Millennials Are Killing Capitalism

In this episode, we are joined by Idris Robinson to unpack his book, The Revolt Eclipses Whatever the World Has to Offer, a searing meditation on race, revolt, civil war, and the psychic wreckage of American life. Reflecting on the 2020 uprisings, Robinson challenges the myth of Black leadership, reframes racial violence through the lens of a "morbid libidinal economy," and argues that revolution is as much a transformation of the human spirit as it is a political event. Drawing on the legacies of Black insurgency, Robinson interrogates liberalism, identity politics, and the hollowing out of American cities—while pondering on what it would take to make life human again in a society built to dehumanize. He argues that racial violence, especially spectacular acts of white supremacist brutality. cannot be adequately explained by frameworks like identity politics, intersectionality, or privilege theory. Instead, these acts emerge from repressed desires and psychic forces intrinsic to white supremacy. The 2020 uprisings, in this sense, exposed both emancipatory and repressive violence rooted in these deeper libidinal dynamics. Robinson also reflects on his personal trajectory, from Occupy Wall Street through development as a theorist, where he grounds his meditation on revolt as humanizing forces. He argues that American capitalism produces profound isolation, psychic damage, and undead social beings, hollowed out by commodification. Uprisings momentarily restore humanity by breaking atomization and re‑creating collective meaning.   On strategy, Robinson challenges traditional socialist models of seizing the "means of production," arguing instead that modern revolt must focus on logistics and infrastructure: transport hubs, electrical grids, supply chains, and urban circulation. He emphasizes blockades, control of space, and understanding the built environment as key to sustaining insurrection in a post‑industrial economy. We devote substantial attention to Robinson's provocative argument that civil war is not a future possibility but a current condition in the United States. Drawing on classical theory, Black radical thought, and historical analogy, he frames civil war as the collision of public (political) and private (libidinal, racial, familial) spheres. While acknowledging its violence and trauma, Robinson argues that fracture and decentralization may paradoxically make revolutionary transformation more achievable, pointing to Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War as the most emancipatory period in American history. Idris Robinson is a philosopher from the New York hinterlands. For over a decade, he has written extensively on crisis and revolt. He is the author of The Revolt Eclipses Whatever the World Has to Offer (MIT Press / Semiotext(e)) and Escritos desde la tierra baldía (Irrupción Ediciones). He is currently an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Texas State University, where he is completing a monograph-length study on the progression of Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy. He is currently undergoing a legal battle with TSU after the school violated his constitutional rights by ending his contract after he gave an off-campus Pro-Palestine talk.    If you like what we do and want to support our ability to have more conversations like this. Please consider becoming a Patron at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. You can do so for as little as a 1 Dollar a month.    Links: Order the book from Massive Bookshop   IdrisRobinson.me    About Idris Robinson's case against Texas State University   Support Idris Robinson's Legal Fund  

In this episode, longtime revolutionary activist and author Torkil Lauesen returns to the show. Our conversation revolves around two of his recent works published by Iskra Books: The Long Transition to Socialism and the End of Capitalism and Unequal Exchange: Past, Present, and Future. Drawing on a lifetime of political engagement and his close relationship with theorist Arghiri Emmanuel, Lauesen discusses his motivation for writing these books as a means of passing down hard-won knowledge to a new generation of organizers. We examine the "long transition" from capitalism to socialism, a process Lauesen frames through the lens of historical materialism. He also explains how the transfer of value from the periphery to the core through unequal exchange created a dynamic center, enabling capitalism to survive the 20th century. Now, with the decline of US economic hegemony and the rise of a multipolar world system centered on a resurgent China, Lauesen argues we are entering a new phase where the conditions for a genuine transition may finally be emerging. We tackle the critical question of revolutionary method, discussing how to identify the principal contradiction to orient our practice and the difficult strategic choices this framework demands. From the revolutionary history of China to the current geopolitical landscape and the intensifying repression of anti-imperialist movements, Lauesen offers a sobering yet urgent call to organize for the decisive struggles ahead. One quick note, there is a little conversation about Iran in this discussion. This interview was recorded on February 20th so a little before the current war took shape. While you get a little bit of Torkil Lauesen's perspective on Iran and the question of anti-imperialism today, if you want more complete analysis on the topic, there are ten videos up on our youtube page where we've delved into the current war with guests like Adnan Husain, Abdaljawad Omar, Lara Sheehi, Nora Barrows-Friedman, Sina Rahmani, and Hiram Rivera among others. This week we have discussions coming with Bikrum Gill and Nina Farnia from the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective. So make sure you are subscribed and have turned on notifications on our youtube page if you want that current analysis amid this world historical struggle. Make sure to head over to Iskra Books to buy copies of these texts we discussed with Torkil Lauesen, and even if you want to check out just remember there are always free PDF copies available on Iskrabooks.org. And of course if you like what we do become a patron of the show to support our work you can do so for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekilingcapitalism I know these are trying times economically, but also remember that our ability to bring you these conversations is based on your ability as an audience to support the work we do. And a huge thank you to all of you who do support the show. Previously we interviewed Torkil Lauesen about his book Riding The Wave: Sweden's Integration into the Imperialist World System

