Guerrilla History - Guerrilla History's 2023 In Review

Episode Date: December 29, 2023

In this year end episode, we do our annual Year In Review.  We discuss some of the major things that happened globally in 2023 as well as the work we have done over the course of this year.  With this, we've released over 50 publicly available episodes this year on a wide range of topic, and we are really proud of what we have been able to provide to you for political education purposes.  We are looking forward to continuing to grow and expand as we go into 2024!  If you appreciate what we do, consider signing up to our patreon to help us do what we do. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory

You don't remember den, Ben, boo? No. The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome to guerrilla history. the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history

and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki, joined as usual by my two co-hosts, Professor Adnan Hussain, historian director of the School of Religion at Queen's University and Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing well, Henry. It's good to be with you at the year's end. Yes, it is. Where are you joining us from today? It's a different room. I'm back in Kingston, Ontario, briefly, for the holiday.

days and returning to London very shortly, but I'm back in my usual town. We should always have an Adnan update, because as the listeners will have listened, he's recently been in Istanbul and London, and now he's back in Canada. So Adnan is definitely the most well-traveled of us at the moment. The Carmen San Diego of our little crew. Yes, that's right. Great reference as well. And that was the voice of our other usual co-host, Brett O'Shea.

who is host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brent. How are you doing? Hello, I'm doing pretty good. It's that little area between, you know, Christmas and the New Year's where everything is really sort of calm, not a lot going on, a lot of time just hanging around the house, and I'm trying to enjoy it as much as I can. I'm very jealous because, as the listeners may know, I'm in Russia and Christmas is on January 7th here, so we're still working today. And work has been particularly crazy, lately. I'm really looking forward to getting to that in between New Year's and Christmas

break that is our equivalent of what you have right now. Is that an Eastern Orthodox thing? It certainly is. Even though the majority of the people in the Republic I live in are Muslim. They still have the holiday schedule based on the Eastern Orthodox calendar. So we also, we have all of the Muslim holidays off here as well. That's a story for a different day. Today we're going to be talking about 2023. This is our annual year in review episode where we talk about some of the major things that happened over the course of the year. And we also bring up some of the work that we've done over the course of the year. Listeners, if you're on our feed, you'll have seen that we've released over 50 episodes on the guerrilla history feed at this point this year, which

is absolutely crazy and has been a very crazy year to put together. But I think that we've done some really valuable stuff. And we'll be able to talk about some of the things. that we've done this year and how it relates to some of the events that have been happening this year. So guys, I'm going to open the floor. I guess we'll keep this a little bit more informal than usual, since this is just a year in review. We'll have kind of a discussion about what's been going on on the show and in the world. Who wants to open up with their initial thoughts about anything that happened in 2023 or anything that we did in 2023? Brett? Sure. Yeah. Well, obviously a lot has happened in 2023. And I'm sure at some point in this

We're going to get to look forward to 2024 and try to extrapolate out, you know, what are the possibilities of what could happen in the new year? What are some of the ongoing dynamics that are going to continue in the new year, some things to look out for geopolitically, the U.S. election coming up next year. There's lots to talk about. So hopefully we have a little looking forward section at the end of this. But this year, I think, you know, I think you could talk about a lot of things. Of course, we have the two wars, one started before the Ukraine and the Russia war, start. started a year or so ago, two years ago, or a year and a half, I don't know, time is weird. But obviously the Palestine conflict, brutality, ongoing genocide is probably the major political flashpoint, putting pressure on NATO, putting pressure on the U.S. imperial hegemonic order. You know, we've seen the rise of multipolarity, as well as criticisms of certain factions on the left who might make too much out of multipolarity, which I might want to touch out. In fact, I'll probably do that right now. I think we are seeing a fundamental shift in the geopolitical situation.

We've been seeing it for a couple years now, and it's only intensifying. And, you know, one of the things I wanted to make clear, and I think we probably made this clear on previous episodes, with regards to our work around multipolarity, is that, and you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I speak for all of us when I say that, you know, our position on multipolarity, Polarity is not that it is a good in and of itself or that it is an end in and of itself, but merely that it opens up new opportunities, creates new leverage points, and, you know, sort of shakes up the geopolitical order in a way that has both good, bad, and ugly repercussions, right? Ugly being obviously the people that are killed. But Henry, are you raising your head?

Yeah, just to say that, wow, we're taking a dialectical view of multipolarity. Like, the listeners will be shot. But actually, some listeners have been shocked because we have put out a couple of episodes on multipolarity. I know we had more in 2022 than we did in 2023, if I'm remembering correctly, but we did have some that talked about multipolarity in 2023. And we've had responses that have varied from, they've mentioned multipolarity. So therefore, they think that multipolarity is an end in itself and therefore they don't care about actually building socialism.

And we've also had people that say, well, in their episode about multipolarity, about multipolarity, they mentioned that it's not an end to itself. So they don't actually think that there's any utility in multipolarity. It's like, people, just listen. This is like both of those positions are profoundly undialectical. And what Brett is describing right now is a very principled and dialectical analysis at looking at what is actually happening in the world, thinking about what is possible, but also thinking about what needs to be done within the context of this.

But yeah, as you said, as soon as you bring up the word multiplicity, polarity, you get the whole gamut of people from both sides that are very hardcore onto polarity as an end to itself and people that hear the word and think that you're talking about it as an end to itself and are therefore opposed you in that way. Sorry for that interaction, Brett. Oh, yeah, it's important. I think it is one of those. It's become one of those, especially on the left, buzzwords that mean different things to different people, that when people hear it, certain emotions come up, certain assumptions will immediately arise. But I think we've been very clear from the beginning. And just as you attested to with the people,

that actually listened to our episode, even if you end up disagreeing with us, we've been very clear that we are not seeing multipolarity as a good and in itself. You could have multipolarity in a fascist world order. You could have five different fascist countries competing, and that's technically multipolarity. So it's not a good in and of itself for an end of itself, but again, it creates these opportunities, it opens these doors, creates these crisis moments in the imperialist chain, as we're seeing right now.

Now, is it always good? Of course now. Look what's happening in Palestine. On one hand, it is a human, tragedy, a brutal genocide ongoing right now. On the other hand, it's putting incredible pressure public opinion-wise and also just materially the forces sort of taking sides and, you know, swirling together, putting huge pressure on Israel and the United States in a way that I haven't seen in my entire life. And that creates opportunities. That creates

room for new narratives, for new forms of criticism, et cetera, for some of our thoughts on you know, our analyses to get out there. And, you know, I find that our analysis makes much more sense than like the mainstream MSNBC, Fox News, ABC style narrative of what's happening in both Ukraine and what's happening in Palestine. And so here's a moment where people are looking for alternative understandings. Some people are turning to independent media like we offer. And that's just one in a million ways in which new opportunities open. So I just kind of wanted to maybe start off with that point and let you guys take that wherever you want. Well, I completely agree with the idea that it's not an unalloyed good or bad.

I mean, if anything, I think the question has been, you know, what are the opportunities and possibilities with the decline of U.S. empire while observing that that very decline may be accompanied by even sharper contradictions, competition, and greater violence as an empire attempts to assert itself, you know, while it's facing, you know, much more competition. Obviously, in the 90s and 2000s, the United States, you know, had what you might think of as purely wars of choice, you know, and attempting to extend its global dominance and hegemony, and now it's facing kind of rush fires on like the limits of its reach and having to, you know, engage in new and different ways. And that is increasing the conditions of

violence and conflict. I think we have been entering a very dangerous phase in history. That doesn't mean that there aren't, you know, potential opportunities here. But in fact, actually, you know, trying to actually capitalize upon those, you know, opportunities can be very difficult when, you know, there's just an increase in repression that's taking place. So that's one thing that I would say, you know, I was trying to think about, like, well, how would I look at this year in review? And I thought, well, one thing to do is see what the Council on Foreign Relations, thinks is important and then figure out, you know, where they're wrong about almost every, you know, position. Not that they're wrong, that there are key events and key processes, but usually their analysis is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is wrong. And I, one thing that I was

interested in is, they noted that, uh, despite optimism, uh, predictions, uh, in previous years, uh, that there would be an expansion of democracy, uh, that they think 2023, saw a contraction of democracy. And of course, what they're speaking of is more authoritarianism in the non-Western world. This is, you know, like, well, Russia, China, etc. You know, this is their kind of way of talking about how authoritarianism is resisting the rules-based order and some of the hope for gains. And what I would say is that there is a rise in authoritarianism and it's happening in the West. This is where we noticed in 2023, you know, cop city, black radicals being targeted as Russia supporters because of the political panic created since the Russia gate and through,

you know, the Ukraine war kind of mobilization. And now, of course, we're seeing it, you know, a reach perhaps its apogy and absurdity, you know, in the West with the attempt to repress political speech and political organizing on solidarity with Palestine. So that's maybe one place I would start is I might be interested in going through some more of the Council on Foreign Relations kind of views of what happened in 2023 and what's important and giving, you know, some of the counter sorts of views. And the last thing I would just say on that kind of multipolarity kind of question is that, of course, we have seen some very important developments that are taking place in the space that's created

