Podcast appearances and mentions of eric ruder

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the German Revolution. Never heard of it? Don’t worry, most people haven’t, even though the revolution—or rather its failure—is arguably one of the most significant events of the 20th century, with consequences ranging from the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany to the triumph of Stalinism over the Russian Revolution. But there’s more to learn about the German Revolution beyond the fact of its ultimate failure. It’s also the closest socialism has gotten to winning in an advanced industrialized capitalist country, and it’s full of rich lessons even a century later. This week we have a conversation with Sean Larson, a PhD student in German Studies at NYU who is currently working on a dissertation on the German revolution. Sean recently wrote an excellent article in Jacobin about the first year of the revolution, and if all this information is new to you, read his article (see the link below) after you listen to the interview. For our opener, Eric joined Jen and Danny to talk about the return of anti-Semitism as a force in mainstream American politics. We discuss how the return of this racist ideology is rooted in the rise of far-right white supremacist groups as well as the urgent need to rebuild a fight against anti-Semitism. Links about the German Revolution Sean’s excellent piece in Jacobin about the first year of the German revolution (http://bit.ly/RedGermany). Alex Fair-Schulz also has this excellent piece in Socialist Worker on the same subject (http://bit.ly/GermanyRev). For longer works on the history of the German Revolution, Haymarket Books has published/republished a number of invaluable books, including: Chris Harman’s The Lost Revolution (http://bit.ly/HarmanGermany) Eyewitness to the German Revolution (http://bit.ly/SergeGermany) by the Russian-born revolutionary Victor Serge who himself was a participant in the German revolution Ralf Hoffrogge’s study of the revolutionary shop stewards movement (http://bit.ly/HoffroggeGermany) and Pierre Broué’s masterpiece The German Revolution 1917-1923 (http://bit.ly/BroueGermany) Links for our opener Our producer, Eric Ruder, has written an extensive article for Socialist Worker in which he examines the rise and fall and rise of anti-Semitism in the United States (http://bit.ly/RuderAntiSemitism) This statement by the International Socialist Organization (ISO) calls for a broad-based, urgent, united response to the far right (http://bit.ly/FightRightISO) Haymarket Books has published a collection of essays by Jewish Voice for Peace about the uses and abuses of anti-semitism (http://bit.ly/HaymarketJVP) Music in this episode The Boy & Sister Alma, “Lizard Eyes” (Dead Sea Captains Remix) FKJ Live at La Fée Electricité in Paris Sevdaliza, “Shahraman” L’indécis, “Soulful" Anohni, "Manta Ray"

Jen is off this week so our producer Eric Ruder joins Danny to speak with Héctor Rivera about the momentous election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO) as the new president of Mexico. Héctor is a California-based socialist who writes for Socialist Worker about protests and politics inside Mexico, and this election gave us a lot to talk about. Not only did AMLO’s MORENA party destroy the country’s three main parties en route to winning power at the federal and local level, but his election is a historic victory for the longstanding democracy movement that has fought against one-party rule and rigged elections in Mexico. Héctor talks to us about the factors that led to this historic election, especially the devastating policies of privatization and “free” trade that enriched the Mexican elite while impoverishing millions, and then the catastrophic drug war, both of which have greatly accelerated longstanding patterns of Mexican migration to the U.S. We also talked about the contradictions in AMLO’s plans to take on what he calls the “Mafia of Power” and the important tasks facing Mexican socialists and activists. Héctor tells us about some of the social movements not often covered by the U.S. media, including a feminist movement that has touched all corners of Mexican society and that formed an important part of AMLO’s campaign, even as he partnered with reactionary evangelical forces. In our opener, we continue a conversation started last week about how socialists should understand and counter the growth of the far right. This week we take a step back to look at the role that Trump’s MAGA nationalism has played in giving fascists a toxic sea in which to swim. We look at how tariffs and protectionism, which many in the labor and progressive movements wrongly favor, are a disastrous strategy for U.S. workers that undermine international solidarity and cede ground to xenophobes and far-right nationalists. And we make the case for why our approach to stopping fascism has to combine direct confrontation with the building of socialist and labor movements that can show the angry and alienated a different model of collective power. Links for this episode: • Listen to the presentation given at Socialism 2018 by Héctor, Luis Rangel and Josie Chávez (http://bit.ly/MexicoSocialists) • Héctor’s Socialist Worker article about AMLO’s election (http://bit.ly/AMLOelection) • Héctor’s two-part interview with Mexican socialist Edgard Sánchez Ramírez: “The making of neoliberal Mexico” Part 1 (http://bit.ly/NeolibMexico1) and Part 2 (http://bit.ly/NeolibMexico2) Links for our opener on right-wing nationalism: • Fortune article on how many Americans make less than $15 an hour (http://bit.ly/Fortune15) • Kim Moody’s book On New Terrain, which argues why globalization isn’t the main source of working class decline (http://bit.ly/OnNewTerrain) • Ahmed Shawki’s classic 1983 article against protectionism, “Don’t Buy ‘Buy American’” (http://bit.ly/DontBuyBA) Music The Boy & Sister Alma, “Lizard Eyes” (Dead Sea Captains Remix) Run The Jewels, “Hey Kids (Bumaye)” Stevie Wonder, “Pastime Paradise” Control Machete, “Sí Señor” Calle 13, “Latinoamérica” Control Machete, “Cumbia Sobre El Río” Lila Downs, “Urge”

