Jacobin Radio

We are living on land from which indigenous people, over hundreds of years, have been violently removed. Almost everyone knows this — yet it’s rarely mentioned in stories that Americans tell themselves about who we are as a country and how we got here. Dan’s guest is Paul Frymer, a professor of politics and director of the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University. In his recent book, Building an American Empire: The Era of Territorial and Political Expansion, he provides a close study of the empire America built in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth century, a project of geographic expansion facilitated and also limited by the demands of racial engineering. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out The Great Cowboy Strike: Bullets, Ballots and Class Conflicts in the American West by Mark A. Lause versobooks.com/books/2592-the-great-cowboy-strike. And from University of California Press, Destroying Yemen: What Chaos in Arabia Tells Us about the World by Isa Blumi ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520296145

Author Vijay Prashad, professor of international studies at Trinity College, on Syria, Trump, and the state of the global left. Then, Jennifer Cohen, assistant professor of international studies at Miami University, joins the show to discuss feminism and economics, and a recent article in the New York Times.

Excitement that Democrats had developed a spine in the fight for Dreamers reverted to familiar despondency and fury when they capitulated and voted to reopen the government on Monday. Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein offers his analysis of the role that the media and the Democratic Party’s right flank played in pushing senators to fold. This interview was recorded Tuesday and posted early because things are moving fast.Thanks to Verso Books for their support. Check out Europe’s Fault Lines: Racism and the Rise of the Right by Liz Fekete versobooks.com/books/2555-europe-s-fault-lines. And please support us with $ at patreon.com/TheDig!

Everyone agrees that the 1970s were the beginning of the end of capitalism as we had known it since the New Deal. But historian Lane Windham makes it clear that it wasn’t for a lack of worker struggle in her new book, Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide. In case studies of union fights in department stores, shipyards, offices, and textile mills, Windham explains that women and workers of color seized the civil rights victories of the 1960s to fight for economic rights in the '70s. Thank you to Verso and University of California Press. Check out The Age of Jihad: Islamic State and the Great War for the Middle East by Patrick Cockburn versobooks.com/books/2518-the-age-of-jihad and Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom by Norman Finkelstein ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520295711 Support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig!

Journalist Sandra Cuffe on Honduras after a stolen election and waves of official violence. Alexander Main, Senior Associate of International Policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, on US policy towards Latin America under Trump. Then, Janet Capron, author of Blue Money, on drugs and sex work in 1970s New York City.

Student workers at Rutgers University are fighting for $15 an hour. Undergraduate history major and dining-hall worker Danny Taylor of @RutgersUSAS talks about their struggle. Thanks to Verso Books for their support. Check out Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump by David Neiwert versobooks.com/books/2535-alt-america, and support this podcast with your $ at patreon.com/TheDig! Also: Jacobin has published a transcription of Dan's interview with the Fields sisters jacobinmag.com/2018/01/racecraft-racism-barbara-karen-fields

Martin Luther King Jr. launched the Poor People’s Campaign alongside other organizers shortly before he was assassinated 50 years ago. Today, organizers nationwide are relaunching that movement as The Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, tackling the evil quadruplet of poverty, systemic racism, militarism, and environmental devastation. Dan’s guest is rock star organizer Nijmie Dzurinko, making her second appearance on the show. Check out Dan’s recent work slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/01/the-opioid-crisis-is-blurring-the-legal-lines-between-victim-and-perpetrator.html & injusticetoday.com/philadelphia-media-slam-newly-elected-da-krasner-for-firings-but-house-cleaning-advances-his-f2da076ffb06 Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Futures of Black Radicalism versobooks.com/books/2438-futures-of-black-radicalism

Suzi talks to UCLA sociologist and Iran expert Kevan Harris about the massive uprising that began in Iran at the end of December and quickly spread to every corner of the country. Persistent poverty and inequality are driving discontent, but Harris says that isn't the whole story. Suzi then talks to economist Dean Baker from the Center for Economic Research, who has some innovative ideas about how California can get around the tax-cut plan passed by the Republicans, which directly targets California and other so-called high tax states that also have relatively decent public services. She also asks Baker about the state of the economy, unemployment and wage growth, whether we’re in a new bubble, and why the media does such a bad job informing the public on economic issues.

Your first Diglet of the new year, and we’re talking about that Trump book. At n+1 Patrick Blanchfield makes the case that Fire and Fury is not, as some might think, a bunch of meaningless palace-intrigue that has distracted us from what Trump is doing to destroy the environment and wage relentless class war against the poor. Rather, the book in one fell swoop exposes the Trump administration for the dangerously hot mess that we all knew it was but were entirely unable to understand clearly because the deluge of drama and weird tweets had rendered it all banal wallpaper. Thanks to our sponsors at Verso Books. Check out How Will Capitalism End versobooks.com/books/2519-how-will-capitalism-end Like our show music? Check out Brodsky’s commercial and artistic work at Jeffreybrodsky.com and painterly.bandcamp.com

Chattel slavery made black women’s reproduction the source of private property — and in doing so, invented race and American racism. Ever since, the denigration and regulation of black women’s childbearing has been central to the construction of white supremacy and the exploitative economic order that it protects, as scholar Dorothy Roberts explained in Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, a pivotal book first published in 1997. In this episode, Roberts talks about the book and what lessons it holds today as Trump and Republicans seek to destroy yet more of the social safety net and use racism as a smokescreen to distract white Americans from their class war against working people. Thanks to Verso Books for their support. Check out Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War by Hito Steyerl versobooks.com/books/2553-duty-free-art. And please support The Dig with $ at patreon.com/TheDig!