with the contraction of U.S. control of hegemony and domination without having to it having to turn to violence. Obviously, it's attempting to reassert it, and that's causing huge problems. But Bricks expansion, for example, the fact that there are alternative institutions and alignments that are developing that are reshaping the global economy and creating new lines of competition, of conflict, but also of challenges where there might be some spaces for progressive reorganizing an opportunity for a better, more just, you know, evil world. But that's going to be something we have to work on because Bricks is not an ideologically coherent. institution, you know, it is creating some institutional options and alternatives for financing than, say, the IMF and the World Bank and ways in which these alternatives to access, you know, for finance may help evade some of the detrimental consequences of U.S. unilateral and illegal

sanctions, something that we've talked about an awful lot last year and through this year. with our continuing series on sanctions as war, but also regional differences. So the Middle East has been undergoing a big transition. I would say what's happening now with Israel's assault and war upon Gaza, bombardment and destruction of Gaza, fits in with regional shifts in with regional shifts that are changing, where you have Saudi and Iran normalizing diplomatic and political relations for the first time in, like, decades. And these are kind of momentous shifts and changes that are we witnessed in 2023. And what we're seeing is a contestation over what is the, what is the disposition of

this region going to be? And that's why if we talk about looking forward, The last thing I would say here is if we talk about looking forward, I see more war, more violence taking place in the Middle East. I put out a Twitter thread recently just looking at what's been happening the last few weeks in Gaza and Palestine and in the seven fronts that Israel itself admits it is working on and fighting on and that it has taken operations on six of the seven fronts. This is something that the defense minister Joav Galanta said. You can see that in southern Lebanon, the northern kind of zone there, there's been much more intensification with the recent assassination, you know, of a very important Iranian general, you know, in Syria with, of course, what's happening in the Red Sea with, you know, the Yemeni. government and Ansarra laws, you know, restrictions on shipping in the Red Sea to prevent, you know, shipping to Israeli ports and the response that the United States is trying to put together. And, of course, also the fact that there have been recent attacks, you know, on U.S. occupying

forces and bases, military installations that still persist. Americans, you are not out of Iraq, you are not out of Syria, you're still in the Middle East and those installations have come under attack. And as a result, the United States is also conducting bombardment and responses. So what we see is that all of the conditions for widening this war are there. And frankly, because Israel has not achieved any of its military objectives, and you could say it's a mixed bag in its political accomplishments, but is being, you know, given shelter and protection and impunity by the United States, it can see that perhaps the window of opportunity is narrowing for it politically to be able

to carry out and achieve some of its larger political goals, that is the ethnic cleansing, you know, of Palestine, that it may need to seize the opportunity, it may feel that now is the opportunity that it has to actually ramp up while it still has the chance, violence in the region, and try and provoke the United States into serving in a much more direct capacity. So that's something I see as where we may be headed for 2024 by looking at what has shifted and been changing. And this is to me a mark of the weakness of Israel's geopolitical position and of the U.S.'s position in the region as a result of major changes that have been taking place in the Middle East. Yeah, Adnan, you bring up a lot of really

good points and a few of them are related to episodes that we've put out this year. So I'm going to just hit a couple of them and mention some of these episodes before I talk about tying together a couple of threads that you had laid out. So one of the things that you talked about is these alternative institutions that have come together like bricks, bricks obviously existed long before 2023, but we see the expansion of bricks and the increasing role of bricks and the global stage. In 2023, we have an episode on de-dollarization with Richard Wolfe that talks about bricks quite a bit, although we do talk about bricks and some other conversations as well.

but if you're looking for one conversation about bricks, mostly, that would be the one from this year. You'd mention sanctions, and of course we have the entire sanctions as for a series, and listeners, you know, go back and check those out. If you listen to them and enjoyed them, find people who descend them to. We have from this year case studies on things like Syria, Iraq, the DPRK in China, Yemen.

We have many case studies of sanctions were Russia. We have the sanctions on Russia. case study episode from this year, as well as we had a few in 2022 as well. And we recently closed out that mini series on sanctions as were, which really became a maxi series, because we have a lot of episodes in it on BDS and sanctions. So again, sanctions, we have a lot of episodes that are on this topic. I highly encourage you to check them out. And if you found them to be useful, do send them to other people because that's useful for them and is also useful for us. At the very beginning of your answer, you mentioned about black radicals being targeted. Again,

this is something that we talked about extensively in our conversation with Professor Cherise Bird and Stelly, Dr. CBS, on her new book, Black Scare, Red Scare, which is looking at the confluence and the interrelatedness of demonization of the black community as well as of communists and how there is this whipping up, this scare about these two communities and how they're often tied to one another. We've seen this in 2020 as well and we talk about that in that conversation so you can check that out.

And of course you mentioned Palestine pretty extensively and I don't want to talk about Palestine too much right now because I'm sure it'll come up again later and we've also had many episodes about Palestine that have come out in the last two and a half months at this point that again

I will direct the listeners to check out and encourage you listeners is if you find them to be useful episodes, send them to people because, yeah, it does benefit us. But also, I think that they're really important conversations to contextualize the ongoing situation in Gaza and also historicize it in a way that is not being done in many other platforms outside of the fringes of the far left. So we're trying to provide this as a resource in order for political education purposes. So do send these episodes over to people if you think that they would have use from them. And honestly, I think everybody would.

So just to name some of these Palestine-related episodes before I hit my last point, before I open the floor again to everyone, we had a remastered episode of how the West sold democracy from the Arabs, which is not directly related to the current situation, but goes back to 1920, and it shows a lot of the connectedness in these processes over the last hundred years. And then after that, we've had a string of really important episodes. I think that we've done some really important work on Palestine. We have Palestinian Resistance v. The Zionist Project with Max Ile and Patrick Higgins. Understanding the Conflict in Occupied Palestine, History and Geopolitics with Rabab Abdul Hadian, Ariel Saltzman. Palestine in the media with Tara Alami. Palestine and the BDS movement with Karina Mullen. We have Palestine War Occupation and Proletarianization with Al-Ikadri.

Sorry, that one's not to Palestine related directly Israel and its role in Latin America with Alexander Ravina, which is the episode that came out last week. We've also had some other episodes that have been tangentially related, but not directly related. And we have a couple more episodes that have already been recorded and we'll be coming out in the coming weeks. I know we have one with Nick Estes and Muhammad Abdu on indigenity in Palestine. And we also have a big interview, two-part interview that's being combined into one with Ali Qadri and Rania Halit about Lebanon versus the Zion imperialist project. so and of course there'll be more coming so check out our feet check out those episodes stay tuned for those upcoming episodes and like i said find people who you think would benefit from

understanding that context and that history and send those over to them but the last thing that i want to talk about before i opened the floor is adnan you mentioned that you you see more wars coming and i would tend to agree with this one of the reasons that i i see this in addition to all of the things that you laid out in your last answer is that we're seeing these imperial powers start thrashing as they realize that they're not quite as powerful as they thought that they were, particularly in the case of, you know, former colonial masters like France. But we can also talk about places like Germany. Germany has been going through a crisis for the last year and a half as a result of energy prices, which has then led to massive inflation across

various consumer commodities and food commodities within the German market. And this is, of course, more or less directly related to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. And Germany has towed the line that the United States has really set forth much to its own detriment. And the people in Germany had begun to see that. And what do we see Germany doing now? They are thrashing wildly, particularly in defense. of the Zionist project and against solidarity with Palestine. I don't know. Of course, Germany has always had this inclination. I don't want to say always for the last couple decades. They've had

this inclination to have this knee-jerk protection of the Zionist project and the Zionist entity that's occupying Palestine. But the rabidity at which they are defending this project in recent weeks has really been something to see. And I'm not sure that we would have this same kind of rabid response if it were not for the domestic crisis that had been unfolding in Germany for the last year and a half. It's almost serving as a distraction to the populace. And so this is just an example that's not really germane to the main thrust of what I'm going to say, which is that one of the places that we're seeing this increased tension. And the increased tension is due to the former colonial power, realizing that it doesn't have that power, is in the Sahel region.

I know that we had talked about coups in the Sahel, not in 2023. In 2022, we had an episode directly related to it. We've mentioned it here or there throughout 2023. Brett, I know on Rev Left, you've done a couple of episodes about that. So listeners, you can check out the Rev Left feed. And I know that there's a couple of episodes about these movements and the Sahel, these decolonial movements and the Sahel, particularly, recently, and even in the most recent episode of Rev. Left, that's touched on as well. So one of the things that you talked about, Adnan, is how there's this seeming increase in authoritarianism, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. One of these forms of authoritarianism

that they will cite is that places like Mali or Burkina Faso or Niger no longer have democratically elected governments. Mind you, those are neo-colonial puppet governments that were in place before that towed the line for the neo-colonial master of France. And that's why France had good relations with them. As we see these regimes be toppled by popular movements, now we are talking about how authoritarian these movements are because now we have military regimes running these countries in a national liberatory way,

in a way that is trying to provide national sovereignty free of influence from the neo-colonial masters. In my opinion, and this is again looking forward, That's only going to increase tensions. We've seen the ambassadorial staff of France being expelled from all of these countries that I've cited. We've seen French soldiers being expelled from these countries. Mind you, why does France have a troop presence in the Sahel in 2023? Well, now they're having less of a troop presence of 2020.

