Rev Left Radio - New Years Reflection: Reviewing 2024 and Looking Ahead to 2025 & Beyond

Episode Date: January 4, 2025

It's time for our annual Revolutionary Guerrilla Menace episode, where we crossover with Rev Left and the Red Menace in order to review the past year in world events and look forward to what we think will be coming in the next year. Breht, Alyson, Adnan, and Henry discuss Palestine, BRICS, the Alliance of Sahel States, global capitalism, and much more, so be sure to tune in and share widely! This episode will also be on Guerrilla History and Red Menace! Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Follow RLR on IG HERE Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio

Hello and welcome to the annual Revolutionary Guerrilla Menace episode of the year. This is Henry Huckimacki, one of the co-hosts of Guerrilla History. And for those of you who have not tuned into the previous year's editions of Revolutionary and Guerrilla Menace, essentially what it is, is the end of year wrap up and looking forward to the new year that we collaborate with our friends at Revolutionary Left Radio and the Red Menace podcast. So I'm going to say hello to everyone now, and listeners, if you are subscribed to Revolutionary Left Radio or The Red Menace, you will also hear this on those platforms as well. I'll start off by introducing my guerrilla history co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, who of course is historian director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great, Henry. I'm really excited for this gathering of our friends and comrades. Absolutely. It's been a long time. It's been about a year since the last. time that we did this. So it's great to see our two wonderful guests slash hosts for this episode today. We have Brett O'Shea, who is a host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. Long time no see. It just occurred to me that the, uh, the name revolutionary guerrilla menace, it kind of sounds like a cold war or Godzilla villain or something. I think of a huge mutant emerging from the ocean to wreak havoc on the capitalist west. So anyway, Happy to be here. Well, I'm wearing a Cold War era Soviet sweater right now, so that would be very fitting. I know this is audio only, but listeners, you'll just have to imagine. It's a military, Soviet military surplus sweater from the 1980s. We're also joined by Alison Escalante, who is a co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Alison. Similarly, it's been a long time since I've had the chance to see you. Yeah, it has been too long. We definitely, you know, I'm collabed in a little bit. I just look at it. It was last.

December. We did that South Africa episode together, which was a real pleasure. But yeah, glad to be here. This is always one of the highlights of the year getting to record with you all. So really looking forward to this. Yeah, absolutely. So like I said, the structure for this is essentially going to be twofold. There's going to be a look back at 2024. We're recording on January 2nd. And hopefully this will be up on the feeds very, very soon. And then we'll be in the second half of this episode, looking forward to 2025 and the years to come. So in starting with 2024, I think that probably the major event and, I guess, series of events that we need to be talking about is the genocide in Gaza, the resistance in Palestine, and the resistance from the axis of resistance. That seems to me like to be a good starting point.

So I'll just put that on the table and we'll see who wants to hop in first in terms of discussion on this topic and we'll just let things go organically from there. Who would like to hop in first on that? Sure. I can say something. Yeah, it's simultaneously, you know, hopeful year in what the resistance has been able to accomplish, putting Palestine back on the map of global politics, making the Palestinian issue, a salient issue in every political sphere, every corner of the globe. People are talking about it. We have this new dimension to the Palestinian struggle, which is the ability

for people around the world to live stream and see in real time at least for a while they've done a horrific job in squashing that ability by just murdering journalists and killing people and then you have the western countries you know doing their best to repress

dissent and you know game the algorithms in Israel's favor but still it seeps through and people see it I think the consciousness of people on the Palestine issue and on issues of colonialism and apartheid apartheid and imperialism have all, you know, ratcheted up enormously, even people who are usually not into such issues or don't follow geopolitics in the way that, you know, we do. People, people see it for what it is. Unfortunately, Western media, especially as of late, has really not been covering it as

much as they did originally. So there's some things for optimism, but it's also utterly fucking tragic. The number of people that have been murdered, that have been maimed, people who's had their entire families robbed from them, that's not going away. And no amount of victories will ever be able to bring those people back. The starvation that's going on in Gaza right now, the brutality, the apathy from Western governments when it comes to caring about Palestinian lives, you know, somebody like, I just saw this clip, but, you know, Josh Shapiro, Ira will wag his finger in the face of everybody for having sympathy with Luigi Mangione talking about how we don't kill people over political differences, you know, and this is someone that signs the bombs that we're sending to Israel to drop on the heads of fucking innocent children. The falling of Syria, you know, none of us are fans of Assad, but we understand the material and geopolitical role that the Syrian state played for a long time in the axis of resistance and seeing the collapse of that.

state and the taking over of it by HTS and U.S. and Israel-backed forces and seeing Israel use it as a golden opportunity to flood in. I'm sure we'll talk more about that. But it's, it's, we don't ever lose sight of the gains and of the resistance and the bravery and the martyrdom. But at the same time, it's, it's certainly a low point and a really, really hard, hard thing to think about and contemplate and look in the eyes as we go into 2025, having really at this, at this moment, no clue which way the ball is going to bounce in the new year. So those are some opening thoughts on that. In passing it over to Allison and if none on this, I just want to add when I mentioned the genocide in Gaza, something I've mentioned on guerrilla history many times

in our conversations about this ongoing issue is that the genocide did not start on October 7th. The genocide has been ongoing since the ongoing colonization of occupied Palestine. What we're referring to, of course, is the escalation of the genocide and the newest phase of the genocide. But it is worth keeping in mind, listeners, that the genocide began a hundred years ago and really, you know, picked up steam with the Nakhban has been ongoing since then. It has ebbed and flowed. We're seeing a particularly hot phase of it at this moment. But like many analysts, the so-called analysts do, by totalizing the...

this event as beginning on October 7th and continuing just to now, that kind of misses the ball entirely. And I just want to highlight one thing that Brett said before passing it over to Allison and Nunn, which is that a lot of people are being forced to grapple with the issue of colonialism once again. And in particular, the issue of settler colonialism, because the ongoing genocide in occupied Palestine, not just in Gaza, is a very, very clear example of ongoing settler colonialism. And it has forced many in the West to grapple with the fact that many of them, those in the

United States and Canada in particular, as well as Australia and New Zealand, they're living in settler colonies as well that are not only settler colonies historically, but this is an ongoing process of settler colonialism in these areas as well. And this is a discussion of Adnan and I have had off and on on guerrilla history. And I know that we have one episode that is devoted in its entirety to that with Muhammad Abdou and Nick Estes on settler colonialism, on Israel and the parallels with the settler colonialism that takes place in the North American continent. But I want to pass it over to Allison and Nod now to carry on this conversation.

I just thought that those might be salient points to add in here at this point. Yeah, briefly, I will say I really appreciate. the broader historical context as a framing, because I think putting it on that longer timeline helps with the feeling of hopelessness that it's easy to fall into now. I think you're correct. We have 100 years of ebbs and flow to this process. The struggle has taken many forms throughout that. There have been particularly violent aspects of that struggle in the past, such as the second intifada, which face severe repression in response to it. And that wasn't the end of the resistance either, right? We have these ups and downs to the movement, as we see in pretty much

all decolonial struggles. You know, the time frame of one year, pretty small in the grand scheme of almost every successful decolonial struggle in history, which largely took decades to achieve what they needed to, and often saw massive state repression from colonial powers. So I do think when we think about it like that, it can make things feel a little less hopeless, although I think Brett is correct. Things look desperate right now, obviously. One thing that I will add to it, though, just talking about the concept of the axis of resistance, is that I do think, you know, what we have seen on the air national scale in the last year is that axis. of resistance mobilizing at just kind of an unbelievable scale in solidarity with Palestine.

I'm going to get called a tankie for this. You can think of what you want of Iran and of Yemen and of all these other forces. But at the end of the day, these groups that are a part of the axis of resistance mobilized in defense of the Palestinian people, whether or not you think that is out of some sort of like real politic and trying to game out their own local hegemony or whatever, the simple fact of the matter is that while we in the United States at least were engaging in street protests that changed almost nothing, Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel this year. The Houthis intercepted American ships, intercepted shipping ships. They have engaged in airstrikes that have also successfully hit Tel Aviv. They appear to have hypersonic misstiles

capable of doing that. There has just been a massive mobilization of the axis of resistance in siding with the Palestinian people and their uprising. And I think that gives me a lot of hope, too. Obviously, we should talk about Lebanon as well, who, you know, ended up being pulled into this, got invaded as a result of what's happening, has had territory annexed, but who has fought valiantly throughout all of it, and even that ceasefire have mostly fallen apart. So I think that is the other side of things, as we've seen, that even though, you know, I think as an American who's been involved in the movement domestically, it often feels hopeless and like we've accomplished nothing, and I feel that way very frequently.

Internationally, there are actors who have really taken the fight to Israel, and we are seeing the effects of that. Israel's economy is in a very bad spot right now and continues to be in a state economic decline because of this war that is going on on multiple fronts now. That is the current face of this genocide. And I think we will see that exacerbated. The United States has found its ability to arm multiple proxy conflicts across the globe compromised because of the intensity of this with having to make tradeoffs between arming Russia and Ukraine. There's a real stress and tension being placed on these imperialist powers right now as a result of that mobilization of the entire axis of resistance. And so, you know, again, call me a tankie or whatever,

but I find a lot of hope in that phenomena as well. Regardless of what those actors, you know, motivations are, it is objectively a progressive process, I think, that is coming out in defense of the Palestinian people right now. Yeah, well, that's very interesting to hear that from Allison about how we might take some hope in the international mobilization in solidarity of Palestine. I definitely agree with you that from the perspective of somebody in North America or anywhere in the Imperial West in Europe that the street protests and the mobilizations that have taken place for well over a year in astounding numbers with persistent and determined regularity have nonetheless not necessarily ended up changing much in terms of the policy. though, I think what it has done, I mean, I think Brett was right that, you know, Palestine is back at the center of anti-imperialist politics in discussions on the left and globally and also, of course, in, you know, the empire, as it were. But I think at the same token, what it has done is it is also

in a kind of dialectically polemical fashion also exposed some of the contradictions on the other side where many people who hadn't been enlisted into, you know, the issue of the question of Palestine, Israel have been mobilized also in defense of a sense of the hegemonic Western civilization and its defense through the proxy frontier state, the Spartan proxy settler colonial advanced state of the West. And this is how Netanyahu portrays and represents the settler-colonial project of Israel. The cultural roots of Zionism are deeply embedded in Western political, religious, and cultural thought. In fact, it's actually Christians who invented Zionism. And nowadays are, in fact, actually its most rabid and largest

in terms of number adherence, if we think about the U.S. Evangelical left, which makes thinking about the issue in the sort of rational terms of politics and discourse, even about its sort of national interests and so on, sometimes almost impossible because of the way in which irrational kinds of affiliations and identitarian, apocalyptic theologies that are part of this dedication to Zionism in Israeli state as a precursor to some sort of rapturous culmination of salvation history in apocalyptic terms, you know, that these are kind of really depressing sorts of realities to actually confront that help us explain why it is that we've been so ineffective, one of the ways in which we can explain why we've been so ineffective sort of locally.

