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Tag Archives: communism

Interchange – Writing Radicals: Mike Gold, Ann Petry, and Thomas McGrath

Today’s show is a somewhat altered version of a program that first aired on November 3rd, 2015, called Tracking Subversives with the noted scholar of the “literary Left,” Alan Wald. According to Wald, the aim of the literary radical is “to endow history with meaning.” Wald has published a trilogy of books brought out by the University of North Carolina …

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Interchange – Needing A Space For Us: On Social Rights with Kimberley Brownlee (Part II)

Once again we’re joined by Kimberley Brownlee to talk about the necessity of Social Rights being a rock-bottom human right. We need each other and we need to be needed so that we might become fully human. Last week we discussed how Social Rights should have priority as human rights in the same way that food and water do, and …

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Interchange – Five Days in Spain: Muriel Rukeyser and the Revolutionary Muse

In 1936, twenty-two-year-old Muriel Rukeyser, who had just won the Yale Younger Poets Award for her first book Theory of Flight, was suddenly (almost accidentally) in Spain as a journalist to cover the Olimpiada Popular, or People’s Olympiad, a protest event against the 1936 Berlin Olympics presided over by Hitler and the Nazi Party. Intended to take place in Barcelona, …

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Interchange – The Communists Made Us Do It: The Cold War Cover for Mass Murder

In April, 1955, representatives from twenty-nine governments of Asian and African nations gathered in Bandung, Indonesia to discuss peace and the role of the Third World in the Cold War, economic development, and decolonization. The twenty-nine countries that participated represented a total population of 1.5 billion people, 54% of the world’s population. The conference was organized by Indonesia, Burma (now …

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Interchange – Out of a Brick Throat: How Poets and Poetry Matter

Our opening song is “Ezz-thetic,” from the 1961 release Ezz-thetics by George Russell. In the conversation to come we’ll make reference to the American modernist poet Ezra Pound, and what the literary scholar Hugh Kenner termed “The Pound Era” in his 1971 book. Pound is perhaps best known for the poetic movement he named Imagism and for his endlessly expanding …

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Interchange – The Limits of Spontaneity and Other Lessons of the Uprising

The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on May 25th has quickly become the catalyst which has given rise to mass uprisings in every major city in the United States. In the days following Floyd’s murder, thousands upon thousands of people across the country have taken to the streets in a massive display of anger and protest against the …

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Interchange – Writing Red: Joshua Clover on Strikes and Riots

It’s May 5th, 2020 and today we’re going to bring our interview with Joshua Clover on poetry and crisis, strikes and riots, back to your attention. This conversation took place at the end of September in 2015 when Clover was completing his Verso book Riot. Strike. Riot that would be published in May of 2016. What recalled this conversation to …

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Interchange – Sounding Angola: Radio’s Electrifying Effects

Today’s show focuses on the history of radio in Angola – as an instrument for Portuguese settlers, the colonial state, African nationalists, and the postcolonial state to project power and challenge empire. Marissa Moorman calls these distinct and sometimes overlapping interests Powerful Frequencies, the title of her new book, published by Ohio University Press. Its subtitle is Radio, State Power, …

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A Case Against Universal Basic Income

Universal Basic Income is often touted as a solution to the struggles of our current economic system; providing for those left behind, as the U.S. economy transitions away from manufacturing. University of Chicago Professor Aaron Benanav spoke on the darker implications of UBI, at an event sponsored by WFHB, last month. Benanav said UBI may be used to placate people …

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Interchange – Blessed Are the Peacemakers: The Radical Pacifism of A. J. Muste

In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist; in such a world a non-revolutionary pacifist is a contradiction in terms, a monstrosity.* A.J. Muste was referred to throughout the world as the “American Gandhi,” and he’s probably best known, if at all, for his leadership of the peace movement in the …

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