Ashley Frawley, sociologist and senior editor at Compact, joins Alex and George to delve more deeply into young people's political polarisation on gender lines.

• Why is there a lack of mutual understanding or goodwill between young men and women when we have never been more equal?

• Why do differing political views on anything from Israel/Palestine to Donald Trump cause such interpersonal rancour?

• Young women are centrally concerned with pain, trauma, and empathy – and see men as lacking. What's behind this?

• How is the conservative explanation (bad lefty ideas) just as faulty as the lefty one (patriarchy)?

• What will the political consequences be of gender polarisation?

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

Links:

• Revealed: the new radicalism among young women, Scarlett Maguire, New Statesman

• Meet the Angry Young Women, Emily Lawford, New Statesman

• Why young women are so angry, Pippa Bailey, New Statesman

• Don’t panic about “Angry Young Women”, Jack Davey, The Critic Magazine

• Why do young women hate men?, New Statesman, YouTube

• /394/ Girls, Left / Boys, Right ft. Nina Power (see for additional links)

• Girls and Boys are becoming very different, Alex Hochuli, Substack

Sociologist Will Charles talks to Alex about a form of social organisation that has stopped trying to justify itself.

• How should the gig economy work and how does it actually work?

• Is any worker in this economy a 'true believer'?

• Why isn't digital sophistication a proof of economic efficiency?

• What's the relationship between secular stagnation, value capture, and rentierism?

• Do workers hold to a latent moral economy that could provide the basis for revolt?

Full episode for subscribers only. Sign up: patreon.com/bungacast

Readings:

• Muskism and the Myth of Productive Revolution, Will Charles

• Post-Legitimate Society, Will Charles & Ryan Gunderson

• Muskism Is the Specter Stalking Our Present, Alex Hochuli, Jacobin

Relevant episodes:

• /538/ Muskism ft. Quinn Slobodian & Ben Tarnoff 

• /522/ At the Bottom of the Tar Pit ft. Benjamin Studebaker

• /540/ Welcome to the Apolar and Post-Multilateral World ft. Tom Chodor

• /546/ Reading Club: Are We All Post-Liberal Now? ft. Geoff Shullenberger

• /547/ What Are the Politics of Stagnation? ft. Dylan Riley

Sociology professor at UC Berkeley, Dylan Riley, talks to Alex and Lee about economic stagnation, the state propping up capitalism, and class politics.

• What is "political capitalism"? And is it true that plunder and predation matter more now than exploitation?

• Why hasn't the ruling class purged the system through mass bankruptcies and unemployment?

• How does Chinese state capitalism fit into the story of stagnation and excess capacity?

• What is the difference between economic interests and class interests? How is the working class divided today?

• Is there a way out of the impasse? What possibility is there of a pro-growth politics?

–> For more like this, subscribe: patreon.com/bungacast <–

Links:

Relevant Episodes

• /312/ Consolation-Prize Marxism & the Bunga-Bunga State ft. Dylan Riley

• /515/ State Capitalism Is Now ft. Ilias Alami

Riley & Brenner

• Seven Theses on American Politics, New Left Review, 2022 

• The Long Downturn and Its Political Results, New Left Review, 2025

Some Key Responses

• Reflections on Political Capitalism, Lola Seaton, New Left Review, 2023

• Notes on ‘Political Capitalism’, John Ganz

• Seven Theses on Brenner and Riley's "Political Capitalism", Tim Barker

• Robert Brenner’s Unprofitable Theory of Global Stagnation, Seth Ackerman, Jacobin

• From Politics to Theory and Back, Benjamin Fong, Damage

 Notable pieces in Sidecar by Dylan

• Lenin in America

• First Principles

• Contra Arendt

• How was the 1950s "end of ideology" (Bell, Lipset) different from the Fukuyaman 1990s "end of history"?

• Is John Gray correct in his characterisation of Alasdair MacIntyre as a prelapsarian?

• Does hyperliberal individualism lead to a search for meaning, and thus to communitarianism?

•  Is the competition between liberalism and post-liberalism now our political spectrum? 

• Is contemporary liberalism now reducible to professionalisation of the state and civil society?

• If liberalism has failed – a basic point of this podcast from the start – has post-liberalism now also failed?

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

Links:

• The End of History and the End of the End of History, Alasdair MacIntyre

• How to Save British Liberalism, John Gray, New Statesman

• What ever happened to post-liberalism, Nicolas D Villarreal, Substack

• /533/ Reading Club: Illiberalism?

Hungarian political analyst and editor of Partizan, Szilard Pap, talks to Alex about the end of 16 years of Fidesz in government.

• What is the scale of Fidesz’s wipeout?

• Who is Péter Magyar, and is he actually to the right of Orban?

• What was Orban’s rule built on, and what parts of it have been rejected?

• Does Orban mark a shift from national-populism to radical conservatism? From anti-politics to hyperpolitics?

• What is the impact on global radical right? Was there a global Orbanism, and is it over?

• How will this impact European “unity” and will Orban's defeat lead to escalation in Ukraine?

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

Links:

• The Mittel Man, Ivan Krastev, Equator

• Viktor Orbán’s Hungarian Model Has Collapsed, David Broder, Jacobin

Historian Arash Azizi is back on the pod, talking to Alex H and Lee Jones about the ongoing war. We try to draw out some firm consequences, beyond the immediate situtation.

• Why did Trump go to war?

• Is this Netanyahu's war? And will he continue it regardless of the US?

• Will the Islamic Republic become more conservative now? 

• What has the war revealed about asymmetric warfare? About US vulnerability?

• What is the state of the Hormuz weapon now?

For more like this, join us at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

Arash Azizi:

• Reasons to be Hopeful in Iran, Arash Azizi, The Atlantic

• /24/ #IranProtest ft. Arash Azizi

• /150/ Shadow Commander ft. Arash Azizi

• /444/ Opportunism & Revenge in the Middle East ft. Karl Sharro & Arash Azizi

Analyses:

• How Trump Took the U.S. to War With Iran, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, NY Times

• Netanyahu’s Iran War Is Also the War of Global Neocon Elites, Nimrod Flaschenberg, Jacobin

• Trump's War, Daniel Luban Dissent Magazine

• The world energy shock is coming, Isabella Weber and Gregor Semieniuk, New Statesman

• One battle after another: Netanyahu’s new security doctrine, FT 

• /532/ Is This a Paleocon Foreign Policy? ft. JF Drolet

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

Ran Heilbrunn talks to Lee Jones and Alex Hochuli about his chapter, "Abolish Queer Theory!" in the edited collection Inversion: Gay Life after the Homosexual.

• What is queer theory and why should it be abolished?

• What is the meaning behind the shift in terms: invert, to homosexual, to gay, to queer?

• How does queer theory politicise sex and why is this bad?

• Do our libidos care about social inclusion? Can they?

• Is identity okay but identity politics bad?

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

Links:

Inversion: Gay Life after the Homosexual, Aman Namaman and Pierre d’Alancaisez (eds.), Verdurin, 2025

Key issues:

• The difference between radical conservatism and the far right

• Racism in class society in decomposition

• Tech bro übermenschen (or just Uber men)

• Who is doing the work of justifying this order?

• And Ursula, the villainous Cecaelian sea witch, about whom songs must be sung

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

Links:

• To Keep and Bear Arms, Garry Wills, The New York Review

• David Graeber vs. Peter Thiel: Where Did the Future Go?

• /495/ Heritage America vs the World? ft. James Pogue

Benjamin Fong, of ASU's Center for Work and Democracy, as well as an editor at Damage and co-author of the substack On The Seams, talks to Alex and George about organising workers in locations of corporate vulnerability.

We also preview the forthcoming print issue of Damage, Trains, by discussing modernity and its avatars, and development and de-development in Brazil.

• Why target Amazon above all else?

• What are the "seams" and why are they important?

• Can labour still "go after the big targets"? Do these still exist given the dispersion of production and distribution?

• How much public appetite is there for blockages at pain points?

Links:

• On the Seams, Substack

• The Labor Movement Must Go All In on Organizing Amazon, Benjamin Y Fong, Jacobin

• Organizing Logistics Chokepoints: Hitting Them Where It Hurts, Benjamin Y Fong, New Labor Forum

• The Apotheosis of Point of Sale Data, Benjamin Y Fong, Phenomenal World

Tom Chodor, IR & politics scholar at Monash University, joins us to talk about a world that still retains the formal shells of multilateral institutions but whose contents have been hollowed out.

• What is "multilateralism"? Why is it an important concept to capture the US-led order that is now falling apart?

• If multilateralism was always in crisis, what is new today?

• Is the emerging (dis)order multipolar or apolar? What's the difference?

• Is multilateralism the historic exception that we wrongly take to be the norm? Why is there no going back to the post-1945 – or post-1991 – order?

• What are the prospects for a new hegemonic order? Isn’t prolonged chaos and decay more likely? 

The full episode is for subscribers. Join at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

• Non-Hegemony, Tom Chodor, Jack Taggart and Ilias Alami, Phenomenal World

• /377/ The Locked-Up Country ft. Shahar Hameiri & Tom Chodor

• /357/ Lucky, Meaty Nations ft. Shahar Hameiri & Tom Chodor

Alex, George and contributing editor (and science writer) Leigh Phillips discuss David Graeber's 2012 essay, Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit. This builds on two of this year's themes: state capitalism (how planning and growth – or their absence – intersect with technology) and the pre-political (how technology shapes

•⁠  ⁠Were we right to expect jetpacks? And are we looking in the right place for technological advances today?

•⁠  ⁠⁠Has technical progress actually slowed in the way Graeber says? 

•⁠  ⁠⁠Are the explanations he gives for slowdown correct?

•⁠  ⁠⁠What political tasks does this reality impose on us?

•⁠  ⁠⁠What is the role of geopolitics and war in the rate of technological development?

Links:

• Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit, David Graeber, The Baffler

• Science Is Getting Less Bang for Its Buck, Patrick Collison & Michael Nielsen, The Atlantic

• /59/ Übermenschen of Capital Pt. 3 ft. Leigh Phillips & Michal Rozworski

• Progress is in the balance between innovation and implementation, Phil Bell, LSE

• Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction (On Robert C. Allen)

• Engels’s Second Theory: Technology, Warfare and the Growth of the State

Historian Quinn Slobodian and tech writer Ben Tarnoff talk to Alex Hochuli and Alex Gourevitch about their new book, Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed, and why we should ask "what is Musk a symptom of?"

• If Fordism characterised the mid-20th century, are our times those of Muskism?

• What are the touchstones of Muskism that the authors identify: fortress futurism, financial fabulism, state symbiosis?

• Who is the real Musk, that of vehicles, energy, infrastructure, or that of the post-industrial stuff of social media, finance, AI?

