You wanted a denouement? Here's your goddamn denouement. Matt and Sean finish this extended look into the 1970s by answering the questions: Why did Carterism (spoiler alert!) fall apart over its internal contradictions? Where have the politics of personal virtue taken us? Why was Reagan the man of the hour and why was Clintonism his enduring achievement? How did neoliberalism become the economic consensus and what the hell is happening now that its entire political and economic edifice is collap...
Jun 03, 2019•4 min
On this episode of Vampire Castle Jamie and Leslie discuss two vampire westerns: Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark and John Carpenter's Vampires.
Jun 01, 2019•3 min
The Illuminati are back, baby! This week, the crew is joined by Anna Merlan (@annamerlan), author of "Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power," to discuss where all these conspiracy theories came from and how to defeat #fakenews once and for all. Jamie and Anna recap how they met at an RNC-adjacent punk show. The crew's favorite conspiracy theories. The history of conspiracy theories in America. What is it about the U S of A that makes it such fertile g...
May 29, 2019•30 sec
The boys are back! This History Is A Weapon is so massive (and inebriated) that we had to break it into two parts. In this installment, Matt and Sean shoot a little shit about the radical geography of Europe before we plunge into the pool of disco and despair that was the 1970s: how global crisis upended the 'Golden Age' of American capitalism, how Richard Nixon rode a wave of aggrievement to become the voice of a 'silent majority' in backlash, and how the uneasy alliance between organized labor...
May 27, 2019•5 min
Andy is back from presenting on Posadas at Cuba's first Trotsky conference and Red May in Seattle with four interviews: Isbel Diaz Torres from the anarchist biblioteca ABRA in Cuba, Simon Rodriguez from Partido Socialismo y Libertad of Venezuela, part of the left-opposition to Maduro, a producer of the Resonance AudioZine distro, and Phillip Wohlstetter of Red May--who wraps everything up with his story of backpacking to Chile in 1973 during the coup. After doing this interview, Isbel and some o...
May 22, 2019•2 hr 1 min
In which Sam returns to discuss with us our worst apartment experiences. Includes attempted murder, our landlord-in-chief, Great Americans and Lindsay Lohan's cocaine. To access this and a tons more bonus content and our Discord, become a patron at www.patreon.com/theantifada
May 17, 2019•4 min
Samuel Stein, author of 'Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State' from Verso Books, comes on the pod to explain why neoliberalism will have us all living in pods if we don't do something about the global housing crisis. We discuss the rise of the FIRE sector. We demystify the concept of gentrification. We isolate the fundamental contradictions of housing as a commodity. We unpack the ways in which even the most well-meaning progressive politicians and planners are utterly constrai...
May 15, 2019•1 hr 29 min
In this bonus, we debut a new parody song by Katie Halper (@kthalps) with an assist from Jamie. We also discuss the garbage musical Rent (and how its composer stole queer radical valor), New York machine politics, why it's good to talk about Biden's boundary issues even though they're the least of his crimes, and the populist potential of #metoo. Everyone talks really fast and interrupts each other. Sean ends with a too-hot-to-handle take on Kurt Cobain. Come see Jamie, Katie, Leslie Lee iii, Ja...
May 10, 2019•3 min
You got your History is Weapon with Sean KB... you got your upcoming new film series (!) with Jamie Peck... and now we are proud to present the first installment of AP Andy's new Proletkult! This irregularly published Antifada series will cover ufological happenings, the paranormal/parapolitical, left futurism and science fiction. After some fresh Space News on the Israeli moonlanding fail, Andy is joined by Stephanie Monohan (@shdwbxng) to discuss her recent presentation at the Theorizing the W...
May 10, 2019•43 min
Doyenne of the podcast left, @kthalps, joins Jamie and Sean to discuss 1990s nostalgia. Mostly we come up with reasons why the decade actually kinda sucked and brought us to the mess we're in today. We also make some indecent proposals to famous people, discuss Juanita Broaddrick and fill a heaping mug with Laura Loomer tears. With Andy in Cuba we recorded a lot of material so expect a big, fat bonus later this week. To become a patron, access paywalled content and our Discord server sign up at ...
May 08, 2019•1 hr 44 min
Every get the feeling that YouTube is a cesspool of corporate propaganda and right-wing nuttery? You're not wrong. Thankfully, the left is fighting back in myriad ways. We are joined by content-craftspersons The Serfs, Non-Compete and Nick from Means Media to discuss how online got so fashy, what we can do to compete with Prager U (and a million other jerks) on the Tube and how left media can break from our capitalist overlords with new cooperative platforms. The Serfs - http://bit.ly/2Y1YOP9 @s...
