This episode looks at Venezuela, but it is really about how global politics has been narrowed and who is allowed to matter politically.

 This is a reactive episode. There are pauses for clarification and moments where ideas are still being worked through. The goal here is to think in public rather than present a settled argument. 

One part of the episode focuses on Trump’s politics. His language about power and leverage did not create a new foreign policy. It made explicit a logic that had already been taking shape. Trump removed the language of human rights and international norms and replaced it with a direct focus on who has power and who does not.

The deeper part of the episode traces how this logic formed. Beginning with the Cold War and moving through the Noriega case and the rise of neoliberal globalization, the episode shows how internationalist institutions weakened under unipolar conditions. As those structures collapsed, anti hegemonic politics increasingly reorganized around sovereignty rather than solidarity.

Using Venezuela and Ukraine as case studies, the episode shows how critiques of neoliberal globalization on both the left and the right now operate within the same realist framework. Despite very different intentions, these approaches often sideline class, race, gender, and popular struggles and treat power as the main measure of political relevance.

The episode ends by challenging the idea that this way of seeing politics is inevitable. Treating power as the only reality is a choice. Other ways of understanding politics still exist, especially in the voices of people pushed out of these debates. The question is whether those voices are recognized as political at all.

For contact, socials, articles, and videos check out the website: https://www.therightpodcast.org/

Correction: Around the 26 minute mark I speak of "Left" accidently. This was in relation to the Traditionalist right. 

Join me for a cough medicine fueled rant about the right in 2025-2026.

The attempted central insight is that failure no longer weakens right movements. When policy or electoral politics fail it can be treated as proof that institutions are hostile and legitimacy is already gone. Once failure is processed this way, governing success matters less than maintaining narrative coherence and moral permission.

A second throughline is the collapse of institutional trust as a starting point rather than a conclusion. Because of this, correction can be difficult from left to right. This helps explain why fact-checking, moral denunciation and appeals to democratic norms often fail. The episode also explains how the right maintains cohesion without ideological agreement. Internal contradictions do not fracture the coalition because it is held together by shared stories rather than shared policy goals.

Finally, it traces the normalization of exception logic and the shift from belief to permission. What is being organized is not agreement but justification for dismissing institutions accepting harm and treating coercion as reasonable.

Apologies for the sniffles and happy New Year!

Website: https://www.therightpodcast.org/

Song: Behind Enemy Lines by Behind Enemy Lines

This episode follows two articles I wrote about the annual Twilight Zone New Year’s marathon, one published last year and one this year. Watching the marathon was a tradition I had growing up, and now writing about it and contemporary politics is becoming one as well. 

The essays discussed here move across multiple Twilight Zone episodes and connect them to contemporary politics, including Trump’s return to power, the rise of far-right parties in Europe, and the normalization of scapegoating, nationalist grievance, and moral panic. Rather than focusing on a single episode or argument, the articles range widely, using Serling’s work to examine how fear is redirected toward internal enemies and how punishment is framed as restoration.

This episode talks through how those articles were written, why the marathon has become a yearly marker for new work, and how The Twilight Zone continues to offer a way to understand recurring political patterns in the U.S. and abroad.

Share this one! 

Referenced articles:

https://therightpodcast.substack.com/p/the-new-years-twilight-zone-marathon-a70

https://therightpodcast.substack.com/p/the-new-years-twilight-zone-marathon

Website: https://www.therightpodcast.org/

Opening Song: “Twilight Zone / Twilight Tone” – The Manhattan Transfer

Buy me a book: https://buymeacoffee.com/therightpodcast

In this episode, we look at why so many political arguments on the left collapse into confusion, hostility, or pure repetition. People talk about Syria, Ukraine, Gaza, imperialism, campism, and solidarity as if they’re debating the same thing, but they’re often answering different underlying questions. Philosophy doesn’t solve that, but it helps us see what those deeper questions actually are.

We start with why internal dissent matters. If we cannot create space to disagree with each other, we will fail to do it with people whose experiences do not line up with our ideological expectations. That failure is what turns solidarity into ideology and people into symbols.

From there, the episode explores what I’ve called “abstraction”: the moment when ideas replace living voices. Syrians become proxies. Ukrainians become NATO assets. Palestinians become political symbols. Once that happens, the person disappears.

We then turn to Emmanuel Levinas and the idea that responsibility to the other person comes before any political interpretation. Levinas offers a powerful corrective to our worst habits, but he also failed to apply his own ethics when asked about Palestinians. This moment reveals something larger about how politics shapes recognition before any ethical encounter can happen.

Drawing on Judith Butler and Frantz Fanon, the episode examines how political and social structures decide who gets to appear as fully human in the first place. When recognition is blocked at that level, no ethical framework can stand on its own.

Website: here

Previous article: here

Current article here

Buy me a book: here

Music: Doom "Means to an End." The singer is repeating "Let's all be friends, means to and end."

