Episodes
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On November 9th, 2024 the Independent Labor Club of NY hosted a panel at Woodbine in Ridgewood, Queens. Sean moderated this discussion between:
Aaron Lelonde of the International Longshoremen's AssociationSou Mi of WGA-East and Left VoiceGregory Butler of Int'l Union of Operating Engineers and Gangbox NewsEllie Pfeffer of Maoist Communist Union, formerly of Amazonians UnitedWhat accounts for the realignment seen in 2024? Did large swathes of workers (including Black and Hispanic) vote Trump solely from racism and misogyny? What was the role of organized labor in the recent election? What effects might the results of the election have on the prospects for organizing labor in the future?
If you like what you hear, support our podcast and access great bonus content: www.patreon.com/theantifada
If you're interested in joining the ILC, we have chapters across the country and in Australia: https://ilclabor.com/
The event was held @woodbine.nyc in Ridgewood, Queens Saturday November 9th. Contribute to Woodbine's Fall Fundraiser drive.
Song - Capital STEEZ x Joey Bada$$ - Survival Tactics
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Our roundtable discusses the meaning of Trump's victory--the election's stakes, its international reverberations, what it tells us about the crisis of capitalist accumulation, how economics connect with the the race/class/gender demographic voting shifts, and the historic characters of the Republican and Democratic Parties.
In Part 2, available for patrons at http://patreon.com/theantifada, we plot THE RESISTANCE!
Panelists: C. Derick Varn Zhandarka Kurti Reid Kane
Song: Los 3 de La Habana - Cancion de Trump
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Missing episodes?
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Sean and Andy are joined by Sean, prolific poster and blogger and short fiction writer, to talk about the changes he has seen over the last decade as an expat worker in both mainland China and Hong Kong.
What shifts in politics, the economy and social life has he seen? What is the material basis for Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign? In what ways is the 'reform and opening up' period of 'market Stalinism' similar to Tony Blair's New Labour Britain? What does the imperial and post-imperial gaze on Hong Kong and the east more generally say about western precepts of China and Chinese capitalism? Is a new social explosion in China on its way or are we all, even in the west, lying flat for the foreseeable future?
To support our work, become a patron today at www.patreon.com/theantifada
Follow Sean on the shit app: https://x.com/nise_yoshimi
Check out his excellent blog: https://lateralthinkingtechnology.wordpress.com/
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Sean is joined by labor activist and historian Jeff Schuhrke to discuss his new book Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor's Global Anticommunist Crusade out now from Verso Books.
Why did American unions become a junior partner in US Empire during the Cold War ? How did anti-communists come to control US labor organizations in the 20th Century? What sort of high jinx were the AFL-CIO up to in Europe and the developing world? What did union activists do to expose this class collaboration and fight back against it? What might a reinvigorated working class internationalism look like in the 21st century? Join us for this great conversation about a great book that's absolutely essential reading for unionists and their allies.
To access the bonus portion of this episode and years worth of other premium content, support the show at www.patreon.com/theantifada
Buy Jeff's book: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2979-blue-collar-empire
Get involved:
https://rankandfileproject.com/
https://workerorganizing.org/training/
Song: Neil Young - Union Man
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Aidan Beatty, author of The Party is Always Right: The Untold Story of Gerry Healy and British Trotskyism joins us to trainspot the British Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP), a Trotskyist cult that was tight with Qaddafi, boasted Vanessa Redgrave as a member, and collapsed after the revelation of years of its leader's sexual abuse of membership.
Sign up at http://patreon.com/theantifada for the bonus where we talk about Irish peacekeepers in Lebanon, the shared historical dynamics of the Irish and Jews, the WSWS's fascination with Woody Allen and Michael Jackson, and the macabre fate of Trotsky's death mask.
Song: Pop Smoke - For the Night
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Jason, Daniel, and Andy talk about Fight Club to celebrate to the 25th anniversary of the movie and the Battle of Seattle that followed it. We look at the history of the book and Chuck Palahniuk's situationist influence and his embrace of his rightwing fans, the Gen-X ennui behind the creation of Tyler Durden, the politics of Project Mayhem, and Marla Singer's character as the story's ethical core.
