Jacobin Radio

Samuel Moyn (author of this article and this) on the political snares of impeachment. Then, Tom Athanasiou on the Sanders climate plan and the need for a global Green New Deal (article here)

Dan interviews Noura Erakat, the author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine, a new book that analyzes the history of settler-colonialism in Palestine and the Palestinian struggle for liberation from just before the British mandate to the present through the lens of the law.Thanks to Haymarket Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at haymarketbooks.orgPlease support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig. We need those of you who can support us to do so because we provide every episode free to all.

Our newest print issue is “War Is a Racket,” focused on war and imperialism. At the Chicago issue release party, I spoke with two organizers and writers who appear in the issue: Rory Fanning and Sarah Lazare. Rory is a former Army Ranger who fought in Afghanistan and became a war resister there. He’s the author of the book ‘Worth Fighting For’ and now works at Haymarket Books. He was profiled by our assistant editor Alex Press in the new issue. Sarah is a web editor at In These Times. She has an overview of where the top five Democratic candidates stand on the issue of foreign policy and war in the issue. If you’re not a subscriber, please buy a copy of the issue. You can purchase it here: https://jacobinmag.com/issue/<wbr />war-is-a-racket And subscribe to Jacobin here:https://jacobinmag.com/<wbr />subscribe/?code=WARISARACKET

Joel Schalit, co-founder and editor of The Battleground, on the Israeli election. Then, Martin Lukacs, author of The Trudeau Formula, on that slippery Canadian prime minister.

Lisa Duggan wrote a book that explains everything you need to know about Ayn Rand and why she became so enormously consequential so that you don't have to read Rand's work yourself. Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed is out now from University of California Press.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Sam Gindin on the UAW’s strike against GM, and the possibilities for the green repurposing of a plant GM is abandoning. Then, Robin Einhorn on the role of slavery in shaping tax politics in the early United States (article here).

The history of suburbanite reactions to school integration in Atlanta and Charlotte reveal the class power underpinning both racism and the demolition of the New Deal order. Dan interviews Matt Lassiter, discussing suburbanite resistance to school busing, why Nixon's Silent Majority was the the product of a suburban strategy rather than a Southern one, and why the class base of all politics matters.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comSupport this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

As we trudge closer to 2020, candidates are emerging for elected office beyond the presidency. And, thank God, they don't all suck. Like Cathy Kunkel, who is running for Congress in West Virginia's second district. Cathy is an energy analyst, cochair of the Working Families Party in West Virginia, an activist during the 2018 West Virginia teachers strike, and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She's also a contributor to Jacobin, where she's written half a dozen articles about West Virginia and Puerto Rico. You can read her Jacobin articles here: https://www.jacobinmag.<wbr />com/author/cathy-kunkel You can learn more about her campaign at her website: https://<wbr />kunkelforcongress.com

Suzi talks to Paul Mason on Brexit and George Kerevan on Brexit in Scotland — to unravel the complexities and many political-economic ramifications of the issue. The Brexit crisis is as consuming for the United Kingdom as Trump is for the United States. Paul Mason calls it "Brexhaustion," and says chaos is being normalized … albeit manufactured. The daily ins and outs are confusing, especially to outside spectators, but we shed light on this now constitutional crisis with British journalist and writer Paul Mason, and with political economist, journalist, and former SNP MP George Kerevan, who fills us in on the Scottish case by framing for us just how the United Kingdom came to this pass, how Britain has been massively convulsed by the internal divisions rocking the dominant Conservative (Tory) Party — such that Boris Johnson, now in power, could be seemingly denouncing the very capitalist interests the Conservative Party was supposed to represent. Brexit didn’t create these developments, but it is the outward form in which these divisions are being played out — and we get both George Kerevan and Paul Mason’s analyses.

Margaret Corvid, city councilor in Plymouth, England, on Boris Johnson and Brexit madness. Then, John Clegg on slavery’s profound effects on the US political structure.

