DIAGRAMMES

This interview was conducted in English.

Find this interview and its explanatory dossier at https://www.diagrammes.fr/en/folders/postdemocracy-in-america 

Duration: 2h01

Joe Lowndes is a prominent scholar of American politics, specializing in the study of right-wing movements, populism, and race. He holds a PhD in Political Science from The New School for Social Research and is currently a Visiting Distinguished Lecturer at Hunter College, after having served as Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. 

Lowndes is the author of influential works such as “From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism” and, with Daniel Martinez HoSang, “Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity”. 

His ongoing research includes co-editing “The Politics of the Multiracial Right” and writing “Adventures in Post-Democracy”, an ethnographic exploration of the growing authoritarian tendencies within American political culture.

In our interview, Joe Lowndes traces the evolution of the American right from the early 1990s to the present, highlighting key moments such as Pat Buchanan’s failed 1992 campaign, the rise of the Tea Party during the Obama years, and the transformation of the Republican Party under Donald Trump. He offers a striking analysis of how events often portrayed as crises—such as the Charlottesville rally, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, and the January 6th Capitol assault—have, paradoxically, served to radicalize and embolden Trump’s base. 

Lowndes also examines the emergence of a multiracial far-right, evidenced by increased minority support for Trump and the participation of activists of color in extremist groups, while emphasizing that racism and xenophobia remain central to Trump 2.0. 

Finally, he reflects on the blind spots and avoidance techniques of both liberals and the left, noting their reluctance to confront the challenges posed by the new configuration of the American political landscape.

A profound and indispensable analysis for understanding the ongoing transformations of American democracy—and the political challenges they pose far beyond the United States.

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CHAPTERS:

00:00:00 – Introduction to Revolutionary conservatism

00:06:49 - (Chap.1) The paleoconservative challenge

00:27:21 - (Chap.2) The tea party Obama’s fixation

00:44:43 - (Chap.3) The fear of a majority-minority nation

00:53:41 - (Chap.4) From Charlottesville to the capitol - The view from MAGA

01:06:07 - (Chap.5) The rise of a multiracial far-right

01:29:14 - (Chap.6) The masculinist factor

01:43:03 - (Chap.7) The Democrats’ debacle

01:50:23 - (Chap.8) Is it fascism?

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Interview by Michel Feher and William Callison

Directed by Justin Luis Denis and Thierry Corroyer

Produced by Vladimir Gurewich

Dossier: Aurélie Windels and Michel Feher

Visual Research : Sophie Liner

Music by Laz Lo, Eeryskies, Damiens Simons

Voice : Amanda Bay

Podcast production : Deborah Le Grand

____

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Find timelines, dossiers and portraits which accompany every conversation, in free access:

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🎙️ Podcast:  https://pod.link/1862341924

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#Diagrammes #JoeLowndes #PostDemocracyInAmerica  

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This interview was conducted in English.

Find this interview and its explanatory dossier at https://www.diagrammes.fr/en/folders/revolutionary-conservatism 

Duration: 1h56

Melinda Cooper is currently professor in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University. She earned her Doctorate from the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-St-Denis) in 2001. She is the author of Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era (2008), Clinical Labour: Tissue Donors and Research Subjects in the Global Economy (with Catherine Waldby, 2014), Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism (2017) and Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance (2024).

Her most recent book Counterrevolution exposes the logic of neoliberal public finance, which mandates crushing austerity for wage earners alongside extravagant fiscal and monetary generosity for asset holders. The book demonstrates how this dual imperative has transformed the DNA of capitalism, turning capital gains into the primary profit form and, by that token, precipitating the advent of a new “gilded age.”

In this video, Melinda Cooper’s applies her incisive analysis to the most recent transformations of capitalism. As the neoliberal counterrevolution reaches its limits, what lies ahead is neither a return to Keynesianism nor a break with a capitalism, but a new phase in the mutation of neoliberalism: one marked by the unprecedented concentration of capital in the hands of a new generation of “robber barons.” The multinationals of the past are being replaced by former startups, now publicly traded yet still entirely controlled by their founders.