But these tensions between these former colonial subjects and the neo-colonial master, are much, they create tension much the same way that the decolonization struggle itself caused. So during the process of decolonization, we saw, of course, tension that led to then actual revolution, decolonial revolution in these colonial subjects. The process of overthrowing a neo-colonial relationship is unfolding in many ways, in many ways the same as that decolonial process, that original decolonial process did. We just haven't seen that open warfare between the neo-colonial master and the neol colonial subject that we did in the colonial struggle.

But that may be something that's on the horizon. Who knows? Adnan, I saw you had your hand raised. No, definitely, I think that's a great example. And in fact, actually, the Council on Foreign Relations in its article about this listed the coups, the military coups in West Africa, in the Sahel region, as the first example of this authoritarian wave that is... What do you know?

Yeah. You have to plug your brain into like how these ghouls would think. You know, you just stumble upon the same logic here. The similar kind of sense of how the imperialist core has some of its own tensions, contradictions, and competitions that reminds us of like, say, the 19th century also is the difficulty that the United States has been having in creating a united front behind which to push its war on Yemen in the Red Sea, and that, you know, France is not willing to integrate its forces under U.S. military command or whatever this, you know, kind of operation, you know,

prosperity guardian and so-called structure would be. So they're very, going to be, you know, having convoys, they're going to accompany convoys themselves. This is, you know, basically a fragmenting and fraying of the system of free

navigation in the seas and the way in which this was organized, right, in modern 20th century history, and it's a kind of a return to imperialist powers having a a very narrow proprietary interest in their, because the system is sort of collapsing.

So as a result, they have to adjust to seeking their own particular interests in a direct way. And actually, they can't rely on the more global institutional framework to have to avoid committing their own military forces. There's actually having to commit their own military forces in a direct sort of way, and that's going to create all kinds of opportunities for conflict and tension among, because they'll have different priorities, they'll have different interests. So I think you're very correct. And what I would just add to that is that some of the architecture, and this is a global point that I would make about what I think I'm seeing in 2023 and going forward, is that that global architecture that existed, say, in, you know, the

post-World War II consensus, even if there was a Cold War competition and conflict, nonetheless, the U.S. and the Euro-North American Atlantic kind of hegemony was able to put in place some of these systems of global order. So you had kind of the UN system, you had international law, which was, of course, always being undermined. I'm not going to say, you know, in any way that there was, you know, an era where international law was actually implemented or followed. But there was a sort of sense of consensus that this discourse had sway. And there were institutions that backed up things like I said. I was talking about, you know, navigation in the seas, and so on, which was basically a form of neocolonialism, but it was neocolonialism that worked for

enough of the Euro-North American states that they participated in this because they benefited collectively from it. And what we're seeing is somehow it seems to me a return to, it's not exactly a return, but it reminds me much more of the kinds of ideas, ideologies, the narrow kind of competition of imperialist powers, struggling for control that we saw before the World War kind of two puts in place these systems. And we see that also, of course, with the, you know, the way in which there isn't even some kind of acknowledgement, you might say, of the relevance and justification of, say, the Geneva Conventions right now. Like Israel is basically arguing that, well, you know, civilian casualties that happened in World War II, and they're missing the point that, historically speaking, these were put in place so that that wouldn't happen again.

But, but Adon, you know, system and consensus no longer, you know, operates even at a discursive level. So what I would just say by conclusion is that 2023 for me is the era of the end of illusions. Like nobody in the global South or in the anti-imperialist, you know, world should have any delusions if they've had any up to this point. They shouldn't have. But now it's impossible even really for liberals without making a grand effort at self-delusion to actually face what's going on and pay lip service to the values that have been dominant in the political and geopolitical discourses of the modern era. All of that seems me, you know, gone. You know, I just have to say that in terms of sidelining the Geneva Convention and how this puts a spotlight on what is actually happening in many ways, this isn't like a unique thing. Actually, the Zionist entity is in many ways copying what the United States said

back in the beginning of the so-called war on terror at the time Attorney General Albert Guzalas said that the Geneva Conventions seemed quaint. I'm quoting him. They seemed quaint when talking about dealing with terrorists and that we would have to essentially, so the quaint is the quote, but what essentially he was saying is that Geneva Convention should be absolutely sidelined, if not completely forgotten about, when our mission is a just mission. And the Geneva Convention, therefore, shouldn't have any bearing on what we do, because what we do is inherently right, because we're, you know, the soldiers of light, essentially. This is the same kind of rhetoric that we see from the Zionist entity today in terms of, well, you know, the Geneva Conventions are a thing, but we're dealing with terrorists.

So these, they haven't said that they're quaint, but essentially they are also saying that these Geneva Convention protocols have to be sidelined in the current context because they are inherently, they, Israel is inherently right in this, and therefore they are justified in everything that they do. but I mean it's a direct echo of what we saw 20 years ago Tragedy and farce both times So yeah I have a lot to say here I'm not absolutely correct I completely agree with you when you talk about basically that this Post-World War II order This you know is coming to an end

This you know this era of unipolarity This era of US led hegemony The entire Bretton Woods system Where you know the US is basically the bodyguards of international trade over the oceans for everybody. That era is coming to an end. So geopolitically, the post-war era is ending violently, of course. And then economically, the era of globalized neoliberalism is ending.

So when we talk about globalization, that can be a vague term because globalization has always been happening. I mean, globalization was happening 2,000, 3,000 years ago. It just takes different forms. When we speak of globalization in the modern era, we're speaking. Speaking of, you know, this hyper neoliberal free trade idea that has, you know, created the Rust Bell, decimated various working class sections in different countries, has had some good and some bad, et cetera. But I think that era is coming to an end. And I think the pandemic was the thing that pushed, you know, that final pressure on the rotting floorboards of globalization and neoliberalism. And we're seeing already, even under the Biden administration, I mean, Biden is a pure product of neoliberalism, an ideological capture.

of neoliberalism. An embodiment of it is even doing things like, you know, reshoring, trying to reboot manufacture, coming up with industrial policy. And this is happening in different ways to different degrees all over the world. So yeah, so we're seeing geopolitically the post-war era crumbling and economically the era of globalized neoliberalism ending. What comes next? Who knows? But one thing is for sure, which is that the elites, the Western ruling elites, have absolutely no answers. they are scrambling to come up with just basic narratives and what's happening is because they don't have the ability or the willingness to change in the fundamental ways that the global order is asking them to change what they're doing interestingly is turning to what if it happened at any global South country they themselves would call authoritarianism

right when we're seeing this all it just it's hilarious now anybody with a brain should be laughing out loud at the idea that Israel and the U.S. are not considered authoritarian, right? But places like Cuba, like Venezuela, anybody that is against the U.S. geopolitical hegemony and its interests and its allies are labeled as authoritarian, even though, even something simple as like, hey, can the American people choose their presidential representatives? Like maybe, you know, 30% of Americans only support Biden. Most people do not support Biden. Can we have another choice?

No, you can't have another choice. You can't have debates. You can't even have a primary. We're defending democracy. It's a joke. Henry? Just to add on to that, I had seen something earlier to date when I was scrolling through Twitter after I got back for my walk from the forest.

And I saw this exact rhetoric playing out from somebody who is like liberal in chief on Twitter, Aaron Rupar, who I'm sure everyone who has a Twitter account is familiar with, and I'm sure, unfortunately. But he had said, I hadn't checked in on brief for a bit. But holy crap, this is nuts. And then attached a screenshot of a tweet that Brie Newsom had put, which is Biden is already a dictator, folks. Fascism is already here under Biden. Please pay attention to how popular will is being completely ignored because Biden doesn't give A.F. What the public thinks if he can maintain his grip on power, which, I mean, yeah, strong rhetoric.

But as you just mentioned, what we see is a subversion of popular will. If it has happened in other countries, we would be talking about a turn to authoritarianism, if not outright authoritarianism. At the very least, they would say this is a turn towards authoritarianism and a disregarding of popular will. But then the follow-up is actually what really made me laugh. Aaron then says, the quote tweets of this, talking about his tweet, are absolutely demented and to illustrate why we'll get a second Trump presidency if it happens. We better hope Twitter isn't real life because a disturbing number of folks on here have deluded themselves into believing that Joe Biden is a fascist dictator.

