The Dig

Featuring Aziz Rana on the making of the American project and its legitimation through popular worship of the US Constitution. This episode, the third in what is now a four-part series, looks at how black movements responded as the Vietnam War and the limits of formal civil rights victories combined to explode the Cold War's contradictions. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Reconsidering Reparations at Haymarketbooks.com Subscribe to a year of Jacobin for only $15— a special offer for Dig listeners! bit.ly/digjacobin

Transcribed - Published: 26 April 2025

Featuring Aziz Rana on the making of the American project and its legitimation through popular worship of the US Constitution. This episode, the second in a three-part series, takes the story from World War I’s hyper-nationalist, xenophobic First Red Scare, through the convulsions of the middle decades of the 20th century: the Communist Party USA, the New Deal, World War II, the civil rights movement, the Warren Court, and ultimately the Cold War, when American liberalism, anti-communism, and empire triumphed. Buy Iran in Revolt at Haymarketbooks.com Register for the Socialism Conference at Socialismconference.org before April 25th for an early bird discount! Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Transcribed - Published: 19 April 2025

Featuring Aziz Rana on the making of the American capitalist, imperialist project and its legitimation through popular worship of the US Constitution. This episode, the first in a three-part series, traces the foundation of the American settler empire from the revolutionary generation up to the eve of World War I. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy White City, Black City at Plutobooks.com Subscribe to a year of Jacobin for only $15— a special offer for Dig listeners! bit.ly/digjacobin

Transcribed - Published: 10 April 2025

Jeff Schuhrke on his book Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade. During the Cold War, organized labor’s top leadership acted as an agent of the US national security state abroad: undermining left-wing unions, fomenting right-wing coups, and promoting the US-led capitalist order. At home, those same forces destroyed left-wing unions and organizers. That history goes a long way in explaining the weakened, conservative, and ineffectual workers’ movement we still confront today. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig [don’t sign up using the Patreon iPhone app because the ghouls at Apple are now requiring a fee! use a web browser or non-iPhone app] Register for the Socialism Conference at Socialismconference.org before April 25th for an early bird discount! Buy Hidden San Francisco at Plutobooks.com

Transcribed - Published: 2 April 2025

Featuring more analysis from Ilias Alami and Tim Sahay on the shape of global geopolitics and geoeconomics. We discuss: the fault lines of the green energy transition; the US and China battle for dominance while the rest of the world seeks advantage and opportunities for leverage; the US and Russia’s full-throttle commitment to fossil capitalism; the IMF’s ongoing imposition of neoliberal austerity on the world’s poorest countries, which, in opposition to these plans, want to remake the entire world capitalist system. Plus: Why the economic weapon failed against China and Russia, and a lot more. The second in a two-part series. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Subscribe to The Polycrisis newsletter phenomenalworld.org/series/the-polycrisis Download a free copy of The Spectre of State Capitalism by Ilias Alami and Adam Dixon academic.oup.com/book/57552 Transnational Institute reports: The New Frontline: The US-China Battle for Control of Global Networks tni.org/en/article/the-new-frontline Geopolitics of Capitalism: State of Power 2025 tni.org/en/publication/geopolitics-of-capitalism Get 50% off Pirate Care and other books in your first order from plutobooks.com with code ‘DIG50'.

Transcribed - Published: 24 March 2025

Featuring Ilias Alami and Tim Sahay on a global conjuncture defined by Washington's shredding of the liberal international order’s legitimacy amid a panic over decline: the escalating Cold War with China; Gaza genocide; Trump’s tariff wars and militarism, and his pivot toward Putin on Ukraine; European defense buildup and fiscal revolution; what this all means for the poor majority of the Global South, and more. Part one of a two-part series. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Subscribe to The Polycrisis newsletter phenomenalworld.org/series/the-polycrisis Download a free copy of The Spectre of State Capitalism by Ilias Alami and Adam Dixon academic.oup.com/book/57552 Transnational Institute reports: The New Frontline: The US-China Battle for Control of Global Networks tni.org/en/article/the-new-frontline Geopolitics of Capitalism: State of Power 2025 tni.org/en/publication/geopolitics-of-capitalism Buy Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal at Haymarketbooks.com Buy Nuclear Is Not The Solution at Versobooks.com