To maintain their unchecked power, these oligarchs rely on the backing of political leaders such as Donald Trump, who are likewise committed to dismantling the counterpowers that define the rule of law. This is what Melinda Cooper calls revolutionary conservatism: a project that blends nostalgia for a mythical past with a cult of the visionary entrepreneur, in pursuit of the final liquidation of democracy.

An essential analysis for understanding the political stakes of our time.

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CHAPTERS:

00:00:00 – Introduction to Revolutionary conservatism

00:05:32 - (Chap.1) All the President’s men

00:13:09 - (Chap.2) Hybrid companies

00:35:29 - (Chap.3) On patrimonial capitalism

00:49:08 - (Chap.4) Cannibalization of the Republican Party

00:57:42 - (Chap.5) The little guy vs the fat cats

01:13:30 - (Chap.6) The social neoliberalism of the Democratic party

01:26:30 - (Chap.7) Hegemony trouble

01:36:28 - (Chap.8) Project 2025 and the destruction of the administrative state

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Interview by Michel Feher

Directed by Thierry Corroyer and Meredith Williams

Produced by Florence Mention and Aurélie Windels

Dossier: Alexandra Bucher

Visual Research : Sophie Liner

Music by Laz Lo, Eeryskies, Damiens Simons

Voice : Amanda Bay

Podcast production : Deborah Le Grand

____

If you appreciated this podcast, support our work:

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▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@DiagrammesMedia

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Support us and stay updated with our news:

🗞️ Newsletter: https://www.diagrammes.fr/en/page/newsletter 

Find timelines, dossiers and portraits which accompany every conversation, in free access:

🌐 Website: https://www.diagrammes.fr/en 

Available on all your favourite platforms:

🎙️ Podcast:  https://pod.link/1862341924

____

#Diagrammes #MelindaCooper #RevolutionaryConservatism

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This interview was conducted in English.

Find this interview and its explanatory dossier at https://www.diagrammes.fr/en/folders/...

Duration: 2h04

Eyal Weizman, an Israeli-British architect and professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, is the founder and director of the research collective Forensic Architecture. 

In this interview, we recount the origins, discuss the methodology and explain the evolution of Forensic Architecture, both the agency and the discipline, until the recent publication of “A Cartography of Genocide”. 

We also retrace the longstanding involvement of the collective with the Palestinian cause, shed light on troubling resonances between the ongoing Israeli campaign in Gaza and genocidal precedents in Namibia and Guatemala, and examine the contemporary backlash against movements of solidarity with Palestine.

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CHAPTERS:

00:00:00 – Introduction to Genocidal Intent

00:05:47 - (Chap.1) Origins of Forensic Architecture : Emergent Countercartography of Palestine  

00:23:45 -.(Chap.2) Between humanism and science : Testimonies reconsidered 

00:37:17 - (Chap.3) Displacing Law : Socialized evidence production 

00:48:04 - (Chap.4) “A cartography of genocide” : Medics as new witnesses

01:04:12 - (Chap.5) Patterns : Facts on the grounds and guilty minds 

01:15:02 - (Chap.6) Genocidal resonnances : Guatemala and Namibia 

01:23:54 - (Chap.7) “Conditions of life” : Calculus as a mode of control

01:34:21 - (Chap.8) Lebensraum : Deployment of the zionist project 

01:51:51 - (Chap.9) Continuous Nakba : Failed depolitization and protracted eradication

02:03:52 - (Chap.10) Reception since October 2023 : Escalation of the pushback 

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Interview by Michel Feher

Conducted on January 26, 2025

Directed by Thierry Corroyer

Produced by Florence Mention and Aurélie Windels

Music by Laz Lo, Eeryskies, Damiens Simons

Voice by Amanda Bay

Podcast produced by Déborah Le Grand

Podcast voice (Intro and Outro) by Laz Lo

____

If you appreciated this podcast, support our work:

