We deal with your questions, comments and criticisms from the past month or so. Key issues this month are:

What are the wrongs of the postmodern right – aand left?

Will the civilisational paradigm become hegemonic?

Is Trump's foreign policy techno-populist?

Whether, and how, to protest anti-immigration policing

To defend or to smash the professions?

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

On anti-racism, communism, and philosophy.

Alex Gourevitch talks to political philosopher Paul Gomberg about his original and deep Marxist arguments for what makes racism wrong, why racism cannot be eradicated without overcoming capitalism, and the limits of many contemporary anti-racist arguments.

What does it mean to "alienate" race?

What is the harm in racism? How does it harm everyone, not just its obvious victims?

Why does Gomberg argue that can racism cannot be overcome in capitalist society?

Has official racism been replaced by official anti-racism in the neoliberal era?

What does it mean to understand anti-racism as communism?

How did Gomberg's communist militancy impact his philosophy?

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

Anti-Racism as Communism, Paul Gomberg, Bloomsbury

How to Make Opportunity Equal: Race and Contributive Justice, Paul Gomberg, Blackwell

On postmodern conservatives.

Matt McManus talks to Alex and George about a Right increasingly shaped by the parameters of postmodern culture – and his Damage article on this.

Who are the key thinkers of postmodern conservatism?

Does truth matter anymore?

Is "flooding the zone" an act of post-truth politics?

Does all that is solid melt into advertising – and is it Charlie Kirk's fault?

Is postmodern conservatism an adequate response the dissolution of the traditional “sources of the self”?

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

Conservativism as Postmodernism, Matt McManus, Damage

Why only Socialism can redeem Conservatism, Maurice Glassman, Together For The Common Good

On Trump and Rubio, Venezuela and Cuba.

Writer Juan David Rojas talks to Alex and Lee about the abduction of Maduro, what next for Venezuela, and Trump's "hemispheric" foreign policy.

What is the Trump administration's policy toward Latin America?

Is the attack on Venezuela a war for oil? Or a war vs 'narcoterrorism'?

What are the internal divisions in Venezuela, and could it fall into civil war?

What are the armed groups in the country?

Who's calling the shots in Washington: neocons or paleocons?

Is the US open-border policy for Cubans going to cause a rift within the Trump admin?

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

How Maduro Sealed His Own Fate, Juan David Rojas, Compact

Atlas Shrugged: Decoding Trump’s National Security Strategy, Lee Jones, American Affairs

From Rogue State to Failed State?: The Perils of Intervention in Venezuela, Juan David Rojas, American Affairs

Trump’s Venezuela Actions Are About More Than Oil, Matt Huber, Jacobin

On "thin ideologies" in a postmodern age.

The Reading Club kicks off with an exploration of illiberalism, a "new ideological universe" that exists in "a permanent situational relation to liberalism."

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast/membership

What are examples of this backlash against liberalism?

How is illiberalism different from populism, conservatism, or the far right?

What is a thin versus a thick ideology? Are we condemned to a 21st century of only thin ideologies?

Is 'illiberalism' a useful term to describe what is going on in politics today?

Is liberalism versus illiberalism just a terminal culture war?

Links:

Illiberalism: a conceptual introduction, Marlene Laruelle, East European Politics (2022)

/114/ Reading Club: The Light That Failed | Patreon

On Trump & radical right ideology.

Jean-François Drolet, a leading researcher into the 'World of the Right', talks to Alex and Lee about Donald Trump's coveting of Greenland, and puts the move into its ideological context.

What is the paleoconservative worldview, how is it different from the neoconservative one, and which is more influential in the Trump regime?

How does paleoconservatism translate into actual foreign policy? What's in Trump's new National Security Strategy?

Are we back to a 19th century-style 'spheres of influence' arrangement?

Does the radical right's foreign policy lead back to a populist kind of isolationism – or to a 'civilisational nationalism'?

Will Trump solidify the transatlantic alliance, or generate a rift?

Links:

/461/ Welcome to the World of the Right ft. Michael C. Williams

World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024).

International Relations and the Geopolitics of the European New Right, European Journal of International Relations, JF Drolet

From Critique to Reaction: The New Right, Critical Theory and International Relations, Journal of International Political Theory, JF Drolet & Michael C. Williams

Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy: Goodbye, Liberal International Order; Hello, Radical Right, Lee Jones, American Affairs (forthcoming

On ICE, Minneapolis – and your questions & comments.

Contributing editor Ryan Zickgraf is back from Minnesota and tells us what is happening on the ground. We also discuss:

If this was Trump picking a fight, why Minnesota?

Do the slayings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti mark a step-change in who can be killed in the US with relative impunity?

What are the implications for the 2nd Amendment and will this divide MAGA World?

Does a hard border necessarily entail a hard, militarised society too? Is the interiorisation of the border inevitable?

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

We then discuss listener questions on:

What is important that Bungacast cover?

The benefits of citizenship

Capitalists paying themselves for labour

The post-doomer personality

Readings:

South Minneapolis has had enough, Ryan Zickgraf, UnHerd

Enforcement Regime, Michael Macher, Phenomenal World 

Minneapolis Is a Second Amendment Wake-Up Call, Tyler Austin Harper, The Atlantic

ICE unloads, Ken Klippenstein, Substack

On the social turn in psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysts Christie and Ricky talk to Alex and George about their article in issue #5 of Damage, on ill-fated attempts at solving social problems through therapy.

What is the 'social turn' and is it another case of immediacy?

Why are the social problems to be dealt with treated as both urgent and impossible to resolve?

Is this a case of hyperpolitics? Is psychoanalysis actually white supremacy?

Do the professions need defending? Do they need to accept their limitations?

Subscribers to this podcast get 15% off print subscriptions to Damage magazine – and access to to this episode. Go to patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

The Regression in Psychoanalysis’s “Social Turn”, Christie Offenbacher & Ricky Levitt

/210/ Reading Club: Psychoanalysis & Spirit of Capitalism

On Southeast Asia's scam compounds.

Mark Bo, organised-crime researcher and co-author of Scam, talks to Alex and Lee about his book, his experiences and why this fusion of gangsterism and speculation has taken root in the contemporary economy.

What is the scale of the scam industry?

How do scams like pig butchering, fish butchering, or law-enforcement impersonation work?

How does organised crime structure itself on corporate lines? How does this fit with modern slavery?

Do illicit zones signal the coming of a kind of "compound capitalism"? Is scamming a symptom of the death of the developmental state?

The full episode is only available to subscribers. Sign up at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

Scam: Inside Southeast Asia’s Cybercrime Compounds, Ivan Franceschini, Ling Li, and Mark Bo, Verso

On the making of independent India – and its lessons.

Assistant professor of politics at The New School, Sandipto Dasgupta, talks to contributing editor Alex Gourevitch about this new book, Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony.

Why was the postcolonial movement insufficiently anti-colonial?

What is the difference between the legal and political meaning of popular sovereignty – and why does it matter?

What was the hidden, repressive element to the Indian Constitution?

Did post-colonial leaders create something novel, even heroic? Or did they fail even on their own terms?

Where do the democratic and counter-revolutionary aspects of the Indian revolution express themselves?

How do symbolic substitutes for genuine popular participation play themselves out in Modi's India?

Links:

Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony, Sandipto Dasgupta, Cambridge UP

/198/ Universal India ft. Achin Vanaik

/417/ Has India passed peak Modi? ft. Achin Vanaik