Hellworld

Over the last forty years, the human landscape of the United States has been fundamentally transformed. The metamorphosis is partially visible in the ascendance of glittering, coastal hubs for finance, infotech, and the so-called creative class. But this is only the tip of an economic iceberg, the bulk of which lies in the darkness of the declining heartland or on the dimly lit fringe of sprawling cities. This is America’s hinterland, populated by towering grain threshers and hunched farmworkers, where laborers drawn from every corner of the world crowd into factories and “fulfillment centers” and where cold storage trailers are filled with fentanyl-bloated corpses when the morgues cannot contain the dead. Urgent and unsparing, this book opens our eyes to America’s new heart of darkness. Driven by an ever-expanding socioeconomic crisis, America’s class structure is recomposing itself in new geographies of race, poverty, and production. The center has fallen. Riots ricochet from city to city led by no one in particular. Anarchists smash financial centers as a resurgent far right builds power in the countryside. Drawing on his direct experience of recent popular unrest, from the Occupy movement to the wave of riots and blockades that began in Ferguson, Missouri, Phil A. Neel provides a close-up view of this landscape in all its grim but captivating detail. Inaugurating the new Field Notes series, published in association with theBrooklyn Rail, Neel’s book tells the intimate story of a life lived within America’s hinterland. Updated Epilogue: http://bit.ly/3bvxzX8 [http://bit.ly/3bvxzX8] Year Zero (Trillbilly's): https://open.spotify.com/episode/3wJjuwc58Rv2gzS42G5yvZ?si=evPY0DyhS6KKZgavgp9uow [https://open.spotify.com/episode/3wJjuwc58Rv2gzS42G5yvZ?si=evPY0DyhS6KKZgavgp9uow] Adolph Reed Clip: https://youtu.be/mANJGMk9JXA [https://youtu.be/mANJGMk9JXA] Twitter: https://bit.ly/H3llworldTwitter [https://bit.ly/H3llworldTwitter] Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hellworldpodcast [https://www.patreon.com/hellworldpodcast]

For this two-episode series we try to understand the features of the new regime of capitalist accumulation that began after the financial crises of the 1970s: neoliberalism. We use David Harvey's popular introductory text,A Brief History of Neoliberalism, as our guide. In part 2 (chapters 4 through 7), we go through individual case studies of neoliberalization in several countries and what makes them important to differentiate in terms of the "uneven geographical distribution" of capitalist development from the 80s into the 2000s. We also grapple with Harvey's controversial description of "neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics," and get mired in the complex questions around China's political economy that many Western leftists struggle with. Finally, we assess Harvey's judgment of the success of neoliberalism as a regime of capitalist accumulation and as a class project, and try to understand what might be coming next. The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine] To Build Socialism We Must First Develop the Productive Forces - Deng Xiaoping [https://dengxiaopingworks.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/to-build-socialism-we-must-first-develop-the-productive-forces/] Twitter: https://twitter.com/_HellworldPod [https://twitter.com/_HellworldPod]

For this two-episode series we try to understand the features of the new regime of capitalist accumulation that began after the financial crises of the 1970s: neoliberalism. We use David Harvey's popular introductory text,A Brief History of Neoliberalism, as our guide. In part 1 (chapters one through three), we interpret Harvey's thoughts on neoliberalism as a project to restore class power to a tiny financial elite, along with how this project has been accomplished. From its ideological roots, to the creation of cultural consent and eventual adoption by politicians in the US and UK, we follow Harvey as he traces the progress of neoliberalization through these countries and outward into Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere in Europe. We describe Harvey's concept of the "neoliberal state" and what it does. HyperNormalisation: https://youtu.be/fh2cDKyFdyU The episode of Chapo that Jeff refers to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp_fjr60qiQ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp_fjr60qiQ] Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/_HellworldPod [https://twitter.com/_HellworldPod]

In this first episode of Hellworld, we grapple with the 20th century's most hellish political project, fascism, since it seems like it's rearing its ugly head again these days. We use Robert Paxton's Anatomy of Fascismas our guide, along with some other helpful sources, and mainly stick to discussing European fascists with the goal of getting a grasp on the material conditions that led to their taking power as well as the political-economic forces at work when they were governing. We also try to describe the fascists as people, and figure out what they believed, to the extent that they had any ideology at all. We come away from the convo better equipped to describe fascism and identify it when we see it. What Is National Socialism - Leon Trotsky [https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1933/330610.htm] Ur-Fascism - Umberto Eco [https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf] NYT Book Review - Samantha Power [https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/02/books/the-original-axis-of-evil.html] Blood & Soil in Narendra Modi's India - Dexter Filkins [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/09/blood-and-soil-in-narendra-modis-india] Twitter: https://twitter.com/_HellworldPod [https://twitter.com/_HellworldPod]