18: Justin Akers Chacón on the violence of borders With Jen out of town, Episode 3 guest Lupita Romero steps in to join Danny in a conversation with Justin Akers Chacón, a San Diego-based professor of U.S. History and Chicano Studies, and author of two new books: Radicals in the Barrio, about the history of Mexican and Mexican American working class revolutionaries; and an updated version of No One is Illegal, Justin’s important 2006 book with Mike Davis about fighting oppression in the American Southwest. On top of all that, Justin is a longtime organizer of cross-border solidarity efforts for workers in both Mexico and the U.S., so we ended up having not one but two conversations. We’ll release our discussion of Radicals in the Barrio in the coming weeks. This week, you’ll hear our conversation about the U.S.-Mexico border, which Justin describes to us as both “political theater” and an increasingly deadly reality. We also talk about immigration politics, and how the enforcement-heavy debates in Washington have generally taken place several steps to the right of where public sentiment actually stands—except in those moments like the enormous marches in 2006, when immigrants and their supporters forced themselves onto the public stage. Justin argues that today we might be seeing the rise of another such moment with the rapid spread of calls to abolish ICE and move past the dead-end negotiations for bipartisan “immigration reform.” In our opening segment, our producer Eric joins Lupita and Danny for a conversation about socialism: the concept and the conference. Since the primary victory of democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (which Jen and Eric discussed in Episode 17), a surge of people have gone online to look up definitions of socialism. We discuss what’s wrong with the definition they find in the dictionary, and how the recent Socialism 2018 conference showed signs of a U.S. left that’s taking steps toward becoming a force than help a new generation give socialism a better name. Links for this episode: • Justin’s new book: Radicals in the Barrio: Magonistas, Socialists, Wobblies, and Communists in the Mexican-American Working Class (http://bit.ly/RadicalsBarrio) • Justin’s updated version of No One is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the U.S.-Mexico Border (http://bit.ly/NoOneIllegal) • Justin’s article written at the beginning of the Trump campaign, “Capitalism and the new brown scare” (http://bit.ly/NewBrownScare) • “Life and death on the border” (http://bit.ly/LifeDeathBorder), a series of Socialist Worker articles written in 2011 by Justin, our producer Eric Ruder and Nohelia Ramos as they travelled the border from California to Texas. • “The new abolitionism” (http://bit.ly/AbolichICEDemand), Danny’s article on the importance of demand to abolish ICE. From our opening segment, here are a few audio and video links to sessions from the Socialism 2018 conference: • Video from the evening plenary, “Workers Strike Back: Lessons of the Teachers’ Rebellion” (http://bit.ly/TeachersStrikePlenary) • Audio from “Future of the Socialist Left”, a discussion between Jen and Ella Mahony of DSA, moderated by Jason Farbman (http://bit.ly/FutureSocialistLeft) • Audio from Eva Maria’s talk: “Did Socialism Fail in Venezuela?” (http://bit.ly/SocialismVenezuela) Music and Audio for this episode The Boy & Sister Alma, “Lizard Eyes” (Dead Sea Captains Remix) Las Cafeteras, "Trabajador Trabajadora" La Santa Cecilia, “El Hielo (ICE)” Woody Guthrie, “This Land Is Your Land” Los Jornaleros Del Norte, "Serenata A Un Indocumentado" Los Tigres Del Norte, "Tres Veces Mojado"