And that is because the West, if we want to think of that category, is having any salience. And I think it isn't some kind of essential, you know, trans-historical. cultural or civilizational entity. But what it is is a political program for global hegemony expressed through a certain kind of culturalist Eurocentric terms. And so it is real in the sense that there are an awful lot of people who are, you know, a part of what I would say is the political program of imperial hegemony, which is why there's been such unanimity in political classes, the elite classes, corporate, political, cultural, in support of Israel. And that's why it's been so hard to make a dent, you know, in the Imperial Corps,

is because there's something very important that's being performed and accomplished by this support for, you know, the settler colonial enclave as a frontier state in, you know, the region that helps accomplish various imperial designs, you know, in the region. And without that analysis, I think it's going to be impossible for the left to make a dent. And that's why I've been somewhat disappointed by one of the developments that have taken place. You know, Brett alluded to the Syria situation. And is it less than, you know, the fact that that that was some kind of pillar of resistance. I mean, we know that in the history of the Syrian state, I mean, it has been an independent Arab sovereign state, that has resisted normalization with Israel. But at the same token, you know, over the last several decades, even before the start of the so-called civil war in Syria, you know, there were attempts at integrating it further, you know, in the post-Cold War, you know, period into the neoliberal, you know, world economic order that just didn't happen as fast or as quickly or as fully

as, you know, people would have wanted. And in fact, actually somebody like Ali Qadri has explained and understood the, you know, weakness of Syria as a state, partly because of the neoliberalization policies that had already started to undermine its integrity even before and, in fact, partially helps explain the classes that saw an interest in overthrowing the Assad regime, right? So, you know, and we've also learned, I think, from listening carefully to other kind of insights and reports and statements coming from, you know, leaders of the axis of resistance as well, that, you know, over the last few years, there had been, you know, a lack of real genuine collaboration, you know, with the Assad government. They had been, you know, integrated. Syria was

recently reintegrated into the Arab League, which is clearly, you know, something that was an overture of Gulf states that were trying to realign, you know, Syria. And so it wasn't that it was some incredible pillar of the resistance. It provided a kind of useful, connective sort of tissue for rearming and providing support and so on. But it itself had not opened up, for example, a front in the Golan, you know, which I think had been actually an interest, you know, of, I think I think I saw some statements, you know, that, you know, Hisbalah had actually requested, you know, and they had, you know, resources as a result of their. involvement, you know, in 2014 and 2015 in Syria, that they still had kind of resources and, you know, installations and things that they wanted maybe to activate during this last year and a half. And, you know, that hadn't been possible because of a lack of cooperation from

and permission from the Syrian government, right? So we know that that's kind of a background in it. What I have been really most concerned about the Syria situation is, of course, the future, and we'll talk a little bit at a certain point later about the geopolitics in the region, but is the way in which whatever sort of solidarity and unanimity, both in the broader, say, Muslim world, like, you know, these, you know, people who think of themselves as connected to the significance and important of Jerusalem as a religious symbol, a sense of solidarity with Palestinians and so on, that there had been a kind of unanimity. in populist sort of circles, you know, and also in the pro-Palestine solidarity movement in the

West, right? And these have both suffered, I think, quite a lot from the consequences and the division of different positions being taken. You know, somehow geopolitics became a dirty word during this like last month, a month and a half. You were supposed to be celebrating the end of the Assad regime and that Syrians could finally be free. And that, you know, celebration of that had to trump all other kinds of materialist analysis, anti-imperial politics. It was an affront to say, well, listen, I mean, as bad as the Assad regime was, we don't know, you know, what is going to be the future under, you know, Takfiri, you know, militias. And it also does materially, you know, harm, you know, the solidarity of the Palestine struggle. It's going to lead to isolation of

Hezbollah. Once this so-called ceasefire comes to an end, it's been violated. You know, I think now the count is like 800 and sometimes, you know, of Israeli bombardment, kidnapping, you know, people that killed, I think, at last count, must be in the 60s now, the 70s of, you know, Syrian, I mean, Lebanese civilians. So in any case, though, we are coming to the horizon where the formal end of the 60-day period will be over. And, of course, there will be a very direct confrontation potentially with His Balala will be isolated in many ways, and also that it can be attacked and approached from a different direction because of the expansion of Israeli occupation, extension of its occupation of the Golan Heights further into southern

Syrian territory and areas that are close to the border, a different side of the border, to Lebanon. between what is the Lebanese and Syria, a Syrian border. So that's going to have major consequences. And even discussing and talking about it in this frame was somehow some kind of divisive, you know, thing to do. And I think I'm worried about the recovery of Palestine solidarity as a result of that kind of, you know, fragmentation over, over this issue. and more the reaction to it and the fact that it has detracted focus in public media, but even on social media, even in circles where pro-Palestine organizing has taken a backseat to thinking through what's happening in Syria.

Well, you know, I mean, the genocide is still to my mind, the key focus. And it's because I don't see, you know, the region being liberated. The people starting from, you know, particular countries in the region and thinking that, you know, that's going to lead to a progressive solution for the interests of the people of those societies. That's not going to happen, it seems to me, until the prior problem of the 100-year, you know, settler colonial project that has deformed, you know, the political, economic and social development of the entire region under imperial hegemony, that's not going to, you know, the region itself will. be liberated will not have sovereign development until, you know, the question of Palestine is decisively solved, you know, in favor of the people of the region. Not that I want to move us on from this subject because it is a very critical subject, but it is something that we've talked about on each of our shows for dozens of hours this

year and where there's a lot to discuss. So I want to link this to the next topic and allow each of you to engage with either of these two topics as you wish. Now, as Adnan is mentioning Syria, and as each of you have acknowledged that Syria played a pivotal role in the axis of resistance and that the West is now licking their lips at the prospects of what is going to be happening now in Syria with this new change of power, as it were. We see this very clearly in that the West is falling all over themselves to change the portrayal of Jalani, who was the leader of this Takfiri group that took over Syria and forced Assad out. We see them scrambling to delist him from the list of terrorist entities. We see them scrambling to revoke the $10 million bounty that was on his head. We see them scrambling to have them in different clothing as they portray him on TV with his hair very nicely combed and his beard trimmed. We see them scrambling to say that he has disavowed his former ties to al-Qaeda.

But we also see linkages with other struggles that the West is very intimately engaged in. And this, in addition to the struggle in Palestine, where we see that they're making statements that they're making statements that they want to be friendly with Israel, that they are not enemies with Israel. We also had three days ago at this point, the foreign minister of Ukraine traveled to Syria, met with Jolani, said that Assad was a puppet of Russia, said that Ukraine stands with a free and democratic Syria, never mind that, you know, it was an al-Qaeda linked entity that that then pushed Assad out and took over the government of the country. But we see them also saying that the government of Ukraine is going to provide a grain

and also provide assistance in rebuilding the country after power has been consolidated, as if there wasn't enough issues going on already that Ukraine should be probably focusing on more than what is happening in Syria. But what we see is that this is a linkage with the strong. that NATO and the West are pushing simultaneously. And linking to that next topic, we have seen in this past year that continued attempts by the West and by NATO and their imperialist ambitions and complete aggressive posture to encircle any entities that go against Western hegemony. And over the last two years, we've seen Russia be a very pivotal point in that

struggle, you know, saying this is somebody who lives there. It's very clear that that is what is happening. But we see it very clearly that also we have this continued attempt to isolate Russia, to isolate China, to isolate Iran, to isolate the DPRK, which you know, is always isolated, but to isolate all of these actors that struggle against Western hegemony. And finally, we are beginning to see changes in a direction where we see these non-Western hegemonic states start to create alternative structures and enhance the cooperation in these alternative structures. I'm not saying that bricks was created last year, but we see the further integration within bricks and we see further projects being carried out

through bricks, which by the way, the Brick Summit was held in the Republic of Tatarstan, my home region in this past year in 2024. I did some work for the Brick Summit, just to, you know, for Fun fact. We can talk about that sometime later. But what we see is that as the West continues to try to isolate these states that are struggling against Western hegemony, we see further integrations. Now, they may not be ideologically coherent. Bricks is certainly not an ideological coherent entity, but they are providing alternatives to the Western hegemonic structures that have been completely dominant over the past three and a half decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, really. This is where I see that linkage taking place is that Palestine, again, Israel is an

outpost for Western hegemony, very clearly. Syria, we see that this new regime that is taking place in Syria is again, even though they were al-Qaeda connected. This is, again, pushing the interests of the hegemonic west, of NATO, of the United States in particular, and that's why they're scrambling to change the way that they're portraying these individuals and these groups in Syria. But as these efforts to isolate these states continue and continue to ramp up, we see that these states that they are trying to isolate from the West have begun to further integrate themselves with one another, which is a major development, I think, that has been taking place, not just in 2024, but really expanded in 2024.

And I want to put that on the table for a discussion for whoever would like to take that up at this point. Yeah, so there's a lot to say that. You know, this is this cause and effect where the U.S. in its moment of post-S. you know, polarity, got ahead of its skis and felt like it was the master of the universe. It started weaponizing the dollar. It started weaponizing the Western economy in the form of sanctions. it starts weaponizing human rights discourse, right? Israel starts weaponizing the accusation of anti-Semitism.

And when you weaponize all these things, you dilute them, you belittle them, and you create openings for responses. So by weaponizing the dollar and thinking you can use sanctions as a war tactic against country after country of the country, eventually those countries are going to say, hey, all of us are getting fucked over by this insane system, we need to do something about it. So the more that, and this is kind of a lesson of dialectics, really, the more that at the Western Imperial Corps led by the U.S. over extends itself, overreaches, tries to, tries to maintain in control, the more that control slips from them, slips from them, slips from them. So they're actually living in a situation of their own making. This is, this is a product of American, you know, led belligerence and Western belligerence more broadly. one of the things with in the case of Israel that I've noticed is just superstructurally and ideologically, the center has fallen out of Western politics. And with the Israel issue coming to the fore, it used to have much more broad spectrum buy in. Right. The far left was always very clear on what the fuck was going on with Palestine, right? But the center, the left liberals, you know, especially going back further in time, there's some soft spots there. There's some sympathy. And then it's all sort of buffeted and maintained by Western. corporate media who presents Israel in a certain way, and then you have the Islamophobia hangover from really the entire history of European and American culture. But, you know, post 9-11,

the American population was indoctrinated with Islamophobia, which made Israeli propaganda even more, you know, seamless in its absorption by the populace. But what has happened recently is that Israel's brutal behavior and its complete, you know, flaunting of the law, of international norms, of international bodies of justice, has reduced its reputational buy-in. So now, and I was going to say that, well, the center is still pro-Israel, but the center is falling out, right? In Germany, in France, in the UK, in the United States, the center of those politics are delegitimized amongst their own population. So the buy-in by Biden and, you know, the German state, and to some degree, the

French state and all these European states, the buy-in is done by a section of the political force that increasingly is seen as illegitimate by their own populations. So that doesn't help them as much as it used to, right? That centrist buy-in used to help a lot more. Then on the right, you could almost say, well, now to be a fan of Israel is to align yourself solely with the forces of reaction around the world. And there's truth in that. But even the right has deep divisions on this issue. Part of it, you know, to be quite frank, is there is just this latent anti-Semitism on the right that plays into this. But that's not all of it. There are genuine divides on the, on the right across the west, on Israel, on the idea of, especially in the U.S. of this America first idea,

which I've been harping on for several months of just trying to understand these fault lines on the right. You have the rise of somebody like that comedian Dave Smith, I believe, who comes out and just really articulates a section of right-wing thinking that is very hostile to Israel. It's not rooted in anti-Semitism, but is rooted in actually like an analysis of the situation coming from certain first principles that we may not agree with. But what you see across the board, even on the right, definitely on the left, is a weakening of Israel's reputation, which honestly it needs going forward. And so there's a certain level in which Netanyahu in the Israeli state kind of sees that it's losing its cachet with people around the world,

especially in those countries that really matter, and that it has to become more belligerent. It has to kind of get things done. If it's going to happen, it's going to happen now, right? The Trump administration, I think, is another like four years where Israel feels like, okay, we still got four years at least. But they see the medium and long-term consequences of their behavior is going to become increasingly hard for them to behave in this way.

So I think there's some fear there, and we'll see exactly how, that plays out. But, you know, just analyzing the international situation and seeing that these forces that the U.S. was just telling us a couple years ago are terrorists. We're fighting them in multiple countries, right? We're spending billions of dollars, trillions in some cases to topple them in Afghanistan and around West Asia. And then the moment it's useful for them, oh, these are actually the good guys. These are the brave Mujah Hadin, right? There's that whole thing once again. And more and more people are seeing how this thing plays out. And then Ukraine comes

along and says, oh, we'd love to invest in the new Syrian state and building it up as Ukraine itself needs investment to build it up from being used as a proxy force for Western imperialism. And so, you know, the idea of like, well, the tankies are campists and they're just picking, you know, certain states that they like against other certain states and their old politics is America bad. No, we understand that the alignment of global forces is in such a way that it's going to break one or the other way, you know, and it's not like we're in this camp first that camp we just like these states over these states we stay critical of all of it but we understand the actual material divides in society and the forces at play that are actually decisive

and how this thing plays out and so you know in the ukraine coming to the support of the new syria is just another example of that so i'll toss it on but the other thing i do want to highlight maybe we can talk about it later is the the dire state of cuba cuba is continuing to be strangled um it's i've i've heard now that conditions in cuba are as bad as they've ever been with regards to basic, you know, abilities for the Cuban society to function. And that is, of course, a direct product of the ongoing embargo. And so I think Cuba gets left out of these, out of these questions and out of these conversations a lot. But that's a, that's a hot flash, an inflection point in the global order that is coming to

ahead itself. And we'll keep an eye on Cuba in relation to these broader conflicts, even though Cuba is not necessarily in the region that we're discussing right now. It is deeply connected to it as always. So those are Yeah, just to add very briefly on Cuba, before I turned it over to Alison and Adnan, you mentioned that now is a very, very dire time in the situation of Cuba.

