C Derick Varn is the guest this week. Varn is a reader at Zero Books, a University lecturer and teacher, a poet, and a frequent guest on this podcast and many others. This week we discuss the contradictions in liberalism and debate whether the goal of Marx was to realize or abandon liberal values.

If you’re looking for some books to help you understand the current political crisis we’re in we at Zero Books have just the reading list for you. Edmund Berger’s Uncertain Futures provides a detailed look into the economic and political conditions of the Trump era from a Marxist perspective, Chris Nineham’s How the Establishment Lost Control offers an upbeat explanation for Corbynism and Brexit both, Anselm Jappe’s The Writing on the Wall is a collection of essays that brings an understanding of Marx’s Value Theory to bear on political questions, and Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies explains how the online culture war added fuel to the fire of right-wing reaction.

If you enjoy the podcast consider joining the Zero Books Club. Zero Books Club members receive access to a Saturday podcast entitled Inside Zero Books which sometimes features the second half of conversations with Zero Squared guests and sometimes features conversations with Zero Books readers about the state of the left. Zero Books Club members are also invited to participate in youtube workshops with Zero Books authors and others.

An anonymous member of leftypol is the guest on this week’s Zero Books podcast. According to the website Know Your Meme leftypol “consists of users who sympathizes with communist ideology and viewpoint. Although many of the memes are centered around the USSR and Albania, almost all the users are opposed to both the USSR and Hoxhaist Albania. The board is also the home of left-wing discussion of ideology and culture, according to the board’s FAQ. The Board is also associated with the USSC (Union of Soviet Socialist Chans).”

If you’re looking for something to read Some Zero Books titles to check out include Angela Nagle’s book Kill All Normies, Joanna Demer’s Anatomy of a Thought Fiction, That Existential Leap: A crime story by Dolan Cummings, and Stephen Lee Naish’s Deconstructing Dirty Dancing.

If you enjoy the podcast consider joining the Zero Books Club. Zero Books Club members receive access to a Saturday podcast entitled Inside Zero Books which sometimes features the second half of conversations with Zero Squared guests and sometimes features conversations with Zero Books readers about the state of the left. Zero Books Club members are also invited to participate in youtube workshops with Zero Books authors and others.

Chris Nineham is a founder member of the Stop the War Coalition. He was one of the organisers of the February 15th,2003 demonstration in London and central to the international co-ordination that led to the protests going global. His book How the Establishment Lost Control is due out from Zero Books on August 25th and in this episode we discuss the success of Jeremy Corbyn.

Some other Zero Books titles to check out include Angela Nagle’s book Kill All Normies, Joanna Demer’s Anatomy of a Thought Fiction, That Existential Leap: A crime story by Dolan Cummings, and Edmund Berger’s Uncertain Futures.

If you enjoy this podcast consider joining the Zero Books Club. Zero Books Club members receive access to a Saturday podcast entitled Inside Zero Books which sometimes features the second half of conversations with Zero Squared guests and sometimes features conversations with Zero Books readers about the state of the left. Zero Books Club members are also invited to participate in youtube workshops with Zero Books authors and others.

The Symptomatic Redness podcast presents conversations on political economy and history. Hosted by C. Derick Varn and Amogh Sahu, the program was an independent project for several years but is now hosted by Zero Books on the Zero Squared podcast feed. This podcast of Symptomatic Redness hosted by Zero Books is a continuation of a conversation between Amogh Sahu and C. Derick Varn on the history and prehistory of human societies.

Thanks goes out to Zero Books Club members. If you find this podcast helpful you might subscribe to the Zero Books podcast feed and keep listening or leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

George Ciccariello-Maher is a professor of Politics and Global Studies at Drexel University, the author of We Created Chavez: A People’s History of the Venezuelan Revolution, and at the center of ongoing twitter storms. On Christmas Eve of 2016 the professor tweeted “All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide” and in March of of 2017 he tweeted that he had to hold back vomit when a soldier was given a first class seat on a flight he was on two days after the US bombing of Mosul. In this week’s episode we discuss his tweets, academic freedom, and free speech.

I want to remind you that Angela Nagle’s book Kill All Normies is available through Amazon and encourage you to ask your favorite bookstore or library to carry Zero Books titles.

If you enjoy this podcast consider joining the Zero Books Club. Zero Books Club members receive access to a Saturday podcast entitled Inside Zero Books which sometimes features the second half of conversations with Zero Squared guests and sometimes features conversations with Zero Books readers about the state of the left. Zero Books Club members are also invited to participate in youtube workshops with Zero Books authors and others.

RL Stephens is an organizer in Chicago, founding editor of Orchestrated Pulse, and the A. Philip Randolph Fellow at Jacobin. His essay The Birthmark of Damnation: Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Black Body was published in May at Viewpoint Magazine and is the topic for this week’s Zero Books podcast.

It’s Wednesday, July 5th, 2017 and I’m Douglas Lain the publisher of Zero Books and the host of this podcast.
I want to remind you that Angela Nagle’s book and Joanna Demer’s book Anatomy of Thought-Fiction are both available through Amazon and other online vendors and encourage you to ask your favorite bookstore or library to carry Zero Books titles. Set some 200 years in the future, Demer’s Anatomy of Thought-Fiction treats a critique of the present, namely Demer’s own arguments about the connection between popular music, the collapse of liberal arts universities, and the current turn to the right as the McGuffin for a kind of meta science fiction.

