Jacobin Radio

Donald Trump is a huge fan of Nayib Bukele, the current president of El Salvador. Last April, Bukele visited the White House and offered to help with a campaign of domestic repression in the United States. In El Salvador, which relies on US support, Bukele’s government has detained tens of thousands of people in mass arrests. Hundreds have died inside their notorious prison system.

Our guest today for a conversation about El Salvador under Bukele is Hilary Goodfriend. Hilary is a postdoctoral researcher at UNAM in Mexico City and she writes about Salvadorean politics for Jacobin.

Read Hilary’s article “An Infinite State of Exception in Nayib Bukele’s El Salvador” here: https://jacobin.com/2026/01/el-salvador-us-bukele-trump-authoritarianism

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies with music by Knxwledge.

Nancy Fraser goes beyond the class/identity disputes. Natalie Y. Moore, who wrote a recent article for Hammer and Hope and EHRP, looks at effects of federal layoffs on black women.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.

Nusantara is a new Dig series on the history of Indonesia: a hinge in the world system where colonialism and revolution have decisively shaped the trajectory of global history. This episode traces a long period of European plunder and domination that began with the Portuguese and then continued, for centuries, under the Dutch—a story stretching from the murderous mercantilism of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) seeking to monopolize the spice trade to a modern colonial administration profiting from plantations, petroleum, and countless commodities. The first installment features Rianne Subijanto and Made Supriatma. Other scholars of the archipelago will join us in the episodes that follow.

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The Dig goes deep into politics everywhere, from labor struggles and political economy to imperialism and immigration. Hosted by Daniel Denvir.

The US-Israeli war against Iran may have been initiated without any coherently stated goals or popular support, but we can already see that it’s a horrific quagmire. It also doesn’t look like Trump and Israel will get the swift Iranian regime change they hoped for.

On the latest episode of Confronting Capitalism, Vivek Chibber is joined by Jason Brownlee, a professor of government at the University of Texas Austin, to discuss the history of regime change wars, the geopolitical interests in the Middle East, and Trump’s further descent into the neoconservative blob.

Read Jason’s most recent Catalyst essay here: https://catalyst-journal.com/2021/03/shadow-wars-and-corporate-welfare

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Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy and published by Jacobin. Music by Zonkey.

Two weeks into the US-Israeli assault on Iran, every prediction of its architects has collapsed. The regime stands. Protests haven't reignited. Iran’s new Supreme Leader — more hardline than his assassinated father — has vowed to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed. And the war began just as negotiations in Geneva were apparently close to a deal.

Suzi speaks to UCLA sociologist and Iran expert Kevan Harris on Day 14 of Operation Epic Fury. We examine Iran’s domestic political economy, the corrupt economic empire of the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), and the regime's brutal repression after the January uprising.

On the fantasy of regime change by bombing, Kevan says, “There are zero historical cases of air power bombing a country into revolution from below. Zero." Every US intelligence agency told the White House this. They went ahead anyway. It’s 2003 all over again.

Kevan describes Israel’s war strategy as a widening gyre with no limit and no endpoint — one likely to produce another war on Iran within two years. That's why, Kevan argues, building an anti-war movement the Left’s most urgent task. "We might have a hot summer in the United States."

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.