In this episode, we are joined by organizers from Dare to Struggle, a multinational organization committed to struggling against all forms of domination. Throughout this conversation we discuss some of their tactics deployed in response to the recent uptick in ICE raids happening nationally. We take a critical look at what has been effective and what has not, and the stakes for those who are daring to struggle against the deportation machine are up against. We also discuss their recent calls for a Spring Surge to melt ice, please check out the show notes to see how you can connect and get involved with the actions they are trying to spread nationally. Dare to Struggle is a multinational organization open to anyone who wants to resist and stop injustice no matter who holds political office. We don't lobby politicians. We don't use insular activist lingo. We don't chase social media fame. We don't seek careers or corporate sponsorship through activism. We're committed to standing with the people subjected to the horrors of the American nightmare. We go to the neighborhoods facing police brutality, ICE raids, poverty, and evictions, talk to people about the problems they face, and organize people in collective struggle. We know that radical change only happens when people step outside of routine protest or expecting politicians to do it for us and take bold, collective action.   If you like what we do and want to support our ability to have more conversations like this. Please consider becoming a Patron. You can do so for as little as a 1 Dollar a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.   Some of Dare To Struggle's links and info:   Dare to Struggle's website   Spring Surge Information, Toolkit, and Guides   When the enemy retreats, We pursue: On the end of metro surge    Why Dare to Struggle takes aim at the left   Donate to Support Building a movement against ICE    Donate to help Families Demanding Justice throw their first conference      

In this conversation a group of us interviewed Dr. Ali Kadri about his book The Accumulation of Waste: A Political Economy of Systemic Destruction. This conversation was the final discussion in a study group which began last October and involved participants from all over the world. The book provides a theoretical framework which understands waste as a value making process where war-making, the wasting of social classes, and the wasting of social nature become central to capitalist accumulation and to how capital resolves crises in accumulation. The questions in this discussion were those that remained for some of the members upon reading and discussing the work over the last few months. In some cases you will hear members of the group ask their questions directly, in others I ask based on individual questions provided by members or common themes that came up among multiple participants from the group. We get into the imperialist aggression against Iran, the role of patriarchy and racism within Dr. Kadri's analysis, and questions of optimism or hope against the death dealing forces of imperialism. To gain a further understanding of Dr. Ali Kadri's work, check out the first interview we conducted with him back in 2023, and of course check out his books as well as various interviews available online, we will link some of these in the show description. This study group was really rewarding once again, thank you to all of our participants and to Dr. Ali Kadri. In our current study group - which is already full - we are discussing Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.  Our next one will be announced in March, so to ensure you have an opportunity to join us, since they almost always fill up quite quickly, make sure you are signed up on our patreon for as little as $1 a month, all patrons are welcome to join us in these study groups and they are a great place to deepen our knowledge and analysis collectively. Links: European Class Struggle Starts at the Bottom of the Sea with Iker Suárez "War Is the Basis of Accumulation" - Ali Kadri on Genocide, Waste, Imperialism, and the Commodification of Death Check out Guerrilla History's Ali Kadri archives Resistance Is Fertile also has some interviews with Ali Kadri  