The full episode is available for free at http://patreon.com/theantifada. Sign up to support the show for the second episode about Joker 2!
Check out Jason's essay on Fight Club and his New York on Earth substack: https://newyorkonearth.substack.com/
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Sean and Andy are joined by returning guest and cofounder of ILC-Chicago Jamie Merchant (@pathtopraxis) to discuss his new full-length monograph, out now from Reaktion Books, called Endgame: Economic Nationalism and Global Decline. In it, Jamie provides a masterful, insightful and readable account of the political economy of the present moment.
What is the connection between the functioning of the profit system and the world-historic shift away from globalization? How do ruling class ideas like economic nationalism spread and why has conspiracism racked the left and right in recent years? Why has a bipartisan consensus emerged around state industrial policy and beggar-thy-neighbor trade policy? And what might the left do about all this except tail the least worst elements of it? This, along with an update on Independent Labor Club of Chicago and how civil-social organizing might pose a path forward that doesn't end in WWIII or a Brave New World.
Read an excerpt at Brooklyn Rail: https://brooklynrail.org/2022/03/field-notes/Endgame-Finance-and-the-Close-of-the-Market-System/
And stay tune for his 11/23 release event at https://www.woodbine.nyc/
To support our work become a patron at www.patreon.com/theantifada
Interested in joining the Independent Labor Club of North America? There may be a branch near you or other workers nearby interested in starting one, here's our Telegram: https://t.me/+TNXgQOPkV18yOGRh
Song: Rage Against the Machine - People of the Sun
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&nders Lee and AP &y guest on the Quorators podcast to field questions about UFOs, cyptids, Pompeii, and, of course, ampersands.
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NEWS EP! We talk about the hurricane disaster, the Middle East disaster, the Ukraine disaster, and the Longshoremen's strike as a prelude to the war on Christmas.
Sign up at http://patreon.com/theantifada for the fun half! We look at a proletarian get-rich quick scheme, an LAPD robbery gone wrong, and speculate on the REAL reason the Feds are taking down Mayor Eric Adams.
Organized abandonment & campaign strategy in Appalachia: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/09/30/helene-aftermath-live-updates-monday-north-carolina/75447978007/
https://www.axios.com/2024/09/27/kamala-harris-asylum-rules-border-crossings
Biden on settling the "strike" https://x.com/greg_price11/status/1840576548992106698
The strike he’s probably thinking of: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-east-coast-port-strike-set-start-tuesday-says-union-2024-09-29/
Cruise ships and weapons shipments not effected by strike: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/baltimore-cruise-ships-military-cargo-not-affected-by-dock-worker-strike/65-93d26a57-812c-44ba-bff6-5704ce08c292
Asheville Mutual Aid Disaster Relief info: https://itsgoingdown.org/mutual-aid-hurricane-helene/
Proletarian self activity: https://www.fox13memphis.com/news/infinite-money-chase-bank-customers-in-trouble-after-viral-glitch/article_4b062eb2-6978-11ef-8c96-2346f53d638b.html
Song: Radiohead - Fake Plastic Trees
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While Marxist friend and historian Cosimo Pataleoni was in town from Italy, Sean decided to bring along Ross Wolf to get a taste of some badass history of piracy. We discuss Cosimo's work on the Uskoks, Croatian rebel sailors of the early modern period, as a lens for understanding the rise of commercial capitalism, proletarianization, debt bondage, and incarceration on the frontiers and the high seas. How do Cosimo's studies-inspired by figures like Eric Hobsbawm, Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker-help us understand the transition towards capitalism and, ultimately, how the transition towards communism might unfold?
In the second half we talk about Cosimo's Italian Bordigist futurism project N+1 (no, not that one) then speculate about Houthi rebels and Yemeni pirates, maritime multipolarity, the fetters that your home wifi imposes on production and why intellectual property and the internet have become the new frontier in capitalist development... and perhaps its overcoming?