Dan interviewed legendary feminist scholar Silvia Federici on Caliban and the Witch at her Brooklyn apartment. Next year, he'll make a return trip to discuss Wages for Housework.Here's the article on the Pawtucket factory strike by Joey La Neve DeFrancesco that Dan mentions jacobinmag.com/2018/06/factory-workers-strike-textile-mill-womenThanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comSupport this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan discusses the history of black politics in the US—left, nationalist, liberal, and neoliberal—with Michael Dawson.Check out New Dawn, Michael's podcast on race and capitalism: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-dawn/id1213696020Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

We need a Green New Deal to stop climate catastrophe. Everybody knows this. But housing has to be a key piece of the GND, as Daniel Aldana Cohen argues in the Spring 2019 issue of Jacobin on housing. Daniel Aldana Cohen is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative and coauthor, with Alyssa Battistoni, Kate Aronoff, and Thea Riofrancos, of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal from Verso Books. The four of them also coedit the Green New Deal series at Jacobin.Buy a copy of our housing issue, "Home Improvement," here: https://jacobinmag.com/<wbr />issue/home-improvementRead Daniel's articles for Jacobin here: https://jacobinmag.com/<wbr />author/daniel-aldana-cohenRead our Green New Deal series here: https://jacobinmag.com/<wbr />series/green-new-deal

Journalist Yasha Levine on the “democracy” demos in Moscow: for a flossier neoliberalism. Then, Maria Luisa Mendonça, director of Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos (Network for Social Justice and Human Rights) in Brazil on the Amazon fires: who’s setting them, why, and what can be done.

Writer Brian Hioe updates us on the Hong Kong protests. Then, Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association (AIPWA), on India’s ongoing crackdown in Kashmir

Heidi Sloan is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America running for Congress in Texas's 25th district. She's challenging a Republican incumbent, used car salesman, and incredibly rich person Roger Williams. Sloan recently sat down to talk about her story, her work with homeless people in Texas, how she came to join the DSA, her socialist political vision, and which corporate supervillain she would most like to grill as a member of the House of Representatives. Read more about Heidi at her website: https://heidifor25.<wbr />com/

Guest host Astra Taylor interviews Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz about Indigenous people's history to reexamine all of history, the present, and our possible futures.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Ordinary language is the sound of hegemony; it is also an archive of the struggles to overturn it. Language is an institution and a constantly emergent field of struggle; it is the product of power relations and it is also itself power relations. Dan interviews John Patrick Leary, the author of Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comSupport this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

The question of how socialists should engage with the labor movement has always been a critical one. One proposal: the rank-and-file strategy, which the Democratic Socialists of America adopted in its recent convention. But what is it? Labor sociologist Barry Eidlin explains. Barry Eidlin is an assistant professor of sociology at McGill University in Montreal and the author of Labor and the Class Idea in the United States in Canada. Read Barry's short explainer on the rank-and-file strategy here: https://www.jacobinmag.<wbr />com/2019/03/rank-and-file-<wbr />strategy-union-organizing Read Barry and Micah's article on the "militant minority" here: https://journals.<wbr />sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/<wbr />0160449X19828470 (Behind an academic paywall, but message Barry or Micah on social media to get a PDF of it) Read Kim Moody's 2000 pamphlet on the strategy here: https://www.jacobinmag.<wbr />com/2018/08/unions-socialists-<wbr />rank-and-file-strategy-kim-<wbr />moody Buy Barry's excellent book here: https://www.indiebound.<wbr />org/book/9781107514416?aff=<wbr />TomLutz

<font color="#000000">Suzi talks to UCLA law professor </font>Gary Blasi, a longtime housing activist and advocate for the homeless about the staggering increase in homelessness in LA city and county (indeed across the country). But there are misconceptions about what is driving this surge in people living on the streets. Put simply, says Blasi, homeless people are homeless because they cannot afford housing, mostly in neighborhoods where they have grown up. We get Blasi's analysis of the scope of homelessness, the effectiveness — or lack thereof —of city, county, and state measures to deal with it, as well as what more can be done. Suzi then talks to author and activist Paul Buhle about his graphic biography of the American socialist and labor leader Eugene V. Debs— one of the most important Americans of the twentieth century according to Bernie Sanders, who also called Debs “the most effective and popular leader that the American working class has ever had.” We hear about Debs’s life, ideas, and struggles as a fighting union leader of the Pullman railroad strike and Socialist Party leader who was jailed for opposing World War I and ran for president from prison, winning over a million votes.