So again, what does this demonstrate is that regardless of what you actually see unfolding in reality in front of your own eyes, if it helps the other political party, if the other person has. And I mean, I don't think that anybody that is listening to this is deluded enough to think that Trump is good or even as as unbad, as. Biden because Biden is terrible, obviously, but like, I think that everybody who's listening to this is that's honest with themselves would concede that Trump is worse, but that's not to say that Biden is in any way good. And that, you know, we should, you know, we've talked about electoralism before. In fact, we'll probably remaster that electoralism of Marx and Lenin episode for election season. But it's just hilarious that we see that, you know, no matter what they do if the other person has the letter that an R next to their name instead of a D next to

their name, we have to just to the hill to defend the person that aligns with our political party because otherwise, oh no, the other political party might win an election. Right. And that's what we're seeing and that's what we need to be really understanding and principled about this crisis in American government and these actions taken by both parties is reflecting of a ruling class dispute. Factions within the American ruling class, both descending into fascism in their own ways, are having a dispute amongst themselves. And so to be the silly liberal is to say, oh, the Democrats and Biden are the anti-fascist faction and the Republicans are fascist. Therefore, we have to vote for Biden, no matter

that he's committing a genocide, that's not fascist, right? Orange Man bad. That's the derangement on that side. And then on the other side is this idea, and you even see with some of these, you know, patriotic maga communist types, which is like, oh, the real base of anti-fascism and progress is in the MAGA movement, right? It's on this side of the thing. No, both parties are parties of capital. Both parties are expressing and manifesting decaying capitalist fascism that we are seeing. They just manifest them in different ways. The only principled stance I think that people on our side of the fence can take is extreme outward opposition to both. To never let, you know, any delusions of this

this guy is better than this, this guy's better, lesser evil nonsense, just ruthless criticism of both parties, their material basis and their various donor classes and the policies that they pursue and the understanding that there is not a fascist and an anti-fascist political party in this country. There are

two fascist parties as capitalism decays that are manifesting that fascism in different ways and we are not party to any of that from the Marxist perspective. And then the other thing I wanted to on that, on point. Just to insert one quick quote, it's something that I've quoted on the show many times in the past, and I was very happy to hear that your guests also quoted in your latest

episode of Rev Left on Kwame and Krumah, which is America is also a one-party state, but in typical American extravagance, they have two of them, and that speaks exactly, and this is why I quote this quote this quote all the time, because it's the phenomenon that you're describing there, to a T, described in a pithy, but completely. accurate quote. Yeah. I believe maybe that was Julius Nair. That is Nair. It was brought up in the Nekrumah episode for short. So yeah, so absolutely. And that is the case more than ever now. And the last point I want to make I have many more points we can get to. But one of the things speaking to Adnan's point about, you know, seeing more war coming. Absolutely correct.

It's going to be continue escalation. We could possibly see a regional or world war in 24, but one of the things that have happened specifically with regards to the Ukraine-Russia situation is not only our analysis being correct the entire time, which just proved correct at this more time goes on. We were correct about the basic analysis and basic approach to the Ukraine-Russia situation. But at first, I was slightly confused because I had the sense that NATO was seeming to be reinvigorated by the Ukraine thing at first, right? I was like, oh, you know, NATO is sort of, there was a lot of contradictions within it. There wasn't a common enemy.

The Ukraine thing at first seemed to fortify the NATO alliance. But as time goes on, I think what we're seeing is NATO becoming weaker, those internal contradictions having pressures put on them and breaks starting to appear. I mean, look at what Turkey is saying about Israel and Turkey is a NATO country, right? What is that port for the rest of the NATO alliance? And I think what we're going to see is when Ukraine loses, because I do believe it is inevitable, one way or another, whatever that results in, who knows. But when Ukraine loses, I think we will begin to see the formal dissolution of the NATO bloc. And, you know, perhaps Russia puts pressure on that in various ways. Who knows exactly how that comes about? But what I initially thought as a reinvigoration

of NATO, I now see as time goes on as it's really putting pressure on the NATO alliance. And even the inability for the U.S. to lead, you know, basically various NATO countries in this sort of anti-Yemen, anti-Houthi attempts to, you know, bring a coalition of forces together to patrol the Mediterranean, the Red Sea or whatever. Even that fell apart. They're not even able to do that anymore at the time. And so I really think that that trend is going to continue. Ukraine is going to lose. And the last thing I want to say on this point is we don't take delight in the idea that Ukrainians are being slaughtered. You know, we don't take delight in that at all. We feel for the Ukrainian regular-ass people just trying to live their lives and are being used.

as a proxy force by the United States to militarily deplete Russia. So, you know, Ukrainians, of course, Zelensky is an absolute freak and the Ukrainian government is all corrupt motherfuckers, but the Ukrainian people, we feel for them. They're being thrown into the woodchipper by the U.S., you know, for the U.S. is gold. It does not benefit Ukraine, as we are seeing. They're losing an entire generation of men, right? They're going to lose territory inevitably. Their economy is in shambles.

Putin has flipped the chessboard over and destroyed that country. And for what? And the U.S. is still trying to throw more Ukrainian men into the Russian woodship for its own goals. And this is the sort of evil that is being seen by more and more people, even within the West, I believe. And I think that contradiction and that process of dissolution is going to continue to play out, particularly when inevitably, right, inevitably they come to the table to have negotiations. Russia takes a big ass chunk of fucking Ukraine. And Ukraine has left like so many American proxies in the past, out to see. We're going to see that continue. Absolutely. I mean, you know, there's some recent, and I think actually the crisis in the Middle East with U.S. being pulled in increasingly, you know, in its military resources, diplomatic and geopolitical resources being stretched then, you know, in the Middle East theater, if we want to think of it from the imperial sort of frame, has meant that there might be more opportunity for some kind of peace negotiation sooner, perhaps, you know, in Russia, Ukraine. And I just saw a report recently that suggested that Biden had intimated or indicated that there may have to be some territorial concessions by Ukraine in order to conclude.

you know, a peace deal or end the war, which, as you are pointing out, Ukraine is losing the 2020-3 counteroffensive. It was much touted, was completely bungled. It was never meant to succeed because the United States never created the conditions to actually support Ukraine, but just threw, as you were saying, a generation into the meat grinder over there. And, you know, it just sort of raises the whole point. It's like, what is the approach of this empire? It's astonishingly short-sighted and mismanaged because there were opportunities. You know, this just raises.

If you're going to agree that there are some territorial concessions will have to be made, you could have agreed on this, you know, before 100,000 people were killed. when there were negotiations and that just recently yet another person who was party to the negotiations that were taking place in Istanbul, the Istanbul negotiations that have been completely suppressed in the American mainstream and Western media. They never talk about this, but late March, early April, it's clear, now another source, an ambassador, a Ukrainian ambassador, has admitted that everything was essentially agreed. and that Putin went out of his way to, you know, confirm these arrangements and agree that this was an acceptable deal and that they wanted to end the war as soon as possible. And this again, the U.S. and the U.S. with its, you know, lapdog the U.K., sent Boris Johnson in there to, you know, scupper the deal. So we are going to see some kind of a conclusion, hopefully, to this,

simply because, in some ways, the United States can't have these two major fronts going on at the same time. But what it means to me is that my analysis, and, you know, I wouldn't say prediction, but my analysis that we're heading towards greater and greater escalation, you know, in the Middle East, you know, might be even more likely, you know, if the U.S. is able within 2024, you know, to manage some kind of wind down to, you know, its support of Ukraine and have some kind of a stable situation there. It just means that it might find itself more susceptible to being involved in a regional war in the Middle East, which would, of course, be absolutely disastrous. So I agree.

that is a very important kind of set of points that you raised there, Brett. One other thing that I would just kind of add here, which is something that maybe we haven't talked about very much this year, but was all the rage, and this features in the Council on Foreign Relations list, are the perils and possibilities of AI. Okay, now, I'm not a scientist, so I really don't understand everything that's at stake here, but I would be interested to hear, you know, if Henry in particular has some perspectives on this. But I note that Jeffrey Hinton, who I think is sometimes credited with the key technical developments and, you know, in computing of creating neural networks that were the basis then for this kind

of machine learning and chatbots that come into the sort of text chat, chat, GPT and so on, you know, left Google criticized the direction of AI express real alarm, along with other kind of top scientists and corporate figures who thought that, you know, perhaps artificial intelligence is, you know, outstripping the ability to safely regulate it. I'm just kind of wondering why they're saying this. It sounds to me a little suspicious, you know, why there would be these kind of hand-wringing qualms about it. What's going on, you know, in this field? The only other kind of link is that some of the brutality of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza

seems to be related to the employment of an AI platform called the Gospel, at least that's the English translation of the Hebrew word, for acquiring targets, i.e. assimilating, it's not clear exactly what data, but presumably assimilating various aspects of Israeli surveillance and other information into generating, you know, targets. And what one analysis I read about it suggests is that it's able to generate targets at a very rapid rate, and that it has widened the net, like that in the past, Israel would target, you know, it thought of as key high-level resistance leaders, and that now what's happened is that the capacities of this AI platform and program are much more extensive,

and so they have widened the net of who they actually consider worthy as a target to low-level people who are merely associated with possibly being a member of Hamas, etc. And what it suggests to me is that the use of the AI is essentially a way of creating a so-called system of discrimination that is indiscriminate. I mean, this is essentially the way in which it's being used is that it provides a kind of algorithmic and computing kind of platform to say, well, look, we're trying to be targeted and we're using this, you know, platform to do so. But the very algorithm allows, essentially, claiming that they're specific targets that actually have imprecise, expanded, you know, consequences for wide-scale civil. in death, which is exactly, of course, what we've been seeing. So, you know, I had some questions about, you know, how to make sense of something that really burst onto the scene in a big way in global consciousness in 2023, which was one component of technology, high-tech technology under capitalism, in particular artificial intelligence. Yeah. I have a couple

of thoughts about AI, although probably not as well informed as others may be able to do because while I was a scientist, I was not a computer scientist. So my insights on to that from a technical standpoint are going to be rather limited. Before I launch into AI, I just want to briefly mention, I'm glad that you mentioned that Istanbul summit regarding the Russia-Ukraine conflict and that more people that were present at the summit are admitting that there was a ceasefire kind of peace negotiation that was on the table that was then scuppered by the West and that that's this had been hidden actually quite for quite some time but it hadn't been completely hidden. I'm pretty sure we talked about in our 2022 year in review because for people like me that oh we did I'm sure

yeah because people like me that have a what's the word I'm looking for people that have a like a masochistic streak where they like the you know they hurt themselves they read foreign affairs which is an imprint of the Council on Foreign Relations. It's their kind of scholarly journal with people that write for it like Henry Kissinger and Hillary Clinton and John Bolton and all of these people. I just want to say that actually as a masochist, I'm similar. What I do when I go to an airport, I've been traveling a lot. So this is something I do is I get a copy of the economist and a copy of foreign affairs.