For this bonus content, and so much more, become a supporter of our work at www.patreon.com/theantifada
Song: Vandals - Pirate's Life
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Sean and Varn are joined by special guest, A.P. Andy of the Antifada podcast, to round out their previous conversation on current impasses on the left.
For access to the full episode, and all our years of great bonus content, become a patron today at www.patreon.com/theantifada
How did Andy’s Platypus Affiliated Panel go? What’s new with the American Communist Party and how have they Stalinized Bordigism? What has happened to make Marxism-Leninism into an anachronistic meme ideology? And, in the bonus section, out of all this decay what hope is there in some sort of renewal? (We’ve got some ideas on this front that are better than tailing MAGA and streaming it to underemployed 20-year-olds.)
Platypus panel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQxb86UTmCo
Song: Gary Numan - This Wreckage
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NEWS ep! We talk about Sean's upcoming well-deserved Alaska vacation before shifting into some preliminary analysis on Israel's brief anti-Netanyahu general strike, the contradictions of the Israeli working-class and war economy, and the legacy of labor Zionism.
Support the show at http://patreon.com/theantifada for the second half, in which we talk about AfD's victory in Thuringia and the meaning of the cleavages within neoliberalism, including Brazil banning Twitter and the absence of left partisanship in free-speech discourse.
Israel general strike: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/2/what-are-israels-protests-and-general-strike-about-and-how-big-are https://www.ft.com/content/e0e5de2d-46a7-43c2-a0e5-1bf4c710efde
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/8/23/gaza-war-extends-toll-on-israels-economyhttps://x.com/bar_peleg/status/1831033750601474400 https://www.histadrut.org.il/eng/P%7Cfs%7CF_workers_in_Israel https://www.histadrut.org.il/eng/Solidarity
Ecuador: https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/ecuador-left-us-linked-prosecutor
Preshow ad: https://bostonanarchistbookfair.org/, https://www.instagram.com/bostonanarchistbookfair/ Song - Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black - Alaska
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Rachel Kushner joins us to talk about her new novel Creation Lake--the story of an American agent provocateur infiltrating a rural commune in France.
We go through some of the inspirations behind her characters in this and past books (including Jacques Camatte, Julian Coupat, and Ben Morea), a Soviet historian's theory of the Neanderthal origins of class war, and the RKCU (Rachel Kushner Cinematic Universe)
The full episode is FREE at http://patreon.com/theantifada. While you're there, support the show with a free, $5, $10, or annual discounted membership for access to all bonus content and our Discord community!
Megabasin protests: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/06/water-mega-basins-reservoirs-france-drought/674313/
Drift Mag interview: https://www.thedriftmag.com/history-as-it-is-happening/
Nation Review: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/rachel-kushner-creation-lake/
Info on Eric McDavid entrapment case: https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/01/18/40682.php
The Tribe: Interviews with Jean-Michel Mension Jacques Camatte - This World We Must Leave
Tiqqun - Introduction to Civil War
The Invisible Comittee - The Coming Insurrection
The Zad and NoTAV: Territorial Struggles and the Making of a New Political Intelligence
Song: Daft Punk - Get Lucky (V A P O R W A V E)
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REUPLOAD of our collaborative commentary with Swampside Chats of S3ep11 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
In this two part episode, the crew goes back in time to a San Francisco homeless camp at the time of the a riot against neo-liberalism on September 1, 2024 that spiraled into international revolution. Written in the '90s, the episode presciently predicts the economic crises of the current day, Trump's plan of rounding California's homeless population into camps, and the coming lumpen revolution.
Listen to Part II: https://www.patreon.com/posts/41951161/
DS9: "Past Tense, Part I", "Past Tense, Part II"
Check out Swampside Chats at: patreon.com/swampsidechats
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Enjoy this seventh episode of a sideproject with Varn, Sean, and Regrettable Century, where they "explain right-wing thought to you so you can actually do something with it."