Professor Tithi Bhattacharya, editor of Social Reproduction Theory on capitalism, Marxism, feminism, and society. Social reproduction theory is a type of socialist feminist analysis of the connection between worker and society, with particular attention paid to the family and household as critical units for the reproduction of society. While this can sound abstract, social reproduction theory has a lot to contribute to today's most pressing issues, from social security reform to the #MeToo movement.

The protest movement against the onset of the Iraq War was countered by a call to “support our troops” from militarists on the Right. But venerating American soldiers is not about supporting actual American soldiers; it's a rhetorical device to preclude questioning or criticism of the wars they are sent to fight. In a face-to-face interview at Brown University’s Watson Institute, anthropologist Catherine Lutz discusses John Kelly’s recent diatribe, Khizr Khan, Trump’s attack on protesting NFL players, and the roots of it all in the Nixon administration’s response to GI rebellion against the Vietnam War. Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books. Check out How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System by Wolfgang Streeck versobooks.com/books/2519-how-will-capitalism-end And support us with $ at patreon.com/TheDig

At the close of the centenary of the Russian Revolution, Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara discusses his new article on the Bolsheviks and what we can learn from and blame on them — and also what might be forgiven and moved beyond. Thanks to our sponsors at Verso Books. Check out Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War by Hito Steyerl and Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy by Lynne Segal at versobooks.com.

Doug Henwood explains the bitcoin craze, and then ex-finance minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis ties up some loose ends on Adults in the Room, and discusses the need for a progressive internationalism.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor returns to The Dig to discuss her new book How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective. Forty years ago, a group of black feminists coined the term “identity politics” in the Combahee River Collective Statement. For them, it was a way to identify the various ways that capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and homophobia created a set of interlocking oppressions. And the point of identifying how those systems operated together was not to create an itemized politics of particularity, as is too often the case today, but rather to create a framework for solidarity. Thanks to our sponsors at Verso Books. Check out Futures of Black Radicalism and support this podcast with $ at Patreon.com/TheDig.

Journalists Robert Scheer, and Marc Cooper join Suzi Weissman in a wide-ranging discussion on "Media and Democracy: From the Vietnam War to the Consolidation of Alternative Facts in the Digital Era," that was recently held at the REDCAT theater in Los Angeles. Suzi Weissman looks at what was behind the social conflicts of the 1960s and the present. Robert Scheer, renowned journalist and former editor of Ramparts, tells the story of Ramparts and provides an inside look at how the war was conducted, including the widespread secrecy and surveillance of the FBI in an attempt to crush dissent. Journalist Marc Cooper looks at media delivery in the present digital era of democratized information that has introduced new potential as well as new dangers.

A lengthy interview with historian Barbara Fields and sociologist Karen Fields on their seminal essay collection Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life. Dan talks to the sister scholars about the book; how Ta-Nehisi Coates’s primordialist view of white racism spells defeat; how racism serves the interest of capitalist class war, how endless debates over Rachel Dolezal distract us from that fact; and a whole ton more. This is over two hours, so you might want to bite it off on a few chunks, or on a long drive. Thanks to our sponsors at Verso. Check out Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of WWI to the Streets of Today by Anna Feigenbaum. And support your (favorite?) left-wing podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig!

Journalist Ryan Cooper talks about the new paper he wrote with Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project, a new left-wing think tank. "Foreclosed: Destruction of Black Wealth During the Obama Presidency" details how the Wall Street-induced foreclosure epidemic wiped out huge swaths of black wealth — and how Obama could have taken multiple actions to save most homes but did not. Check out the report and this article about it. Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books. Check out Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy by Lynne Segal. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig.

The prospect of nuclear war with North Korea sits near the top of the list of things that have been unthinkably bad about Donald Trump’s presidency. But the conflict with North Korea didn’t begin with Trump. It’s critical that we understand the Koreas and their historical context right now. Journalist Tim Shorrock breaks it all down — North Korea, South Korea, the role of the US, and others — from World War II to the present. And he argues that peace is possible, but it can only achieved through engagement between North and South, not through bellicose US intervention. Thanks to Verso Books for their support. Check out Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of WWI to the Streets of Today by Anna Feigenbaum at versobooks.com/books/2109-tear-gas. And please support us with $ at Patreon.com/TheDig.

Author and economist Dr. Jack Rasmus dissects the Trump/Ryan/McConnell Tax (Cut) Plan, that he says will only increase financial instability and economic fragility. It is neoliberalism on steroids. Then, Professor Victor Pickard discusses FCC Chair Ajit Pai's intention to repeal net neutrality protections that will threaten public access to information by limiting content and speed. He's hopeful that massive resistance can push back against this radical corporate agenda.