🔔 Subscribe to our Youtube channel: 

▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@DiagrammesMedia

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📲 Instagram: https://instagram.com/diagram.me.s 

🦋 Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/diagrammes.bsky.social

Support us and stay updated with our news:

🗞️ Newsletter: https://www.diagrammes.fr/en/page/newsletter 

Find timelines, dossiers and portraits which accompany every conversation, in free access:

🌐 Website: https://www.diagrammes.fr/en 

Available on all your favourite platforms:

🎙️ Podcast:  https://pod.link/1862341924

____

#EyalWeizman #ForensicArchitecture #Genocide #Gaza

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This interview was conducted in English

Find this interview and its explanatory dossier on our website.

Duration: 1h52

Thea Riofrancos is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College and a Strategic Co-Director of the Climate and Community Institute. Her research focuses on resource extraction, climate change, the global lithium sector, green technologies, and the Latin American left. She is the author of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism and Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador, and the coauthor of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal.

In our conversation, Thea shows how renewable and fossil extractivism is not merely a localized operation of resource removal, but an enduring political and economic regime. She highlights the growing fusion of climate goals, industrial imperatives, and geopolitical strategies. It marks a new phase of green capitalism that displaces the failures of market-based mechanisms with tensions of its own.

This interview reframes contemporary resource politics within the long arc of extractive geoeconomics, from the oil crisis to Biden’s green policies and Trump 2.0.

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CHAPTERS:

00:00:00 – Introduction to Extractivism, green and brown

00:05:58 - (Chap.1) What is extractivism?

00:15:27 - (Chap.2) Green and brown mining

00:24:30 - (Chap.3) The Security-Sustainability nexus

00:40:10 - (Chap.4) Green Capitalism

01:03:31 - (Chap.5) History of Geoeconomics

01:15:25 - (Chap.6) Ecomodernism vs Degrowth

01:23:39 - (Chap.7) Trumps’s Energy Emergency

01:28:28 - (Chap.8) Insecurity and unsustainability under Trump 2.0

01:33:10 - (Chap.9) Critical Mineral Deals from Ukraine to Rwanda

01:40:20 - (Chap.10) From Opportunistic Greening to Fossil Fascism

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Interviewed by Marius Bickhardt

Directed by Sam Jones

Editing by Thierry Corroyer

Produced by Vladimir Gurewich

Dossier : Marius Bickhardt

Visual Reasearch : Sophie Liner

Music by Laz Lo, Eeryskies, Damiens Simons

Voice : Amanda Bay

Podcast production, editing and mixing : Deborah Le Grand

____

If you appreciated this podcast, support our work:

🔔 Subscribe to our Youtube channel: 

▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@DiagrammesMedia

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Support us and stay updated with our news:

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Find timelines, dossiers and portraits which accompany every conversation, in free access:

🌐 Website: https://www.diagrammes.fr/en 

Available on all your favourite platforms:

🎙️ Podcast:  https://pod.link/1862341924

____

#TheaRiofrancos #Extractivism #Climate #GreenCapitalism #Diagrammes

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This interview was conducted in English

Find this interview and its explanatory dossier at LATE NEOLIBERALISM - DIAGRAMMES

Duration: 1h57

Quinn Slobodian is a professor of history at Boston University and a specialist in neoliberal thought. He is the author of Globalists.The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, Crack-Up Capitalism, Market radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy, and Hayek’s Bastards. Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right.

Diagram[me]s invited him to trace the genealogy of trumpism. Rather than portraying Trump as a champion of a populist break with the neoliberalism of the late 20th century, Slobodian depicts him as a beneficiary of that doctrine’s transformations. He shows how the libertarian wing of the neoliberal movement came to stake the future of economic liberalism on curbing migration flows, rehabilitating race-based IQ theories, and strengthening the executive branch at the expense of the rule of law.

