Jacobin Radio

The US has played a major role in fomenting violence across Yemen, backing the Saudi and United Arab Emirates-led forces attacking the country while also conducting a direct war against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula under the guise of counterterrorism. But while it's understandable that US involvement is the top focus for the American left, understanding the war in Yemen requires a much broader analysis. The Yemeni conflict not only includes multiple outside actors but also multiple groups of Yemenis pursuing different outcomes, rooted in a complex history that few outside of Yemen understand. Explaining that context is what this show, in partnership with the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), is all about. This special episode includes two interviews with contributors to Middle East Report, MERIP's print publication. First, up is Yemeni journalist Afrah Nasser and political scientist Stacey Philbrick Yadav; and then, Dan speaks with political-economist Adam Hanieh. Check out The Fight for Yemen, the latest issue of Middle East Report at merip.org/magazine/&lt;wbr /&gt;289 Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.org Please support this podcast with your cash at Patreon.com/TheDig <style></style>

<font color="#000000">Our guest Yoav Peled argues that Netanyahu i</font>s the only issue in the April 9 election. <font color="#000000">Netanyahu is under indictment for one case of bribery and two cases of fraud, but Yoav says </font><font color="#000000">he is likely to win even though his party and their bloc </font>—<font color="#000000"> with far-right, racist and religious parties </font>—<font color="#000000"> is more or less tied with the anti-Bibi “Blue an</font>d White” coalition or bloc. Yoav also discusses his new book, The Religionization of Israeli Society— <font color="#000000">which sheds light on how the country has moved from secular Zionism to an increasingly far-right expansionist religious Zionism, and how that helps us understand the election, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict </font>—<font color="#000000"> and the relation between culture, politics, nationalism, secularization, and new social movements. </font> <font color="#000000">Suzi then talks to</font>Micah Uetricht in Chicago, where 5–6 socialists <font color="#000000">were just elected to the City Council. Micah argues they will have outsize influence in determining the political issues </font>— <font color="#000000">much as we have seen nationally with the election of democratic socialists to Congress. In his aptly titled article in</font> the Guardian<font color="#000000">“America's socialist surge is going strong in Chicago” Micah writes that the socialist victories in Chicago were not a fluke, people are miserable with the status quo of austerity </font>— and if Chicago’s elections are any indication, it just may be that people are ready to try socialism.

Jason Wilson on how cops are more interested in surveilling the Left than the Right (article here; Will Parrish article here). Then, Todd Chretien reflects on the forty-two-year history of the International Socialist Organization, which dissolved itself at the end of March.

In the US, China is often viewed at best as a nefarious and enigmatic rival and at worst as a civilizational enemy. But these stories of national rivalry that permeate both major parties and the mainstream media function as a mystification, shrouding the global supply chain that connects capitalist exploitation from East to West. When we cut through the noise, a rather different picture emerges: China is home to a massive portion of the world's working-class, a class that is struggling against the combined forces of state and global capital for dignified lives. And these struggles, contrary to conventional wisdom, are deeply connected, rather than opposed to, worker struggles in the West. Dan interviews sociologist Jenny Chan on China's class conflict and labor movement.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Car dominance, public transit austerity, and the neoliberal political-economy within which both are embedded have fomented what Marx called idiocy, in its classical sense of privatized social isolation. Dan talks to geographer Kafui Attoh, the author of Rights in Transit: Public Transportation and the Right to the City in California's East Bay, about the political-economy of public transit and why the fight for transportation justice must be part of a broader struggle for the right to the city.André Gorz's "The social ideology of the motorcar" unevenearth.org/2018/08/the-social-ideology-of-the-motorcar/Two upcoming live Dig tapings in Providence!April 23: Dan interviews Sam Stein on his book Capital City facebook.com/events/2164662790291372/May 2-4: Slavery’s Hinterlands: Capitalism and bondage in Rhode Island and across the Atlantic world facebook.com/events/661508874305008/And check out the Philadelphia Socialist Feminist Convergence, April 26-28 socfemphilly.wordpress.comThanks to Verso Books. Peruse their massive selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com

Suzi talks to political economist Pedro Paulo Zahluth Bastos about the Trump-Bolsonaro love fest in D.C. last week, and the new Brazilian-US relationship. Bolsonaro was "summoned" to Washington to support a US invasion of Venezuela under the pretext of "exporting democracy," and we ask Pedro Paulo how that will go over in Brazil — and note the irony that Bolsonaro is a staunch defender of military dictatorships and no lover of democracy. We also get Pedro Paulo's view of Brazilian politics and economics under their new tweeter in chief — who campaigned as a murderous, homophobic, anti-feminist, declaring open season on the Left and on the Amazon rainforest, but governs as an extreme neoliberal.

The strike is back, and big time. Teachers in particular have been walking off the job not only to demand higher wages but also to fight for an end to privatization and for a transformation of the educational system for their students. These strikes, often led by women, are no doubt inspiring, and they have won important victories for workers and the communities they serve. We are, in other words, beginning to head in the right direction—but we're not heading there even close to fast enough. Winning working class power is not only necessary to meet people's immediate material needs. It is necessary if we are to accomplish a profound democratization of this country, which is what we must do if we are to implement a just energy transition that heads off what scientists have determined to be imminent climate catastrophe. Dan talks to Jane McAlevey about the labor movement and strikes.Jane's Catalystarticle The Strike as the Ultimate Structure Test.And her Jacobinarticle Organizing to Win a Green New Deal.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Tony Wood, author of Russia Without Putin, on contemporary Russia and Putin.

Four of the five candidates endorsed by the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America either won outright or advanced to the runoff election on April 2, leading to talk of a Socialist Caucus on the city council. And other progressive candidates throughout the city knocked off corporate-friendly incumbents. Dan passes the mic to guest host Micah Uetricht for an interview with United Working Families Executive Director Emma Tai and In These Times web editor Miles Kampf-Lassin on how years of grassroots organizing—and partnerships between labor and community groups and socialists—can produce a sea change in urban politics.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

American liberty has since its foundation relied upon the dispossession of indigenous people and Mexicans, upon African enslavement and, ultimately, upon the constant fleeing outward that created an empire that none dare call by its name. As historian Greg Grandin writes in The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, this expansionist project has finally lost its ideological and material vitality, no longer able to neatly reconcile centuries of mounting contradictions. And so politics returned to the border as American expansion hit a wall—figuratively and, as Trump has demanded, very literally. "Trumpism," Grandin writes, "is extremism turned inward, all-consuming and self-devouring. There is no 'divine, messianic' crusade that can harness and redirect passions outward. Expansion, in any form, can no longer satisfy interests, reconcile contradictions, dilute the factions, or redirect the anger."Thanks to University of California Press. Check out No Go WorldL How Fear Is Redrawing Our Maps and Infecting Our Politics by Ruben Andersson ucpress.edu/book/9780520294608/no-go-worldAnd thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at patreon.com/TheDig