We're joined by Portland, Oregon organizers to talk about the revolutionary politics there over the last 25 years and related writings by Don Hamerquist of the Sojourner Truth Organization and Three Way Fight . Among other things we cover the IWW-initiated Burgerville Union, the battle of Longview, Occupy, massive black blocs following the 2020 George Floyd Uprising, state repression, and the mysterious George Sakai. Hear the full episode by supporting the show at http://patreon.com/theantifada ...
Jun 21, 2023•56 min
A news roundup--we start by talking about Sean's psychedelic encounter with a woke Civil War statue, the recent Supreme Court decisions on the Voting Rights Act and Teamsters, the West Coast port shutdowns and dynamics of portworker labor in the US, and the upcoming UPS strike as a potential opening salvo of the final battle of organized labor. We then discuss the recent trans panic in light of the history of queer liberation, and our cis blindspot on the issue.For the full episode, in which we ...
Jun 14, 2023•1 hr 7 min
As we take the week off to celebrate the marriage of Sean and Rax, enjoy this classic bonus from our 2019 trip to the UK to visit the Trash lads and drink many horrible cans of lager and read James Kirkup's dystopian fanfic "How the Lib Dems could seize power."Read along: https://unherd.com/2019/07/how-the-lib-dems-could-seize-power/ Listen to all our drunken bonus material and contribute to the KB honeymoon fund: https://www.patreon.com/theantifada...
Jun 07, 2023•53 min
For the full episode support the show at Patreon.com/TheAntifada C. Derick Varn is back to discuss Sean's new article on China. What is the political economy of China? Was the 1949 revolution betrayed by capitalist roaders? What were the patterns of development that brought it into the world market? Should China be defended as a socialist project? Is it a model worth emulating? Lastly, does the working class of China, or anywhere for that matter, have a role to play still in history or will the ...
May 31, 2023•1 hr 3 min
Communist philosopher Søren Mau chats with us about his new book Mute Compulsion , an introduction to Marx's thought on the nature of economic domination under capitalism. Support us on our Patreon: http://patreon.com/theantifada William Clare Roberts' review in Jacobin: https://jacobin.com/2023/03/mute-compulsion-soren-mau-book-review J asper Bernes essay on Revolutionary motives: https://endnotes.org.uk/articles/revolutionary-motives.pdf Song: Royksopp - Compulsion...
May 24, 2023•50 min
STRIKE UPDATE! SEIU, WGA, AFL-CIO, PNWSU, MLBPA! Degrowth vs. workers' movement, WGA strike and culture production, the Player's Revolt against the National League, immanent critique of culture war, extinction rebellion as the zombie New Left, and much more! For the full episode support the show at http://patreon.com/theantifada APOLOGIES for the echoey/murmury audio stuff. I messed up and i won't do it again :( AFL-CIO support Willow Project: - https://www.foxbusiness.com/energy/bidens-decision...
May 15, 2023•53 min
At long last, Middle East historian Djene Bajalon of This Is Revolution talks with Sean and Andy about affairs international and internecine. Topics include: London vs Hull, Labor vs Tory, the deep fakes and stonings of the Turkish election, the way Turkish culture wars mask the class war, Erdogan and anti-imperialism, And in the second half for subscribers: Twitter files, Rojava update, autonomous regions and communism, Post-Bernie leftism, DEI for imperialism, and a sip of Sublation tea.Song: ...
May 10, 2023•1 hr 2 min
David A. Banks , author of The City Authentic and co-host of the upstate-urbanist podcast Iron Weeds describes the rural gentrification of upstate New York and how the commodification of authenticity works. We also talk about the anti-work assault on the New College of Florida; For the full episode where we talk about upstate cults like Nxium support the show at patreon.com/theantifada Cigarettes After Sex - Apocalypse....
May 03, 2023•1 hr 4 min
For full episode: http://patreon.com/theantifada We check in with labor reporter Alex Press about the Sean vanguard emerging in the UAW and Teamsters, if the the unions are moving left and if the left is moving closer to the working class, recent updates from Amazon, Starbucks, and Trader Joe's unionization drives, cross-border solidarity with Mexican and US autoworkers, reflections of striketober and the great resignation, something interesting Andy found in the trash, and much more! Articles b...
Apr 26, 2023•1 hr 1 min
Author and fellow Occupy-vet Malcolm Harris joins us to talk about his cursed hometown of Palo Alto and the many evil spirits that haunts it--mainly, Herbert Hoover. Buy the book at https://www.paloaltobook.com/ Support the show at Patreon.com/TheAntifada Song: Radiohead - Palo Alto
Apr 19, 2023•1 hr 12 min
A NEWS EP so timely we decided to release early. We talk about the strikes and riots in France, A DNA Mist that reveals forced labor in the supply chain, And Andy's review of How to Blow up A Pipeline, Subscribe to the show on Patreon and you'll hear the full episode, with: thoughts on raving, Taibbi Derangement Syndrome, ChatGPT's solutions for sublating the New Left, and the Israeli secrets revealed in the recent US Intelligence leaks. Articles mentioned about France: https://www.seattletimes....