Transcribed - Published: 19 March 2025

Featuring Eric Blanc on We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big. Interview conducted by guest host Gabriel Winant. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Defend federal workers and federal services: actionnetwork.org/forms/let-us-work/ Contact the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) for help organizing your workplace: workerorganizing.org Contact Workers Organizing Workers (WOW) if you are interested in taking a job in a strategic industry to unionize it: form.jotform.com/250337473301045 Buy All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence at Haymarketbooks.com Subscribe to a year of Jacobin for only $15— a special offer for Dig listeners! bit.ly/digjacobin

Transcribed - Published: 12 March 2025

Featuring TrueAnon hosts Brace Belden and Liz Franczak on our freakish and reactionary tech oligarchy. Musk and friends built a technological infrastructure that has warped everyone’s minds, including their own. Now they’re seizing the state. The hideous AI “art” we discuss: https://bit.ly/4ksG1aM http://bit.ly/3DmDfTD Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Register for the Socialism Conference at Socialismconference.org before April 25th for an early bird discount! Use code "DIG" for 30% off a subscription to The-Syllabus.com

Transcribed - Published: 5 March 2025

Featuring Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Mike McCarthy on the MAGA and DOGE war on woke; the complicity of bankrupt liberal identity politics; and the centrality of various oppressions to the class domination of capital and struggles against it. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Read Mike’s article "The Problem of Class Abstractionism" epublications.marquette.edu/socs_fac/356 Buy Enemy Feminisms at Haymarketbooks.com Buy Solidarity Betrayed at Plutobooks.com

Transcribed - Published: 26 February 2025

Featuring Danielle Carr on the history and present state of American unwellness and how that's been shaped by psychiatry, prescription drugs, neuroscience, popular culture, smartphones and social media. We trace the rise of psychiatry as a Gilded Age human science, the disastrous contradictions of asylum deinstitutionalization, the invention of neuroscience and deep brain stimulation, Elon Musk’s Neuralink fraudulence, how Adderall made the Internet run, the liberal gospel of traumatic literalism recounted in The Body Keeps the Score, and the scientific Bonapartism of RFK Jr.’s medical freedom movement. Buy Empire of Normality at Plutobooks.com Buy Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal at Haymarketbooks.com Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our vast archives and newsletters at thedigradio.com

Transcribed - Published: 17 February 2025

Featuring Chris Newman on Trump's far-right anti-migrant agenda and Democrats' cruel and stupid complicity. Read All-American Nativism versobooks.com/products/704-all-american-nativism Read Dan's essay on Gaza and migration politics in n+1 nplusonemag.com/issue-48/politics/do-border Trump's immigration executive orders propublica.org/article/donald-trump-immigration-executive-orders Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy After Accountability at Haymarketbooks.com Subscribe to a year of Jacobin for only $15— a special offer for Dig listeners! bit.ly/digjacobin

Transcribed - Published: 9 February 2025

Featuring Hannah Srajer on building tenant unions by applying labor organizing models. The Connecticut Tenants Union is partnered with SEIU 1199NE to organize fighting super majority tenant unions that win collectively bargained leases and wield working class political power. It's a model that's spreading nationwide. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Peruse The Dig's vast archives at thedigradio.com Support Reclaim RI https://secure.actblue.com/donate/reclaimri Buy Not Your Rescue Project at Haymarketbooks.com Buy My Country, Africa at Versobooks.com

