podcasts

Europe

Podcast: against Putin’s Big Lie

In Episode 115 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to dissect Vladimir Putin’s ultra-cynical fascist pseudo-anti-fascism. Putin presides over Nuremberg-type mass rallies celebrating war and conquest, spews overtly genocidal rhetoric, and prepares concentration camps for the Crimean Tatars. Alexander Dugin, “Putin’s Rasputin” and the intellectual mastermind of his revanchist imperial project, has openly called for “genocide” of the Ukrainians. In areas of Ukraine occupied by Russia, a forced mass deportation of the populace is reported. Putin is clearly approaching a genocidal threshold in Ukraine—while imposting a totalizing police state within Russia. Yet, with unimaginable perversity, all this is done in the name of a campaign to “denazify” Ukraine. The painting of Ukraine as a “Nazi” state on dubious basis of a few ugly right-wing paramilitaries on the Ukrainian side is vigorously repudiated by the leadership of Ukraine’s Jewish community. Yet this “Big Lie” is credulously (or cynically) echoed by elements of the “left” as well as far right in the United States—who arrogantly refuse to listen to Ukrainians. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Wikipedia)

Europe

Podcast: against pseudo-pacifist war propaganda

In Episode 114 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to dissect Vladimir Putin’s cynical fascist pseudo-anti-fascism—now abetted by pseudo-pacifist war propaganda. “Anti-war” voices in the West join with Putin in relentlessly portraying Ukraine as a neo-Nazi state on the dubious basis of right-wing paramilitary groups on the Ukrainian side—while turning a blind eye to the totalizing dictatorship now unfolding in Russia, and the plethora of equally ugly right-wing paramilitary groups on the Russian side. The inevitable Noam Chomsky sees fit to protest a hypothetical No-Fly Zone (which has been rejected by NATO) rather than Russia’s very real bombardment and aggressive war against Ukraine. “Anti-war” clicktivists are also avidly sharing a video from the right-wing pundit John Mearsheimer, who essentially blames the Ukrainians for getting invaded. “Leftists” closing ranks with their supposed right-wing enemies behind Putin’s illegal war of aggression recalls George Orwell’s observation that pacifism “is secretly inspired by an admiration for power and successful cruelty.” Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo via Wiadomosci)

Europe

Ukrainian self-determination: Bandera or Makhno?

In Episode 113 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to dissect the cynical fascist pseudo-anti-fascism of Putin’s war propaganda, which portrays any expression of Ukrainian identity or national aspiration as “Nazism.” Much of this hinges on the legacy of Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian nationalist who collaborated with the Nazis in World War II. Bandera is indeed viewed favorably today by some in Ukraine—just as some in India look favorably upon the Axis-collaborationist independence fighter Subhas Chandra Bose, and some Palestinians lionize the wartime Mufti of Jerusalem who similarly looked to the Axis for support against British imperialism—a reality exploited by Israel’s propagandists. But there is another tremendously important figure who fought the Russians and Germans alike a generation before Bandera, and is nearly forgotten by both “sides” in the current propaganda war—Nestor Makhno, the great Ukrainian anarchist leader of the Russian Revolution. And there is now an anarchist armed resistance to the Russian aggression emerging in Ukraine, reviving the Makhnovist tradition. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Graphic: CounterVortex with images via Marxists Internet Archive, Ukrainian Youth Union)

Europe

Podcast: against Putin’s czaro-fascism

In Episode 112 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to deconstruct the cynical fascist pseudo-anti-fascism of Vladimir Putin’s war drive against Ukraine. Putin’s speech announcing his “military operation” in Ukraine says his aim is to “denazify” the country. This as Ukraine’s Jews prepare to flee the advancing Russian forces in a mass evacuation. While Ukraine has been going in a more democratic direction since the 2014 Maidan Revolution, Russia over this same period has seen a consolidation of increasingly autocratic power in the hands of Vladimir Putin—who has ruled continuously as either president or prime minister since 1999. As courageous anti-war protesters flood the streets of cities across Russia in defiance of the authorities, the morally and intellectually bankrupt “left” in the United States echoes Putin’s lies. Any genuine anti-war position must begin with repudiating Putin’s fascist ambition to rebuild the Russian empire. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Meme via Imgflip. Lenin quote from his 1916 essay, “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination”)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: Russia and the new fascism