May 03, 2019•1 hr 15 min
More of our interview with Natasha Lennard about the antifas, social democracy, smooth bernies, and our political horizons Listen to the full episode by becoming a patron! https://www.patreon.com/theantifada Check out 'Being Numerous,' available May 1st: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2949-being-numerous
Apr 26, 2019•2 min
Good friend and all-around badass Tash rolls through once again to talk about her forthcoming essay collection from Verso Books, 'Being Numerous: Essays On Non-Fascist Life.' We discuss anti-fascism in theory and practice, the promise and pitfalls of radical love, and the role of capital and the state in ratifying and distorting our desires, and whatever the opposite of "enforced monogamy" is. We also try not to have a take on the Notre Dame fire, but ultimately cannot help ourselves. C'est la v...
Apr 24, 2019•1 hr 23 min
This weekend was the biennial blast that is the Historical Materialism (@histmat) Conference NYC. Naturally, we took the opportunity to attend some panels and interview old friends and new. Several we interviewed tipsy in an NYC public school and others we talked to rather drunk at the @commune_mag loft down by the railroad tracks. A COMPLETE LIST OF ALL FAMOUS LEFTISTS: George Ciccariello-Maher (@ciccmar) on the coup in Venezuela Jasper Bernes (@outsidadicator) on communization Michelle O'Brien...
Apr 17, 2019•1 hr 32 min
Massive spoiler alert on this one, baby! @leslieleeiii of your favorite leftist culture podcast @strugglesesh joins the crew (in studio!) to talk about Jordan Peele's sophomore offering, the blockbuster social-critique/horror film 'Us'. Sean, Jamie and Andy offer their weird opinions on the deeper meaning of the film... then Leslie, as always, schools everyone with his vast cinematic knowledge. Fun and talking shit on Breitbart happens along the way! To access this and other bonuses, along with ...
Apr 12, 2019•2 min
When @brettpain and @murderbryan from @streetfightwcrs are in town for their epic live show what the hell were we gonna do? Not have them on Antifada to talk workers inquiry, kratom and small business tyrants? Fat chance, bosses... Early access for patrons! If, for some strange reason, you're not an avid listener to America's #1 anarcho-comedy radio show here's a link: http://www.streetfightradio.com/ Please support the local work of Columbus, Ohio comrades at https://actionnetwork.org/groups/pe...
Apr 06, 2019•1 hr 31 min
@commune_mag editor Shyam @dollarpizza1 joins us for what was meant to be a friendly chat about Issue 2 of Antifada's favorite publication... then things went horribly wrong. Is Shyam cancelled? Tune in to find out. To listen to this and other bonus content, along with access to our Discord server, consider supporting our work at https://www.patreon.com/theantifada Subscribe to Commune Magazine today at https://communemag.com/subscribe/ to get great analysis and help make a communism or two....
Apr 05, 2019•6 min
After a quick lesson on Fugazinomics, we talk with Parisian Rona Lorimer, author of the Yellow Vest Diaries from the new issue Commune Magazine, about the origins of the Gilet Jaunes movement, its politics and potentials. [Note: in the intro Sean confuses the Provos (Irish Republicans) with the Ulster Volunteer Forces (anti-Catholic, loyalist murderers) like an idiot. Big apologies to all on the screw up!] Read Rona's article here: https://communemag.com/yellow-vest-diaries/ We mention/stole a t...
Apr 03, 2019•1 hr 24 min
Third-time (!) guest @niralshah jumps in to help us bang through some recent cancellations: Rachel Maddow, Barbara Streisand, the International Socialist Org... and Great Britain as a viable/sane bourgeois democratic state. Since we couldn't get any limeys to come on and talk UK politics, we had to do our best to Yank-splain what the hell is happening on the other side of the pond: Why is a Brexit? What's at stake in this slow-motion train wreck for Corbyn and the left? How come - as Jordan Pete...
Mar 27, 2019•1 hr 31 min
We are joined by cartoonist, writer and all-around provocateur @elivalley to talk about his work, including recent online run-ins with fellow Jewish luminaries Ben Shapiro, Meghan McCain and Chelsea Clinton. Eli discusses the ways in which his art lampoons the fraught and contentious relationship between Israeli/Christian Zionists and the largely liberal/leftist Jewish diaspora. Lots of good talk in here about xenophobic right-wing forces abroad allying with Likudniks and Kahanists in Israel, th...
