This episode, originally published in June 2024 only for subscribers, is crucial backdrop to this Sunday's (23 Feb 2025) snap elections in Germany. 

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On German political derangement.

Independent researcher and writer Gregor Baszak joins us to talk about German centrism being squeezed under pressure from both left and right — Sahra Wagenknecht and the AFD. Meanwhile the German economy is getting squeezed between the US and Russia, and NATO pressures Germany to up its defence spending.  

Is German public life remilitarising? 

What are the prospects for Sahra Wagenknecht’s new ‘left-conservative’ politics? 

What was the original political vision behind the Nordstream 2 pipeline? 

Why are Marine Le Pen and Giorgia Meloni trying to carve the AFD out of pan-European national-populist cooperation? 

Where does Germany now stand in relation to the Ukraine War? 

Links:

On the world under Trump, and British responses. 

Tim Pendry, author of the Unstable Times substack, as well as an international affairs consultant, talks to Alex H and Lee Jones about the world under Trump II, the massive shifts underway, and his own policy work with the Workers Party of Britain.

How has intra-bourgeois struggle shaped the past decades in politics?

What is "American imperial nationalism (MAGA)" plus a "real-estate negotiation style"?

Who are the winners & losers of a "rational" return to classical great-power, sphere-of-influence politics?

Why are the UK's tensions and problems an extreme version of what may soon apply to any ostensible American ally?

What is the Workers Party of Britain's pitch and strategy?

Are the bulk of British people really "left on economics, right on culture", and how does the WPB try to appeal to workers?

What are the practical challenges of building and organising a new party?

Links:

Manifesto – Britain Deserves Better, Workers Party of Britain

The Foundations of the Liberal Polycrisis, Unstable Times, Tim Pendry

Taking Trump Seriously, Unstable Times, Tim Pendry

Trumpism and Geo-Politics, Unstable Times, Tim Pendry

On European decline and inertia.

[For full episode: patreon.com/bungacast]

Anton Jäger is back, talking to Alex and George about Belgium's new right-wing government, American hyperpolitics, and the lack of a European future.

The radical right has prevailed in Belgium, despite having factors that should impede this, like higher union density, lower inequality and so on. Why?

Why is the US particularly 'hyperpolitical'?

Are those who say hyperpolitics is over correct?

Why is Europe now a pale imitation of authoritarians in the East and the unbridled capitalism to its West?

Is it Europe's capitalists – not its workers or pensioners – who are in need of strict market discipline?

Links:

Things Are Terrible in Europe, and They’re Only Going to Get Worse, Anton Jäger, NYT

Goodbye, ‘Resistance.’ The Era of Hyperpolitics Is Over, Ross Barkan, NYT

My Country Shows What Europe Has Become, Anton Jäger, NYT

Hyperpolitics in America, Anton Jäger, New Left Review 

Is Trump 2 the End of ‘Neoliberal Order Breakdown Syndrome’?, Lee Jones, The North Star

/454/ The Last Man at the Euro Tango ft. Michael Wilkinson

On David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity (1989).

[Patreon Exclusive - subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast]

We focus in particular on Part III: The Experience of Space and Time – and reflect on the general themes of this section. The central question is:

How do we rescue a sense of ‘place’ – in a political, forward-looking and future-oriented way – after the age of globalisation?

The age of globalisation generated and emphasised placelessness. But if oppositional struggles need to start from a definite place, where is that?

And how do they not get restricted by that same sense of place – that is, not becoming particular, nostalgic or backward-looking?

And if walls are now being put up, halting globalisation, then does this provide a more propitious scenario for struggle?

On Syria, the fall of Assad, and nationalism in the Middle-East.

[Patreon Exclusive]

Historian Djene Bajalan talks to Alex about a major rearrangement in the Levant. We discuss:

Who are Syria's new rulers HTS, and what is their vision – if any?

Did geopolitics really determine the fall of Assad and the Ba'ath Party?

How HTS's victory is so profoundly different from Islamism in Iran 1979

Why 2025 finally closes the book on the Arab Spring – and on secular Arab nationalism

Were the Kurds wrong to rely on US protection?

And in the full episode we continue by discussing...

Is Turkey the big winner of the decade?

What the Left gets wrong on nationalism

Civic versus ethnic nationalism, revisited

What was democratic, liberal and revolutionary about nationalism – and whether it can be again

How conservatives recuperate left-wing ideas, which were always conservative from the start

Links:

Djene's writing at Jacobin

/95/ The Fall of Rojava? ft. Dani Ellis / Alexander Norton

On disinformation, NATO vs Russia, terrorism + more.

[Full episode for subscribers only. Go to patreon.com/bungacast]

We look back at a turbulent last month or so with the help of guest and "disinformation bot" Tara McCormack. We put it all in the context of Trump's return, post-neoliberalism and deglobalisation.

