Guerrilla History - Announcements and Recommendations - August 2022

Episode Date: August 5, 2022

Read and subscribe to our free weekly newsletter https://guerrillahistory.substack.com/ Breht's recommendation: The Counterrevolution of 1776 w/ Gerald Horne Adnan's recommendation: Why Turkey Is Authoritarian w/ Halil Karaveli Henry's recommendation: Women In Nepal's Civil War w/ Hisila Yami Support us on Patreon!

Hello, guerrilla history listeners. This week, we don't have a publicly released episode coming to you. So we are going to do a couple of brief announcements to tell you some things that you should keep an eye out for and some old things that you should actually go back and listen to. The first thing that you need to know is that today we are releasing a Patreon exclusive episode. Brett, would you mind letting the listeners know what that episode is going to be all about? Sure, yeah. Today's episode is going to be kind of a roundup and reflection on all three of our kind of coincidentally, you know, timed travels to different places of the world. So Henry went to St. Petersburg, Adnan went to Istanbul and Turkey and to London, I believe. And I went to Paris, France, more or less around the same time. And so we thought it would be a really cool sort of exclusive episode if we all discuss our different experiences and reflections on those. trips. So that's going to be on Patreon. And to find that plus our entire back catalog of bonus episodes, you can go to patreon.com forward slash gorilla history.com. And yeah, have access to that

episode and our entire back catalog. Absolutely. I highly encourage people to sign up for the guerrilla history Patreon. We'd really like to get above 250 people on the Patreon by the end of August. That amount would really give us a nice financial backing to keep doing what we're doing. So here's the push to get to 250 by the end of August. I think that we can do it. We're just a bit shy of it now. The next thing that we want to let you know about is guerrilla history has recently launched about in the last two weeks, a newsletter.

Now, this newsletter is actually a very useful resource for you and it's completely free to use. What it is is it rounds up the recent work that Adnan Brett and myself have been doing, very convenient links telling you all of the things that we've put out recently from our respective platforms or appearances that we've made on different shows, things that you should keep an eye out for. It also serves as a reading and listening list for political education purposes curated by the hosts of the show, as well as former guests of the show.

So we've had participation from people like Salvatore Engel de Mauro, Amanda Yee from Radio Free Amanda, Richard Wolfe, all of these former guests. I have the ability to submit things that they think that you should know, things that you should read and engage with in order to further your understanding of the world. Totally free resource, highly recommend that you subscribe to it. You can get it in your email inbox for free, once again, by going to, let me just get the URL, guerrilla history.substack.com. That's g-e-r-r-r-I-L-A history dot substack.com.

Highly recommend signing up. And if anybody that you know also would benefit from having a curated reading and listening list every week. of things that you should be keeping your eye out for, feel free to send it to them. It's intended to be a good resource for political education purposes. The next thing that we have to announce is something from Adnan. Adnan, why don't you tell the listeners? Well, I think listeners, when you mention about recommendations for listening,

I think our listeners are going to be very excited as we were to listen to an episode that's coming up in about two weeks. We had the opportunity to talk about a new forthcoming book that will be released later this month called The Withdrawal, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the fragility of U.S. power by Nome Chomsky and V.J. Prasht. And we spoke with both of them with Nome Chomsky and then followed by a brief discussion as well with VJ. Prashad about the book. And I think listeners, this is a blockbuster episode. I mean, it's absolutely. fantastic. I think listeners are going to love it and you should share it widely with others. Do tell people about it. We had a really stimulating conversation with Professor Nomschomsky. And as listeners already know, VJ. Prussia is wonderful to speak with and the fact that they produced this dialogue themselves in a book form about basically the history of U.S. imperialism, something you won't want to miss.

Absolutely. terrific episode. Really a great opportunity to speak with the two of them. I know we've had VJ on the show a couple of times before. This is Noam Chomsky's first appearance, but it really was a pleasure to speak with them. Now, the last thing that we're going to go through in this brief announcement before we wrap up listeners is we know that we have a lot of relatively new listeners. And it's totally understandable. Everybody has a lot of things to read. Everybody has a lot of things to listen to. If you're a new subscriber to the show, you may not have gone back and listened to some of the old episodes. that we've done. But some of these old episodes are really useful and very interesting in my, you know, somewhat biased opinion. So each of us is going to give one recommendation for a former episode that we've recorded, just a brief explanation of what it is, why we think that you should listen to it and why we're recommending it today. So without further ado, Brett, why don't I turn to you first? What episode from our back catalog are you going to recommend the listeners to checkout? And I'll just mention listeners if you're interested

in these, look down in the podcast description box below the play button on whatever app you're on, and you'll have links to these episodes there. Sure, yeah. It's difficult to pick because I think we had so many good ones, but I'll go earlier rather than later. And I will recommend the episode we did with Professor Gerald Horn on his text, the counter-revolution of 1776. I think Gerald Horn is a really, really essential historian.