• What does Muskism promise people? How does it legitimise itself – if at all?

• Is the state actually dependent on Musk, or is Musk dependent on the state?

• How much of Musk's right-wing turn is necessary to Muskism, and how much is contingent? Is the racial component central?

Links:

• Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed, Quinn Slobodian & Ben Tarnoff, Harper Collins

• /57/ Übermenschen of Capital Pt. 1 ft. Alex Gourevitch

• 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?

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

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?

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

Links:

• Anti-Racism as Communism, Paul Gomberg, Bloomsbury

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

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”?

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

Links:

• Conservativism as Postmodernism, Matt McManus, Damage

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

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

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

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

• 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

Jean-François Drolet, a leading researcher into the 'World of the Right', talks to Alex and Lee about Donald Trump's coveting of Greenland, and puts the move into its ideological context.

• What is the paleoconservative worldview, how is it different from the neoconservative one, and which is more influential in the Trump regime?

• How does paleoconservatism translate into actual foreign policy? What's in Trump's new National Security Strategy?

• Are we back to a 19th century-style 'spheres of influence' arrangement?

• Does the radical right's foreign policy lead back to a populist kind of isolationism – or to a 'civilisational nationalism'?

• Will Trump solidify the transatlantic alliance, or generate a rift?

Links:

• /461/ Welcome to the World of the Right ft. Michael C. Williams

• World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024).

• International Relations and the Geopolitics of the European New Right, European Journal of International Relations, JF Drolet

• From Critique to Reaction: The New Right, Critical Theory and International Relations, Journal of International Political Theory, JF Drolet & Michael C. Williams

• Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy: Goodbye, Liberal International Order; Hello, Radical Right, Lee Jones, American Affairs (forthcoming

Contributing editor Ryan Zickgraf is back from Minnesota and tells us what is happening on the ground. We also discuss:

• If this was Trump picking a fight, why Minnesota?

• Do the slayings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti mark a step-change in who can be killed in the US with relative impunity?

• What are the implications for the 2nd Amendment and will this divide MAGA World?

• Does a hard border necessarily entail a hard, militarised society too? Is the interiorisation of the border inevitable?

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

We then discuss listener questions on:

• What is important that Bungacast cover?

• The benefits of citizenship

• Capitalists paying themselves for labour

• The post-doomer personality

Readings:

• South Minneapolis has had enough, Ryan Zickgraf, UnHerd

• Enforcement Regime, Michael Macher, Phenomenal World 

• Minneapolis Is a Second Amendment Wake-Up Call, Tyler Austin Harper, The Atlantic

• ICE unloads, Ken Klippenstein, Substack

Psychoanalysts Christie and Ricky talk to Alex and George about their article in issue #5 of Damage, on ill-fated attempts at solving social problems through therapy.

• What is the 'social turn' and is it another case of immediacy?

• Why are the social problems to be dealt with treated as both urgent and impossible to resolve?

• Is this a case of hyperpolitics? Is psychoanalysis actually white supremacy?

• Do the professions need defending? Do they need to accept their limitations?

Subscribers to this podcast get 15% off print subscriptions to Damage magazine – and access to to this episode. Go to patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

• The Regression in Psychoanalysis’s “Social Turn”, Christie Offenbacher & Ricky Levitt

• /210/ Reading Club: Psychoanalysis & Spirit of Capitalism

Mark Bo, organised-crime researcher and co-author of Scam, talks to Alex and Lee about his book, his experiences and why this fusion of gangsterism and speculation has taken root in the contemporary economy.

• What is the scale of the scam industry?

• How do scams like pig butchering, fish butchering, or law-enforcement impersonation work?

• How does organised crime structure itself on corporate lines? How does this fit with modern slavery?

• Do illicit zones signal the coming of a kind of "compound capitalism"? Is scamming a symptom of the death of the developmental state?

The full episode is only available to subscribers. Sign up at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

Scam: Inside Southeast Asia’s Cybercrime Compounds, Ivan Franceschini, Ling Li, and Mark Bo, Verso

Assistant professor of politics at The New School, Sandipto Dasgupta, talks to contributing editor Alex Gourevitch about this new book, Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony.

• Why was the postcolonial movement insufficiently anti-colonial?

• What is the difference between the legal and political meaning of popular sovereignty – and why does it matter?

• What was the hidden, repressive element to the Indian Constitution?

• Did post-colonial leaders create something novel, even heroic? Or did they fail even on their own terms?

• Where do the democratic and counter-revolutionary aspects of the Indian revolution express themselves?

• How do symbolic substitutes for genuine popular participation play themselves out in Modi's India?

Links:

• Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony, Sandipto Dasgupta, Cambridge UP

• /198/ Universal India ft. Achin Vanaik

• /417/ Has India passed peak Modi? ft. Achin Vanaik

Panagiotis Sotiris, Historical Materialism editorial board member and assistant professor at the University of the Aegean, talks to Alex and Lee about class and the "national-popular".

• Is the way to recover popular sovereignty to "return" to the nation?

• Is there a contradiction between this and declaring oneself to be "in favour of open frontiers for migrants and refugees"?

• What is the meaning of citizenship in this case?

• What's the difference between Gramsci's conceptions of people-nation and nation-rhetoric?

• Does the radical right's "civilisational nationalism" offer the left an opportunity to reclaim a popular notion of nationhood?

Links:

• Rethinking the “We” of Emancipation, Panagiotis Sotiris, Communis

• /471/ Reforming the Deformed ft. Nathan Sperber & George Hoare

The OG Bunga boys get togther for the annual end-of-year film episode. We discuss Ari Aster's Eddington, as well as a bit of Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another and Yorgos Lanthimos' Bugonia: the three films that together marked 2025, and which deal with paranoia, conspiracy, disinformation and unmoored political activity.

• Is this hyperpolitics on screen?

• Do these films serve any critical purpose?

• Is Eddington a faithful depiction of the society of immediacy or is it guilty of immediacy itself?

• Are we all fkin r*****ed?

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

Links:

• /520/ Conspiracy Culture & Paranoid Styles ft. Catherine Liu

• Hell in Ari Aster, Tara Heffernan & Felix McNamara, Corporate Total Art

• /458/ The Society of Pure Vibe ft. Anna Kornbluh (on 'immediacy')

• America’s Unraveling on Screen, Monica Marks, New Lines Magazine

Branko Milanovic, Research Professor at City University of New York, talks to Phil and Alex about his most recent book, The Great Global Transformation: National Market Liberalism in a Multipolar World.

• What unites the political trajectories of Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump?

• How is global inequality, growth and political conflict evolving in the aftermath of globalisation?

• How are hierarchies of global income shifting as the world rebalances towards East Asia?

• What kind of political theories can we use to model the emergence of this new multipolar world – Adam Smith, Lenin, Luxembourg or John Rawls?

• And what is Homoploutia? 

Links:

• The Great Global Transformation: National Market Liberalism in a Multipolar World, Branko Milanovic

• Global Inequality 3.0 and More, Branko's substack

• An Economist’s Case for Open Borders, Branko Milanovic, Dissent Magazine

• The ‘homoploutic’ elephant, with Branko Milanović, FT

Amber Trotter, practicing psychologist and an editor at Damage magazine, and George Hoare tell Alex about their co-written article in the print issue of Damage on "the pre-political".

• What is driving the explosion in mental health diagnoses? Why are people seeking diagnosis?

• How is it the product of the subjective and the purely scientific?

• Does capitalism make us ill? Is blaming 'capitalism' abstractly part of the problem?

• What is the crisis of authority? Whose authority?

• Can we solve pre-political problems with politics? And political problems with pre-political approaches?

Damage, Issue 5: The Pre-Political

Ryan Z is back on, talking to Alex and George about the US Democrats' attempt to respond to Trump/MAGA.

In association with Damage magazine.

• Can the Democrats escape the shadow of woke?

• Is Big Woke dying? Everywhere?

• Who are the groups and think-tanks pushing for a reorientation, and what are they proposing?

• Will the Dems adapt to Trump’s challenge or pretend nothing is happening? 

We then take listener questions and comments on transport infrastructure, left-wing gatekeeping, and the crisis in education everywhere, high and low.

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

Links:

• Can the Democrats Escape the Shadow of Woke?, Ryan Zickgraf, Damage

• Inside the Democratic identity crisis, Ryan Zickgraf, UnHerd

Benjamin Studebaker talks to Alex and Lee about his book, Legitimacy in Liberal Democracy – and why the absence of the threat of revolution makes the crisis drag on.

• What's wrong with 20th century accounts of legitimacy crises? What's changed?

• Why is contemporary politics so stuck? Is it inescapable?

• How does the breakdown of consensus make the emergence of a social majority so difficult?

• Is there no common programme we can agree on, focused on bread-and-butter issues?

• Do we need to stare despair in the face? Is catastrophe the only way out?

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

Links:

• Legitimacy in Liberal Democracy, Benjamin Studebaker, Edinburgh UP

• UNLOCKED: /361/ A Nightmare on the Brains of the Living ft. Benjamin Studebaker

• Debilitated democracy: When the legs get ripped off, Dirk Jörke and Benjamin Studebaker, European Journal of Social Theory

Poet, podcaster and teacher, C. Derick Varn – who has taught in Mexico, Korea, Egypt and the US, at various levels – joins Alex and George to interrogate the coming "post-literate society".

• What do we mean when we say 'post-literate'?

• This seems a global problem – so is it a problem of the education system?

• Is it as simple as blaming smartphones?

• How else has education become degraded? How have progressives and conservatives combined to do this?

• Are we becoming on oral culture again? What are the consequences?

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

Links:

• Are we becoming a post-literate society?, Sarah O'Connor, FT

• Have humans passed peak brain power?, John Burn-Murdoch, FT

• Visible Learning (synthesis of meta analyses), John Hattie

• Why Knowledge Matters, ED Hirsch, Harvard

• Seven Myths about Education, Daisy Christodoulou

• Insensitivity Readers!, Nina Power

• 00:01:23 – Catherine Liu: Opening Remarks, on Richard Hofstatder’s classic essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”

• 00:12:18 – George Hoare: The Paranoid Style in British Politics

• 00:36:06 – Catherine Liu: "Zombies Clowns and Gangsters"

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

On the middle classes and cultural compression.

For the concluding episode of the 2024/25 Reading Club, we discuss C. Wright Mills' White Collar, plus some additional short texts on what mass culture is like today.

• Does Mills' account of the “economic psychology” of the White Collar worker still ring true today?

• What about their "political psychology"?

• What is the state of White Collar trade unionism today?

• Is there no possibility of the middle class leading a political movement?

• Do the distinctions of high- middle- and low-brow still make sense today, in our era of levelling-down and slop?