Transcribed - Published: 1 February 2025

Featuring Leonardo Vilchis and Tracy Rosenthal on their book Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis. Tenant unions fighting to transform Los Angeles, the country, and the world. Support Reclaim RI https://secure.actblue.com/donate/reclaimri Buy Abolish Rent haymarketbooks.org/books/2443-abolish-rent Subscribe to Dissent at dissentmagazine.org/subscribe Use code 'DIG50' for 50% off your first order at Plutobooks.com

Transcribed - Published: 27 January 2025

Featuring Michael Denning on Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order, collectively authored by Stuart Hall and his colleagues at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. Hall’s method of Marxist conjunctural analysis applied to the generalized crisis that paved the way for neoliberalism's rise; a model for how we should ask questions about our world that will provide us with knowledge we need to change it. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our vast archives and newsletters thedigradio.com Support Atlantic Mills Tenants Union Legal Fund https://bit.ly/4jg4D61 Buy Dead Cities and Other Tales at haymarketbooks.com Donate to Jacobin Magazine at jacobin.com/donate

Transcribed - Published: 19 January 2025

Featuring Michael Denning on Stuart Hall’s Marxism—a Marxism without guarantees. This is a comprehensive introduction to Marxism as a method to analyze historically specific, complex and contradictory capitalist social formations, and what that means for making, rather than assuming the existence of, a working-class socialist politics. Next week Dan interviews Denning on Policing the Crisis, a 1978 book collectively authored by Hall and his colleagues; it’s a remarkable project that anticipates today’s politics around anti-immigrant xenophobia, mass incarceration, and Trumpism. Listen to Hall’s full 1983 Inaugural Karl Marx Memorial Lecture in Sheffield youtube.com/watch?v=IP_OWahR-Gc Our two-part series on Gramsci with Denning: thedigradio.com/podcast/gramsci-hegemony-w-michael-denning/ thedigradio.com/podcast/gramsci-organization-crisis-w-michael-denning/ Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Set the Earth on Fire at Haymarketbooks.com Use code "DIG" for 30% off a subscription to The-Syllabus.com

Transcribed - Published: 11 January 2025

Featuring Bassam Haddad on the historical and geopolitical origins of Assad’s rise and fall—and what might happen next. We think through the contradictions: honoring the joy felt by Syrians at Assad’s ouster while simultaneously taking stock of a truly bad geopolitical outcome. Want to learn more? Listen to Thawra, our series on the 20th century political history of the Arab East thedigradio.com/Thawra Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Palestine in a World on Fire at Haymarketbooks.com Buy Against the Crisis at Versobooks.com

Transcribed - Published: 22 December 2024

Featuring Patrick Blanchfield on assassination and political violence: from the routine to the extraordinary; authored by the state, capital, the left, the right, the unwell and alienated; as an anxiety, in our fantasies, as a morbid symptom and repetition compulsion; and as expressing distinctively American logics of domination and human disposability. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Listen to the Ordinary Unhappiness podcast at ordinaryunhappiness.buzzsprout.com/ Read Patrick's essay on the death drive late-light.com/issues/issue-1/death-drive-nation Buy China in Global Capitalism at Haymarketbooks.com Use code "DIG" for 30% off a subscription to The-Syllabus.com

Transcribed - Published: 18 December 2024

Featuring Quinn Slobodian and Wendy Brown on Trump’s triumphant return to power and the freakish, obscene, billionaire-dominated, capitalist reactionary, Christian nationalist, contradiction-ridden MAGA movement that surrounds him. A comprehensive early assessment of what is going on, where it’s coming from, and where it all might be heading. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Share Thawra with a friend thedigradio.com/Thawra Use code "DIG" for 30% off a subscription to The-Syllabus.com Subscribe to a year of Jacobin for only $15— a special offer for Dig listeners! bit.ly/digjacobin

