The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

The tables have turned! In this crossover episode, Dr. Van Jackson gets interviewed by Jacob Shapiro of The Jacob Shapiro Podcast. Together they cover the enter landscape of geopolitics from a critical perspective: why the MAGA project of white nationalist social democracy cannot work; why Israeli primacy, not oil, explains US militarism in the Middle East; why the US doesn't want to fight the Houthis; how Japan failed to understand American politics; and the beginnings of a post-American Korean Peninsula.  Jacob Shapiro Podcast: https://youtu.be/Ar6-f0OVAss?si=-0mrKcLjpUCRdj7P [https://youtu.be/Ar6-f0OVAss?si=-0mrKcLjpUCRdj7P]  Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/ [https://www.un-diplomatic.com/]

Award-winning journalist, author, and lifelong New Yorker Spencer Ackerman joins the show to talk about the world from a New York point of view: The importance of NYC-DSA and the Zohran Mamdani mayoral campaign; how New York's oligarchs used unfounded claims of anti-semitism to protect class privilege; ICE's preparations to do mass extraordinary renditions; how Donald Trump's presidency has become the Global War on Terror that he used to mock George W. Bush for; and why US Central Command's new viceroy inflates the Iran threat (it's for Israel).  Subscribe to the Forever Wars Newsletter: https://www.forever-wars.com/  [https://www.forever-wars.com/ ] Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/ [https://www.un-diplomatic.com/]

Van joined David Parsons of The Nostalgia Trap--literally Van’s favorite pod--in a delicious freak out about ICE arresting local college professors, MAGA's Jeffrey Epstein fissures, Andrew Cuomo aiming to spoil Mamdani's victory in NYC, Trump sending weapons to Ukraine, and the overall Third Reich vibes that America is currently giving. As the ever-rising waters of tyranny begin to splash onto our windowsills, what are any of us supposed to be doing? Subscribe to the Nostalgia Trap: https://www.patreon.com/nostalgiatrap [https://www.patreon.com/nostalgiatrap] Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com [https://www.un-diplomatic.com] Catch Un-Diplomatic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@un-diplomaticpodcast [https://www.youtube.com/@un-diplomaticpodcast]

Free episode cross-over with the Bang-Bang Podcast. The question of “Which side are you on?” haunted me (Van Jackson) intermittently throughout the long Global War on Terror. It was a beat that I would hear during occasional moments of consciousness, which I tried to suppress or rationalize away…until I no longer could. On my other show, The Bang-Bang Podcast [https://www.bangbangpod.com/], I ended up having a surprising conversation with our guest, George Dardess. Before we started the actual episode, we talked at length about memoirs and stories of conversion. George is an expert in the lost art of close reading, which we get into. And his favored genre—which also happens to be mine—is the memoir. My co-host Lyle Rubin wrote a memoir [https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/lyle-jeremy-rubin/pain-is-weakness-leaving-the-body/9781645037095/?lens=bold-type-books], and his wife, Colette Shade, just came out with a memoir [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/y2k-colette-shade?variant=41231617097762] too (both are excellent). In that context, George started asking about my story, and the beginnings of my own memoir inadvertently came pouring out. The conversation has stuck with me everyday since. Although I have no shortage of distractions, I’ve begun putting pen to paper, reckoning with the slow-burning crisis of conscience that took me from being an agent of the national security state to one of its fiercest critics. As we discuss in this short episode, there are a few factors that might account for my political consciousness. Hip-hop not only acquainted me with the Black Freedom Struggle from an early age; it provided a soundtrack, a musical coda, to my life. And I think that made a difference. Spending time in Monterey, California, at the Defense Language Institute, was a pivotal experience. In a twisted way, so was my immersion in “hustle culture,” which was so strong that I basically lost my 20s to obsessive self improvement. When my humanity finally thawed in the 2010s, the world had changed dramatically and I started questioning my place in it. Physically getting out of Washington—an idea whose appeal grew during my alienation in Obama’s second term—was almost certainly crucial too. It feels like I’ve always been on some Robert Frost shit. Few roads are less traveled by than New Zealand, and it has made all the difference! But I also grew up precarious working class. The lives of the people surrounding me had no connection to the foreign policy world I strived so hard to enter. At first, I saw that as a problem of social mobility. Eventually, I would see it as a problem of class antagonism—national security takes its legitimacy from the people but forsakes them in its every decision. The most generous thing I could say about foreign policy is that people like me faced problems growing up that were never made better by anything happening in national security. Anyway, I have a lot to work through. But if you’re interested in memoir as a form, close reading as a practice, or some of the details in my personal evolution, you’ll find this impromptu conversation as stimulating as I did. Subscribe to the Bang-Bang Podcast: https://www.bangbangpod.com [https://www.bangbangpod.com] Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/ [https://www.un-diplomatic.com/]

Ross Douthat confronts Peter Thiel with the possibility that he is the anti-Christ. Zohran Mamdani shows a model for politics that the media fears. The Democrats' Project 2029 is a farce that shows leaders of the party don't actually want to win. Fascist public policy is here, and it's class war. According to Gallup, even most Americans think US hegemony sucks. The Pentagon's Elbridge Colby just halted missile shipments to Ukraine so that the US can more readily fight a war against China that it just can't win. Why European elites are embarrassing themselves.  Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/  [https://www.un-diplomatic.com/ ] Watch Un-Diplomatic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@un-diplomaticpodcast  [https://www.youtube.com/@un-diplomaticpodcast ] Catch Un-Diplomatic on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/undiplomaticpodcast  [https://www.twitch.tv/undiplomaticpodcast ] Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the individuals and not of any institutions.