Ep 383 - The Complicit Lens with Robin Andersen

Ep 383 - The Complicit Lens with Robin Andersen

Join us Tuesday, June 9th, at Macro ‘n Chill, the online gathering where we’ll listen to and discuss this episode. 8pm ET/5pm PT. Register with this link: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/L40tjKhOSCGCJTR-R-QJvw [https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/L40tjKhOSCGCJTR-R-QJvw] The title of Robin Andersen’s upcoming book (published next week) is The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of the Genocide in Gaza. You can see why Steve wanted to talk with her. Their conversation looks at how the corporate media helped manufacture consent for Israel’s war on Gaza by erasing historical context. It is tasked with enforcing cultural hegemony à la Gramsci, and defending the interests of the imperial core. Robin goes into examples of how the media has been used to erase Palestinian history and justify war crimes. Terms like "occupation," "apartheid," and "genocide" are scrubbed from discourse to maintain ideological control. It allows the ongoing dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to go unchallenged. As MMTers we understand – and Steve emphasizes – how state resources are mobilized without hesitation for war and geopolitical control, while austerity is imposed at home as a political choice rather than an economic necessity. In this time where journalists are under attack (literally) the episode urges solidarity with truth-tellers like Francesca Albanese who confront imperialist violence. Robin Andersen is professor emerita of media studies at Fordham University and an award-winning author of a dozen single- and co-authored books. Her work examines film, television, and media coverage of war, the environment, politics, and elections. She edits the Routledge Focus Book Series on Media and Humanitarian Action, serves as a Project Censored Judge, and contributes to the annual State of the Free Press. Andersen is on the Board of Directors of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), where she also writes regularly, and is an Izzy Award Judge for the Park Center for Independent Media. Her writing has appeared in CounterPunch, LA Progressive, The Progressive, Salon, Common Dreams, and ScheerPost, among others. @MediaPhiled on X

Ep 382 - Yellow Vests & the Battle for Democracy: Beyond the Ballot Box with Ida Susser

**Every Tuesday we hold an online gathering where we listen to and talk about the episode while building community. Share your insights and questions as we educate ourselves and each other. Macro ‘n Chill, June 2, 8pm ET/5pm PT. Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/OEYtu7v-SciBITwiIWwdzw [https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/OEYtu7v-SciBITwiIWwdzw] A frequent theme of our podcast revolves around the contradiction between formal political rights and the material realities of the working class. This week, our guest Ida Susser talks to Steve about the French Yellow Vest movement as a reaction to the contradictions of late-stage financial capitalism which has systematically gutted the welfare state, dismantled public services in the provinces, and further abandoned the universalist promises of the French Republic. Ida, an anthropologist, is author of the book The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy: Taking to the Streets of Paris in the 21st Century. [https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-yellow-vests-and-the-battle-for-democracy-taking-to-the-streets-of-paris-in-the-21st-century/fbd17d3e6df32416?ean=9781032877938] Moving beyond the liberal fetish of the ballot box, the conversation explores how the Gilets Jaunes, or Yellow Vests, built horizontalist, leaderless power from the grassroots. They blockaded traffic circles, constructed makeshift commons, and forged bonds of class solidarity across regional and ethnic lines. Ida contrasts this bottom-up mobilization with the top-down, cultish nature of MAGA; she points out that the French movement’s refusal of vanguardism did not prevent it from “thresholding” into a broader, anti-neoliberal bloc. Steve introduces the MMT lens to expose the ideological confusion around taxation and public spending. Is it possible the Yellow Vests’ defense of the social wage and their rage against the Macronist oligarchy represent a necessary, if incomplete, rehearsal for working-class power? Ida Susser is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. She has conducted ethnographic research in the U.S., Southern Africa and Puerto Rico, France and Spain with respect to urban social movements and the urban commons, gender, the global AIDS epidemic and environmental movements. She is the author of numerous books, chapters, and articles, including The Tumultuous Politics of Scale (Routledge Press, 2020) co-edited, and Norman Street: Poverty and Politics in an Urban Neighborhood (Oxford University Press, 2012. Her most recent is The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy: Taking to the Streets of Paris in the 21st Century. [https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-yellow-vests-and-the-battle-for-democracy-taking-to-the-streets-of-paris-in-the-21st-century/fbd17d3e6df32416?ean=9781032877938] (Routledge, 2026).