Mar 20, 2019•1 hr 28 min
Once more into the breach! @cushbomb is here to make history all the more weapony. In this episode, we discuss the 'controversial' French 'novel' that is 'just asking questions' about the Migrant Invasion, the Great Replacement, and Yt Genocide. How did a 1970s book by some grenouille asshole named Jean Raspail become a prophetic lodestar for an ascendant white nationalist movement? How does a historical materialist analysis help us understand why dickheads like Steve Bannon and Marine Le Pen ar...
Mar 15, 2019•2 hr 1 min
Jamie had a birthday weekend. Andy came back from Mexico. After the gang caught up a little, we listened to some interviews Andy got from migrants and their supporters in Tijuana, MX. The stories are heartbreaking and the situation is dire, but we give some practical advice on how to show solidarity with working class brothers and sisters in desperate need of political and material support. Enclave Caracol - https://enclavecaracol.wordpress.com/ Al Otro Lado - https://alotrolado.org/who-we-are/ ...
Mar 13, 2019•1 hr 36 min
Folks, it finally happened: we royally fucked up the sound. Which is a shame, because we had a great conversation with Splinter News' Hamilton Nolan (@hamiltonnolan) about union organizing in the media and beyond. Is millennial entitlement good for labor? Why do workers need their own institutions? Can we change organized labor from within, or do we need a new paradigm? All this, plus Jamie's failed union organizing drive, Hamilton's successful one, and Jamie and Hamilton squash an ancient beef!...
Mar 07, 2019•1 hr 50 min
Are you a nerd like us? Do you read stories about robots and space, while also pondering a socialist future? Well, do we have an interview for you... Fellow science fiction fanatic Will Menaker joins Sean and Jamie for an extended discussion with one of our favorite utopian futurists, Kim Stanley Robinson. Come for the revolutionary potentialities of the post-capitalist imaginary and stay for the psychedelic polyamory! Outro - Hawkwind: Space is Deep @willmenaker (still buy the book: https://bit...
Feb 28, 2019•1 hr 39 min
Time to take a big ole bong rip! In a radical departure from our usual weekly content, Sean KB joined up with a bunch of commie pals to talk about C O M M U N I Z A T I O N. We use Ben Noys' critical compilation "Communization and Its Discontents" to dip our toes into the deep waters of current ultra-left thought on the crises of capitalism and its overcoming: Has the development of bourgeois society utterly changed the terrain of struggle? Must the proletariat struggle not just against exploita...
Feb 23, 2019•1 hr 20 min
@CoreyPein sticks around to discuss The Californian Ideology, Baywatch & Julian Assange. Then we do a textual analysis of a LA Times puff piece about Instagram-ready, curated co-living complete with app-based solutions to modern living in (ugh...) The Node. Forget the chore-wheel, this is hellworld baby! Become a patron today at www.patreon.com/theantifada
Feb 19, 2019•2 min
Author, journalist and cat dad @coreypein joins us to gives us some important updates on what he described in last year's excellent 'Live Work Work Work Die': the hyper-capitalist hellscape of Silicon Valley, the over-under on a big Bezos hog reveal, the dark powers that our new tech overlords hold over our of lives, and how we might fight back against them! Buy the book (maybe not from Amazon): https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781627794855 Outro: JJ Doom - BOOKHEAD Bonus with Corey forthcoming! ...
Feb 13, 2019•2 hr
AP Andy comes across a fellow radical exile Blair Taylor washed ashore on a beach in Nayarit, Mexico. The two post-anarchists discuss the life and work of curmudgeonly communalist Murray Bookchin as they watch dolphins frolicking in the sunset. Topics include radical muncipalism, Bookchin's concepts of democracy and citizenship, Blair's Institute for Social Ecology and the formation of the Symbiosis network with DSA-LSC, Black Socialists, Cooperation Jackson, the PKK and Rojava, Bookchin's criti...
Feb 11, 2019•1 min
A bunch of our die-hard listeners were in NYC, so we decided to have as many people as would possibly fit in the studio come on the show. Why the hell not? Collectively, we get at the heart the Putin problem and... SING SONGS! Become a patron today at www.patreon.com/theantifada for bonus content, access to our discord server and more.
Feb 06, 2019•1 hr 20 min
Jamie and Sean are schooled by the master of critical analysis @leslieeiii from Struggle Session on what is good and what is not good about #resistance media in the age of Drumpf. Join us as we dissect the dystopian world of The Handmaid's Tale, the ur-text of liberal anxiety around the impending neo-theocratic counter-revolution. How does the Hulu series stand up to Margaret Atwood's 1985 masterpiece? What does the show tell us about donut Twitter and Hillary dead-enders? Can anything be redeem...
Jan 30, 2019•1 hr 42 min