Apr 10, 2023•1 hr 2 min
Welcome to Proletkult! The Antifada sideproject about the paranormal and the parapolitical. Today we’ll be talking to Wu Ming 1, of the Italian writing collective Wu Ming about their origins in the Italian revolutionary milieu, the Satanic Panic pranks played by their associates the Luther Blisset Project in the 90s, their novel Q , and their theory that it inspired QAnon. We’ll also talk about their novel UFO78, and their political analysis of the recent UFO news. In the full episode available ...
Apr 05, 2023•49 min
Sean and Varn return to their miniseries on the global debt crisis with a very topical bank failure episode.Since Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and Credit Suisse went belly up the last couple of week capital and the state have scrambled to contain the damage to the financial system and the 'real' economy. Why is an adequate explanation for inflation important? Does the Federal Reserve Bank itself even have one? If Fed policy is blowing up banks and barely even working is there some other r...
Mar 29, 2023•59 min
Race Traitor, Hard Crackers, and Insurgent Notes editor John Garvey stops by Antifada HQ to chat about the SVB collapse, the war in Ukraine and revolutionary defeatism, In the bonus we get the Race Traitor line on the hatred of Mr. Beast, Hasan Piker's John Brown-inspired streetwear, who really killed Rosa Luxemburg, and being a militant taxi driver in the '70s. For the full episode support the show at Patreon.com/TheAntifada ! Read Hard Crackers Read Race Traitor Read Insurgent Notes John's ess...
Mar 15, 2023•1 hr 28 min
For the full episode support the show at patreon.com/theantifada Topics we cover: Lab Leaks and Bioweapons, mall punk, Antifada company mask policy, why being an NPC is actually based, support SB1312, Trump’s Quantam Leap Fully Automated Luxury MAGA Communism cities, Sean's thoughts on American NEOMism, reportbacks from Mexico City and the Villages, and what credit cards YOU need in 2023 to join the revolutionary laptop class. Song: Drug Church - Million Miles of Fun Show notes: https://theracke...
Mar 08, 2023•57 min
Aaron J. Leonard, author of Whole World In An Uproar joins us to talk about the relationship between the revolutionary culture of the 60s as seen through the repressive apparatus of the FBI. Read more from Aaron on Truthout: https://truthout.org/authors/aaron-leonard/ Including this great article about the FBI's tracking of Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo: https://truthout.org/articles/fbi-tracking-of-bob-dylan-and-suze-rotolo-foreshadowed-future-abuses/ Also check out his book about the history of Am...
Mar 01, 2023•1 hr 11 min
Sean welcomes Dylan Riley, Marxian sociologist and scholar of interwar fascism, to discuss his book Microverses about life and society in the pandemic and his recent article in New Left Review about American class structure, why US party politics has a materialist core with no class struggle, and what the pandemic revealed about the fractures in society. Check out more full episodes and join our discord community by joining our Patreon Song: Cabaret - Tomorrow Belongs to Me...
Feb 22, 2023•56 min
Sean and Varn return with part two of their series on basic principles and methods of communist analysis and organizing. This episode deals with the importance of periodization of capitalist development in formulating praxis, the problem of complexity in global accumulation, and barriers to class knowledge within the social division of labor and more. The conclusion gets us closer to the goal of the series which is to sketch an outline of what a communist organization adequate to the moment woul...
Feb 15, 2023•59 min
To celebrate JD Vance's ascension to the Cathedral power, we present you a discussion between Sean and Tarence from May of 2021! They talk some smack about the National Conservative slash Post-Left crowd. Are they worth worrying about? What does their whole stupid movement mean? How do we all get some of that sweet Theil cash? Part 1 of the episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/65977397 Beck - Sleeping Bag
Feb 08, 2023•1 hr 4 min
For the full episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/antifadas-is-15-77698515 In light of the depressing denouement of last year's railroad conflict, Sean and Matt sit down, in person at last, to discuss the deep history behind how American organized labor got so disorganized and why the labor movement hasn't moved in decades. Why was it that, in the United States, workers institutions had trouble evolving past the infancy of narrow, sectoral, decentralized craft unionism towards broad-based, nat...