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Ashley Farmer to discuss the life and legacy of Queen Mother Audley Moore—an organizer, theorist, and political visionary who helped shape the very foundations of modern Black nationalism and the contemporary reparations movement. Though she was, as our guest writes, "one of the most important activists and theorists of the twentieth century," Mother Moore's figure has been largely confined to a handful of photographs and passing references, even as her ideas reverberate across generations. Dr. Farmer discusses how if Rosa Parks is remembered as the mother of the Civil Rights Movement, then Queen Mother Moore should be understood as someone who midwifed the political traditions of Black radical nationalism. Farmer traces Moore's extraordinary life, which spanned nearly the entire twentieth century—from the aftermath of Reconstruction to the rise and fall of Jim and Jane Crow, all the way until the late 1990s. Like Du Bois, her longevity allowed her to inhabit multiple political worlds, sometimes in tension with one another. We discuss how her early experiences in Jim/Jane Crow Louisiana, witnessing lynch mobs and growing up in a family shaped by both slavery and free Black community life, forged her political consciousness. We also explore the radical sisterhood she shared with Eloise and Loretta, women who were themselves deeply involved in Black liberation struggles and who helped shape Moore's earliest political actions. The conversation moves westward as they examine Moore's migration to Los Angeles, where the promise of escape from Southern racial terror collided with the realities of redlining, discrimination, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Southern California. We look at how these conditions transformed LA into a hotbed of Black nationalist organizing—and how this period pushed Moore toward Chicago and eventually Harlem, where her political life would take on new dimensions. A portion of the discussion centers on the state's surveillance of Moore. Targeted first by HUAC and later by the FBI's Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO), Moore amassed thousands of pages of government files—documents that reveal both the threat she posed to the racial order and the broader pattern of state repression directed at Black radical women. Dr. Farmer analyzed thousands of these files and discusses some of what she discovered in them.  Dr. Ashley D. Farmer is a historian of black women's history, intellectual history, and radical politics. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Departments of History and African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to this book, she is the author of Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era.  If you like what we do and want to support our ability to have more conversations like this. Please consider becoming a patron. You can do so for as little as a 1 Dollar a month. Now, here is Dr. Farmer discussing her book Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore Related conversations: "Attica Is an Ongoing Structure of Revolt" - Orisanmi Burton on Tip of the Spear, Black Radicalism, Prison Rebellion, and the Long Attica Revolt Free the Land! Edward Onaci on the History of the Republic of New Afrika Black Scare / Red Scare 2025 with Charisse Burden-Stelly "The Shadow of the Plantation" - Eugene Puryear on The Black Belt Thesis: A Reader  

In this conversation we speak with Ed Vogel from Southerners Against Surveillance Systems & Infrastructure about the rapid expansion of various police surveillance programs. We talk about the nexus of private corporations, policing agencies, and nonprofit foundations and organizations that facilitate the expansion of these technologies and how they seek to circumvent democratic processes and oversight mechanisms. We discuss ICE, Customs & Border Patrol, Atlanta's Cop City, Shot Spotter, Flock Safety, Fusus, and automated license plate readers. Ed also talks about what we do and don't know about the role played by corporations like Target and Home Depot in the policing surveillance network.  As we see the terror that ICE is enacting in Minneapolis, this conversation offers a set of analyses that can help us understand the problem of ICE's power beyond simply the goons kidnapping or executing people in the street. Rather than just focusing on the expanding problem, we do talk about some of the ways that local communities are fighting back and winning campaigns against the adoption of these technologies. We also talk about maintaining good digital hygiene as an act of solidarity for people in social movements.  There are a number of articles that Ed either authored, co-authored, or contributed documents to in the show description. We reference these throughout the conversation and recommend you read them for further details.  Southerners Against Surveillance Systems & Infrastructure has a hands-on digital security workshop Wednesday, February 4th. During the session they will walk through how to better protect yourself and community against how ICE is accessing phone data for their kidnappings.  Follow SASSI on IG or Bluesky or visit their website. Recently we also featured Dwayne Monroe during one of our livestreams to talk about ICE's use of the surveillance program known as Webloc, the SASSI training will address how to protect cellphone data from this program. If you like the work that we do, please consider becoming a patron for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. It is through the support of our listeners and viewers that we sustain this work and the ability to bring you these conversations.  By Enabling Police Surveillance, Elected Officials Fuel Trump's Agenda  A Nashville Proposal Could Outsource Surveillance and Policing to a Nonprofit  ICE Taps into Nationwide AI-Enabled Camera Network, Data Shows ACPC and Lucy Parsons Labs win open records lawsuit against Atlanta Police Foundation Police surveillance tech and Cop Cities are the State's complementary counterinsurgency strategy Safety from Surveillance Turning Death into a Commodity Background Photo Credit Chad Davis

In this episode we are joined by Wassila Abboud to discuss her essay, "The Dining Table and the Drone." Our conversation begins with her meditations on grief in Lebanon. We explore how people often name today's grief through the language of past griefs — and what this transference between past and present reveals about the psyche under domination. From there, we turn to Walter Benjamin's "angel of history" and why Abboud argues this analogy fails to capture Lebanon's relationship to catastrophe. We discuss why so many returns cluster around 1982, how that year fractured grief itself, reshaping collective memory, political imagination, and the vocabulary of resistance. We examine the paradoxical meaning of ceasefire, the choreography of repeated displacement, and the temporal logic of domination that ensures catastrophe is always waiting just beyond its declaration. Our conversation also situates Lebanon's grief in relation to Gaza's present devastation, asking what it reveals about the impossibility of stability in a regional order sustained by capital accumulation and the extraction of life. We trace the sequence of events between 1978 and 1982 — from Operation Litani to the Camp David Accords and Israel's full-scale invasion of Beirut — not simply as military maneuvers but as the crystallization of a regional order that fractured Lebanon's political landscape and redefined resistance. Wassila Abboud is a cultural worker and writer researching between Beirut and Amsterdam. Her work engages with critical theory, philosophy, and culture and takes on both a speculative and materialist approach, examining the conditions of past and present historical struggles. (Follow her on IG: @wassila_) If you like what we do and want to support our ability to have more conversations like this. Please consider becoming a Patron. You can do so for as little as a 1 Dollar a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism  