Marxists, Elections, and the State Eric Ruder Socialism 2018 Socialism & Marxism The surprise primary victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over a high-ranking Democrat has given fresh energy to a longstanding debate about how the left should relate to elections and the Democratic Party. read more

After Trump’s election, Berkeley became the epicenter of far-right organizing and resistance to it. Mukund talks to us about that experience, the strategic debates and lessons learned. In our intro, we talk about why we can’t succumb to helplessness in the face of the Trump nightmare - and some ideas about how we build an alternative. Mukund Rathi is a law student at UC Berkeley and an active socialist in the Bay Area. He has written for Socialist Worker, In These Times and the Daily Californian. In February 2017, Milo Yiannopoulos attempted to speak at Berkeley and was shut down by thousands of protesters. Mukund points out that nearly all the media coverage, including on the left, focused on a small core of antifa activists and ignored the 2,000 students who showed up to protest. Mukund talks to us about the development of the fight against the right in Berkeley and nationally. He discusses the different strategic debates and argues both against a position of shutting the right down by any means necessary and against the argument to simply ignore the right. Instead, he argues, it has been mass mobilizations and coordinated organization and solidarity that have pushed back the right - in Charlottesville, Boston and in a later round of struggle in Berkeley. We talk about how the protests in Charlottesville, and the murder of Heather Heyer, were a turning point in galvanizing mass opposition. However, Mukund also points out that the far-right is still organizing. They have continued to harass and threaten student and community activists in the Bay Area. This has had a chilling effect on protest. The liberal establishment in the Bay Area has refused to take this threat seriously and failed to protect activists while bending over to protect the “free speech” of the far-right. It will be up to activists to build solidarity and learn the lessons from last year’s battles. Resources and links for this episode: Mukund wrote an article for Socialist Worker on the protests that shut down Milo (http://bit.ly/MiloSW). And in this article he reflected on the lessons of the fight against the right (http://bit.ly/MukundLessonsSW). Here, the Bay Area International Socialist Organization describes the attempt by the far-right to disrupt its meeting (http://bit.ly/BayISOStatement). Eric Ruder and Francois Huges describes the “free speech week” fiasco, in which Berkeley spent a million dollars to defend Milo’s fantasy carnival of far-right speakers (which never materialized) while doing nothing to defend the rights of students. (http://bit.ly/FreeSpeechFiasco). Mukund participated in a roundtable debate hosted by In These Times in which he defended the shutting down of Milo while arguing for a strategy of mass confrontation. In this article for the International Socialist Review, Monique Dols discusses the debates around free speech and fighting the right on campus (http://bit.ly/ISRFightRight). Music in This Episode: A Tribe Called Quest - We the People Patti Smith - People Have The Power Death - Where Do We Go From Here? The Clash - Know Your Rights Elvis Costello - Night Rally Sunflower Bean - Crisis Fest Milva - Bella Ciao

03: Sportswriter Dave Zirin on justice for Michael Bennett We talk to The Nation’s sports editor, Dave Zirin, about NFL player Michael Bennett’s new book Things That Make White People Uncomfortable and the outrageous and false charges made against him by the Houston police department. Dave talks about why the case “stinks to high heaven” and Bennett’s long history of standing for social justice. But first, Jen and Danny, with their producer Eric Ruder, talk about Trump’s new cabinet of zombie warmongers and what it means for the increasingly dangerous world we live in. For more information on things we touched on in this episode, you can check out the links below: You can purchase Michael Bennett’s book at bit.ly/BennettBook. Jessica Brand has raised important questions about the connections between Bennett’s outspoken response to his mistreatment by Las Vegas police and the current charges. You can read her report at bit.ly/InjusticeTodayBennett. Last fall, Slate published a great article about the Las Vegas police department’s smearing of Bennett, which you can read at bit.ly/SlateBennett For more on Trump’s war cabinet, read Ashley Smith’s article at SocialistWorker.org on Trump’s Cabinet of Horrors at bit.ly/SWTrumpCabinet. And for more historical context, you can also read Smith’s four-part series about the 2003 war on Iraq at bit.ly/SWIraqSeries. To find Dave Zirin’s interview with Michael Bennett in Seattle, go to his Edge of Sports podcast “Michael Bennett LIVE in Seattle.” And Lupe Fiasco’s “American Terrorist” was the intro to the statement by Michael Bennett that opened our segment with Dave Zirin.

Lessons From the Last GI Resistance Movement Martin Smith Tod Ensign Eric Ruder Socialism 2008 War & Antiwar