The United States today exceeds at perpetually waging wars that it are destined to fail to meet their purported objectives. The War on Terror is one such war. The War on Drugs is another. In both cases, failure never leads to much official questioning of the war let alone a repudiation of its underlying wisdom. The conventional wisdom is always that the war just hasn't been waged in the right way, or aggressively enough. My guest today is Leo Beletsky, who directs the Health in Justice Action La...
Sep 23, 2018
For many, conservatives and liberals alike, Appalachia provides a skeleton key for interpreting changes in American politics that might otherwise be difficult to comprehend. But the way conservatives and liberals talk about Appalachia tells us a lot more about conservatives and liberals than it does about the region. Elizabeth Catte, the author of What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia, puts the region and representations of it in historical and political-economic context. Thanks to Verso B...
Sep 19, 2018
Legendary critical theorist Nancy Fraser argues that a total analysis of capitalism requires taking Marxism beyond a narrowly economistic view. Throughout its history, capitalism has been defined not just by labor exploitation but also by the disavowal of that exploitation's own basic conditions of possibility: the things that the daily business of labor exploitation and surplus value appropriation require from politics, care work, war-making, mining, patriarchy, racism and more. Thanks to Verso...
Sep 12, 2018
What socialism should offer is freedom by way of power and democratic control over our polity and economy—and thus over our future as a society. Matt Bruenig has one proposal (https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/social-wealth-fund/) out at his People's Policy Project on how to begin to do just that, and it's called a social wealth fund. The idea is that the state gradually socializes the assets of every single publicly-traded company in the United States by purchasing their stocks. Tha...
Sep 09, 2018
Nikhil Pal Singh on the unfortunate obsession shared by certain pundits, journalists and social scientists: definitively proving that Trump won because of racism, and racism alone. What drives so many people to dedicate so much time to arguing that either class or race or gender or whatever matters the most—or worse yet, matters exclusively? And what does "matter more" even mean? Plus, a lengthy Dan Denvir monologue on the identity politics debate on the socialist left. Thanks to Verso Books. Ch...
Sep 05, 2018
Dan speaks to Elizabeth Rush, the author of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, a lyrical, mournful but ultimately hopeful account of people dealing with amongst the most tangible effects of global warming right now: the rising seas that are threatening poor and working-class people with dislocation, community destruction and compounded destitution. It's a beautifully-written guide to the current crisis that sugarcoats nothing yet that highlights how ordinary people can organize to f...
Aug 31, 2018
Today's episode is a long one. It's the first of two this week on climate politics: a live event that I hosted at Verso Books in New York a couple weeks ago. Or, at least part of it is. The event livestream, which we grabbed the audio from, malfunctioned for the first half hour or so of the episode. And so, dear listeners, we made lemonade out of audiovisual lemons and re-did the first part of the interview later over the phone from Providence. Dan spoke to Audrea Lim, Thea Riofrancos, Ashley Da...
Aug 29, 2018
Josie Duffy Rice on Justice in America, her new podcast from The Appeal that she co-hosts with with Clint Smith, media coverage of criminal justice, carceral feminism and domestic violence, and the disturbing liberal affection for federal law enforcement under Trump. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out For a Left Populism by Chantal Mouffe versobooks.com/books/2748-for-a-left-populism Support this podcast with your money at patreon.com/TheDig
Aug 25, 2018
Russia: the more your average American thinks about it, the less they seem to know. National security-state enthused liberals blame Putin and for creating what is an obviously-if-incomprehensibly made-in-America monster. Trump, in turn, cannot seem to contain his giddy enthusiasm for Putin's brand of hyper-masculine authoritarianism. Meanwhile, Russia, an actual country where roughly 144 million people live, has become mostly invisible to Americans—because it has been replaced by a caricature. S...
Aug 22, 2018
Part two of a two-part interview with Aslı Bâli on the Syrian civil war and the larger geopolitical conflicts that shape the Middle East—with an emphasis on the role played the United States. During part one, which you should definitely listen to first, Bâli discussed the various powers sacrificing the lives of Syrian people in the pursuit of their perceived geopolitical and sectarian interests. In this installment, Bâli discusses the restrictive frames that dominates the American discussion ove...