In this episode, we're joined by Austin Cole to discuss the three-part series Black/African Liberation & Grassroots Economies, beginning with part one: "Rootedness for our people, our economies, our liberation." We start with Toni Morrison's concept of rootedness and how it informs urban planning and economic development. From there, we'll dig into Strategies of Counter-war—how fascists are shaping local policy, and how BAP-Baltimore is building alternatives from the ground up. We examine the threat of elite capture and the strategic use of municipal power: how can engagement with the state enable collective self-determination rather than dilute it? Can it do such a thing?  We also explore expanded notions of self-defense, the Black commune as theorized by George Jackson and Orisanmi Burton, and the four principles guiding grassroots efforts toward that vision. Finally, we'll sit with the question of mass consciousness—what it demands of us now, and how we might cultivate it together.   Austin Cole was raised in Springfield, Ohio, and his people come from the Mississippi Delta and Birmingham, Alabama. He is an organizer, writer, and community development planning practitioner. His professional work focuses on environmental/climate justice, transforming economic systems, and Black/African liberation. He is a member of and currently serves as National Co-Coordinator for the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) and co-coordinates of BAP's Haiti/Americas Team.   Support our work via patreon!   Black/African Liberation & Grassroots Economies PT. I: "Rootedness" for Our People, Our Economies, Our Liberation   Black/African Liberation & Grassroots Economies PT. II: Situating  'Economy' and Ourselves in the Struggle from the Internal (Neo)Colony Additional writings (not yet released as of the recording of this episode in late 2024) Black/African Liberation & Grassroots Economies PT. III: Constructing the Counter-War That Our Liberation Demands Black/African Liberation & Grassroots Economies PT. IV: Collective Struggle Is Our past and Future  

This is the audio from a livestream video we hosted with Hala Sabbah from The Sameer Project on December 3rd, 2025. Hala returned to the program to talk about life in Gaza nearly two months into the so-called "ceasefire." We spoke about the realities on the ground and the needs of people in Gaza right now, what is getting into the strip and what is not, and how the Sameer Project is working within the current conditions in Gaza. We also talk about the need for continued organizing, boycotts, and direct action against the zionist entity. And we spoke about creative ways people can fundraise for Sameer Project and other local groups operating on the ground in Gaza. RETURN HOME x The Sameer Project  Sameer Project's linktree 

In this episode, we are joined by organizers from the Lowcountry Action Committee to discuss climate justice in South Carolina's Lowcountry. We begin with a discussion about climate reparations and the state's unfortunate priorities. We go on to explore the history of phosphate mining and its exploitation of newly emancipated Africans, the ecological destruction it caused, and its legacy of environmental racism.  We then turn to hurricane season and the anxiety it provokes in vulnerable working-class and poor Black communities, followed by the toxic legacy of military pollution and "forever chemicals" in North Charleston. Finally, we reflect on political consciousness, the fight against capital, and whether the Gullah Geechee are punished for their self-determination—echoing Haiti's revolutionary legacy. Lowcountry Action Committee is a Black led grassroots organization dedicated to Black liberation through service, political education, and collective action in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. If you like what we do want to support our ability to have more conversations like this, please consider becoming a patron for as little as one dollar a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism, you can also support via a one-time donation at BuyMeACoffee.com/MAKCapitalism The piece the conversation is based on this issue of Surge: Lowcountry Climate Magazine Lowcountry Action Committee's Website, LinkTree, Youtube