00:13:52 – Jacob Siegel  talks to Alex about Meta's policy U-turn on censorship and what it means for the public-private partnership on digital surveillance.

00:50:11 – How will European powers react to the US's relative withdrawal of its protection? Will France, Britain and Germany double-down on the Ukraine war?

01:06:21 – Why is Luigi Mangione not understood as 'terrorism' while the Magdeburg Christmas market attack is? What drives terrorism and is that even the right term to understand explosive anomie?

 01:15:24 – Letters to the Editors: on the global radical right, and Trump's foreign policy

Links:

/369/ Information-War and War-Politics ft. Jacob Siegel

/34/ War Propaganda ft. Tara McCormack

To the Finland Station, Branko Milanovic, Substack

Trumpism & Geopolitics, Tim Pendry, Substack

Class Patricide, Dustin Guastella, Damage

On the martial law crisis in South Korea.

For the full episode: patreon.com/bungacast

Jamie Doucette, who researches contemporary political economy and Korea's development at the University of Manchester, talks to Alex and George about December 2024's coup attempt and the past 50 years in the Republic of Korea.

 Why is South Korea western capitalism's best propaganda tool?

Did Yoon Suk Yeol want to institute a dictatorship? Did he want to militarise all of society, or only politics?

How "unreconstructed" is the South Korean right? Do they dream of dicatorship?

What was the Park Chung-hee regime of the 60s and 70s like? What is authoritarian developmentalism?

Why did S. Korea democratise? Did the workers win it or did elites concede it?

What is the post-developmental state, how neoliberal is ROK, and what does the left-right spectrum look like now?

What was the Candlelight movement of 2016?

Links:

 /420/ Fertility Freefall & Gender Strife in South Korea ft. Hyeyoung Woo

The Postdevelopmental State: Dilemmas of Economic Democratization in Contemporary South Korea, Jamie Doucette (OPEN ACCESS)

The Logic of Compressed Modernity, Chang Kyung-Sup 

On Trump's foreign policy, the 2nd time round.

Historian and podcaster Daniel Bessner joins Alex Hochuli and contributing editor Lee Jones to ask how this era of rot and decay will proceed under Trump II, from Ukraine to China and beyond. We discuss:

Will we see "America First transactionalism"?

Does Trump have a capable cadre to bend the state to his will?

What will Trump’s relationship be to the deep state?

How important are generational splits in attitudes to the US empire?

Will there be a peace deal in Ukraine? Where does that leave 'Atlanticism'?

Is confrontation with China baked in?

Is the Middle East the key to world peace?

Links:

Empire’s Critic: The Worlds of Noam Chomsky, Daniel Bessner, The Nation

American Prestige podcast

EU blows hot and cold over Trump, Benoît Bréville, Le Monde diplomatique

America First, Russia, & Ukraine, Lt. General (Ret.) Keith Kellogg, Fred Fleitz, AFPI

/171/ Fukuyama & the End of History ft. Daniel Bessner 

/142/ Dollar Empire (2) ft. Daniel Bessner

On The Fall of Public Man.

[Patreon Exclusive]

We continue working through the 2024/25 syllabus and the first theme, The Future of Place. We ask is politics possible without a sense of place. Here we discuss chapter 13, "Community becomes uncivilised", and deal with listener questions.

How does the changed relationship between public and private impact notions of community and of place?

How does the maintenance of impersonal relations signify 'civility'?

Is impersonality really the summation of all the worst evils of industrial capitalism?

What is wrong with yearning for community, or specifically “love of the ghetto, especially the middle-class ghetto”

How does "fratricide" become "logical" when people use intimate relations as a basis for social relations? Why is fratricide "system-maintaining"?

Links:

2024/25 Bungacast Syllabus (with links to readings)

Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence, Christina B. Hanhardt

The Making of a New Political Subject, George Hoare, Café americain

On President Jimmy Carter's responsibility for neoliberalism.

[Patreon Exclusive]

Writer and historian Tim Barker talks to Alex Hochuli and contributing editor Alex Gourevitch about the former president's life and legacy.

What do people get wrong about Carter? Was Carter, not Reagan, the start of neoliberalism?

How is Carter's much-admired 'decency' of a piece with his neoliberalism?

What is 'austerity' and how does it relate to questions of public and private, vice and virtue?

What was the alternative to the neoliberal pivot in the late 1970s?

How did the appointment of Fed chairman Volcker change the entire world?

Did Carter set the script for the Democrats, of being 'noble losers' (but actually on the side of the winners)?

Links:

Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024, Tim Barker, Origins of Our Time

Weapons of the Week newsletter

On neoliberalism and the Cold War: /276/ Broken Promises ft. Fritz Bartel

Other biographical/obituary episodes:

Silvio Berlusconi: An Oral History

/293/ Goodbye 20th Century (RIP Gorby)

/410/ Reading Club: Deutscher's Stalin

/435/ Reading Club: Stalin's General – Winning WWII