The Dig

Historian and political theorist Timothy Mitchell joins Dan for the second of a two-part interview on his book Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil, published in 2011 by Verso. In part 1, we talked about a lot of things, including how the rise of coal made both industrial capitalism and newly powerful worker resistance possible; and how the shift to oil then facilitated the persistence of imperialism in a decolonizing world while thwarting worker organizing. In this installment, we discuss imperialist assaults on worker struggles in Iraq and Iran, the cooptation of those struggles by nationalist elites, and how those imperialist attacks facilitated the rise of the Baathist security state. We'll also look at how the true history of the 70s oil shock undermines the conventional account, how the protection of minorities was used to legitimate imperialism, how petro-dollars fueled the global arms trade, in what sense the Iraq War has been a war for oil, and the US strategy to seek advantage through the continuation of conflict and instability across the Middle East. Finally, we'll address petro-imperialism’s bedrock alliance with right-wing Islamists against democratic movements of the left in Saudi Arabia and beyond, and why we must fight to ensure that the coming energy transition is a just one. That review of Yascha Mounk's book that Dan wrote with Thea Riofrancos https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/zombie-liberalism/ Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War by Hito Steyerl versobooks.com/books/2553-duty-free-art and and Police: A Field Guide by David Correia and Tyler Wall versobooks.com/books/2530-police And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig, where you can also check out the first edition of our new weekly newsletter.

  Historian and political theorist Timothy Mitchell joins Dan for the first of a two-part interview on his book Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil, published in 2011 by Verso. In this first episode, we talk about how the rise of coal made both industrial capitalism and newly powerful worker resistance possible; and how the shift to oil then facilitated the persistence of imperialism in a decolonizing world while thwarting worker organizing. On the next show, we'll discuss a lot more, including how oil companies and Western governments made autocratic governments and conservative Islamists key partners in creating the very global order that we now find in such profound crisis. Thanks to Verso Books. and The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing and Police: A Field Guide by David Correia and Tyler Wall versobooks.com/books/2530-police And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig, where you can also check out the first edition of our new weekly newsletter.

It’s our 100th episode and the launch of our spring fundraising drive! Aziz Rana returns to The Dig 15 years after the invasion of Iraq to reflect on the paucity of substantive anti-imperialist politics across much of the American left. Socialism isn’t just an internationalist politics on principle: domestic and foreign struggles are inherently linked, just as the forces we struggle against are globally intertwined—and the latter benefit from perpetuating an ideology that artificially divides the two. But for decades, a bipartisan consensus has governed foreign policy, to disastrous ends. Why, Rana asks, is there no foreign policy equivalent to the new left-wing domestic policy litmus test on single-payer healthcare? Check out Aziz’s n+1 article here: nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/the-lefts-missing-foreign-policy. Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books. Check out Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War by Hito Steyerl versobooks.com/books/2553-duty-free-art and Where Freedom Starts: Sex Power Violence #MeToo versobooks.com/blogs/3635-where-freedom-starts-sex-power-violence-metoo And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig

It’s obvious that student debt can be an excruciating financial burden. But anthropologist Caitlin Zaloom explains that it has also done a lot to make American families into plunderable financial mines, part of a larger capitalist system that individualizes blame for economic failure and forces families that can to support their children into their twenties while depleting retirement savings. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out the free e-book Where Freedom Starts: Sex Power Violence #MeToo versobooks.com/blogs/3635-where-freedom-starts-sex-power-violence-metoo and The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing. And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig  

Many Americans take the existence of so-called "illegal immigrants" for granted, whatever their opinion of the matter. But illegality isn't a property of immigrants; rather, it's a creation of positive law. And we can only understand how immigrants are declared "illegal" by the government by examining this country's too-often ignored history of racist and exclusionary immigration politics. Dan’s guest today is Mae Ngai, an historian at Columbia and the author of Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing and Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War by Hito Steyerl versobooks.com/books/2553-duty-free-art. And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig

Perhaps nothing has more defined the monstrosity of Donald Trump than his racist demonization and targeting of immigrants from Mexico, Muslim-majority countries and those nations he deems to be "shitholes" or, according to another account, "shithouses." But what's seldom reported is that one of the key mechanisms that the Administration has used to target immigrants was rolled out under Barack Obama. It's called Secure Communities, and it's the culmination of decades of policymaking and politicking that have intertwined the United States systems of mass incarceration and immigrant enforcement—facilitating the growth of both. To fight both mass deportation and mass incarceration, localities and states must move beyond what's currently defined as sanctuary, as a new report by Kade Crockford from the Century Foundation and ACLU of Massachusetts argues. tcf.org/content/report/beyond-sanctuary Also: Check out Dan’s essay on Trump’s proposal to execute drug dealers slate.com/technology/2018/03/trumps-call-to-execute-drug-dealers-is-a-natural-progression-of-american-policy.html And thanks to Verso Books. Check out the FREE e-book Where Freedom Starts: Sex Power Violence #MeToo versobooks.com/blogs/3635-where-freedom-starts-sex-power-violence-metoo and also Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War by Hito Steyerl versobooks.com/books/2553-duty-free-art

Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry talk about their new book To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. King is often remembered for his soaring oratory. But the commonplace emphasis on his rhetoric in place of his ideas too often allows enemies of King's agenda to domesticate him or, worse, to weaponize his taken-out-of-context words to bolster the very forces of racism and oppression that King had struggled to defeat. Dan asks Shelby and Terry about King’s theory of nonviolence (more complicated than you might think), his debate with the Black Power movement, and his thinking on gender, hope, political economy, Beloved Community and more. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War by Hito Steyerl versobooks.com/books/2553-duty-free-art and Police: A Field Guide by David Correia and Tyler Wall versobooks.com/books/2530-police And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig  

