Manufacturing Dissent Since 1996
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Episode 1005

Class Traction

May 26 2018

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Jorge Martin

Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution can only move leftward or backward.

Writer Jorge Martin reports on the re-election of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, amidst a history (and present) of US influence in the elections and a deepening economic crisis - and examines the two futures for the Bolivarian revolution - forward and beyond the Maduro government's aims, or backwards into the hands of oligarchs.

Jorge wrote the articles Venezuela: Maduro Wins Presidential Election, Despite Imperialist Meddling – What Next? and Venezuelan Presidential Elections: Between Imperialist Aggression and Economic Crisis for Venezuelanalysis.

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Tina Vasquez

This is creating chaos: ICE unleashed.

Journalist Tina Vasquez explores the brutal architecture of ICE in the Trump era - from the bi-partisan creation of a surveillance, detention and deportation mechanism under Obama and previous administrations, to the nativist adaptation of both capital and ideology to the violent machine handed over to the Trump White House.

Tina wrote the article The New ICE Age: An Agency Unleashed for Rewire.News and the New York Review of Books.

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Courtney Desiree Morris

Understanding the roots of Nicaragua's April 19 movement.

African American studies scholar Courtney Desiree Morris traces the rise of Nicaragua's 19th of April movement - as an uprising against the country's slow drift towards neoliberal privatization and authoritarian rule under president Daniel Ortega, and a grassroots mobilization of popular political will.

Courtney wrote the article Unexpected Uprising: The Crisis of Democracy in Nicaragua for NACLA.

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Steve Fraser

This society is not holding together: On class denial and delusion in American politics.

Historian Steve Fraser explains why the mass delusion of class denialism in post-WWII America blinds us to the deepening economic inequalities in our daily lives and robs us of the words and ideas necessary to challenge the political elites that are very aware of the class divide - and doing their best to stay on the other side

Steve is author of Class Matters: The Strange Career of an American Delusion from Yale University Press.

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Alex Press

A tech labor movement starts up in Silicon Valley.

Writer Alex Press profiles the new labor movement working to disrupt power in Silicon Valley - as left-leaning white and blue collar workers in the tech industry explore startup labor organizing in the heart of a sector whose greatest innovation is control over both its workers and its users.

Alex wrote the article Code Red: Organizing the Tech Sector for n+1.

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Jeff Dorchen

Take the incels bowling: Thoughts on horniness and reality.

In a Moment of Truth, Jeff Dorchen takes a crack at the nut (gross, sorry) of sexual fulfillment, and lays out a middle path for the frustrated incel, somewhere between Buddha and Jordan Peterson, between being a baby and being a murderer - a path that most of us are on at some point in our horny lives actually.

Read the transcript here

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