He also shows how the reconfiguration of financial capitalism after the 2008 crisis first allowed tech entrepreneurs to amass enormous fortunes, and then encouraged them to seize the levers of political power.

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CHAPTERS:

00:00:00 – Introduction to Late Neoliberalism

00:05:16 - (Chap.1) The Trump administration: Family Portrait

00:16:41 - (Chap.2) The neoliberals’ post-cold war blues

00:31:11 - (Chap.3) Human capital management: nativism, IQ, natalism

00:51:23 - (Chap.4) Movement of goods: The praise for tariffs 

01:07:41 - (Chap.5) On warding off inflation: Gold and Cryptocurrencies

01:32:42 - (Chap.6) From legislative encasement to executive privilege

01:40:24 - (Chap.7) Nostalgia and technofuturism

01:50:19 - (Chap.8) Wrestling as allegory

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Interview by Michel Feher

Conducted on February 1st, 2025

Directed by Thierry Corroyer

Produced by Florence Mention and Aurélie Windels

Music by Laz Lo and Boni (Introduction); Laz Lo, Eeryskies and Damiens Simons (Credits theme)

Voice by Amanda Bay

Podcast produced by Déborah Le Grand

Podcast voice (Intro and Outro) by Laz Lo

____

If you appreciated this podcast, support our work:

🔔 Subscribe to our Youtube channel: 

▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@DiagrammesMedia

Join us on Social Media: 

📲 Instagram: https://instagram.com/diagram.me.s 

🦋 Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/diagrammes.bsky.social

Support us and stay updated with our news:

🗞️ Newsletter: https://www.diagrammes.fr/en/page/newsletter 

Find timelines, dossiers and portraits which accompany every conversation, in free access:

🌐 Website: https://www.diagrammes.fr/en 

Available on all your favourite platforms:

🎙️ Podcast:  https://pod.link/1862341924

____

#QuinnSlobodian #Trump #LateNeoliberalism #NeoLiberalism

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Hello and welcome to Diagrammes, an independent bilingual media based in Paris and New York. Because resisting the world’s rightward drift requires us to take the measure of it, Diagram[me]s offers every three weeks, in free access, one or more in-depth interviews with scholars, journalists, and activists.

The world is moving rightwards at a staggering pace. Leading this race to the worst is a breed of rulers who make their countries great again by cracking down on their own cities, brutalizing their neighbors and licensing their favorite oligarchs to plunder the planet. 

Taken alone, however, the ways of a few strong men and their cronies cannot fully explain our current trajectory. Other enablers include moderate politicians ready to reach across any aisle, reasonable experts who confuse impartiality with complacency, and large constituencies eagerly absorbing the phobias stoked by the entrepreneurs of resentment.To hinder these global trends, the first task at hand is to get a better understanding of them, even as the spaces devoted to the critique of common sense are rapidly being defunded or closed. Diagrams thus seeks to join a resilient network of sites still attempting to diagnose our contemporary condition – one where freedoms are corroded in the name of liberty and inequalities are celebrated in the name of the people.

With a new episode released every three weeks, Diagrams features in-depth interviews with scholars, journalists and activists. Our aim is to showcase research that illuminates the present and to gain a more lucid perspective on the fault lines of our brave new world.

Production, editing and mixing of the podcast by Deborah Le Grand

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If you appreciated this podcast, support our work:

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▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@DiagrammesMedia

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Support us and stay updated with our news:

🗞️ Newsletter: https://www.diagrammes.fr/en/page/newsletter 

Find timelines, dossiers and portraits which accompany every conversation, in free access:

🌐 Website: https://www.diagrammes.fr/en 

Available on all your favourite platforms:

🎙️ Podcast: https://pod.link/1862341924 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.