On Trump's foreign policy, the 2nd time round.

Historian and podcaster Daniel Bessner joins Alex Hochuli and contributing editor Lee Jones to ask how this era of rot and decay will proceed under Trump II, from Ukraine to China and beyond. We discuss:

• Will we see "America First transactionalism"?

• Does Trump have a capable cadre to bend the state to his will?

• What will Trump’s relationship be to the deep state?

• How important are generational splits in attitudes to the US empire?

• Will there be a peace deal in Ukraine? Where does that leave 'Atlanticism'?

• Is confrontation with China baked in?

• Is the Middle East the key to world peace?

Links:

• Empire’s Critic: The Worlds of Noam Chomsky, Daniel Bessner, The Nation

• American Prestige podcast

• EU blows hot and cold over Trump, Benoît Bréville, Le Monde diplomatique

• America First, Russia, & Ukraine, Lt. General (Ret.) Keith Kellogg, Fred Fleitz, AFPI

• /171/ Fukuyama & the End of History ft. Daniel Bessner 

• /142/ Dollar Empire (2) ft. Daniel Bessner

On The Fall of Public Man.

[Patreon Exclusive]

We continue working through the 2024/25 syllabus and the first theme, The Future of Place. We ask is politics possible without a sense of place. Here we discuss chapter 13, "Community becomes uncivilised", and deal with listener questions.

• How does the changed relationship between public and private impact notions of community and of place?

• How does the maintenance of impersonal relations signify 'civility'?

• Is impersonality really the summation of all the worst evils of industrial capitalism?

• What is wrong with yearning for community, or specifically “love of the ghetto, especially the middle-class ghetto”

• How does "fratricide" become "logical" when people use intimate relations as a basis for social relations? Why is fratricide "system-maintaining"?

Links:

• 2024/25 Bungacast Syllabus (with links to readings)

• Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence, Christina B. Hanhardt

• The Making of a New Political Subject, George Hoare, Café americain

On President Jimmy Carter's responsibility for neoliberalism.

[Patreon Exclusive]

Writer and historian Tim Barker talks to Alex Hochuli and contributing editor Alex Gourevitch about the former president's life and legacy.

• What do people get wrong about Carter? Was Carter, not Reagan, the start of neoliberalism?

• How is Carter's much-admired 'decency' of a piece with his neoliberalism?

• What is 'austerity' and how does it relate to questions of public and private, vice and virtue?

• What was the alternative to the neoliberal pivot in the late 1970s?

• How did the appointment of Fed chairman Volcker change the entire world?

• Did Carter set the script for the Democrats, of being 'noble losers' (but actually on the side of the winners)?

Links:

• Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024, Tim Barker, Origins of Our Time

• Weapons of the Week newsletter

• On neoliberalism and the Cold War: /276/ Broken Promises ft. Fritz Bartel

  Other biographical/obituary episodes:

• Silvio Berlusconi: An Oral History

• /293/ Goodbye 20th Century (RIP Gorby)

• /410/ Reading Club: Deutscher's Stalin

• /435/ Reading Club: Stalin's General – Winning WWII

On radical conservatism and global order.

Professor Michael C. Williams talks to George and Alex about his co-authored World of the Right and how the radical right has gone global. We discuss:

• Does academia takes the Right as seriously as it should?

• What's the difference between the radical right and the far right, the new right, national conservatives, or fascists?

• How is the right 'global' – not just through international conferences but by being "co-constituted by its relation to the global"?

• Why is the radical right focused on the global liberal managerial elite? What does it get right and what does it get wrong about this stratum?

• How did the radical right come to take Gramsci seriously?

• Is the radical right just parasitic on the breakdown of liberal universalism?

• What does this analysis of the radical right say about the Left – is it the force that protects the status quo of the liberal international order?

Links:

• World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and Global Order, Michael C. Williams et al., Cambridge UP

• /351/ Eating the Left’s Lunch? ft. Cecilia Lero & Tamás Gerőcs

• /129/ The Right Is Weak ft. Corey Robin

On Conclave.

In our final episode of the year, we debate Edgar Berger's new film about a Papal election, featuring Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci as Cardinals and Isabella Rossellini as a nun.

• Is the film about an alien, abstruse process – the conclave – or is it about something familiar and earthly? Is the film about the sacred or the profane? About temporal or holy power?

• What does it say about process and neutrality, in times of lawfare and contested elections?

• ⁠Why is there so much film and TV about the Pope? What is it that appeals today about Papal authority?

• The film features a good liberal, a corrupt moderate, a nasty reactionary, a tainted idpol candiate (a homophobic African) – do these politics matter? Why so crude?