In this episode, recorded in the summer of 2024, Josh interviewed two organizers from the Lowcountry Action Committee.  Lowcountry Action Committee is a Black African grassroots organization dedicated to Black liberation through service, political education, and collective action in the South Carolina Lowcountry.  Our conversation centers around their 2024 piece on environmental racism, where they trace the climate catastrophe, threatening to wash away Gullah Geechee homelands back to the phosphate mining industry of the eighteen sixties.  We discuss how today's disproportionate exposure of Black communities to hazardous waste sites, landfills, incinerators is inseparable from the region's history of chattel slavery and why Black people must be at the vanguard of the environmental movement.  We then situate the crisis within the broader context of the Black Belt, a historical homeland of Africans trafficked to North America. Now among the most vulnerable regions to climate change, drawing on Kali Akuno's prediction that large portions of the Black Belt may be underwater by 2050. We explore what displacement, housing costs, and organized abandonment mean for Black communities in the Carolinas and beyond.  The conversation also turns to international frameworks, particularly Cuba's model of sustainable development and the parallels between Cuban soil erosion and sea level rise and the ecological challenges facing Gullah Geechee communities. We discuss how the Lowcountry itself lives under a kind of economic blockade, how this juxtaposition illuminates environmental racism, neocolonialism, and anti-Blackness.  If you like what we do want to support our ability to have more conversations like this, please consider becoming a patron for as little as one dollar a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism, you can also support via a one-time donation at BuyMeACoffee.com/MAKCapitalism Lowcountry Action Committee's Website, LinkTree, Youtube Crisis in the Carolinas: Racial Disparities, the Climate Catastrophe and Environmental Racism in the Lowcountry Cuba's Life Task: Combatting Climate Change (Tarea Vida)   Organizing to Free the Land with Kali Akuno    

In this conversation we speak with a labor organizer and people's historian who covers Latin American movements with connections to Ecuador, Colombia, and Cuba. Folks may know her by the twitter handle @SovietwithSazon. In this conversation she discusses recent struggles and developments in Ecuador. In particular a recent 38 day general strike, and the popular rejection of a recent referendum  including measures which would have allowed the US to build military bases in Ecuador and cut public funding for political parties. Our guest contextualizes the current US-backed narco-military regime lead by Daniel Noboa. And she talks about the broader revenge campaign against former Pink Tide governments like Ecuador and Bolivia, now led by right wing forces. She discusses how the tactics we're seeing across Latin America against left-leaning governments, and the disappearances and assassinations of organizers, mark a return of the CIA's Operation Condor tactics. And she discusses how the capitalist class colludes with cartels to create crises that manufacture consent for the state of war decree that Ecuadorians are currently under. We'll include links to follow our guest on twitter, where she will be increasing her reporting on developments in Latin America, and to other episodes where we discuss recent developments with regard to Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, and on the topic of general strikes, the general strike Italian workers led a couple months ago. Link to Black Alliance for Peace's Week of Action. As we approach the year end. We're offering up a 40% discount on yearly memberships, or 40% off the first month on monthly memberships for MAKC if you join at the $5 a month level or higher. Buy one for a friend, comrade, or relative. Support our work, help us continue to do more. Use code EOY25. Reminder, if you purchase a yearly subscription for as little as $10.80 per year, you gain access to study groups for all of 2026, our first study group next year won't start until February, but we will have at least 3 study groups you can take advantage of if you are a member. Join now at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism  

In this episode, we are joined by Dalton Lackey and Teagan Murphy, co-authors of the article "The COVID-19 Murders": Prison death-worlds and the fatal convenience of crisis. Their work offers a piercing critique of how carceral institutions weaponized the pandemic—not as an unprecedented emergency, but as a tactical opportunity to deepen control, dehumanization, and death. We'll begin by hearing from Dalton and Teagan about their political motivations, the methodologies they employed, and the intellectual scaffolding behind their analysis. From there, we'll unpack their challenge to the dominant narrative of "failure"—a framing that presumes the prison system was simply overwhelmed by crisis. Instead, they argue that the pandemic revealed not incompetence, but calculated cruelty. We'll also examine how disaster operates as a tool of tactical evolution within prisons. As the authors write, "Rather than revealing entirely new challenges, our findings demonstrate how the pandemic instead exacerbates what the literature has suggested are the preexisting goals of carceral punishment." We'll discuss how incarcerated people themselves narrated these shifts—how they recognized the charade of "safety" and named the degradation that exceeded even the brutal norm. From psychic death and coerced docility to the punitive treatment of those living with HIV/AIDS, we'll trace the historical continuities and contemporary parallels that shape this death-world. We'll ask how social distancing protocols, meant to protect, instead expanded estrangement—and how preexisting conditions of confinement intensified the crisis. Teagan Murphy (any/all) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Their research, conducted primarily through qualitative interviews, ethnography, and content analysis, focuses on institutional and carceral logics and the reproduction of inequities via narratives of deservingness. Their dissertation, which draws on data collected from their time as an active courtwatcher in Prince George's County, presents a critique of the distinction courts draw between criminalized defendants and "the community," resulting in a pretrial system where Black bodies are deemed public safety risks that antagonize the moral sanctity of white civil society. They also argue for a literary reframing of "courtwatching," moving from reformist interpretations to an antifascist one aligned with broader abolitionist goals. IG: @veganmurphy  Dalton Lackey (they/them) is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Their research broadly concerns structural anti-blackness, carcerality and punishment, revolutionary social movements, and Fanonian psychopolitics. Dalton is currently working on their dissertation project, which explores the complexities of invention and signification that emerge in the haze of radical collective action against the anti-black social order. IG: @daltonjared American Prison Writing Archive The COVID-19 Murders": Prison death-worlds and the fatal convenience of crisis  Some related/referenced MAKC conversations: Joshua Myers discussion on Robinson's rebuttal to "Social Death" Conversations with Andrew Krinks Orisanmi Burton on Black Masculine Care Work Under Domestic Warfare Charlie Frank on AIDS & COVID-19 From the Free Alabama Movement to The Alabama Solution featuring Renee Johnston "Everybody Changes In The Process Of Building A Movement" - Ruth Wilson Gilmore on Abolition Geography (responding to the question of the 13th Amendment & prison conditions) Dylan Rodriguez on Domestic Warfare & prisons