And I get what is the empire thinking right now? Right, you know. No, no, it's definitely masochistic. Totally. So, I mean, and the people that write for foreign affairs are smart people. They're evil people, but they are smart people. But it's good to get that insight into the mind of evil. But last year, this is in one of their issues. I want to say it was in like their June, July issue. I could be wrong on that. People who were in and around the American administration had co-written an article in foreign affairs in which they, wrote, kind of buried in the middle of it, that this negotiation was on the table and that it had been scuppered by the West. But that wasn't reported outside of the journal, really. It never made it into the news that, hey, there was a peace negotiation on the table that people like Boris Johnson were being brought in to make sure that it wasn't actually signed or actually had any progress made on it. You'd think that that would be major news. So that is something that we talked about last year. But to get back to AI, one of the things that

we have to always remember when we talk about things like AI, it's the same sort of discussion that we used to have, and by we, I mean, even people that are older than me, because I'm not that old, but discussions about automation. And what I mean is that for some people, automation in itself is a bad. And for other people, automation in itself is a good thing. We have to remember that we're operating in the system of capitalism and that when we're talking about advances in automation, those advances were made for the benefit of capital. Those advances were made to benefit capitalists at the detriment of workers. This is something that even, you know, people that didn't read any political theory understood. People that were working in the factories

that were being automated, understood what automation was happening for. From a real world perspective, AI is very similar in terms of it's not inherently good or bad. It's about how it's being used. And here's an example of a good usage of it. I just read this today, actually, in the Russian news. There are trials that are going on in Russia right now that are utilizing AI for screening for breast cancer. And they followed that, they were able to determine, they were able to catch breast cancer earlier using AI 80% of the time compared to traditional radiologic methods. So, you know, obviously it's not perfect.

Obviously, there are going to be some, you know, there's human variation in the, in the patients and therefore that's going to necessarily vary how the AI technology is able to, you know, work with it as opposed to somebody who has years and years experience looking at human variations through the screen. But the point is, is that in 80% of the cases, they were able to catch the breast cancer earlier using this AI, which hadn't, you know, they're only in kind of the early phases of actually developing AI for this purpose at this point. Now, for people who are familiar with cancer, and unfortunately, I know that that's going to be many of us, whether that's ourselves suffering from cancer, loved ones suffering from cancer, what you know when you experience that is that weeks in terms of how early you detect it make a huge difference, much less months in terms of how early you're able to catch that cancer is developing. So even those marginal gains in terms of how early are you able to detect that cancer is present, you know, in these radiographs that are taken out of, you know, breasts, that could be a huge difference in terms of survivorship. That's amazing. And, you know, that absolutely should be continued to be explored. Not that we want to rely solely on that, but as a tool to aid in the early detection of breast cancer, that is very encouraging. And, you know, the studies on that. that should absolutely continue. But is that only what AI is being used for? No, AI is also being used to eliminate jobs, writing jobs, coding jobs, etc. It also is creating some other societal problems that, you know, this is probably not the right, I mean, we're a history podcast. This isn't probably

the right venue to talk about how AI chatbots are creating a generation of people, not the entire generation, but a large cohort of a generation of people that are more comfortable communicating with AI chat bots than they are with other people, and that alienates them from their fellow workers and prevents them from having any sort of connection in which they can come together and discuss the real problems that they're facing at their job or in their lives. Instead, they vent to an AI chat bot that doesn't have any meaningful way of actually organizing with them and addressing these grievances. It also is creating a young generation that is becoming increasingly reliant on the utilization of AI technologies for

things like writing papers, which at some institutions now, I am aware that they have not even bothered to ban using AI for writing of essays and things like that because it has become so pervasive that saying that you can't use it puts a big onus on the teacher in terms of catching when it is being used versus when it's not being used. And so they haven't bothered to ban it at all. And this, of course, creates other problems in terms of people who don't have that experience in writing, don't have that experience in generating creative ideas on paper or creating speeches from scratch that then they have to practice and then deliver. You know, there are issues with that. It's a matter of thinking through how is it being used. But the last

thing I want to say on it before I turn it over to Brett, because Brett, you probably have better things to say than I do on AI in all honesty. But Adnan, you talked about the AI targeting that is being used in Gaza and how in many cases it seems like just a justification for creating its systematizing, unsystematic widespread killing of people. Again, this is paralleling what the United States did during its drone war. As we talked earlier about how the rhetoric about the The Geneva Convention echoed exactly what was being said by the U.S. Attorney General 20 years ago. We also see the same sort of thing happening now in terms of justifying these strikes on people. Think about in Obama's drone wars, one of the criteria for determining whether somebody was a potential enemy combatant or not was whether or not they were male and of a certain age.

That was it. Like, there were some other criteria that they could achieve and say, okay, this person was killed in a drone strike. And so we're going to count it as an enemy combatant because this person hit these parts of a checklist. But in some cases, they were counted as enemy combatants because they were a male between the ages of 16 and 40. And that was more or less the entire criteria. Now, we didn't have AI technology at that time, but they did have ways of collecting, you know, photographic data of the strike sites determining whether or not that person was male or female, determining roughly what age that person. person was, and then then categorizing them. I mean, they did have data processing at the time. It just wasn't AI technology. But that was a way of then justifying the indiscriminate killing

of civilians by saying, look, it wasn't indiscriminate and they weren't civilians. That's exactly what the Zionist entity is doing right now. They're just utilizing this new technology that has really become a buzzword over the course of 2023 in terms of AI and saying, look, this is this cool, fancy technology that you've all been hearing about for the last year. And this is telling us that the people that we are killing are likely enemy combatants and not just ordinary civilians. But in effect, it's the same thing. It's just a different process by which you're justifying the exact same thing happening.

Brett? Yeah, I mean, really great points all around. Yeah, you know, you have artificial intelligence and then all of the interesting things that it creates. for example with the rise of social media and the internet, we had this utopian vision of what that meant, that it was going to unite people, you know, is going to be a whole new information agent in some ways

that's true. People are united. This show wouldn't exist, probably without, or certainly without the internet, probably without social media. On the other hand, you could also get the rise of all these weird distortions, like the rise of conspiracy theories and these echo chambers, etc. And so the same thing will play out with these various

new technological progresses, including the artificial intelligence, but there's two other major technological breakthroughs on the horizon that are going to get expressed in one way under capitalism, but could be expressed in a much more beautiful and harmonious way under something like global socialism. And the first thing that jumps to mind is quantum computing. And interestingly, what the intersection of artificial intelligence with quantum computing could possibly create. We often don't talk about that. But it would be very interesting to see what the possibilities are in that direction, but what is quantum computing

going to be used for under capitalism? Well, lots of things, certainly military issues with computing data, et cetera, but also look at how the internet is in the hands of corporations. What's going to happen with something like quantum computing is that the algorithms are just going to get better, you know, the ability to derive profit from people, to keep people's attention to psychologically and cognitively entrap them into whatever sort of, you know, website or whatever you want to promote it is going to deepen. And of course, quantum computing is, you know, with these new technologies have high prices of entry and are going to be used by the powerful initially before they trickle down into various devices or to people being able

to have them. What would quantum computing under socialism possibly be like? I don't know. One of the things that jumps immediately to mind is that I sure would, help with the problem of central planning, right? We talk about overproduction, the excessive commodity creation under capitalism that creates waste, pollution, etc. Imagine under socialist a situation in which we could use that technology to centrally plan to make sure everybody has enough of what they actually need, not a perfluous amount of things that some people want, but not everybody needs giving rise to the garbage patch in the Pacific, these quick fashion desert sprawls of clothes all over the desert in South America and a million other examples of just this.

So that's just one example of how a different technology will manifest. And then, of course, you have perhaps in some ways the scariest, in my opinion, is the rise of gene editing, CRISPR, these abilities to go in vitro and decide what genes can get expressed, et cetera, and what's going to happen under capitalism is the people with most money are going to have access to this stuff first. And in a highly unequal context, like the one we live in globally and nationally, you're going to give that that gap between the rich and the poor at least will have the possibility of widening to previously unthinkable levels when the rich can make their kids super athletic and super smart, you know, and not prone to certain diseases, while the poor still don't have access to those things. Under socialism, what could gene editing do? It could eradicate disease, you know, it could give everybody a fair shot. from the jump. You know, we talk about equality of opportunity, equality of outcome, neither of which exists under capitalism. Imagine the equality of opportunity that comes with the possibility of gene editing for a universal good to, you know, to liberate people from certain genetic disorders,

to give people a good, at least something approaching a fair starting point in life, etc. So, you know, those are two other things that I would certainly keep an eye on as developing over the next several years. The other thing I want to, can I say something quickly on CRISPR? We do, yeah. Just as somebody who has actually made CRISPRed organisms before, which I don't think I've mentioned on the show before, but I had to... As scientists, Henry.