• ⁠Is it mere Oscar bait?

On Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity

[For access, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast/membership]

We continue working through the 2024/25 syllabus with the first theme, The Future of Place, asking, is politics possible without a sense of place. We discuss Marc Augé's much-referenced 1992 work on 'non-places': airports, shopping malls, corporate hotels, motorways... We discuss:

• Are non-places proliferating, and what would this mean for society and politics?

• Are non-places the spatial accompaniment to post-politics, to the foreclosure of political contestation?

• Is the distinction between non-places and places/spaces useful?

• Is there anything to the notion of a hyper- or super-modernity?

• Is Augé too deterministic? Does he miss how non-places can be places for culture or politics?

Links:

• 2024/25 Bungacast Syllabus (with links to readings)

On immediacy, representation, and anti-politics.

Anna Kornbluh, professor of English and author of Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism talks to Alex about the cultural, political, and economic changes she refers to as 'immediacy'. We discuss:

• Is 'immediacy' just a vibe, or is vibe itself non-mediated?

• How does anti-representation in film, TV and books relate to anti-representation in politics?

• And can we relate culture immediacy to the 'material base'?

• How do Fleabag, Uncut Gems, and the turn to memoirs and autofiction exemplify immediacy?

• Why does self-disclosure fit so well with the data economy?

• In what way is contemporary anti-theory nihilistic and apologetic?

• How does the style of immediacy relate to Frederic Jameson's understanding of postmodernism?

• Is the desire to put everything private on show a response to alienation?

• And is the professionalisation of 'theory' a problem or solution?

Links:

• Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism, Anna Kornbluh, Verso

• Has culture become pure vibe?, Anna Kornbluh, Spike Art Magazine

• The Theory of Immediacy or the Immediacy of Theory?, Jensen Suther, Nonsite

• Embracing Alienation: Why We Shouldn't Try to Find Ourselves, Todd McGowan, Repeater

On your questions, comments & criticisms.

[Patreon Exclusive]

We're back with a final letters to the editor episode of 2024 in which we discuss:

• the universalisation of 'anti-fascism' as a kind of politics

• whether there are any actual 'family abolitionists' out there

• humanitarian intervention in Palestine

• the hard and less hard facts of US imperial decline

• the legitimacy of 'existential' politics

• whether anti-corruption politics are good, actually

• and why Phil loves Hillary

On Taiwan, semiconductors, and war.

[Full episode for subscribers only]

James Lin, Assistant Professor of International Studies at the University of Washington at Seattle, talks to Phil about Taiwanese politics and the country's place in the world, in terms of the global economy and Sino-American geopolitical rivalry. We talk about Taiwanese history and politics, from Japanese occupation and colonisation across the Cold War, to the present day, including: 

• Taiwanese politics in the shadow of the geopolitical crisis

• The paradox of political divergence and economic convergence between China and Taiwan since the 1980s

• How did Taiwan corner the market for manufacturing computer chips? 

• How successful is the ongoing US reshoring of chip production?

• Will there be a Marco Rubio/Elon Musk divide on China in the Trump White House? 

• How might a war over Taiwan play out? 

Links:

• In the Global Vanguard: Agrarian Development and the Making of Modern Taiwan, James Lin, UC Press

• What Works in Taiwan Doesn’t Always in Arizona, a Chipmaking Giant Learns, John Liu, NY Times

• Will Trump take the Musk path or the Rubio path on Taiwan?, Lev Nachman, Nikkei Asia

On Mothers and the institution of the family.

We're happy to bring you the recording of the launch event for the third issue of Damage magazine, with whom we're partnered. George and Alex were present for the event as part of a sequence of recordings on the future of place that will be released as a docu-series in the New Year.

For now, here is regular contributor Catherine Liu and friend of the pod Dustin Guastella debating the family to a packed-out bookstore at Moma's PS1 in Queens, NY.

On the End of History and Europe.

[For full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast]

LSE professor Mike Wilkinson talks to Phil and Alex about how the history of European integration fits with constitutional theories and ideas of sovereignty. We discuss: 

• In what way are the conspiracy theories about the EU true?

• What are the origins of European integration in the inter-war crisis?

• How did European integration tie into the history of ideas and development of 20th century legal history?

• How far does European integration overlap with counter-revolutionary theories and ideas?

• And who is the Last European? 

Links:

• Authoritarian Liberalism and the Transformation of Modern Europe, Michael Wilkinson

• Political Constitutionalism in Europe Revisited, Michael Wilkinson, Journal of Law and Society

• The Rise and Fall of World Constitutionalism, Michael Wilkinson, Verfassungsblog