Politics Theory Other

Does Labour face terminal decline? w/ Jeremy Gilbert

With the prospect of another potential Labour by-election defeat in Batley and Spen next month, Jeremy Gilbert joins PTO to talk about the prospect of the Labour Party facing further erosion in its support and whether the Keir Starmer project is even about winning elections or if the goal is simply to defeat and marginalise the Labour left.

PTO Extra! Palestine - a new era of resistance? w/ Rana Barakat

Rana Barakat joins PTO from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank to talk about the current humanitarian situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, the significance of the recent general strike and the protests amongst Palestinians within the 1948 borders, and what Israel's escalation of violence may mean for Netanyahu's efforts at normalising Israel's relations with Arab states in the region.

On violence and on violence against women w/ Jacqueline Rose

Jacqueline Rose joins PTO to talk about her new book, On Violence and on Violence against Women. We discussed how psychoanalysis can help us grasp the mental states that make male violence possible, where Jacqueline parts company with the radical feminist perspectives of Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, and how the experience of trans women illuminates more broadly the nature of male violence against women. Finally, we talked about the violent history of South Africa - from th...

How China escaped shock therapy w/ Isabella Weber

At the end of the 1980s, China's leaders came close to implementing the kind of economic shock therapy reforms that a few years later caused a social and economic catastrophe in the former Soviet Union and much of eastern Europe. A moment of enormous significance for Chinese and world history, Isabella Weber explains how and why China came to the brink of initiating an economic "big bang", and why ultimately the leadership chose to pursue a gradualist process of market reform instead.

...

PTO Extra! From euphoria to disaster - India's Covid-19 crisis w/ Ravinder Kaur

Ravinder Kaur joins PTO to talk about India's devastating second wave of Covid-19. We talked about the shift from the bizarre euphoria at the start of the year about the Modi government's handling of the crisis, to the brutal second wave. We discussed why the Indian government has mismanaged the crisis so badly and how the Hindu nationalist project of the BJP has taken advantage of the situation to continue its efforts at rewriting India's history for its own purposes. 

New Pandemics, Old Politics w/ Alex De Waal

Alex De Waal joins PTO to talk about his new book New Pandemics, Old Politics: Two Hundred Years of War on Disease. We discussed the history of pandemic disease control, from the cholera outbreaks of the 19th century to HIV/AIDS and the Covid19 crisis. We chatted why the war on disease narrative is so unhelpful, how colonial era vaccination programmes spread HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, and why the Great Influenza pandemic of 1918-19 is so little discussed and written about, despite it...

PTO Extra! Daniel Finn on Northern Ireland and the DUP's dilemma

Earlier this month rioting broke out in loyalist communities in several towns and cities in Northern Ireland - the worst such violence for years. PTO spoke to Daniel Finn about his recent article for the London Review of Books on the causes of the disturbances. 

Enoch Powell: Britain's first neoliberal politician w/ Robbie Shilliam

Robbie Shilliam joins PTO to talk about his article, 'Enoch Powell: Britain’s First Neoliberal Politician' which appeared in the New Political Economy Journal. We spoke about how Enoch Powell, far from being a political throwback was in fact a key figure in the emergence of neoliberalism and Thatcherism, and how his politics presaged the Brexit project. We also chatted about how Powell, in contrast to many conservatives became hostile to nostalgia for the British Empire and how he ...

PTO Extra! - "Global Britain" and the UK defence review w/ Paul Rogers

Earlier this month the UK government published the latest defence review, titled 'Global Britain in a Competitive Age'. PTO spoke to international security analyst Paul Rogers about the defence review, and the government's move to increase the UK's nuclear stockpile by 40%. We also talked what the review tells us about the UK in a post-Brexit world and finally what the review means for the government's relations with China. 

HyperCurtisisation w/ Owen Hatherley, Juliet Jacques, and Alberto Toscano

Owen Hatherley, Juliet Jacques, and Alberto Toscano join PTO to talk about Adam Curtis's new BBC series Can't Get You Out of My Head. We chatted about Curtis' politics, the changes in his documentary style since the early 1990s, and why he avoids talking about neoliberalism.

