Mexican elections and radicals on the run
Sociologist Edwin Ackerman on the Mexican elections, and the reasons for AMLO’s immense popularity (Sidecar piece here) • Joel Whitney, author of Flights, on radical and revolutionaries’ battles with the CIA
Behind the News
12:00 PM (Noon) Pacific Time: Thursdays
Host Doug Henwood covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.
Ruling parties take a hit in India and South Africa
Siddhartha Deb, author of Twilight Prisoners, on the Hindu right and its poor showing in India’s elections • Sean Jacobs, New School prof and publisher of Africa Is a Country, on the ANC’s poor showing in South Africa’s elections
The Constitutional fetish
Aziz Rana, author of The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document that Fails Them, on how our founding document constrains democracy
Fundraising special: Mouin Rabbani on Israel–Palestine
Mouin Rabbani on the war on Gaza, and the broader context of the Israel–Palestine conflict
Fundraising special: a rare resignation on principle
Annelle Sheline, who’d been on BtN three times before, on her resignation from the State Department as a protest against the war on Gaza (her statement is here).
Fundraising special: the Alabama ruling class confronts the UAW, the white supremacist wing of neoliberalism
Derek Seidman looks into the Alabama corporate elite and its terror at the incursion of the UAW (articles here and here) • Quinn Slobodian on Peter Brimelow and the white supremacist wing of neoliberalism
Criminalizing protest, exploiting transphobia
Adam Federman on the criminalization of protest (article here) • Kay Gabriel on how the right is using the anti-trans panic to make war on public schools and teachers’ unions (article here)
Professor silenced for controversial article, the lingering effects of antebellum Southern society
Jodi Dean talks about being suspended from teaching at Hobart and William Smith Colleges for writing an article the administration didn’t like • Keri Leigh Merritt on the lingering effects of antebellum Southern society (article here) • excerpts from an interview first broadcast in June 2023 with Samuel Bazzi, co-author of this paper, on the effects … Continued
Yanis Varoufakis on being banned in Germany, and on the new post-capitalist world of technofeudalism
Yanis Varoufakis talks about being banned in Germany for supporting the Palestinian cause, and then about the transformation he analyzes in his new book, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism
The World Court, and the world of Jelly Roll Morton
Heidi Matthews on the World Court and the cases against Israel pending there • Elijah Wald, author of Jelly Roll Blues, on Jelly Roll Morton and the hidden history of early blues