Transcribed - Published: 29 November 2024

Featuring Hilary Goodfriend and Jorge Cuéllar in the final installment of a three-part series on Central America. This episode picks up with Nayib Bukele’s authoritarian crypto enthusiasm in El Salvador; Daniel Ortega’s perversion of Sandinismo’s revolutionary legacy in Nicaragua; anti-mining movements in Panama; Honduras and Guatemala, where popular social movements have elected left presidents to confront entrenched power structures. We conclude by discussing mass migration from the region that’s taken on a mystified form in US politics as the MAGA far right’s principal scapegoat. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Share Thawra with a friend thedigradio.com/Thawra Check out nacla.org for in-depth coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean Buy Defund: Conversations Toward Abolition at haymarketbooks.com

Transcribed - Published: 23 November 2024

Featuring Hilary Goodfriend & Jorge Cuéllar in the second of a three (not two!) part series on the history and present of Central America. This interview picks up our discussion of revolutionary armed struggles against brutal US-backed military-oligarchic regimes in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Then, the peace accords and postwar transitions accompanied by the imposition of neoliberal economic restructuring. Finally, the rise of mass migration, new transnational gangs, and the regime of El Salvador’s authoritarian Bitcoin enthusiast Nayib Bukele. And more. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Want to learn more? Greg Grandin on The Dig: thedigradio.com/podcast/empires-workshop-with-greg-grandin We now have a special feed dedicated entirely to our Thawra series. Listen and spread the word: thedigradio.com/Thawra Subscribe to a year of Jacobin for only $15— a special offer for Dig listeners! bit.ly/digjacobin Buy Abolish Rent at Haymarketbooks.com

Transcribed - Published: 18 November 2024

Featuring Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on Trump’s decisive victory, Harris’s catastrophic loss, multi-racial working-class dealignment, and where the left might go from here. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig We now have a special feed dedicated entirely to our Thawra series. Listen and spread the word: thedigradio.com/Thawra Subscribe to a year of Jacobin for only $15— a special offer for Dig listeners! bit.ly/digjacobin Buy Solidarity is the Political Version of Love at haymarketbooks.com

Transcribed - Published: 9 November 2024

Featuring Hilary Goodfriend and Jorge Cuéllar on the history of Central America. This is the first episode in a two-part series covering the late-19th and early-20th century rise of export-crop oligarchies and constant US intervention, the US-backed separation of Panama from Colombia to take control of the Canal, the CIA's 1954 Guatemala coup, the rise of armed revolutionary movements in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador, and the US-backed dirty wars that were prosecuted in response—that and so much more. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Want to learn more? Greg Grandin on The Dig: thedigradio.com/podcast/empires-workshop-with-greg-grandin We now have a special feed dedicated entirely to our Thawra series. Listen and spread the word: thedigradio.com/Thawra Buy Mastering the Universe at haymarketbooks.com Buy Disaster Nationalism at versobooks.com

Transcribed - Published: 3 November 2024

Featuring Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix on their book Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea. Guest hosted by Micah Uetricht. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Get 40% off The Years of Theory with code "DIG" at Versobooks.com Buy Our History is the Future at Haymarketbooks.com

Transcribed - Published: 28 October 2024

Featuring Naomi Klein on how the pandemic turbocharged a far-right conspiracist politics that’s sweeping into power. This strange new world, however, is a product of an old contradiction: the need to disavow and deny a long history and awful present; the inability to make sense of the extreme violence and oppression that makes everyday Western capitalist society possible. We discuss Klein’s book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World and her Guardian essay "How Israel has made trauma a weapon of war": theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/oct/05/israel-gaza-october-7-memorials Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Subscribe to Dissent magazine at Dissentmagazine.org/subscribe Buy Rosa Luxemburg at Haymarketbooks.com

Transcribed - Published: 18 October 2024

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the third and final part of the epilogue to Thawra (Revolution), our epic series on the history of revolutionary Arab politics. This episode takes us from Hamas’s victory in the 2006 legislative elections, through the siege on Gaza, to October 7, the Gaza genocide, the Axis of Resistance, and Israel’s attempt to draw Iran into a massive regional war with the US. Share Thawra with a friend thedigradio.com/Thawra Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy The Wannabe Fascists at UCPress.edu Buy Visualizing Palestine at haymarketbooks.org

