“The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned.
I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”
-- Antonio Gramsci
The old forms of the Left are moribund and the new forms are stupid. We're making a podcast that discusses the need to organize a Dialectical Pessimism and develop a salvage project capable of sparking a new workers' movement for socialism.
A clean, honest, and unsentimental melancholy is required; we are cultivating one and would like to share it with you.
Check us out on Patreon for regular Patron Book Clubs, Regrettable Geopolitics updates, Real Nerd Hours, and more...
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Episodes
Thursday Mar 07, 2024
Thursday Mar 07, 2024
This week Jason and Varn sat down to have a primer discussion about the different types of American Conservatism. Don't worry, we will be back later this month with more Dugin.
Check out Varn Vlog here:
https://www.patreon.com/varnvlog
Monday Feb 26, 2024
Monday Feb 26, 2024
Welcome to our seventh and FINAL reading group episode on Revolution: An Intellectual History, by Enzo Traverso. We had a lot of fun with this series and will be starting a new one soon. Head on over to the Discord if you would like to be involved.
Special thanks to our comrade Connor at Autumn Brigade for our new intro music. Check his music out here: https://autumnbrigade.bandcamp.com/album/geist-ist-tot
Traverso, Enzo. 2021. Revolution : An Intellectual History. London ; New York: Verso.
https://www.versobooks.com/products/2783-revolution
Monday Feb 19, 2024
Monday Feb 19, 2024
As recovering Third Campists ourselves, we sit down to discuss the lingering problems that the third camp of Trotskyism has always had and how they are much dumber in their contemporary incarnation.
Resignation from the Fourth International - Natalia Sedova Trotsky
https://www.marxists.org/archive/sedova-natalia/1951/05/09.htm
Against Campism, for International Working-Class Solidarity https://socialistforum.dsausa.org/issues/winter-2020/against-campism-for-international-working-class-solidarity/
The Third Camp, Socialism From Below, and the First Principle of Revolutionary Socialism https://newpol.org/issue_post/third-camp-socialism-below-and-first-principle-revolutionary-socialism/
Libya’s revolution, U.S. intervention, and the left https://isreview.org/issue/77/libyas-revolution-us-intervention-and-left/index.html
Ukraine and fetishising the anti-NATO call https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2022-05-04/ukraine-and-fetishising-anti-nato-call
Like our theme song?
Check out Autumn Brigade here!
Monday Feb 05, 2024
Monday Feb 05, 2024
This is a Patreon episode that we recorded in April of 2022. We decided to post this on our main feed at the request of several of our patrons who said more people should hear it.
Continuing in the spirit of our discussion about the synthesis of socialism from above and below, we decided to dive a bit deeper into a topic that we have referenced many times in passing. The liberal narrative about the revolution is that it was a coup carried out by the Soviet Union against the will of the Czechoslovak people, but a cursory glance at how the revolution unfolded reveals a much different tale.
Czechoslovakia 1948- By Joseph Grim Feinberg in Jacobin Magazine
The Czechoslovak Revolution- By Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart in Foreign Affairs Magazine
Duchacek, Ivo. “The February Coup in Czechoslovakia.” World Politics2, no. 4 (1950): 511–32. https://doi.org/10.2307/2008933.
Myant, Martin. Socialism and Democracy in Czechoslovakia: 1945 - 1948. Soviet and East European Studies 33. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981.
Music: Hej, slnko vychodí - (Hey, the sun is out) composed by Bartolomej Urbanec and sung in Slovak.
Thursday Feb 01, 2024
Thursday Feb 01, 2024
Jason and Varn continue with their close reading of The Fourth Political Theory by Alexander Dugin.
**This is a 30m preview of a 3 hour long episode**
Check out Varn Vlog here:
https://www.patreon.com/varnvlog/posts
Thursday Jan 25, 2024
Thursday Jan 25, 2024
This episode of InForm:Podcast is a re-release and cross-post of an older interview done with From78 (of Lost Horizons fame). It was originally posted several lifetimes ago, in 2020, but has been re-released by InForm so we decided to promote it here.
Go check out the full episode: https://www.surplusjouissance.com/inform-podcast/
Tuesday Jan 23, 2024
Tuesday Jan 23, 2024
Not really, but we do talk about the history of Zionism as a settler colonial project.
Pappe, Ilan. “The Framing of the Question of Palestine by the Early Palestinian Press: Zionist Settler-Colonialism and the Newspaper Filastin, 1912-1922.” The Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies : a Multidisciplinary Journal 14, no. 1 (2015): 59–81. https://doi.org/10.3366/hlps.2015.0104.
Zionism: False Messiah (1998) by Lance Selfa
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/selfa/1998/xx/zionism.htm
Zionism from the standpoint of Its Victims (1979) By Edward Said https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Edward-Said-Excerpt.pdf
Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims Author(s): Ella Shohat https://palestinecollective.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/sephardim-in-israel_-zionism-from-the-standpoint-of-its-jewish-victims.pdf
The long history of Zionist proposals to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip https://mondoweiss.net/2023/12/the-long-history-of-zionist-proposals-to-ethnically-cleanse-the-gaza-strip
Like our intro music? Of course you do!
Check out Autumn Brigade here:
https://autumnbrigade.bandcamp.com/album/geist-ist-tot
Monday Jan 15, 2024
Monday Jan 15, 2024
Varn and Jason discuss this new collaborative project "Boundless and Bottomless Seas" and discuss why talking about Dugin and his Fourth Political Theory is worth doing. This is episode was recorded before the first episode of the series and is meant to be a sort of primer and introduction to the project.
Sunday Jan 07, 2024
Sunday Jan 07, 2024
This week we've got a podcast that we recorded with Subjective Conditions a few months ago. This podcast deals with Walter Benjamin as a vibe and, in true Regrettable Century fashion, the discussion is guided by the World Spirit.
Check out Subjective Conditions here:
https://www.patreon.com/subjectiveconditions/posts
Check out Autumn Brigade here:
https://autumnbrigade.bandcamp.com/album/geist-ist-tot
Thursday Jan 04, 2024
Thursday Jan 04, 2024
Sean KB from the Antifada joins Jason and Varn for a new series that examines the work of right wing thinkers. This week they are discussing the first chapter of Alexander Dugin's, 'The Fourth Political Theory' to break down and understand why people from all over the political spectrum are influenced by this seminal work of post-fascist thought.
**This is a 30m preview of a 2.5 hour long episode**