Remaking Radicalism with Dan Berger, Emily Hobson and Barbara Smith

In this conversation we talk to Zeyad el Nabolsy about two of his recent pieces on Marxism-Leninism in the East African context. One piece is entitled, “Lenin in East Africa: Abdul Rahman Mohamed Babu and Dani Wadada Nabudere” from The Future of Lenin: Power, Politics, and Revolution in the Twenty-First Century  and the other is “Questions from the Dar es Salaam Debates” which is in the book Revolutionary Movements in Africa: An Untold Story which was recently released from Pluto Press.

Zeyad El Nabolsy is an Assistant Professor at York University, he has written extensively on African philosophy, and we hope to have many more conversations with him in the future. I will note as a caveat again that this is one of the conversations that we recorded prior to October 7th so if it feels like Palestine, or the Congo or Haiti or Sudan or even more discussion on Fanon might be meaningful for us to engage with in this discussion given recent events, there is a reason that we do not and that the context that we do discuss in passing are the anticolonial coup d’etats in West Africa. 

Zeyad has done some interesting work on Edward Said and some work on western philosophy and Islam so hopefully we can have another conversation with him soon that is able to weave together some more current events with his historical and philosophical research interests. Nonetheless, this is a very interesting discussion and highlights some East African Marxists that we should be more familiar with given the importance of their thought and their political formulations, but who are often not well known outside of circles who are more knowledgeable about African Marxism or African Marxism-Leninism.

In this discussion we do talk about East African-Marxism Leninism, Pan Africanism, African Socialism, and the famous Dar Es Salaam Debates. We also talk about Dani Nabudere’s work on imperialism, taking Lenin’s theory of imperialism and updating and applying it to the African context. There’s much more to say, but we’ll leave for the conversation itself.

As always to support our work become a patron of the show. It’s the best way you can ensure that we’re able to continue bringing you livestreams which we do multiple times each week on our YouTube page, that we are able to bring you podcast episodes, and of course our study groups as well. You can support us at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism for as little as $1 a month.

Aidan Elias and Jared Ware co-produced this episode.

Sources/Links:

“Lenin in East Africa: Abdul Rahman Mohamed Babu and Dani Wadada Nabudere” from The Future of Lenin: Power, Politics, and Revolution in the Twenty-First Century  

“Questions from the Dar es Salaam Debates” from Revolutionary Movements in Africa: An Untold Story

Zeyad El Nabolsy's PhilPapers site (where you can download free pdfs of his pieces)

For this episode we interview Ernest McMillan to discuss his memoir Standing: One Man's Odyssey During the Turbulent '60s which came out last summer. McMillan grew up in the highly segregated heart of Dallas, Texas. We talk to him about his childhood experiences within his segregated Black community, and his experiences organizing against white supremacy in Dallas and across the South with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). 

McMillan’s story is one of the power of organizing, but also of fierce state repression, police raids, trumped up charges, and a j ourney to find refuge in West Africa, time in the underground, political imprisonment, and prison organizing. There are many more aspects of his life story of course, but those are some of the ones he discusses in Standing and in this episode as well.

A couple of notes, McMillan offers a few words on solidarity with Palestinians, and on the importance of this today. This conversation was recorded in September, and I say that just to underscore the long history of solidarity between SNCC members and the Palestinian Liberation struggle. If we had recorded it after October I’m sure we would’ve talked about that solidarity in more detail, but I’ll just say it’s a common thread that has come up in most of our conversations with SNCC veterans.

We do have a number of new episodes on their way soon. I apologize to the audio listeners that I have been a little busier on the video side in recent months, but Aidan Elias - who co-produced this episode - is helping to produce and release the audio content we have and more is on its way soon.

We encourage folks to pick up Ernest’s book to learn more about his life and political odyssey.

To support our work please consider contributing to our patreon. You can do so for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Other conversations we've had with SNCC veterans or about SNCC (or SNCC members) in some capacity. 

In this episode we speak to Pulitzer Prize winning composer and musician Henry Threadgill and the co-author of his autobiography Brent Hayes Edwards. The book we discuss, which was published last year is entitled Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music.

Henry Threadgill was born in Chicago in 1944. He is one of the most significant and innovative composers of the 20th and 21st Century. In addition to being an award winning composer is an amazing saxophonist and flautist. He also is known for his percussion work, in particular the invention of the hubkaphone, a marimba like instrument made out of hub caps. He has been a leader or co-leader of the bands Air, Ensemble Double UP, Make a Move, The Henry Threadgill Ensemble, The Henry Threadgill Sextett, The Situation Society Dance Band, Very Very Circus, X-75, Zooid and 14 or 15 Kestra: Agg and probably some others I didn’t track down.  If we went into all the bands and groups Henry was a part of the list would be three times as long. In recent years Threadgill has established a completely new chromatic system for musical composition outside the confines of diatonic harmony. In 2016, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for In For a Penny, In for a Pound, an album he composed for his sextet, Zooid. He currently lives in New York.