Transcribed - Published: 11 October 2024

Featuring Jake Werner on how the US and China entered into a New Cold War and why the whole world urgently needs an alternative international order that fosters great power cooperation. Read Jake’s report A Program for Progressive China Policy quincyinst.org/research/a-program-for-progressive-china-policy/#executive-summary Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Our History is the Future at Haymarketbooks.com Use code "DIG" for 30% off a subscription to The-Syllabus.com

Transcribed - Published: 4 October 2024

Featuring Aslı Bâli and Aziz Rana on the history of left-wing internationalism from the Third Worldist currents that powered decolonization and struggles against neocolonialism through today’s renewed politics in solidarity with the Palestinian national liberation movement. Recorded in New York at Jewish Currents Live. Support The Dig now at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Center of the World at UCPress.edu Buy Abolish Rent at Haymarketbooks.com

Transcribed - Published: 25 September 2024

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the second of what has become a three-part epilogue to Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. This episode takes us from the disastrous Oslo Accords through the 2000 Camp David Summit and the eruption of the Second Palestinian Intifada. Then the 9/11 attacks, the War on Terror, the US destruction of Iraq, the Arab Spring, the Syrian Civil War, and the rise of Islamic State. A century of Western imperialism had undermined Arab revolutionary movements and governments; the new millennium brought two decades of US-led war that destroyed the Arab state system. Atop its wreckage was the explosion of sectarian violence and murderous authoritarianism across the Arab East. Hope still resides in the power of popular renewal. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Visualizing Palestine at haymarketbooks.org Buy Exit Wounds at UCPress.edu

Transcribed - Published: 19 September 2024

Featuring Amna Akbar, Gabe Winant, and Thea Riofrancos on the American political conjuncture: the centrality of Palestine, the contradictions of left electoralism, renewed liberal militarism, the return of Obama-ism, the state of the labor and climate movements—and more. Recorded live at Socialism 2024 in Chicago. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Unbuild Walls at haymarketbooks.org Subscribe to Jacobin in print for $15/yr at bit.ly/digjacobin and Catalyst in print for $20/yr at bit.ly/digcatalyst

Transcribed - Published: 9 September 2024

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the first of a two-part epilogue to Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment covers the Iranian Islamic Revolution’s huge impact across the Arab East alongside Saudi and Egyptian efforts to foster religious conservative movements in an effort to supplant and suppress the secular nationalist left. Plus the Iran-Iraq War, the mujahideen in Afghanistan, the First Intifada, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the first US-led invasion of Iraq, and the PLO’s march toward the Oslo Accords–and how Hamas and Islamic Jihad stepped into the resulting vacuum, picking up a Palestinian armed struggle the PLO had renounced. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Buy Nuclear Is Not The Solution at versobooks.com Buy The Wannabe Fascists at UCPress.edu

Transcribed - Published: 30 August 2024

Featuring Sunaura Taylor on her book Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation. What does it mean to rethink socialism and Marxism through the frameworks of disability liberation and animal liberation? How do we relate to human difference and also to non-human animals? Where does the struggle against industrial agriculture fit into the fight against capitalism? Sunaura is interviewed by her sister, Dig guest host Astra Taylor. Read about Daniel Denvir and The Dig in The Guardian theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/aug/13/dig-podcast-daniel-denvir Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Take 25% off a subscription to n+1 at nplusonemag.com/thedig Buy Unite and Win at haymarketbooks.org/books/2434-unite-and-win

Transcribed - Published: 16 August 2024

Featuring Jeremy Corbyn and Laleh Khalili on internationalism and left-wing politics. A special Dig co-hosted with the Verso Podcast in front of a live London audience. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig The Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago from Aug 30 - Sept 2. Learn more and register at socialismconference.org Buy Twilight Prisoners at Haymarketbooks.com

