Welcome to another episode of Confronting Capitalism. I'm Jacobin contributing editor, Paul Prescott, and I'll be your host today.

I'm here, of course, with Vivek Chibber, a professor of sociology at NYU and the editor of Catalysts, a journal of theory and strategy.

Hey, Vivek, how's it going? It's going really well, Paul. Nice to see you. It's been a while.

You too. So as we record, we've seen a significant escalation in the United States involvement in

the conflict between Israel and Iran.

One really interesting question that has come up in these last few weeks is to what degree

has Trump actually challenged neoconservative ideology,

or is he actually just totally in line with it? And we're in this interesting world now where

neocon has actually now become a dirty word and an insult among a significant portion of the MAGA base.

So let's first clarify Vivek, what do you mean by the term neocon? And do you think this is the same as what MAGA means when they say it?

I think there's a conventional understanding of what the word means.

And it refers to a foreign policy outlook amongst American advisors and practitioners inside

the political elite.

And the outlook is one which stresses American unilateral authority to carry out its business

as it wishes unconstrained by institutions that are multilateral like the United Nations or even institutions like NATO.

It stresses American supremacy

and the virtues of American power

for the rest of the world.

And it largely sees American expansion

as a force for good,

however you define good,

and therefore sees constraints on it

...