I know, I know, no. I was crispering some mice for some Ebola research back in the day. And, you know, this was to, again, benefit humanity by figuring out some of the secrets of Ebola. Anyway, neither here nor there nor do I want. work in that field anymore, so it doesn't really matter. But in terms of CRISPR, it is important. Just I'm not pushing back on you, Brett, but it's a word of caution for people when they're thinking about CRISPR. So obviously, there is a moral, philosophical, and also societal wrong

when we're talking about the rich having access to gene editing technologies and then being able to create like super children, which frankly, the technology and the knowledge of how genes work is still not there for that yet, but in the future could be. So obviously that is wrong. But we also have to remember, and this is, again, I know that you understand this. It's just something for people to keep in mind that when we're talking about creating a level playing field for everyone by utilizing CRISPR, it's one thing to talk about utilizing CRISPR. or similar gene editing technologies as things inevitably advance in the future. CRISPR is one specific technology, which is very excellent, by the way, but, you know, it's one technology.

We may have advances. Editing out inherited diseases that dramatically impact the quality of someone's life in itself is also a debate worth having. Because in terms of, let's think about Down syndrome, this is a debate. that's had quite frequently in terms of some people say, well, we can identify before the child is born that they're going to be born with Down syndrome, and we could utilize CRISPR technologies to eliminate that. On the other hand, we have to say, well, in the way that society is structured now, Down syndrome is an impediment to maintaining equitable quality of life with people who do not have Down syndrome, but is Down syndrome inherently something that is wrong with that

individual? That is a very interesting philosophical debate and one that has had quite frequently in terms of what is wrong, what is right, what is normal, what is not. So again, thinking about the societal factors that come into play and thinking, well, yes, society now makes it so that Down syndrome is a major impediment. But could we envision a society in which Down syndrome is not an impediment. It's just one phenotype of human that is being born on a spectrum of phenotypes of humans being born. So that is slightly different than other things like, you know, congenital heart conditions that would kill somebody when they're like three weeks old. So obviously that, then the philosophical debate swings differently. But when you open that realm in

terms of thinking about things like Down syndrome in terms of having these debates, well, is it actually an impediment, or is it because of society that's an impediment? Is it normal? Is it not normal? Is it something that we want to touch? You then open the door to thinking about, well, we could just put everybody, you know, we would eliminate Down syndrome, we would eliminate all of these other inherited conditions that might alter how somebody experiences life compared to what we consider to be phenotypically normal. But then you have a very real possibility, if for eugenicist thinking in terms of, again, not normal, this idea of not normal and what we consider to be like normative phenotypically comes into things. And, you know, who's to say

that at some point people wouldn't come back with this, this centuries old rhetoric of skin color being not normal in terms of this person is the wrong, wrong race. And I'm using this term, not because obviously I believe it, but because this is the kind of rhetoric that you could see potentially coming out of that. So again, Brett, I know that you understand this. I just want to make sure that we are very clear on this, that we have to think deeply about the debates within CRISPR

because congenital heart problem that's going to kill the kid when they're two months old is one thing. But thinking about things, Down syndrome is the classical example of this philosophical debate that's had amongst people in the biological sciences on this topic. and I've been involved in many of these arguments in terms of, let's assume that CRISPR is now cheap, readily accessible, is Down syndrome something that we then eliminate using CRISPR technology? And that debate is going to go on for quite some time, I can assure you. Fascinating debate. Yeah. I mean, autism jumps to mind as well. These interesting, this spectrum of human abilities to cognize in different ways could have certain, you know, beneficial impacts on our humanity that we otherwise,

don't automatically think of and that yeah could create things and then you also think of like a Nazi regime in 20 you know 2090 with the capacity to gene edit like we know that create a master race through through a return of race science as you were alluding to so there's lots of horrific dystopian forms this could take lots of fascinating bioethical um you know debates to to be had etc and my only concern is we live in a we live in a very anti-democratic world where no matter how many deep conversations we have about this, no matter how much we weigh the ethical odds, it seems like certain corporations or certain governments are going to go ahead and do what they're going to do regardless of broader societal input. I mean, we see that

across policies all across the board. So it has food for thought. One other quick, sorry, one other quick thing, just because we're doing a 20, we're doing a 20, 23 year in review, and I forgot to mention it. This just came out about a month ago that in the United Kingdom, essentially their medical regulation agency, which I forget the specific name of off the top of my head. But they had an approval for a therapy that uses CRISPR gene editing technology as a treatment for things like sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemia. So that was about a month ago. And that opens the door for potentially using it for these conditions. And again, this is the first time in which some government-associated agency has

granted approval for usage on human diseases for CRISPR. As far as I know, it hasn't actually been tested yet. Like, there hasn't been any cases that have been brought forth to try to use it on someone. But that ruling came through about a month ago, is my memory recalls. And I just want to make sure that I get it in here for this year in review. Yeah. I mean, interesting. And the same thing goes with AI even more so that no matter how much we talk about it, no matter how much we come up with great ways to try to regulate it or think through it. Somebody's going to develop it as soon as they can no matter what. And what that's going to bring is going to be interesting. That's the very least. A couple quick points I just want to make about 2023 and going forward. One, interesting

developments in Argentina, right? A self-proclaimed libertarian ANCAP takes over Argentina immediately hands over its economy, like sort of, you know, the whole dollarization process. And it enforces basically fascist policies, right? Pulling people off of buses, suspected of protesting. So it's just an interesting real-world experiment of libertarianism in practice turning immediately into fascism, which I've long said, pushed a libertarian down the stairs, there'll be a fascist before they hit the bottom. There's no mass support for, you know, anarcho-capitalism. So it's going to necessitate a brutal fascist state to impose those policies that are,

ostensibly liberty oriented freedom oriented it's all bullshit funny example just to point that out Argentinian masses are going to have to struggle against that insane government and then another thing I just wanted to mention is you know Xi Jinping recently telling Biden that you know he is going to reunify with Taiwan

basically making that incredibly clear this is going to happen as relations are sort of coming out of their absolute lowest point in the last few years still very tense of course but Xi coming of telling Biden that it's going to happen is a very fascinating development and how that's going to play out if it's going to be next year in three years. Who knows what's going to happen.

But it's something definitely worth keeping an eye on. And the last thing I wanted to mention is this, I'm wondering your thoughts on this, both of your thoughts on this. Obviously, the U.S. is not going to become a socialist internationalist state, right? Obviously, the empire is going to flail to try to mainstain control. But what you do see within the American population, And you've seen this throughout American history, this renewed interest and isolationism, right? Across the political spectrum, less and less people are getting on board with various wars. More and more people across the political spectrum are completely fed up with these endless wars that were constantly in. And while the elites in both parties act like that's not true, pull after pull after pull is showing that the broad swath of Americans do not like to be the whatever policemen of the world as Americans conceive of it. And I'm interested to think about how this isolationist streak might play out within U.S. politics and what those of us on the internationalist anti-imperialist left might be able to gain or perhaps lose by participating in this push towards isolationism, right? Just get America, you know, it's pause off the world. Could that be isolationism?

Could that be a positive development internally within the U.S. that could have some promises going forward? I'm interested in your thoughts. Well, I do think that loosening the grip of U.S. hegemony around the world is extremely useful. That's probably the key contribution that those of us who have anti-imperial politics but live in the imperial core can try to contribute to. But I'm not as worried about it that it would necessarily have to feed into something that we think of as right-wing, isolationism, because I'm very hopeful by what I see in the critique of U.S. support for Israel's attacks in Gaza being combined with a genuine sense of solidarity with the Palestinian people. That, to me, is a hopeful sign of the possibilities, that as we kind of contest the U.S.

empire from this position that it can also be framed as a, you know, as a move in solidarity with peoples of the global South. That to me is the hopeful direction that we have to, you know, amidst what we've been talking about, algorithms of repression, dystopian, you know, AI. And we didn't even mention climate, you know, collapse. And of course, you know, this was the year where we again had temperatures. You know, I'm sitting in Canada and it's, you know, balmy weather. You know, we've had just seriously high, you know, temperatures. And it seems to me that we're in a position where it's clear that we're missing the boat on doing anything about impending, you know, devastating, irreversible on, some effects are going to be irreversible now.

you know, in terms of how the climate is changing. Admits that, you know, I actually feel the generation behind us, you know, is on a path that could conceivably challenge. And that's why I think the time is limited. And so some of the global elite, I think, are absolutely shocked by what's happening, you know, with people who are under 35, how they're not accepting the paradigms of the neolism. liberal order and are turning away from the fascistic, isolationist, anti-immigrant, anti-soliduristic kind of politics that is also operating. But I think more on older generations. So what really is needed now is organizing and continuing the process of

consciousness that is developing. It's a kind of worker's consciousness. It's a consciousness that accepts none of the narratives that are being presented to it through mainstream corporate media that serves the global capitalist elite. They don't accept those. They don't see the horizon and the promises that may have distracted and co-opted older generations. They don't see that there is a future for them in the world as it's going in this direction. And they're recognizing maybe partly through social media, partly because they've had these lateral connections where they can see

youth around the world, what they're suffering, what they're experiencing and connect with them, is that they have a much more solidaristic internationalist kind of perspective. That to me is very hopeful. Yes. And really quick, one last point on the isolationist part.