This is as a direct result of US policy as the conditions of Cuba over the last 70 years have been. So what we need to keep in mind, I guess 65 years, but in any case, what we need to keep in mind is that the United States,

and its Western allies, choose moments at which they find they're more likely to be success in their ultimate goals. Now, the goals have always been the overthrow of the Cuban Revolution, the dismantling of the Cuban Revolution, and reversion to Cuba being essentially a neo-colony of the United States. That has always been the goal ever since the Cuban Revolution. One of the reasons that we see right now is a particularly dire time is that historically the Soviet Union and then more recently Russia have done what they could to help support Cuba. Now, obviously that was more the case with the Soviet Union than with Russia. But even in the modern era, Russia has come to the aid of Cuba. And even now at the time where, you know, Russia does have some other commitments at the moment.

and there are certain pressures in terms of commodities and in terms of what support can be given when there was the recent power outages across Cuba, Russia immediately loaded up multiple oil tankers filled with oil and dispatched them across the Atlantic to Cuba in order to try to support the Cuban government and also provided some technical specialists as well to help with getting some of the machinery

that was breaking down across Cuba online. Now, obviously, that was a very bare minimum of what needed to be done. There are much deeper issues in terms of the electricity grid in Cuba, in terms of what is being prevented from getting to Cuba by the illegal, internationally illegal blockade that the United States has been imposing on Cuba for decades and has only been, you know, perpetuated further by the Biden administration and certainly isn't going to be getting any better under Trump. But this moment is a particular moment in which Russia, again, historically would have come to the aid of Cuba and even at this moment is doing something to try to come to the aid of Cuba. But the amount of

aid that they're able to provide and the amount of technical expertise that they're able to provide at this moment is obviously very limited, which means that this is a moment in time, which is particularly ripe for Western intervention and continued Western pressure on Cuba with again that ultimate goal of overturning the Cuban revolution. I just wanted to add that in. Adnan, Alison. Yeah, building off of what Brett talked about, I'll leave back to Cuba slightly, but I am interested in this idea that Brett brought up of sort of the loss of, you know, standing for the United

States and its imperialist project, the loss of anyone really believing in what it says and what its goals are. And I think that's been very obvious. It was the last year, right? I think when we look at the situation happening in Palestine right now, the, general population is able to see not just like the horror of the genocide, but also the hypocrisy of U.S. rhetoric around it, right? Now, whether or not the general population is willing to go beyond that to support violent resistance is a separate question, but even

liberals seem to be kind of, you know, shocked at the extent to which the United States is just brazenly taking the position that international law does not apply to it or to its proxy states across the globe, just the utter denunciation of international law institutions intervening whatsoever, I think really has for a lot of people, other than kind of these like diehard neocons who are still holding on for ideological reasons, put the lie to the idea of a stable rules-based order, right, as kind of the goal that the West is fighting for. And so it becomes increasingly obvious, I think, that Western imperialism doesn't have sort of the ideological base that it was, that it had built out previously. That sort of ideological justification has collapsed. And I think

we're increasingly forced to see it just as like pure power politics, right? And I think that's a very useful thing. Losing that ideological veneer of international liberalism, I think does a lot for being able to push back against it. So I think that's been a big change. But I also think it just looks like increasingly like a bumbling imperial power to a certain extent, right? You know, thinking about several aspects of this, I think if we look at Syria, you know, the U.S. I think is quite happy that HTS one, but I also think it's not the faction the United States would have picked to take power, right? The fact that they're scrambling to remove the terrorist designations around them right now does show the extent to which it really wasn't their preferred group. And, you know, we spent

really, honestly, the last decade hearing to talk about how there are these moderate, secular forces that are actually at the core of the Syrian revolution, right? And this is who the U.S. wants to see in power one day. And to get obvious, you know, very, very radical Islamists and the power really puts the lie to that entire narrative. In addition to that, I think the other thing that looks very bumbling in Syria is just the utter betrayal by the United States of the Kurdish forces, right? We talk a lot about HTS taking power, but the whole other side of what's happened in the last several months has been the Syrian National Army in the North taking the fight to the Turkish forces there and the Syrian Democratic forces and just really the abandonment of these Kurdish

territories who've been engaged in really quite intense fighting beyond the fall of Damascus, right? Right. So I think that really has this look where the U.S. is abandoning some of its non-state agriculture allies in the region. I think that will cause groups like the Kurds in the future to consider if there's an emerging eastern block, would we rather, you know, cast our bot would then side with the United States and take military support from them? So that's probably relevant in that emerging, you know, non-Western block that is coming out about in an increasingly multipolar world. I think Brett's also right about shifts in right-wing politics in the United states being interesting around this. I mean, the just massive unpopularity of continuing to

provide weapons to Ukraine along, you know, both the far left in the United States, but even kind of the mainstream right is kind of fascinating to see. I mean, my own father is like a Trump supporting right-wing U.S. populist, and he fully thinks that the U.S. should completely back out of Ukraine and that, you know, he actually has gone so hard to basically say, yeah, like Russian-speaking Ukrainian territories have the right to succeed, who are, be to stop them from doing that. So seeing that develop within right-wing politics in the U.S. I think has been fascinating. I don't think that will bleed into that actual foreign policy of the administration that those people support, but it does show that ideological collapse of

liberalism in a very interesting way. And so I think, yeah, the ideological function is going away, and I think you're right, Henry, there's an emerging non-Western block that is coming about. I think that many groups, again, even non-state actor groups, will probably be curious about whether or not that is the more stable choice to ally with rather than the United States. That will probably be to an increasing shift in power. And I think, yeah, getting rid of the ability for the United States and its crony international institutions to yield sanctions as an isolating mechanism will be huge for the emergence of that block and probably the main reason for states to want to support it. And this comes back to Cuba, right? So much of the post-Soviet

experience of Cuba has really been about the ability of the United States to isolate it, despite states like Russia doing what they can, there has been a massive isolation, which has occurred. And so a non-Western block shaping up has a massive ability to be able to stabilize states like Cuba, but also to really create the possibility for more revolutionary action in international context, right? Many of the post-Soviet states, when they weren't isolated, were forced into a more friendly trade relationship with the United States. Vietnam is like a very good example of this. But again, that was only possible due to the ability to isolate them and make them rely as a trade client state.

So I think that shift towards bricks and hopefully a shift towards, you know, this emerging multipolarity will change things. I will say one of the things that frustrates me in this discourse is I think people often talk about multipolarity is just like an objective, progressive development. And I think it is progressive, but I also think it's destabilizing, right? And so the idea that there will be a peaceful transition

away from U.S. unipolarity and hegemony seems very unlikely to me. I think the next few years, the next few decades will be varying marked by international conflict. I think when we've seen the rise of multipolar global phenomena, that is largely how it goes. So that is something to watch out for. But I do think overall it is a progressive development. Such great points. And echoing actually some points that we made a year ago, I think, and also in some of our discussions about multipolarity, that it wasn't itself a goal, but a mechanism for dismantling or weakening U.S. imperial hegemony, but that the process that that takes shape could look

in a variety of ways. It could take shape in a variety of different ways. And that, you know, one way is increased conflict, you know, wars, chaos. And also I think there really is a question about what's shaping up, you know, to be a new global arrangement. So there's been hopefulness about bricks as a possible alternative. And, you know, Allison, you raised, I think, a really interesting issue about whether certain kind of movements like, say, the Kurds who don't have a nation and are an ethnic minority in several states, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, and that this has ended up meaning that they've aligned themselves with the U.S. and with Israel in some ways.

You know, against their neighboring states that have suppressed their desires for, you know, national self-determination and so on for Kurdistan and whether they might make different choices in the emerging global order. I mean, well, one, it's not entirely clear how much the U.S. will abandon them because I think they feel like they need to restrain. Turkey, you know, from being the dominant power. And there's a lot of anxiety and concern over that among. other U.S. allies, you know, in the Gulf region, Saudi, Emirates, and so on. And so it's going to be a question mark about how much they maintain, they certainly are going to maintain their occupation, it seems, of those parts of Syria, but how much they will support the Kurds and allow them to survive under Turkish and HDS pressure. And I agree, I don't think necessarily HDS would have been their preferred. They would have liked, I think, to see them as a subordinate in a larger kind of coalition that would be easier to present a positive public face toward, which is why they've had to get, you know, the Brits involved and, you know, get the strand,

you know, clotheers, you know, involved in getting a new suit fitted. I had a colleague who I was speaking with over the break, and I think I tweeted about it, is that we were having a casual Congress. He's also a Middle East historian, and he said, oh, did you see his shoes? Jolani's shoes in the last, you know, kind of public media session. And those were monk straps. I think the British are really behind his makeover. And so there are definitely forces that are involved in having to, you know, make a public enemy number one suddenly appears responsible head of state, you know, even to the extent where people have been like on NPR referring to him as the president of Syria. It's like, well, wait a minute. This is the strong man who is an installed himself initially as a part of a caretaker, you know, transitional government to elections in March, but who is now revised, you know, the path towards constitutional democratic order to four years because it takes three years, apparently, to write a

constitution and do an appropriate census. And so we're not expecting now to have elections for four years. So how he became a president, you know, it's quite interesting. But I guess my larger point that I want to make about the instability of the current system and the weakness of U.S. Empire that you were highlighting is also, however, to be pretty cautious about whether Bricks is going to amount to something that proves to be, you know, a genuine alternative. And also I would say the role of China in this, who's going to step up? And I read an interesting piece and it was something actually I had been thinking about with the fall of Syria as well was that China's kind of deep dedication, it seems, to non-interventionism is perhaps going to be a bit of a problem in organizing an alternative order. And I think the real test case is going to be whether Iran as a member of BRICS and as a long time trading party, and geopolitical kind of ally, you might say, to the Russia, China kind of alternative. A big test case in, you know, being able to survive the U.S. sanctions regime through these

alternative trade arrangements, the possibility of, you know, using different currency and so on. I mean, Iran is a really important as a kind of global energy supplier is really important to the Chinese economy and to the BRICS project, it seems to me. The fact that they joined BRICS recently is important. Are, you know, is China? Are China and Russia going to draw a line in attempts that might be on the cards to isolate and destroy Iran? I mean, this is, you know, a goal that clearly the Israelis have had for a long time. And now that, you know, six of the seven countries that Wesley Clark mentioned had been, you know, on the list for destruction, you know, in the new Middle East right after 9-11, have, you know, been subjected to regime change,

chaos, civil war, and this kind of devastation. Iran is the last of those that were listed. Will there be a real line in the sand drawn here? And I think, frankly, I think China is going to need to be more proactive, not just in economic relations and investments and so on, but in anti-imperialist political and military organized. I'm not saying they have to intervene and send troops and do these kinds of things, but I mean, I think there's a real question about whether or not a different alternative can take shape under U.S. pressure that is perfectly willing. I think that's what we've been learning about U.S. plans in the Middle East. is that they're perfectly willing to just so chaos and destruction because that serves certain

kinds of their interests. It also, you know, the only part of the American economy that seems to be vibrant and, you know, unique as a advantage is the military industrial complex and certain connections with the high-tech, you know, surveillance and social media and disinformation kind of complex. You might put that all together. And so actually, that would be a big question that I have for the coming year is, you know, is China going to be more proactive to defend its interests and the possibility of an alternative of different mechanisms of trade and finance and so on? Can those survive under a declining U.S. empire whose sole resource really is an advantage in the, you know, forces of destruction, not of controlling and managing. Like it wasn't able to do that in Iraq, wasn't

able to do that in Afghanistan. Ukraine is turning out to be impossible for them to, you know, fully control and manage. But what they can do is continue to cause war, destruction, chaos, and they seem to be able to profit from it because of their unique orientation, the form of their economy, military Keynesianism, as Chomsky said, and, you know, is what sort of defines kind of the U.S. economy. So that's a real question that I have. Now, the second component I just briefly want to say is about this collapse of the center, the end of liberalism as a real sort of force. There's no faith in these institutions now.

All the hypocrisy has been really exposed. But what it's led to is like is two things. one, a complete sclerosis of political culture and institutions, say in Europe, if you look what's happened in France and Germany, they cannot put, you know, humpty dumpty, you know, had a great fall. And, you know, it seems like they can't put him back together again in a coherent sort of way. And that there's, because they can't manage the alternatives. And the two alternatives are France and Sumis, you know, a kind of left formation. that, you know, did the best in the elections, but not so decisively that it was so obvious that the government had to be replaced in that a new government formed. And so France has sort of been limping along in this, you know, undemocratic sort of way under centrist control. And Germany that also, you know, is in real political crisis. And the beneficiaries so far have seemed to be forces of the right. And we see that in the United States as well. It's that like,

politics just don't make sense anymore in the West. Like you can't like what's left and what's right. These things, you know, have to be completely redistributed and redefined in some ways. You know, somebody like Luigi Mangione is a populist hero to people across various different political affiliations and divides that exposes, you know, a deep distrust of elite institutions, of elite privilege. and so on. And that's, you know, I think an unpredictable in a very unstable direction. And unfortunately, what I haven't seen and what we need to really talk about and think about is going forward is how does the left actually organize itself in such a way to present a counterweight? So far, it's been slow going, you know, in terms of traction, you know, on these kinds of questions.

