This Wreckage

The boys are back! This History Is A Weapon is so massive (and inebriated) that we had to break it into two parts.

In this installment, Matt and Sean shoot a little shit about the radical geography of Europe before we plunge into the pool of disco and despair that was the 1970s: how global crisis upended the 'Golden Age' of American capitalism, how Richard Nixon rode a wave of aggrievement to become the voice of a 'silent majority' in backlash, and how the uneasy alliance between organized labor and the Democratic Party began to fracture as stagflation undermined the post-war compromise.

Part II, another goddamn hour-and-a-half of historical goodness, will drop later this week to complete the story of how this thing called neoliberalism came to dominance, how it, too, is now crumbling, and how we might dialectically overcome the limitations of working class self-organization evident in previous cycles of struggle.

To listen to this bonus content and more, become a patron at www.patreon.com/theantifada

Andy is back from presenting on Posadas at Cuba's first Trotsky conference and Red May in Seattle with four interviews: Isbel Diaz Torres from the anarchist biblioteca ABRA in Cuba, Simon Rodriguez from Partido Socialismo y Libertad of Venezuela, part of the left-opposition to Maduro, a producer of the Resonance AudioZine distro, and Phillip Wohlstetter of Red May--who wraps everything up with his story of backpacking to Chile in 1973 during the coup.

After doing this interview, Isbel and some of his comrades were arrested for organizing a demonstration in Cuba against homophobia. Learn more and support them here:

https://itsgoingdown.org/cuban-state-arrests-two-anarchists-as-counter-revolutionaries/

More links from the guests:

Anarchist podcasts:

Red May Seattle site and schedule (still one weekend left!)

Songs:

In which Sam returns to discuss with us our worst apartment experiences. Includes attempted murder, our landlord-in-chief, Great Americans and Lindsay Lohan's cocaine.

To access this and a tons more bonus content and our Discord, become a patron at www.patreon.com/theantifada

Samuel Stein, author of 'Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State' from Verso Books, comes on the pod to explain why neoliberalism will have us all living in pods if we don't do something about the global housing crisis.

We discuss the rise of the FIRE sector. We demystify the concept of gentrification. We isolate the fundamental contradictions of housing as a commodity. We unpack the ways in which even the most well-meaning progressive politicians and planners are utterly constrained by the system itself.

And, as is our want, we take a profound plunge into how workers have organized for the right to housing in the past and how we might ultimately fight to slay the housing monster.

Bonus on housing horror stories and other ephemera with Sam later this week! Become a at patron at www.patreon.com/theantifada

Follow Samuel Stein: @SamuelBStein

Read his great takedown of Hudson Yards: http://bit.ly/2JEGgAA

Buy the concise and fantastic 'Capital City' - part of the Jacobin Series from Verso: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2870-capital-city