Bungacast

We deal with your questions, comments and criticisms from the past month or so. Key issues this month are:

What are the wrongs of the postmodern right – aand left?

Will the civilisational paradigm become hegemonic?

Is Trump's foreign policy techno-populist?

Whether, and how, to protest anti-immigration policing

To defend or to smash the professions?

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On anti-racism, communism, and philosophy.

Alex Gourevitch talks to political philosopher Paul Gomberg about his original and deep Marxist arguments for what makes racism wrong, why racism cannot be eradicated without overcoming capitalism, and the limits of many contemporary anti-racist arguments.

What does it mean to "alienate" race?

What is the harm in racism? How does it harm everyone, not just its obvious victims?

Why does Gomberg argue that can racism cannot be overcome in capitalist society?

Has official racism been replaced by official anti-racism in the neoliberal era?

What does it mean to understand anti-racism as communism?

How did Gomberg's communist militancy impact his philosophy?

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Links:

Anti-Racism as Communism, Paul Gomberg, Bloomsbury

How to Make Opportunity Equal: Race and Contributive Justice, Paul Gomberg, Blackwell

On postmodern conservatives.

Matt McManus talks to Alex and George about a Right increasingly shaped by the parameters of postmodern culture – and his Damage article on this.

Who are the key thinkers of postmodern conservatism?

Does truth matter anymore?

Is "flooding the zone" an act of post-truth politics?

Does all that is solid melt into advertising – and is it Charlie Kirk's fault?

Is postmodern conservatism an adequate response the dissolution of the traditional “sources of the self”?

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Links:

Conservativism as Postmodernism, Matt McManus, Damage

Why only Socialism can redeem Conservatism, Maurice Glassman, Together For The Common Good

On Trump and Rubio, Venezuela and Cuba.

Writer Juan David Rojas talks to Alex and Lee about the abduction of Maduro, what next for Venezuela, and Trump's "hemispheric" foreign policy.

What is the Trump administration's policy toward Latin America?

Is the attack on Venezuela a war for oil? Or a war vs 'narcoterrorism'?

What are the internal divisions in Venezuela, and could it fall into civil war?

What are the armed groups in the country?

Who's calling the shots in Washington: neocons or paleocons?

Is the US open-border policy for Cubans going to cause a rift within the Trump admin?

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

How Maduro Sealed His Own Fate, Juan David Rojas, Compact

Atlas Shrugged: Decoding Trump’s National Security Strategy, Lee Jones, American Affairs

From Rogue State to Failed State?: The Perils of Intervention in Venezuela, Juan David Rojas, American Affairs

Trump’s Venezuela Actions Are About More Than Oil, Matt Huber, Jacobin

On "thin ideologies" in a postmodern age.

The Reading Club kicks off with an exploration of illiberalism, a "new ideological universe" that exists in "a permanent situational relation to liberalism."

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What are examples of this backlash against liberalism?

How is illiberalism different from populism, conservatism, or the far right?

What is a thin versus a thick ideology? Are we condemned to a 21st century of only thin ideologies?

Is 'illiberalism' a useful term to describe what is going on in politics today?

Is liberalism versus illiberalism just a terminal culture war?

Links:

Illiberalism: a conceptual introduction, Marlene Laruelle, East European Politics (2022)

/114/ Reading Club: The Light That Failed | Patreon