• Should we defend democracy in the economy and elitism in culture?

Readings:

• White Collar: The American Middle Classes, C. Wright Mills, 1951 (esp final two chapters)

• Highbrow, Middlebrow, Lowbrow, Russell Lynes, Wilson Quarterly, 1976 reprint of 1949 article (pdf attached)

• Post-Mass Culture, Dylan Riley, Sidecar

• Unionizing the “Cultural Apparatus”, Nelson Lichtenstein, Jacobin

James Hughes (Exec Director, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies) and Eli Sennesh (postdoc, Vanderbilt) present a futurist approach to Alex and contributing editor Leigh Phillips.

• What is wrong with the acronym TESCREAL?

• Why is it wrong to worry about future transhumanism when we need to grapple with the technologies of now?

• What are the limits of bourgeois futurism? What is an alternative futurism?

• Has AI changed everything? Will it?

• Are we actually living in an age of rapid technological advance?

Links:

• Conspiracy Theories, Left Futurism, and the Attack on TESCREAL, James Hughes & Eli Sennesh

• /306/ AI Capitalism: Inhuman Power

• /335/ AI & the End of the End of History

• /446/ The Techno-Fantasy of Perfect Freedom ft. Amber Trotter

• /488/ Homo-Techno, Homo-Solo ...Post-Homo? ft. Alex Gendler

• The Obama-to-Yarvin Pipeline, Geoff Schullenberger, Compact Substack

Geoff Shullenberger, managing editor at Compact, joins Alex and George to talk about Peter Thiel, René Girard, victimhood and the antichrist.

• Does it make sense to talk of "right-wing cancel culture"? Is it different from the left's?

• Is countercultural trolling in tension with "defending Western civilisation"?

• What does René Girard argue about mimesis and scapegoating? Why have his theories become popular?

• Is right-populism still politicising? How does it relate to libertarian anti-politics and hard-right militarisation?

• How has Silicon Valley libertarianism adapted to the new state-capitalist disposition?

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

Links:

• René Girard and the Rise of Victim Power, Geoff Shullenberger, Compact

• The Real Stakes, and Real Story, of Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession, Laura Bullard, Wired

• The Faith of Nick Land, Geoff Shullenberger, Compact

Architect Pier Paolo Tamburelli talks to Alex about his project to catalogue modern wonders – structures that are very big, that pretend to be ancient, and are mostly ugly.

For the full episode subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

• How has architecture lost its ritual dimension?

• Why are these "modern wonders" kitsch? And why are they found the world over, from Munich to Malaysia, South Dakota to Dakar?

• Do 'wonders' speak to a world where places remain distinct, and where conflicts and history seem to have returned?

• Are disillusioned and cynical postmodern subjects searching for wonder?

• Can architecture rebuild society?

Links:

• Wonders of the Modern World, Arch+, issue 259

• Wonders of the Modern World: Notes for a Research Programme, Pier Paolo Tamburelli, Arch+ (pdf attached in patreon)

• What's wrong with the primitive hut?, Pier Paolo Tamburelli, San Rocco (pdf attached in patreon)

Fred Lyra, philosopher and musicologist based in Paris, joins Alex to talk about France through 4 moments: 1995 – the last moment of classic class struggle; 2005 – riots in the banlieues; 2015 – Islamist terror; 2025 – government collapse.

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

• How were the riots normalised? And what was the state's response?

• Why did the riots prompt debates about "models of integration"?

• Why is there an "excess" of state in the banlieues, and an absence of state in left-behind smaller cities?

• How did France go from the Nuits Debouts protests to the Gillet Jaunes – and how did they differ?

• What about Bloquons Tout protests and the repeated fall of governments today?

Links:

• The Peripherisation of France, Fred Lyra, A Terra É Redonda

• Two, Three, or More Fractures in French Society?, Fred Lyra, A Terra É Redonda

• Bonapartist Solutions, Dylan Riley, Sidecar

• Nuits Debout: Up All Night, Fred Lyra, Lavra Palavra

Ilias Alami joins Alex and Lee to talk about his essential co-authored book, The Spectre of State Capitalism.

• Why is state capitalism not just a China story, but is global?

• What does the rise of state capitalism tell us about the health of contemporary capitalism?

• How did globalisation and stagnation combine to give birth to it?

• Is this an extension of neoliberalism or something new and different?

• Does this represent a 're-politicisation' of the economy – and does it open up more hopeful political futures?

Links:

• The Spectre of State Capitalism, Ilias Alami & Adam D Dixon, Oxford UP [OPEN ACCESS]

Richard J Williams talks to Alex and George about his new book, The Expressway World and how cities have adapted to the infrastructural legacies of the mid-20th century. We talk about New York, London, São Paulo, Madrid, Glasgow and Seoul.

• Why do people hate expressways – and who actually loves them?

• What are Big Man cities? How do expressways bring together populism, authoritarianism, and capital?

• Why is the antidote to 20th century car-centricity always gentrified and sanitised public space?

• What are the class struggles that emerge over the expressway world?

• Is there a basic lie behind many "ecological" infrastructure projects?

Links:

• The Expressway World, Richard J Williams, Polity

• Intersections, Owen Hatherley, Sidecar

• /113/ Globoville ft. Richard Williams

Alex talks to Guilherme Casarões, Associate Professor of Brazilian Studies at Florida International University, about Bolsonaro's sentencing, Trump's tariffs on Brazil, and the bailout of Milei.

• Is the motivation behind the tariffs on Brazil just partisan interest?

• How has Jair Bolsonaro's son, Eduardo, become point-man for the Latin American radical right's connection to MAGA?

• Is Bolsonarismo the closest to MAGA among the global radical right?

• Will a "Populist International Order" follow the Liberal International Order?

• Why is the nationalist Trump bailing out the libertarian Milei?

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

Then George, Alex and Ryan Zickgraf discuss the global radical right and whether Charlie Kirk's killing was its "George Floyd moment".

Finally, the boys take listener questions & comments from the past month. (NB recorded 25 September)

The penultimate episode of this block on the middle class, we discuss the differing fortunes and politics of the global North and South middle-classes – as well as ways they may be similar.

Subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

• Is the middle-class dream increasingly only a dream?

• Can the "ever-rising middle-class wave" in China and India sustain itself?

• Is being middle-class defined by one's consumption? By income? By something else?

• How have fears changed: from being politically "squeezed" between to proletariat and bourgeoisie, to being economically "squeezed" and fearing falling?

• What politics do the middle-classes generate? What kind of populism?

Sociologist Lisa McKenzie talks to Alex and contributing editor Lee Jones about why the country feels like a powder-keg.

• What's behind protests like Unite the Kingdom? How responsible are far-right agitators?

• Why are threats posed to women and children such an explosive issue?

• What is the type of nationalism that is behind the proliferation of English and British flags?

• What are Farage's Reform promising and will they deliver? What of the immigration question?

• How is Corbyn's "Your Party" going, and why can't the Left seem to speak for or to the working class?

Links:

• Getting By: Estates, Class and Culture in Austerity Britain, Lisa McKenzie, Bristol UP
• Lockdown Diaries of the Working Class, Lisa McKenzie
• James Treadwell thread on raising of flags, X

New contributing editor Ryan Zickgraf joins Alex and George to talk about the history of media critique and contemporary cases.

• How does consensus-age comedy like King of the Hill deal with hyperpolitics today?

• Is the reliance on archetypes a problem, or inherent to all comedy?

• Why is Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death still relevant?

• Is the Gen X critique of 'couch potatoes' and TV-watching similar to today's techlash?

• Have we become insensible to contradiction?

Links:

• We’re still distracting ourselves to death, Ryan Zickgraf, UnHerd 

• King of the Hill reboot is ill-suited to the Trump age, Ryan Zickgraf, UnHerd

Renowned sociologist Orlando Patterson talks to contributing editor Alex Gourevitch about themes brought up by his recent The Paradox of Freedom as well as his works as a whole.

• Why is the study of slavery too affected by the exceptional US American experience?

• In what way is violence a constitutive feature of slave relations that aren’t true of others?

• Are we still mired in a politics of ethnic chauvinism?

• What does it mean for ethnic minorities to engage in self-criticism?

• Is there a politics of freedom that is hopeful today or has it been eclipsed?

In this episode, we examine the Millennials and Generation Z. Uniquely, generation war today seems to be a conflict over resources more than over values. Is there any basis for this, and what do Millennials actually want? With generational and class conflict seemingly bound together today, we analyse 'Generation Left' and 'Millennial Socialism'. And we ask what the effect of the pandemic may be on the creation of a Gen Z consciousness.

Guests include:

• Paul Taylor, former director, Pew Research
• Jennie Bristow, senior lecturer in sociology at Canterbury Christ Church University
• Helen Andrews, senior editor at The American Conservative
• Clive Martin, journalist who has written for VICE Magazine
• Josh Glenn, semiotician, author, and publisher of HiLoBrow
• Jennifer Silva, assistant professor in sociologist, Indiana University

Original music by: Jonny Mundey

Additional music:

• Cacti / I Will Be Waiting / courtesy of epidemicsound.com
• Filthy the Kid / Vampire / courtesy of epidemicsound.com

In this episode, we examine Generation X – the generation of the End of History. How was this generation overshadowed by the Boomer's failures? In the Eastern Bloc, the fall of Soviet regimes was a traumatic moment – how did this shape consciousness? And how did the Iranian Revolution – and subsequent war – shape the political perspectives of Iranians?

Guests include:

• Maren Thom, film scholar
• Alexei Yurchak, professor of anthropology at Berkeley
• Jennie Bristow, senior lecturer in sociology at Canterbury Christ Church University
• Josh Glenn, semiotician, author, and publisher of HiLoBrow
• Arash Azizi, historian of Iran at New York University
• Felix Krawatzek, political scientist at the Centre for East European and International Studies in Berlin

Original music by: Jonny Mundey

Additional music:

• Kit Kruger / Freakin' Freefall / courtesy of epidemicsound.com

• Medité / A Change in My Heart / courtesy of epidemicsound.com
• Ondolut / Blumen / courtesy of epidemicsound.com
• Elliott Holmes / Bull Chase / courtesy of epidemicsound.com
• Kick Castle / Kick Down / courtesy of epidemicsound.com
• T. Morri / Nuthin' but Nuts / courtesy of epidemicsound.com

• American Pastoral Trailer © 2016 - Lionsgate
• Mai 1968 © France 3 Paris Ile-de-France
• Imitation de Daniel Cohn-Bendit © C'est Canteloup
• Baader Meinhof Complex © 2008

Guests include:

• Niall Whelahan, Chancellor’s Fellow in History, Strathclyde University

Original music by: Jonny Mundey

Additional music:

• Leimoti / Don't Leave It Here / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
• Leimoti / The Small Things / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
• Philip Ayers / Trapped in a Maze / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
• Walt Adams / Dark Tavern / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com

Other Clips:

• Black 47 Trailer © 2018 - WildCard Distribution
• Arracht Trailer © 2019 - Break Out Pictures
• The Sun Also Rises © 2019 - 20th Century Fox
• Mr Lloyd George Speaks To The Nation (1931) British Pathé

Guests include:

• Felix Krawatzek, political scientist at the Centre for East European and International Studies in Berlin
• Jennie Bristow, sociologist at Canterbury Christ Church University
• Joshua Glenn, semiotician, author, and publisher of HiLoBrow

Original music by: Jonny Mundey

Additional music:

Peter Kuli / OK Boomer / courtesy of Elektra Entertainment Group, Inc.

