For the full episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/antifadas-is-15-77698515

In light of the depressing denouement of last year's railroad conflict, Sean and Matt sit down, in person at last, to discuss the deep history behind how American organized labor got so disorganized and why the labor movement hasn't moved in decades.

Why was it that, in the United States, workers institutions had trouble evolving past the infancy of narrow, sectoral, decentralized craft unionism towards broad-based, nationally-coordinated industrial unionism? How did capital, in the face of militant organizing, help choose the weaker of the two as their partner to bargain with? In what ways is worker self-organization in this country truly, as our enemies always say, anti-American? And importantly what is to be done now that private sector union density is so low, workers institutions so captured and the national labor relations regime has fallen apart?

This is an extended preview, but to get access to all two hours of recording - including an example of a practical way that communist theory can begin building class power today - become a patron at patreon.com/theantifada. You'll get access to our discord server, all our archives of bonus content and you get to support our work (if that's something you're into.)

For the full episode, support the show at patreon.com/theantifada!

Ian Svenonius is a rock singer (Nation of Ulysses, The Make-Up, Chain and the Gang) now turned Marxist polemicist with his new book Against the Written Word.

We discuss his theory of literacy as a tool of the bourgeoisie and how rock n' roll reeducation camps might be the antidote, and why that might not go far enough for as to completely devolve to our neanderthal origins.

Buy Against the Written Word from Akashic Books

Interview with Ian about being the "sassiest boy in America" and why the workers are rock-and-roll

Read John Zerzan on The Failure of Symbolic Thought

Check out his film The Lost Record

Opening song: Nation of Ulysses - Aspirin Kid

Closing song: The Make-Up - I am Pentagon

Andy guests on a weird films podcast and forces them to talk about Marx and revolution for an hour. Movies discussed include: The Menu, Triangle of Sadness, Sorry to Bother You, Young Karl Marx, The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Don't Look Up, Snowpiercer, Tar, Spirited Away by Agnes Varda, and much much more

For the full episode support the show at http://patreon.com/theantifada

and/or follow Twitch of the Death Nerve on Instagram and Patreon

For the full episode and the rest of the Diving into the Wreckage series, support the show at Patreon.com/TheAntifada

Taking a break from the ongoing debt crisis analysis, Sean and Varn lay out a series of first principles. This miniseries is meant to lay out some basics for how to think about the world and act within/upon it, what differentiates our particular political bent from others on the left and ultimately what is to be done with the social knowledge and beliefs that all of us hold in common.

By the end of this series we hope to have hammered out these principles into a basis for a recomposition of communist organizing.

Song: Gary Numan - This Wreckage

We ring in the New Year by answering all the questions posed to us on our Discord! Topics include: the terminal crisis of capitalism, pushing Biden to the left, Brenner's recent NLR article, John Brown, animal testing, ecosocialism, and of course, what is to be dun.

For the full episode support the show at patreon.com/theantifada

Brenner dust-up:

https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii138/articles/dylan-riley-robert-brenner-seven-theses-on-american-politics

Closing song: Flower - Filth of their Confines

Old friend Eric-John Russell wanders with us through a variety of topics including critical theory of art and culture, the maturation and end of the Situationist International, and our traditional holiday discussion of antisemitism.

After the paywall we talk about Triangle of Sadness and Walter Benjamin's Emergency Brake, and if George Costanza is Jewish.

For the full episode support the show at patreon.com/theantifada

Check out Cured Quail and the interview in Book Forum

Read: Spectacular Logic in Hegel and Debord: Why Everything is as it Seems (Critical Theory and the Critique of Society)

Song: Louie Zong - Quail

For the 7th episode of Talkin' Tina, the Antifada side project where we discuss the history and politics of America Latina, we chat with a comrade from Oakland about the uprising that occurred in Cuba on July 11th, 2021, via his interview with an anarchist from the island.

The interview can be read in full here: https://www.sm28.org/articles/j11-the-return-of-the-cuban-proletariat/

Support the show at Patreon.com/TheAntifada

Check out Tamarack in Oakland

Song: Afro Cuban Allstars - Distinto, Diferente

Sean and Varn take a brief intermission from their long-running debt crisis series to check in on the state of the American Left. (Tl;dr it's not looking good.)

Where have the forces unleashed by the Bernie wave gone? Why has the social-democratic left become merely an adjunct to the Democratic Party? How come revolutionary organizations have either liquidated themselves into the DSA or remained marginal micro-sects? In what ways might these two coeval paths be overcome and what part might all of us play in this overcoming?

This is an extended preview of [the three-hour long conversation]( the three-hour long conversation) which ends on a hopeful note and a call to action. If you're interested in this content, become a patron today at www.patreon.com/theantifada

Follow Varn (@skepoet) on: Youtube and podcasts

It's an unhappy 200th birthday for us, we do a postmortem of the little rail strike couldn't. Is the blame on the squad, Brandon, the unions, or the workers themselves? And what comes next for rail workers and class struggle in general?

In the second half we propose a few theories of Musk's Twitter takeover: Thiel-pilled fascist Musk, Hannah Arendt high-liberalism Musk, Gordon Gecko-style corporate raider Musk, Henry Ford productivist-futurist Musk (and why ultimately we believe none of it really matters.) Support the show at patreon.com/theantifada to hear it!

Song: Annie Lennox - Train in Vain

Sean and Rax King of Low Culture Boil talk about Baz Luhrmann's 2022 masterpiece Elvis and suggest that Baz Luhrmann should in fact be tasked with directing the biopics of every single notable person until he dies from exhaustion. We also read a 1956 NYT review of an Elvis performance, where the reviewer says "teenagers" a lot, and bits of Priscilla Presley's memoir Elvis and Me, where Priscilla talks about Elvis' kinks a lot.

Check out more great cultural commentary and fun times at www.patreon.com/lowcultureboil