Drawing from their own experiences of incarceration, authors Jarrod Shanahan and David Campbell offer an unprecedented look inside New York's notorious Rikers Island jail in their compelling new book "City Time." They meticulously document how incarcerated people construct complex social systems and survival strategies within an environment defined by structural racism and institutional neglect. Through their intimate perspective as former detainees, they reveal the intricate unwritten rules, relationships, and daily rituals that emerge among those serving "city time" - sentences that, while too brief for state prison, expose the profound dysfunction of America's carceral system.

Buy the book from NYU Press:https://nyupress.org/9781479828999/city-time/

and free William Banks!

Music from The Nightcrawlers - Alone in the Dark

Sean and Andy (recovering from various ailments) are joined by political theorist, Bruno Leipold, to discuss his excellent new book Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the Formation of Karl Marx's Social and Political Thought from Princeton University Press on how Marx and Engels developed their theories within and against an 18th century republican pollical milieu that is largely lost to history and the histories of Marxism.

What is republicanism? What distinguishes it from liberalism? How did real world experience with the reactionary Prussian state temper Marxism's preoccupation with civil rights? (How was that preoccupation submerged within Actually Existing Socialism of the 20th century?) How did Marx build upon and surpass republicanism by synthesizing it with communism and large defeating antipolitical strains of socialism?

In the bonus we discuss what is left in the 21st century of republican social theory: the universalizing of capitalist private property as opposed to its abolition. How does this middle class 19th century political economy survive down to this day in republics like the United States? Broadly, what is the relevance of this republican revival for groups like the Independent Labor Club and others who seek a revival of communist politics on a broad basis?

To access this bonus and years more of excellent content become a patron today at patreon

song: Nas - Black Republican

Audio from a talk held by Woodbine's December 22nd Research Group facilitated by Malek Rasamny and Arya Zahedi.

What are the horizons, opportunities and challenges amidst the collapse of the Iranian-led order? Over the past few months Israel’s genocidal assault in Gaza has more fully expanded into a regional conflict with what has been referred to as the “axis of resistance”, led by Iran. Its fall has been decisive, with the destruction of much of the senior leadership of Hezbollah, including the assassination of secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah on September 27th; and the collapse of the Assad regime on December 7th, after a lightning fast four-day offensive led by rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

BIOS:

Malek Rasamny is the co-director of the research project The Native and Refugee, and the documentary film Spaces of Exception. Both seek to juxtapose and parallel the communities, spaces and struggles of American Indian reservations and Palestinian refugee camps. He is currently completing his doctoral research project on the relationship between reincarnation and the communal memory of the Lebanese Civil War amongst the Druze community.

Arya Zahedi is a teacher and writer who lives in Baltimore, MD. He is a PhD candidate in Politics at the New School for Social Research, and has written a number of works on the class struggle and revolutionary movement in Iran.

Aziz Alhamza is a Syrian journalist, human rights activist, and founder of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS)

Referenced readings:

-Understanding the rebellion in Syria

- Joseph Daher, 2024: https://tempestmag.org/2024/12/understanding-the-rebellion-in-syria/

-Class Struggle, Autonomy, and the State in Iran - Arya Zahedi, 2024: https://illwill.com/iran

-Building Alternative Futures in the Present: the Case of Syria’s Communes - Leila Al-Shami, 2021: https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/the-paris-commune-and-the-world/building-alternative-futures-in-the-present-the-case-of-syrias-communes

-The Revolution Post-Explosion - Malek Rasamny, 2020: https://thenewinquiry.com/blog/the-revolution-post-explosion/

Song: Syrian Revolutionary Dabke

We talk about the Cybertruck psyop with Insurgent Notes, Race Traitor, and Hard Crackers vets John Garvey and Zhana Kurti.

In the fun half, available to subscribers at http://patreon.com/theantifada, we read the prophecies of alien intervention and free energy by the Balkan Nostradamus Baba Vanga, and hear Sean's interpretation of Charli XCX's Brat.

Song: Kendrick Lamar - wacced out murals

This is a short preview of the paywalled portion of the long discussion between Sean and Varn about the 2024 election and the end of the Long Twentieth Century.

To access the entire audio file and a bunch more bonus content become a supporter of the show at www.patreon.com/theantifada in the New Year.