Liru / For the Floor / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com

We continue our attempt to conceptualise the present moment by looking at Silicon Valley-style disruption, geopolitical disturbances and 'polycrisis', and decline & decay along two axes: normative vs descriptive, and geopolitical and universal.

Then we deal with your questions and comments over the past month on: religious authority; Russia, imperialism, and the USSR; and the limitations to 'the national interest'.

Subscribe for the full episode: patreon.com/bungacast

We discuss Michael Lind's The New Class War.

Lind identifies new lines in the class war, between working class and managerial overclass, between those in the "heartlands" and those in the "hubs". How convincing is this account? What is his critique of technocratic managerialism and its symptom, populism? How convincing - and realistic - is his solution of "democratic pluralism"? And is this only achievable as a result of a new cold war with China?

Aufhebunga Bunga co-founder and contributing editor Phil Cunliffe joins us to talk about his new book about politics after the age of globalisation. We ask questions about his book – and then put him on trial for wrongthink.

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• Who is the 'national interest' good for? Is it a domestic or a foreign policy concern?

• Why did the 'national interest' disappear from our political vocabulary?

• Is the national interest an abstraction anyone can rhetorically claim? Is that not dangerous?

• What happens if leading politicians – or elites in general – adopt the national interest? Would this be good or bad?

• Will Trump's re-assertion of US interests push others to defend theirs?

• Does the national interest stand against class interests? Is this anti-socialist?

• Was Stalin-style socialism-in-one-country actually correct? Has Phil come around to supporting Roosevelt-style social democracy?

Links:

• The National Interest: Politics After Globalization, Philip Cunliffe, Polity

Jason Myles of This Is Revolution is back on, talking to George and Alex H about his article in Damage on increasing steroid use.

• What does the discourse around 'fake natties' tell us about authenticity? Do SSRIs provide "fake happy"?

• If steroids are a short-cut, how do we understand the "work" in "working out"?

• Is the taboo on drug use completely gone?

• Are we medicating to counter the side-effects of other meds?

• How do issues such as steroids and trans reveal contradictory attitudes to the body?

• Have the links between body, image, sex, and eroticism been erased?

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

Links:

• Self-Catfishing with Steroids, Jason Myles, Damage 

• Shedeur Sanders and the Marketization of College Sports, Jason Myles, Damage 

• /359/ Apollo Gets High ft. Benjamin Fong

We focus on a very short section from Jakubowski's 1936 book, and delve into wider questions regarding ideology, social totality, and the middle classes.

• Is ideology “false, partial consciousness”?

• Is Jakubowski right that capitalism is the least ideological social form so far?

• Is it true that the middle classes only come into contact with the commodity when it is in circulation?

• How is the middle class' social position reflected in its worldview? How has this changed over 100 years?

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

Links:

• Ideology and Superstructure in Historical Materialism, Chapter: “Ideology and the Classes of Bourgeois Society” (pp. 49-52)

• OK BUNGER! The Problem of Generations (FULL)

• The Middle-Class Leviathan: Corona, the "Fascism" Blackmail, and the Defeat of the Working Class, Elena Lange & Joshua Pickett-Depaolis

• The Rise of the Professionals, George Hoare, Compact

Historian Sean Fear talks to Alex H and Lee Jones about Vietnam on the 50-year anniversary since the end of the war.

• How is Vietnamese identity wrapped up with the notion of resistance?

• Is Chinese influence as great as resistance to China?

• How is the ‘American War’ thought about in Vietnam today?

• How similar is Vietnam to China: defying Fukuyama’s thesis by retaining a state-socialist political system while adopting capitalism?

• Why has Vietnam achieved rapid growth and development while neighbours have failed?

• How is Vietnam reacting to being at the centre of Trump tariff disputes?

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

Links:

• The Republic of Vietnam, 1955–1975: Vietnamese Perspectives on Nation Building, Sean Fear, Tuong Vu (eds.), Cornell UP

• /115/ Singapore Shangri-La ft. Lee Jones

• Post-Cold War Vietnam: stay low, learn, adapt and try to have fun – but what about the party?, Adam Fforde

Phil is back on the pod, talking with George and Alex about the big themes of the podcast. In particular, we look at a recent essay in Foreign Policy by historian Christopher Clarke called "The End of Modernity".

• To what extent was the 1989 moment as significant in Beijing as Berlin?

• Is Trump actually Stalin (but in a good way)?

• Is Russia the revisionist power? And if so, in what regard and what are the consequences?

• Who says the choice is between "liberal democracy" and "authoritarian populism"?

Then, we take your questions and comments from the past month.

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

Links:

• The End of Modernity, Christopher Clarke, Foreign Policy

• The End of the End of History: Politics in the Twenty-First Century, Bungacast, Zer0 Books

• Into the Abyss, Ed McNally, Tribune

[Patreon Exclusive]

Journalist Lamorna Ash talks to George and Alex about how and why young people might be turning to religion today.

• Have things moved on from the New Atheists and their critique of religion?

• What are the divides in Christianity today? How do culture wars over sexuality play out?

• Why do ritual, quiet, and the 'new monasticism’ hold appeal today?

• Is Gen Z's pessimism a type of apocalyptic thinking? Is it related to environmentalism?

The After Party, following the interview, is at 00:51:30.

Links:

• Don't Forget We're Here Forever, Lamorna Ash, Bloomsbury

• The Tyranny of Structurelessness, Jo Freeman, Damage

• Reading Club on Martin Hägglund’s This Life: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

We kick off the third block of the 2024/25 Reading Club, which is dedicated to the question of the middle class:

The abatement of class struggle between workers and owners has shone a light on the role of the middle classes. Beyond the resurgence of the debate around the much-maligned professional-managerial class (PMC), what is the true role of the middle class in politics and society? Who rules today – and how would we go about answering that question?

In this episode we discuss:

• Is the lower middle class still the main recipient/consumer of popular culture?

• Is the condition of the lower middle class in fact universalised across society today?

• Is the lower middle class a "classless class"?

• Is this class united or in fact divided? Is is the main site of political contestation today? Of culture wars?

For access, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

• The Lower Middle Class as Historical Problem, Arno Mayer

• Regime Crisis: The Persistence of Arno J. Mayer, Verso Books blog

Alex and George plus contributing editors Lee Jones and Alex Gourevitch wrangle with four principal questions:

• What does it mean to say our era is one of decay or decline?

• How does this relate to the non-death of neoliberalism – its intellectual destitution, its practical weakening, but also its mutation and perpetuation?

• How does neoliberal decay relate to the decline of a unipolar world under total US hegemony, and the decline of the liberal globalist order?

• To what extent is the decay of representative democracy cause or consequence of the above?

And finally, as we have been asking since we started this podcast in 2017: what comes next?

For all Bungacast content, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast, and for our monthly newsletter, click here.

Readings:

• Geopolitics at the End of the End of History, Lee Jones, The Northern Star

• Technofeudalism vs Total Capitalism, Alex Hochuli, American Affairs 

• Regime Change in the West, Perry Anderson, London Review of Books

• Changing the Regime, Building the Nation, Phil Cunliffe, The Northern Star

• An Audacious Book, Roberto Schwarz (review of Robert Kurz's 1991 Collapse of Modernisation), Meditations Journal

• The new historical simultaneity, Robert Kurz, Libcom

Past landmark episodes

• 100: What was the end of history? 

• 200: Which country crystallises world-history from 1900-2020?

• 300: The threat of nuclear annihilation

• 400: The political oppositions of the next decade

Taylor Hines, an editor at Damage magazine, talks to George and Alex about his essay "Fool Me Twice" in Issue 4 of the magazine, which deals with the theme Responsibility.

Remember, subscribers to Bungacast get a complimentary online subscription to Damage!

We discuss:

• Why is Robert Eggers' Nosferatu about shame? What about the Rape of Lucretia?

• What can Frédéric Gros’ A Philosophy of Shame tell us?

• What's the difference between shame and guilt?

• Do psychoanalytic thinkers like Christopher Lasch and Melanie Klein clarify the matter?

• Why do we need to Make Guilt Great Again – but not as affect, as a sense of responsibility?

For the full episode subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

• Fool Me Twice, Taylor Hines, Damage

• Issue 4: Responsibility, Damage

• Do you often feel ashamed? Maybe you should, Nina Power, Daily Telegraph

Historian Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi talks to Alex about the leadup and aftermath of the so-called "12-Day War between Iran and Israel and the US.

• Hamas and Hezbollah have been humbled, Assad is gone from Syria – how weakened is Iran?

• Did the 12-Day War actually happen? What prevented it becoming a wider war?

• What is the meaning of Israel's maximalist aims of regime change and regional dominance?

• Why is Iran now leaning into Iranian nationalism, even using pre-revolutionary symbols?

• Is a nuclear Iran now inevitable? What lessons will it draw?

• How has the region been reconfigured over the past two years? What about Saudi and the Gulf states?

Subscribe to this podcast at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

• Iran and the ‘Axis of Resistance’: A Brief History, Eskandar Sadeghi, Jadaliyya

• Culmination, Eskandar Sadeghi, Sidecar

• The Failson and the Flag, Golnar Nikpou & Eskandar Sadeghi

James Hughes (Exec Director, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies) and Eli Sennesh (postdoc, Vanderbilt) present a futurist approach to Alex and contributing editor Leigh Phillips.

• What is wrong with the acronym TESCREAL?

• Why is it wrong to worry about future transhumanism when we need to grapple with the technologies of now?

• What are the limits of bourgeois futurism? What is an alternative futurism?

• Has AI changed everything? Will it?

• Are we actually living in an age of rapid technological advance?

