Millennials Are Killing Capitalism

This episode is part 2 of Josh’s conversation with Alex Charnley, Alana Lentin, and Michael Richmond. This conversation is extremely wide ranging, but focuses around topics of anti-racism, identity politics, neoliberalism, class politics, and politics of solidarity. In this part of the conversation Alex, Alana, and Michael get a little deeper into discussions of anti-semitism, of historical fracturing and composition of social movements and class struggles, and of so-called anti-identity politics sentiment and anti-trans discourses as well.  For full bios and introductions of the guests check out part 1. But just to remind folks this conversation centers primarily around Michael and Alex’s book Fractured: Race, Class, Gender and the Hatred of Identity Politics and Alana Lentin’s latest book Why Race Still Matters. But beyond that Alana discusses themes she’s taken up in her  writing on racism and anti-racism over the past couple of decades, and Alex and Michael bring in some important perspective from their own involvements in social movements as well.  Please continue to support our partnership with Prisons Kill and Massive Bookshop which sends books into prisoners every month. We will include another link to that in the show notes as well. This is our 55th episode of the year. And if you appreciate our work and find it valuable for hopefully putting your politics into action or just for your own education, we are 100% supported by our listeners who are not millionaires or billionaires, but regular workers and students and activists and organizers like you. We are able to bring you episodes every week because of the financial support of folks just like you. So if you want to join the wonderful folks who make this show possible you can become a patron for as little as $1 a month or make a yearly contribution of $10.80 at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. Now here is part 2 of our conversation with Alana, Alex and Michael. Links: Alex Charnley tweets at @steinosteino Michael Richmond tweets at @Sisyphusa. The Prisons Kill Book Club Fractured by Charnley and Richmond Alana Lentin's books / AlanaLentin.net

In this episode Alex Charnley, Alana Lentin, and Michael Richmond all join the podcast. Josh brought all three of these thinkers together for a discussion on anti-racism in the current conjuncture. This conversation took place across three continents and time zones that were as much as 16 hours apart. Due to its length, we’ve decided to release this episode in two parts, but because of how arbitrary the cut-off point is, we’ve also decided to release them simultaneously so folks can listen to both without having to wait for us to release part 2. Teacher and writer, Alana Lentin is a Jewish European woman who is a settler on Gadigal-Wangal land (Sydney, Australia). She’s the author of Why Race Still Matters (Polity 2020), The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a neoliberal age with Gavan Titley (Zed, 2011) and Racism and Antiracism in Europe (Pluto, 2004). Her academic and media articles as well as videos, podcasts, and teaching materials are free to be used and available at www.alanalentin.net Michael Richmond was a co-editor of the Occupied Times and of Base Publication. He has written for publications including OpenDemocracy, New Socialist and Protocols. Alex Charnley was illustrator and co-editor of the Occupied Times and of Base Publication.  They each provide broader discussions of their organizing, teaching and publishing backgrounds in the discussion.  Michael and Alex’s book Fractured: Race, Class, Gender and the Hatred of Identity Politics was just recently released on Pluto Press. Through an appraisal of pivotal historical moments in Britain and the US, including Black feminist and anticolonial traditions on both sides of the Atlantic, the authors question the assumptions of the culture war, offering a refreshing and reasoned way to understand how historical class struggles were formed and continue to determine the possibilities for new forms of solidarity in an increasingly dangerous world. Alana Lentin’s latest book Why Race Still Matters is a call to notice not just when and how race still matters but when, how and why it is said not to matter. Lentin argues that society is in urgent need of developing the skills of racial literacy, by jettisoning the idea that race is something and unveiling what race does as a key technology of modern rule, hidden in plain sight. We want to thank them all for this rich discussion and definitely recommend that people pick up their books and engage with their work.  Two final notes, please continue to support our partnership with Prisons Kill and Massive Bookshop which sends books into prisoners every month. We will include another link to that in the show notes as well. This is our 54th episode of the year. We are able to bring you episodes every week because of the financial support of folks just like you. So if you want to join the wonderful folks who make this show possible you can become a patron for as little as $1 a month or make a yearly contribution of $10.80 at https://www.patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.   Links: Alex Charnley tweets at @steinosteino Michael Richmond tweets at @Sisyphusa. The Prisons Kill Book Club Fractured by Charnley and Richmond Alana Lentin's books / AlanaLentin.net

