The Dig

How unlucky it was for Angela Nagle to make her so-called left case against immigration the same week that Hillary Clinton reprised her neoliberal case for border crackdowns. In reality, solidarity with immigrant workers has long been a core tenant for much of the socialist left and labor movement, while neoliberalism, despite pretenses to the contrary, has always been implemented alongside repression. Dan interviews Richard Seymour, a founding editor of Salvage, who has done some excellent work on left politics and migration:   https://www.patreon.com/posts/to-win-argument-22956541 https://www.patreon.com/posts/reinventing-anti-20945069   Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com   Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig    

Guns in general, and American gun culture in particular, have created a horrific bloodbath. But much of the liberal gun control movement has, in concert with the NRA and Republican Right, worked to make the war on guns a central facet of mass incarceration. The upshot is that we have the worst of both worlds: a society flooded with guns, where the paradigmatic white “good guy with a gun” treasures his weapons as a bedrock constitutional right even as the supposed “bad guys with a gun,” often black men with a felony record, are mercilessly prosecuted for carrying. Dan talks to reporter George Joseph, who has a new piece up at Slate on former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ war on guns, which has led to a sharp increase in federal gun prosecutions—often hitting ordinary black men with felony records who are simply carrying for their own protection. Thanks to University of California Press. Check out their excellent catalogue of books at ucpress.edu Support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Black Lives Matter is a poignant slogan and a powerful force for social transformation. It’s also shorthand for a huge array of organizations, mostly led by people that you’ve never heard of, working the daily hard grind of ordinary organizing that stitches together spectacular mass actions into a movement. That’s the subject of the new book Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-First Century by Dan’s guest, historian and activist Barbara Ransby. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com Please support The Dig with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Neoliberalism: we all hate it, but what does it mean? Dan talks to intellectual historian Quinn Slobodian about his book Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, which tells the story of neoliberalism’s Geneva School—including Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Wilhelm Röpke—and their vision for a new imperial order establishing rules to protect the market from political interference. It’s a movement that begins with nostalgia for the bygone Habsburg Empire, moves on to fights against the decolonized world’s efforts to create a New International Economic Order, and that plays a key role in forming the European Economic Community and the WTO. Live Dig interview in NYC with Yanis Varoufakis on Challenging the New Right-Populism. Saturday December 1, 6pm. The New School’s Arnhold Hall at the Theresa Lang Student Center. Thanks to Verso Books and University of California Press. Check out their titles at www.versobooks.com and ucpress.edu Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

The man who carried out the massacre in Pittsburgh was apparently motivated by a belief that Jewish people were conspiring to destroy the white race by way of orchestrating mass immigration. It’s a conspiracy theory with deep roots in America’s violent white power movement and that today is echoed by Trump and Fox News. Dan interviews Kathleen Belew on her book Bring The War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, a history of the white power revolutionary movement from 1975-1995. Thanks to Verso Books and University of California Press. Check out the excellent titles they have for sale at www.versobooks.com and www.ucpress.edu Please support this podcast with money at patreon.com/TheDig

View Transcript Historian Howard Zinn remains a model for left-wing intellectuals who want to not only convey ideas to a public beyond academia but also take action to transform the world that it is their profession to explain. Dan interviews Keeanga Yahmatta-Taylor, a leading intellectual of today’s resurgent socialist left, on her foreword to a new edition of Zinn’s autobiography, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge collection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

The brutality of the Saudi royal family had been hiding in plain sight. It was an open secret convenient to the political, media and business elites for whom the Kingdom means big business and an invaluable geostrategic proxy. But the brutal murder and dismemberment of a single Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, has forced Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman and his American enablers onto the defensive as the regime’s brutal war on Yemen, global support for Salafist fundamentalism, and kleptocratric repression have suddenly been subjected to intense public scrutiny. Dissident scholar Madawi al-Rasheed explains the history and political-economy of Saudi Arabia, and the now-frustrated efforts at obfuscation mounted by bin Salman and his allies. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge collection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Recently, Dan spoke to Nikhil Pal Singh about the unfortunate and never-ending debate over whether it was economics or racism that got Trump elected. This is a sequel to that discussion: because what Malaika Jabali powerfully exposes in a Current Affairs piece combining on-the-ground reporting in Milwaukee and historical and data analysis is that when we talk about the impact of economic crisis on Trump’s victory, the condition of Black poor and working-class people—many of whom decided to stay home on election day—must be at its center. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge collection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Jacobin Managing Editor Micah Uetricht pulls Dave-Davies-duty for Dan and interviews Rossana Rodríguez-Sanchez, a DSA member running for alderwoman in Chicago. Rodríguez-Sanchez moved to Chicago from Puerto Rico, where the brutal austerity imposed on the island made her job as a teacher impossible. She has brought with her a radical tradition and a program to fight for the city’s beleaguered public schools, for renters and for immigrant rights, and for a public safety agenda that prioritizes social workers over cops. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of radical titles at www.versobooks.com Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

CORRECT EPISODE NOW POSTED. Today’s episode is on the alarming new report out from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and how it is that William Nordhaus—an economist whose work is dedicated to arguing that that it would be too inefficient to address the ecological crisis aggressively and urgently—recently won the discipline’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Dan speaks to Alyssa Battisoni, a PhD candidate in political science and member of Jacobin’s editorial board. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing books at www.versobooks.com Please support this podcast with your money at www.patreon.com/TheDig