and a longtime organizer, activist, you know, pro-Black liberation, pro-socialism, and has just done a lot of good work for the cause and a lot of this historical work is very crucial and very helpful for the left in the United States in particular. So just for the caliber of guest and the depth and relevance of the topic, I would recommend the Counter-Revolution of 1776 with Gerald Horn. Yeah, great recommendation was one of the ones that I was thinking about recommending as well. Adnan, why don't we turn to you? What do you have to recommend for the listeners today? Well, I'd suggest going really early, actually our second full episode of the podcast. And I would encourage listeners to go back if you haven't had a chance to listen to our discussion with Halil Karavali about his book, Why Turkey is Authoritarian. As Brett mentioned, I was just recently in Istanbul and visiting Turkey.

And I think that's a really good background episode to understand the history of the Republic as a backdrop to thinking about a lot of the discussions today about Erdogan, who has been in power now almost 20 years as variously prime minister and president and his reshaping of Turkey. Very often these narratives emphasize his authoritarian character. but what one kind of needs to understand that Halil Karveli's book really establishes is that there's actually a long tradition of authoritarianism with various kinds of consequences in understanding and shaping the modern Turkish state. So I really encourage it was an excellent episode, outstanding book. So do check that out. Absolutely.

I remember that conversation well, despite the fact that as you mentioned it on, It was one of the first episodes that we ever recorded. And keeping with that theme, the recommendation that I have is also one of our very first episodes that we recorded. It's titled Women in Nepal's Civil War with the excellent guest, Tisili Yami. And this is a very important episode, I think, for a couple of reasons. One, it looks at a successful revolution from the perspective of somebody who had a leading role within this revolution.

So this was part of the Maoist revolution that overthrew the government of Nepal and eventually became the governing body of the country. And Hissila, our guest for the show, was one of the women at the forefront within this revolutionary movement. And alongside her husband, who was also a very prominent leader and ended up becoming prime minister of Nepal, and she ended up becoming multiple time minister of the country. She has some very insight, insights into this movement. And since that time, since she's been a minister, she also, her and her husband have also

founded another political party. I believe that the translation is the social democratic party of Nepal. But a very interesting episode to talk about both a successful revolution as well, particularly as the role of women in it. And we have a couple of episodes that focus on women within our show's run. But this was really one of the first episodes that we really took a deep dive into the role of women within revolutionary movements. Adnan, you want to say something? Yeah, I just wanted to point out. That's interesting. the choices that we have made here as recommendations, because I think they really illustrate the range of kinds of episodes we've done over the last, not quite two years on the podcast

for these main reconnaissance report episodes. Listeners, of course, remember that we also have intelligence briefings, the occasional dispatch, and we do different kinds of things in each of these different kinds of episodes. But as far as the main reconnaissance report episodes, we, you know, have a recommendation of a work of historical scholarship that has a lot of contemporary relevance in Gerald Horn's Counter-Revolution of 1776, bursting, you know, these kinds of myths that are so important and significant in contemporary American politics and identity. And then on the other hand, we have kind of interdisciplinary historicist, but sort of sociological analysis with Caravelli's work. He's a sort of historical sociologist.

And so he kind of approaches things in a different sort of way. And then lastly, we have, you know, with Hesilayami, we have a few really profound and interesting discussions with actual participants in revolutionary history. We've had several episodes like that where we've talked with participants about their reflections. So Comrade Joma, we've had Margaret Schiller. And in this case, our first episode like that was with Hesilayami. So I think that, you know, go back and look at these episodes and it gives you a real sense of the range of kinds of episodes we have on guerrilla history that are part of a broad sense of what's necessary for a good historical and political education. Yeah, excellent. If none, thank you for that feedback on the

choices. I completely agree with that. So on that note, then, listeners, we're going to wrap up this little announcement and things to look out for, recommendations. If you are interested in of the things that we mentioned, such as the newsletter or any of these episodes, just look in the description box below wherever you clicked on play, and you'll find the links to all of these things. So just click on it, you'll go there. If you find this useful, let us know on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod. And again, you can support the show by going to patreon.com forward slash gorilla history, again, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And until next time, listeners, Solidarity.