Listener questions: What is Bidenism? w/ Corey Robin and Meagan Day

Tomorrow I'll be talking to Corey Robin and Meagan Day about Joe Biden and the new Democratic administration. We'll be talking about the surprisingly large fiscal stimulus, why Biden appears to have moved away from the Democrat establishments' prior obsession with bipartisanship, how the left ought to relate to the administration, China and Biden's foreign policy, and we'll also talk about the state of the Republican party. If you have a question on these or any other topics - please send me ...

The entwinement of police and male violence w/ Melissa Gira Grant & Chardine Taylor Stone

Melissa Gira Grant and Chardine Taylor Stone join PTO to discuss police and male violence and the murder of Sarah Everard. We talked about the importance of not seeing Wayne Couzen's role as a police officer as merely incidental to the murder of Everard and we also talked about why carceral feminist approaches that seek to combat male violence through the police and the courts are doomed to fail.  We also talked about the social media reaction to the initial vigil for Sarah Everard on Cl...

Listener questions: Melissa Gira Grant and male violence

Hello PTO's wonderful supporters! From this week PTO Legend tier patrons (and the higher tiers) will be able to submit questions for upcoming shows. Tomorrow I'll be talking to Melissa Gira Grant about police and male violence with regard to her recent article in The New Republic: Sarah Everard and the Useless Generality of “Male Violence”. Melissa is a st...

The Care Crisis: What Caused It and How Can We End It? w/ Emma Dowling

Emma Dowling joins PTO to talk about her new book The Care Crisis: What Caused It and How Can We End It. We chatted about the scale of the care crisis today, how social reproduction theory can help us to make sense of the crisis, and we also talked about how conservatives conceive of care and of how they believe practices of care should be undertaken.

PTO Extra! Shamima Begum and normalising citizenship revocation w/ Nisha Kapoor

On Friday the UK's supreme court ruled against allowing Shamima Begum, the young British woman who in 2015 travelled to Syria to join ISIS, to return to the UK to contest the Home Office's removal of her citizenship. PTO spoke to Nisha Kapoor about the Supreme Court's decision, the question as to whether Begum was groomed by traffickers and we also talked about the dangerous precedent that the normalisation of citizenship revocation represents.

#111 Why the Luddites were right (part 2) w/ Gavin Mueller

Gavin Mueller joins PTO for part two of our conversation on his new book, Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Were Right About Why You Hate Your Job. We talked about Taylorism and the deskilling of workers, how automation was used by American military planners during the Vietnam war in order to maintain control of the increasingly mutinous US Army, and finally we talked about why - in spite of how the increasing deployment of deskilling technologies made working conditions worse an...

Understanding Burma's coup w/ Carlos Sardiña Galache

On the 1st of February, the Burmese military launched a coup d'état against the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy which had been returned to power in November in a landslide victory. Alleging electoral fraud, the Tatmadaw's leader Min Aung Hlaing promised that military rule would last for one year and then be followed by new elections. The coup has perplexed outside observers since Aung San Suu Kyi had done little during her time in office to threat...

Ed Rooksby

Like so many others, I was extremely sad to hear that Ed Rooksby has passed away, at just 46 years old, apparently due to long Covid - a condition he had been struggling with for nine months. I knew Ed mostly through his writing and social media presence but he always struck me as very kind, strikingly humble (he seemed to be really quite unaware of how smart he was) and generous. Ed was teach...

#110 Biden begins w/ Kate Aronoff

Kate Aronoff joins PTO to talk about what can be expected from the Joe Biden administration in the United States, both domestically and on foreign policy. We discussed the scale and scope of the administration's stimulus package, where the Republican party goes next after its defeat at the polls in November, and we also talked about why - in spite of Biden's impressive rhetoric on climate and the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline - the US fossil fuel industry expects a good year ahead ...

