ORIGINALLY RELEASED Feb 3, 2022 In this episode, Alyson and Breht introduce, teach, and discuss the philosphy of two giants in western philosophy: Arthur Schopenhaur and Friedrich Nietzsche. They discuss their respective philosophies, how they relate, how they differ, the subsequent thinkers and movements they inspired or influened, their relation to politics right, left and center, their connection to eastern philosophies and religions, and much more! -------------------------------------------...
Apr 21, 2025•2 hr 9 min
ORIGINALLY RELEASED Jul 25, 2019 In this episode, Alyson and Breht dive into Mao Zedong's seminal text On Contradiction —a cornerstone of Marxist philosophy and revolutionary praxis. Written in the heat of anti-imperialist struggle, Mao develops a distinctly materialist theory of dialectics rooted in motion, contradiction, and transformation. We explore his concepts of principal and secondary contradictions, the universality of contradiction, and how this framework guided revolutionary strategy ...
Apr 20, 2025•1 hr 23 min
ORIGINALLY RELEASED Oct 21, 2023 In this critical episode of Guerrilla History, we bring on Max Ajl and Patrick Higgins to discuss some recent history and the ongoing situation regarding Palestinian resistance to the Zionist project and the ongoing bombardment on Gaza. Max and Patrick provide some absolutely crucial information here, so be sure to tune in, and forward the episode along to anyone you think would benefit from it. Our guests recommend you to donate to the Middle East Children's All...
Apr 19, 2025•1 hr 56 min
ORIGINALLY RELEASED Aug 1, 2019 Chuka Ejeckam joins Breht to discuss the one and only Malcolm X. In this episode, we honor the life, legacy, and radical clarity of Malcolm X, one of the most fearless and honorable figures in the struggle for Black liberation. From his early years shaped by systemic racism and incarceration, to his rise as a powerful voice within the Nation of Islam, and finally to his global awakening and revolutionary vision in the last years of his life—we trace the evolution ...
Apr 18, 2025•2 hr 39 min
ORIGINALLY RELEASED Jan 8, 2024 Dr. Joy James joins Breht and PM for the third installment of Rev Left's ongoing Du Bois series , but this conversation goes well beyond the life and work of Du Bois to cover James' newest book, her long history of organizing, the history of black liberation struggles in the US, and much more. Together, they discuss George Jackson, James' concept of the Captive Maternal, Erica Garner, "New Bones Abolition" , Marxism, black history, Ida B. Wells, and much more. Ove...
Apr 17, 2025•1 hr 35 min
ORIGINALLY RELEASED Jun 21, 2020 In this episode, we explore the Haitian Revolution—the only successful slave revolt in history and a landmark event in the global struggle against colonialism and white supremacy. From the brutal plantation economy of Saint-Domingue to the rise of revolutionary leaders like Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, we trace how enslaved Africans overthrew French rule and declared the world's first Black republic. We also examine how this radical uprising ...
Apr 16, 2025•1 hr 55 min
ORIGINALLY RELEASED Jan 23, 2020 On this episode, Melody (aka A World to Win!) joins Breht to introduce and discuss the work of Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, specifically his work on ideology. ---------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio HERE Outro Beat Prod. by flip da hood...
Apr 15, 2025•1 hr 10 min
ORIGINALLY RELEASED Feb 16, 2023 Breht gives a moving speech on the topic of dialectial materialism, Buddhism, and Marxism. After explaining the philosophy of dialectical materialism in depth, he uses it to unite core insights from Buddhism and Marxism, arguing that their combination offers a potent path toward inward and outward liberation. He ends by advancing the archetype of the Bodhisattva Revolutionary, asserting it as a uniquely well-rounded and profoundly deep path for revolutionaries in...
Apr 14, 2025•56 min
ORIGINALLY RELEASED Nov 2018 Historian David Parsons joins Breht for a deep and wide-ranging conversation on the Vietnam War, Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese National Liberation struggle, unforgivable American imperial war crimes, historical memory, and much more! David Parsons is an author, historian, and leftist podcast host of The Nostalgia Trap. Find The Nostalgia Trap here: https://nostalgiatrap.com/ Find his book, Dangerous Grounds: Antiwar Coffeehouses and Military Dissent in the Vietnam E...
Apr 13, 2025•2 hr 6 min
ORIGINALLY RELEASED Jul 28, 2018 John from Working Class History joins Brett to discuss the Spanish Civil War! This is a long-anticipated episode on a deeply important and relevant historical event. We spent a LOT of time editing and producing this episode, so we hope you find it informative as well as genuinely moving. Here is the reading guide from WCH on the Spanish Civil War: https://libcom.org/library/spanish-civil-war-1936-39-reading-guide Working Class History website is here: https://wor...