In Episode 111 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg explores the legacy of Francis Parker Yockey and other exponents of the fast-growing current in the Western fascist tradition that looks to Russia as a patron and ally. Under the leadership of Alexander Dugin, “Putin’s Rasputin” and the theorist of a “Eurasian” bloc against Western democracy, resurgent far-right Russo-nationalism is building ties to neo-fascist organizations across Europe—as well as to supposed “anti-war” leftists in the United States. The Putin propaganda machine’s Nazi-baiting of the Ukrainians is yet another example of the sinister trend of fascist pseudo-anti-fascism. It is imperative that progressives in the West do not take the toxic bait of this “Red-Brown Alliance.” Any genuine anti-war position must begin with repudiating Putin’s threats and aggression against Ukraine. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Far-right protesters in Germany with sign reading “Putin, save us!” Via PRISM)

Planet Watch

Podcast: Nuclear power? No thanks!

In Episode 110 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg rants against the current greenwashing of nuclear power, and hype about a supposedly “safe” new generation of reactors. Every stage of the nuclear cycle is ecocidal and genocidal. Uranium mining has poisoned the lands of indigenous peoples from Navajo Country to Saskatchewan to West Africa. The ongoing functioning of nuclear plants entails routine emissions of radioactive gases, factored in by the bureaucrats in determining “acceptable” levels of cancer. Disposal of the waste, and the retired reactor sites themselves, is a problem that inherently defies solution. They will be deadly for exponentially longer into the future than biblical times stretch into the past. The Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) in New Mexico, hyped as secure for hundreds of millennia, leaked plutonium after only 13 years. And finally there is the “sexiest” issue, the one that actually gets some media play, at least—the risk of accident. It is a mark of capitalism’s depravity that even after the nightmares of Fukushima and Chernobyl, we periodically get media campaigns about an imminent “nuclear renaissance.” Nuclear versus fossil fuels is the false choice offered us by industry. The imperative is to get off the extraction economy and on to one based on sustainability and resource conservation. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

South Asia

Podcast: solidarity with Nagaland

In Episode 109 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg explores the under-reported conflict in India’s northeastern state of Nagaland, which has seen a multi-generational pro-independence insurgency. Popular protest is rising there since an army massacre of coal-miners in December. The armed conflict began in 1956, when the Naga National Council declared independence from India in the face of Delhi’s intransigence on recognizing local autonomy, and adopted a constitution emphasizing village self-rule. The traditional Naga territory is divided by the border with Burma, which has complicated their self-determination struggle. With Burma now going over the edge into civil war, there are growing fears that India’s conflicted Northeast could be further enflamed. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Naga Student Union Delhi via My Nagaland)

Europe

Podcast: Ukraine between East and West

In Episode 108 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes stock of the frightening East-West escalation over Ukraine. Beyond the front-line on that country’s eastern borders, the forces of Russia and its allies and those of NATO are preparing for war from the Mediterranean to the Pacific. The “anti-war” (sic) left in the US is, with perfect predictability, lining up with Russia. Contrary to pseudo-left misconceptions, the post-Cold War promises to Russia that NATO would not expand east were never formalized. However, the promises made to Ukraine that its sovereignty and territory would be protected were formalized. The prevailing double standard on the Western “left” sensationalizes a “Nazi” threat in Ukraine while ignoring the actual consolidation of fascistic dictatorships in Russia and Belarus. Putin’s propaganda, spread by the Kremlin media machine, is an exercise in fascist pseudo-anti-fascism. Ukrainian socialists and democratic-left forces advance a “Neither East Nor West” position that demands solidarity against Russian aggression from the world anti-war forces. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Map via Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection)