Brent Hayes Edwards is a Professor at the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University and the Director of the Scholars-in-Residence Program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library.

So why this episode, it’s a bit outside of most of our content here. Perhaps the closest things we’ve done to a conversation like this would be the dialogue we hosted between Fred Moten & Hanif Abdurraqib or the interview we did with Dionne Brand last year. But although I didn’t ask it directly, the guiding question that animated this interview and engagement with Henry and Brent’s book for me was: what insights might a truly revolutionary composer have for aspiring revolutionary organizers or for cultural workers seeking to maximize the revolutionary possibilities of their work? 

We hope you enjoy this conversation and that it proves as meaningful to you as it was to us. It was a tremendous honor to sit down with Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes Edwards to discuss their beautiful book which is available now everywhere.

Thank you to Aidan Elias for co-producing this episode.

If you appreciate the work that we do, as always you can support our work for as little as $1 per month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. Our podcast is fully supported by individual contributions of folks like you and we encourage you to join the amazing folks who make it possible for us to bring you these conversations on a weekly basis. 

In this episode we welcome Chris Gilbert back to the podcast to discuss his new book, Commune or Nothing! Venezuela’s Communal Movement and its Socialist Project. 

Chris Gilbert is a professor of political studies at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela and creator and co-host of Escuela de Cuadros, a Marxist educational television program and podcast. Gilbert is co-author with Cira Pascual Marquina of Venezuela, The Present as Struggle (Monthly Review, 2020). 

We’ve hosted three previous discussions with Chris Gilbert, one related to an essay that is a chapter of this book, which discusses the theoretical work behind seeing communes as building blocks of a socialist metabolism. The two others with Cira Pascual Marquina were on the book they co-authored.

I just want to make a note, that we recorded this conversation back in September, prior to October 7th, which would’ve definitely warranted some attention in the conversation particularly as Gilbert talked about sanctions as total war and viewing Venezuela as a concentration camp, remarks that resonate with the Palestinian experience currently. This was also recorded prior to some of the recent developments in Venezuela including - among many other things - the Essequibo referendum, Biden threatening harsher sanctions against Venezuela, and the arrest of 32 people in alleged assassination plots. The best place as always to stay abreast of developments in Venezuela is to follow and support the work of venezuelanalysis.com. 

We talk about many things in this conversation, but a few I will highlight are Gilbert’s theoretical work, building on the work of feminist social reproduction theory, Marx’s theory of value, to put forth the concept of directly social labor as a key to the emancipatory possibilities of the commune. Gilbert also shares some of the contributions of African Maroon communities and indigenous communal practices to the development of Venezuela’s socialist vision.

We also talk about why for Gilbert the commune represents a recovery of Marx, in particular the romantic Marx who saw revolutionary potential among the Iroquois Confederacy, Algerian peasants and Russian peasant communes. Along the way we talk about a commune that is geographically the size of Manhattan and discuss currency experiments, communal banking efforts, and the process of “de-alienation” that Gilbert sees in the commune.

The book is out now from Monthly Review press, I highly recommend it, it was one of our favorite books that we read in 2023. 

And if you like what we do please support us at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. We do have a study group that starts for patrons tomorrow night at 7:30 PM ET on February 8th studying the counterinsurgency manual, so this is a final call for anyone interested in joining us for that.

Links:

Purchase the book from Monthly Review Press.

Previous conversation on a chapter in this book

Part 1 & Part 2 of our discussion with Chris and Cira

Aidan Elias co-produced this episode.

For this episode I’m joined by Haydar of The Resistance Report which is a podcast that was launched after October 7th by a Palestinian news organization known as the Al Falasteniyeh Media Network or AFMN.

In this discussion we talk to Haydar about AFMN, their approach, their media work including The Resistance Report, and their efforts to uplift the analyses of Palestinians from Palestine to those in the diaspora. We talk a little bit about their analysis of the resistance’s position and of the unfolding genocidal depravity of the zionist occupation in Palestine. We talk about the suppression of AFMN as an outlet which has attempted to set up offices and develop correspondents in Gaza. We also get into a little bit of a discussion of episode four of theirs which is entitled Al-Araj’s Echo, Guiding Modern Resistance, which highlights the life and contributions of Bassel al-Araj to the Palestinian Resistance.

We encourage folks to check out their work for yourselves and if you like what they’re doing support their work. We will include links to listen and support them in the show notes.