Apr 12, 2025•1 hr 48 min
ORIGINALLY RELEASED Apr 10, 2024 In this episode, Alyson and Breht wrestle with the possible rise of artificial general intelligence and its implications. Together they discuss the Silicon Valley Techno-Cult and their dark religious search for immortality, their hubristic attempts to "build god" and escape death, their neoliberal subjectivities and how that manifests in their work, how AI might manifest under the capitalist mode of production, the horrors and contradictions of "capitalism withou...
Apr 11, 2025•1 hr 57 min
ORIGINALLY RELEASED Apr 20, 2019 What is to be Done? is a classic work on the role and organisation of the revolutionary party in the communist movement. Lenin criticises economism, revisionism and spontaneity, and argues persuasively for a centralised and professional vanguard of the proletariat. On this episode of Red Menace Alyson and Breht explain and reflect on the text, and then extract the core lessons for revolutionaries today. What Is To Be Done? by V.I. Lenin Full text here: https://ww...
Apr 10, 2025•1 hr 28 min
Best Of Series (creating a clean back-catalogue) starts tomorrow. Join the Patreon - even for free - to get new public episodes in the meantime. We will also be putting new episodes out on the Red Menace feed (subscribe on your preferred podcast app) ---------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev ...
Apr 09, 2025•15 min
Directors Michael T. Workman and Kei Pritsker join Breht to discuss The Encampments , their award-winning new documentary chronicling the 2024 student-led pro-Palestinian uprisings at Columbia, UCLA, and beyond. We talk about the ethical challenges of filming, the fascist state repression faced by people who speak out against Israel, the story of Mahmoud Khalil's ICE detention and its relationship to the film, this film as revolutionary cultural production and political education, the universiti...
Apr 08, 2025•1 hr 23 min
In this powerful episode, we sit down with a frontline activist from Palestine Action , the UK-based direct action network targeting Elbit Systems—the Israeli weapons manufacturer responsible for arming and enabling genocide in Palestine and beyond. We dig into the strategy of physically dismantling the military-industrial complex, the stakes of this fight, and the growing number of political prisoners facing terror charges for their resistance. Max, from Palestine Action, joins Breht to discuss...
Apr 07, 2025•1 hr 11 min
In this lecture, Breht provides an accessible but rigorous introduction to the Marxist theory of history: historical materialism. Breht explains how historical materialism is dialectical materialism applied to the evolution of human societies over time, the role that the base-superstructure model has in understanding culture and ideology, the long march from hunter-gatherer communal societies to slave empires to feudal monarchies to capitalist republics and beyond - to socialist democracy and ul...
Apr 06, 2025•1 hr 11 min
With this episode of Guerrilla History, were continuing our series on African Revolutions and Decolonization with an outstanding case study on the Congo, looking at the process of colonization, how decolonization unfolded, Lumumba's short time as Prime Minister, and the transition to the Mobutu regime. We really could not ask for a much better guest than Prof. Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, who not only is one of the foremost experts in not only this history, but also served as a diplomat for the DRC...
Apr 04, 2025•1 hr 44 min
With this episode of Guerrilla History, we launch into Pan-Africanism as a great additional starting point to our series on African Revolutions and Decolonization . We bring on two marvelous guests, Prof. Layla Brown and Jacquie Luqman, to discuss the history, theoretical currents, and modern expressions of Pan-Africanism. This is a 2+ hour masterclass, you certainly won't want to miss a moment of it! Also subscribe to our Substack (free!) to keep up to date with what we are doing: guerrillahist...
Apr 03, 2025•2 hr 16 min
In this episode, Alyson and Breht welcome Brendan back on the show for the first time in a few years. Together, we dive deep into Leon Trotsky's Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It , a sharp and urgent intervention written in the shadow of the Nazi rise to power. We unpack Trotsky's class analysis of fascism, the role of the petite bourgeoisie, his searing critiques of both sectarian isolationism and liberal class collaboration, and his insistence on the United Front as the only viable revol...
Mar 24, 2025•1 hr 56 min
In this episode Breht sits down with Brian Becker, a longtime socialist organizer and leading member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), to break down the current political and economic crisis in the United States and the urgent need for revolutionary organization. As Trump-aligned forces consolidate power, billionaires tighten their grip over the state, and the feckless Democratic Party continues its self-imposed paralysis, Brian and Breht examine what this moment signals about the...