In this episode we interview China Miéville.  China Miéville is the multi-award-winning author of many works of fiction and non-fiction. His fiction includes The City and the City, Embassytown and This Census-Taker. He has won the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Arthur C. Clarke awards. His non-fiction includes the photo-illustrated essay London’s Overthrow. He is also the author of October: The Story of the Russian Revolution. He has written for various publications, and is a founding editor of the journal Salvage. He is also a former member of multiple socialist party formations and organizations. In this conversation China joins the podcast to talk about his latest book, A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto. The book provides an introduction to The Communist Manifesto which provides readers with a guide to understanding the Manifesto and the many specters it has conjured. Through his unique and unorthodox reading, Miéville offers a spirited defense of the enduring relevance of Marx and Engels’ ideas. The book also contains the full text of the Manifesto and multiple prefaces penned by Marx & Engels.  You can pick the book up directly from Haymarket Books at 40% off currently. We really want to thank Haymarket and China Miéville for donating 40 copies of the book (!!) and also for making a donation to help cover the cost of postage to our incarcerated book club through our partnership with Massive Bookshop and Prisons Kill. We do still need to raise about $150 more dollars to cover the cost of postage to get this book inside, and we’ll include a link to contribute to that effort in the show notes. Last month we were able, along with some donations from Massive Bookshop and our patrons to provide 40 copies of Saidiya Hartman’s Scenes of Subjection to those incarcerated readers. As for the show itself, It is December, currently for the month we’ve had more nonrenewals than we have new patrons, which is not unexpected this time of year as people try to balance holiday expenses. However if you have the capacity to become a patron of the show, you can do so for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year, at patreon.com/millennialsarekilingcapitalism. We really want to thank all of the folks who support the show, or have supported it when they’ve been able to, as it is only through your support that conversations like this are possible.  Links: To purchase A Spectre, Haunting (currently 40% off): https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1990-a-spectre-haunting To donate to the Prisons Kill book club (to help with postage for the donated copies): https://massivebookshop.com/products/prisonskill-book-club-donation To check out the Salvage journal that Miéville talked about in the episode: https://salvage.zone To support the show: patreon.com/millennialsarekilingcapitalism

[photos in the collage were taken by Guy Smallman, Callum Ford, and Martin Pope or otherwise found on Palestine Action's social media] In this episode we interview co-founder of Palestine Action, Huda Ammori. Ammori has organized against British complicity in the colonization of Palestine and against British  support for the Israeli colonial apartheid regime in historic Palestine for years now. Palestine Action is an organization born out of that struggle. One that recognizes the need to take direct action approaches. Their core campaign, is the campaign to Shut Elbit Down (#ShutElbitDown). Elbit Systems is Israel’s largest privately-owned arms company. It’s largest single customer is the Israeli Ministry of Defense.  In this episode Ammori shares some of her organizing history, her experience exhausting the modes of redress available through lobbying and protest, and the rationale behind Palestine Action’s targeting of Elbit Systems. It is noteworthy that while Palestine Action has targeted Elbit in the UK, that there are a number of Elbit Systems facilities in the US, and that in addition to the deplorable and brutal violence that they enact in occupied Palestine, they are also a major contractor for Border Patrol and components of the US-Mexico border wall.  This is a great conversation about an important ongoing campaign and we hope folks will listen in for ways they can act in solidarity and to consider some of the tactical and strategic considerations Ammori talks through as well. It is noteworthy of course that the British legal system is different from the US legal system, so obviously nothing that’s discussed here should be considered legal advice. But the general point that Ammori makes about the difference between the legal and military framework that Palestinians are subjected to in Palestine versus the legal systems within the imperial core is still an important strategic consideration for movements that seek to be in solidarity with people in Palestine.  Make sure to check out Palestine Action’s website and follow them on social media to stay current with their campaign, and their legal cases and to look for ways to support and get involved. All of which we’ll discuss further in the episode and include some links in the show notes. As you all know, it’s the last month of 2022, we have a number of things coming this month, we set a goal of adding 31 patrons this month and we’ve got 24 left to go to hit that goal. You can do either a small monthly or yearly contribution and of course you’ll get emails with every episode that comes out, and when Josh or I publish any articles, and when the next round of our study group starts up. If you’d like to support the show, you can do so at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism Links: Palestine Action’s website (includes ways to get involved and follow along with their campaigns) Palestine Action's Twitter Palestine Action's Instagram The Commoner Interview referenced in the episode  