This episode looks at what happens when political conviction replaces human connection.

 It’s based on my new article When Politics Forgets the Face and asks how ideology on both the right and the left can turn people into symbols instead of subjects.

I talk about Ukraine, Syria, and Gaza, and why so many Western voices speak over those actually living through these conflicts. From there, I turn to Emmanuel Levinas and his idea that ethics begins with the face of another person, before politics or theory. I contrast that with Frantz Fanon’s view of how colonial systems destroy the very possibility of relation.

This is not just philosophy. It is about how we talk to and about each other, and how easily empathy becomes abstraction. It is about remembering that solidarity means standing with people, not speaking for them.

Read the full piece: When Politics Forgets the Face

Related episode: 52: In Defense of Leftist Self-Critique

More work: therightpodcast.org

Music: Flux of Pink Indians, "Some of us scream, some of us shout."

Every movement begins with conviction—but without reflection, conviction can harden into dogma. This episode explores how moral certainty, group loyalty, and algorithmic culture combine to silence the very critique that keeps political movements alive. Drawing from Foucault, Habermas, Rosa Luxemburg, Edward Said, and Herbert Marcuse, I argue that self-critique is not betrayal—it’s the foundation of solidarity.

We examine how:

Core idea: To critique is to care. Real solidarity means wanting our movements to live up to their own principles.

Mentioned thinkers: Foucault, Orwell, Rosa Luxemburg, Edward Said, Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Marcuse.

Leftist thought, political self-reflection, intellectual honesty, digital culture, solidarity

Please consider spreading the word, it's greatly appreciated. 

Read the article here: https://therightpodcast.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-leftist-self-critique

Subscribe: therightpodcast.substack.com

Check out the website with all social links: https://www.therightpodcast.org/

Read Rethinking the Syrian Revolution: How the Left Misread Syria here: https://spectrejournal.com/rethinking-the-syrian-revolution/ 

ICE was never just about immigration. It was created after 9/11 as a tool of executive power, and today it is being used against migrants, dissenters, and even elected officials.

This video looks at my article ICE Was Built for This in the Summer 2025 issue of New Politics and explains how fear, emergency powers, and bipartisan choices made ICE central to Trump’s authoritarian project.

https://newpol.org/issue_post/ice-was...

#ICE #Immigration #Trump #Authoritarianism #politics #AbolishICE

Music: The Pist, "Not Your Problem."

https://www.therightpodcast.org/ 

Website: https://www.therightpodcast.org/

Check out the video on Youtube

Trump was never a peace candidate. From his early Reform Party days to his “America First” doctrine, he wasn’t seeking an end to U.S. empire. Instead he wanted to strip it of regulation, diplomacy, and disguise. In this episode, I unpack how Donald Trump’s foreign policy was misread from the start — first framed as less hawkish by figures like Glenn Greenwald than Hillary Clinton, later described by academics like John Mearsheimer as realist, whether Trump realized it or not. But from his 2000 Reform Party flirtation to his 2016 “America First” campaign, Trump never sought to dismantle empire — he wanted to privatize it.

I trace how Trump repackaged old anti-globalist rhetoric with psuedo business logic, treating places like Gaza and Ukraine as assets to be claimed, not communities to be protected. He didn’t want peace. He wanted the end of the neoliberal world order — not to replace it with global justice, but with a deregulated empire unbound by alliances, international law, or oversight. Think less withdrawal, more hostile takeover.

What’s chilling is how this wasn’t just tactical — it was ideological. Russian fascist Aleksandr Dugin saw Trump as a civilizational rupture, not a restrainer of empire but its metamorphosis into something new and authoritarian.  Dugin, in some ways, sees Trump clearer than the liberal media and politicians of the West.

This episode dives into that fundamental misunderstanding — from the Reform Party to Gaza, Ukraine, and the post-liberal future Trump seems to imagine: an unapologetic, race- and class-coded imperial order in which stronger nations simply take what they want, and weaker ones are absorbed, relocated, or erased. . It’s not just empire without apology, it’s empire without brakes.

Catch up on ongoing projects, revisiting some that have stalled and others still in progress. I dive into the book I’m working on and reflect on articles written over the past few months. Topics span a wide range, from analyzing left and right reactions to the events of October 7 to Chomsky. 

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cerAMbKXz-w 

Website: https://www.therightpodcast.org/

Buy me a book: https://buymeacoffee.com/therightpodcast

Article link https://therightpodcast.substack.com/p/in-times-of-division-unitys-our-mission

Video link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSfWJrC1Iz4 

Join me as I read through "stumbling at times" an article I wrote on Substack about the election of Trump, highlighting key issues to watch and actionable steps for those newly inspired to resist a potential second Trump administration. The piece covers a range of topics, including inflation and the economy, Gen Z's role, the global rise of right-wing populism, the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, strategies for meaningful conversations with Trump voters, fresh opportunities for activism, practical tips for new advocates, and more.