Mar 19, 2025•1 hr 28 min
(There was a small audio issue at the end of this episode, we fixed it and are re-releasing it) Breht goes on the Pokepreet Podcast as a guest to have a fun and fiery conversation about his ideological development, why the United States is so hostile to socialism even relative to other hyper-capitalist countries, the current grotesque state of global capitalism-imperialism, and much more! "In this thought-provoking conversation, we sit down with Breht O'Shea to dive deep into the current state o...
Mar 18, 2025•2 hr 19 min
Todd McGowan joins the show once again, this time to discuss his newest book "Pure Excess: Capitalism and the Commodity". Together, he and Breht discuss commodity fetishism, the tensions between Marxism and psychoanalysis, what a critique of the subjective aspects of capitalism offers anti-capitalist politics, the "superstructural malaise" of late capitalism, Desire and Lack, capitalism's death drive, how to resist becoming a neoliberal subject, and much more. "Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, ...
Mar 10, 2025•1 hr 29 min
Breht listens to, reflects on, and critically engages with a public lecture by the late philosopher Michael Sugrue titled Marcus Aurelius' Meditations: The Stoic Ideal . He discusses the philosophy of Stoicism, its insights as well as its limitations, its commodification and bastardization under late capitalism, the dialectical inversion of the philosophy of a Roman Emperor for proletarian revolutionaries, Virtue Ethics, Mahayana Buddhism and The Four Brahmaviharas, the importance of courage and...
Feb 27, 2025•2 hr 2 min
Dawson Hicks from Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty joins Breht to discuss the organization, its founding by prisoners, its strategies and vision, the Alabama carceral system, the use of nitrogen hypoxia as the newest method of murdering inmates, the benefits of rehabilitation over punishment and slaughter, the utter moral depravity and intellectual mediocrity of U.S. politicians deciding who lives and who dies, the racial and class inequalities of the American injustice system, the ques...
Feb 25, 2025•1 hr 37 min
In this episode of the brand new Adnan Husain Show , Professor Adnan Husain is joined by two outstanding scholars and thinkers, Drs. Peter Beattie and Karim Bettache of BettBeatMedia ( @BettBeat_Media ) .They discuss a number of interrelated topics including: the current geopolitical order, China's role in it, BRICS and political economy, anti-imperialist politics in the Trump era, the media, as well as the politics of race and Islamophobia beyond "left and right" in "the West". Please subscri...
Feb 24, 2025•1 hr 20 min
Dr. Rory Dickson is a professor of Islamic Religion and Culture and author of several publications on Sufism, the mystical path within Islam. He joins Breht to have an incredibly deep conversation about the Sufi poet Rumi, his life and work, Rumi's relationship to his teacher Shams of Tabriz, the concepts of fana (annihilation of the self) and baqa (subsistence in God), the spiritual practices of Sufism, non-duality and perennialism, "dying before you die", Buddhist enlightenment, the Quran, Ser...
Feb 17, 2025•2 hr 9 min
Willy Massay returns to the show to discuss his recent (second) trip to Gaza as a medical volunteer. He got back two weeks ago and stayed for over a month. He discusses his heart-wrenching experiences, the wintry conditions and terrible air quality in Gaza and how both are impacting the health of every single Palestinian on the ground. He also discusses the ceasefire, the spirit of the Palestinian people, the insane cruelty and horrific war crimes of Israel, and his personal relationships and ex...
Feb 10, 2025•1 hr 17 min
Breht discusses American Capitalism's Death Drive Accelerationism, how the only path that's left for capitalism is to return us to fuedalism "at a higher level", how dialactics plays out in this context, and why the purposeful cultivation of inner silence and stillness and love is more important than ever. outro music: 'Breathe' by Alexi Murdoch Support Rev Left and get bonus episodes on Patreon Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow RLR on IG HERE Learn mor...
Feb 04, 2025•32 min
This is an unlocked patreon episode. To get bonus episodes like this every month, and access to our back catalogue of hundreds of bonus eps like this one, support the show on Patreon: www.patreon.com/revleftradio In this patreon exclusive, Breht discusses the second Trump administration, mass deportations, the crescendo of neoliberalism, the US Oligarchy, the implications and possible trajectories of Artificial Intelligence, Deepseek, what's next for the Democrats, accelerationism in the era of ...
Feb 02, 2025•1 hr 43 min
Professor of philosophy Colin Bodayle joins Breht to dive into the profound, unique, and almost mystical philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. Together, they discuss the value of philosophy for all of us, Spinoza as a "philosopher's philosopher", his life and death in 17th century western Europe, his complex geometrical structure of writing, God as Nature as Substance, his forward thinking politics, Atheism and Pantheism, what Spinoza thinks a good life is, Stoicism and Buddhism, Marx and Engels connect...
Jan 31, 2025•2 hr 44 min