Dan talks to Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara about his book The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality. We must study socialism's history and plan for its future.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Jobs have in recent years gotten much worse for millions of service workers at Amazon, McDonalds and call centers. Dan interviews Emily Guendelsberger on her book On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at patreon.com/TheDig

Suzi looks at the rising in Puerto Rico with professor, activist, and author Rafael Bernabe in San Juan, Puerto Rico where two weeks of massive protests brought down the corrupt government of Ricardo Rosselló, and continue amid uncertainty about what comes next. The protest movement took off after the Center for Investigative Journalism released nearly 900 pages of chat messages between Rosselló and his inner circle, revealing their misogyny, homophobia, and the contempt they held for the population. But it wasn’t just the most recent events that brought the people’s anger to the boiling point: the economic meltdown of 2008–2009 hit a Puerto Rico already ensnared in a never-ending debt crisis engineered by vulture funds, and when natural disaster hit following economic disaster, conditions went from bad to worse. Bernabe helps us understand this trajectory, and we get his view on what direction he sees for Puerto Rico after the success of the mass movement.Asli Bâli, UCLA law professor and Middle East expert on public international law, international security, and nuclear non-proliferation, gives us a big picture look at the US-Iran conflict and its defunct nuclear agreement. Trump continues to threaten Iran, aided by the mainstream media who are freaking out over Iran’s supposed breach of the 2015 Nuclear Accord, seemingly forgetting that it was Trump who unilaterally tore up that agreement, arbitrarily imposing a new, brutal sanctions regime. Bâli looks at the deeper context of the chronic but escalating US-Iran conflict, and explores its trajectory now that Trump has essentially abandoned the deal.

Dan interviews Lily Geismer, the author of Don't Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party. While Boston whites fought school busing in the streets, suburban liberals along Route 128 maintained and benefited from the larger system of metropolitan residential and school segregation that made the crisis possible. Suburban liberals also played a key role in creating a new Democratic Party that embraced a superficial politics of recognition while advancing a technocratic elite-driven neoliberal agenda that included the demonization and persecution of poor black mothers on welfare and mass incarceration.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

The Democratic Socialists of America's biennial convention is in Atlanta this weekend. The rise of the DSA is one of the most promising developments in American politics in at least half a century. I talked to Andrew Sernatinger, a member of Madison DSA, an elected delegate to the convention, and a rank-and-file member of Teamsters 695, about what's at stake at the convention. You can read Andrew's pieces about the convention and the state of DSA in New Politics: https://newpol.org/<wbr />dsa-2019-convention-breakdown/<wbr />https://newpol.org/dsas-<wbr />growing-pains/ Also, if you're going to be in Atlanta, come to the Jacobin "Our Socialism Is International" event, featuring leftist guests from Peru, Sudan, Brazil, Japan, Germany, the Philippines, and Yemen. https://www.facebook.<wbr />com/events/489420788296872/

Dan is taking his first week off ever in Dig history to finish his book. Here's a classic from deep in the archives: our first interview with Aziz Rana, on his book The Two Faces of American Freedom, aka episode 62. If you've already heard this one and are hungry for more content we've got everything organized by date, guest and topic at www.thedigradio.com.Support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Suzi talks to historian Myrna Santiago and immigrants' rights specialist Alicia Rusoja, who just returned from a week at the border, where they talked to men, women, and child migrants, sat in immigration court, and spoke to support groups — as well as deported veterans, and deported mothers of Dreamers in Tijuana. Their reflections and revelations include the way abuse and corruption are adding to the horrors these migrants face. Suzi then talks to Daniel Finn about British politics: while the Tories are deciding whether Boris Johnson will be their next leader, the Labour Party has its own dilemmas — over its attitude to Brexit, but also how to deal with the surprisingly effective smear campaign against Labour’s left-wing leadership, in particular leader Jeremy Corbyn. Finn looks at the underlying controversy, and as he wrote in Jacobin, despite Corbyn’s unprecedented efforts to expel antisemites from party ranks (no such similar move in the Conservative Party), Corbyn’s critics will never be satisfied — their issue is Corbyn’s politics itself. This has great relevance for our own politics, as Finn explains.

Dan's lengthy interview with two brilliant Chilean social movement organizers: Alondra Carrillo and Pablo Abufom. Carrillo organizes in the country's massive feminist movement. Abufom works in the labor-backed movement for a just pension system.Read Dan's interview with Daniel Jadue, the Communist mayor of Recoleta, in Jacobin.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Professor of philosophy Bernat Tort on Puerto Rico’s economic and political crisis. Then, sociologist Sahan Karatasli on Turkey’s economic and political crisis.