Jan 25, 2023•50 min
For the full episode, support the show at patreon.com/theantifada! Ian Svenonius is a rock singer (Nation of Ulysses, The Make-Up, Chain and the Gang) now turned Marxist polemicist with his new book Against the Written Word . We discuss his theory of literacy as a tool of the bourgeoisie and how rock n' roll reeducation camps might be the antidote, and why that might not go far enough for as to completely devolve to our neanderthal origins. Buy Against the Written Word from Akashic Books Intervi...
Jan 18, 2023•53 min
Andy guests on a weird films podcast and forces them to talk about Marx and revolution for an hour. Movies discussed include: The Menu, Triangle of Sadness, Sorry to Bother You, Young Karl Marx, The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Don't Look Up, Snowpiercer, Tar, Spirited Away by Agnes Varda, and much much more For the full episode support the show at http://patreon.com/theantifada and/or follow Twitch of the Death Nerve on Instagram and Patreon...
Jan 13, 2023•6 min
For the full episode and the rest of the Diving into the Wreckage series, support the show at Patreon.com/TheAntifada Taking a break from the ongoing debt crisis analysis, Sean and Varn lay out a series of first principles. This miniseries is meant to lay out some basics for how to think about the world and act within/upon it, what differentiates our particular political bent from others on the left and ultimately what is to be done with the social knowledge and beliefs that all of us hold in co...
Jan 11, 2023•58 min
We ring in the New Year by answering all the questions posed to us on our Discord! Topics include: the terminal crisis of capitalism, pushing Biden to the left, Brenner's recent NLR article, John Brown, animal testing, ecosocialism, and of course, what is to be dun. For the full episode support the show at patreon.com/theantifada Brenner dust-up: https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii138/articles/dylan-riley-robert-brenner-seven-theses-on-american-politics Closing song: Flower - Filth of their Conf...
Jan 04, 2023•1 hr 9 min
Old friend Eric-John Russell wanders with us through a variety of topics including critical theory of art and culture, the maturation and end of the Situationist International, and our traditional holiday discussion of antisemitism. After the paywall we talk about Triangle of Sadness and Walter Benjamin's Emergency Brake, and if George Costanza is Jewish. For the full episode support the show at patreon.com/theantifada Check out Cured Quail and the interview in Book Forum Read: Spectacular Logic...
Dec 28, 2022•1 hr 6 min
For the 7th episode of Talkin' Tina, the Antifada side project where we discuss the history and politics of America Latina, we chat with a comrade from Oakland about the uprising that occurred in Cuba on July 11th, 2021, via his interview with an anarchist from the island. The interview can be read in full here: https://www.sm28.org/articles/j11-the-return-of-the-cuban-proletariat/ Support the show at Patreon.com/TheAntifada Check out Tamarack in Oakland Song: Afro Cuban Allstars - Distinto, Dif...
Dec 21, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Sean and Varn take a brief intermission from their long-running debt crisis series to check in on the state of the American Left. (Tl;dr it's not looking good.) Where have the forces unleashed by the Bernie wave gone? Why has the social-democratic left become merely an adjunct to the Democratic Party? How come revolutionary organizations have either liquidated themselves into the DSA or remained marginal micro-sects? In what ways might these two coeval paths be overcome and what part might all o...
Dec 14, 2022•1 hr 5 min
It's an unhappy 200th birthday for us, we do a postmortem of the little rail strike couldn't. Is the blame on the squad, Brandon, the unions, or the workers themselves? And what comes next for rail workers and class struggle in general? In the second half we propose a few theories of Musk's Twitter takeover: Thiel-pilled fascist Musk, Hannah Arendt high-liberalism Musk, Gordon Gecko-style corporate raider Musk, Henry Ford productivist-futurist Musk (and why ultimately we believe none of it reall...
Dec 07, 2022•50 min
Sean and Rax King of Low Culture Boil talk about Baz Luhrmann's 2022 masterpiece Elvis and suggest that Baz Luhrmann should in fact be tasked with directing the biopics of every single notable person until he dies from exhaustion. We also read a 1956 NYT review of an Elvis performance, where the reviewer says "teenagers" a lot, and bits of Priscilla Presley's memoir Elvis and Me, where Priscilla talks about Elvis' kinks a lot. Check out more great cultural commentary and fun times at www.patreon...
Dec 02, 2022•1 hr 1 min
RARE TUESDAY RELEASE DUE TO 'SCABBIN' JOE BIDEN'S ANNOUNCEMENT TO HAVE CONGRESS PUT THE RAIL WORKERS IN CHAINS National rail strike impending, Sean is joined by Justin Roczniak ( @who_shot_jgr ) of Well There's Your Problem , your favorite engineering disaster podcast - with slides. If the December 9th deadline for strike action is only the capstone of decades of mismanagement, decline and consolidation of private freight service in the United States, how did things get this way? What conditions...
Nov 29, 2022•1 hr 3 min
