The Dig

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 different meaning when it was first coined by the black, radical lesbian feminists of the Combahee River Collective. This is not a book that dismisses racism and sexism. Quite to the contrary. Haider shows that we can only confront and defeat oppressions like racism and sexism if we recognize their relationship to the capitalist exploitation of the working class as a whole. The corollary is also true: capitalism can never be defeated without recognizing and fighting the various oppressions that help sustain it. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out We Built the Wall: How the US Keeps Out Asylum Seekers from Mexico, Central America and Beyond by Eileen Truax versobooks.com/books/2606-we-built-the-wall And Old Gods, New Enigmas: Marx’s Lost Theory by Mike Davis And support this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDigversobooks.com/books/2779-old-gods-new-enigmas And support this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig  

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 organizations formed out of the Bernie campaign that are playing critical roles in the left electoral insurgency. dissentmagazine.org/article/transforming-electoral-process-our-revolution-justice-democrats Thanks to Verso Books. Check out The Amateur: The Pleasures of Doing What You Love by Andy Merrifield versobooks.com/books/2765-the-amateur And support this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig

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 tell. She immigrated from Colombia as a child, and came of age as a young activist by organizing a rent strike in her Harlem building. She describes herself as a democratic socialist, which she defines as recognizing "the capitalist system as being inherently oppressive and actively working to dismantle it and to empower the working class and the marginalized in our society." Get involved with the campaign at salazarforsenate.com Support this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig

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 up is DSA member Julia Salazar, who is running for state senate in Brooklyn. Support this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig

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 target. This is the second episode in this week's super series on left electoral politics in the wake of Ocasio-Cortez's stunning win. Thanks to Verso. Check out Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump by Asad Haider versobooks.com/books/2716-mistaken-identity Support this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig

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 Ryan Grim on left media and left electoral politics, why mainstream media missed Ocasio-Cortez, and why Emily's List fails to support left women challengers. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx with Sven-Eric Liedman versobooks.com/events/1785-a-world-to-win-the-life-and-works-of-karl-marx-with-sven-eric-liedman And the new paperback edition of China Miéville’s October: The Story of the Russian Revolution versobooks.com/books/2731-october And support this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig  

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 and Citizen Network for Democracy in Mexico. Thanks to Verso. Check out Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis by George Monbiot, now out in paperback versobooks.com/books/2732-out-of-the-wreckage George did a Dig interview too blubrry.com/thedig/34202825/telling-a-new-story-with-george-monbiot/ And Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump by Asad Haider versobooks.com/books/2716-mistaken-identity You can find lots of great left Latin America news in English at nacla.org (nacla.org) Support this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig  

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: The Design of Everyday Life by Adam Greenfield versobooks.com/books/2742-radical-technologies   And register for the Socialism 2018 conference (July 5-8, Chicago!) at socialismconference.org   And support this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig  

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 he loves wins, whatever their political or ideological content. But wow, has the liberal reaction been revealing. According to the mindset that pervades the liberal media and political elite, a move toward peace with North Korea is bad because Trump is bad. Or perhaps worse yet, it's bad because the national security state conventional wisdom that has governed Washington under both parties for so long—purveyed by the very people who have brought us endless war almost everywhere—says that it's bad. It's clearer than ever that the task of the left to find a way out of this ideological closed circuit of the liberal vs. Trump foreign policy debate—and, if we win power, to shut down its warmongering for good.   Thanks to Verso. Check out Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump by Asad Haider versobooks.com/books/2716-mistaken-identity   And register for the Socialism 2018 conference (July 5-8, Chicago!) at socialismconference.org   Support this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig  

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. Thanks to Verso. Check out Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis by George Monbiot, now out in paperback versobooks.com/books/2732-out-of-the-wreckage George did a Dig interview too blubrry.com/thedig/34202825/telling-a-new-story-with-george-monbiot/ And register for the Socialism 2018 conference (July 5-8, Chicago!) at socialismconference.org Support this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig

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 versobooks.com/books/2731-october And register for the Socialism 2018 conference (July 5-8, Chicago!) at socialismconference.org And support this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig

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 toward socialism. And more.   Thanks to Verso. Check out Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump by Asad Haider versobooks.com/books/2716-mistaken-identity   Register for the Socialism 2018 conference (July 5-8, Chicago!) at socialismconference.org   And support this podcast with $$ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig    

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 of the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx with Sven-Eric Liedman versobooks.com/events/1785-a-world-to-win-the-life-and-works-of-karl-marx-with-sven-eric-liedman Also, register for the upcoming Socialism 2018 conference at SocialismConference.org Support this podcast with $ and get our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig

Last week, we posted an interview Dan recorded in Barcelona on Spanish politics—specifically the question of Catalan independence, and also the municipalist movement governing cities like Barcelona. What we didn't really talk much about was the fact that the conservative Spanish government of Mariano Rajoy was about to fall—which it did, just a few days later. So, Dan brought sociologist Carlos Delclós back for a follow-up interview. Production note: Dan sounds like he’s speaking in an aquarium or calling into his own show because he fucked up the recording. So don’t blame Alex Lewis. Thanks to Verso. Check out Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties by Tariq Ali versobooks.com/books/2666-street-fighting-years Also, register for the upcoming Socialism 2018 conference at SocialismConference.org And support this podcast with $ and get access to our stellar weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig (http://patreon.com/TheDig)

For libertarians, liberty means something different. It’s about liberty for property owners. And in their quest to preserve that absolute freedom for the ownership class—whether their assets be human slaves, factories or extractive industries—democracy must be curtailed and the power of the people must be checked and repressed. This is the argument put forward by Dan’s guest, historian Nancy MacLean, in her book Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America. The book makes a powerful argument for the anti-democratic origins and trajectory of free-market fundamentalist Koch-Brothers-aligned economists who have come to profoundly shape and warp American politics to fit their dystopian vision. The book has also been controversial. Thank you to Verso Books. Check out Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21st Century State Extremism by Nisha Kapoor versobooks.com/books/2551-deport-deprive-extradite. Thank you to the Socialism 2018 conference. Register now at socialismconference.org Want to get access to our stellar weekly newsletter? You can do so by making a contribution to the long-run viability of this show at Patreon.com/TheDig