Zombie Economic Nationalism | Antifascist Protest | Arundhati Roy | Who Tariffs Are Good For Ep. 234

Explicit content warning

04/20/25 • 52 min

In this episode, Dr. Van Jackson appears as a guest on A Public Affair, a radio show with a live call-in segment. The conversation ended up being deliciously wide-ranging, including: Why the oligarchs who back Trump want an economic recession; What tariffs are good for, and how Trump’s tariffs impact both global trade and domestic labor; What separates Biden’s economic nationalism from Trump’s “zombie economic nationalism,” and why both are bad but Trump’s is much worse; The value of the #TakeDownTesla movement; What Arundhati Roy teaches us about civil disobedience; Why the general strike is civil society’s ultimate weapon against fascism; and Why the trillion-dollar military budget is not possible without inflating the China threat.

Visit A Public Affair radio show: https://www.wortfm.org/van-jackson-on-zombie-economic-nationalism/

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Visit A Public Affair radio show: https://www.wortfm.org/van-jackson-on-zombie-economic-nationalism/

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Watch The Un-Diplomatic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@un-diplomaticpodcast

Previous Episode

The Four Books Billionaires Think Explain International Relations (and why they're wrong!) | Ep. 233

The tech billionaires who are part of the Trump-MAGA coalition have repeatedly boosted the same collection of books that they think explain international relations. Dr. Van Jackson--a professor of international relations--explains why these books are not only bad books, but also books with a pessimistic, zero-sum, ethnonationalist, and militarist outlook on the world.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the individuals and not of any institutions.

Next Episode

The Siege (1998) w/ Kevin Fox | Bang-Bang Podcast Cross-Over | Ep. 235

Free preview cross-over with the Bang-Bang Podcast. Long before the Patriot Act, long before “See Something, Say Something,” long before 9/11—there was The Siege. Released in 1998, this Bruce Willis–Denzel Washington vehicle depicts a post–terror attack New York placed under martial law. The city is bombed, neighborhoods are surveilled, and Arab and Muslim men are rounded up en masse, held indefinitely in cages under the Brooklyn Bridge. And yet, in perhaps the most jarring twist of all, the whole thing was co-written by Lawrence Wright, the celebrated journalist behind the GWOT-era classic, The Looming Tower.

In this episode, Van and Lyle are joined once again by screenwriter Kevin Fox to revisit The Siege, not just as an artifact of pre-9/11 paranoia, but as an uncanny rehearsal for everything that would come after. Together they break down the film’s oscillation between prescience and myopia, from Bruce Willis as cartoonish generalissimo to Denzel Washington as constitutionalist good cop. The story’s themes of blowback, anti-Muslim hysteria, and civil-military overreach may come off as heavy-handed or superficial, but there are so many moments that still hit disturbingly close to home.

Van, Lyle, and Kevin ask: What can a work like The Siege tell us about liberal complicity in the War on Terror? What happens when a film simultaneously warns of repression while making its own contribution to the atmosphere of fear? And what’s with the horny thermal cam surveillance scene?

Subscribe to the Bang-Bang Podcast for more: https://www.bangbangpod.com

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