For the full episode subscribe on http://patreon.com/theantifada or view the episode on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f_qKnAxV2I&list=PL3jOfuAY4QruaeI1PbA6aTHNzYpi4yI_A&index=1
In this episode they read chapter 5 of Dugin's Fourth Political Theory"
Previous episodes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3jOfuAY4QruaeI1PbA6aTHNzYpi4yI_A
Work Cited: Dugin, Alexander (2012). The Fourth Political Theory. Translated by Sleboda, Mark; Millerman, Michael. Arktos Media. Prior Video in this Series:
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Bronx expat Zhana Kurti reports back from the Chicago DNC and the protests against it. We go through the context of the 1924 and 1968 DNCs, the issues of Palestine and race in the election, how the left should relate to the elections, and if we should even be talking about it all.
Check out last week's episode of Party Girls podcast for more in depth discussions of the protests in Chicago, and why some found them underwhelming.
Support the Antifada for all bonus content and discord community discussion at http://patreon.com/theantifada
Essay about CLR James' American Civilization: https://aeon.co/essays/c-l-r-james-foresaw-the-crisis-of-us-liberal-democracy
Check out Zhana's books: Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity and States of Incarceration (buy them from Chicago's radical bookstore Pilsen Community Books!)
song: Charli XCX - 360 + 365 (ガキ brat - slowed and reverbed)
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Situ-Punk Bill Brown of "NOT BORED!" zine fame chats with Andy about Raoul Vaneigem's The Revolution of Everyday Life and its influence on the punk subculture of the seventies, eighties, and nineties. Towards the end of the episode we talk about his Vaneigem's prediction of the "End of Christianity" in relation to heresy and queerness.
Greil Marcus’s Liptick Traces https://monoskop.org/log/?p=12932
Bill Brown's Not Bored! anthology: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Not_Bored_Anthology_1983_2010/1wQlAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
Bill's translation of Vaneigem's Resistance to Christianity: https://eris.press/Resistance-to-Christianity
Vaneigem’s The Revolution of Everyday Life: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/raoul-vaneigem-the-revolution-of-everyday-life
Vaneigem on Coronavirus: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/raoul-vaneigem-coronavirus
Writing on Tarnac affair: https://notbored.org/tarnac.html
Armed Love series: https://www.patreon.com/collection/87680
Songs: Chrissy Hynde - Love Minus Zero (No Limits) Wanda Jackson - Riot Goin’ On Sex Pistols - Holiday in the Sun The Strokes - NYC Cops The (International) Noise Conspiracy - Survival Sickness
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Sean and Varn are back to talk about the various paroxysms of the American left: why are the sects getting weirder and weirder? Why do we have to pay attention to capitalist politics while realizing we have no stake in it? Why do we focus on labor and what the hell is the Independent Labor Club trying to do?
This is an extended preview of the complete episode. To listen to this, the rest of the DitW series and years worth of bonus content become a subscriber at www.patreon.com/theantifada
Check out Varn's work at www.patreon.com/varnlog
Song: Gary Numan - This Wreckage
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Ross Wolfe, Alex Gendler, Morgan, and Matthew Donovan join us for an extensive review and analysis of last week's Hegelian E-Girl Symposium and a discussion of fascist mystique in counterculture, social alienation, and different interpretations of Hegel
For the full episode support the show at http://patreon.com/theantifada
Matthew Donovan's review/analysis of the party: https://matthewdonovan.substack.com/p/i-hosted-the-hegelian-e-girl-party
Sanje call-out: https://x.com/sanjehorah/status/1820166696021131470
Manifesto: https://x.com/tenshi_anna/status/1819922668704944403
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Our France correspondent Henry J. Wallis returns to give updates since the New Popular Front's surprise victory on July 7. Will Macron block them from power after the Olympics? Will the French return from vacation in fighting mode? And how does Kamala's emergence compare to the antifascist electoral block?
Support the show at http://patreon.com/theantifada
First episode with Henry: https://www.patreon.com/posts/e253-populaire-w-106800367
Check out Henry's Forms Podcast and his post-election essay.
International Communist Tendency: Popular Front in France: A Deception in 1936, A Deception in 2024
Lundi Matin - Poplar Front in the Streets (by Georges Bataille):
Bordiga on activism: https://libcom.org/article/activism-amadeo-bordiga
Song: Zouzou - Il est parti comme il était venu
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