As Euro 2024 gets underway, election results show a surge of support for the far-right across Europe. Can football help us make sense of it? This week on Pro Revolution Soccer, Juliet Jacques and Tom Williams look at the connections between football and fascism, and explain how the same forces that allowed a tiny elite to take over the game are now reopening the door to the far-right. Music by Matt Huxley. Design by Pietro Garrone. Produced by Chal Ravens.
Jun 19, 2024•52 min
What’s it like to be left-wing in an aspiring ethnostate? Israel has swung hard to the right in the last few decades, with self-described fascists now in government. But a left remains, calling not just for a ceasefire in the war on Gaza, but for the end to the apartheid regime as a whole. What power do they have? Comedian and activist Noam Shuster-Eliassi and +972 Magazine journalist Haggai Matar talk to Rivkah Brown about the terrifying consequences of resistance to the Israeli state, how Jewi...
Jun 13, 2024•1 hr 32 min
Novara Media’s football podcast returns for another crack at the silverware! Every Wednesday until the Euro 2024 final, Juliet Jacques and Tom Williams provide political and tactical analysis of the tournament in an episode of two halves. This week: the strange spectacle of politicians pretending to like football, the changing status of women and LGBT+ players and fans, what Starmer will do for the game, and England’s prospects after a flat showing against Iceland. Music by Matt Huxley. Design b...
Jun 12, 2024•44 min
After investigating the politics of cool on the last Trip episode, the crew turn their attention to another distinctly modern sensibility: camp. Digging into Susan Sontag’s formative 1964 essay on the camp aesthetic, Nadia, Keir and Jem think about how elements of the artificial, the theatrical and the sentimental come together in camp objects, from porn movies to Tiffany lamps to risqué radio comedy. Find our ever-expanding playlist on Spotify by searching “ACFM”. Sign up to the ACFM newsletter...
Jun 09, 2024•1 hr 29 min
Renewable energy technology is only getting cheaper. And yet it hasn’t increased its share of the energy mix for two decades. So what explains this paradox: cheap green energy with incredibly slow adoption? According to Brett Christophers, there is a straightforward explanation for this seeming paradox: the capitalist need for profits. And green energy projects are not as profitable as oil and gas. So can capitalism address the climate crisis? Does the state need to play a decisive role? How is ...
Jun 03, 2024•1 hr 33 min
The right have ditched climate denial and found something worse. They’re doubling down on the exhaustion of people and planet alike, making us run ever-faster just to stay in place. Can we turn our collective exhaustion into a climate politics of rest and recuperation? That’s the urgent question Ajay Singh Chaudhary asks in The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World. He tells Richard Hames about the strange new alliances forged by climate change, what we can learn from global peasan...
May 30, 2024•1 hr 4 min
The Indian election will be one of the largest the world has ever seen, with almost 1 billion people eligible to vote. It’s often said that India is the world’s biggest democracy. But what if that isn’t quite true? What if Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister for the last decade, has undermined the very building blocks of what we consider a democratic state to be? To discuss the caste system, political assassinations and state-sanctioned pogroms, Aaron is joined by anthropologist Alpa Shah, aut...
May 27, 2024•1 hr 15 min
What exactly is cool? Well, if it was that easy to describe, it obviously wouldn’t be cool. In this Trip, Keir, Jem and Nadia wonder if cool can ever be politically useful, and what happens when cool is used as a disciplining force. With ideas from Pierre Bourdieu, Norman Mailer and Paul Gilroy, and music from OutKast, Gwen Stefani and Miles Davis, the gang adopt a blank expression to explore the mysterious rules of this singular modern concept. Check out all the books and music mentioned in the...
May 26, 2024•1 hr 39 min
The difference between sex and gender is fundamental to how we talk about trans people. But what if it obscures the richness of life outside of gender norms? There is so much more to gender non-conforming people than this academic, middle-class, distinction – so says Jules Gill-Peterson, a historian at Johns Hopkins University and the author of A Short History of Trans Misogyny. In conversation with Eleanor Penny, Gill-Peterson reaches back into the past to explain what it means to be a queen, w...
May 23, 2024•1 hr 22 min
In the pouring rain and 20 points behind in the polls, Rishi Sunak has announced that a UK general election will take place on 4 July. Michael Walker and Moya Lothian-McLean report. Plus: Ireland, Spain and Norway have announced their intention to recognise Palestine as a state. Follow our election coverage on Novara Live every weekday at 6pm on YouTube, and subscribe to the podcast by searching “Novara Live” in your app.