If you enjoy this podcast consider joining the Zero Books Club. Zero Books Club members receive access to a Saturday podcast entitled Inside Zero Books which sometimes features the second half of conversations with Zero Squared guests and sometimes features conversations with Zero Books readers about the state of the left. Zero Books Club members are also invited to participate in youtube workshops with Zero Books authors and others.

Michael Tracey is a reporter for TYT politics and a freelance journalist who has written for Vice, The Nation, Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, The Intercept, and The New Republic, along with many other publications. He has also been a skeptic of the Russia collusion story and on this week’s episode of the Zero Books podcast we continue our discussion of that narrative and specifically take up the ideas in his piece for the New Republic entitled “Why Are Leftists Letting the Democratic Establishment Define the Trump Opposition?”

Also in this episode Tracey discusses a twitter scandal that followed after Tracey tweeted the following:

Rep. Maxine Waters just shoved me and angrily stormed off as I asked her questions. (Not a violent shove but she initiated physical contact)

I want to remind you that Angela Nagle’s book and Joanna Demer’s book Anatomy of Thought-Fiction are both available through Amazon and other online vendors and encourage you to ask your favorite bookstore or library to carry Zero Books titles. Set some 200 years in the future, Demer’s Anatomy of Thought-Fiction treats a critique of the present, namely Demer’s own arguments about the connection between popular music, the collapse of liberal arts universities, and the current turn to the right as the McGuffin for a kind of meta science fiction.

If you enjoy this podcast consider joining the Zero Books Club. Zero Books Club members receive access to a Saturday podcast entitled Inside Zero Books which sometimes features the second half of conversations with Zero Squared guests and sometimes features conversations with Zero Books readers about the state of the left. Zero Books Club members are also invited to participate in youtube workshops with Zero Books authors and others.
The music you’re listening to right now is Vitas’s hit the 7th Element but in just a moment you’ll be listening to Michael Tracey and I discuss how liberals are shoving the Russia narrative.

This week’s episode of the Zero Books podcast features a conversation with Professor Pete Bohmer from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Evergreen has been in the news lately as students have protested professor Brett Weinstein over an email he sent to a private faculty list. In the email Weinstein objected to the students reversing what is traditionally called a Day of Absence wherein people of color leave campus voluntarily to demonstrate their importance to campus life. This year a call went out asking white people to leave. Brett Weinstein felt that this call abandoned a core principle of racial equality, namely that people should not be barred from participation in campus life based on the color of their skin. During the interview Peter Bohmer tries to reframe this, suggesting that only a small group of white students were asked to leave campus in order to participate in seminars, about 200 students,however it is my understanding as of this recording that all white students and faculty were asked to voluntarily leave and that some 200 students had the additional opportunity to participate in consciousness raising seminars off campus.

In any case, Weinstein has been called out as a racist for his email and campus protests around his email and other, sometimes more substantial, issues and demands have been made even as the students have damaged their reputation and the reputation of the college nationally. Videos of the protests have gone viral online and the college has become not only an embarrassment for the left but a target for the alt-right.

I want to thank Peter Bohmer for being a guest. At the end we discuss the possibility of an open debate on racism and free speech being held at Evergreen. I surely hope this happens and would recommend people who would like to see this email President George Sumner Bridges of Evergreen, to urge him to organize such an event.

It’s Wednesday, June 21st, 2017 and I’m Douglas Lain the publisher of Zero Books and the host of this podcast. I want to thank Zero Books Club members and encourage people who enjoy this podcast to sign up to the Zero Books Club in order to receive a second podcast every week. Right now you’re listening to Saint Pepsi’s Enjoy Yourself, but in just a moment you’ll be listening to Peter Bohmer and I discuss the Evergreen Struggle Session.

and we encourage you to join. Zero Books Club members gain access to a second podcast each week. The Inside Zero Books podcast sometimes features a second hour from this podcast, and sometimes features conversations about the left and left publishing with members of the Zero Books editorial team.

Zero Books Posadist Special

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June 07, 2017 09:53 PM PDT

This week’s Zero Books podcast features a conversation with Comrade Communicator from the Intergalactic Worker’s League.

Posadism is an ideology or movement born out of the Fourth International and headed by a certain J. Posadas, who, (per wikipedia) tried to create a synthesis of Trotskyism and Ufology. Posadas’ most prominent thesis from this perspective was Flying saucers, the process of matter and energy, science, the revolutionary and working-class struggle and the socialist future of mankind (1968). Posadists believed that extra-terrestrials visiting earth in flying saucers must come from a socially and scientifically advanced civilisation to master inter-planetary travel and that the working-class should welcome the alien invaders as their liberators.

The interview took place at the Left Forum where we also launched Angela Nagle’s book "Kill All Normies."

Special thanks goes out to members of the Zero Books club for their patience. Zero Books club members will be invited to listen to the second half of last week’s conversation with Chris Cutrone this coming weekend, and everyone should look forward to an upcoming podcast featuring panel discussion on Kill All Normies.

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