In this episode we interview Efemia Chela. Chela is a Zambian-Ghanian writer, literary critic, and an editor. Efemia joins us in her role as the commissioning editor at Inkani Books, which is the publishing division of The Tricontinental Pan Africa NPC, a research institute that collaborates with and is aligned with the work of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. In this conversation Efemia shares a bit about some of the current struggles in South Africa, and situates Inkani Books as a publisher within those struggles as well as within their broader African continental context as a Pan African publishing house.  The focus of this discussion is Inkani’s latest book, Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories which brings together an extensive set of Amílcar Cabral’s interviews, official speeches and PAIGC party directives from 1962 through 1973. It features a foreword by Grant Farred and an introduction by Sónia Vaz Borges who we’ve previously hosted on the podcast.  We engage Efemia about several of Cabral’s important theoretical interventions, and the grounding of his theory in the real movement of the Guinean and Cape Verdean people and their liberation struggles. We talk about the continued relevance of his thought today to people and movements across the African continent, and discuss studying it in group contexts. Among other things, we discuss the idea of a new humanity forged in struggle, Cabral’s thinking on culture, on patriarchy, his caution with regards to decolonization and neocolonialism, and the question of what Cabral calls organic security for radical and revolutionary movements.  We want to deeply thank everyone who has been supporting us over these last 5 years. In just the last week we surpassed 1 million downloads around the world, almost half of those downloads have come this year. That feels like an amazing milestone. And we’re so thankful, and hope to continue to grow from here. We do want to note however that we don’t get paid anything for downloads. We don’t sell ads. And it is December, and this month we have a goal of adding 31 patrons, one per day. We’re always catching up with non-renewals this time of year as folks divert money towards holiday expenses. Which is understandable. So if you can afford to become a patron of the show, even if it’s just $1 a month or a small yearly contribution, it really helps a great deal at this time. You can do that at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. Links: Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories by Amílcar Cabral (Inkani Books) Inkani Books website Tricontinental South Africa Other MAKC Episodes on Cabral & the PAIGC: Militant Education, Liberation Struggle, Consciousness - PAIGC Education with Sónia Vaz Borges (a recent study from Sónia on the PAIGC's education programs)  The Life of Amílcar Cabral and the Struggle of the PAIGC with António Tomás “Culture is Sovereign” - Amílcar Cabral and African Anti-colonial Internationalism with António Tomás Other episodes which reference Cabral historically or theoretically (there are others, but these were most handy): "We Need To Be Active In The Working Class Struggle For Socialism Globally" - Steven Osuna on Class Suicide "We Remember The Attempts To Be Free" - Joy James on Black August and the Captive Maternal Becoming Kwame Ture with Amandla Thomas-Johnson "Abolition Is Inherently Experimental" - Craig Gilmore on Fighting Prisons and Defunding Police      

In this episode we welcome Robin DG Kelley back to the podcast. Robin DG Kelley is the Gary B. Nash professor of American History at UCLA. He is the author of seven books, and the editor or co-editor of even more.  For this episode, Kelley returns to the podcast to talk about the 20th Anniversary Edition of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination.  We talk to Kelley about what has been added to the new edition of the book, and discuss some of the ways that Freedom Dreams has been taken up during and in the wake of what Kelley terms “Black Spring” the protests following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and others.  Kelley also talks a bit about the context in which Freedom Dreams was written and why he’s restored a previously unreleased epilogue to the book.  Beyond that we ask several questions about the original text itself, drawing from the great reservoir of Black radical visions that continue to animate Freedom Dreams 20 years after its release.  Just a quick plug Robin is currently raising funds for Palestine Legal which is an independent organization dedicated to defending and advancing the civil rights and liberties of people in the US who speak out for Palestinian freedom. We’ll include a link to that fundraiser in the show notes.  We’ll also include a link to purchase the new 20th anniversary edition of Freedom Dreams from Massive Bookshop. Speaking of Massive our book club for incarcerated readers with Massive Bookshop and Prisons Kill was able to fund copies of the 25th Anniversary Edition of Scenes of Subjection to all 41 its participants, so thank you very much to all of you who supported that campaign! We will be announcing our December book soon so keep an eye out for that.  And we also hit our goal of adding 30 patrons for the month of November. Thank you to everyone who continues to support us. If you appreciate and enjoy conversations like this, become a patron of the show. You can do it for as little as $1 per month and be a part of the amazing group of folks who make this show possible.  Links/References: Purchase Freedom Dreams from Massive Bookshop Conjuncture: Against Pessimism (hosted by Jordan Camp) with Robin DG Kelley Robin & LisaGay’s fundraiser for Palestine Legal. More on Palestine Legal Midnight On The Clock Of The World - (our first interview with Robin DG Kelley)

