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Power. What is it? Political theorist Robert Dahl gave one example. He said, “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that he would not otherwise do.” Why is it that often that those who are on top are the wrong people? The high rollers and the nabobs lust for power behind a smokescreen of homilies about doing good. Today, more and more power is concentrated in the hands of the few, thus weakening democracy. Who wields it? How is it allocated? What are effective ways to ensure power is not abused and serves the societal greater good? How can we organize and protect ourselves from those seeking personal power and profit? How can we get the right people on top?

In times of war the corporate media play a salient role in shaping public opinion. There are worthy and unworthy victims. Muslims, Arabs, and Iranians generally fall into that latter category whereas Washington and its allies are worthy victims that we support and empathize with. The current phase of the Gaza war did not begin on October 7 as the media repeat ad nauseum. But to dig into the underlying causes and provide context and history rarely occurs because it would undermine the dominant propaganda. Thus the Norah O’Donnells, Wolf Blitzers,  Lester Holts and other corporate news anchors don’t question the embedded assumptions and simply mimic, with few exceptions, the dominant official line. Interviewed by David Barsamian.

Zion is the name of a hill in ancient Jerusalem. The Jewish nationalist movement coined the term Zionism in the 1890s. Zionism got the big power backing it was looking for when Britain issued the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917. Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary stated: “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” This declaration became the major legal cornerstone for Zionist claims to Palestine. Two issues complicated things. At the time, 90% of Palestine's population was Arab Muslim and Christian, and only 10% Jewish. And the British were signing away land that was not theirs. Recorded at NYU.

Indigenous communities are among the poorest in the U.S. This is one of many persistent symptoms of the colonial relationship imposed by force upon Indigenous peoples. As famed historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz says, “Neither arcane colonial laws nor the historical trauma of genocide simply disappear with time and certainly not when conditions of life and consciousness perpetuate them.” From the earliest days of colonial settlement, a theme of eliminating Indians in the name of expansion and settler opportunity became embedded into the U.S. political system and culture. The violence unleashed on the largely defenseless Indian nations had few parallels in history. Treaties and policies involving Indigenous peoples have consistently been designed to disadvantage them, locking them into suppressed social status and codifying their dependence on the U.S. government. Recorded at Bowdoin College.

Blaming the victim is as old as the hills. It occurs when the victim of a crime or tragedy is held at fault for the harm that befell them. In other words, you had it coming to you. The great scholar Edward Said ruefully remarked that the Palestinians were the victims of the victim hence it was very difficult for them to generate support. Said quoted Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the “conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion…than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea.” From the Palestinian perspective in the wake of the Holocaust, they were paying for the crimes of Europeans. Interviewed by David Barsamian. Recorded at Boulder Public Library's Canyon Theater.

After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the term international rules-based order would be repeated by Washington officials almost daily to describe Moscow's action. Then a curious thing happened when Israel invaded Gaza in 2023. The term virtually disappeared as the U.S. sought to protect its close ally Israel. But the U.S. itself has a long record of violating the international rules-based order with its invasions, occupations, coups, assassinations, sanctions and UN vetoes. Compliant corporate media consistently fail to point out this brazen hypocrisy. Since the leader of the so-called free world and its allies are not held to account the rules-based order is in total disorder. From Washington’s perspective, the rules are for thee but not for me. Recorded at Socialism 2024.

A myth is a story passed down through generations that attempts to explain the origins of something. The foundational myth of Israel was “a land without people for a people without a land.” That myth had profound consequences that reverberate today. There were people there - the Palestinians. Such myths are characteristic of settler colonial societies such as South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S. Sure there were a few primitive savages but they had to give way to superior beings. John Kennedy famously said: “We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier. The pioneers gave up their safety, their comfort, and sometimes their lives to build our new west.” Kennedy did not mention the great Indigenous nations that were slaughtered by the colonizers. We must deconstruct the myths and reveal the realities behind them. Recorded at Socialism 2024.

As a kid, did you ever play "What If"? Like, what if the Kennedys, Dr. King and Malcolm X weren't gunned down in the 1960s? Like, what if the votes in Florida were counted and Al Gore won the 2000 election? What if the U.S. did not support the jihadis in Afghanistan? What if the U.S. did not invade Iraq? History, the world would have been very different. And on a personal level: what if your partner didn't take that job baking bread you never would have met? What if you got stuck in traffic and missed your job interview? You get the point. Why do things happen? Random chance events can divert our lives and change everything. Social scientist Brian Klaas examines this phenomenon and the chaos it can sow. Recorded at Carleton College.

Fascism is being mentioned more and more in the context of U.S. and European elections. It is a term that is bandied about often rather loosely. Orwell wrote that it is understood to be "something not desirable." But it is a complex political and economic synergy that has racism, force and nationalism as its animating matrix. It involves heavy doses of propaganda and media manipulation. Mussolini, in one of his more honest moments said, "Fascism should be more properly called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power." For Americans it is universally associated with despotic regimes in other countries. It can't happen here. Huey Long, the self-styled populist governor of Louisiana, once warned, "If fascism ever comes to America, it will come wrapped in an American flag."

Barbara Ehrenreich was a renowned social critic, journalist, feminist and author. She was born in Butte, Montana and studied chemistry at Reed College in Oregon and later received a Ph.D. in cellular immunology at Rockefeller University in New York. But she left a possible career in science and teaching to become a seasoned muckraker in the tradition of Ida B. Wells and Lincoln Steffens. She wrote many books. Her articles appeared in Ms., Mother Jones, and The Progressive. She wrote incisively and with compassion about working people and the hardships they endure. To write about the underclass she went undercover and took low-wage jobs such as hotel maid, cleaning houses, nursing home aide and waitressing. Through her work, she made the invisible working poor visible. She was long active in the DSA, Democratic Socialists of America. In 2012 she founded the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, seeking to place the crisis of poverty and economic insecurity at the center of the national political conversation. Her best-known book Nickel and Dimed, a classic in social justice literature, has sold millions of copies. She passed away on September 1, 2022. Katha Pollitt in The Nation wrote “Barbara accomplished so much, but what I love most about her work is that it was never boilerplate. She always found a way to take her argument to a deeper level. And there was always empathy—for the people who are overlooked, whose struggles are disregarded, who have to fight for food and shelter and a halfway decent life, for every shred of dignity and recognition.”