This episode is part of a two part project covering the Puerto Rican Independence Movement from the beginning of the 19th Century until the present. For this conversation our guests are Francisco A. Santiago Cintrón and Sebastián Castrodad Reverón.  Francisco A. Santiago Cintrón was born in Guayama, Puerto Rico. He is an activist that currently forms part of Democracia Socialista and works as a labor lawyer. He is also the founder of the journal "Critica: Cuaderno de Discusión Política" Sebastián Castrodad Reverón, born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, is an organizer, documentarian, activist, and writer currently working out of Moca, Puerto Rico.

In this episode we interview Reverend Darren who is a minister in the Presbyterian Church USA in Wisconsin.  This conversation started as a text and google doc exchange around the story of Amalek within the Old Testament of the Christian Bible and the Tanakh, or the Hebrew Bible. We talk about how we should understand the relationship between these biblical stories and documented history, their relationship to the Gaza genocide, and how we might fit our analyses of these narratives into the relationship between US imperialism and zionism. Along the way, Darren engages with questions of faith practice, the relative absence - and silence - of particularly Euro-American liberal Christian congregations among those standing in defense of Palestinian lives, and Palestinian sovereignty. Darren also discusses how the gears of US fascism - called for in documents like Project 2025 and Project Esther, and being enacted through the Trump administration - are being lubricated by the absurd and ethically vacuous nature of US liberalism.  A couple things to mention, this conversation was recorded 10 days ago, so the 8th year anniversary episode we mentioned is currently out on our YouTube channel. In addition to reflections from Josh and myself, it featured special appearances from Stefano Harney, Renee Johnston, Fred Moten, Sina Rahmani, and Lara Sheehi This episode was also recorded before the 2nd anniversary of Tufan Al Aqsa and before the ceasefire agreement. We have episodes on the YouTube channel about those developments as well, one putting Abdaljawad Omar and Lara Sheehi in conversation together and the other with Nora Barrows-Friedman from Electronic Intifada and Sina Rahmani from the East is a Podcast. As always the absolute best way to support us and to help us continue to sustain our work and hopefully grow as a project is to become a patron of the show or support us through our BuyMeACoffee page. Shout-out to all the people who gave us a little something for our 8th anniversary. Related conversations: "The Book of Genocide" Nick Estes w/ Justin Podur  "The Crusades: Then & Now" MAKC with Adnan Husain "Christian ZIonism & Zionist Settler Colonial Ideology" MAKC with Adnan Husain The original background for the thumbnail image (slightly re-colored) is available here 

