Twink Revolution Podcast

We reflect on a tough week for the nation with racialized police violence spilling over into a protest movement that everyone seems to have strong feelings about. We offer a modest critique of some tendencies that come too quickly to most of us--being an edgelord, and trying to apply grand narratives too early. Stay safe, everybody.

We upset some work-doers with our live streaming, but it's OK because it's almost pride month and we get a pass for anything we do during June. Canada and Britain decided to fly rainbow flags over Baghdad, and the results were… not great. Norway is doing conversion therapy, but woke. People are mad at Liz Bruenig for being Catholic in 2015 (again), but we're busy getting mad about people being mean to blue check marks with a past in woke human trafficking.

It's Episode 3 of Gaylag Archipelago and we are breaking down the LGBT experience in communist Czechoslovakia. We explore the rise of the Communist Party from a legacy of fascism and empire, the contributions of sexologists and medicalization in decriminalizing homosexuality, and the dark legacy of a post-Communist region and the booming gay sex industry.

We're joined by Mila Ghorayeb (@sedcontra_) to discuss being a socialist who engages across ideological lines, her podcast, vulgar anti-imperialism, secularism, and our post-lockdown gay circuit party tour of the Middle East. Mila is the second problematic lebanese marxist woman we've had on the pod, which is v. problematic, sweetie.

Mila's writings on anti-war activists

Unacceptable Podcast on Patreon

We're joined by tech rabble-rouser and perpetual target of gratitude, Jason Prado (@jasonpjason). We discuss shifts among white-collar attitudes to job security in the age of the 'rona, organizing technology companies and desk workers, the DSA, and Jason's time inside the Bernie campaign. We also find out how tech billionaire Marc Benioff turned Jason into a meme.

Jason's writings on Substack

We're bored of endless online discourse wars and quarantine life, so we watched a bunch of movies. This is now a movie review podcast. We watched some good movies and some bad movies, and we tell you about them and whether we liked them or not. This is how movie reviewing works.

THE MOVIES:

Bizarre (dir: Étienne Faure, 2015)

The Animal People (dir: Denis Henry Hennelly and Casey Suchan, 2019)

Trophy (dir: Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz, 2017)

Fox and His Friends (Faustrecht der Freiheit, dir: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1975)

We're once again joined by Aimee Terese (@tereseaimee) of the What's Left podcast. We chat about corona, making banners and reclaiming public spaces inside your home, fear of proletarianization, the #MeToo movement, and liberal hypocrisy. Hopefully Aimee doesn't get banned from Twitter again after appearing on Twink Revolution.

Folsom Street Fair is online now, which is basically niche porn? Biden is endorsed by the HRC, which is basically inevitable? Owen Jones has a problem with your bookshelf, which is basically incoherent? And the US used mercenaries to attempt a coup in Venezuala, which is a basically a failure?

We watched the new movie TFW No GF and we talk about what it tells us about the completely impotent nature of the modern left and its complete inability to deal with despair and alienation. That leaves us a little despairing and alienated, so we finish off the episode with a lovely interview with Mike (@sinistrallean), who wrote a fantastic piece back in December about Strasserism as a slur for the left.

Join us tomorrow (May 1st!) for a May Day livestream special on YouTube.

Follow @sinistrallean on Twitter and read the article "Otto And Gregor Would Roll In Their Graves: How an online slur exposes liberal contradictions"

We're joined by Oliver Bateman, journalist, historian, lawyer, person of swoleness, and new co-host of the What's Left podcast. We discuss lifestyle leftism and grifting, masculinity, what being physically intimidating tells you about someone's politics, and where COVID-19 is steering the "left" (if anywhere…).

Check out Oliver's website with link to his writings, his Twitter, and the What's Left podcast.