Transcribed - Published: 5 August 2024

Dan just did a live Dig in London with Jeremy Corbyn and Laleh Khalili. It was part of a podcast doubleheader that included this recording of the economics podcast Macrodose featuring Asad Rehman, James Meadway, and Thea Riofrancos. The live Dig with Corbyn and Khalili on internationalist and anti-imperialist politics will be posted in a few days. Subscribe to Macrodose at linktr.ee/macrodosepodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or wherever you get podcasts Support Macrodose at patreon.com/Macrodose The Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago from Aug 30 - Sept 2. Learn more and register at socialismconference.org

Transcribed - Published: 2 August 2024

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the SIXTEENTH and final episode of Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment traces a massive defeat for the Palestinian Revolution: Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and brutal siege of Beirut. Under severe pressure and isolated in the wake of Egypt’s normalization with Israel, the PLO evacuated its headquarters. What followed was a giant massacre of Palestinian civilians and the end of the decades-long era of Arab revolutionary politics to which this series has been dedicated. A substantial epilogue is coming soon. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Spread the word about Thawra thedigradio.com/Thawra Check out the Palestinian Revolution website! learnpalestine.qeh.ox.ac.uk/teach Take 25% off a subscription to n+1 at nplusonemag.com/thedig. Enter THEDIG for discount.

Transcribed - Published: 30 July 2024

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FIFTEENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment addresses the Palestinian Revolution’s project in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan—leading up to the 1970 conflict with the Jordanian state and the violent expulsion of PLO guerrillas during Black September. Then, Egypt and Syria checked Israel’s power in the October War of 1973—only for Anwar Sadat to lead Egypt into Kissinger’s plan to pacify Arab revolution. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Spread the word about Thawra thedigradio.com/Thawra The Palestinian Revolution website is live! learnpalestine.qeh.ox.ac.uk/teach Buy tickets for live Dig with Corbyn in London unionchapel.org.uk/venue/whats-on/versothe-dig-live-podcast-with-jeremy-corbyn-laleh-khalili The Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago from Aug 30 - Sept 2. Learn more and register at socialismconference.org Subscribe to a year of Jacobin for only $15— a special offer for Dig listeners! bit.ly/digjacobin

Transcribed - Published: 17 July 2024

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FOURTEENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment covers the rise of the Palestinian Revolution and then its explosion after the Arab defeat in the June War of 1967 with Israel. Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation and Palestine, and other factions launched an armed guerrilla struggle against Israel, engaging the Palestinian people in a full-scale mobilization for their liberation. Also: Ba'athists Aḥmad Ḥasan al-Bakr and Saddam Hussein seized power in Iraq, as did Muammar Gaddafi’s Free Officers in Libya. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Spread the word about Thawra thedigradio.com/Thawra Buy Happy Apocalypse at versobooks.com Buy Love in the Time of Self-Publishing at princeton.press/love

Transcribed - Published: 7 July 2024

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the THIRTEENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment covers the armed left-wing revolutionary movements that challenged British imperial power across Southern Arabia, with the National Liberation Front taking over South Yemen and Dhufari rebels in Oman waging a liberation war against the Sultan. Today’s alliance of reactionary Gulf monarchies was not inevitable; they were made by colonial power, and Arab revolutionaries in the 1960s and 70s mounted a major effort to overthrow them. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Buy tickets for live Dig with Jeremy Corbyn in London: unionchapel.org.uk/venue/whats-on/versothe-dig-live-podcast-with-jeremy-corbyn-laleh-khalili Buy The Last Human Job at Princeton.press/job Buy How to Abolish Prisons: Lessons from the Movement against Imprisonment at haymarketbooks.org