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

Links:

• Conspiracy Theories, Left Futurism, and the Attack on TESCREAL, James Hughes & Eli Sennesh

• /306/ AI Capitalism: Inhuman Power

• /335/ AI & the End of the End of History

• /446/ The Techno-Fantasy of Perfect Freedom ft. Amber Trotter

• /488/ Homo-Techno, Homo-Solo ...Post-Homo? ft. Alex Gendler

• The Obama-to-Yarvin Pipeline, Geoff Schullenberger, Compact Substack

Alex and George review the past month in the world and on Bungacast:

• The crazy will-they-won't-they of a potential US war on Iran

• The ex post facto justifications on all sides

• Where does "sanewashing" come from

• Ways to understand and not understand US political polarisation

And we deal with your questions and comments from the past month:

• Woke Dungeons and Dragons

• Being Safe versus Feeling Safe

• More on victimhood, authenticity and the PMC

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

Links:

• Trump’s Tariff Gamble and the Decay of the Neoliberal Order, Lee Jones, American Affairs

• Sanewashing, and how Defund The Police stopped meaning Defund The Police, Inverse Florida, Substack

• Did Iran win the 12-day war?, Sohrab Ahmari, UnHerd 

• A Comprehensive History of Woke D&D, Mark of the Weather-Sun, Substack

Journalist James Pogue talks to George and Alex about his book Chosen Country: A Rebellion in the West. The book concerns the events surrounding the 2016 armed occupation of the Oregon Malheur National Wildlife Refuge led by the rancher Ammon Bundy. We discuss:

• Why were these 2016 events so important and so telling?

• Is the Jacksonian concept of America still relevant?

• Does knowing how these people think enable you to predict what Trump – or JD Vance – will do?

• How is Mormonism the encapsulation of a certain America?

• Is the division on the Right about 'winners' versus 'losers' (or lost-causers)?

• Is this story also America First versus Globalists?

• How unique is the US's forms of political polarisation?

Wolfgang Streeck, renowned economic sociologist, is back on to talk to us about the crisis of capitalist growth and of democracy. We focus on the solutions proposed in his brilliant new book, Taking Back Control? States and State Systems After Globalism.

Then, Lee and Alex discuss three key themes emerging from the interview: federalism and small states; the national interest; and the redefinition of democracy.

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

With Streeck we discuss:

• Why is the revival of nation-state democracy "possible, although not very probable"?

• Have Europe’s right-wing populists given up on restoring governance to the national level?

• Why are Europe's globalists turning towards a militarised bloc with securitised external economic relations?

• Why haven’t left-wing populists been able to exploit the "dual crisis"?

• How has democracy been redefined to mean a set of discursive and moral principles rather than power struggle?

• Can we have an orderly de-globalisation?

Links:

• Taking Back Control?: States and State Systems After Globalism, Wolfgang Streeck, Verso

• Notes on the political economy of war, Wolfgang Streeck, Review of Keynesian Economics

• /218/ Stability Über Alles ft. Wolfgang Streeck & /219/ Stability Über Alles pt. 2 ft. Wolfgang Streeck

• /160/ Enemies of the People (Large & Very Small) ft. Wolfgang Streeck

• /170/ Reading Club: Streeck's Critical Encounters

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

Contributing editor Alex Gourevitch talks to Alex H and George about restrictions on speech and protest at US universities and beyond – particularly with regard to Palestine solidarity demonstrations.

• How have uni administrators not just undermined by seemingly attacked the right to protest?

• Why is Trump going after the universities this way?

• How have progressives undermined the right of protest by talking up the role of 'harm'?

• How have pro-Israel groups been complicit in treating political speech as an attack on identities?

• Why have so many authorities chosen the defence of Israel as their hill to die on?

Links:

• The Right to Be Hostile, Alex Gourevitch, Boston Review

• /409/ Palestine, Protest, Repression: The Wider Context

Philosopher Maciej Szlinder joins us to talk about Polish politics, society and history. Maciej is a member of the general council of the left-wing political party Razem ("Together"), as well as the president of the Polish Basic Income Network, so we discuss these matters as well as the general context.

• How did Poland represent a beacon of neoliberal democracy to Western liberals in the 80s and 90s – and what happened next?

• What does Poland represent, to Poles and to the rest of Europe, today?

• Is the political duopoly of the centrist Civic Platform and the right-wing Law and Justice falling apart?

• Why is political turnout up – and what anti-establishment parties are the young voting for?

• Why is Poland the most pro-American country in Europe, and how does Trump affect that?

• What is Poland's huge economic success felt like on the ground?

• How does precarious employment and emigration impact Polish politics?

Links:

• In the Polish Mirror, Gavin Rae, New Left Review

• In Poland, Presidential Hopefuls Battle for Young Voters Who Don’t Like Them, NY Times

[For the full episode, subscribe: patreon.com/bungacast]

[Reading Club LIVE: Sat 14 June, 9am LA, 12am NY, 5pm London, 6pm Berlin]

In the third installment of this block on inter/nationalism in the 21st century, we take a look at the other side of nationalism, through scholar Stefaan Jansen's “Anti-nationalism: Post-Yugoslav Resistance and Narratives of Self and Society”.

• Who are the Somewheres and Anywheres in post-Yugoslavia?

• How does Jansen understand the marginalisation of anti-nationalism in Serbia and Croatia?

• Is understanding nationalism and anti-nationalism as discursive practices a useful lens for understanding post-Yugoslav identities?

• Why is the act of forgetting or misremembering significant in the context of post-Yugoslav anti-nationalist narratives?

• How did the contrast between pre-war Yugoslavia and post-war realities shape anti-nationalist identities?

• Must individuality be anti-nationalist?

Reading Club 2024/25 Syllabus: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TRn6kWzICbqUBo64Jp-c8TS0K4axTy3M/view

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

Contributing Editor Lee Jones joins Alex and George to talk through the themes and stories of the month, including MAGA's war on universities, right-populists in power, and culture war. Plus we deal with your questions and comments on: lawfare, video games, and the 'new class'.

• What is TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out)?

• How should we respond to rightist attempts to rewrite the past?

• Why are Angela Merkel and Donald Trump representative of the age, in similar and different ways?

• Are people sick of subversion and just want order?

• What happens as the Boomers leave public life? Can we bracket 1960-2020?

• When should we throw the book at politicians?

Links:

• Trump’s Tariff Gamble and the Decay of the Neoliberal Order, Lee Jones, American Affairs

• The Techno-Populist Convergence, Alex Hochuli, Compact

• How Labor won the preference war (and screwed the Greens), Financial Review

• Saving Britain’s Universities: Academic Freedom, Democracy and Renewal, Lee Jones and Philip Cunliffe, Cieo

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

Writer Alex Gender is back, talking to Alex and George about his recent essay, "Homo Algorithmicus", as well as reflecting on how incel culture has widened and deepened in the past five years.

• How does healthcare CEO assassin Luigi Mangione exemplify a “rationalist” worldview?

• What is "TESCREAL" and how are those distinct ideologies underpinned an anti-human rationalism?

• Is "tech" or Silicon Valley split between liberal effective altruists and neo-reactionary libertarians?

• Is tech moving from trying to escape the state to trying to capture it?

• What is it about “Gen Z boss and a mini” that generated such ire among "masculinists"?

• What is to be done about the Man Question?

Links:

• Homo Algorithmicus, Alex Gendler, The Point Magazine

• /215/ Organize the Incels?! ft. Alex Gendler

• The perennial surplus, Alex Gendler, Substack

• The New Legislators of Silicon Valley, Evgeny Morozov, The Ideas Letter

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

The social media avatar known as Christopher Lasch's Angry Ghost joins us to unpick the conjuncture: as the Trump administration makes cuts and seeks to do away with progressives in bureaucracies, where does that leave the left-wing critique of the PMC?

• What would Lasch's ghost be telling us now?

• Is the PMC a class? Is it distinct people? Or is it more like procedures, and ways of thinking?

• Is woke over? Will the MANGOs (media, academia, NGOs) carry on?

• Can the PMC still advance oppositional politics or it hopeless compromised?

• What will be the effect on AI doing away with professional class jobs?

• Is vice-signalling replacing virtue-signalling?

Links:

• Death of a Yuppie Dream, Barbara Ehrenreich, RosaLux (pdf)

• It’s Our Fault, Dustin Guastella, Damage

• Trump’s purge of the professionals, Ryan Zickgraf, UnHerd

• This obsession with a ‘new elite’ hides the real roots of power, Kenan Malik, The Guardian

• The Techno-Populist Convergence, Alex Hochuli, Compact

Academic and housing activist Enikő Vincze talks to Alex about why December 2024's election result was annulled, and how Romanian politics is following the script of European politics: lawfare, misinformation, techno-populism, and "sovereigntists" who provide the same neoliberal solutions.

• Who are the contenders in the May 2025 election and what do they represent?

• To what extent do Simion and AUR represent an 'anti-system' candidacy? How do they compare to other European radical rightists?

• Is Romanian politics really torn between Brussels and Moscow, or is something else at play?

• How is the Ukraine War, and EU militarisation, playing out in Romania?

• Why does the Right's promise of sovereignty only provide new capitalist alternatives to neoliberal globalism?

• What is the state of the Left and of struggles over housing in Romania?

Links:

• Romanian elections and the agony of neoliberalism: militarization and austerity, with or without “sovereigntists”, Enikő Vincze, Internationalist Standpoint

• Fractured Romania, Costi Rogozanu, Sidecar

• Romania Redivivus, Alexander Clapp, New Left Review

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

Pawel Kaczmarski – a literary critic who teaches modern and contemporary Polish literature at the University of Wrocław – talks to George and Alex about his piece in Damage, "The Promise of Video Games".

• How are things gearing up for Poland's election later this month?

• Are video games moving culturally "upstream"?

• How does a game like Helldivers 2 promise to teach us agency but fails?

• Is the problem with video game criticism, and literary criticism, not so much their difficulty but rather that they are boring today?

• Has anyone managed to write a good "novel of the internet"?

Links:

• The Promise of Video Games, Pawel Kaczmarski, Damage

• /162/ Gaming & Politics ft. Jonas Kyratzes

• Gospels of the Flood

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

Alex and George discuss some main stories from the past month. After the death of Pope Francis, what's behind left-wing sympathy for the late Pope – and more widespread appreciation for Catholicism? Why do we want a progressive Pope, and would a reactionary one be better for us? Why is the US deporting people to Nayib Bukele's Salvadorian prisons, and what makes this so dystopian?

Then Alex calls up Jacobin's Europe editor David Broder to understand the charges against Marine Le Pen.

• Is Marine Le Pen a victim of lawfare, or has she been hoist by her own petard?

• What are the consequences for the Rassemblement National, and for French politics?

• What has the European radical right's response been to Trump II so far?

And we respond to your questions and comments from the past month on:

• Holding politicians to account on free speech

• Listening to poetry

• Redistribution as the obvious solution to the crisis

• Clientelism and hyperpolitics

***

We are exceptionally making this episode of the Reading Club freely available. See the full syllabus here: 2024/25 Reading Club. If you'd like to join, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast/membership.

