Bungacast

On Trump and Rubio, Venezuela and Cuba.

Writer Juan David Rojas talks to Alex and Lee about the abduction of Maduro, what next for Venezuela, and Trump's "hemispheric" foreign policy.

What is the Trump administration's policy toward Latin America?

Is the attack on Venezuela a war for oil? Or a war vs 'narcoterrorism'?

What are the internal divisions in Venezuela, and could it fall into civil war?

What are the armed groups in the country?

Who's calling the shots in Washington: neocons or paleocons?

Is the US open-border policy for Cubans going to cause a rift within the Trump admin?

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Links:

How Maduro Sealed His Own Fate, Juan David Rojas, Compact

Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy: Goodbye, Liberal International Order; Hello, Radical Right, Lee Jones, American Affairs (forthcoming)

The Venezuelan Predicament: Oil & Power in Caracas, Washington and Miami, Juan David Rojas, American Affairs (forthcoming)

Trump’s Venezuela Actions Are About More Than Oil, Matt Huber, Jacobin

On "thin ideologies" in a postmodern age.

The Reading Club kicks off with an exploration of illiberalism, a "new ideological universe" that exists in "a permanent situational relation to liberalism."

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What are examples of this backlash against liberalism?

How is illiberalism different from populism, conservatism, or the far right?

What is a thin versus a thick ideology? Are we condemned to a 21st century of only thin ideologies?

Is 'illiberalism' a useful term to describe what is going on in politics today?

Is liberalism versus illiberalism just a terminal culture war?

Links:

Illiberalism: a conceptual introduction, Marlene Laruelle, East European Politics (2022)

/114/ Reading Club: The Light That Failed | Patreon

On Trump & radical right ideology.

Jean-François Drolet, a leading researcher into the 'World of the Right', talks to Alex and Lee about Donald Trump's coveting of Greenland, and puts the move into its ideological context.

What is the paleoconservative worldview, how is it different from the neoconservative one, and which is more influential in the Trump regime?

How does paleoconservatism translate into actual foreign policy? What's in Trump's new National Security Strategy?

Are we back to a 19th century-style 'spheres of influence' arrangement?

Does the radical right's foreign policy lead back to a populist kind of isolationism – or to a 'civilisational nationalism'?

Will Trump solidify the transatlantic alliance, or generate a rift?

Links:

/461/ Welcome to the World of the Right ft. Michael C. Williams

World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024).

International Relations and the Geopolitics of the European New Right, European Journal of International Relations, JF Drolet

From Critique to Reaction: The New Right, Critical Theory and International Relations, Journal of International Political Theory, JF Drolet & Michael C. Williams

Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy: Goodbye, Liberal International Order; Hello, Radical Right, Lee Jones, American Affairs (forthcoming

On ICE, Minneapolis – and your questions & comments.

Contributing editor Ryan Zickgraf is back from Minnesota and tells us what is happening on the ground. We also discuss:

If this was Trump picking a fight, why Minnesota?

Do the slayings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti mark a step-change in who can be killed in the US with relative impunity?

What are the implications for the 2nd Amendment and will this divide MAGA World?

Does a hard border necessarily entail a hard, militarised society too? Is the interiorisation of the border inevitable?

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

We then discuss listener questions on:

What is important that Bungacast cover?

The benefits of citizenship

Capitalists paying themselves for labour

The post-doomer personality

Readings:

South Minneapolis has had enough, Ryan Zickgraf, UnHerd

Enforcement Regime, Michael Macher, Phenomenal World 

Minneapolis Is a Second Amendment Wake-Up Call, Tyler Austin Harper, The Atlantic

ICE unloads, Ken Klippenstein, Substack

On the social turn in psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysts Christie and Ricky talk to Alex and George about their article in issue #5 of Damage, on ill-fated attempts at solving social problems through therapy.

What is the 'social turn' and is it another case of immediacy?

Why are the social problems to be dealt with treated as both urgent and impossible to resolve?

Is this a case of hyperpolitics? Is psychoanalysis actually white supremacy?

Do the professions need defending? Do they need to accept their limitations?

Subscribers to this podcast get 15% off print subscriptions to Damage magazine – and access to to this episode. Go to patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

The Regression in Psychoanalysis’s “Social Turn”, Christie Offenbacher & Ricky Levitt

/210/ Reading Club: Psychoanalysis & Spirit of Capitalism