Oct 24 2023 66 mins 4
Welcome to the fourth, and long-awaited (we hope) episode of Why We're Socialists, and Not Liberals. In this episode we discuss why a liberalism is simply not up to the job of responding to the far right, and why a left-wing approach is needed, and what that would look like. This is an especially theory-heavy episode in which we explore the philosophical underpinnings of far right ideology so that we can better understand how to fight it. We read well over 2,000 pages of pretty dense academic leftist theory in order to produce this episode and we hope you appreciate the effort.
Here are our sources in case you'd like to do some reading of your own.
The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin
The Destruction of Reason by Georg Lukács
The Authoritarian Personality, by Theodor Adorno et al
Breaking the Impasse by Kim Moody
Fascism: What It Is And How To Fight It by Leon Trotsky
Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes
Donald Trump, Lumpen Capitalist. Samuel Farber. Jacobin Magazine, October 19th, 2018. https://jacobin.com/2018/10/donald-trump-lumpen-capitalist-class-elections
Disney Company Drops YouTube Star PewDiePie Over Anti-Semitic Jokes. Camila Domonoske. NPR. February 24, 2017. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/14/515184619/disney-company-drops-youtube-star-pewdiepie-over-anti-semitic-jokes
Reply in the Senate to William Seward by Jefferson Davis. February 29th, 1860. https://constitutingamerica.org/reply-in-the-senate-to-william-seward-by-jefferson-davis-1808-1889-reprinted-from-the-u-s-constitution-a-reader-published-by-hillsdale-college/
Report from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons on the Douma poison gas attack. January 27, 2023. https://www.opcw.org/sites/default/files/documents/2023/01/s-2125-2023%28e%29.pdf
The Rank-and-File Strategy, from the DSA website https://rfs.dsausa.org/
Behind the Bastards podcast, Part One: The Eternal Fascist. Also found in audiobook form on the website http://www.thewaroneveryone.com/
Ur-Fascism, by Umberto Eco https://web.archive.org/web/20170131155837/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/
HEGEMONY, WAR OF POSITION, & HISTORIC BLOC: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO ANTONIO GRAMSCI’S STRATEGY CONCEPTS, Harmony Goldberg, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20170131155837/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/
Recommended reading (we didn’t use these in our episode but recommend them anyway)
The Anatomy of Fascism, by Robert O Paxton
Against the Fascist Creep by Alexander Reid Ross
Neoreaction a Basilisk: Essays on and Around the Neo-Nazi, by Elizabeth Sandifer
The works of Kim Stanley Robinson
Conspirituality Podcast
Here are our sources in case you'd like to do some reading of your own.
The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin
The Destruction of Reason by Georg Lukács
The Authoritarian Personality, by Theodor Adorno et al
Breaking the Impasse by Kim Moody
Fascism: What It Is And How To Fight It by Leon Trotsky
Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes
Donald Trump, Lumpen Capitalist. Samuel Farber. Jacobin Magazine, October 19th, 2018. https://jacobin.com/2018/10/donald-trump-lumpen-capitalist-class-elections
Disney Company Drops YouTube Star PewDiePie Over Anti-Semitic Jokes. Camila Domonoske. NPR. February 24, 2017. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/14/515184619/disney-company-drops-youtube-star-pewdiepie-over-anti-semitic-jokes
Reply in the Senate to William Seward by Jefferson Davis. February 29th, 1860. https://constitutingamerica.org/reply-in-the-senate-to-william-seward-by-jefferson-davis-1808-1889-reprinted-from-the-u-s-constitution-a-reader-published-by-hillsdale-college/
Report from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons on the Douma poison gas attack. January 27, 2023. https://www.opcw.org/sites/default/files/documents/2023/01/s-2125-2023%28e%29.pdf
The Rank-and-File Strategy, from the DSA website https://rfs.dsausa.org/
Behind the Bastards podcast, Part One: The Eternal Fascist. Also found in audiobook form on the website http://www.thewaroneveryone.com/
Ur-Fascism, by Umberto Eco https://web.archive.org/web/20170131155837/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/
HEGEMONY, WAR OF POSITION, & HISTORIC BLOC: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO ANTONIO GRAMSCI’S STRATEGY CONCEPTS, Harmony Goldberg, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20170131155837/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/
Recommended reading (we didn’t use these in our episode but recommend them anyway)
The Anatomy of Fascism, by Robert O Paxton
Against the Fascist Creep by Alexander Reid Ross
Neoreaction a Basilisk: Essays on and Around the Neo-Nazi, by Elizabeth Sandifer
The works of Kim Stanley Robinson
Conspirituality Podcast