Planet Watch

Podcast: against ‘normalcy’ III

In Episode 107 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues his rant against the ubiquitous propaganda that normalizes the oppressive and dystopian pre-pandemic normality—or, as it is now incorrectly rendered, “normalcy” (sic). The opportunity for a crash conversion from fossil fuels that was posed by 2020’s pandemic-induced economic paralysis is now being squandered. The fashionable COVID denialism of the anti-vaxxers is ironically complicit in the actual crimes of the pharmaceutical industry, such as the instating of a “vaccine apartheid“—failing to make the vaccine available to Africa and the much of the Global South. Just at the moment that socialist ideas are being legitimized in mainstream discourse again, the drum-beat for “normalcy” (sic) means less pressure for an urgently mandated public expropriation of corporate cyber-overlords such as Verizon, as well as Big Pharma and Big Oil. Meanwhile, consumerist and technocratic pseudo-solutions, such as the bogus notion of reducing one’s personal “carbon footprint,” obscure the systemic nature of the problem. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: IBEW)

Planet Watch

Podcast: against ‘normalcy’ II

In Episode 106 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues his rant against the ubiquitous propaganda that normalizes the oppressive and dystopian pre-pandemic normality—or, as it is now incorrectly rendered, “normalcy” (sic). The opportunity for a crash conversion from fossil fuels that was posed by 2020’s pandemic-induced economic paralysis is now being squandered. As fossil-fuel prices soar, the Biden administration is continuing a Trump-era policy to aggressively open public lands to coal mining, refusing to return to an Obama-era moratorium on new leases. US greenhouse gas emissions dramatically bounced back in 2021—one of the hottest years on record. The global mean sea level is rapidly rising, and will keep rising for centuries even if the Paris Agreement goals are met, as seems less likely each day. And all this as hospitals remain overwhelmed coast to coast, and the National Guard is being mobilized to keep them functioning. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: CounterVortex)

Planet Watch

Podcast: against ‘normalcy’

In Episode 105 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg rants against the ubiquitous propaganda that normalizes the oppressive and dystopian pre-pandemic normality. Amid the relentless COVID-19 denialism, even mainstream voices are calling for a return to “normalcy” (sic)—which is not even a word. The opportunity for a crash conversion from fossil fuels that was posed by 2020’s pandemic-induced economic paralysis, when already depressed oil prices actually went negative, is now being squandered. President Biden just released oil from the Strategic Reserves to control soaring prices. Simultaneously, the administration is moving ahead with the largest offshore oil lease sale in US history. While during the 2020 lockdown. the usually smog-obscured Himalayas became visible from northern India for first time in decades, Delhi is now choked with emergency levels of toxic smog. During the 2020 lockdown, the total US death rate actually dropped because people were staying off the roads; US traffic deaths are now soaring. New York’s new Mayor Eric Adams wants to stake the city’s economic future to the cryptocurrency industry, even as China is cracking down on Bitcoin “mining” (sic) because of its “extremely harmful” carbon footprint. And amid all the empty hand-wringing about climate change, airlines are flying thousands of empty “ghost flights” in order to keep their slots at congested airports. The “return to normalcy” must be urgently resisted. As Bruce Cockburn observed long ago, the trouble with normal is it always gets worse. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: malingering via The Source Metro)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: antivax is fascist II

In Episode 103 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg, still suffering from possible COVID-19 symptoms, again notes how the radical right, including neo-Nazi elements, is in the vanguard of anti-vax protests, from Germany to Romania to England to Brooklyn. A virtual industry churns out relentless online disinformation that is easily refuted by anyone who makes the effort to break out of the confirmation-bias bubble. Contrary to the conspiranoid propaganda, COVID-19 deaths are actually being underestimated. The juvenile Nazi-baiting of the anti-vax machine is another example of the propaganda device of fascist pseudo-anti-fascism. Meanwhile, Tuskegee experiment survivors are encouraging vaccinations, and the Peoples Vaccine Alliance protests the actual crimes of Big Pharma—failing to make the vaccine available to Africa and the much of the Global South, in what has been decried as “vaccine apartheid.” Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo via Twitter)