May 23, 2024•1 hr 2 min
The involuntary celibate community (aka ‘incels’) are often thought to be rightwing, white supremacist, and prone to violence. But how much of that is true? Ash Sarkar is joined by William Costello – a researcher whose work focuses on the psychology of incels – to discuss what we get wrong about incels, what incels get wrong about women, and the catastrophe that is modern dating culture.
May 20, 2024•1 hr 43 min
No country has ever changed so fast as China. From the west, we see only the dazzling headline figures – 15% growth in some years. But it’s on the ground, in the huge shifts in the patterns of daily life, where the story comes alive. Journalist Yuan Yang’s first book Private Revolutions provides just that insight, revealing the individual lives behind the increasing lines on the graphs. Born in China, Yang moved to the UK at the age of 4 but in 2016 returned to her home country to become deputy ...
May 16, 2024•1 hr 9 min
Common sense tells us that free-market economies maximise freedom and that planned economies, typically found under socialist governments, curtail it. But what if this is completely the wrong way around? On this episode of Downstream, Aaron is joined by economist and author Grace Blakeley to discuss Henry Ford, Boeing and the nature of democracy. You can buy Grace’s new book here: Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts and the Death of Freedom...
May 13, 2024•1 hr 9 min
George Bernard Shaw once joked that the US and the UK are “two countries divided by a common language.” Can the same be said of their conservatives? As we brace for a joint election year, Eleanor Penny talks to Sam Adler-Bell and Matthew Sitman, two expert guides to US conservatism via their podcast Know Your Enemy, to analyse the special relationship between right-wingers on both sides of the pond. They discuss the differences between US and UK conservativism, the different factions that have j...
May 10, 2024•1 hr 29 min
George Galloway has been elected as a member of parliament for four separate constituencies – with only Winston Churchill beating him. Perhaps more remarkably still, he won on three of those occasions while not being a member of a major political party. Most recently, he became the MP for Rochdale in the north of England. That success was, in no small part, because of Galloway’s position on Gaza – and his outspoken criticism of Israel. But is his latest success merely the swan song in a rollerco...
May 05, 2024•1 hr 26 min
How do mainstream politicians and pundits contribute to the normalisation of far-right ideas, even as they claim to reject racism and populism? That’s one of many vital questions asked by Aaron Winter and Aurelien Mondon in their book, Reactionary Democracy . Following ACFM’s recent Trip about Fascism , Keir and Jem speak to Aaron and Aurelien about the making of the “woke conspiracy”, how illiberal politics absorbs liberal rhetoric, and why the left has to stop falling for reactionary narrative...
May 05, 2024•1 hr 7 min
In the ’00s, animal rights protestors nearly won their battle to ban vivisection in the UK, shutting down multiple breeding farms that were supplying laboratories with cats, dogs and guinea pigs. But at the last moment, the government made a dramatic U-turn, blocking their attempt to shut down Huntingdon Life Sciences and throwing activists in jail. How did this winning campaign fall apart? Why was the war on terror a crucial turning point? And what might the Palestine movement learn from its ta...
May 02, 2024•1 hr 25 min
Teresa Thornhill is an author and former child protection lawyer. Throughout her long career, working for both local authorities and advocating on behalf of parents, she has been a first hand witness to how the system fails parents, social workers and, most importantly, children. Teresa sat down with Aaron to talk about the untrained volunteers deciding children’s futures, whether drug policy matters, and how austerity will have costs for decades to come. She’s also the author of In Harm’s Way: ...
Apr 29, 2024•1 hr 32 min
The exhortation to “read some effing Orwell!” is an old chestnut of the online left, whether ironic or sincere, or somewhere in between. But if we’re looking for a writer whose body of work truly anticipates the world we live in now – globalised, postcolonial, postmodern – we might instead turn to the American Marxist cultural critic Fredric Jameson. He’s just turned 90 and, in characteristically productive style, has three new books out this year. But where to start? To get a grip on Jamesonian...
Apr 25, 2024•1 hr 20 min
It’s not what you know; it’s what you can prove. For years, Forensic Architecture has exposed state crimes against civilians, nature, and humanity. This week on Downstream, Ash Sarkar meets its director Eyal Weizman to discuss Israel’s settler colonial project, the police killing of Mark Duggan, and how the testimony of blindfolded torture victims helped construct a model of Bashar al-Assad’s most notorious torture prison.