Aug 17, 2018
Aslı Ü. Bâli joins Daniel for part one of a two-part interview on the Syrian Civil War and the murderously instrumentalized geopolitics that fuel it. Syrians continue to suffer and to die while various actors treat the conflict as a proxy for their own geopolitical ends; meanwhile, huge numbers of Syrian refugees languish in neighboring countries, and the much smaller number who have made their way to Europe and the United States have been utilized by a resurgent far-right to blame ordinary Syri...
Aug 15, 2018
That right-wing people in the US and Europe have made George Soros the answer to so many troubling questions is not very surprising: he's a billionaire, he's Jewish and, unlike most of his cohort, he is an actual intellectual who spends much of his money on substantively progressive causes. Daniel Bessner's essay on him in n+1 (https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/the-globalist/), however, not only sketches out the right's obsessions but also offers a detailed analysis of Soros as a t...
Aug 11, 2018
Sorry to Bother You is a hilarious film about the dead serious shitiness of life under neoliberalism's flexibilized and precarious labor regime, a system teetering upon a thin line between free labor exploitation and a form of expropriation reminiscent of full-on slave labor—all at the mercy of the thinly-veiled barbarity of Palo Alto-style techno-utopianism. It's about how capitalist society divides and conquers friends and family to claim not only our obedience but also our very souls, and abo...
Aug 09, 2018
If Kerri Evelyn Harris wins in Delaware, she will have knocked out an incumbent US Senator. And that would be a really big deal. Harris, a left candidate backed by Justice Democrats, is Dan's guest today. She is the latest candidate putting forward the bold proposition that in a democracy ordinary people should govern themselves—particularly since well-credentialed incumbents like her opponent, Senator Tom Carper, so often do the bidding of corporate interests. Live recording of The Dig coming u...
Aug 03, 2018
The SESTA/FOSTA law purportedly aims to curb sex trafficking. But as my guest Melissa Gira Grant explains, it actually denies sex workers access to online platforms to more safely conduct their business. It received just two "no" votes in the Senate: from Rand Paul and Ron Wyden. It's a problem of hegemony: prohibition has long been plain common sense. So, it's our job to change that. The first step is to make it clear that there is dissent, and that prohibition is self-evidently neither good po...
Aug 01, 2018
Kaniela Ing (kanielaing.com) is a DSA member running in Hawaii's 1st Congressional District, calling for an end to imperialism and rule by the wealthy, and for housing rights, a green New Deal, Medicare for All, and free college. And he's Dan’s guest. Ocasio-Cortez became an overnight celebrity when she defeated Joe Crowely. But what's most important is that you know who these candidates are before election day—because that's when they most need your help. Live recording of The Dig coming up in ...
Jul 27, 2018
Janus was an entirely expected and atrocious decision. The conservative business interests that successfully obliterated private sector unions hope it will do the same to their public-sector counterparts. Chris Maisano, a contributing editor at Jacobin, argues that labor has no choice but to return to its militant roots if it hopes to survive. In other words, to survive, labor has to fight for a lot more than mere survival. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in th...
Jul 25, 2018
Checking your privilege. Invisible knapsacks. Intersectionality. In his new book from Verso, Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump (https://www.versobooks.com/books/2716-mistaken-identity), Asad Haider questions the terms and concepts that underpin much liberal and left conversation about race and racism, exploring critiques advanced by the black radical tradition to mount a thoroughgoing demolition of what we now refer to as "identity politics"—something that had a quite differe...
Jul 18, 2018
The last episode in this week's Ocasio-Cortez super series. First, an interview with Seth Ackerman on his essay "A Blueprint for a New Party," which lays out a strategy for building independent socialist power effectively, which means opportunistically seizing the Democratic Party ballot line when necessary. jacobinmag.com/2016/11/bernie-sanders-democratic-labor-party-ackerman/ Then, Kate Aronoff on her article "A Revolution From Within," which explains Our Revolution and Justice Democrats, two ...
Jul 16, 2018
This week's super series on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's victory and the future of left politics continues with Julia Salazar, a DSA member running for a Brooklyn state Senate in New York's District 18. Salazar's campaign worked hard for Ocasio-Cortez; now, Ocasio-Cortez's team is returning the favor. Recently, The New York Daily News wondered if Salazar might be the new Ocasio-Cortez. Ocasio-Cortez responded: Salazar "isn’t the next me, she’s the first HER." Indeed, Salazar has her own story to t...
