Understanding Sudan: Revolution, Civil War, and the Fight for the Future
Rev Left Radio
Breht O'Shea
4.8 • 3.6K Ratings
🗓️ 24 June 2026
⏱️ 120 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Breht sits down with Mohamed Khougali, author of Politically Unconscious: The Psychic Aftermath of the Sudanese Revolution (Iskra Books) for a sweeping and deeply illuminating conversation on Sudanese history, revolution, counterrevolution, and the current catastrophe unfolding in Sudan. Together, they discuss the 2018–19 Sudanese Revolution, how it erupted, what forces animated it, his direct participation in it, how it was contained, and what its aftermath reveals about the dynamics of counter-revolution and co-optation. Mohamed also walks us through the history of the revolutionary left in Sudan, from the period after independence through the rise and repression of the Sudanese Communist Party, and the weakened but still significant state of the Left today. Along the way, we touch on the civil war, Darfur, the RSF, the unfathomable human suffering and staggering acts of brutality taking place in Sudan, and why revolutionaries everywhere need a much deeper understanding of this country, its people, and its unfinished struggle for liberation.
Politically Unconscious: The Psychic Aftermath of the Sudanese Revolution is Mohamed Khougali's reflection on what it means to organize and think after a revolution has been usurped. Written as both a participant in Sudan's 2018-19 uprising and a working psychotherapist, Khougali weaves together a history of the Sudanese Left, an account of the current war and the racialized financialization that informed the various factions, alongside the development of a new clinical modality he calls "praxis psychotherapy." Refusing the reductive binaries of international media coverage and the moral puritanism he sees paralyzing contemporary leftist thought, Khougali argues that Sudan cannot be understood apart from a longer "irrational revolution" linking Khartoum to Darfur, and Sudan to Palestine, through the same circuits of imperial accumulation and waste. At once political history and clinical experiment, Politically Unconscious is a work with lessons for comrades involved in the struggle; in Sudan, and far beyond.
Outro music: Lunch Break by spinitch
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. I have an incredibly important episode for you today. I have on the show Mohamed Kugali, who is the author of a book put out recently by Iskra Books entitled Politically Unconscious, the Psychic Aftermath of the Sudanese |
| 0:23.2 | Revolution. So we talk about Sudan. We talk about the Civil War in 2011 that gave rise to South |
| 0:29.3 | Sudan. We talk about the 2019 People's Mass Movement Revolution that overturned a dictatorship |
| 0:37.0 | in Sudan. and then the unfortunate |
| 0:39.9 | consequences afterwards, the takeover of that post-revolutionary situation by the military |
| 0:46.7 | and paramilitary forces, the current situation in Darfur, and throughout Sudan with the |
| 0:51.7 | UAE-backed RSF death squads basically, these fascist death squads, |
| 0:57.2 | almost certainly if you've seen any horrific, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching imagery out of Sudan, |
| 1:04.1 | it's the deeds and the nasty behavior of the RSF almost certainly. |
| 1:11.7 | So we're connecting this this long history of the Sudanese communist left, |
| 1:16.7 | the independence movement post-World War II situation in Sudan, |
| 1:20.8 | connecting it all the way up with the 2011 Civil War and then really focusing in on the |
| 1:26.2 | 2019 Sudanese revolution, not least because |
| 1:28.6 | Muhammad participated actively in the streets on the front lines of that revolution. |
| 1:33.8 | So he's writing about it from a perspective of lived experience, not scholarly distance. |
| 1:39.9 | And that makes it all the more compelling. |
| 1:42.1 | And, you know, I think a lot of people, and I think I mentioned this in the show itself, a lot of people on the left, a lot of people writ large. But even on the left, this is an issue that is under discussed. It's under-emphasized. It's understood, right? Misunderstood or not understood at all by people even on the international Marxist, anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist |
| 2:02.4 | left. And so, Muhammad is a great guest to have on to walk us through some of this crucial |
| 2:08.7 | history and to help make sense of what's happening presently. And just an amazing guest all |
| 2:15.4 | around. And of course, you know, no interview substitutes for the book itself. |
| 2:19.6 | So I highly, you know, urge people to go and support Muhammad, support Iskra books. |
| 2:24.4 | They're putting out amazing stuff. |
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