***

The second reading in this block on Inter/Nationalism in the 21st Century is The Invention of Tradition (eds. Eric Hobsbawm & Terrence Ranger, 1983), specifically Hobsbawm's chapter "Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe 1870-1914".

• How much did ordinary people buy into invented national traditions?

• Why did industrialisation allow for mass-producing traditions?

• Does the sense of belonging fostered then still exist today?

• If nation-states don't require active participation any more, what does this mean for the mass-production of loyalty?

• Are things like social media campaigns, national holidays for diversity, or even global events like the Olympics the new “mass-produced” traditions?

Renowned public intellectual Walden Bello talks to Alex and contributing editor Lee Jones about his recently published memoirs, former president Rodrigo Duterte's arrest, warring political dynasties and more.

• What's behind Duterte's arrest? Is it lawfare?

• How did the Philippines comes to be an ‘anarchy of families’?

• What are the barriers to doing left-wing political work in the Philippines?

• How has Walden been involved with the social-democratic party Akbayan?

• What does China's rise mean for developing countries and the global South?

• What are Walden's key lessons for the ‘end of the End of History’?

Links:

• GLOBAL BATTLEFIELDS: Memoir of a Legendary Public Intellectual from the Global South, Walden Bello, Clarity

• Duterte Is Right to End the U.S.-Philippine Military Exercises, Walden Bello, NYT

• /52/ Duterte’s Despotism ft. Nicole Curato

• /351/ Eating the Left’s Lunch? ft. Cecilia Lero & Tamás Gerőcs

Political theorist Corey Robin talks to Alex H and contributing editors Lee Jones and Alex Gourevitch about Trump II from a domestic perspective. We look at the three main things he's done so far: cutting the civil service, imposing economic sanctions domestically, and his immigration terror politics.

• Is Trump a strong president? Does the reliance on executive orders indicate weakness?

• What happened to the #Resistance?

• Why has the tariff issue, instead of uniting Republicans as in the 19th century, divided them?

• Is the bond market the main force limiting Trump's agenda?

• Has Bernie Sanders' prediction come true – this is now an oligarchy?

• Does Trump just represent patrimonialism and even gangsterism? A degradation of democracy?

• What does reaction looks like when there’s very little left to react against?

Links:

• /129/ The Right Is Weak ft. Corey Robin | Bungacast

• Notifications, Corey Robin, Sidecar (on Trump & tariffs)

• Corey Robin's facebook posts

• The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics, Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld, Princeton UP

[For the full episode subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast]

We kick off the second block/theme of the 2024/25 Reading Club on Nations & Internationalism in the 21st Century by looking at a 2002 essay which charts nationalism against internationalism from the Atlantic revolutions through to the age of globalisation. It is particularly apposite to revisit this text in light of an acceleration in de-globalisation brought on by the second Trump presidency.

• What are the cultural aspects of "internationalism"?

• While nationalism can be good or bad, internationalism is usually seen as positive. Is this still the case?

• How has internationalism accompanied, seperated from or stood against nationalism throughout the latter's history?

• How is internationalism different from cosmopolitanism today, if at all?

• How could we update Anderson's charting of internationalism along 5 coordinates: capital, geography, philosophy, nation-definition, and class relations?

Internationalism: A Breviary, Perry Anderson, New Left Review

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

Contributing editor Lee Jones talks to Alex about the tariffs, as they try to reconstruct the Trump admin's thinking, and consider avenues and consequences.

• Why is this a retro-80s moment, and how much does China take the role that Japan used to in Trump's thinking?

• How much strategy is there to this? Is it possible to disentangle the competing logics?

• Is this a return to the 19th century: small state, no income tax, high tariff walls?

• How credible an attempt at reindustrialising the US is this?

• Is Trump trying to weaken the dollar? What store to put in the Mar-a-Lago accord?

• Do Europeans kick the can down the road and hope for the best?

• Is this a global restructuring or just a reset in terms more favourable to the US? The end of neoliberalism or a new iteration on it?

Links:

• Will anybody buy a ‘Mar-a-Lago accord’?, FT

• A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System, Stephen Miran, Hudson Bay Capital 

• Is Trump 2 the End of ‘Neoliberal Order Breakdown Syndrome’?, Lee Jones, TNS 

• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Breaks Down Trump's Tariff Plan and Its Impact on the Middle Class, Tucker Carlson, YouTube

• Back to the ’80s?, Andrew Liu, n+1

• MAGA and the Fragmentation of Europe, Tim Pendry, Substack

George and contributing editor Alex Gourevitch talk to Orlando Reade, who teaches English at Northeastern University London.  We discuss Orlando’s new book What In Me Is Dark: The Revolutionary Life of Paradise Lost and the history of readings of John Milton’s great epic poem.

• Is Paradise Lost a poem about darkness?

• What does a poem written in the seventeenth century have to tell us about the age of Trump and the contemporary Right?

• What can we learn about freedom today from the rebellious Satan in the poem? Or the disobedient Eve?

• What did Malcolm X get from the poem and why is Jordan Peterson so hot on epic poetry?

Links:

• What In Me Is Dark: The Revolutionary Life of Paradise Lost, Orlando Reade, Penguin

• John Milton’s Paradise Lost Mourned a Revolution Betrayed, Orlando Reade, Jacobin

• Why Is the Right Obsessed With Epic Poetry?, Orlando Reade, The Nation

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

Historian Djene Bajalan joins George and Alex to review the past month – ceasefires in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, winning and losing US patronage, Trump's inconsistent strategy and leaks, and the gold rush. We then turn to a country exemplary of the contradictions of the end of the End of History: Türkiye. And finish by answering your questions and comments on internationalism, free speech, Die Linke, anti-immigration, and domination.

• What's driving the protests and how do they compare to past revolts against Erdogan?   

• What is the meaning of charges – corruption & terrorism – against Istanbul mayor and potential opposition leader İmamoğlu?

• Who is the opposition?

• What has sustained Erdogan's rule – repression, conservatism, modernisation, growth?

• Why is Erdogan one of the winners of the past 20 years, and how is he a world-historic figure? 

Links:

• Erdoğan's new world order, Lily Lynch, UnHerd

• /339/ Erdogone? People vs Nation in Turkey ft. Alp Kayserilioglu

• Kultur Kampf TR, Selim Koru, Substack

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

Jensen Suther, a junior fellow at Harvard working in philosophy and literature, talks to Alex H and contributing editor Alex Gourevitch about art, culture, and socialism. He also offers a riposte to previous guest Anna Kornbluh's discussion of immediacy, and its cultural forms such as autoficition.

• What does Suther think Kornbluh gets wrong – and right – in her critique of contemporary culture?

• How autonomous is art from society and the economy?

• To what extent can we tie cultural forms to deep changes in the economy?

• What is the right response to the historical defeat of the working class? What does it mean for critical theory?

• What is the difference between immanent critique and critique from the outside – and how dow this relate to freedom?

• And what does it matter if you read Hegel right?

Links:

• The Theory of Immediacy or the Immediacy of Theory?, Jensen Suther, Nonsite.org

• /458/ The Society of Pure Vibe ft. Anna Kornbluh

• /473/ Make Alienation Great Again ft. Todd McGowan (features a different response to the question about critical theory after the defeat of the working class)

• Jensen's thread on X on capitalist totality and the end of the working class

• Jensen's thread on X on the return to Hegel, against economic determinism

George and contributing editor Leigh Phillips talk to Dan Evans, a writer and academic based in South Wales. We discuss his piece in the New Socialist, ‘Is the Working Class Back?’ and themes emerging from it.

• How important are definitions of class?

• If the working class remains weak and fragmented, and its politics increasingly chaotic, what is to be done?

• How does Gabriel Winant's pessimism about the industrial working class compare to Evans'?

• What are the class contradictions of the contemporary Left?

• Who is the real oppositional class today? Should we be more positive about the petite bourgeoisie?

Links:

• Is the Working Class Back?, Dan Evans, New Socialist

• A Nation of Shopkeepers: The Unstoppable Rise of the Petty Bourgeoisie, Dan Evans, Repeater Books

• /349/ The PMC & Their Politics ft. Dan Evans & Catherine Liu

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

Ben Bradlow, assistant professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton, talks to Alex about his book Urban Power: Democracy and Inequality in São Paulo and Johannesburg.

• If our future is urban – and it is – why is it different to what we imagined?

• Are Johannesburg and São Paulo representative of what is going on in cities?

• How did democratic promise and neoliberal disappointment go together in the 1990s, through to today?

• What has been the role of social movements (e.g. for housing) in transforming cities and municipal government?

• Is the radical right in the global North and South fundamentally different? What is the urban dimension?

• What does China's lead in industries like electric vehicles mean for countries like Brazil?

• Is industrial upgrading possible under post-neoliberalism?

Links:

• Urban Power: Democracy and Inequality in São Paulo and Johannesburg, Benjamin Bradlow, Princeton UP

• A processual framework for understanding the rise of the populist right: the case of Brazil (2013–2018), Tomás Gold and Benjamin Bradlow, Social Forces

• Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation, Peter Evans, Princeton UP

Todd McGowan is back on the pod, talking to George and Alex about his book, Embracing Alienation: Why We Shouldn't Try To Find Ourselves.

• Why is alienation good actually? What does it give us?

• How is alienation related to subjectivity and freedom?

• What is the problem with anti-alienation politics of Left and Right?

• What happened to the 1960s concern with alienation, where did it go?

• Why is an embrace of the public realm, against therapy culture, the right response?

• What is the task of critical theory today?

Links:

• /167/ The Kingdom of God Is on Main Street ft. Todd McGowan

• Embracing Alienation: Why We Shouldn't Try To Find Ourselves

[This contains only the interview on South Africa – for the full episode subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast]

Alex, George and Ryan Zickgraf round up events in Germany: first the elections, then US Vice-President JD Vance's speech to the Munich Security Conference where he called out Western elites' hypocrisy on liberalism and democracy.

Then Alex speaks to Will Shoki, editor at Africa Is A Country, about what Musk wants from South Africa, why the global radical right has fixated on land reform in South Africa, and what is really at stake for South Africans.

We round out by taking your questions and comments – and by welcoming in carnival by discussing drinking & socialising, and its anti-social enemies.