Jul 12, 2018
Capitol Hill used to be a lonely place for a leftist. And, frankly, it still is. But now that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appears to be headed to Washington, Senator Bernie Sanders will likely have some powerful company. Today, Sanders is Dan's guest, and they're talking about the impact of Ocasio-Cortez's victory and where the left goes from here. This is the latest interview in this week's Ocasio-Cortez super series, which has already included interviews with Ocasio-Cortez and Cynthia Nixon. Next...
Jul 11, 2018
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's victory should make New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a larger-than-life bully and ideologically-chameleon Democrat, very afraid. He faces a challenge from Dan's guest today, Cynthia Nixon, who has spent the years after her time on Sex in the City organizing for public education. After what happened to Joe Crowley, the left is more energized than ever. And what once appeared to be a long-shot attack on the king of New York politics now appears like it might just hit its targ...
Jul 10, 2018
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a 28-year old Latina working-class champion committed to social transformation who beat one of the most powerful men in Congress: the King of Queens. Dan had an extended conversation with her about how organized people won her election, how she’ll stay accountable to those movements now that she’s a rock star, establishment myopia and denial, The Congressional Progressive Caucus' shortcomings, and where the insurgency goes from here. Then Intercept D.C. Bureau Chief R...
Jul 09, 2018
Leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO, won an overwhelming victory in Mexico's presidential election, shattering a corrupt, old party system that brought ordinary Mexicans rampant violence and economic immiseration. But AMLO faces powerful political and economic constraints once in office—including some of his own making. Dan's guest is Christy Thornton, a professor of sociology and Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins. During the last week, she was an election observer for the Scholar...
Jul 07, 2018
Today, we're talking about Italy, where a so-called "populist" alliance of the Five Star Movement and right-wing League just took over the government with anti-migrant and Euro-skeptic agenda. Dan's guest is David Broder, a historian of French and Italian communism and frequent contributor to Jacobin. The Five Star Movement was for a time welcomed by some on the left. But it’s not of the left; rather, it is a product of the Italian left’s collapse. Thanks to Verso. Check out Radical Technologies...
Jul 03, 2018
Stephen Wertheim, a Lecturer in American and international history at Birkbeck, University of London, breaks cuts through the suffocating foreign policy debate that shapes American Empire under Trump. Peace has broken out across the Korean Peninsula—or, at least, the odds that Donald Trump will blow the world up have gone down a just a bit—at least temporarily. Yes, Trump is the one who pushed us way too close to the brink of nuclear war. And yes, he likely sought peace with Kim Jong-Un because ...
Jun 30, 2018
Everyone wants to know what's wrong with Appalachia. But beginning in the 1960s, it was "white ethics"—Italians, Irish, Polish, Jews and other non-WASPs—who broke from the New Deal coalition, embracing their Ellis Island immigrant roots in reaction to the Black Freedom struggle and, ultimately, Latin American migration. Dan’s guest today is Matthew Frye Jacobson, an historian at Yale and the author of Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post–Civil Rights America, from Harvard University Press. Th...
Jun 27, 2018
Vox immigration reporter Dara Lind, one very bright spot in an often disappointing landscape of mainstream immigration journalism, discusses the historical, political and legal context of Trump’s family separation policy. Dan also just wrote a lengthy piece on this for Jacobin, which you can read at jacobinmag.com/2018/06/trump-immigration-child-family-separation-policy Thanks to Verso Books. Check out the new paperback edition of China Miéville’s October: The Story of the Russian Revolution ver...
Jun 22, 2018
David Harvey has taught Capital to huge numbers of people everywhere. Dan interviews him about his latest book, Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason. Harvey explains why he thinks all three volumes are of Capital are key, why we’re still living under neoliberalism at least unless and until ethnonationalist autarchy pushes it aside, how capitalism might survive climate change via mass immiseration, and linking struggles over production and consumption in the fight to transform society...
Jun 20, 2018
The US colony of Puerto Rico has been repeatedly shocked and Puerto Ricans are traumatized. That is precisely what successful shock doctrines like this one—which wants to remake the island into a utopia for rich Americans and crypto-bros and a dystopia for everyone else—depend upon. This is is the subject of Naomi Klein's new book from Haymarket, The Battle For Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists. Today, Klein returns to The Dig, and is joined by Mercedes Martínez, president ...
Jun 13, 2018