Ep 381 - Disinformation Nation with Mickey Huff

**Will we see you at Macro ‘n Chill on Tuesday? You’re invited to join our online gathering where we listen to the episode together and share our insights and questions. May 26 at 8pm ET/5pm PT. Use this link to register https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/UHE6NoSDRbibqXYAeJJ8gQ [https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/UHE6NoSDRbibqXYAeJJ8gQ ] Disinformation is neither an accident nor excess; it is the normal functioning of late capitalism’s media apparatus. Our friend Mickey Huff, executive director of Project Censored, talks with Steve about the machinery of modern propaganda, algorithmic control, and billionaire-owned media ecosystems. Their conversation highlights key tensions of a base and superstructure in decay. Mickey lays out the historical continuity of media manipulation, and they bring up surveillance as a class weapon and electoral distraction as a dead end. (Mickey may be the first guest to mention Gilens and Page before Steve does.) From Silicon Valley oligarchs and tech monopolies to the collapse of local journalism and the rise of curated realities, Steve and Mickey frame today’s information war as a struggle over who gets to shape “common sense.” Critical media literacy is not about neutral fact-checking but about exposing whose interests a narrative serves. Mickey Huff is Executive Director of Project Censored, President of the nonprofit Media Freedom Foundation, and Distinguished Director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College Find his full bio at https://www.projectcensored.org/mickey-huff/ [https://www.projectcensored.org/mickey-huff/] @ProjectCensored on X

Ep 380 - Struggle & Resistance: Retelling Vietnam with Luna Nguyen

** This Tuesday, come to Macro ‘n Chill, our online gathering. Bring your insights and questions about this episode. May 19 at 8pm ET/5pm PT Use this link to register: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/AIz56SKPT6Gfh0pXhs3PTw [https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/AIz56SKPT6Gfh0pXhs3PTw] You may know Luna Nguyen as Luna Oi, the YouTuber and member of the Non-Compete content collective who creates videos about culture, history, and politics in Vietnam, as well as panels and interviews with indigenous activists and comrades in the Global South. Steve asked her to come onto the podcast because, as a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist, she can take us beyond US propaganda and into the lived history of Vietnamese resistance. The conversation goes into Ho Chi Minh's revolutionary development, the application of Marxism-Leninism to Vietnam's reality, French colonialism and Japanese fascism, the 1945 famine and August Revolution, US betrayal after WWII, the fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incident, the nature of the "Resistance War Against Imperialist USA," and the post-war embargo and debt extortion. Luna shares deeply personal family history – her grandfather's death in the Tet Offensive and her mother's childhood survival of a US bombing – grounding the analysis in living memory. She also connects Ho Chi Minh Thought to dialectical and historical materialism, making the case that revolutionary movements must emerge from concrete material conditions. Born and raised in Vietnam, Luna Nguyen is a writer and creator on a mission to share her country’s perspective with the world. She’s currently tackling the ambitious project of translating Vietnam’s official Marxist-Leninist philosophy curriculum into English. In addition to her translation work, she also produces YouTube documentaries that dive into the intersection of Vietnamese culture and politics. Check out her channel https://www.youtube.com/LunaOi/ [https://www.youtube.com/LunaOi/] Free E-books available at https://www.banyanhouse.org/shop/

Ep 379 - The Real Cost of War with L. Randall Wray

** This Tuesday, May 12, come to Macro ‘n Chill, our online gathering where we listen to and discuss this episode. Bring your questions and insights. 8pm ET/5pm PT. Use this link to register: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/rn_HAqgaSRGdj8W2UX9aKw [https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/rn_HAqgaSRGdj8W2UX9aKw] Did you think we had abandoned MMT? Well, after a few weeks of tackling some rather prickly topics, we’re back to strictly non-controversial macroeconomics. Heh heh. Just kidding. Don’t get too comfortable. Our old friend Randy Wray is back, bringing his somewhat optimistic belief that a sound reality-based agenda might possibly succeed in the upcoming Congressional elections. But more on that later. First, he and Steve need to dissect Trump’s latest imperialist venture against Iran and expose the bipartisan lie that there are just enough of your tax dollars to pay for war; when it comes to affording social programs, the cupboard is bare. Claims of scarcity are pure ideology. MMT has taught us that the federal government faces no dollar constraints. The real cost of war is measured in diverted labor, wasted resources, destroyed infrastructure, and the steady cannibalization of society’s productive capacity. Not to mention human lives, disabled veterans, and a chain reaction leading to starvation in the Global South. Back to Randy’s guarded optimism, which Steve does not share. Rather than smooth over their differences, they lean into them. Randy believes an anti-neoliberal program could win congressional seats. It would require candidates to break out of the fiscal austerity frame. Steve counters by referring to the Gilens and Page study – showing policy has near-zero correlation with popular will – and a class-lens analysis of manufactured consent. He sees a theatrical oligarchy, not a reformable political system. Since both parties serve capital, there is no electoral path. No possibility of reallocating resources from bombers to bread. The conversation represents an unresolved, essential tension inside the MMT-Marxist synthesis: is monetary sovereignty a tool for working-class liberation blocked only by bad ideas, or is the entire political theater designed to ensure those ideas are never acted upon? L. Randall Wray is a Senior Scholar and Professor of Economics at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, and Emeritus Professor at University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is one of the developers of Modern Money Theory and his most recent book on the topic is Understanding Modern Money Theory: Money and Credit in Capitalist Economies (Elgar, 2025). Find his work at https://www.levyinstitute.org/people/lrandall-wray/ [https://www.levyinstitute.org/people/lrandall-wray/]