Transcribed - Published: 19 June 2024

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the TWELFTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment tells the story of Saudi Arabia, a country whose reactionary, US-aligned trajectory was throughout the 1950s and 60s challenged by labor strikes, dissident currents, rebellious princes, and an anticolonial oil minister. But Saudi royal conservatism asserted itself and a friendship with Nasser’s Egypt turned into conflict. Ultimately both countries got drawn into North Yemen’s civil war, which sapped Egypt’s military strength ahead of the 1967 war with Israel. Plus: radical politics against British colonial power in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the Trucial States. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Buy tickets for live Dig with Jeremy Corbyn in London: unionchapel.org.uk/venue/whats-on/versothe-dig-live-podcast-with-jeremy-corbyn-laleh-khalili Buy Twilight Prisoners at haymarketbooks.com Buy Automatic Fetish at versobooks.com

Transcribed - Published: 9 June 2024

Featuring Dylan Saba and Waleed Shahid on how Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the mass solidarity movement opposing it are transforming US politics. This anti-imperialist internationalist moment marks a profound turning point for the American left. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Buy tickets for live Dig with Jeremy Corbyn in London: unionchapel.org.uk/venue/whats-on/versothe-dig-live-podcast-with-jeremy-corbyn-laleh-khalili The Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago from Aug 30 - Sept 2. Learn more and register at socialismconference.org (early bird discount until 6/28!) Buy Unbuild Walls at haymarketbooks.org

Transcribed - Published: 31 May 2024

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the ELEVENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment tells the story of the destruction of the two giant revolutionary projects of 1958: the union of Egypt and Syria under Nasser’s United Arab Republic and Iraq’s July Revolution that brought Qasim alongside communist allies to power. The rival radical projects of pan-Arabism and communism suffered huge blows. So did Nasser and Qasim, the era’s most significant Arab anti-imperialist leaders. Meanwhile, the Ba’ath, once ideological and idealistic, became increasingly dominated by military men who made the party into an instrument for raw domination. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Buy tickets for live Dig with Jeremy Corbyn in London: unionchapel.org.uk/venue/whats-on/versothe-dig-live-podcast-with-jeremy-corbyn-laleh-khalili Buy Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom at Versobooks.com Subscribe to Dissent magazine in print or online at dissentmagazine.org/subscribe

Transcribed - Published: 23 May 2024

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the TENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment tells the story of Iraq’s 1958 July Revolution: a Free Officers’ coup overthrew the imperialist-aligned Hashemite monarchy and brought nationalist Abdul-Karim Qasim to power alongside a surging Communist Party. Revolutionary currents soon turned against one another, however, as did Qasim and Nasser. Conflict stemmed from serious political and strategic differences, but also petty rivalries and bitter feuds. And in Iraq, class conflict often appeared dressed up in the sectarian and ethnic modalities through which class was lived. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Subscribe to a year of Jacobin for only $15— a special offer for Dig listeners! bit.ly/digjacobin Buy The Black Antifascist Tradition at haymarketbooks.org

Transcribed - Published: 11 May 2024

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the NINTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment covers the creation of a Palestinian national liberation movement throughout the 1950s by a people dispersed by the Nakba: organizations, alliances, and theories of change assembled in the universities, cities, and refugee camps surrounding Palestine. We end with the 1959 foundation of Fatah, the first organization for Palestinians led by Palestinians focused first and foremost on Palestinian liberation. This is the story of the beginning of the Palestinian national liberation movement as we have come to know it today. Buy How to Abolish Prisons: Lessons from the Movement against Imprisonment at haymarketbooks.org Buy States of the Earth: An Ecological and Racial History of Secularization at Versobooks.com Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Spread the word about Thawra thedigradio.com/Thawra

Transcribed - Published: 3 May 2024

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the EIGHTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. A compact introduction to the Movement of Arab Nationalists, which in the 1950s built a presence that stretched across the region, from Beirut and Jordan to Cairo and the Gulf—becoming a truly powerful force in Kuwait. Led in significant part by Palestinians, its early history offers a ground-level look at the organizational and theoretical currents shaping radical Arab politics. It is also the backstory for key Marxist groups that later grew out of the Movement: the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, South Yemen’s National Liberation Front, and the Dhofar Liberation Front. Buy Future of Denial at versobooks.com On May 1st, subscribe to a year of Jacobin's digital publication for just $1, or a year of Jacobin in print for only $10: jacobin.com/subscribe/?code=MAYDAYDIG Or this link for a gift: jacobin.com/subscribe/?type=gift&level=standard-digital&?code=MAYDAYDIG Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Spread the word about Thawra thedigradio.com/Thawra