So maybe I'll just leave it there because that was a lot of blather. but I really do agree that I think there's a crisis of liberalism internationally and domestically. Unfortunately, it seems that far-right orientations are gaining the most ground in this. So that's the real question for the future is, you know, whither the left, you know, in these circumstances, particularly when a lot of the conventional ways in which these have been defined and framed, seem to be falling apart in the actual sentiments and politics of people who are completely dissatisfied with an oppressive, you know, corporate, you know, sort of system that's absolutely intolerable, but isn't necessarily congealing into what we would think of as working class,

democratic, anti-imperialist political orientations. I'm going to say one quick thing on China first. before I put another topic on the table. Again, not that we have to abandon this one, but just that we have to continue moving because there's still much to talk about in 24 and we still must talk about 2025 during the course of this recording. But one thing that Adnan said that was quite interesting and I think is absolutely true is that China must be more interventionist if they are to see a fostering of forces that are actually aligned with them and are able to support them and support each other. Now, this was something that was just

reported this morning, my time. I think it would have probably been last night, your time, those of you in the West. But China just imposed some sanctions on the United States on dual use goods. And this affects companies in particular like Boeing and Raytheon. Now, this is obviously a step in the right direction in terms of limiting dual use goods, dual use. meaning both for commercial purposes as well as military purposes. It's obviously a good thing that China is going to be restricting the flow of dual-use goods to the United States, an entity that is opposed to not only liberatory movements around the world and allies of China, but opposed to China itself and has imposed numerous sanctions on China

over the past few years. But I think it's also quite telling that it was only this morning, my time, time last night, your time, that China has finally decided to restrict the flow of some dual-use goods to the United States. The United States has been imposing sanctions on China for years. The West, more generally, has been imposing sanctions on China for years. Under the Biden administration, we have seen ramping up of tensions against China. We have seen increased rhetoric against China. We have seen increased military aid flowing to Taiwan. Western military aid to Taiwan, directly going against the one China policy and one China

principles. These are all things that are meant to aggravate China, but only now has China taken this step to even restrict dual-use goods, some dual-use goods, to the United States, which seems far too little, far too late, and it's the absolute bare minimum of what should be done. So as Adnan points out, for there to be positive movements, real positive movements, that China is actually aiding, they really need to step up their game because that is the absolute minimum. You know, you may see that news and think to yourself, wow, you know, that's a step in the right direction. It's not just them trying to balance economic benefits for themselves on the international stage while also trying to adhere to socialism with Chinese characteristics. but you know that is an actual step in in the right direction that is kind of divorced from economic force but again far too little far too late why only now and why only that

limited response it really is i mean frankly ridiculous but hoping not necessarily expecting and you know we can talk about 2025 later but hoping that that is the first step in many But I do want to put something else on the table related to something that Adnan said and then turn it back over to all of you to continue the discussion. One of the things that Adnan said kind of humorously is that some Western media have started portraying Jolani as the president of Syria. We've also seen figures in the past, not in 2024, who with very little legitimate claim to be the president of a country or the leader of a country being hailed as the. the president of a country by the collective West and particularly by Western media. Juan Guaido is the first one that pops to mind, obviously, because he was such a cartoonish figure. But for years, the United States and Britain and Western media persisted with calling

Juan Guaido the president of Venezuela, despite the fact that he never received a single vote for being the president of Venezuela. But they persisted with that. On the other hand, when the United States and their Western allies are not happy with the way that an election goes. We see them delegitimize that election, or if it's through non-electoral means, we see a change of power. They continuously denigrate that power. So regarding elections, we saw in Romania recently, and not that the guy who won the first round of elections was a good guy, because he is a far-right conspiracy theorist freak, but he is a non-eastern. Western supporting far-right conspiracy theorist freak.

The United States was not happy with that non-Western part of that. If he was a pro-Western, far-right conspiracy theorist freak, the United States would have been said, great. That's like a lot of our allies. But he is not in favor of the West. So what happened, and it was in the news, and I'm not sure how much it was reported in the United States, but obviously in Russia it was big news, is that. the media in Romania started reporting with support from the United States. It's worth mentioning

and corroboration from sources in the United States, not in Romania, that Russia through TikTok and through various other social media channels was boosting this far right non-Western conspiracy theorist freak, who then pretty decisively won the first round of elections, not enough to win the election outright, it was scheduled to go to a runoff, second round election. But the court systems in Romania decided that because there was this so-called Russian interference in the elections in Romania, that they would just annul the results of the first round of elections and hold a redo of the first round of elections. Now, interestingly, and this is the part that I'm really not sure how much it was reported

in the West, perhaps when each of you come in, you can tell me if this was or not. It came out afterwards that actually there really wasn't Russian interference via TikTok or anywhere else. Actually, one of the main backers of the ads that were playing for this non-Western far right conspiracy theorist freak in Romania was from one of the centrist parties in Romania trying to boost him to bump out one of the other competitors of that party from making it to a runoff. So what we were seeing is that a Romanian political party, a mainstream one, was contributing advertisements and money for advertisements for a Romanian politician, but despite the fact that it was Romanians and Romanian political parties contributing to a Romanian candidate that was not from their party, it became Russian and therefore without any constitutional bearing, they had to annul the first round of elections and schedule a redo of the elections and then

even when that came out, they didn't decide to go with the first drone. In any case, a very confusing situation, but it just goes to show that when the United States and their allies are not happy with the way that an election goes, they just say, well, this was not a legitimate election. We've seen that in, of course, in places like Russia and Belarus as well, but we also have through non-electoral means, and I'm getting to the point that I'm going to put on the table. sorry for dragging this out, everyone, but when we have non-electoral means of a non-Western hegemonic

force coming to power in a place, we see not only does the United States and the collective west not rush to declare them the legitimate authority of the country like they have with Jolani and with Juan Guaido, and we could mention other individuals as well, but we see the constant denigration over the course of years. One of the most inspiring things that, for me, in the last year, has been the actions of Ansar Allah in Yemen. Ansarala has controlled the vast majority of Yemen and has the vast majority of popular support within Yemen for years. However, do we ever hear the West say that Ansarala is the legitimate authority of Yemen, that they are the ruling forces in Yemen? No, we hear them described, and on guerrilla history, we have several episodes.

devoted to Yemen and to Ansar al-Lah, both historically and within the contemporary case. We hear them denigrated as, and I'm quoting here, the Iran-backed rebel group, the Houthis. That is how they are portrayed in the media to this day, despite the fact that they have had the vast majority of public support for years at this point. Why? Because they don't support Western hegemony and because they actually stand up in a very material. way, despite the strikes that take place in Sana'an elsewhere in Yemen, they stand up in a very material way for the Palestinian resistance. But we also see it not only there, but in Africa. We are seeing new formations such as the alliance of Sahel states who are coming together in West Africa

to struggle against French neocolonialism and Western neocolonialism. We have leaders who came, yes, through military coups, nobody is saying that they came through electoral means. Nobody is saying that they are the president of the country, even those of us who support those states in the Alliance of Sahel states. We don't say that they're the president because they're not the president. They don't claim to be the president. But what we see from the West is that we have this constant denigration of these individuals as nothing more than power-hungry coup leaders because they are struggling against

Western neocolonialism. But very interestingly, and this is the last thing I'm going to say as I turn it over to you, the main point is the Alliance of Sahel States, which I think is a very interesting development and something that's been going on not only in 2024, but has persisted throughout 2024, is that while yes, the three states that comprise the Alliance of Sahel States are the most firm in their resistance to French and Western neocolonialism, we actually are seeing some of that anti-French neocolonial mentality spread beyond those three states to their neighboring countries as well. It was just reported that in the Ivory Coast and in Senegal, French troops have been ordered to leave the countries. Now, the Ivory Coast

and Senegal are not in the Alliance of Sahel States. They neighbor the Alliance of Sahel States, Berkina Faso, Niger, and Mali. Those are the Alliance of Sahel States. Just within the last couple of weeks, each of them has also asked French troops to leave their countries. Now, French troops that are supposed to be fighting against terrorism, but of course, where we see the French troops involved, we only see increases in terrorism. Funny how that works. So it is a very interesting development that we have these alternative formations also elsewhere, not just these big global, non-ideological coherent institutions like this. Gricks being formed, but also that we have the continuation and further integration of alliances like the Alliance of Sahel states that are explicitly anti-imperialists, anti-Western

imperialist, and anti-Neil colonialist. I think a very interesting development. And now that I have talked far too much, I will turn it over to each of you. Yeah, I had the Alliance of Sohail States on my list of things I wanted to bring up as a positive development. And we were talking earlier about how my multipolarity in and of itself is not, you know, good or bad, but it creates opportunities. And you can see these opportunities opening up in certain, you know, forces, certain states, certain people is trying to take advantage of it. But the process is ongoing. Imperialism is trying to reassert itself. But, you know, with those hypocritical maneuverings where, you know, they say one thing and they do another or they talk about human rights in one area and disregard it in another, that reputation

stripping away is simultaneously the stripping away of the West's ideological hegemony. Their narrative hegemony is weakening. And of course, that has to happen before the actual material unraveling occurs, right? It has to lose its ideological capture on people domestically and abroad in order for it to be weak enough to be sort of challenged in a much more robust and material way. So the blossoming of the alliance of the Sahel states is really a beautiful thing that we should keep our eyes on going forward into 2025. And we can see how positive anti-imperial developments like that, as you were just saying, Henry, create these ripple effects to countries around. But it sets an example, you know, and I always think in the wake of increasing climate

crisis, in the wake of upcoming World War III or economic collapse, that what will, what we'll start to see is various states that are least invested in the global order begin to experiment with new ways of organizing their society. And with U.S.-led imperialism on the decline and stretch thin, it won't always be able to drown those experiments in blood like it has been able to do fairly reliably for the past several decades. And so, you know, that's a big hope that I have is that we'll start to see more of these experimental approaches, more of these new ways of organizing across borders in the case of the Alliance of the Sahel states finding solidarity, you know, and in West Asia, with the rise of enthrallah and Yemen's courageous self-sacrifice on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza and Lebanon entering the fray.

These are all machinations of, you know, longstanding solidarity in some cases, but these global forces kind of coming together to have one another's back as U.S. imperialism continues to lash out, but also flail, ideologically, reputationally, and then hopefully in the in the coming. years we'll even see it weakened materially. And it's being weakened domestically as well. And that's kind of the thing I wanted to touch on here really quick, is just Adnan was talking about, you know, the response to the falling out of neoliberal, of the center, acutely, but of neoliberal globalization more broadly. That process is coming to an end. Liberalism itself is threatened by the collapse of neoliberalism, which is like a sub, you know, a sub process within the broader process of liberalism. And it's being dragged down by. It's it's still a question mark as to whether liberalism writ large is really in long-term threat. It's certainly in short-term threat because it's so tied to neoliberal globalization, which is ending one way or another. You know, neoliberalism domestically takes the form of economic austerity and we know corporate control. It's a way it's a way that capital, the

capitalists, the bourgeoisie, the ruling class, neoliberalism is a way that it protects itself from democracy. Fascism is this more overt way of preventing the onslaught of democratic reforms or up bottom up movements. Neoliberalism is a much more finessed way of protecting them from democratic input domestically. And so I think thinking about neoliberalism that way is important and knowing that it's falling apart, it's going to create opportunities as well as crises and chaos more broadly. But in lieu of a left-wing response to the failure of neoliberalism, which not far left enough for us, but which Corbyn and Bernie Sanders represented the possibility of of neoliberalism is ending. Here's a left response to the end of neoliberalism,

completely crushed by the liberal-centric movements in both of those countries themselves. And that's why I always say that in the U.S., the Democratic Party is not a vehicle for left-wing expression. It's the final bulwark against it. So they've shut that off. It's not that that power and that energy and that desire wasn't there, right? That would be even more depressing. If there was absolutely no bottom-up, you know, desire for left populism of that sort, it was there. It was just crushed by much more organized and well-financed forces domestically in the UK and in the United States. So since that had happened, the only response is either more of the liberal-centric neoliberalism, not going to happen, or the right-wing response. And what we're getting now is the right wing response and that is the that is the direct product of the center preventing the left wing response right and we always we all talk about the you know capital would prefer fascism over socialism liberals the liberal elite prefer fascism over social they do trump getting into power with this billionaire of his boys club it's only gonna i mean it's only