Running Order

• 00:03:10 – German elections

• 00:08:20 – Vance's Munich speech

• 00:26:00 – Will Shoki on South African politics

• 01:04:55 – Musk and the global radical right

• 01:13:20 – Letters to the Editors

• 01:23:10 – Carnival and social drinking

Links:

• Trump’s Tool: The Limits of Bannon’s Postmodern Nationalism, Alex Gourevitch, The Northern Star

• Make Afrikaners great again! National populism, democracy and the new white minority politics in post- apartheid South Africa, Danelle van Zyl-Hermann, Ethnic and Racial Studies 

• Why Trump loves corrupt Democrats, Ryan Zickgraf, UnHerd

• The Case for Social Drinking, Ryan Zickgraf, Jacobin

• The Hangover and Life as a Commodity, George Hoare, Damage

• Segregation Is Still Alive in Mardi Gras’s Birthplace, Ryan Zickgraf, Jacobin

[Patreon Exclusive]

Sociologist Nathan Sperber and our own George Hoare talk to Alex H and Lee Jones about the new edition to their book, An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci: His Life, Thought and Legacy, which includes a new chapter on Gramsci's relevance to contemporary politics and events and a new section on Gramsci's influence on the New Right. We discuss:

• How does this book differ from other introductions to Gramsci?

• What is wrong with the post-Marxist, post-colonial or culturalist version of Gramsci?

• What are Gramsci's top 3 insights into politics?

• How has Gramsci been taken up by the political Right?

• How has Gramsci been used and abused by the Left? What to make of the post-Marxist radical democracy of Laclau and Mouffe ("left-populism")?

• Why is the concept of the "national-popular" that Gramsci takes from the Jacobins so important to rediscover?

For more like this, join us at patreon.com/bungacast

On German political derangement.

Independent researcher and writer Gregor Baszak joins us to talk about German centrism being squeezed under pressure from both left and right — Sahra Wagenknecht and the AFD. Meanwhile the German economy is getting squeezed between the US and Russia, and NATO pressures Germany to up its defence spending.  

• Is German public life remilitarising? 

• What are the prospects for Sahra Wagenknecht’s new ‘left-conservative’ politics? 

• What was the original political vision behind the Nordstream 2 pipeline? 

• Why are Marine Le Pen and Giorgia Meloni trying to carve the AFD out of pan-European national-populist cooperation? 

• Where does Germany now stand in relation to the Ukraine War? 

Links:

• Europe After America, Gregor Baszak, The American Conservative 
• What’s the Matter With Germany?, Gregor Baszak, The American Conservative
• The Left-wing maverick who could stop the AfD For many, Sahra Wagenknecht is a tribune of the people, Gregor Baszak, UnHerd

Tim Pendry, author of the Unstable Times substack, as well as an international affairs consultant, talks to Alex H and Lee Jones about the world under Trump II, the massive shifts underway, and his own policy work with the Workers Party of Britain.

• How has intra-bourgeois struggle shaped the past decades in politics?

• What is "American imperial nationalism (MAGA)" plus a "real-estate negotiation style"?

• Who are the winners & losers of a "rational" return to classical great-power, sphere-of-influence politics?

• Why are the UK's tensions and problems an extreme version of what may soon apply to any ostensible American ally?

• What is the Workers Party of Britain's pitch and strategy?

• Are the bulk of British people really "left on economics, right on culture", and how does the WPB try to appeal to workers?

• What are the practical challenges of building and organising a new party?

Links:

• Manifesto – Britain Deserves Better, Workers Party of Britain

• The Foundations of the Liberal Polycrisis, Unstable Times, Tim Pendry

• Taking Trump Seriously, Unstable Times, Tim Pendry

• Trumpism and Geo-Politics, Unstable Times, Tim Pendry

[For full episode: patreon.com/bungacast]

Anton Jäger is back, talking to Alex and George about Belgium's new right-wing government, American hyperpolitics, and the lack of a European future.

• The radical right has prevailed in Belgium, despite having factors that should impede this, like higher union density, lower inequality and so on. Why?

• Why is the US particularly 'hyperpolitical'?

• Are those who say hyperpolitics is over correct?

• Why is Europe now a pale imitation of authoritarians in the East and the unbridled capitalism to its West?

• Is it Europe's capitalists – not its workers or pensioners – who are in need of strict market discipline?

Links:

• Things Are Terrible in Europe, and They’re Only Going to Get Worse, Anton Jäger, NYT

• Goodbye, ‘Resistance.’ The Era of Hyperpolitics Is Over, Ross Barkan, NYT

• My Country Shows What Europe Has Become, Anton Jäger, NYT

• Hyperpolitics in America, Anton Jäger, New Left Review 

• Is Trump 2 the End of ‘Neoliberal Order Breakdown Syndrome’?, Lee Jones, The North Star

• /454/ The Last Man at the Euro Tango ft. Michael Wilkinson

[Patreon Exclusive - subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast]

We focus in particular on Part III: The Experience of Space and Time – and reflect on the general themes of this section. The central question is:

How do we rescue a sense of ‘place’ – in a political, forward-looking and future-oriented way – after the age of globalisation?

• The age of globalisation generated and emphasised placelessness. But if oppositional struggles need to start from a definite place, where is that?

• And how do they not get restricted by that same sense of place – that is, not becoming particular, nostalgic or backward-looking?

• And if walls are now being put up, halting globalisation, then does this provide a more propitious scenario for struggle?

[Patreon Exclusive]

Historian Djene Bajalan talks to Alex about a major rearrangement in the Levant. We discuss:

• Who are Syria's new rulers HTS, and what is their vision – if any?

• Did geopolitics really determine the fall of Assad and the Ba'ath Party?

• How HTS's victory is so profoundly different from Islamism in Iran 1979

• Why 2025 finally closes the book on the Arab Spring – and on secular Arab nationalism

• Were the Kurds wrong to rely on US protection?

And in the full episode we continue by discussing...

• Is Turkey the big winner of the decade?

• What the Left gets wrong on nationalism

• Civic versus ethnic nationalism, revisited

• What was democratic, liberal and revolutionary about nationalism – and whether it can be again

• How conservatives recuperate left-wing ideas, which were always conservative from the start

Links:

• Djene's writing at Jacobin

• /95/ The Fall of Rojava? ft. Dani Ellis / Alexander Norton

[Full episode for subscribers only. Go to patreon.com/bungacast]

We look back at a turbulent last month or so with the help of guest and "disinformation bot" Tara McCormack. We put it all in the context of Trump's return, post-neoliberalism and deglobalisation.

• 00:13:52 – Jacob Siegel  talks to Alex about Meta's policy U-turn on censorship and what it means for the public-private partnership on digital surveillance.

• 00:50:11 – How will European powers react to the US's relative withdrawal of its protection? Will France, Britain and Germany double-down on the Ukraine war?

• 01:06:21 – Why is Luigi Mangione not understood as 'terrorism' while the Magdeburg Christmas market attack is? What drives terrorism and is that even the right term to understand explosive anomie?

•  01:15:24 – Letters to the Editors: on the global radical right, and Trump's foreign policy

Links:

• /369/ Information-War and War-Politics ft. Jacob Siegel

• /34/ War Propaganda ft. Tara McCormack

• To the Finland Station, Branko Milanovic, Substack

• Trumpism & Geopolitics, Tim Pendry, Substack

• Class Patricide, Dustin Guastella, Damage

For the full episode: patreon.com/bungacast

Jamie Doucette, who researches contemporary political economy and Korea's development at the University of Manchester, talks to Alex and George about December 2024's coup attempt and the past 50 years in the Republic of Korea.

•  Why is South Korea western capitalism's best propaganda tool?

• Did Yoon Suk Yeol want to institute a dictatorship? Did he want to militarise all of society, or only politics?

• How "unreconstructed" is the South Korean right? Do they dream of dicatorship?

• What was the Park Chung-hee regime of the 60s and 70s like? What is authoritarian developmentalism?

• Why did S. Korea democratise? Did the workers win it or did elites concede it?

• What is the post-developmental state, how neoliberal is ROK, and what does the left-right spectrum look like now?

• What was the Candlelight movement of 2016?

Links:

•  /420/ Fertility Freefall & Gender Strife in South Korea ft. Hyeyoung Woo

• The Postdevelopmental State: Dilemmas of Economic Democratization in Contemporary South Korea, Jamie Doucette (OPEN ACCESS)

• The Logic of Compressed Modernity, Chang Kyung-Sup 

Historian and podcaster Daniel Bessner joins Alex Hochuli and contributing editor Lee Jones to ask how this era of rot and decay will proceed under Trump II, from Ukraine to China and beyond. We discuss:

• Will we see "America First transactionalism"?

• Does Trump have a capable cadre to bend the state to his will?

• What will Trump’s relationship be to the deep state?

• How important are generational splits in attitudes to the US empire?

• Will there be a peace deal in Ukraine? Where does that leave 'Atlanticism'?

• Is confrontation with China baked in?

• Is the Middle East the key to world peace?

Links:

• Empire’s Critic: The Worlds of Noam Chomsky, Daniel Bessner, The Nation

• American Prestige podcast

• EU blows hot and cold over Trump, Benoît Bréville, Le Monde diplomatique

• America First, Russia, & Ukraine, Lt. General (Ret.) Keith Kellogg, Fred Fleitz, AFPI

• /171/ Fukuyama & the End of History ft. Daniel Bessner 

• /142/ Dollar Empire (2) ft. Daniel Bessner

[Patreon Exclusive]

We continue working through the 2024/25 syllabus and the first theme, The Future of Place. We ask is politics possible without a sense of place. Here we discuss chapter 13, "Community becomes uncivilised", and deal with listener questions.

• How does the changed relationship between public and private impact notions of community and of place?

• How does the maintenance of impersonal relations signify 'civility'?

• Is impersonality really the summation of all the worst evils of industrial capitalism?

• What is wrong with yearning for community, or specifically “love of the ghetto, especially the middle-class ghetto”

• How does "fratricide" become "logical" when people use intimate relations as a basis for social relations? Why is fratricide "system-maintaining"?

Links:

• 2024/25 Bungacast Syllabus (with links to readings)

• Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence, Christina B. Hanhardt

• The Making of a New Political Subject, George Hoare, Café americain

[Patreon Exclusive]

Writer and historian Tim Barker talks to Alex Hochuli and contributing editor Alex Gourevitch about the former president's life and legacy.

• What do people get wrong about Carter? Was Carter, not Reagan, the start of neoliberalism?

• How is Carter's much-admired 'decency' of a piece with his neoliberalism?

• What is 'austerity' and how does it relate to questions of public and private, vice and virtue?

• What was the alternative to the neoliberal pivot in the late 1970s?

• How did the appointment of Fed chairman Volcker change the entire world?

• Did Carter set the script for the Democrats, of being 'noble losers' (but actually on the side of the winners)?