And of course if you want to support our work we have a study group that starts next week, we’ll come together at 7:30 PM ET on Thursday nights to discuss the Counterinsurgency Field Manual. If you become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month you can join us for that study group or just contribute and make this show possible along with the work on our YouTube channel. 

Now here is our interview with Haydar of The Resistance Report  

For this week’s episode we interview Leila Shomali and Lara Kilani

Leila Shomali is a Palestinian PhD candidate in International Law at Maynooth University Ireland and a member of the Good Shepherd Collective.

Lara Kilani is a Palestinian-American researcher, PhD student, and is also a member of the Good Shepherd Collective.

We interviewed them on January 12th to talk about their recent piece “Anti-Zionism As Decolonisation” which is published in the brand new debut physical edition of Ebb Magazine. We will also link a web version of the article in the show notes. I will also say quickly that just recently we hosted a conversation with Louis Allday on our YouTube channel that goes over some of the other topics and analyses in that issue of Ebb Magazine. I highly recommend it and I actually bought a couple copies so that I could share it with others. 

In this conversation we talk about both the terms anti-zionism and decolonization which have each faced their own forms of elite capture and distortion. Along the way we talk about settler colonialism, the Oslo Accords, NGO’s, the limits of human rights discourse and international law for Palestinians, the problems of neoliberal identity reductionism, and why as Lara and Leila write, “the caretakers of anti-zionist thought are indigenous communities resisting colonial erasure.”

I very much enjoyed this discussion and encourage people to check out and support the work of the Good Shepherd Collective which Leila and Lara are members of, and which they talk about through the conversation as well. We will link their work in the show notes.

Leila and Lara reference a number of articles in their discussion and we will link those in the show notes.

We do have a study group starting next week, where we will go over the US military counterinsurgency field manual Thursdays at 7:30 PM ET. If you are interested in that I put a link in our show notes. It is for our supporters whether you support us on patreon on or Youtube. And if you want to stay up to date on all of our work and support our work the best way to do that is to become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism 

"Anti-Zionism As Decolonisation" (their article the episode is based on)

"Jewish Settlers Stole My House. It's Not My Fault They're Jewish" by Mohammed El-Kurd

When Does a Settler Become a Native? Reflections of the Colonial Roots of Citizenship in Equatorial and South Africa by Mahmoud Madani

Guide for Jewish Anti-Zionist Allyship

Steven Salaita "A Postmortem on Bernie Sanders and Palestine"

Defund Racism (includes their report on Regavim)

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Vladimir Lenin. A couple months ago we had the pleasure of speaking with Paul Le Blanc, the author of a new book entitled Lenin: Responding to Catastrophe, Forging Revolution. 

Paul Le Blanc is an activist dating all the way back to Students for a Democratic Society or SDS in the 1960’s. He is also an acclaimed historian who teaches at La Roche University in Pennsylvania. He is the author of too many books to name, but several on Lenin, Trotsky, CLR James, Rosa Luxemburg and other revolutionaries and movements.

We talk to Le Blanc about Lenin’s flexibility, his understanding of Marxism as not a dogma, but a guide to action, his belief that ordinary people could and must change the world, and his childhood. We also get into the concept of the United Front, Lenin’s experiences working with individuals who did not share his ideology, his understanding of dialectics, and his fierce commitment to struggle and to constant learning from struggle. Paul shares some thoughts on Lenin’s analysis of imperialism, his concept of revolutionary defeatism, and the question of authoritarianism, bureaucratization, and democracy through examples in Lenin’s life and leadership as well as what he advocated on these issues at the end of his life.

We close with some thoughts from Le Blanc on today and the type of approach he thinks organizations and parties need to undertake in today’s world in order to change it once again before it’s too late.

We deeply appreciate Paul Le Blanc for taking the time to talk to us about his book which is available now from Pluto Press. 

We would like to thank Aidan Elias who did the lion’s share of the production work on this episode. 

If you appreciate the work that we do, the best way to support the show, to stay updated on our study groups, follow any writings Josh or I may publish, and keep track of our work on both YouTube and our audio podcast feed is to become a patron of the show. You can join that for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. We have a new study group that will be announced this week, so keep an eye out for that.

This is the conclusion of our 2-part conversation with Michael Hardt on his recently published book The Subversive Seventies. Part 1 is here.

In this conversation we talk about the turn among management and the ruling class in the 1970’s away from a politics of mediation and discuss the various ways that movements in the 1970’s sought to deal with this shift in the political terrain. We talk about the false problem of the so-called debate between non-violence and violence. We discuss various movements including East Asian Anti-Japan Armed Front, Weather Underground, The Black Panther Party, and the Fatsa Commune. 

