A critical reading of “The Wisdom of Kandiaronk, The Indigenous Critique, the Myth of Progress and the Birth of the Left” from David Graeber & David Wengrow’s upcoming book The Dawn of Everything. In this chapter Graeber & Wengrow argue... Continue Reading →

WHAT IS POLITICS?

10. David Graeber & David Wengrow’s The “Dawn of Everything”: The Wisdom of Kandiaronk

What would happen if you could end sexism overnight by giving everyone a magic pink pill? Why we need to target material and practical conditions if we want to eliminate cultural hierarchies. A thought experiment about political strategy which lays... Continue Reading →

7.1. Pink Pilled: Why You Can’t Eliminate Sexism Just by Changing Culture

Interview with Arnold Schroeder of Fight Like an Animal, a wonderful and endessly fascinating show that looks through 20 years of experience of hardcore climate activism, at why left political movements are so weak and ineffective and how to change... Continue Reading →

Interview: Fight Like an Animal / Arnold Schroeder

The terms “cancel culture” and “political correctness” are used to delegitimize ideas like gender equality and racial equality by conflating them with toxic dominance behaviour practiced by up-and-coming elites who disguise their power plays in egalitarian social justice language. In... Continue Reading →

Spitball Session 2: Cancel Culture is Corporate Management Culture

The foundation of “cancel culture” and “political correctness” is the wage labour employment contract. ARTICLES QUOTED: Corey Robin, Chris Bertram and Alex Gourevitch 2012 – Life at Work, Crooked Timber Amanda Hess 2013 – How Sexy Should A Worker Be?... Continue Reading →

Spitball session: Cancel Culture is Your Boss

Human beings have free will, but our actions are constrained by material realities.  Understanding how material and practical conditions shape human behaviour can make all the difference between success and catastrophic failure when it comes to the whole spectrum of... Continue Reading →

8. Free Will vs. Material Reality: Haudenosaunee Women / the Suffragettes / the Double V Campaign / The English Peasant’s Revolt of 1381 / The Anarchist Revolution in Spain 1936-39

Why are hierarchy and male dominance so prevalent in human societies?  According to anthropologists David Graeber & David Wengrow, it’s because people were “self-consciously experimenting with different social possibilities,” and then we somehow got stuck this way.  Meanwhile according to... Continue Reading →

7. The Origin of Hierarchy and Male Dominance: why David Graeber and Jordan Peterson are wrong

Everywhere we look, past and present we see hierarchical societies where some people have more wealth, more power, and more rights than others.  Was this always the state of the human world?  Is hierarchy in our nature?  Are egalitarian societies... Continue Reading →

6. Political Anthropology: Why Communism Worked

This episode is for everyone who keeps writing to me to insist that one or the other wrong, incoherent, popular definitions of Left and Right is actually the correct one.   How do we know the left and right refer... Continue Reading →

5. Who’s Who on the Left and Right: 1789-1917

Why police get away with murder, why their budgets keep inflating while other services keep getting cut, why we suddenly have the power to do something about it, and how we can use that power. tweeter: @worbsintowords YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/WHATISPOLITICS69 Patreon:... Continue Reading →

Bleep Bloop: police, protestors and power

Definitions of political terms affect what we see and don’t see in the world around us, and turn us into effective or ineffective communicators and political actors. The definition of government that journalists and academics use makes us blind to... Continue Reading →

4. Definitions and Perception: right-wing vs. left-wing definitions of political terms

This series aims to make sense out of the political muddle that we've inherited from media, academia, and decades of cold war propaganda, so that we can figure what’s happening all around us, and what we can do about it.

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WHAT IS POLITICS?

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