Apr 22, 2024•1 hr 11 min
A lot of people are saying that fascism is on the rise. But what are we pointing to when we call a system, or a person, fascist? On this Trip, Nadia, Keir and Jem map out a complicated ideology, from its roots in 19th century industrialisation to its resurgence in ethnonationalism and eco-apartheid. Exploring how different political traditions try to explain fascism, they look for signs of the f-word in contemporary politics and play music from Woody Guthrie, Heaven 17 and Black Sabbath. ACFM wi...
Apr 21, 2024•1 hr 53 min
London is a foodie metropolis: undoubtedly one of the best places to eat in the world. But eating in London is also, like everything else in the city, shaped by its history as the capital of a globe-spanning empire. How did the contraction of this formal empire change infamously terrible British cuisine? How did multiculturalism become an excuse for underpaid racialised labour? And how did landlords ruin Chinatown? The essay collection London Feeds Itself , now in its expanded second edition, is...
Apr 18, 2024•1 hr 14 min
Centuries of colonial capitalism have reordered life on the planet and inside our bodies, from industrial farming and the uneven advances of modern medicine, to night shifts, chronic stress and inflammation. Has the system made us sick? That’s the concern of Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, who join Eleanor Penny to talk about the history of medical injustice and environmental toxicity, and what can be done start the healing process. Their book, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice , is...
Apr 11, 2024•1 hr 15 min
Abby Martin is an American journalist and activist, host of the interview series The Empire Files, and a co-founder of the citizen journalism website Media Roots. She joins Ash Sarkar to discuss her political journey after 9/11, working for the state broadcaster Russia Today, how Israelis really talk about Palestinians, and why she believes the west doesn’t care about Ukraine. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support
Apr 08, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Why is it so expensive to rent in the UK? In a divisive new book, barrister Nick Bano places the blame squarely on price-gouging landlords, rejecting the conventional wisdom that calls for more new housing as a solution to the crisis. He goes head to head with Novara Live’s Michael Walker to explain the thinking behind Against Landlords: How to Solve the Housing Crisis , out on Verso Books. This episode was produced in a collaboration with the Crash Course With Michael Walker podcast. * Novara F...
Apr 04, 2024•1 hr 6 min
For a special edition of Downstream IRL, Ash Sarkar is joined by philosopher, author, and one of the world’s most cited academics, Judith Butler. Their new book, ‘Who’s Afraid of Gender’ charts how a transphobic moral panic morphed into an all-our war on so-called ‘gender ideology’. Together, Ash and Judith explore how Britain became TERF island, the limits of self-identification, and what really defines a woman.
Apr 01, 2024•55 min
With hindsight, the wars waged by the US and Britain in Afghanistan and Iraq look like terrible failures, both strategically and politically: the Taliban are back in power in Afghanistan, and living standards are worse in Iraq than they were before Saddam Hussein. In his new book The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the Middle East, 1979-2003, veteran American journalist Steve Coll looks at British and American foreign policy through the lens of one man: Saddam Hussein. He sa...
Mar 25, 2024•1 hr 6 min
We’re living in a world of hurry and shortcuts, of intimacy on tap and just-in-time production. Immediacy, according to Anna Kornbluh, is the link between flow-states and Fleabag, between food delivery apps and a mistrust of political systems. She joins Richard Hames to explain the thinking behind her new book – Immediacy: Or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism – and what the effects of immediacy both reveal and conceal about our world. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/supp...
Mar 21, 2024•1 hr 12 min
Peter Hitchens is an author and journalist whose contrarian takes on drug policy, education and foreign policy have found him occupying a singular place in the British media – with his brand of conservatism often angering audiences who would consider themselves staunchly conservative. He sat down with Aaron to discuss grammar schools, Gaza and Britain’s profoundly inhumane actions at the end of the second world war.
Mar 18, 2024•1 hr 34 min
From fecal transplants to the yoghurt-industrial complex, we’ve never been more absorbed in the workings of our gut. But can we trust it? Nadia, Jem and Keir investigate the mysterious connections between mind and body, reason and instinct. How did capitalism separate our minds from our bodies? Is a belief in intuition filling the gap left by religion? And will reclaiming our biomes be a win for anti-capitalism? They digest their thinking with music from Björk and Olivia Rodrigo and ideas from M...
Mar 17, 2024•1 hr 20 min