A reminder that this conversation - like part 1 - was recorded in September and this is why we con’t reference some more recent events like the Palestinian resistance and Israel’s western backed genocidal war on Palestinians. 

We also have a little bit of a discussion of Hardt’s use of the notion of strategic multiplicity and the idea of non-priority between different forms of oppression within movements. 

Lastly I know I acknowledged it last time, but I do mention Sekou Odinga in this episode, who as you all know passed away just recently. Again may he rest in power.

For the month of January we’ve released three livestreams on our YouTube page. One with Josh Davidson and Eric King on Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners. Another is a wide-ranging discussion with Abdaljawad Omar on The Making of Palestinian Resistance and a conversation with Louis Allday on the debut issue of Ebb Magazine he edited, entitled “For Palestine.” Also on Sunday the 21st we have a livestream with Shireen Al-Adeimi on Yemen. Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel to follow our work there.

We are just winding down our Sylvia Wynter study group and a new study group will be launching in February so keep an eye out for that. 

The best way to support the show, to stay updated on our study groups, follow any writings Josh or I may publish, and keep track of our work on both YouTube and our audio podcast feed is to become a patron of the show. You can join that for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. 

This is part 1 of a 2-part conversation on Michael Hardt’s recent book The Subversive Seventies. 

Michael Hardt teaches political theory in the Literature Program at Duke University. He is co-author, with Antonio Negri, of the Empire trilogy and, most recently, Assembly. He is co-director with Sandro Mezzadra of The Social Movements Lab. 

A couple of things I need to say up front. This conversation was recorded in September and initially would have been released in October, but obviously our programming took a quick turn to solidarity work on the Palestinian struggle in light of those events. As I mentioned in the intro to our most recent episode we will continue to do that solidarity work primarily though not exclusively through our YouTube page for a while just so that we can get some of these other conversations out on the podcast feed.

Nonetheless, this conversation and the book and the problems it poses I think are as interesting and relevant today as they were in September. I mostly note it's recording date for two reasons, one it will be glaring that we don’t talk at all about events in Palestine in the conversation. The second reason I mention the date is that in the intervening months Michael Hardt’s long-time collaborator Antonio Negri passed away. Negri was of course a very serious and renowned political philosopher, militant organizer, and a political prisoner, coming out of some of the very movements that Michael Hardt discusses in this book. May he rest in peace and our condolences to Michael for the loss of his friend and collaborator.

This discussion is about Michael Hardt’s book The Subversive Seventies which was one of the more interesting books we read last year on the podcast. And we would definitely recommend it both for its value as a historical text as well as for the theoretical work Hardt is engaged in in the text. As is laid out quite well I think on the publisher’s website, it is a book that attempts to reconstruct the history of revolutionary politics in the 1970’s, to systematically approach political movements of the seventies within a global framework of analysis, and to bring together a wide range of political movements from the decade highlighting the ways movements in different countries resonated with and were inspired by one another.

Part 2 of the conversation will be released this coming week. 

I would also be remiss if I didn’t say rest in power to Sekou Odinga who passed away earlier this week. We hope to be able to do more in honor of him and as a tribute to his legacy in the coming weeks and years. 

If you appreciate the work we do, our work is only possible through the support of our patrons. You can support our show for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

This is a lightly edited version of a livestream we hosted back on December 13th with Steve Salaita.

We’ll include a link to that livestream for folks who want to watch the conversation, which is one of my favorites we’ve hosted since we launched our Youtube Channel as a companion with this audio podcast. 

Steven Salaita is an educator and the author or editor of eight books. His written work includes Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine, Uncivil Rites, Israel's Dead Soul, and Anti-Arab Racism in the USA: Where it Comes From and What it Means for Politics. 

His forthcoming book An Honest Living: A Memoir of Peculiar Itineraries will be released in March 2024.

In this episode, we discussed several of Salaita's recent interventions regarding the Palestinian resistance and Israel’s genocidal retaliation. All of the articles we discuss can be found on his website: stevesalaita.com. Because it was a livestream, audience members were also able to ask questions and Steve was gracious enough to answer several of those as well.

A quick update, in order to catch up on some of the fifteen audio podcasts we’ve recorded but haven’t released yet we will focus on editing and releasing those over the next couple of months. So if you haven’t yet make sure you also subscribe to our YouTube channel, a link to that is in the show notes. Over there, there are a number of conversations we haven’t converted to audio yet, and we will continue to host more livestreams there in the coming weeks as well.

If you want one central place to stay abreast of all of our work, become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month. You will get an email with every new episode, new livestream, new study group, or new publication that Josh or I put out and it is the best way to support our work and keep it coming. You can sign up for that at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism