Episode 1111
Soleimani in Iran.
Jan 9 2020
I, when you look at the, the different versions of this narrative, whether it's in say, uh, uh, the, the books of, uh, James Lindsay, um, who's antiwar warrior or all, all the films of people who were kind of involved, uh, in the Tea Party movement, you'll see that there are, there, there are some, uh, historical facts, uh, involved there about really the, the, the unraveling of, um, sort of post-war American order, the, the sort of, uh, the new deal order that was, you know, sort of hastened by, uh, uh, uh, by Reaganism and the kind of cultural norms that emerge from that.
So I think that these different, um, conservative and reactionary intellectuals are, [00:21:00] um, responding. To really a, a, a crisis of a certain, uh, um, uh, arrangement of American national life. But I think that the, um, uh, the blaming of it on, um, sort of cultural deviance like the Frankfurt School or, or on work professors, it, it, um, means that they kind of can distract people from sort of more structural or more economic factors.
intellectual historian A.J.A. Woods, author of, The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West (Verso Books) discusses their book on the day it is published. A.J.A.’s writings on conspiracy theories and reactionary politics have been translated into four languages and appeared in Open Democracy, Patterns of Prejudice, and Marx & Philosophy Review of Books.
"Rotten History" from Renaldo Migaldi follows the interview.
After all that, we receive an update from Loyola University Chicago SEIU 73 Faculty Forward co-chair Paige Warren about next steps bargaining for a fair contract... read more
Deborah Goodman
Apr 15
Labor Struggle in Higher Ed: An Update from Loyola University Chicago SEIU 73 Faculty Forward Union
Follow
Weekly Mailing List
New interviews every Monday
Posted by Matthew Boedy
Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.
I don’t know what I’ve been doing all week. Mostly I’ve been trying to draw pleasure from the same old things that have given me pleasure in the past. But it’s not working. Maybe it’s the law of diminishing returns, but I think that only affects people below a certain level of capitalization. It seems like the uber-wealthy follow a different law, the law of infinitely increasing returns.
By the time I’m on This Is Hell radio, with your host Chuck Mertz and your producer Alex Jerri, who knows what part of the world will be in flames?
Then again, maybe everything will be resolved nicely by then, wrapped up with a bow, and I will have stopped agonizing about World War III.
It all makes me worry about Hillary Clinton. How it must eat at her, believing she could have saved the world from its now immanent destruction. Has anyone checked on her? I just think someone should console her, tell her, “It’s all right. Yes, your management of our forever war would’ve been much more discreet, but Australia would still be on fire. Don’t worry, you wouldn’t have done much to fix most of the problems, which we might not have even known existed if we didn’t have Dump to highlight them and to blame them on, when a lot of them were actually results of Obama, Bush, and even Bill Clinton policies. So, rest easy. You were never going to save us from what started long before Dump, only from the pain of his most flagrant vulgarities. You certainly wouldn’t have saved the world, get over yourself.”
What I should do, rather than worry about the world or Hillary, I’ll pick a distraction, that usually works. Eating, that’s something to do. What shall I eat? How about that piece of farm- raised salmon I got for such a reasonable price at the Armenian market? Color added for appeal!
Yes, I know, I know. Everything I do, every move I make, adds to the destruction of the planet. Well, at least I’m not assassinating anyone. At least I’m not provoking a region’s largest military in order to distract from the untimely publication of evidence of my crazy, ego-driven crimes. At least I’m not Donald Dump.
I agree, faithful listener, that is not a very high standard to hold oneself to. No, you’re right. I ought to expect more from myself. At least I don’t damn... read more
Dec 20 2019
Posted by Matthew Boedy
Chuck picks his 18 favorite books from the 100+ he read for the show this year:
A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland
DaMaris Hill / Interview
Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence
Kellie Carter Jackson / Interview
Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power
Anna Merlan / Interview
Rape: From Lucretia to #MeToo
Mithu Sanyal / Interview
Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family
Sophie Lewis / Interview
White Supremacy Confronted: U.S. Imperialism and Anti-Communism vs. the Liberation of Southern Africa from Rhodes to Mandela
Gerald Horne / Interview
Them Goon Rules: Fugitive Essays on Radical Black Feminism
Marquis Bey / Interview
How To Be An Antiracist
Ibram Kendi / Interview
Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging
Jodi Dean / Interview
The Enigma of Clarence Thomas
Corey Robin / Interview
Without Apology: The Abortion Struggle Now
Jenny Brown / Interview
In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West
Wendy Brown / Interview
Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership
Keeanga Yamhatta Taylor / Interview
The Torture Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago
Flint Taylor / Interview
Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century
Charles King / Interview