Aufhebunga Bunga

On cash welfarism and state investment. Plus regionalism in Belgium & the UK.

Anton Jäger is back on the pod to discuss the emerging 'transfer state'. We examine Biden's massive trillion-dollar spending plans and ask if this means we're leaving neoliberalism. What are the limitations to the 'cashification of welfare'? Also comparisons with cash transfers or lack thereof in the UK, Brazil and Belgium.

Plus Anton talks us through recent Belgian history and why its immobilism and bureaucracy has actually prevented a full-on neoliberal assault. 

[Part 2 available at patreon.com/bungacast]

Readings:

• “Welfare without the welfare state”: the death of the postwar welfarist consensus, Anton Jäger & Daniel Zamora, New Statesman
• Joe Biden Is a Transformational President, David Brooks, NYT

• Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional-Managerial Class, Catherine Liu, University of Minnesota Press, 2021
• Moral Minoritarianism from the Ashes of Left Populism, George Hoare, Damage
• Saving Britain's Universities report, Lee Jones & Phillip Cunliffe, Cieo

On American breakdown.

Editor of Damage Magazine, Benjamin Fong, joins us to talk about the lack of shared narratives in contemporary America. We discuss QAnon and conspiracy theories, Biden's authoritarian liberalism, and "pro-worker" conservatives. 

We also interrogate the use of psychological analyses of politics and reaffirm the value of psychoanalysis, in a preview of a more detailed forthcoming discussion on our patreon.

Readings:

• The Siren Song of “Pro-Worker” Conservatism, Benjamin Fong & Dustin Guastella, Jacobin
• Unpacking the Left's Culture Baggage, Benjamin Fong, Damage
• Therapy Without Therapists, Briana Last, Damage

On the Biden administration and Trumpist reaction.  

We discuss the riot at the US Capitol and why it was not a (failed) coup attempt. How serious was the event, and what next for Trumpist reaction - will it lead to a split in the Republican Party?

Our guests - journalist Amber Frost and political science academic Daniel Bessner - help us preview what the Biden administration has in store for the US. With Democratic control of both houses, it should be able to pass legislation - but does it have any substantial plans to do so? In foreign policy, we can expect more foreign adventurism and at home, an ominous anti-domestic terrorism bill. Does the alliance of the Democrats with an increasingly domineering Silicon Valley signal the coming-out moment of authoritarian liberalism?

Readings:

• Riot on the Hill, Mike Davis, NLR Sidecar blog
• Render unto Ourselves, What is Ours—or Caesar Will Seize It, Alex Hochuli, Damage
• What Experts on Extremism Want From the Biden Administration, James D Walsh, NYMag
  
• Morbid Symptoms Can Persist for a Long Time, Barry Eidlin, Jacobin
  
• Violence in the Capitol, Dangers in the Aftermath, Glenn Greenwald, Substack
• The revenge of the blob, Alex Ward, Vox
  

On the US election, a huge turnout and the end of Trump.

We survey the results of the presidential and legislative elections, peer through the exit polls and discuss some counterintuitive facts: Florida goes Trump but opts for a $15 minimum wage; California goes Biden while Uber gets its way; Trump did protectionism but it didn't help him win the Rustbelt; the Republicans win over more Latinos – but do Latinos even exist?

And the big questions: Will Biden and the Democrats have any authority now that they don't have anti-Trumpism to drive them? Is a Biden administration to be a Silicon Valley dictatorship? And will the GOP be Trumpism without Trump?

Readings:

• Are the Democrats losing on purpose? Amber Frost & Daniel Bessner, Jacobin

• We Don’t Live in Weimar Germany, David Broder, Jacobin
• The Trap The Democrats Walked Right Into, Andrew Sullivan
• The End of Anti-Fascism, David Broder, Jacobin
• What Is Trump?, Dylan Riley, NLR

On the Covid election. 

Full episode is for subscribers only. Sign up at patreon.com/bungacast 

On the Covid election. 

• We Don’t Live in Weimar Germany, David Broder, Jacobin
• The Trap The Democrats Walked Right Into, Andrew Sullivan
• The End of Anti-Fascism, David Broder, Jacobin
• What Is Trump?, Dylan Riley, NLR

On political decline and realignment.

The editor of American Affairs joins us to discuss the decay of conservatism and we ask whether this decay doesn't apply to other parts of the political spectrum too. Is today's 'class struggle' really just between the upper-middle class and the elite? And we discuss the 'late-Soviet' USA - the sense of decline embodied in the gerontocracy of the ruling class. 

Readings:

• The Real Class War, Julius Krein, American Affairs
• America’s Unhealthy Gerontocracy, Julius Krein, American Affairs
• Conservatism Is A Collection Of Losers. It Doesn’t Have To Be. Julius Krein, The American Conservative

• Conservatives’ grip on ‘red wall’ holding firm, Sebastian Payne, FT
• Lawmakers ‘Alarmed’ by Reports U.S. Envoy Told Brazil It Could Help Re-elect Trump, Ernesto Londoño, Manuela Andreoni and Letícia Casado, NYT
• “Imagine the damage a president could cause”: What would happen if Trump refused defeat?, Emily Tamkin, New Statesman

• The Triumph of Black Lives Matter and Neoliberal Redemption, Cedric Johnson, NonSite
• ‘As soon as I saw the slaveowner’s statue being toppled in Bristol, I knew the real anti-racism protest was OVER’, Lisa McKenzie, RT
• The Triumph of American Idealism, Alex Hochuli, Damage
• Alex's additional notes on his blog

On the left case for freedom.  

We talk to Corey Robin about how the left has sacrificed the realm of freedom to the right. And why the Left's weakness is also the Right's. Plus, why is it clear that Trump is not a fascist? And insight into the BLM protests in NYC and responses to the pandemic. 

Reading:

• What People Power Looks Like in a Pandemic Democracy, Corey Robin, NYRB
• Symposium on the Challenges Facing Democrats: Freedom Now, Corey Robin & Alex Gourevitch, Polity
• If authoritarianism is looming in the US, how come Donald Trump looks so weak?, Corey Robin, Guardian

This is a sample. For the full episode go to patreon.com/bungacast 

Bonus content (always the best stuff) from our interview with Angela and Michael (episode 126). 

Why did Bernie Sanders fail?

In the third in an occasional series on the US presidential election and the Left, we talk to Angela Nagle and Michael Tracey about their analysis of Bernie Sanders' campaign. We put to bed some bad arguments as to why Bernie didn't win the nomination, and examine some better ones: was the campaign was too establishment-friendly? too "left"? too middle-class? too anti-nationalist?... or are structural factors to blame instead?

And we ponder the end of the union of Old and New Lefts, of cultural liberalism and socialism. And the most worrying of all: was Bernie just a blip?

Reading:

• First as Tragedy, Then as Farce: The Collapse of the Sanders Campaign and the "Fusionist" Left, Angela Nagle & Michael Tracey, American Affairs