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I have learned three things about America since leaving America. The first is that I didn't leave America, it's a big White Empire and I'm still in it! The second is that every accusation is a confession. For every finger pointing out, a billion middle fingers point right back at America. The third is to take every condemnation as a reading recommendation. America's enemies list makes for an excellent reading list. That's what we'll discuss here. The only thing that recommends Empire is its book recommendations.

How the ‘free press’ is bought and paid for.

How next-day delivery is the new opiate of the masses.

This is me reading the 1991 book America Against America by currently CPC Politburo member Wang Huning.

Shruthi Mathews talking about Mark Fisher's work on Capitalist Realism - the idea that we can't even imagine a world outside of capitalism, and how we must. 

Cover art by Oluwole Omofemi.

I lived through over 25 years of Civil War in Sri Lanka and I see the same things happening in America today. When people check out of democracy, you've all checked into violence. It's just a matter of time.

America is choking to death on its own mythology. The ‘strongest nation in the world’ cannot defend its own Capitol. The ‘oldest democracy in the world’ is attacking the right to vote. The ‘richest people in history’ are broke and dying in lakhs upon lakhs.

(White) Americans consistently refuse to believe what is happening to them because it’s not supposed to be happening to them. Our democracy cannot be collapsing, it’s so old. The pandemic cannot be out of control, we’re rich. From the crazies of Q-Anon to sober talking heads on TV, everybody agrees, America is exceptional and things cannot be exactly what they are.

The country cannot be corrupt, that’s for Africans. The country cannot have a coup, that’s what we do to South America. The country cannot be collapsing, that’s the ‘third world’. And yet here you are.

American exceptionalism is wrong. Worse than wrong, American exceptionalism is precisely what’s getting you killed.

Citizenship is shit. What we call citizenship is a system of passport apartheid that keeps brown and black people in the Global South down while privileged rich, white people continue their colonial exploitation of the world. This podcast goes over the scholarly work of Dimitry Kochenov and other academics with copious swearing.

We live in a world of passport apartheid, where some citizenships are worth vastly more than others, and where this caste system is enforced by violence. Scholars like Dimitry Kochenov are writing about this, and I'm angry about it here.

An unstable government, guns in the street, hate speech in the air, what would you call this in the Third World? Does America live in a different world. How America shows all the signs of coming violence (including violence happening already), and lessons unlearnt from places like Sri Lanka. Intro and outro music by The Soul.