It's gotten heated this last week between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the squad, on the one hand, and Nancy Pelosi, centrist Democrats, and the House Democratic Party leadership on the other. But this conflict isn't empty intra-party bickering. It's an actual political and moral battle, with one side, AOC's, on the right side of history and one, Pelosi's, not. Miles Kampf-Lassin wrote about the battle and what it means, in an article called "They're Not Just Mad at AOC — They're Scared of Her." https://www.jacobinmag.<wbr />com/2019/07/alexandria-ocasio-<wbr />cortez-aoc-nancy-pelosi-<wbr />democratic-party We also mentioned a recent Washington Post profile of AOC's chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, that's worth a read: https://www.<wbr />washingtonpost.com/news/<wbr />magazine/wp/2019/07/10/<wbr />feature/how-saikat-<wbr />chakrabarti-became-aocs-chief-<wbr />of-change/

Dan interviews Sophie Lewis about her new book Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family. Something is deeply wrong with commercial surrogacy—but it's just not what you might think. What's wrong is the brute labor exploitation taking place at the reproductive crossroads of a racialized global capitalist order.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at versobooks.comSupport this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

The New York Times recently attacked Bernie Sanders’s record on solidarity with Nicaragua in the 1980s. It probably won’t be the last time we see red-baiting attacks against Sanders in the election season, so it’s important to establish what exactly happened in Central America in the 1980s, how brutal US intervention in the region was, what the Central American solidarity movement of that era looked like, and what side of history was the right one to be on. Hilary Goodfriend discusses all of this in her recent article ”Why Bernie Sanders Was Right to Oppose US Intervention in Central America.” Hilary is a doctoral student in Latin American Studies at the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City. You can read her article here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/<wbr />2019/07/bernie-sanders-<wbr />central-america-sandinista.

Suzi does three stories on this episode of Jacobin Radio, beginning with Katie Halper's expose in Jacobinof <wbr />the New York Times'sproblem with Bernie Sanders, evident in their coverage.The problem is their correspondent Sydney Ember, who has a long record of unfairly attacking Sanders — while neglecting to mention that the sources she quotes as objective authorities are corporate lobbyists and austerity ideologues. Suzi then looks at two articles in the new journal Commune, first withM. E. O’Brien. Her article, “Junkie Communism” questions how the socialist project emphasizes the dignity of work as its basis, but leaves out those who are unable to maintain stable employment — and posits a politics that includes those whose lives have been broken by the cruel conditions imposed on us all. Suzi then talks to Chloe Watlington about her powerful piece “Who Owns Tomorrow,” a devastating and revealing look at deaths of despair — from opioids, alcohol, and unemployment in crumbling neoliberal America, an all-too-familiar story that has hit Watlington personally.

For much of the twentieth century, Cold War politics defined socialism as the antithesis of democracy. Today, an insurgent democratic-socialist movement is transforming US politics. It is socialism that is at the forefront of a fight for a radical deepening of democracy, one in which ordinary people exercise control over our political, economic, and social lives — and one in which the people is expansively defined to include those excluded by racist immigration law and mass incarceration. Dan discusses this, and more, with filmmaker and writer Astra Taylor.Read Astra's article on socialism here: newrepublic.com/article/153804/reclaiming-future-growing-appeal-socialism-age-inequalityCheck out her film, What is Democracy? on your preferred streaming service.And her book, Democracy May Not Exist, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone, here: us.macmillan.com/books/9781250179845.Support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig.

Elizabeth Warren is, by American political standards, a very strong presidential candidate. She has taken up a robust domestic social-democratic agenda — one that, while not as strong as Bernie Sanders’s, is pretty damn good.Foreign policy, however, is a different story. Here, Elizabeth Warren is far from the most hawkish in her party. But she still leaves much to be desired, as Sarah Lazare recently wrote in a piece titled “Elizabeth Warren Can and Should Do Better on Foreign Policy.”Sarah Lazare is a web editor at In These Times. You can read her piece on Elizabeth Warren’s foreign policy here.

<style type="text/css"></style> <style></style> What is a socialist society going to look like? Like, actually look like? We have to have some answers to this question. Luckily, Sam Gindin has some. He talks to Micah about his article in Catalyst, “Socialism for Realists,” which you can read here.<o:p></o:p>

Dan's lengthy interview with Nick Estes on his remarkable book Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance. The problem that settler colonialism was repeatedly trying to solve by unleashing such terrific violence — through massacres, by nearly eliminating the buffalo, in reservation confinement, in dominating the Missouri River — was not just indigenous people being in the way but also the existence of a larger relationship between indigenous people and the land, water, and animals. The history of resisting this capitalist and colonialist dispossession has endured through the Water Protectors' struggle at Standing Rock — which will, in retrospect, be remembered as a pivotal moment in the global struggle against climate catastrophe.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com.Please support this podcast with money at Patreon.com/TheDig.