Abdaljawad Omar and Lara Sheehi joined us on the 2nd anniversary of the beginning of Tufan Al-Aqsa! From the youtube livestream (which I encourage people to watch): We will remember the morning of October 7th 2023. In the two years since then there has been a genocidal counterinsurgency war waged against the whole Palestinian population, most acutely through the apocalyptic decimation of the Gaza Strip. There has also been constant resistance in many forms. How do we consider the present moment, the possibilities (once again) of "ceasefire," the attempts to end the "Palestinian Question," the actuality of resistance and the possibilities for a resistance that will produce a liberated Palestine, and more broadly a world that we all want to inhabit. Remind yourself of some of the images from Tufan Al-Aqsa.  Abdaljawad Omar is a Palestinian scholar, educator, and theorist whose work focuses on the politics of resistance, decolonization, and the Palestinian struggle. He has written extensively in Arabic. In English, in addition to being a frequent contributor to Millennials Are Killing Capitalism, he has contributed to Electronic Intifada, Ebb Magazine, Material, Mondoweiss, Communis, Monthly Review, and Rusted Radishes among other outlets. Lara Sheehi is a Research Fllow at the University of South Africa. She was the founding faculty director of the Psychoanalysis and the Arab World Lab. Lara's work takes up decolonial and anti-oppressive approaches to psychoanalysis, with a focus on liberation struggles in the Global South. She is co-author with Stephen Sheehi of Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine (Routledge, 2022) which won the Middle East Monitor's 2022 Palestine Book Award for Best Academic Book. Lara is the author of the forthcoming book, From the Clinic to the Street: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures (Pluto Press, 2026) Support Palestinians through the Sameer Project or Lifeline4Gaza"

Recently the US Military has been bombing boats in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Venezuela. This marks a major escalation, and a new development in the US Empire's hybrid war on Venezuela that has been waged over the last 20 years. In this episode we speak with Joe Emersberger who along with Justin Podur authored the book Extraordinary Threat: The US Empire, the Media, and Twenty Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela for Monthly Review Press. "All Elements in Place for a US Strike on Venezuela" by Joe Emersberger and Richard Harris on Venezuelanalysis We talk about the origins of this tactic of aerial assassinations, its deployment in international waters, and whether we could see the US expand its assassination program to target government leaders like Nicolas Maduro as we have seen the so-called state of Israel do - with full US backing - across West Asia. We also discuss the merging of war on drugs policies with the policies of the war on terror, and contextualize these so-called wars. Finally, we talk about some of the dynamics that hem in progressive and socialistic projects in Latin America, using Joe's long engagement with Ecuador as an example. Joe Emersberger is based in Canada. He is co-author of Extraordinary Threat: The US Empire, the Media, and Twenty Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela. His work can be found on Substack "Unedited Anti-Imperialism". Older articles of his can be found on VenezuelAnalysis, Counterpunch, Fair.org, Znet and Mint Press News As always if you like the work that we do, the best way to support the show is through either to become a patron of the show at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism or through either an ongoing pledge or one time donation through BuyMeACoffee.

In this episode, we speak with Iker Suárez, who authored a searing piece in the Monthly Review titled "The Migrant Genocide: Toward a Third World Analysis of European Class Struggle." In it, he challenges the dominant humanitarian framing of migrant deaths at sea, arguing that it isn't a moral crisis but a structural necessity of late imperialism. What unfolds on Europe's shores, he contends, is but a violent expression of global capital's unraveling. Further, diving into the works of scholars like Ali Kadri and Samir Amin, we explore how unresolved agrarian contradictions in the Global South, the accumulation of waste, and the labor-capital contradiction are converging in the form of the systemic genocide of migrants. We unpack why immigration is not a peripheral issue, but the return of capital's deepest contradiction to the imperial core—and how this rupture shapes Europe's ideological terrain, from the failures of social democracy to the rise of fascism. Iker Suarez is an author and doctoral researcher. He studies neocolonialism in Europe and organizes in socialist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist movements in Madrid and New York. His work revolves around European borders, class struggle, and immigration politics from a political economy perspective grounded in the Third World. He co-authored a book on Spain's southern border enclave in northern Morocco (Melilla), focusing on the neocolonial dynamics that undergird European social democracies. His current research focuses on linking European state racism with a holistic understanding of imperialism to better think through strategy. You can follow his work at @ikersuarz. If you like what we do and want to support our ability to have more conversations like this. Please consider becoming a Patron. You can do so for as little as a 1 Dollar a month.  Related: "War Is the Basis of Accumulation" - Ali Kadri on Genocide, Waste, Imperialism, and the Commodification of Death Study Group Ali Kadri's Accumulation of Waste (only about 5 spots left)

This is an episode recorded this week with Tara Alami to talk about a piece she wrote about Jordan for Vox Ummah last Spring. The essay's title is "The Price of Peace" and it delves into Jordan's role within the US-Imperialist led world system. And Alami discusses the history of the Hashemite monarchy, and the political legacy of Jordanian rulers with respect to Palestinians, Zionist colonizers, and western imperialism. This discussion gets into many of the contradictions of the history of Jordan, Tara's own family history as Palestinians living in Jordan, as well as her personal history as a student there. And she talks about the ideology promoted by the state, the enticement to maintain fealty to the monarchy, and the role Jordan plays as a buffer state in the region.   Tara Alami is a Palestinian writer & researcher from occupied Jerusalem and occupied Yafa. Check out Tara's substack as well. A reminder that on October 1st we launch our study group on Dr. Ali Kadri's The Accumulation of Waste: A Political Economy of Systemic Destruction. It's available to everyone who supports the show. There are only about 25 spots left in the group as we publish this, so if you want to join us, make sure you do so ASAP to reserve your space.  As always if you like the work that we do, the best way to support the show is through either to be come a patron of the show at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism or through either an ongoing pledge or one time donation through BuyMeACoffee

