theantifada

E281 - Remember the Alamo Workers w/ NYC Alamo United

Sean and Andy chat with a worker organizer at one of the three Alamo Drathouse locations striking against seasonal firings. We cover how Barbenheimer weekend inspired the union effort, frustrating interactions with management, the weird subterranean Wall Street location, some ancient NYC organizing history, service sector organizing, and how a worker-run theater could make the ner...

E280: Imagining the Burger Reich w/ Phil Neel

Hinterland author Phil Neel returns to explain value-form to an American by asking us to imagine a burger.

Phil Neel's burger essays:
2025-02-17 14:00:14 +0000 UTC View Post

E279: What's going on?

NEWS EP! We sort out the class forces behind the Muskite restructuring underway, the meaning of the tariff trade war, and argue for why we should stay partisans of woke.

Ganz: https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/what-happened-here-c9f
Nolan: 2025-02-10 10:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post

BONUS: Our Lives. Remain. Severed. w/ Rax King, Mattie Lubachansky & Jaya Saxena

Our guests from this week's AI episode stick around with Sean to continue the hijinks about our tech oligarchy and discuss the first couple of episodes of AppleTV's television show Severence about how working for a mid-20th century capitalist firm is creepy and kinda suss ngl.

AI Caramba 1: The Martin Files w/ Rax King, Mattie Lubchansky, Jaya Saxena

Sean didn't have the guts to name this new podcast series about AI as Rax, Mattie and Jaya would have it: Unintelligent Fartelligence. Feel free to boo him or commend him as you see fit in the comments.

In the meantime, we are introducing our new series by having a few friends over to shit upon the entire artificial intelligence enterprise: the personnel, the locale and the hype. It was i...

DITW: Autopsy of the Micro-sect (Part 2)

In part 2 of our biological inquiry into the miscrosect, we look at the drama within ACP: "a unique communist project to train and centralize the terminally-online, post-COVID era youth."

Shaw’s essays on ACP:
https://www.profdannyshaw.com/the-h...

DITW: Anatomy of the Micro-sect (Part 1)

Sean, Andy, and Varn scan the sectarian terrain of the US today as a prelude into our (part 2) discussion of drama in MAGA communism.

Read along: https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1973/xx/microsect.htm...

BONUS: Real Bordigangsta Hours w/ David Campbell and Jarrod Shanahan

D-Rock and J-Bone are back to join us in a reading of the ICC's classic essay about gangsta rap and Eminem: https://en.internationalism.org/wr/242_eminem.htm

Correction: the ICC is *NOT* Bordigist. More info: 2025-01-20 11:00:13 +0000 UTC View Post

E278: Living on Island Time w/ Jarrod Shanahan and David Campbell

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 survi...

E277: Citizen App Marxism w/ Bruno Leipold (Full episode)

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 los...

BONUS: Beyond the Axis of Resistance w/ Arya Zahedi, Malek Rasmany, Aziz Alhamza

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 regio...

E276: Stochastic Panic w/ John Garvey, Zhana Kurti

We talk about the Cybertruck psyop with Insurgent Notes, Race Traitor, and Hard Crackers vets 2025-01-06 11:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post

Diving into the Wreckage: 2024 and the Long 20th Century, Part 1 w/ C Derick Varn

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...

Diving into the Wreckage: 2024 and the Long 20th Century, Part 2 w/ C Derick Varn

Part two of the extended discussion between Sean and Varn!

Song: Gary Numan - This Wreckage

E275: Unwrapping Spotify w/ Liz Pelly

Music journalist Liz Pelly joins us to talk about 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 mass...

E274: Merry Brutalistmas w/ Ross Wolfe & Susannah Grossman Wolfe

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, ...

PROLETKULT 13 - eXpropriate SpaceX w/ Beka Valentine, Nick Chavez

 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 ...

BONUS: Immortalist Techniques

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 "dynamism" between the Trump administration's Musk and Vance wings.