going to serve anything nancy pelosi's really sweating it out no she's going to be making buku bucks all of them are going to be having their financial interest firmly served so it's not really a threat. A left wing coming to a left wing populist or anybody for their left coming to power is a real financial threat to them and they far far would oppose that. But look at the since the right is taking over, I think it's worth looking at the kernel of possibility within the right because what we see in the U.S. I'll just keep it there for simplicity's sake is a, it's like simultaneously the emergence of and limitation of a sort of distorted class consciousness. There is much more willingness than I've seen in my life on segments of the right to critique corporate power,

to critique a market economy, to critique a market society. We see more and more critiques of organizing our society around corporate profiteering from the right than we've seen. That's a positive development. Here's the limitation on it. It's not actually a critique of capitalism as such. It's not actually a critique of corporate power as such. It gets funneled through this anti-immigration sentiment and this culture war so yes there are these corporations there is this market society it's not serving people you know on the right they talk about young men can't form families and there's the whole freak out about the declining demographics with the birth rate and their solution to that kick all the immigrants out and let's have like a cultural return to a golden age well that can never ever solve the

problem right so we're we're working ourselves through this right wing attempt to solve the neoliberal problem, but it's also hindered by being right wing such that it can't actually solve that problem. It cannot solve that problem. So, you know, I call Trump the Obama of the right. He's promising hope and change. He's not going to deliver it. He's not going to deliver it. And you can see the connections with with billionaires, with Israel, with all the people he's putting in his cabinet. None of the problems that Magda thinks Trump is going to come in and solve are going to be solved. And so then the big question is what happens post-Trump? We saw the disillusionment with the left in democratic politics after Obama came and went. And I think we're going to see something

similar after a second Trump term. Because now there's no excuse of I'm trying to run again. I've got to win another election. You have now the House, the Senate and the White House, do whatever you want. And we're going to see that that's not sufficient at all. I saw the the H-1B visa discourse on the right to be very indicative of. this contradiction on the right, where there is this liberal capitalist reactionary class headed by Vivek and Elon Musk, who are ultimately their interests lie as capitalists, right? And that's clashing against the nativist America first element, which is actually the constituent base of the MAGA movement. That's the real bottom up power of the MAGA movement comes from

that more nativist aspect within it. And that clash, I think, is going to be definitive when it comes to how this administration actually plays out and the inevitable disillusionment that's going to come with the Trump administration. But what's really horrific here and what is really, I mean, this is just one of the many limits on right-wing versions of this, is that the failures of capitalism, of liberalism, and neoliberalism continuously get couched on the right as failures of socialism, as failures of Marxism, you know, as failures of communism. They can't critique capitalism as such. that it can just critique corporatism or neo, you know, postmodern Marxism like Jordan Peterson spent years beating into these people's heads, such that I saw this very viral video. And this is kind of inside baseball on the right.

But for those who know, you know, Gen Z. Right. Like this guy named Sam Hyde, right? We don't have to go into who Sam Hyde is. But he posted this viral 46-minute critique of Elon Musk and of the faction of the right that Elon Musk represents on YouTube. anybody can go look it up has over 200k views while it's being so algorithmically repressed right this is not something youtube's going to put on your 4U page because like he's saying slurs and it and shit but what what his argument is is like on its face is this anti-corporate anti neoliberal argument where he would say over and over again the big quote that came out of this is human beings are not interchangeable economic units right human beings have this sense of place this sense of community you need social cohesion of course this is an anti-immigration argument right but what he did in that to hundreds of thousands of gen z young men suffering from capitalism is say capitalism is Marxism he's like Marxism thinks that you're an interchangeable economic unit that you're a cog in the economic machine

right this is this is a Marxist ideological takeover of Western states that's what we're suffering from okay once you do that you take off the table any real ability for you to formulate a coherent critique of the actual dynamics at play much less solve them you're blaming the thing that is actually the solution to your problems as being a part of the problem and all that leaves is for raw nativist backlash against scapegoats and certain liberal elites and so in that in that atmosphere you are never going to solve you can't deport your way out of capitalism like you can't deport your way out of these problems this idea that the right has is like if you just get rid of the 11 million immigrants. If you stop these H-1B visas, then, you know, I'm going to be able to get a

tech job with six figures. And I'll be able to finally, you know, form a family. And then the birthing crisis will go away. I mean, that's how these people literally think. So, and then to say nothing of the similar development on the right, of a critique of, I won't even call imperialism, a certain selective critique of militarism couched as like this is antithetical to the interest of the U.S. So when it is of interest to the U.S., yeah, we can go to war and spend trillions of dollars, but when it's not. And then that opens up a debate about what is and what isn't, because every time we go to war, the U.S. says it's national interest. And so there's mystification there. But there's something positive to see in this half-hearted, deformed, distorted,

bubbling up even on the right of anti-libertarianism, a certain sort of class consciousness and a certain sort of skepticism toward war that hasn't been present for a very long time. but at the same exact time as that emerges, it's also limited by its own ideology. And so I think keeping an eye on that and continually advancing our actual solution to these problems, I think will be really important because once Trump inevitably fails, there's going to be ideological fallout from that. And I think that represents a messy but very real opportunity for those of us with an actual critique of capital. Yeah, I think there's a lot to be said there that is very, very useful, especially these internal contradictions, would then. the right-wing populist response, right? I think, you know, Adnan, I agree with you, the question for the future is how do we respond to the fact that the primary sort of vocal critique, and again, I think all agree, it's superficial, but at least vocal critique of something like imperialism is a right-wing populist critique really emerging on the far right. And those

contradictions, I think, are in our favor, in a sense, because the far right has always struggled with this. This isn't new, these contradictions between kind of populism and capitalism within their coalition. I mean, this was at the core of much of the internal struggle with the original Nazis, right? The knight of the long knives and the purging of the essay really represented this break within the party to reject the populist base inside the capitalist side of the party and also the old kind of remaining aristocratic elements of the party. So those contradictions really have defined fascists far-right thinking for a fight some time. And so I think those will continue to exist and continue to create fracture points. I think for Marxists,

Like one of the questions going forward is going to be how do we articulate a politics that has a relation to liberalism that is different than the far rights relation to liberalism. Now, I've talked about this on Redmond's a little bit before, but I think what is simple is I think many people can see this failure of liberalism, this crisis of liberalism, both as an ideology and a governmental structure. And in response to that, the very easy move to make is just to embrace the negation of liberalism, right? A very straightforward. illiberalism as a response. And this is what I think right-wing populism really represents, right? In the classic reactionary understanding, it wants to undo liberalism. What Sam Hyde is

talking about, this return to the organic community that precedes capitalism slicing up communities through primitive accumulation and industrialization is just this pure politics of negation. And what's hard for Marxists is that I think we have to have a more complicated relationship to liberalism ideologically, right? We don't just need. We don't just negate it. We, in fact, I think, you know, this is a very specific understanding of Marx, but I understand Marx as an imminent critique of liberalism, right? Marx is criticizing liberalism's inability to live up to its own values. The universalism that it proclaims actually is completely impossible to achieve under the conditions of capitalist society, capitalist production.

And so I think this is like a super difficult task. I actually don't even know how we thread this needle, but we need to be able to say that, yes, you are correct that there's a crisis of liberalism happening. But the solution to that isn't a rejection of the positive values of liberalism, like universalism, like freedom, these broad kind of ideas. It's an imminent critique of the fact that liberalism actually makes those very values impossible to embody in actual social institutions and material configurations of society. And that's kind of the difficult task. And part of it, I think, is imperialism has done a very good job of trying to associate liberal values with itself in these dying moments, right? And I think

you can look at pink washing as this very good example of it, where the United States really wants to say, we are this force for progressive social values globally. And they have this unfortunate ability to correctly point out that the illiberal right that is anti, you know, sort of Western throughout the world is generally socially reactionary, right? Romania gives that example that you were talking about, Henry, where this is someone who is putting forth opposition to nation. but also is this reactionary right-wing figure. I think tying this back into the Alliance of Zahel states, this is some of the rhetoric that I've seen mobilized against Burkina Faso's current leadership, right, is trying to emphasize this social conservatism there. And so this idea of

social progressive values and universalism and rights and liberty becomes innately tied to the imperialist factions. And in response to that, it's really easy to fall into that right-wing, kind of just pure negation. And we have to do something more complicated than that. that. I'm not sure how we do it. I think, you know, Brett, to your example, I think Corbyn has been much better about this than Sanders, because Bernie Sanders even has shown some level of implicit support for the imperialist project to various degrees, whereas Corbin has been much more vocal in opposition while still maintaining, I believe, the promise of this sort of universalism. But there's a fine thread to, you know, really be wrestled with there. And I think ultimately we will see

the right-wing coalition and the populist right fall apart. Those internal contradictions that are coming up in the H-1B visas, are going to get worse. And because of the way that ideologically, the construction of their ideas works, and because of who has the money and power in their coalition, it's always going to sign with the musks and the Ramosways over the actual populace. That seems obvious. So as that happens to collapse, I think we need to be able to make these interventions. Maybe we can try to figure out to do this in the next year to say your discontents are correct,

but just the pure negation of everything progressive isn't going to get you. what you want. And in fact, it will only get you a more bare-faced barbarism, essentially, rather than one with ideological niceties. So I see that as kind of the task. And I think, you know, thinking about these emerging groups like the AES, they are going to continue to denigrated by imperialist factions with these appeals to liberal social values as the primary attack against them and trying to paint them a socially conservative. So I think finding a way to reconcile these difficulties is going to be necessary to mount an ideological defense of these new formations that emerge as well. And, you know, to push back against the kind of pinkwashing narrative that it seems like as

imperialism really has very few appeals left is the kind of thing it is trying to fall back on. Really fascinating remarks. I definitely take the point, Brett raised, that we have to be watchful for the end of this coalition because you're absolutely right. I mean, I had on my list definitely to talk about right-wing fissures with the Vivek Ilan Musk faction versus the Maga anti-immigration and those kinds of tensions in that kind of alliance. But I think, Alison, you really put it well, is that maybe we're going to have to think about, you know, how we relate to liberalism. Because I definitely feel, you know, there's a lot of seductive force in just attacking liberalism because there's such hopeless hypocrites. They're horrible, you know, they've gone hand in hand, as you're

pointing out, in managing to associate themselves with the worst of imperialist interventionist politics. And so there's a natural tendency to just react negatively against that. But we do have a real, I think, difficult task in being able to recover genuine liberal values that people have lost faith in, but that everybody wants to enjoy freedoms, freedoms of speech, you know, freedom for political expression and organizing, you know, all of these things like, you know, are actually social goods that people value when they do have them. And so we have to find some way of being able to explain. And I agree, I read Marx exactly the same way, is that his critique was just that it's not going

to be possible to actually have them. Those are the contradictions of, you know, political liberalism when you don't have socioeconomic equality. And this is why I think actually going far beyond the attempt that some people, which I feel was wholesome of trying to interject the idea of economic bill of rights and fulfill the sort of FDR program of social democracy in the United States, you know, that some colleagues and people were interested in promoting and trying to get into the political platforms as if that was ever on the cards for the neoliberal party par excellence, a corporatist neoliberal party. But I think going even beyond that is somehow to connect that with the anti-imperialist, more global internationalist analysis. And so I would encourage every one of us to be. thinking about the new international economic order that the Progressive International has put

forward. I think it's a really important document as a beginning place for trying to think about how we reinterpret economics and politics and the policies around those. We had an episode about it on guerrilla history and had a couple guests from Progressive International to talk about it. And it was reviving a program for a new path of development in the early 1970s that had been put together by a coalition of the non-aligned states, the third world states in the UNCTAD, you know, the UNCTAD, you know, the UN trade and development organization, which is where, you know, a lot of this kind of discussion was taking place. And in that, in that era, there were actually states with all of the contradictions

and problems of states trying to, you know, promote genuine, you know, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist economic and political development. But nonetheless, at least there were state sponsors that were willing to put it into international institutions. It was, of course, derailed by neoliberalism. But I think now is the time to be trying to expand the purchase of that kind of analysis for exactly the reason that you were mentioning, Alison, is because it's very difficult actually to make this case. We need resources and we need to be able to guide good discussion and political programs to take advantage of exactly what Brett was talking about,

which is that, you know, this is a fundamentally contradictory formation. The right wing has no genuine solutions to this. And that's going to become increasingly apparent in much the same way that faith in neoliberal economic order in corporatism has begun to collapse. Faith in the rules-based international order and the hypocrisy around that with the Gaza genocide and other examples has again, you know, torn, you know, that veil is removed. So, but now what do we put in place? This is, I think, really a big, big question.