In this conversation Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson return to the podcast for the second conversation on their book Rehearsals For Living (part one is here). This conversation was recorded in late October, about a month after recording the first part. Most of these questions were conversations from the reading which we just weren’t able to ask during our first conversation due to time constraints.  In this conversation we talk more about architects of climate catastrophe in Toronto, about fascist monsters, and we talk about cooptation and elite capture. We also discuss moments of intense spectacle and important organizing and world-making that takes place all the time outside of the light of media attention. Robyn reflects on the spread of abolitionist ideas into the mainstream and Leanne discusses prominent scholarship within settler colonial studies in the academy and the disconnect between that and indigenous forms of knowledge. Once again, Rehearsals for Living is a really powerful read and we encourage you to pick it up from Haymarket Books or from your local bookstore. As we release this episode, we’re just 2 patrons away from hitting our goal for the month of November, which was to add 30 patrons to make up for non-renewals and continue to grow. If you appreciate conversations like this and the other 175 episodes of this podcast, you can help sustain our work at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

[Note: In the episode image the artwork behind Dionne Brand at the podium is by Torkwase Dyson, as is the cover art work for Nomenclature] In this conversation we are thrilled to welcome Dionne Brand to the podcast.  This is a conversation with her new book Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems and also with a number of her lectures, interviews, and dialogues over the years. If we reference something not in Nomenclature we have done our best to include a link to it in the show notes.  We ask questions about themes and ideas we hear or read Brand grappling with in her work, as well as questions that we grapple with in relation to her work. These include questions about time, epistemology, nature, the category of the human, Black thought, spectacle, narrative, capital, imperialism, socialism and liberation. If you find value in this conversation and others we publish, we encourage you to support the podcast at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism, we are 100% supported by our listeners and you can be a part of that for as little as $1 a month. Dionne Brand is a renowned poet, novelist, and essayist. Her writing is notable for the beauty of its language, and for its intense engagement with issues of international social justice. Her work includes ten volumes of poetry, five books of fiction and three non-fiction works. She was the Poet Laureate of the City of Toronto 2009-2012. From 2017-2021 Brand was Poetry Editor at McClelland & Stewart- Penguin Random House Canada. Dionne Brand became prominent first as an award-winning poet, winning the Griffin Poetry Prize for her volume Ossuaries, the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Trillium Book Prize for her volume Land to Light On. She’s garnered two other nominations for the Governor General’s Literary Award for the poetry volumes No Language Is Neutral and Inventory respectively, the latter also nominated for the Trillium and the Pat Lowther. She has won the Pat Lowther Award for poetry for her volume thirsty also nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the city of Toronto Book Award.  Her 2018 volume, The Blue Clerk, was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry and the Griffin Poetry Prize and won the Trillium Book Prize. Brand has also achieved great distinction and acclaim in fiction and non-fiction. Her most recent novel, Theory won the Toronto Book Award 2019 and the BOCAS fiction prize. Her novel, Love Enough was nominated in 2015 for the Trillium Book Award. Her fiction includes the critically acclaimed novels In Another Place, Not Here, At the Full and Change of the Moon, and, What We All Long For an indelible portrait of the city of Toronto which also garnered the Toronto Book Award. Her fiction has been translated into Italian, French and German. Dionne Brand’s non-fiction includes Bread Out Of Stone, and A Map to the Door of No Return, which has been widely taken up by scholars of Black Diaspora and An Autobiography of The Autobiography of Reading. In 2021 Brand was awarded the Windham Campbell Award for fiction. Dionne Brand has published nineteen books, contributed to many anthologies and written dozens of essays and articles. She has also been involved in the making of several documentary films. She was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at St. Lawrence University in New York and has taught literature and creative writing at universities in both British Columbia and Ontario. She has also held the Ruth Wynn Woodward Chair in Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University. She holds several Honorary Doctorates, Wilfred Laurier University, University of Windsor, Simon Fraser University, The University of Toronto, York University and Thornloe/Laurentian University.  She lives in Toronto and was Professor in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph until 2022. She is a member of the Order of Canada. In every area of her work Brand has received widespread recognition through literary awards, honorary doctorates, and praise by the likes of Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Kamau Braithwaite, and so many, many others. In the show notes we will include Dionne Brand’s full bio which further details her award winning work in poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and film. As well as her distinguished work as an educator, documentary film maker, and poetry editor. Sources: Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems David Naimon’s interview with Dionne Brand on Between The Covers Podcast  Adrienne Rich and Dionne Brand in Conversation  Dionne Brand: The Shape of Language (along with Torkwase Dyson)  “I Am Not The Person You Remember” - In Memoriam of MF DOOM with Hanif Abdurraqib “The Oppressed Have a Way of Addressing Their Own Conditions” - On Joshua Myers’ Cedric Robinson: The Time of the Black Radical Tradition   Dionne Brand - “An Autobiography of the Autobiography of Reading”  