Links:

• Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024, Tim Barker, Origins of Our Time

• Weapons of the Week newsletter

• On neoliberalism and the Cold War: /276/ Broken Promises ft. Fritz Bartel

  Other biographical/obituary episodes:

• Silvio Berlusconi: An Oral History

• /293/ Goodbye 20th Century (RIP Gorby)

• /410/ Reading Club: Deutscher's Stalin

• /435/ Reading Club: Stalin's General – Winning WWII

Professor Michael C. Williams talks to George and Alex about his co-authored World of the Right and how the radical right has gone global. We discuss:

• Does academia takes the Right as seriously as it should?

• What's the difference between the radical right and the far right, the new right, national conservatives, or fascists?

• How is the right 'global' – not just through international conferences but by being "co-constituted by its relation to the global"?

• Why is the radical right focused on the global liberal managerial elite? What does it get right and what does it get wrong about this stratum?

• How did the radical right come to take Gramsci seriously?

• Is the radical right just parasitic on the breakdown of liberal universalism?

• What does this analysis of the radical right say about the Left – is it the force that protects the status quo of the liberal international order?

Links:

• World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and Global Order, Michael C. Williams et al., Cambridge UP

• /351/ Eating the Left’s Lunch? ft. Cecilia Lero & Tamás Gerőcs

• /129/ The Right Is Weak ft. Corey Robin

In our final episode of the year, we debate Edgar Berger's new film about a Papal election, featuring Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci as Cardinals and Isabella Rossellini as a nun.

• Is the film about an alien, abstruse process – the conclave – or is it about something familiar and earthly? Is the film about the sacred or the profane? About temporal or holy power?

• What does it say about process and neutrality, in times of lawfare and contested elections?

• ⁠Why is there so much film and TV about the Pope? What is it that appeals today about Papal authority?

• The film features a good liberal, a corrupt moderate, a nasty reactionary, a tainted idpol candiate (a homophobic African) – do these politics matter? Why so crude?

• ⁠Is it mere Oscar bait?

[For access, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast/membership]

We continue working through the 2024/25 syllabus with the first theme, The Future of Place, asking, is politics possible without a sense of place. We discuss Marc Augé's much-referenced 1992 work on 'non-places': airports, shopping malls, corporate hotels, motorways... We discuss:

• Are non-places proliferating, and what would this mean for society and politics?

• Are non-places the spatial accompaniment to post-politics, to the foreclosure of political contestation?

• Is the distinction between non-places and places/spaces useful?

• Is there anything to the notion of a hyper- or super-modernity?

• Is Augé too deterministic? Does he miss how non-places can be places for culture or politics?

Links:

• 2024/25 Bungacast Syllabus (with links to readings)

Anna Kornbluh, professor of English and author of Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism talks to Alex about the cultural, political, and economic changes she refers to as 'immediacy'. We discuss:

• Is 'immediacy' just a vibe, or is vibe itself non-mediated?

• How does anti-representation in film, TV and books relate to anti-representation in politics?

• And can we relate culture immediacy to the 'material base'?

• How do Fleabag, Uncut Gems, and the turn to memoirs and autofiction exemplify immediacy?

• Why does self-disclosure fit so well with the data economy?

• In what way is contemporary anti-theory nihilistic and apologetic?

• How does the style of immediacy relate to Frederic Jameson's understanding of postmodernism?

• Is the desire to put everything private on show a response to alienation?

• And is the professionalisation of 'theory' a problem or solution?

Links:

• Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism, Anna Kornbluh, Verso

• Has culture become pure vibe?, Anna Kornbluh, Spike Art Magazine

• The Theory of Immediacy or the Immediacy of Theory?, Jensen Suther, Nonsite

• Embracing Alienation: Why We Shouldn't Try to Find Ourselves, Todd McGowan, Repeater

[Patreon Exclusive]

We're back with a final letters to the editor episode of 2024 in which we discuss:

• the universalisation of 'anti-fascism' as a kind of politics

• whether there are any actual 'family abolitionists' out there

• humanitarian intervention in Palestine

• the hard and less hard facts of US imperial decline

• the legitimacy of 'existential' politics

• whether anti-corruption politics are good, actually

• and why Phil loves Hillary

[Full episode for subscribers only]

James Lin, Assistant Professor of International Studies at the University of Washington at Seattle, talks to Phil about Taiwanese politics and the country's place in the world, in terms of the global economy and Sino-American geopolitical rivalry. We talk about Taiwanese history and politics, from Japanese occupation and colonisation across the Cold War, to the present day, including: 

• Taiwanese politics in the shadow of the geopolitical crisis

• The paradox of political divergence and economic convergence between China and Taiwan since the 1980s

• How did Taiwan corner the market for manufacturing computer chips? 

• How successful is the ongoing US reshoring of chip production?

• Will there be a Marco Rubio/Elon Musk divide on China in the Trump White House? 

• How might a war over Taiwan play out? 

Links:

• In the Global Vanguard: Agrarian Development and the Making of Modern Taiwan, James Lin, UC Press

• What Works in Taiwan Doesn’t Always in Arizona, a Chipmaking Giant Learns, John Liu, NY Times

• Will Trump take the Musk path or the Rubio path on Taiwan?, Lev Nachman, Nikkei Asia

We're happy to bring you the recording of the launch event for the third issue of Damage magazine, with whom we're partnered. George and Alex were present for the event as part of a sequence of recordings on the future of place that will be released as a docu-series in the New Year.

For now, here is regular contributor Catherine Liu and friend of the pod Dustin Guastella debating the family to a packed-out bookstore at Moma's PS1 in Queens, NY.

[For full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast]

LSE professor Mike Wilkinson talks to Phil and Alex about how the history of European integration fits with constitutional theories and ideas of sovereignty. We discuss: 

• In what way are the conspiracy theories about the EU true?

• What are the origins of European integration in the inter-war crisis?

• How did European integration tie into the history of ideas and development of 20th century legal history?

• How far does European integration overlap with counter-revolutionary theories and ideas?

• And who is the Last European? 

Links:

• Authoritarian Liberalism and the Transformation of Modern Europe, Michael Wilkinson

• Political Constitutionalism in Europe Revisited, Michael Wilkinson, Journal of Law and Society

• The Rise and Fall of World Constitutionalism, Michael Wilkinson, Verfassungsblog

[Full episode only available to subscribers. Join at patreon.com/bungacast]

We kick of the 2024/25 syllabus with the first theme, The Future of Place, asking, is politics possible without a sense of place. We discuss Georg Simmel's short essay "Metropolis and Mental Life" and Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts into Air (chapter 5, on New York).

• How does Simmel relate the metropolitan condition to a historical passage from the 18th century to the 19th?

• Is city life intellectual and blasé, versus small town emotionality?

• Is narcissism built into modernity? Is there an aristocratic individualist revolt in evidence today?

• Do we need places to hang out in before we can do political organising?

• Are we nostalgic for top-down modernisation?

Readings:

• "Metropolis and Mental Life"

• All That Is Solid Melts into Air (chapter 5, on New York)

[Patreon Exclusive]

The Swedish writer Malcom Kyeyune talks to Phil about what happens to the evil empire when the stormtroopers can’t shoot straight and the empire isn’t producing enough star destroyers. They discuss:

• What happens to international politics in a world of new geopolitical rivalries? 

• How does American industrial decline affect US military capacity and strength? 

• Why is America unable to produce enough ships? 

• Why is the US unable to do conscription anymore? 

• Who would win in a showdown between China and America? 

Links:

• America will have to dodge the draft, Malcom Kyeyune, UnHerd

• The Houthis now rule the Red Sea, Malcom Kyeyune, UnHerd

• The West can no longer make war, Malcom Kyeyune, New Statesman

• The American Empire’s Burning Peripheries, Malcom Kyeyune, Compact

• /240/ Populist Interventions: Örebro Party ft. Malcolm Kyeyune | Bungacast

• Facing war in the Middle East and Ukraine, the US looks feeble. But is it just an act?, Adam Tooze, The Guardian

[Patreon Exclusive - in association with Damage magazine]

Dustin Guastella talks to Phil and Alex about what the election of Trump will mean for US labour organisations. We then move on to Dustin's proposal for progressive pro-family policies.

• What actually is "the family" today? 

• Social democrats are proud of policies but wary of encouraging family growth. Why?

• What would pro-family policies look like, what would they do, and what might their negative effects be?

• Is the family not a pillar for the reproduction of authoritarian norms?

• How do we explain the fertility crisis in global terms?

• How do we confront the growing marketisation of everything?

Links:

• Damage issue #3 - MOTHERS - Bungacast subscribers get free access

• NY live event: issue launch - Family Trouble

Historian and Jacobin contributing editor Matt Karp joins us to extract the true meaning of the US election. We discuss:

• How Trump's victory explodes so many Democrat assumptions about demography and identity

• How this election re-writes the past ten years' history

• Whether Trump still retains an anti-political or anti-establishment charge

• If the Democrats are preponderant in leading sectors of the knowledge economy, is this a political rejection of its assumptions?

• How to place this election in the sweep of the global anti-incumbency wave

• What the relationship is between inflation, labour and legitimacy

Links:

• Power Lines, Matt Karp, Harper's

• It’s Happening Again, Matt Karp, Jacobin

• Democrats join 2024’s graveyard of incumbents, John Burn-Murdoch, FT

• /262/ The Useless Past ft. Matt Karp

• /447/ Brunch Back Better ft. Ryan Zickgraf & Amber A'Lee Frost

• /445/ How I Hacked the US Election ft. Alex Gourevitch

[Patreon Exclusive]

It's our letter to the episode show where we have a chance to answer you, the listener. We discuss:

• Has Bungacast gone eco-austerian?

• Are Marx and Freud in conflict?

• Is abortion about healthcare or about freedom?

• Why has the left abandoned liberty?

• Did we underestimate Israel’s existential fears?

• And what’s so “complex” about the Arab-Israeli conflict anyway?

Links:

• 2024/25 Reading Club on Place, Nation, Class

• Direct link to the syllabus PDF

• Our substack newsletter

[Full episode only for patrons]

Hans Gutbrod, who has been working in the Caucasus region since 1999 and now teaches at Ilia State University in Tblisi, talks to Alex about Georgia's choice between the EU and Russia. We discuss:

• Who is Bidzina Ivanishvili, whose wealth is equal to 1/4 of GDP?

• What is the ruling Georgian Dream's pitch to voters, and how has it turned 'rightward'?

• Did Georgia witness the end of history, or merely the de-development of the post-Soviet years?

• How has civil society become dominated by NGOs, and is this a problem?

• Can Georgia flourish in a multipolar world, acting as an entrepôt between East and West?

Links:

• In Georgia, a National Election Is a Geopolitical Struggle, Bryan Gigantino, Jacobin

• Telling Time the New Way: 17 Years of Reform, Hans Gutbrod, Civil Georgia

• Macbeth in the Caucasus: Omnipotence and Loneliness - Bidzina Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream, Hans Gutbrod (PDF)