WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 59:36 — 54.6MB)
Our music tonight, at the suggestion of our guest, comes from The Fugs, formed in 1963 by the poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg and Ken Weaver. And we open with, “Here Comes the Levellers,” which is from the Reagan Era release No More Slavery.
Our guest is Paul Buhle, one of the foremost historians of American Radicalism and the American Left having authored or edited over 30 books, including works such as Images of American Radicalism, Marxism in the United States, The Encyclopedia of the American Left, and Radical Hollywood. He is also the editor of 12 comic art books that are wide-ranging yet consistent in Socialist and Radical perspective: There are books on Jesus, Lincoln, The Beats, Bohemians, The Wobblies, Rosa Luxemburg and most recently on the Irish martyr James Connolly who was executed by the British for his role in the Easter Uprising of 1916. He’s also done a comic adaptation of Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, titled A People’s History of American Empire.
Paul Buhle is also the editor of the project, Bernie Sanders Comics.
After becoming involved in Students for a Democratic Society’s antiwar movement in the 60’s, he founded the journal Radical America and served as editor until the early 70’s, later founding a journal of popular culture studies called Cultural Correspondence, as well as founding and directing the Oral History of the American Left archive at New York University. In 2006, he also helped found the rebirth of SDS, also called Students for a Democratic Society.
In this show we cover a lot of ground–leap over it really–but in the process touch on many continuities in the history of the Radical Left, and consequently in its opposition to the dehumanizing and alienating organizing principles of capitalist economies. There is life in this Radical Left still and according to Buhle it’s the massive support for Bernie Sanders that has made this clear.
One thing I should share, our sound quality tonight is not ideal, but if your patient you’ll find your ears for it. I wish I could say I did it on purpose for, as assistant producer Rob Schoon says, it seems like the audio equivalent of Buhle’s hand-published editions of the SDS journal Radical America: legible, a little rough around the edges, but it’s the content that counts anyway.
RELATED
Red Rosa: Eagle of the Revolution
Bernie Sanders’ 1979 Eugene Debs Documentary (YouTube)
Radical America (online full text)
Anarchism and American Labor by Paul Buhle (a pdf is available on this page)
The Crash of Democratic Values by Paul Buhle
An Interview with Paul Buhle by Derek Seidman
This Feminist is #Still Sanders by Mari Jo Buhle
MUSIC by the Fugs
“Here Come the Levellers”
“If You Want to Be the President”
“Morning, Morning”
“Life Is Strange”
CREDITS
Producer & Host: Doug Storm
Assistant Producer: Rob Schoon
Board Engineer: Jonathan Richardson
Executive Producer: Joe Crawford