You're right. My concern about right-wing isolationism is that it comes inherently with militarized border policing and a ramping up of fascism on the border. And so that's something that we should be a very skeptical of, suspicious of, and to keep an eye on as this strain of isolationism continues to develop. And instead of peer isolationism to push exactly what Adnan is saying, the solidarityistic, you know,

anti-imperialist, universalist sort of approach to like, we are all human beings. We do not support the brutalizing of migrants at the border, just in the same way we don't support the brutalization of Palestinians and Palestine, et cetera. And I think that is the antidote. And there's a huge strain of that, especially among young people, that I find absolutely fascinating. So, yeah, absolutely great point. Well, just to underscore that point, Brad, it was actually more or less what I was going to say is that when we're talking about isolationism, isolationism is not showing the underlying reason for that isolation.

So there's two dramatically different ways in which isolationism, I should say, could manifest itself or reasons why it would manifest itself. One is genuine solidarity for people across the world. And one is saying, well, this doesn't actually benefit us. So we need to take care of ourselves and, you know, kind of screw the rest of the world. And that's really the difference between what we see these more right-wing forms of isolationism, which say, why are we worried about getting involved in country X or country Y when people in the United States don't have X, Y, or Z. You know, it sounds like a left-wing position, but as you said, it's often combined with increased border militarized border spending and things like this. Like, that's

not a left-wing position. It's just gussying up a very right-wing position with left-wing rhetoric. Yeah. On the other hand, saying, why are we being a malign influence in the world? Because that's what, again, I say we, I don't live in the United States anymore, but, you know, that's where it comes from mostly. Why is the United States being a malign influence in the world? Why doesn't it show genuine solidarity with people of the world? But, you know, there's actually, there's a lot of bleed over that's happening these days. That's very worrying for me, which is that traditionally when we looked at isolationism,

we would see it in terms of solidaristic military isolationism in terms of not using the military abroad, but having solidarity with people abroad. And we also had this kind of right-wing isolationism where it was, well, let's increase border spending, but we're going to cut humanitarian aid. We're going to cut this, cut that. We're going to maintain an absolutely huge military, but we're going to have the troops stationed within our borders as opposed to being stationed in country X, Y, or Z. What I've seen in recent days is that, not recent days, but recent months, years, is that we have certain tendencies that nominally are on the left that parrot this right-wing isolationist

talking point in terms of why don't we take care of the workers in the United States and stop caring about using the military abroad. But really what that also demonstrates is that they're ignoring the plight of workers abroad. I mean, my goodness, one of the foundational rally in crisis workers of the world unite. It's not let's think about how we can cut the military budget to benefit the workers of the United States. Like, that is not the rallying cry. The rallying cry is workers of the world unite. We need to think of ways in which we can reduce the malign influence of imperialist militarism abroad, but while also fostering solidarity between peoples across the world. And having these tendencies that nominally are some

form of socialist or patriotic socialist is kind of the one that I'm hinting at here. And terms of saying, let's not use our military abroad. We can have solidarity with these right-wing isolationists because we believe in the same thing. We want to fight for the working man in the United States. Well, the reason for that and the ways in which that manifests would be completely different than what anybody who's genuinely on the left would actually want to see. So it's something to be careful of when thinking of isolationism just as a buzzword. Brett, you want to add something? Yeah, absolutely. Just to add to that. And, you know, all this, this

isolationist rhetoric from these sort of right-wing factions throughout history have never taken the form of actually taking care of our own, right? It's not like isolationism gets implemented and then we get health care and then we get higher education and we get infrastructure improvement. You know, it's often like law

and order within cities, border policing gets more militarized and at the end of the day, the capitalist class is still in charge. And so even if we were an isolationist society, the capitalist class is not going to suddenly turn around and say, let's universalize health care, you know, let's make sure every working parent has

childcare. And that's why isolationism is always going to be insufficient in and of itself and why we have to keep the anti-capitalist analysis and posture fully front and center, not only to show solidarity with people around the world, not only to promote that idea of workers of the world unite, but also to realize that leaving capitalism intact is going to prevent that part of that slogan that says, so we can take care of our own. Of course, politicians say that cynically, right? When you hear, like, a Republican politician saying, we need to stop all these ventures around the world so we could take care of around.

They're not interested in taking care of Jack's shit. That's never going to come to fruition. It's just a rhetorical device that sounds good. And like you said, almost sounds progressive. It sounds like a solution to our problems. But in material reality, given the donor classes and the capitalist class in the United States, will never actually happen. And so we have to fight that.

and anti-imperialism and showing solidarity with, you know, people around the world, oppressed and working people around the world, helps keep our eye on the ball of what we're actually trying to achieve here. And that allow and prevents acts as a bulwark to the sort of, you know, opportunism that you see by some of the people you were just mentioning. People, people that I'm, that I was mentioning have a tendency to think that if they ally themselves with right-wing isolationists and they're successful in enacting isolationists. military isolationism that they've already succeeded in building socialism in one country is essentially what they're thinking, which again, if you look at it in terms of capital relations within that country, if you look at how the capitalist class is oriented within the economic structures and political structures of that country, nothing has fundamentally changed. And therefore, what are you still seeing? You see a strengthening of the capitalist class,

which is what they're always pushing for. You haven't built socialism in one country by this. But I want to also make sure that I mention the other topic that Adnan really hit was climate change or the climate catastrophe. This is a very critical topic, something that I wish that we could talk about more now, but I understand we've already been going for quite some time. And this is supposed to be our short overview of what we've done for the year. But just to say that we have talked quite a bit about the climate, we've talked quite a bit about the processes that drive the climate. and this is a topic that we are going to continue to focus on because it is a critical importance, not just from like a bourgeois environmentalist approach, but also protecting the environment as a form of class warfare.

Like this is a thing. And actually, I guess I can announce it. Now, this might be either the first or second place in which this is announced, but my collaborator, Salvatore Engel de Mauro and I are finishing. up the translation of a new book, which will be coming out from Iskra, probably sometime early next year. Like I said, we're in the final stages. The preliminary title for this book is communism, the highest stage of ecology. And it's a agro-ecological historical assessment of the Soviet Union and Cuba. It's a translation from a French scholar. And it's a very, very interesting

work. So I think that everybody should look forward to that. And really, it goes along very well with Salvatore's book, which he authored Socialist States and the Environment, which of course, we have an episode on on guerrilla history, which was like two hours and 40 minutes long of talking about that book. But we have a lot of other conversations on guerrilla history that are focused on the environment that I will just direct the listeners to instead of kind of opining on it again right now, because we are going to have further conversations. And just if we're looking at 2020, three. We have ones including with Max Isle, who of course is a very good friend of the show and everybody loves to learn from Max. We have on national liberation and the agrarian question,

which is also related to the climate. We Adnan, you and I had an intelligence briefing, which I recently relisten to and really enjoyed listening to again. Climate breakdown sovereignty and the Anthropocene and quotation marks and listeners, if you listen to you listen to, to that. You'll know why. We had a history of the world in seven cheap things with Jason W. Moore and Raj Patel. We have another one with Jason W. Moore talking about the Capitolo scene. And we have more. I'm not going to list all of them right now. But we have World Ecology and the Capitolocene was the name of the other Jason Moore episode. And in 2022, we did a lot on the environment and climate, you know, the climate catastrophe. I think in 2024 will probably have at least several more episodes on that topic.

So I just want to, you know, highlight that that is a crucial issue and one that we've talked about quite a bit before, things that you can listen to, and also that you will hear more from us on that topic in the future. Yeah, I mean, we can kind of wrap, wrap things up. I think I don't have any other major points to say. What's your highlight of the show in 2023? Yeah, I was going to do that. I was going to say, okay, great.

Yeah, perfect. A couple episodes I had in mind. You know, these are not necessarily the absolute best for everybody. But as I was scrolling through all my episodes from this year in guerrilla history, these are the ones that sort of stood out to me. So I'll just mention five really quick. If any of them peak your interest and you haven't heard them, definitely go check them out. One of my absolute favorites was organizing militant unionism in the class war, the fighting life in times of Jahad Melrod. I just found it fascinating, you know, using the life of Jahad. to understand the political development of the union struggle, the anti-fascist struggle. It was just a fascinating conversation and definitely love that one. Building the Communist Party of Kenya with Comrade Booker Amole was a wonderful episode. It's such a dedicated, principled comrade. I still see him popping up all the time on social media, you know, putting in work in Kenya. A huge salute to him. I love that conversation.

The one that me and Adnan had together, which was religion and Marxism, I believed. It was a Patreon episode that we unlocked. But I just enjoyed doing that. You know, that's a topic that I personally have a lot of thoughts on and always have had a lot of thoughts on. And I thought Adnan and I had a really interesting back and forth. That was without you, right, Henry? I don't want to exclude you.