I think the other thing that we really should look to, to, we had a great episode in conversation with BJ Prashad on his analysis of far-right politics. And he said, we shouldn't call them fascist. That's pretty specific. And it occludes and obscures the way in which the liberal order is, you know, will prefer, just as Brett was saying, we'll prefer fascism to socialism. So we have to take into account the fact that there are new forms of far-right organizing and movements that don't fit necessarily exactly in the kind of classificatory schemes we've inherited from the past, and we need to actually materially analyze what's at stake and what's involved in these far-right movements today.

I mean, unfortunately, he didn't have a good way to characterize it. We said far-right of a special type doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. I mean, there's some marketing branding that we need to do in terms of how we get at the core of what's unique and special about these new far-right formations so that we can combat them and present our alternatives. And so I think those are sort of two things I want to be thinking about a lot going forward. The last thing that I do think is at risk and danger, however, going forward under the right-wing, you know, governments, political parties and formations that have swept really across Europe. And now, of course, again,

revived under Trump administration, although, you know, I mean, we could say we've had that under Biden, is the continuing political repression and maybe it's advancement and escalation that's going to take place undermining exactly those liberal, you know, of liberties. Well, the liberties that, you know, we've had about, you know, free speech and so on, there's going to be a wave of reaction with the right wing. They're already talking about essentially criminalizing criticism of Israel. I mean, that's like what's on the cards. And this weird MAGA characterization of the depredations of corporate neoliberal capitalism as communism that Brett was referring to with this Sam Hyde, you know, is also flowing into coalescing of hostility.

against communism, against Marxism, that I think, you know, is exactly what far right politics needs to accomplish is to suppress the actual analysis and alternative that it is kind of superficially basing and organizing its complaint and victim discourse, you know, for grievances, grievances against scapegoats, grievances against immigrants, grievances against corporate elites, not on the basis, you know, of a genuine material analysis, but of their cultural position and their arrogance and so on, all of these other secondary characteristics of the manifestation of political power and privilege in society rather than the material class-based, you know, difference. So I think that's, you know, something that we're going to

have to, you know, be fighting for and on quite a bit in this period. And, and, and, of course, we've had the technique and the tool of media, and that's one thing I did want to mention. I think that's the other sort of liberal institution, the press, the media. That has just absolutely collapsed under its bias, hypocrisy. You know, nobody is watching these mainstream, you know, media. But that's exactly why I think there's going to be political repression because there are too many shows like this. And, you know, ours are the ones we share are not quite. popular enough to really, you know, probably be considered really a threat. But there are some that have become, you know, real, well, not just islands anymore. I mean, you know, they're really connecting to some aspects of mainstream discourse and promoting a different vision of how the world can be otherwise. And I think that's a real serious danger that with the collapse of

mainstream corporate media that has been exposed, I think we're going to to, you know, I don't know how long we have, but hopefully we have a little while to be able to do some of the organizing work and some of the educational and political education work we're doing. But I do see threats that there will be repression and suppression. There already has been, we know about it, but I feel like it's going to escalate and ramp up, partly because of the collapse of those mainstream, the credibility of those mainstream institutions and the threat of emerging. alternatives actually being successful in mobilizing popular social movements in combating the disinformation and ideological confusion that is promoted by, you know, those obfuscatory mechanisms of the mainstream media. They're being replaced and that's a serious threat. Well, it sounds like Nan is moving us into the Looking Ahead section, 2025 and beyond. I just want to reflect on one thing briefly that was said by Adnan. And then I will also turn to the looking forward section, which will be our final section of this episode. And again, Alison, Brett,

if you want to look back at something in 2024, as you also look forward, that's more than, more than fine. But one of the thing that Adnan mentioned earlier in his answer was that a lot of people take this sort of knee-jerk, anti-liberal alignment. Allison, I believe, that you also kind of hinted at this as well. I think that this is a very important thing to just mention that far too many people take anti-liberalism as an ideology in itself. Anti-liberalism is not a coherent ideology. Yes, it is true that if you take a perspective that is opposed to the perspective proposed

by liberals, often you will end up at a more correct analysis of a given situation. Yes, that is true. That does not mean that having an anti-liberal ideology is a coherent way of analyzing the world. Similarly, an anti-Western ideology is not a coherent ideology either. Just having a knee-jerk reaction against some individual, some state, some force, some orientation that is fixed, is not. It's not a coherent analysis. You have to look at structures. You have to look at structures economically and politically. You can't just look at, well, you know, the United States did this. Therefore, it is bad. And I take the opposite position. Okay, nine times out of ten, you're going to be correct. But there is that one time out of ten where you may not be completely correct just by taking a knee-jerk opposition to it. There is not always. this, you know,

Manichaean divide between the correct position and the Western position or the correct position and the Liberals position. Most of the time, yes, but we do have to be much deeper in our analysis. I only mention this because I have seen far too many who have taken this knee-jerk reaction and have shifted from what appeared to be, perhaps somewhat naive, but anti-imperialist perspectives on events to all of a sudden taking side of far-right ideologues who will mention something that would be considered anti-liberal or

anti-Western. And in that instance, rather, the individual who had politics that perhaps were on the anti-imperialist left, again, maybe not ideologically coherent, or well-reasoned or well-read or well-researched or whatever, but politics that would have aligned more closely with ours. I have seen many individuals, of course, this is not only an online phenomenon. I'm very much not online these days. I have seen it in person many, many times as well. These individuals whose politics would have been fairly aligned with ours,

having this analysis that is not a coherent analysis of structural, and economic structures, political economic structures, that have then been drawn into these far-right political formations that have rhetorically been explicitly anti-liberal or anti-Western in some cases. We see that far too often. So just to warn you listeners, and I'm sure that, you know, you agree with this, but also make sure that we are educating those around us, This podcast is not only meant for you who has the headphones in their ears,

but we have to foster these sorts of conversations within our communities, within our families, within our organizations as well, that a knee-jerk anti-liberalism or a knee-jerk anti-Western analysis is not an ideologically coherent analysis. It's a good starting point, sure, but you have to actually pick beneath that and analyze the structures at play. Now, with that out of the way, I would like to turn forward, to some of the things that I am maybe not expecting, but looking at going forward, both in

2025 and beyond. We are seeing attempts by the West right now to try to push some sort of resolution to the conflicts in Alistine and in Ukraine. Those resolutions are often not, they're not very well-reasoned resolutions, which is why they haven't been picked up yet. There's a reason why the West is pushing them, and it's because those proposed resolutions would just continue to entrench a Western hegemony. So I expect fully to see a continuation of those resolution attempt, air quotes, listeners, I know you can't see them, but they're there, and particularly as the economic

impact of continuing these conflicts is felt. So, of course, there is economic benefits from continuing these conflicts for the imperialist West. Arms manufacturers love them. Stock markets love these conflicts. Ali Kadri has a very salient analysis and a terrific work, the accumulation of waste in which he analyzes waste, destruction, and war as a source of accumulation of capital for the imperialists.

I highly recommend reading that. I believe I talked a little bit with Ali about that. work in one of the episodes that we had him on guerrilla history, but we didn't focus on that book. So perhaps the next time we bring Ali on, we should talk about that work more closely. Ali's a friend of mine. I know he also listens to the show. So hello, Ali.

Nice to shout your work out. Everybody should be reading it. But there is benefits for the imperialist West, but there is also, of course, economic pressures that are felt as resources are shifted from one part of society to another part of society. and we see a division of, a continuing division of economic resources within Western society that does eventually require some sort of resolution, but I don't really expect the resolution to be the one that the West is pushing for. I expect to see a continuation of the advancements of these sorts of alliances and

alternative formations like bricks, like the Alliance of Sahel states, of course, there is going to be imperial pressures on each of them. Bricks has been under quite a bit of criticism from Western leaders and denigration as well in terms of, well, what are they actually accomplishing? I've seen quite a bit of that, even though if you look at the BRICS members and BRICS partner countries, economically, they comprise more economic, not only potential, but in terms of the reality at this moment, then the imperialist West states do cumulative. but we still see this denigration of them by the West. And of course, the Alliance of Sahel states, it's under constant threat, neo-colonial threat, an imperialist threat. I fully expect the integration of these anti-imperialist states to only increase in the coming year,

but I also expect the pushback by the imperialists to be only greater. two other things that I want to bring up before I pass it over to you, or perhaps three. I have a big list of things that I want to talk about, but I'll try to narrow it down. One of the things is that we're going to see continued authoritarianism by Western allies as conditions within those countries as we see the pressures of capitalism and neoliberal capitalism on the mass of society. So looking at Argentina, for example, under Javier Millet, we have analyses that are going and being put forth. Look at the economic miracle that Millet has been fostering in Argentina.

Elon Musk talks about it quite frequently. But if you look at in terms of poverty rates, the number of people who are subsiding on under $5 a day, If you look at the distribution of wealth within Argentina, if you look at food intake within Argentina, large percentages of people are suffering under the changes that Millet has put in place in Argentina. Poverty rates are shooting up dramatically. Now, there are some economic indicators that look nice from an investor's standpoint. But if you look at what's actually happening in the country,

you see that there is a miseration of the populace. And there has been some protests that have been breaking out over the course of the last year in Argentina that have not been covered in the media particularly much, even here in Russia. But I know also I do periodically check Western media. And I have not seen much mention of those protests there. But they do happen. Another very close ally of the United States and staying in Latin America, since I think we haven't talked about Latin America nearly enough in this episode.

I know we talked about Cuba a little bit, but talking about El Salvador, I think is also apropos of this moment, talking about Buckele, talking about how he is often propped up is look how much he's cleaned up crime within El Salvador, but without any acknowledgement of the fact that the repression that is taking place in that country,

the mass arrests locking up of entire families of people, disappearing with very little evidence that they were involved in any sort of organized crime or other sorts of crime. But that is then brushed under the table and say, look, this guy is cleaning up crime and he's making it a Bitcoin paradise. This is an investor's paradise. And he is a very close ally of the United States. Was a close ally of Trump, is a close ally of Biden, will be a close ally of Trump. This is a very close ally of Trump. this is what it is like when you see the internal conditions within these countries get worse in some way, whether that is due to repression, whether that is due to economic constraints or economic, well, flailing around by the government really in the case of Argentina, we just see increased repression, but we see the United States and its Western allies cover that up because it is their allies. So I would expect to see more of that. that as the crises of capitalism continued to bear their faces in different allied countries

of the West around the world, I would fully expect to see even more severe repression and authoritarianism within those countries, and I would similarly expect it to not be covered by the Western imperialist media. I also fully expect to see not nearly enough done regarding the climate. And I expect grassroots movements to continue their pressure for the climate and in terms of trying to find solutions to the crisis of the climate and the environmental crisis. I also expect that we are going to start to see more and more individuals in the grassroots start to link the environmental crisis with capitalism, which is something that has been severely lacking in other phases of the climate movements, which have tried to totalize it

in fossil fuels or tried to totalize it in bad business practices by individual companies. I expect to see increased focus on capitalism as a system in the grassroots climate movements. And lastly, because I know my internet is on the fritz, but I will. just say that we are following up on something that Adnan said, we are going to have increased informational warfare by the imperialist West and their media apparatacies, but we're also going to have increased forms of resistance to those imperial narratives by alternatives, whether that is podcasts like ours, whether that is YouTube shows by anti-imperialist comrades, or whether that is publishing, like we have many anti-imperialist publishers, including one that I am

very familiar with, ISCRA books, just as a shout out to our comrades at ISCRA. But I fully expect to see the further development of anti-imperialist media in the space of increased repression against that anti-imperialist media. All right. So I'll go and I'll say a couple points and then I'll do my 2025 and I'll just try to make this quick for people. I'm just going through things fairly quickly. So I just wanted to respond one thing to what Adnan said about the media and the rising

of the media. that's different alternative forms of media and unfortunately shows like ours you know we live in a deeply anti-communist society you know these these shows are never going to be millions of views etc but it is worth interesting it's worth noting the ones that are really breaking through and um one of that has really broken through is is unfortunately for some reasons but also interestingly and also interestingly and others is the tucker carlson after he's left fox he now has this media empire and i've been key keeping an eye on it and these are some of the last shows that he's done in the last month or sue a show criticizing big pharma um many shows criticizing the deep state the CIA the FBI in great detail shows that are critiquing the military industrial complex and he had on recently the head of the teamsters union to talk about labor organizing so this is both an interesting development on the right but also something that we have to be on the lookout for this is sort of insidious in that the right, because of the abject failure of the Democratic Party, now the right gets to have these conversations while the liberal center in the Democratic Party defend and protect and try to squash these conversations. Okay. You are handing over the entire pie to the right wing when you allow them to have a monopoly on these conversations while you're trying to shush everybody up over on the Democratic Party. Like it's disgusting. That's what you get.

