The Dig – Details, episodes & analysis

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.

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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
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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.

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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

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Featuring Evgeny Morozov on his essay “Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason.” Thinkers from the Marxist left all the way to the neoliberal and even neo-reactionary right are convinced that we’ve exited capitalism entirely and entered neo-feudalism. Morozov argues that our bleak moment is in fact still a thoroughly capitalist one.

Evgeny’s essay: newleftreview.org/issues/ii133/articles/evgeny-morozov-critique-of-techno-feudal-reason

Evgeny’s website: evgenymorozov.com

The Syllabus: the-syllabus.com

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Featuring Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò on his essay “Being-in-the-Room Privilege: Elite Capture and Epistemic Deference,” an interview first posted in December 2020. This pairs well with last week’s Jared Clemons interview on In This House We Believe antiracism. Since 2020, Táíwò has published a book expanding on these ideas: Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else).

Read Táíwò’s essay: thephilosopher1923.org/post/being-in-the-room-privilege-elite-capture-and-epistemic-deference

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Political scientist Jared Clemons on feckless liberal anti-racism: how In This House We Believe racial liberalism leaves racial capitalism’s inequalities in place and why, drawing on Martin Luther King and A. Philip Randolph, the Black Freedom Movement instead needs solidarity with the multi-racial working class.

Read Jared’s article: jaredkclemons.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/7/5/117532940/clemons_2022_-_from_freedom_now_to_blm.pdf

Interview with Matt Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell from February 2021: thedigradio.com/podcast/conservative-intelligentsia-with-sam-adler-bell-matt-sitman/

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Know Your Enemy hosts Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell on terrifyingly protean right-wing American politics.

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Read James Pogue on the New Right: vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets

Read Mie Inouye’s Boston Review article on union salts: bostonreview.net/articles/labors-militant-minority/

Patrick Blanchfield analyzes the long history of US gun violence and the American death drive.

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Check out our most recent newsletter on the Progressive Era roots of Clintonism’s conception of the “deserving poor” thedigradio.com/newsletter32

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Dan’s second episode with historian Lily Geismer, who he interviewed in 2019 about Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party. This interview is on Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality, which details the long history of Clintonism and the Democrats’ neoliberal turn.

Read the latest newsletter. It’s on what Ruthie meant when she said abolition was another word for communism: thedigradio.com/newsletter31

Listen to Geismer’s first Dig interview: thedigradio.com/podcast/race-and-class-in-the-liberal-suburbs-with-lily-geismer

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What role does mass incarceration play in American political economy? What does that reveal about what sort of politics are required to overcome it? Ruth Wilson Gilmore with Alberto Toscano and Brenna Bhandar, who edited the new collection Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation.

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Buy Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Racial Capitalism, and the Movement for Black Lives by Donna Murch haymarketbooks.org/books/1650-assata-taught-me