Democrat Conor Lamb's victory is a stunning rebuke of Republicans. But Lamb is far from an ideal candidate, and so the race also raises a perennial debate between the left and liberal center over what kind of alternative to the Republican Right we need. Dan’s guests are Elizabeth Fiedler, Sara Inammorato, and Summer Lee, three leftist women running for state rep in Pennsylvania—all three DSA members endorsed by their local chapters. Other stuff: Patrick Blanchfield’s article on guns and neoliberalism discussed last week is here splinternews.com/the-market-cant-solve-a-massacre-1823745509 Thanks to Verso Books. Check out the free e-book Where Freedom Starts: Sex Power Violence #MeToo versobooks.com/blogs/3635-where-freedom-starts-sex-power-violence-metoo and Police: A Field Guide versobooks.com/books/2530-police Support us with your $ at patreon.com/TheDig  

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px} In West Virginia, a focal point of Trump-era liberal armchair ethnography, teachers have won a historic statewide strike just as the Supreme Court is poised to rule in Janus, a case that will mark the culmination of a long right-wing effort to gut public sector unions. It's a scary time—but maybe, just maybe, also an exciting one. Dan’s guests today are Sarah Jaffe, Nation Institute fellow and author of Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt, and labor historian Gabriel Winant. Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books. Check out The Right to Have Rights by Stephanie DeGooyer, Alastair Hunt, Lida Maxwell, Samuel Moyn and Astra Taylor versobooks.com/books/2424-the-right-to-have-rights and Greece and the Reinvention of Politics by Alain Badiou versobooks.com/books/2560-greece-and-the-reinvention-of-politics. And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig

Neoliberal culture is one that expects little from government and everything from plucky individuals—including, apparently, the self-sacrificing courage to charge an AR-15 wielding gunman while your classmates cower behind bulletproof backpacks. Writer Patrick Blanchfield returns to the show to discuss his recent essays on guns for New York magazine (forthcoming) and The Intercept (theintercept.com/2018/02/28/parkland-florida-school-shootings-arming-teachers). Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books. Check out Greece and the Reinvention of Politics by Alain Badiou versobooks.com/books/2560-greece-and-the-reinvention-of-politics And support this podcast with $ at Patreon.com/TheDig

How does gun culture get built from the ground up? What are the everyday politics of guns? Sociologist Jennifer Carlson does ethnographic fieldwork that provides answers to these questions, showing how men see guns as a way to be a protector in a time of economic precocity and how the NRA’s massive training operation helps shape the racialized identity of “citizen protectors” defending “sheeple” against the “wolves.” Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books. Check out The Right to Have Rights by Stephanie DeGooyer, Alastair Hunt, Lida Maxwell, Samuel Moyn and Astra Taylor versobooks.com/books/2424-the-right-to-have-rights and Greece and the Reinvention of Politics by Alain Badiou versobooks.com/books/2560-greece-and-the-reinvention-of-politics. And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig

Nomiki Konst, a correspondent for The Young Turks and Sanders appointee to the DNC’s Unity Reform Commission, talks about the Berniecrat struggle against a corrupt neoliberal establishment to democratize the Democratic Party. This is the first in a series on electoral politics over the next couple of months that will include conversations about DSA’s electoral strategy, an interview with Jackson, Mississippi Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, and more. Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books. Check out Greece and the Reinvention of Politics by Alain Badiou versobooks.com/books/2560-greece-and-the-reinvention-of-politics and The Progress of This Storm: Nature and Society in a Warming World by Andreas Malm versobooks.com/books/2575-the-progress-of-this-storm. And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig      

Did the "Woke Blacks" Instagram account really cost Clinton the election? Glenn Greenwald returns to the show to ask basic but rarely asked questions about the troll army’s presumed efficacy, explain his often mischaracterized position on Russiagate, and call out Republicans and Democrats for hypocritically supporting unfettered power for national security state surveillance. Thanks to Verso and University of California Press. Check out The Right to Have Rights by Stephanie DeGooyer, Alastair Hunt, Lida Maxwell, Samuel Moyn, and Astra Taylor and The Progress of This Storm: Nature and Society in a Warming World by Andreas Malm at versobooks.com Check out Miller's Children: Why Giving Teenage Killers a Second Chance Matters for All of Us by James Garbarino at ucpress.edu Support this podcast with your $ at patreon.com/TheDig!  

Dan talks to Randy Bryce (@IronStache), the Berniecrat ironworker taking on Paul Ryan, about how he plans to knockout the House Speaker, Scott Walker’s decimation of unions and Foxconn’s con against the people of Wisconsin. Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books and University of California Press. Check out Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future by Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright versobooks.com/books/2545-climate-leviathan and Healing from Hate: How Young Men Get Into—and Out of—Violent Extremism ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520292635 Support us with your cash at patreon.com/TheDig  

What if the Cold War only just ended in November 2016, as Donald Trump grotesquely encircled and then captured the presidency, finding it, to his surprise, unguarded? The Cold War proper, of course, ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But Aziz Rana, making his second Dig appearance, argues that it was a lot more than the conflict with the Evil Empire. It was a domestic order that, he writes in the latest issue of n+1, “concerned everything from the genius of America’s domestic institutions to the indispensability of its global role. These judgments gave coherence to the country’s national identity—allowing both Barack Obama and Bill Kristol to wax poetic about America’s special destiny as a global hegemon—and legitimacy to its economic policy. But with the 2016 election, the cold-war paradigm finally shattered.” Check out Aziz’s article here https://nplusonemag.com/issue-30/politics/goodbye-cold-war/. Thanks to our supporters at Verso and University of California Press Check out The New Spirit of Capitalism versobooks.com/books/2513-the-new-spirit-of-capitalism andAmerican Islamophobia ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520297791!