A figure like Jeffrey Sacks, I think is very interesting. He goes right, left center media and gives us really, you know, credentialed and knowledgeable critique of the military industrial complex and imperialism, which I think is interesting as well. So those are things to keep an eye on. It's interesting because, you know, we have a mutual friend here that it's gotten really big on YouTube recently, Danny Haiphong. He's been on our show a lot. Great guy. Have nothing but, you know, love and support for him. But what allows him to get so big, I think, is that there is this absence of explicit, and this is just sucks, because this is the media environment we're in in the United States, an absence of explicit Marxism, socialism, communism, right?

It comes in at the margins. If you know Danny's background, you understand that. But I think if he front-loaded that, then yet I don't think you see the hundreds of thousands of views he's now getting on videos, right? He'll have people on like Scott Ritter, certainly no lefty, but a trunchant critic of certain aspects of the military industrial complex. They'll have on, you know, ex-marines to do geopolitical analysis. And so that says something about where the media is moving. And it's not always in a left-wing direction, but it is in a direction of critiquing of these institutions that have been taken for granted on the center and on the right for so long. So keep an eye on that stuff. Two is the point I think Adnan was also talking about about the rise of,

this new right whatever you want to call this this you know neo reactionary right wing has fascist elements isn't always fascist fascism becomes this sort of buzzword that people now dismiss or over apply and i think it is really worth being considerate about how we use that word trying to define it and don't fall in the trap um of labeling everything to the right of nancy pelosi as fascism right because i think that makes you discredited but also understand this, fascism can just as easily come out of the center. Now, the center has been delegitimized, but what happens once the right and Trumpism is delegitimized? Will the center have this resurgent moment?

And so the liberal state and extremists will welcome the de-liberization of the political system, right? They'll be, when really push comes to shove, they'll be happy to get rid of free speech and the right to privacy and these things that they've so far trumpeted. And so I don't think we should ever lose sight that fascism or some form of it, state authoritarianism, tyrannical crackdown, whatever you want to call it, can just as easily come out of the center as it can come out of the right as the center starts to lose its grip. So, but for 2025, let's go through a couple things I want to keep an eye on. Number one, the Luigi trial. You know, he's pled not guilty.

So this shit's going into the trial. And the media would love nothing more than for us to forget about it, to move on. The story, as I said in my recent Out of Staying Capacity. I mean, this story has stuck around and has been viral on social media longer than the Trump assassination story. That's profound.

So if something is making the story stick, there's clearly attempts to try to move on, but when you have a big trial like this, it's not going anywhere. So to keep an eye on the trial, on its developments, on how the media and the corporate establishment and elite try to reframe it,

and their continuing botheredness at the bottom-up support for Luigi will continue to play out. And this is an opportunity for us on the left to drive home this critique of capitalism, drive home our critique of the health care industry and push for universal health care and push strongly in that direction. The health care system this country has completely failed. And everybody left right and center understands it. But the elite are going to do their best to keep this rotten system in place at any and all costs because their donors are the big pharma company. are the big insurance companies, et cetera. There's also a side note about the surveillance state that we should keep an eye on the fact that they were able to track down Luigi

and all the ways that they were is unsettling. And we live in this era where as the center is falling out, the surveillance state is getting stronger than it's ever been. And so how much behind do they really need if they can label everybody an extremist and a terrorist and mark your every move and bring up old social media posts that you've made and all of that. So keep it out on that. The other thing, Trump's getting in office, his number one promise, we're doing mass deportations.

That is something that 2025 domestically is going to be centered around. The politics of 2025 are going to be centered on the level to which the Trump administration goes for mass deportations. The order in which they do it, are they just going after criminals, which you'll have more buy-in from the American public? Once you start seeing images of families being separated and grandma's being put in handcuffs, Cuffs. Okay, now it gets weird. What's going to happen there? I think that's going to be perhaps the definitive domestic story of 2025 because Trump says that's his number one goal and that's what he's going to do first day in office. And he has that ICE director coming out of retirement, Tom Holman or whatever, who, you know, I listened to a whole interview. He just

did. I forgot on what show. Maybe it was Tucker Carlson where he's just laying out his entire plans of mass deportation. So that's going to be a hot topic. Keep an eye on that. Next, a couple more here, Elon Musk and Vivek doing the Doad government thing. You have to understand Elon Musk might be the single biggest beneficiary of the American tax dollars in human fucking history. And when he

goes in and cuts government as the number one contractor for the Pentagon, he's not cutting the Pentagon budget. He's not cutting defense. He's coming after Medicare and Social Security. We'll see if Trump can stomach that, if he can just stomach Elon, but also if he can stomach that aspect

because there's a contradiction there. Well, Trump says, all these Republicans want to take Social Security from you. We're not having it. We're going to protect it. Elon and Vivek are trying to fucking cut that shit. So keep an eye on that. And then the very last thing, you could pick many countries to keep an eye on here. I find in particular

the UK and Canada to be in really interesting turmoil at the moment. You know, if you take London out of the UK, it is poor per capita than Mississippi in the United States. So it is a poor

country attached to an incredibly rich city, and minus London, that country is already in complete collapse. There you have right-wing anti-immigration sentiment as well. You have a disgusting corporate elite, journalism, the media, I mean, really gives America run for its money as far as nauseating goes. But what happens in the UK and Canada, I think the current situation is untenable. The U.S. has its problems. It also has a comparably big, big, bolstered economy you know it has a breadbasket it has protection in other ways from some of the crisis that's going on in ways that the canada and uk just don't quite have so i think things are going to come to do ahead in 2025 when it comes to those two states in particular but of course

the west more broadly germany has a very interesting situation and the u.s has this temporary boost where people widespread think that trump's going to actually bring some changes and so that might hold off some domestic turmoil in a way that's not going to be possible in places, specifically like the UK, but also Canada and perhaps places like Germany as well. So those are my 2025. Keep an eye on topics for sure. Allison. Yeah, a couple of my end. I'll just go ahead to go straight into them rather than giving sort of response to all the years. I think we're in agreement on quite a number of them. Political regression domestically is one of the big things that I have my eyes on. I think everyone's mentioned to that so far. But I think the right has been pretty

clear about their plans for this in a really interesting way. You know, Trump has talked openly about prosecuting people within the Palestinian Solidarity Movement, deporting students who are here on immigration status. There's been really shockingly open discussion of this. The Heritage Foundation's Project Esther Plan has talked about using RICO charges against Palestinian youth movement, Jewish Voice for Peace, and SJP, and also trying to find other ways to isolate them, the bill that went through for removing 501C3 status for nonprofits that are designated as terrorist supporting, where that designation that is made unilaterally with no judicial oversight by the Treasury. A pretty good example of this gearing up that is going on to crack down on not just the far left,

but I also think kind of the more like civil institution NGO side of the progressive left as well. So I think that's very clear that that is coming and something that we really need to prepare for. I think the other aspect to that, besides just those shockingly clear plans, it's just this right-wing desire for revenge. They see the prosecutions that followed up January Syth as like an attack on their ideology and their people. And I've already seen in these online right-week spaces this discussion of, well, why couldn't we do that after the uprisings in 2020? Or why are we doing that now after the Palestinian Solidarity Movement, you know, that emerged on campuses? So they're mad. They're mad their people are in federal prison. They're hoping their

people get pardoned. They want to use the federal repressive apparatus that is the Department of Justice to get revenge on who they see as their ideological enemies, very clearly. We need to be prepared for that. We need to be figuring out legal defense and funding structures. There's a lot of work that I think needs to get done there

because I don't think they're bluffing. Who knows how far they'll get, but at the point that they control the Supreme Court, the main check that would exist is there. I will say, there are still quite a few federal laws on the book like the Smith Act that make it more are less illegal to be a communist, right? The reason that those aren't enforceable is because of

Supreme Court precedents, cases like Brandenburg v. Ohio and others that establish the idea that you can call for the overthrowing of the government as long as you oppose a clear and present danger. Those aren't law, right? Those can be outdone by changing precedent with the court like Roe was. So I do think it's very clear that the protections that have existed, you know, post-red scare to limit some of the federal legislation there are not guaranteed. And so I think we need to be very prepared for that crackdown. Yeah, I think the emergence of more left-wing media is the other thing. If people hit on that will happen, you know, again, we're only so big. I think 90% of the things that we've said on this episode, probably disqual by us from ever getting

too large in terms of our media presence, because we're pretty not restrained about what our views are, I think. And I think that's a good thing. There's an audience who wants to to hear that and he benefits from that. So I think that matters. But more moderate figures on the left who still associate themselves with the far left to various degrees are really growing right now. I mean, Hassan Piker is like an obvious example of someone whose Election Day stream got more views than the MSNBC stream than the CNN stream in terms of concurrent viewers. On election night, people wanted to watch what he had to say, not the hacks on mainstream media. And I think that is a trend that is very meaningful and will continue to develop and have

that dialectical relationship with repression. The other thing that I want to touch on is what Henry mentioned as well, which is that, you know, this focus on Latin America, I think, is going to be interesting. Aside from the states that Henry mentioned, I think increased tension with Mexico is very likely going into this next year and with the next Trump administration. You know, one interesting thing is that Claudia Shinebom has been very willing to take a very oppositional stance already to everything Trump has talked about. There's a popular, popular president there in Mexico who I think, you know, wants to take a more defiant tone towards the United States. We'll see how that plays out in actual policy. But pair that with Trump talking about limited invasions of Mexico with U.S. special forces to go after cartels. You have a recipe for a massive escalation of tensions between those two states. It will be interesting to see how that actually goes, because again, as much as Trump wants to saber-rattle, the U.S. is surprisingly economically dependent on Mexico due to trade.

interrelation in a way that will make it difficult, I think, for him to do a lot of what he wants, but I would imagine those tensions will continue. And then the other thing that I would say for 2025 is, yeah, I think increased global conflict is likely. Again, I think there's a clear shift to multilateral that is occurring here, how stable that will be, whether that actually leads to a full transition, all up in the air. But it certainly creates the room for more conflict. And I think, you know, the instability of the Israeli regime, the fact that it is opening multi-front wars with multiple states now and multiple non-state actors does indicate just an increased instability. So that's the other thing I would keep an eye on. Obviously, none of that

is super exciting or positive staff necessarily, but those are the trends that I think matter and that will have to be figuring out how to formulate a response to as the left. Pass it over to you on. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm so glad you went into some of those specific repressive measures planned that have already been incubating, you know, particularly using Palestinian solidarity activism and anti-genocide activism as the tip of the spear in the undermining of civil liberties and as the mechanism through which wider scale political repression and suppression is being rolled out and that it definitely does threaten left, left organizing, and so forth.

So I'm glad you specified a lot of those. Just one of the kind of revenge politics that is clearly evident in addition to media and some of the other institutions you mentioned is I definitely think academia is going to be subject to a lot more surveillance, defunding, pressure from donors. things that all, you know, were exposed as contradictions that undermine free speech, academic freedom, and so on because of the Gaza encampments and, you know, statements. You know, the left is not as embedded in the working class as it really needs to be. And that's one of the weaknesses is that, you know, an institution like academia, which is actually overall, quite conservative, has had, you know, some space for left voices. those have been, I think, attracting more attention as one of the last spaces in which there was any kind of left presence.