Bernie Sanders has been talking a lot about the New Deal lately, mentioning it in his recent speech on democratic socialism. Ironically, the response from many liberals has been to argue that the New Deal wasn’t really socialism. Jacobin’s Seth Ackerman has a few quibbles. Plus, we talk about why the idea that the New Deal was racist doesn’t fully capture its relationship to white supremacy. Read Seth’s article on Bernie’s New Deal rhetoric here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/<wbr />2019/06/new-deal-socialism-<wbr />bernie-sanders-democratic-<wbr />primary Read an interview with New Deal historian Richard Walker, who discusses the charge that the New Deal was racist, plus many other aspects of the New Deal’s wide-ranging policies, here: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/<wbr />03/green-new-deal-roosevelt-<wbr />public-works

On this episode of Jacobin Radio, Suzi focuses on the intensifying US-Iranian crisis and war brinkmanship that saw us about ten minutes away from military strikes, before Trump pulled back. We get MIT historian Pouya Alimaghum’s analysis of the crisis, the implications and goals of the increasing bluster and ever more draconian sanctions, and what they mean for domestic dissent in Iran. Then Suzi talks to UCI professor of Chinese history Jeff Wasserstrom, who has just returned from Hong Kong and has written in the Atlanticabout the gigantic protest movement that was met with extreme violence, only bringing more people into the streets. The protestors were fighting against a bill that would allow the extradition of suspects to mainland China, a further threat to Hong Kong’s partial autonomy, and for the right to assemble without persecution, to speak freely, and enjoy freedom of information. For the moment the bill has been shelved, thanks to the massive protests in the streets, but not the efforts to erode the city’s freedoms. We get Wasserstrom’s analysis.

Russia intervened and Trump is a criminal who committed obstruction of justice and is surrounded by constant criminality. But it's no doubt also true that this situation and the hawkish liberal response to it have dangerously damaged US-Russia relations. At the core of Western misunderstanding is the way we think about Vladimir Putin, which is what Dan is discussing today with Tony Wood, the author of Russia Without Putin: Money, Power and the Myths of the New Cold War.Thanks to Verso. Check out their massive left-wing book selection at versobooks.comGo to the Socialism 2019 conference in Chicago July 4-7! Register now at socialismconference.orgSupport this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Political scientist Rune Møller Stahl on the Danish elections, which the Left won but partly by going anti-immigrant. Then, Heidi Matthews, author of this article, on Canada’s genocidal treatment of its indigenous people.

There is perhaps no more depressing situation in Western Europe than that which prevails in Italy: a coalition government between the far-right Lega party and the now subordinate, bizarre, amorphously anti-corruption, internet-fetishist, pseudo-directly democratic Five Star Movement. In other words, Italian politics is dominated by a viciously racist anti-migrant politics; the left, along with most traditional forces, is in utter disarray. Today, Lega, led by Interior Minister Mateo Salvini, runs Italian politics. But the bad news is maybe also the good news: Salvini has not solved Italy's deep rooted economic problems, and so it's quite possible that the very same instability that abetted his rise will ultimately lead to his downfall. Dan interviews David Broder, Lorenzo Zamponi and Marta Fana.Thanks to Verso. Check out their massive left-wing book selection at versobooks.comSupport this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

In Spanish politics, the center-left Socialist Party has demolished the conservative Popular Party and checked risk of a major far-right surge. But meanwhile, the once very plausible-feeling dream of an insurgent radical left Podemos gaining power has faded. And fast. Dan discusses the Spanish situation with Carlos Delclós and Magda Bandera.Go to the Socialism 2019 conference in Chicago July 4-7! Register now at socialismconference.orgCheck out Next Left, a new podcast from The Nation magazine: thenation.com/next-leftSupport this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Part two of our discussion with Eric Blanc on his new book Red State Revolt: The Teachers Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics. We discuss the role of a "militant minority" of rank-and-file radicals in Arizona and West Virginia's teachers strikes — as well as what it means when that militant minority wasn't present, as in Oklahoma. This episode is of particular interest to rank-and-file union members who are interested in making their unions more democratic and militant, as well as members of socialist groups who support unions but want to figure out how to get personally involved in the labor movement. Read Micah's article (coauthored with Barry Eidlin) in Labor Studies Journal, "US Union Revitalization and the Missing 'Militant Minority,'" here: https://journals.<wbr />sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/<wbr />0160449X19828470 (Sorry, you'll need academic access.)Buy Eric's book here: https://www.versobooks.<wbr />com/books/2955-red-state-<wbr />revolt