2024-12-09 12:58:58 +0000 UTC View Post

E273 - The Mass Stroke

Sean is BACK from hopital with Stroke Updates + Syria, South Korea, UHC Shooter and other political assassinations

Song: The Strokes - Reptilia (Stroked and Reverbed)

&&& - This Trotskyist American Life

&y and &ers Lee read Leon Trotsky's predictions about the glorious future of a 1930s Soviet America, in which tipping and chewing gum have been abolished.

In Defense of Marxism article: 2024-12-06 11:00:15 +0000 UTC View Post

E272 - Merchant of Doom w/ Jamie Merchant

Audio from our November 23rd event at Woodbine with Jamie Merchant about his new book Endgame: Economic Nationalism and Global Decline. He sketches the economic background of the rise of populist right internationally before we transition to questions about the current moment and WI2...

BONUS: Even Jesus Had a Girlfriend w/ Henry J. Wallis

In Part II, Henry discusses the New International article Erasing the Pregnant as a way into talking about religious politics and secularism in regards to issues like abortion, death with dignity, Zionism, and sex.

Henry's Podcast with George Floyd's Pastor: 2024-11-27 11:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post

E271 - New International Year One w/ Henry J. Wallis

Henry's back for France Popular front updates and to unveil his new journal, the New International!

From there, we discuss Andy and Varn's essay The Undying Appeal of Brunch, and if it conflicts with the organizational method of Hen...

Boundless and Bottomless Seas: Understanding Conservative, Reactionary, and Traditionalist Thought from Left Wing Engagement

This is the section where it becomes clear that Dugin uses a different intellectual framework about civilizations than left anti-imperialists.

Work Cited: Dugin, Alexander (2012). The Fourth Political Theory.

See this episode and prior videos in this series on VarnVlog

E270 - The Rain in Spain w/ Prole.info

A report from the Valencia inundation zone by B from the propaganda powerhouse Prole.info! We discuss the floods and the political aftermath, including mudslinging at the King and the future of the Spain's tenuous socialist government. From there were move on to his thoughts about Trump, the Democrats, and the second edition of the 2024-11-17 11:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post

BONUS: Thoughts on the pre-political moment + more post-election talk with Varn and Reid Kane

Sean reads his speech from the ILC assembly looking at the emerging politics of the Trump era and a "secret third" approach to it.

Afterwards, some cut talk from last week's episodes with Varn and Reid Kane about the ultraleft and praxis.

Song: Masato Nakamura - St...

E269 - What Does the Election Mean for Labor? w/ Independent Labor Club of NY

On November 9th, 2024 the Independent Labor Club of NY hosted a panel at Woodbine in Ridgewood, Queens. Sean moderated this discussion between:

• Aaron Lelonde of the International Longshoremen's Association

• Sou Mi of WGA-East and Left Voic...

  2024-11-13 11:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post

BONUS: We're Doing the Resistance Again (Antifada Election Desk Part 2 w/ Varn, Zhana, Reid Kane)

If there's a second coming of the 2017 Trump Resistance movement, what will it look like? Can we escape the trap of the Democratic Party now that there's no hope of Bernie 2020? Will the left finally assert itself as an alternative, or will it, for better or worse, cease to exist?

Song: Quinteto Negro La Boca - Chau Falcon

E268 - Antifada Election Desk (Part 1) w/ Varn, Zhana, Reid Kane

Our roundtable discusses the meaning of Trump's victory--the election's stakes, its international reverberations, what it tells us about the crisis of capitalist accumulation, how economics connect with the the race/class/gender demographic voting shifts, and the historic characters of the Republican and Democratic Parties.

In 2024-11-08 05:25:26 +0000 UTC View Post

E267: Ex-Pat Zerg Rush w/ Nise_Yoshimi

Sean and Andy are joined by Sean, prolific poster and blogger and short fiction writer, to talk about the changes he has seen over the last decade as an expat worker in both mainland China and Hong Kong.

What shifts in politics, ...