In this discussion we talk with Professor Corinna Mullin who is a member of the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective.  Corinna Mullin is an anti-imperialist academic who teaches political science and economics. Her research examines the historical legacies of colonialism and the role of capitalist expansion and imperialist imbrications in producing peripheral state "security dependency," with a focus on unequal exchange, super-exploitation, resource extraction, and other forms of surplus value drain/transfer as well as resistance. Corinna has also researched and published academic works on border imperialism, struggles around the colonial-capitalist university, fascism, multipolarity, and national liberation, with a focus on the Maghreb, West Asia, and Turtle Island. Corinna was a member of the Steering Committee for the International Peoples' Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism and organizes with CUNY for Palestine and Labor for Palestine. She serves on the Steering Committee of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC)-CUNY's International Committee and is a member of the Delegate Assembly. Full bio from AISC. In this discussion we primarily discuss her piece, Zionism, Imperialism, and the Struggle Against Global Fascism: Palestine as the 'Hornet's Nest' of US Empire from the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective blog The Pen Is My Machete  And a little bit on her piece The 'War on Terror' as Primitive Accumulation in Tunisia: US-Led Imperialism and the Post-2010-2011 Revolt/Security Conjuncture from Middle East Critique  Also I say more about this in the episode, but Dr. Mullin was fired from CUNY as a result of her stance and organizing with respect to Palestine. We will include a statement from AISC on this and a Statement in Solidarity with CUNY Faculty and Students Facing McCarthyite Retaliation for Palestine Solidarity which we have signed.  There are also a number of other calls to action for faculty and students at CUNY that we will include in the show description. Corinna talks about those at the end of the episode and we strongly encourage folks to support those calls to action it only takes a minute of your time. In this discussion Dr. Mullin talks a little bit about Dr. Ali Kadri's The Accumulation of Waste: A Political Economy of Systemic Destruction and it just so happens that we have a study group on that exact book starting on October 1st, it's available to everyone who supports the show, whether through patreon, BuyMeACoffee or as a YouTube member of the show. Details on that study group and how to join it are linked in the show description. But just to note that there are only about 40 spots left in the group as we publish this, so if you want to join us, make sure you do so ASAP to reserve your space. Calls to Action:  "Hadeeqa Arzoo Malik is being made an example of for the sake of setting the tone across the nation at public universities, as they seek further control over the student movement for Palestine. City College President Vincent Boudreau has already denied her appeal for a drop to the charges, without even an acknowledgement to the 2,000+ calls and emails from the community that demanded her reinstatement. Now, it is time to escalate both our tactics against CUNY and whom we pressure— Take it to the Board of Trustees. Your rage is needed to make it loud and clear that CUNY's repression will not go uninterrupted.  CALL CUNY STUDENT AFFAIRS: 646-664-8800 EMAIL THE BOT: https://tinyurl.com/Defendhadeeqaarzoo" Free Tarek Bazrouk! Tarek is a 20-year-old Palestinian from NYC, unjustly convicted of federal charges stemming from his participation in protests against the genocide in Gaza. "Demand Immediate Reinstatement of Terminated Adjunct Faculty and Defend Academic Freedom Send a letter to Brooklyn College President Michelle Anderson, CUNY Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez, and CUNY Board Chairperson William Thompson urging them to reinstate the fired adjunct faculty and protect the rights of CUNY students and workers who stand in solidarity with Palestine. The targeting of these individuals is part of a broader assault on higher education and academic freedom. Their fight is our fight—silencing them is an attack on us all. Send your letter here ➔" Sanctuary & Popular University Network (SPUN statement & instagram) Related conversations: War is the Basis of Accumulation with Ali Kadri Charisse Burden-Stelly on Black Scare/Red Scare  Link to the latest issue of Middle East Critique & the conversation with Matteo Capasso   "Attica Is an Ongoing Structure of Revolt" - Orisanmi Burton on Tip of the Spear, Black Radicalism, Prison Rebellion, and the Long Attica Revolt  Heading Towards Invasion? The US Empire's Campaign Against Venezuela with José Luis Granados Ceja  Palestine's Great Flood with Max Ajl