Stroky Sean and cancer-free Varn are reunited to dive back into the wreckage. This is part one of over three hours of conversation about just about everything under the sun (what happens when we take a several month break from these things) including political economy, current events, intra-Marxist rivalry and analysis. Mostly we bid adieu to the Long Twentieth Century. Turns out it expired for real this time not on 9/11/01 but 11/5/16.

We are in a new epoch and its time to start acting like it!

To check out a couple more hours of this kind of thing you can become a patron at www.patreon.com/theantifada

To check out of couple more hours but on video (!) you can become a patron at www.patreon.com/varnvlog

Song: Gary Numan - This Wreckage

Music journalist Liz Pelly joins us to discuss her new book The Mood Machine the Rise of Spotify and the Cost of the Perfect Playlist.

How did the DIY culture of mixtapes and file sharing move towards massive streaming platforms? And with nearly every song freely accessible why are so many listening to elevator music instead?

You can listen to this full episode gratis by signing up at our free membership tier over at patreon.com/theAntifada

Links to Liz's work:

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machine-liz-pelly-spotify-musicians/

https://thebaffler.com/downstream/big-mood-machine-pelly

https://thebaffler.com/downstream/streambait-pop-pelly

https://thebaffler.com/downstream/wrapped-and-sold-pelly https://thebaffler.com/latest/podcast-overlords-pelly

Check out the Art and Labor Podcast

Music/image: Lo-Fi Girl

Merry Christmas, everyone! This year, the Santifada is bringing you the same present as always: an episode about the themes of Jewish identity and antisemitism! We discuss Brady Corbet's new epic film, The Brutalist, starring Adrien Brody as a Bauhaus architect and Holocaust survivor trying to rebuild his life in the absurd New World of America.

In the first half of the episode, our brutalism scholar guests, Ross and Susannah, explain what brutalism is and how it relates—or doesn’t relate—to Brody's character, Laszlo Toth, and the themes of the movie in general.

In the second half, available for subscribers at patreon.com/theantifada, we discuss the film's final chapter and epilogue, which features an infuriating, although perhaps excusable, political twist ending.

• Music for the episode is mostly from the brutalist soundtrack by Daniel Blumberg. Closing song is La Bionda - One For You, One For Me

For the full episode, support the show at http://patreon.com/theantifada

The Antifada sideproject about the paranormal, the parapolitical, science fiction, and science futurism returns to check in on the New Space Age! While the left typically perceives Elon Musk as an all-talk grifter, our guest Beka Valentine argues his Starship program will make many off-earth industries, like drug manufacturing and solar harvesting, inevitable through dramatically lowering the cost of launching to low-Earth orbit. Could his and Bezos's fantasies of colonies on the moon, Mars, or in asteroid belts be far behind?

If so, what happened to the late-2010s enthusiasm for "Fully Automated Luxury Space Communism"? Is the left now anti-space, and is that position leaving the future entirely in the hands of capitalists and imperialist states? In her new essay for Strange Matters, Valentine argues we should begin strategizing for this new era so we don't get stranded from Elysium.

Guest co-host Nick Chavez gives the engineer's perspective, and describes his critique of ME Obrien and Eman Abdelhadi's vision of expropriating a SpaceX-like factory in their speculative novel Everything for Everyone.

Beka Valentine's essay in Strange Matters: https://strangematters.coop/political-economy-of-near-future-space-industries/

Inside Musk's Starfactory: https://wccftech.com/spacex-is-using-robots-to-make-starship-rockets-in-texas-shows-footage/

Nick Chavez's review of Everything for Everyone: https://designformanufracture.com/2023/01/25/review-everything-for-everyone-an-oral-history-of-the-new-york-commune-2052-2072-by-m-e-obrien-and-eman-abdelhadi/

Don't Let Them Leave! zine: https://ia903003.us.archive.org/20/items/dontletthemleave/Dont-Let-Them-Leave-zine-unimposed%20.pdf

Past episodes of Proletkult: https://www.patreon.com/collection/87627 Song - Giorgio Moroder - Racer

Andy and Sean read about Prospera, a libertarian City State in Honduras that is attempting to abolish death and bankrupt the country in the process. Then sean reads Ross Douthat's analysis of the Trump administration's Musk and Vance wings.

For the full episode subscribe at http://patreon.com/theantifada