Two interviews on the results of the May 26 European Parliamentary elections, which did not cleanly match predictions that there would be a further shift to to authoritarian hard-right parties. The biggest losers across the continent were the center-right neoliberal mainstream parties, but the shift to the Right was not as pronounced as feared. First, Sebastian Budgen, contributing editor for Jacobin, analyzes the election across Europe, especially in France, where the failed policies of the center were critical in understanding the results. We also get his take on the continuing protest and promise of the gilets jaunes social movement. Then Kevin Ovenden takes a deeper look at the vote in Great Britain, where the upset couldn’t have been more pronounced in the wake of the repeated failure by the Tories’ Theresa May to implement Brexit. The Conservative Party had its worst result in history, but Labour also lost votes, as Jeremy Corbyn tried to bridge the divide between those in favor and those against Brexit. The newly created “Brexit” Party of Nigel Farage took first, with the center Lib-Dems in alliance with Scottish and Welsh nationalists and Greens doing very well.

The radical left has been unable to electorally capitalize on the Yellow Vest movement, a massive revolt against a vicious, unequal and alienating neoliberal order. Instead, French electoral politics has pit an insurgent far-right against a zombie liberal center that presents itself as a bulwark against the nationalist tide. Dan interviews Sebastian Budgen and Danièle Obono, a member of the National Assembly with La France insoumise.Check out War over Peace: One Hundred Years of Israel's Militaristic Nationalism by Uri Ben-Eliezer ucpress.edu/book/9780520304345/war-over-peaceSupport this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Brexit has so dominated UK politics that it has put the Labour Party in a profoundly difficult and perhaps untenable position of strategic ambiguity toward how to handle the never-ending matter of leaving the EU. Today, in part two of our five-part series on European politics, Dan discusses this all with Grace Blakeley, Maya Goodfellow, and Richard Seymour.Thanks to Verso Books, which has loads of great left-wing titles at versobooks.comGo to the Socialism 2019 conference in Chicago July 4-7! Register now at socialismconference.orgSupport this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

This week and next, we're bringing you five episodes on European politics. Today, we're starting things off with Chris Bickerton and Jerome Roos for an overview of the European situation and the debate on the European left over how to approach Europe and the EU. Then, an interview on British politics with Grace Blakeley, Maya Goodfellow, and Richard Seymour. After that, a discussion of French politics with Sebastian Budget and Danièle Obono, a member of France's National Assembly with the left-wing La France insoumise. Then, an interview on Spanish politics with Carlos Delclós and Magda Bandera. And finally, an interview with David Broder and Marta Fana on Italy.Thanks to n+1. To get 25% off a one-year subscription, go to nplusonemag.com/thedig and enter THEDIG at checkoutCheck out Next Left, a new podcast from The Nation magazine: thenation.com/next-leftSupport this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

The teachers strike wave of the last year and a half is the most important development in US working-class politics in decades. And nobody has covered that strike wave closer than Eric Blanc. Eric has been Jacobin's man on the ground for most of these strikes, and he was there when they kicked off in West Virginia, then spread to Arizona and Oklahoma. (Since then, he's written many articles about strikes in Denver, Oakland, Los Angeles, Baton Rouge, and elsewhere.) He wrote the "red-state" strike wave in a new book, Red State Revolt: The Teachers Strikes and Working-Class Politics, published by Verso as part of the Jacobin series. I can't recommend this book enough — it's one of the best labor books published in recent years in the United States, of interest both to rank-and-file workers looking to organize their workplaces but also anyone seeking to understand how and why these strikes came about. This is the first of two Vast Majority episodes with Eric. This one talks about the role of the Bernie Sanders campaign in bringing together the strikers, the myth of the "red-state" voters and their willingness to go on strike, the role of social media in the strikes, why low wages aren't enough to kick off strikes, and more. The second episode, which will be out later this week, covers the role of a "militant minority" in organizing the strikes and consolidating the strikes' gains. You can buy Eric's book here: https://www.versobooks.<wbr />com/books/2955-red-state-<wbr />revolt You can read his many Jacobin articles on the strikes and other issues here: https://www.jacobinmag.<wbr />com/author/eric-blanc

US Rep. Rashida Tlaib on the local struggles that guide her work on behalf of the working class in Congress, the urgent need for a politics that puts people over profit, the question of impeachment, and why American people are coming around to supporting a free Palestine.Go to the Socialism 2019 conference in Chicago July 4-7! Register now at socialismconference.org Support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig