The Dig: Comey Liberal Cop Fetish

Jacobin Radio

Jacobin

Socialism, History, News, Left, Jacobin, Alternative, Socialist, Politics

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2018

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

James Comey is liberal America’s favorite cop and now, as a result, a bestselling author as well. Patrick Blanchfield returns to talk about his Baffler review of Comey’s new book. It’s awful, of course. But it’s bad in productively revealing ways. Comey has become an icon of the liberal fetishization of the national security state as a bulwark against Trumpism—when it fact it is that very national security state and its rampant abuses that are deeply implicated in Trump’s rise. The elevation of police as a model of duty and leadership contrasted against Trump’s vulgar monstrosities renders invisible not only why Trump won but why he is so dangerous.

Here’s Patrick’s review: thebaffler.com/latest/prig-and-pig-blanchfield

Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che by Max Elbaum versobooks.com/books/2707-revolution-in-the-air And Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21st Century State Extremism by Nisha Kapoor versobooks.com/books/2551-deport-deprive-extradite And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our supporters on Patreon and by Verso Books which has loads of great left-wing titles
0:09.7	Perfect for dig listeners like you.
0:13.4	One that you might like is Revolution in the Air.
0:17.4	Sixties radicals turn to Lenin, Mao, and Chee by Max Elbaum, with a forward by Alicia Garza.
0:25.1	This is the new edition of the first in-depth study of the long march of the U.S. New Left after
0:30.7	1968. The 60s were a time when radical movements learned to embrace
0:35.9	20th century Marxism. Revolution in the air is the definitive study of this turning point
0:41.6	and examines what the resistance of today of this
0:45.0	the turning point and examines what the resistance of today can learn from the legacies of Lenin, Mao, and Che.
0:49.0	It tells the story of the new communist movement,
0:52.0	which was the most racially integrated and fast growing
0:54.7	movement on the left. Thousands of young activists, radicalized by the Vietnam War and
1:00.4	Black Liberation, and spurred on by the Puerto Rican, Chicano, and Asian American
1:05.2	movements embraced a third world-oriented version of Marxism.
1:10.9	These admirers of Mao, Che, and alma-Kabral organized resistance to the Republican majorities of Ford and Nixon.
1:20.0	By the 1980s, these groups had either collapsed or become tiny shards of the dream of a Maoist world revolution.
1:35.5	Taking issue with the idea of a division between an early good 60s and a later bad 60s, Max Elbaum is particularly concerned to reclaim the lessons of the new communist movement for
1:39.9	today's activists, who, like their 60s predecessors, are coming of age at a time when the
1:46.0	left lacks mass support and is fragmented along racial lines.
1:51.8	Revolution in the air, 60s radicals turned to Lenin, Mao, and Che, by Max Elbaum, with a forward by
1:58.5	Alicia Garza. Out now from Verso Books.
2:03.0	Welcome to the Digg, a podcast from Jacobin magazine. My name is Daniel Denver and I'm
	...

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