Politics Theory Other

Bhaskar Sunkara joins me to talk about the violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin and collusion between the far right and the police, whether the frightening prospect of a second Trump administration makes a rerun of the 2016 election result less likely - in spite of Joe Biden's underwhelming policy platform - and we also talked about the prospect of the American right breaking from its relative economic orthodoxy and moving towards advocacy of a meaningful industrial policy.

Britain is officially in its deepest recession since records began following the unprecedented economic shutdown in response to the Covid19 pandemic. In the past six months, the UK has shed close to three quarters of a million jobs - a grim foretaste of what could be the kind of mass unemployment not seen in the UK since the 1980s. PTO spoke to James Meadway about why Britain's recession is more severe than those faced by comparable economies, whether central bank economic crisis fighting measures may lay the basis for a financial crisis, and why the Government could be forced to extend the furlough scheme beyond the autumn. Become a PTO supporter on Patreon to get access to the full episode: https://www.patreon.com/poltheoryother

Haim Bresheeth-Zabner joins me to talk about his new book, 'An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defense Force Made a Nation'. We discussed how the the Zionist project in Palestine depended upon the erasure of the culture of the Pre-WWII Jewish diaspora, why it is that Israeli military operations command near unanimous support within Israel, and how Israel's economy has become massively dependent on its military industrial complex and permanent conflict. Read more about the book here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3168-an-army-like-no-other

In late March PTO spoke to Adam Tooze whilst he was in New York as the Covid19 crisis was escalating. In today's episode we return to some of the issues we discussed back then, including the pandemic's role in the rise of China, the increasing entwinement of government and private corporations in the United States and Europe and the return of austerity politics.

What will come after the capitalocene - and is that even the right term to describe our geological era? Rosie Warren joins me to talk about 'The Tragedy of the Worker: Towards the Proletarocene' - an essay coauthored by Rosie that considers the entwined processes of climate change and the proletarianisation of the world's population. We talked about the debate over whether to describe our geological age as the anthropocene or the capitalocene and we also discussed Walter Benjamin's notion of capitalism as a "cultic religion".

On Sunday Alexander Lukashenko, ruler of Belarus since 1994 claimed a landslide victory in the country's presidential election with an implausible 80% of the vote. Large protests broke out in the wake of the announcement of the result. I spoke to Nelly Bekus about Lukashenko's rise to power, how Belarus differs from other post-Soviet states in its relationship to the Soviet era, and how Covid19 and its economic impact helped spark the protests.

On Monday the Nobel laureate, and co-architect of the Northern Ireland peace process John Hume passed away at the age of 83. A giant of the political scene in Northern Ireland he was most well known for his role in the Good Friday Agreement that brought the so-called Troubles to a close and for his commitment to nonviolent support for a gradualist route to a united Ireland. I spoke to Daniel Finn, author of 'One Man's Terrorist: A Political History of the IRA' about Hume's legacy, the simplistic contrast made between the politics of Hume and supporters of the armed campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland and the class and generational factors that informed Hume's political outlook. To get access to this episode sign up as a $5 supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/poltheoryother

Tobita Chow and Jake Werner join me to talk about the roots of the increasingly antagonistic relationship between China and the United States, the reasons for bipartisan consensus on China's increasing technological prowess, and the specific character of anti-Chinese racism in the United States. We also talked about how the crushing of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 signalled China's deepening integration into the US-led international order

Rachel Shabi joins me to talk about her recent article in the New York Review of Books - 'The Pro-Privatization Shock Therapy of the UK’s Covid Response'. We talked about why the UK Government's response to the coronavirus pandemic was so heavily dependent on outsourcing to private corporations, and whether the UK's very heavy Covid19-related death toll will eventually erode public support for the Conservative government.

In the latest episode of #RedHacks - a series of conversations on journalism in the neoliberal world - Joana Ramiro talks to filmmaker and writer Ana Naomi de Sousa about being a non-white journalist in an industry stymied by privilege.