And the right wing has had it out for academia for, you know, generations since the 60s and the cultural revolutions of the 1960s. And it blames all of, you know, America's problems for, you know, so, and those were also very much associated with, you know, campus protest. movements and so on. And so I think there's definitely going to be a lot of targeting and repression there is one of the manifestations of that larger political repression that we've all been, you know, talking about. But another component of it, you know, it connects with the Luigi Mangione trial, which is, again, the way in which terrorism charges very uniquely were applied. In this case, when there are plenty of, you know, police, you know, friendly, you know, laws for investigation for murder as a state charge. Why did they have a federally oriented charge? And I think

part of the reason is that, of course, there are risks with the democratic system of jury trials and so forth, especially in a case where you have a popular figure. Where are they going to find a jury to convict this guy? I mean, this is, you know, you're going to have to go to, you know, the precincts of Congress or, you know, Wall Street to try and find, you know, 12 people who, out of a pool of a set of population who are going to be, you know, willing to, you know, come down hard on him. And so I think that's an interesting issue here as well, is the widening way in which terrorism, these like, you know, deal political dimensions of U.S. Empire are going to going to come back into domestic repression in a much more obvious and direct way. I mean,

that's a relationship that has been historically very significant and important. But I think we're going to see that. You know, one other thing is it's very seldom that Canada gets mentioned on, you know, in any real context as an important country. And so I really appreciate Brett mentioning that. But I think it connects with what you were talking about, Alison, with U.S. dependence on Mexico, I think also actually in a resource competitive environment, a very vulnerable dependent economy like Canada's is actually going to be an increasing target of a voracious U.S. empire that is failing and flailing elsewhere to secure local resources like timber, metals for mining,

which Canada is actually very big, many of the largest mining corporations that operate globally to repress workers and foul environments in Africa and Latin America are actually Canadian companies that have been exploiting the resource-rich parts of native indigenous lands in Canada. And so, you know, you've got timber,

you've got water, I think clean water resources. I mean, cattle, you know, so basically there's Canada is like a commodities, you know, economy that really feeds the U.S. market. And as a result, when Trump came in, I sort of joked and put out on Twitter and then, you know, I think I was on a, on another podcast. I said, well, you know, is the Anschluss coming, you know, for Canada, you know. there's a lot of political turmoil in the Trump tariff threats and how that's causing, you know, political crisis in Canada and may bring down the Trudeau government as a result. As soon as he was, as Trump was elected, the leader of the Conservative Party, Pierre Poitiv was, you know, saying, well, we really need to have elections because, you know, given the previous history between. the liberal government and Trudeau and the Trump administration. Now that Trump is coming back in, he's not a suitable person to work with the Americans, you know, which is absolutely vital for Canada that

have, i.e., an appropriate, subservient, you know, figure, you know, to smooth relations and the exploitation of Canada's resources. And so when I was joking about the, you know, the possibility of an uncialist, it's because there is a, you know, corporate kind of local elite class that is so tied into, through various networks, political and economic and social, with U.S. elites and power brokers, that, you know, this isn't really actually something that is impossible to envision. And in fact, it occurred to Trump when he started calling, you know, Canada, the great state of Canada and Trudeau as Governor Trudeau. And he's done this twice, you know, in his meetings with him. And then subsequently when there was, you know, kind of the resignation of the deputy. prime minister, you know, the kind of right hand person up to this point of the Trudeau government stepped down. You know, he intervened by saying, oh, you know, basically the solution is, is just get absorbed by the United States. And so I think what we're seeing is the renegotiation of NAFTA and the anti-trade kind of discourse that brought Trump to power. Let's be serious.

You know, he won Michigan. He won, you know, these Midwestern former industrial states because of the decline of U.S. industry through the neoliberal era being offshoreed. And that resentment and that genuine economic critique, you know, the TPP, you know, was on, you know, on the cards. He ran against that. And he said, we need to renegotiate NAFTA. Well, now he's, you know, kind of rethinking that. And I think what we're seeing is the reshaping of the North American geopolitical economy as a possibility going forward. And that'll be interesting to watch to see how that gets worked out.

Last thing I want to say is just coming back to the point about China. And I think we really need to be concerned now that the right wings may be going to be able to find some way to pull out of the Ukraine situation because they feel that China. the confrontation with China is the real task at hand and, you know, that pivot to China. So I think it's going to be very important to pay attention. And I'd just like to remind everybody that, you know, Xi Jinping gave a New Year's message that I heard Nick from RBN talk about how, what a contrast between the like lack of faith and the pessimism that we all have about, you know, our futures here in, you know, the West with like declining economies, political repression, and, you know, no health care and all, all those things that we've been talking about is how forward-looking, you know, Xi Jinping's statement was. You know, it's sunny optimism. There's been economic recovery. Things are going well. He lists a whole bunch of really kind of glamorous high-tech, you know, like in infrastructural developments that are taking place.

that put China into the frame as the example of the new modern, an Asian modern, right? Like society that actually works and, you know, provides basic services and, you know, has mass transit and is developing a green economy. And, you know, so this is the future vision for, you know, that, you know, China has. It's that the alternative. And it was a very sunny and optimistic kind of like discussion, basically, of like the state of China and the state of the state of the world. world and China's place in the world. In some ways, I think it was too sunny because he should be preparing his people for confrontation that is coming because of, you know, Western hegemonic militaristic attempts to ring China, you know, with military bases and so on. So he says, you know,

in this, in a world of both transformation and turbulence, China as a responsible major country is actively promoting global governance reform and deepening solidarity and cooperation among the global south. We are making deeper and more substantive advances in high-quality belt and road cooperation. It talks about the Beijing Summit, China-Africa cooperation, Shanghai cooperation organization, BRICS, APEC G20, and other bilateral and multilateral forms. We have contributed greatly to the maintenance of world peace and stability. Now, that's the part that I actually have a bit of an issue with this sunny optimistic, is I think actually a lot more is going to have to happen from China being engaged and

invested economically, not just in, you know, profit making and kind of long-term sustainable investments, but some sense that world peace is quite full. fragile. It is under threat. China's prosperity and the possibility of the global South developing, you know, in a sovereign way, in a sovereign direction, is a direct target of Western imperialism. And there needs to be a kind of conscious sense of what to do. So just as we're saying on the left, how do we take advantage of multipolarity or of contradictions in the right wing capture of government? And we need to be, you know, thinking about that pro actively on the geopolitical and internationalist stage, I really think that's what I'm hoping 2025 is for China is a wake-up call. Syria's fallen. If Iran does as well, they're on your doorstep. If they get out of Ukraine, they're coming for you. Time to start getting active and organizing a form of resistance that is sustainable on behalf of the peoples of this world. A lot of fascinating points made both with regard to looking at 2024 as well as the

section where we look forward to 2025 and beyond. I want to thank you all for this wonderful conversation, this very extensive conversation, thought-provoking conversation. It's given me a lot of food for thought as we continue to analyze the world around us and look back and see parallels between past movements and what we are going through today. So on that note, I'm going to turn to each of you and ask you to let the listeners know how they can find your respective shows and keep up with up to date with the work that you're doing. I'll turn first to my guerrilla history co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein. Adnan, can you let the listeners know where they can find you and your other podcast besides

guerrilla history? Yes, well, you can follow me on Twitter at Adnan A. Hussein, H-U-S-A-I-N. It may be Musk ascendancy, but it's still Twitter to me. And you can also check out my other podcast that's been, you know, kind of in abeyance, but I've had some recent recordings. It's called the M-A-J-L-I-S. And actually, I'm hoping to expand and make it a little bit more independent. It's been associated with the university,

but for all the reasons that we've been talking about, the repression, and I've experienced a little bit of that. And so I'm planning to kind of take it sort of private and on its own and possibly also even have some video content as well. So look for that coming soon in the coming week. weeks in the new year is an expanded profile of the Mudge list on a new kind of YouTube channel. And you'll hear all about it on Twitter. And of course, you know, maybe there'll be some announcements on guerrilla history as well about related content.

So look for that. Absolutely. And of course, in addition to following Agnon on Twitter, you can also follow Gorilla underscore pod on Twitter for our show's Twitter account. And all of the information about the Mudge list will also be putting out from the show's account. So make sure that you follow both of those, Adnan, as well as guerrilla history. Allison, I'll turn to you next. Can you let the listeners know where they can keep up to date with what you're working on and Red Menace?

Yeah, so Red Menace is pretty much my only public outlet, so that would be the place to go. We're on, I think, pretty much all the major podcasting apps. You can find us there. We're on Twitter at Red underscore Menace, underscore Pod. Not very active there, but you know, also present there. But yeah, basically the podcast is what you would want to check out. I think we've had some really fun episodes this year. We just completed an episode I'm really happy with about the history of the German Revolution. So plenty to dive into you there if you want to hear more. Yeah, I was really happy to see that history of the German Revolution come out. It was a great time because during the summer, I read a book on the German Revolution.

So it was still fresh in my mind. And I think that that helped me get through and kind of deepen my thinking of what you were discussing on the episode as well. It was a people's history of the German Revolution was the book that I had read during the summer. William Pels, if I remember, was the author of that one. Brett, I'm turning to you now. You're not so active

on Twitter these days, but can you tell the listeners where they can keep up to date with your excellent podcasts. Sure, yeah. I've kind of gotten off Twitter for a million different reasons. I feel more comfortable over on IG, so official Rev Left Radio over

at Instagram. I update my stories very often. I post my episodes there. You really won't see me on X pretty much at all unless there's a really big global event or something that I hop on there for news reasons. So yeah, Instagram, official Rev Left radio, follow us there. The episodes that Allison and I do, they go out on Red Menace. They also go out on Rev. Left. We want to, you know, I want to get as many ears on everything that Allison does as possible. And so getting it out on both formats, I think, is helpful in that regard. So, you know, subscribe. to both, support both. If you leave a positive review for both, it really does help the algorithm and get those shows out to more people. Recently on Rev Left Patreon, I had on my friend Matthew Furlong

to talk about Canadian issues and echoed many of the same sentiments that Anon just echoed. The idea of Canada being usurped by the U.S. in one way or another, it is kind of funny and mostly a joke, but there's real dynamics at play that do not make that as impossible as it might seem on its face and we get into we get into that so check that out and then yeah finally i do a separate show with my friend who is an active recovery for alcoholism and substance abuse called shoeless in south dakota it's much it's uh black comedy there's a humorous tinge juvenile humor but we talk about mental health we talk about recovery we talk about active addiction um and we follow my my childhood friend as he wrestles with his um his you know pretty much life

long addiction to alcohol and drugs. And so it's simultaneously cathartic for people who are going through stuff, makes people feel less alone, is also hopefully educational when it comes to the actual real life struggles of specifically working class people struggling with mental health and addiction issues. So that's shoeless in South Dakota, if you're interested in that as well. Yeah, absolutely. As for me, you can follow me on Twitter at Huck 1995. I am very much not online these days.

I mean, Twitter is blocked in Russia, so technically I'm not on at all. But I'm really not on much these days. But you can follow me. As I mentioned, you definitely should follow guerrilla history on Twitter. That's Gorilla underscore Pod, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-R-I-L-A-U-Score pod. That account will put out everything that Adnan and I are each working on both individually as well as collectively. I'll just mention that within the next couple of weeks we're going to start releasing episodes on guerrilla history of our African revolutions and decolonization series, which has been long in the planning process. We have one last thing that we have to record before we can start releasing the episodes, but I expect that to happen very soon.

So within the next, I'm hoping two or three weeks, you'll see episode one of the series proper come out, which will be an introduction episode to African Revolution. and decolonization with our friend, Mamadu Tau, who is a wonderful comrade. And just to shout out his program, you should definitely listen to the Malcolm Effect as well, one of my favorite podcasts. But yeah, also, I'll just also mention since my time to list projects, should also follow Iskra Books, which is the independent, non-profit, volunteer-run, communist publishing company that I'm on the editorial board of. There's two books that I've been doing work on, which are going to be coming out within the next couple of months.

We have communism, the highest stage of ecology, which is a translation from French that my dear friend and frequent collaborator, Salvatore Engel de Mauro, and I have been working on that should be coming out within the next couple of months with an introduction that we wrote as well as our translation. and a republication from, what would it be, 38 years ago, a republication of unequal exchange in the prospects for socialism, which was originally written by the Communist Working Group, which was the group that Torkel-Lausen, I'm sure listeners of Rev. Left and Red Menace are familiar with Torkel-Lausen. I know guerrilla history listeners are, because he's been on the show a couple of times. Torkel was in this group, Communist Working Group, and Denmark,

which most fame, they're most famous for robbing banks in Denmark to send money to national liberation movements in the global south, particularly the PFLP. Torkel was imprisoned for nearly 10 years for that. But unequal exchange in the prospects for socialism was a text that they wrote while they were still in their active phase prior to being imprisoned. And we've updated the text. We're including an extensive new prologue and epilogue by Torkel. Very brief a preface that was co-written by me and my friend Namanya Lukich from the anti-imperialist network.

So I know that Brett, you just had an episode with Torkel about the long transition towards socialism, which is a brand new book that Torkel wrote out through Isker books as well. Listeners, if you listen to that on Rev Left and you found it interesting, you'll also almost certainly find unequal exchange in the prospects for socialism, very interesting as well, as both a historical document, but also one that is very relevant today. And as a last note, in addition to buying the books at Iskra Books, which helps support us and allows us to continue making books like that, you can also download all of Iskra's catalog for free in PDF format at Iskrabbooks.org.

We recently had the editorial board of some members of the editorial board of Isker Books on guerrilla history talking about publishing is anti-imperialist practice. I definitely check that episode out too. So on that note, then, listeners, Happy New Year and Solidarity.