PTO Extra! Is Scottish independence inevitable? w/ Rory Scothorne

With support for Scottish independence at an all time high, and with Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish National Party predicted to win a landslide in May's Scottish parliamentary elections, PTO spoke to Rory Scothorne about whether independence really is inevitable, how the UK government will try to prevent the break up of the union, what the economic argument for Scottish independence looks like post-Brexit, and we also talked about the increasing fractiousness of the SNP.

#109 Why the Luddites were right (part 1) w/ Gavin Mueller

Gavin Mueller joins PTO to talk about his new book, Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job. In the first part of our conversation we talk about the history of the Luddites, why their reputation for conservative technophobia is undeserved and how their struggles to resist the imposition of new deskilling technologies are relevant to the contemporary workplace. We also talked about the problems of leftwing techno-utopianism.

PTO Extra - the UK's disastrous Covid-19 response w/ Richard Seymour

With the UK Office of National Statistics reporting that covid-19 related deaths in the UK have exceeded 100,000, PTO spoke to Richard Seymour about why the UK government's covid response has been so disastrous. We also talked about why the UK vaccination has not been characterised by the vacillation and delay that has been associated with so much else of the British government's reaction to the pandemic. And finally we talked about impact of the covid crisis on the prospects for the breaking...

#108 Capitalist dreams and nationalist designs w/ Ravinder Kaur

Ravinder Kaur joins PTO to talk about her new book, Brand New Nation: Capitalist Dreams and Nationalist Designs in Twenty-First-Century India. We spoke about how in both India, and around the world ethnonationalism in alliance with domestic and international capital seeks to rebrand entire nations as attractive investment opportunities. We talked about who and what is left out of the airbrushed picture of the branded nation, why it is that nationalism and capitalist globalisation are...

#107 Climate activism and the fetishisation of nonviolence w/ Andreas Malm

Andreas Malm joins PTO to talk about his new book, How To Blow Up a Pipeline. We chatted about why the climate movement is so fiercely committed to nonviolence, how that hinders climate activism, and how the advocates of nonviolence edit the history of popular struggles and liberations movements in order to downplay the importance of the more militant wings of those struggles. 

ee8r4jgn

#106 The trouble with mainstream feminism w/ Alison Phipps

Alison Phipps joins PTO to talk about her new book, Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism. We chatted about the Me Too movement and what it reveals about the mainstream of feminist politics, how violence against women is necessary to the project of capitalist globalisation and how the image of the imperilled white woman has been central to the project of empire both formal and informal.

#RedHacks - Economic journalism and the end of neoliberalism w/ Laurie Macfarlane

In the final episode of the second season of #RedHacks Joana Ramiro speaks to Laurie Macfarlane about the necessity of an economic journalism that challenges the status quo.

PTO Extra! The defeat of the Anglo-American left (part two) w/ Jeremy Gilbert

Jeremy Gilbert joins PTO for part two of a two-part conversation on the defeats of the Corbyn and Sanders projects in the UK and the United States and why, in Jeremy's view it was never realistic to believe that the new left was yet ready or capable of taking power and implementing a radical policy agenda.

#105 The mainstreaming of the far right w/ Aurelien Mondon & Aaron Winter

Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter join PTO to talk about whether Joe Biden's election victory represents a comprehensive repudiation of Trumpism, what we can expect from the Republican Party after Trump, and we also chatted about the significance of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

#104 The meaning of Maradona w/ Marcela Mora y Araujo & Jonathan Wilson

Marcela Mora y Araujo and Jonathan Wilson join PTO to talk about the late Diego Maradona and the outpouring of grief that greeted his death in Argentina and around the world. We also talked about the darker side of Maradona, his mistreatment of the women in his life in particular and the tangled question of whether one can separate the art from the artist.

PTO Extra! The defeat of the Anglo-American left (part one) w/ Jeremy Gilbert

Jeremy Gilbert joins PTO to discuss why the Corbyn and Sanders projects ultimately foundered. We talked about the significance of personality and strategy versus deeper historical tendencies, and why the Corbyn leadership seemed to prefer a critique of austerity to a broader attack on the neoliberal era. Our discussion was prompted by Jeremy's article in Open Democracy, 'We lost...