You know, I don't remember if I was in that one or not. I definitely listened to them. I know we did one together. But, yeah, in any case, check it out. And then the last two, black communist women's political writing with Cherise Burdunstelli and Jody Dean, two wonderful comrades, wonderful thinkers, you know, have had both of them on Rev Left at various times and hopefully we can continue to have

them on. And then World Ecology and the Capitalisting with Jason Moore, just one of those really fascinating conversations on the whole area, you know, world ecology that I myself have never fully delved into. I learned a lot from talking with Jason Moore and, you know, his work. So those are some that jumped to mind as some of my personal favorites. I could add many more, but those definitely jumped out to me. Just to tease for the listeners, Jason Moore and Matt aisle have already agreed to coming on the show together early next year. We actually planned on doing it in November, but because of all of the Palestine coverage that we've been doing, we pushed it off until early 2024. But expect an episode with the two of them

together. And the topic is going to be absolutely awesome. I might as well just let you know. I don't know how many people are still listening to us at this point. Tweet us and let us know if you hear this part. But the topic is going to be environmentalism, perspectives from the global north versus the global south. And that is going to be a super interesting topic. I am really looking forward to that conversation. Adnan, what are your highlights at 2023 for the show and any other closing remarks? Well, I mean, in addition to the excellent episodes that Brett just mentioned and that you've

been mentioning throughout today's discussion, I would say all of the new series on sources and methods. I think those were fascinating. I love dealing with primary sources as a working historian, a teaching historian. And I think it's so important to give and equip people with the tools to be able to make their own guerrilla historical investigations and analysis. And that means training on how do you use evidence and what are the methods by which you conduct your investigations. So I think those were not only terrific conversations, but they're also very practically useful for anybody who wants to be engaged in using history, you know, for the purpose of liberation in our struggles. So I liked those. You know, we had Brandon Wolf Honeycutt

talk about, you know, some of the sort of secret. Psychedelic remote viewing. That's right. It was a fascinating discussion, and I think likewise, the two about black liberation struggles that we had, and those are worth checking out just from that perspective. There were so many exciting conversations we had this year. I just want to thank all the listeners for their continued interest and support and the positive feedback that we get about how people do find these discussions. of history useful in giving them tools to equip their interpretation and understanding of the world that we have to change. So I really appreciate that listeners, all the positive feedback. And we look forward to, you know, an important year of struggle and of understanding and a political education through history in the coming year, 24. Let's hope this is our year. As for me, in addition to the excellent episodes that you both highlighted, I am going to kind of cheat by not mentioning specific episodes per se.

I mean, I could say everybody, the best episode is the Stalin history and critique of a black legend episode because, you know, I co-edited. I had that down, but I was going to let you for about that one. I, you know, I've said it so many times on this show, the people are probably sick of hearing it. If they've already bought it, they're going to return it just to spite me. but which don't do that please uh you know i know the pdf is free and you don't need the physical copy but don't return it it looks cool like it'll hurt my feelings anyway uh no on a more it's a beautiful it's a beautiful looking book every leftist should have it off on their shelf it's just a you know it's it's kind of like what i think is an iconic looking cover it's beautiful

it's all my shelf ben shantka is uh the master of the the artwork i can not draw stick figures. So it definitely was not me that designed it. In any case, Adnan's a pitch for that was much better than mine. So I'm just going to not not pitch it anymore. But I will say that in terms of what I have enjoyed in 2023 for the show is that now that the show has kind of really established itself in many ways. And like I said, we've we've released more than 50 public episodes this year in addition to some Patreon stuff as well, we have almost 140 episodes overall across the show's run, with over 50 of those being just this year. What we've seen is that we've been able to take previous conversations and

make thematic spreads out of them, or we've been having more miniseries, like the Sources and Methods mini series that Adnan has mentioned. We've got to have another episode on that sometime soon, by the way. But we've also had, we've had many thematic episodes that weren't necessarily a mini-series on the environment. We've talked many times about it. That dates back to the very early days of the show back in 2020. God, when did we start the show? 2021, I guess, the end of 2021. Up to today, we've probably had at least 10 or 15 episodes that are related at least in large part to the environment, if not solely the environment. I mean, that's a lot of hours of discussion about the environment and the climate crisis. So, you know, that's very interesting. We're

able to more deeply develop the ideas that we're talking about by having these subsequent discussions that we can then continue to think about these topics and in different ways with different guests that can give us more information. Similarly, the Sanctions' War miniseries was great. We started off with some knowledge of sanctions and how they're crimes and how they're a modern form of siege, warfare, et cetera, et cetera. But over the course of probably, again, 15 episodes or so within. that miniseries over the last year and a half, the understanding of sanctions regimes,

the purpose of sanctions regimes, the way in which they manifest themselves, the goals, the strategies, historical parallels, et cetera, et cetera, like the knowledge that we have of sanctions has exponentially deepened as a result of that miniseries and hopefully for the listeners as well. We have other mini series that we've done. I know we have some more that are planned, some of which we've already announced. I know that we announced that we're going to be having a mini-series with Ken Hammond on modern Chinese history, a four or five-part mini-series on that, which we were planning on recording it at the end of this year.

But again, because of Palestine, we're moving it to early next year. So listeners stay tuned for that. As well as a huge mini-series, which is going to be another probably 15-parter that I don't want to announce just yet. But listeners stay tuned because it is going to be absolutely awesome. probably one of the things that I'm most excited for going forward with the show. And then also we've had this theme of Palestine recently. I mean, less I forget that we've had six or eight episodes on the topic in the last two

and a half months that have hit different facets of the history of Palestine, the history of the Zion imperialist project, the relations, the media, all of these different things that come together allow for the deepening of that discussion in subsequent discussion. which I find really, really valuable. Heck, just another kind of fun one. We've had, I think, three conversations now about dinosaurs. I don't probably, like, that's very deep history, much deeper than probably the people that are tuning into the show

probably are particularly interested in. But if you look at the first conversation that we had at decolonizing science, then the second conversation on decolonizing paleontology and colonialism within the field of paleontology, And then the third on settler colonial law and the case study of Sue the T-Rex, you see that deepening of the conversation, the deepening of the understanding of the concepts as we go. And, you know, that's what I've really enjoyed is being able to get deeper and deeper and deeper into these topics as we continue to explore them. And I know next year we're going to continue to deepen our knowledge and hopefully the knowledge of the listeners as well to be able to utilize this information in our daily and collective struggles. with one another. And again, if you've gotten anything out of it, feel free to tweet us.

I would love to see and hear what has been a highlight for you in 2023 that the show has done. If any of these sort of connections that we're talking about have been a particular interest to you, I would love to see any feedback. I even like constructive criticism, which sometimes we get very useful constructive criticism. Don't just put insults. We're not going to retweet your insults, But constructive criticism is very useful. So if you have that, feel free to send that in. And praise, of course, praise us. We love to see that because we are very, we thrive on your praise.

If you don't praise us, no one will. The capitalist class certainly isn't going to. We need it, guys. We need the validation. Yes, that's exactly the point. All right, let's close this out. Adnan, how can the listeners find you in your other podcast? that can find me on Twitter at Adnan A. Hussein, H-U-S-A-I-N.

And you can listen to the Mudgellis. We've got an episode coming up very soon. I'm editing it now. So look forward to it, you know, January 1. Let's start the new year with a new episode on the history of the Oud. Let's start 2024 with some beauty, some culture. amidst, you know, what has been a very difficult period in the history of the world. And for anybody who's struggling for justice, I know we've all been going through a lot.

So look forward to that as maybe some spiritual refreshment on the M-A-J-L-I-S, and that's on all the usual platforms. Absolutely. If you're looking for beauty, go to the muddless. If you want the beast, stay on guerrilla history. But I suggest getting both. I mean, you know, a little bit of yin, a little bit of yang. We've got to, come on, look, Val, balance these things up. But we are definitely the beast on this show.

Brett, how can the listeners find you and your other excellent podcasts? Yeah, I just want to echo the sentiment. Thank you to everybody who listens to the show. It's really cool to see how this show has grown over the last couple of years. Really cool to see the wonderful audience of deeply curious, deeply intelligent, deeply moral people that find the show and like the show. So, yeah, thank you so much. Obviously, we wouldn't exist without all of you who, who listen. and find what we do useful.

I also encourage people. The New Year is a great time to set up a personal goal that you want to reach and go out and try to accomplish that outside of the realm, of course, of politics. It's just good to pursue things and pursue excellence and try to better yourself and broaden your interests. So I highly recommend people do that. The New Year is a great way, a great reason to do that. But as for me, you can find everything I do at RevolutionaryleftRadio.com.

That's Rev. Left Radio. That's guerrilla history, and that is Red Menace with the one and only Allison Escalante. So you can check me out there. Yeah, absolutely. And I would be remiss to mention that we have our annual get together with everyone, including Allison, that came out a couple weeks ago, a deep dive on apartheid, which I've heard very good feedback on. I don't know, Brett, if you've heard more on your end of things, but I have. People loved it. People liked it a lot.

Great. Happy to hear that. Yeah, we've heard a lot of good things about that. So if you haven't listened to the apartheid deep dive that we did as the revolutionary guerrilla menace for the year, go back and listen to it. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck-1995, H-U-C-K-1-9-95. You can follow Gorilla-H-R-H-R-H-R-I-L-A-U-R-L-A-U-Sk. You can help support the show because we're 100% listener-funded and we would like to keep expanding the show. You can do that by going to patreon.com forward slash

Gorilla history, guerrilla being spelled G-U-E-R-R-R-I-L-A history. And I guess I'll try to say something in Russia for the first time on the show. Snovum-Godom, which is Happy New Year to everyone. I hope that 2024 will be less depressing than 2023. I'm sure it won't be, but you can commiserate with us in the new year. So until the next episode, listeners, which is going to be, again, a very excellent episode related to Palestine. Solidarity. You know what I'm going to do.