Transcribed - Published: 26 April 2024

Featuring Noura Erakat, Avi Shlaim, Ussama Makdisi, Ilan Pappé, Ghada Ageel Hamdan, and Abdel Razzaq Takriti on the ongoing Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Recorded at the World Academic Forum for Palestine in Houston. We’ll be back next week with episode eight of Thawra, our rolling series on 20th century Arab radicalisms. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Donate to Palestine Legal palestinelegal.org/donate Watch more from the World Academic Forum for Palestine youtube.com/c/haymarketbooks Check out our vast archives and newsletters at thedigradio.com Buy An Enemy Such As This at haymarketbooks.org Buy The Jail is Everywhere at versobooks.com

Transcribed - Published: 19 April 2024

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the SEVENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the the US’s Eisenhower Doctrine, which in 1957 inaugurated a new era of imperialism in the Middle East; the Ba’ath Party driving Syria and Egypt into the United Arab Republic, a superstate under Nasser’s rule, in 1958; and, later that year, Eisenhower landing US Marines in Lebanon, the first American combat operation in the region. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Buy Burnout: The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat at versobooks.com Subscribe to Jacobin bit.ly/digjacobin

Transcribed - Published: 10 April 2024

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the SIXTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the intensification of the Cold War across the Middle East. Western imperialist powers attempted to recruit Arab countries to the Baghdad Pact, a Middle Eastern NATO. Nasser rallied the Arab masses in opposition, becoming an anti-imperialist icon. In 1956, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. In response, the British, French, and Israelis attacked Egypt. But Nasser and Arab anti-imperialism won the day. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Buy What Was Neoliberalism at haymarketbooks.org Buy Abolition: Politics, Practices, Promises, Vol. 1 at haymarketbooks.org

Transcribed - Published: 2 April 2024

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FIFTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the early years of a struggle for Syria that would decisively shape the Arab world: the fight for independence from France, the first (CIA-backed) coup of 1949, and the rise of the Ba’ath and Communist movements. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Buy The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Wont Save the Planet at versobooks.com Buy Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism at haymarketbooks.org

Transcribed - Published: 23 March 2024

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FOURTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the politics surrounding the Zionist settler colonial destruction of Palestine, the Nakba of 1948, and the ground-shifting event that followed in its wake: the Nasser-led 1952 Egyptian Free Officers Movement coup that would set the tone for two decades of revolutionary nationalism across the region. Also: the Soviet camp’s support for the colonial partition of Palestine and its calamitous impact on powerful Arab communist parties. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Subscribe to a year of Jacobin for only $15— a special offer for Dig listeners! bit.ly/digjacobin Buy Abolition: Politics, Practices, Promises, Vol. 1 at haymarketbooks.org/books/2096-abolition

Transcribed - Published: 11 March 2024

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the THIRD episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment is a comprehensive overview of the Middle Eastern Arab state system that crystalizes with the end of British and French colonial rule. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Buy Environmentalism from Below: How Global People’s Movements are Leading the Fight for our Planet at haymarketbooks.org/books/2101-environmentalism-from-below

Transcribed - Published: 4 March 2024

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the second episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out early 20th-century anti-colonialism: from the Iraqi, Syrian, and Palestinian Great Revolts, to the birth of Arab nationalism, Islamic resistance, Ba'athism, and communism. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com Subscribe to a year of Jewish Currents at 50% off with special code DIG2024 secure.jewishcurrents.org/forms/subscribe Buy Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom at versobooks.com

Transcribed - Published: 27 February 2024