Episode 11, part 1: The Left's Identity Crisis w/Justin Charles
This Wreckage
Sean KB and AP Andy
4.2 • 980 Ratings
🗓️ 20 June 2018
⏱️ 89 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In part one of a monster episode, we sit down with Justin Charles of North Brooklyn DSA and the AfroSocialists and Socialists of Color Caucus. Sean is scarred by a perilous bus journey. Rachel Maddow and the libs freak out about potential peace (oh no!) on the Korean Peninsula. Democrats 'Russia Russia Russia' themselves into becoming the NatSec party. Who cares if 81% of South Koreans want an end to the war? (Not the lamestream media!)
Super deep dive: where does 'identity politics' come from? Does the left foster conflict between racial groups as per weeping moron Jordan Peterson, or is 'race' a historically constructed category with no basis in biology? Jamie explains the Marxist concept of 'real abstraction'.
Justin on how the term 'identity politics' was created by the black, lesbian Marxists of the Combahee River Collective in 1977. The gang then traces — with help from Adolph Reed and the Fields sisters — how this radical conception was watered down into neoliberal diversity capitalism.
How does the left avoid 'bad' idpol? What structures should socialist organizations put in place to ensure that racialized and gendered domination is not reproduced within our movement? Is the AfroSocialist and Socialists of Color Caucus a bourgeois radlib beachhead destined to undermine the Democratic Socialists of America? (Spoiler alert: nah.)
Part two will further the conversation by addressing critiques of the caucus before it degenerates into dragging on Elon Musk's utopian anarchist turn.
Become a patron starting at just $2/month at patreon.com/theantifada
Reed articles referenced:
leftbusinessobserver.com/Antiracism.html
libcom.org/library/marx-race-neoliberalism-adolph-reed-jr
Outro music:
"The Underside of Power" - Algiers
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Antifada is more than a podcast. It's a specter haunting the globe. |
| 0:10.0 | It is the synthesis of the two most frightening forms for the cheerleaders of this reactionary |
| 0:15.3 | home. |
| 0:16.3 | One ravaged by the unfounded savagery of capital and its states. |
| 0:21.0 | Antipras Super soldiers and into power. Bash the Bash Super Soldiers into part. |
| 0:23.5 | BASH the fashion and the Global Uprising. |
| 0:25.8 | We prepared to enter. |
| 0:27.8 | The Antif bottom mindset. I'm Jamie Peck |
| 0:37.0 | I'm Amy Peck I'm AP Andy and we are broadcasting not live from Left as Best Headquarters, about a half hour walk away from the gentrification Ravage Gowanus Canal in the coastal elite bubble of America, |
| 0:50.0 | Downtown Brooklyn, USA. |
| 0:52.0 | That's right, and we have a special guest with us today. |
| 0:55.0 | Hey, Justin, you want to introduce yourself. |
| 0:57.0 | Hey, my name is Justin Charles. |
| 0:59.0 | I'm a member of New York City,SA, Democratic Socialist of America? |
| 1:04.0 | Yeah, Justin and I have done a few things together |
| 1:08.0 | thus far in the North Brooklyn DSA. |
| 1:10.0 | I look forward to doing more. |
| 1:11.0 | The protest today was, not today, protest a few days ago was pretty good, I might say. |
| 1:18.0 | We're talking about the housing protest? Yes, that was great. I know there's, we do so many. |
| 1:22.0 | We do a lot of stuff. |
| 1:24.0 | I was I really liked it when Cuomo came out of the building and scurried to his waiting vehicle |
| 1:30.0 | and everyone was like, boo shame. |
... |
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