[The image contains the cover of the 25th Anniversary Edition of Scenes of Subjection, two images of author Saidiya Hartman, and one image from visual artist Torkwase Dyson (which is included in the book) entitled set/interval/enclosure] For this conversation we are extremely honored to welcome Saidiya Hartman to the podcast.  In this conversation we’ll be talking about the new 25th anniversary edition of Hartman’s groundbreaking and influential work Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. In addition to Scenes, Saidiya Hartman is the author of two other amazing books, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval and Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. She has been a MacArthur Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, Cullman Fellow, and Fulbright Scholar. She is a Professor at Columbia University. This 25th anniversary edition features a new preface by the author, a foreword by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, an afterword by Marisa J. Fuentes and Sarah Haley, notations with Cameron Rowland, and compositions by Torkwase Dyson. We ask about a number of the key formulations in Scenes, including Hartman’s work on empathy, the fungibility of Blackness, the varied violences and violations of enslavement, white supremacy and the popular theater, and the constitutive limits of bourgeois liberal democracy.  We also talk about Black Feminism, gender differentiation, and the role of cishetpatriarchy in law, violation, and aspiration.  A content notice, that although we don’t hover on details, the conversation does include references to rape, abuse, and sexual violence in the context of slavery and in its afterlives. Hartman shares some clarifications on where the pessimism in Scenes lies. She also offers scathing critiques of the limits of emancipation, of the structure of citizenship, and of the project of inclusion within US empire and racial capitalism.  Along the way, we take time to attend to various forms of Black anarchism and the attendant survival programs that Hartman observes and highlights in Scenes and in her later work, particularly Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. We are also partnering with Massive Bookshop and Prisons Kill to send copies of this book into prisoners. This is part of a new project where we will pick one book each month to share with incarcerated people. We’ll provide a link to this program in the show notes if you want to contribute to it. You can also pick up a copy for yourself while you’re over there if you like. And lastly if you like what we do, and want to support our capacity to bring you conversations like these. Our platform is 100% supported by our listeners. Thanks to everyone who became a patron last month we hit our goal thanks to your support. If you would like to support us for as little as $1 a month you can do so at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

This is the continuation of our conversation with Winston James about his latest work Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik. In part 1 we talked about McKay’s origins in Jamaica up through the Red Summer of 1919 when he would pen his famous poem “If We Must Die.” In this conversation we talk about McKay’s time in Harlem, his relationship with Hubert Harrison, his support of - and political differences with - the Garvey movement or the UNIA. In that vein we also talk about McKay’s theorization of the relationship between class struggle, anticolonial struggle, and anticapitalist revolution. And relatedly his support of movements for Irish nationalism, Indian independence, and Black Nationalism.  James also shares McKay’s experiences as a worker, as a member of the Wobblies or the IWW, and as a member of Sylvia Pankhurst’s Workers Socialist Federation in the UK and some associated discussion of syndicalism and leftwing communism. We close with some reflections on McKay’s attitudes towards Bolshevism over time, especially after Lenin. We really enjoyed Winston James book and highly recommend it to people who are interested in McKay’s life or just in history including debates of the Black left - and communist left - in the early 20th century. You can pick up Winston James' Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik which is currently on sale from our friends at Massive Bookshop. A final reminder as this is likely to be our final episode of this month. October is the 5 year anniversary of Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. We had set a goal of adding 50 patrons this month. And with 2 days left is attainable. We need just 4 more patrons to hit that goal. You can help us hit that goal for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. A new post will be up on patreon about it this week, but our Black Marxism study group will start up in November, and our 5 year anniversary episode is still on its way.