Savage Minds Podcast (private feed for wylesie@hotmail.com)

Nina Power

Nina Power, writer and editor, discusses the collapse of the left-right divide that has characterised the contemporary era of political thought, along with the exhaustion of concepts that have plagued Western discourse. Analysing the “perpetual present” where hyperbole dominates mainstream discussions, such that “Nazi” and “fascist” are lazily involved to such a degree that these terms and their signified have become virtually meaningless, Power notes the political divide today, which is drawn between those who stand on principle and those who do not. In an era where asking certain questions will mark the subject, Power analyses the mechanisms within society today that have vested interests in repressing free speech, such that today approximately thirty people a day are arrested within the UK for their written words and even their thoughts (for praying outside abortion clinics). Power notes the current cultural focus upon semiotic violence that punishes the subject more severely than actual violence, while observing that this “semiotic psychosis” lends more weight to words than to reality and truth, fomenting a “conceptual, abstract terror.” Weighing in on those who have engaged in impassioned speech, such as the online post made by Lucy Connolly in the wake of the Southport killings which led to her imprisonment and an ensuing row over free speech in the UK, Power questions the lack of clemency for those who have been caught up in the legal clash between laws that ostensibly guarantee freedom of expression and opposing laws which denote certain speech as “hate speech.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Charles LeBaron

In this episode, Charles LeBaron, a former Center for Disease Control (CDC) epidemiologist, discusses his recent book, Greed to Do Good: The Untold Story of CDC's Disastrous War on Opioids: A CDC Physician's Personal Account (Amplify Publishing, 2024). LeBaron discusses the nationwide opioid crisis which has left, over the past two decades, a million Americans dead from opioid overdoses while noting how each year there are now twice as many deaths from overdoses as from breast cancer or colon cancer and more deaths than from automobiles and firearms combined. Noting how the implementation of CDC interventions had the paradoxical effect of “turbocharging the opioid epidemic,” LeBaron carefully analyses what went wrong, the gross improprieties conducted by Big Pharmaceutical companies, and how bad policy led to the opioid crisis in America. A physician who has seen first-hand the impact of opioids on the poor populations he treated in Appalachia and in prison, LeBaron sheds light on the class and status discriminations that are part and parcel of the wrong-minded approach to drug addiction in the United States that has riddled the country’s history. Fundamentally, LeBaron argues for a better and more scientific approach to addressing the crisis while detailing the country’s dysfunctional system in handling the crisis and analysing some working models that might actually improve the situation. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Olivia Guaraldo

In questa puntata, Olivia Guaraldo, professoressa ordinaria di filosofia politica presso il Dipartimento di Scienze Umane all’Università di Verona, discute il libro scritto in collaborazione con Adriana Cavarero, Donna si nasce (2024), che offre uno sguardo al femminismo e ai concetti di “donna” e “gender” da Simone de Beauvoir ai giorni nostri. Guaraldo storicizza concetti come “patriarcato” e “differenza sessuale”, soffermandosi su come queste valenze siano state mutuate dall’antropologia culturale, assorbite dal femminismo e poi complicate con l’introduzione dell’“identità di gender” nei paesi prevalentemente anglofoni. Analizzando il discorso dei “diritti” in Occidente a partire dalla Rivoluzione francese, Guaraldo discute di come il pensiero moderno sia stato plasmato da un orizzonte simbolico in cui i soggetti maschili erano di fatto soggetti di “liberazione”, mentre le donne venivano invariabilmente eclissate. Approfondendo il paradosso secondo cui i diritti “universali” concessi nel corso del XVIII e XIX secolo erano specificamente rivolti agli uomini, mai all’altra metà della popolazione umana, dove gli uomini erano “la misura dell’umano”, Guaraldo evidenzia anche alcune delle differenze tra il femminismo italiano e francese e il femminismo anglo-americano, dove il primo presenta un femminismo della differenza e il secondo un femminismo dell’“uguaglianza”, e dove i diritti conquistati sono invariabilmente pagati con il prezzo dell’“assimilazione” postulata all’interno di un “modello neutro” in cui i diritti della persona vengono assunti sul corpo (ad esempio, diritti riproduttivi, accesso all’aborto, ecc.) e dove le conquiste sono sempre parziali. Guaraldo sottolinea anche l’attuale paradosso socio-politico in cui il linguaggio della differenza e del gender, così come inscritto dal poststrutturalismo francese nella seconda metà del XX secolo, ha portato a un nuovo dogmatismo e a una rigidità sociale tale per cui le giovani generazioni di donne si stanno opponendo al definirsi “donne” a causa della deliberata diluizione del significato del linguaggio. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Christian Parenti

Christian Parenti, Professor of Economics at John Jay College, City University of New York and author of Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder (Verso, 2020), returns to the show with a searing analysis of the US political scene and various international theatres. Kicking off with an evaluation of the Trump v2.0 administration, Parenti reviews some of Trump’s pre-presidential promises, from the Jeffrey Epstein file dump that was vastly redacted to Trump’s enthralment with the Israeli lobby. Delving into the Israeli lobby, deeply entrenched within the US government, Parenti notes that this “lobby” is much more than simply monetary, and suggests that it is much more entrenched within the US political system. Parenti also develops a deeper examination of the war in Ukraine and the “demonology” of Russia within legacy media that has taken up the Cold War era model of anti-Communism by eliding the fact that some of Ukraine’s oblasts (Donetsk and Luhansk) are still occupied by Ukrainian Nazis. Observing how the domestic pressure upon Putin is coming from the Communists and the far-right parties, both highly critical of Putn’s longstanding abandonment of the Russian people who have been militarily occupied by Ukrainian forces wearing swastikas, Parentis evidences the machinations within the US proxy war against Russia from its provisions of munitions to Ukraine to the Ukrainian government’s banning the Russian language in 2019 and Law 5371 which denies unionisation, exempting workers in companies with fewer than 250 employees from the coverage of collective agreements. Parenti also discusses the situation of free speech in the United States that is currently being eroded, specifically regarding any criticism of both the Israeli government and Zionism, as he explores the broader questions of academic freedom and anti-war sentiment within American universities where today the managerial class of university administrators within these institutions outnumbers faculty while itinerant workers with PhDs, the adjunct class, provide approximately 78% of all university teaching. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Ilan Pappé

Ilan Pappé, Israeli historian and professor of history at the University of Exeter, discusses the tragic situation of Palestinians who, for many decades, have been the circumstantial victims of a larger global coalition because their existence was “in the way” of other geo-political machinations. Giving a brief history of Zionism in Palestine, Pappé outlines the early alliances made between various groups, all composed of different members with entirely different motives—often contradictory reasons, to include the cooperation between secular nationalist and religious anti-Semites—who came together with one common goal: to see Palestine as a Jewish state and to expunge Palestinians from their land. Mapping out the various forces that wished to symbolically and/or physically disappear Palestinians, Pappé notes how Christian Zionists and British imperialists weaponised Zionism and Islamophobia to change the demographics of the region while later secular Jews understood the power of utilising anti-Semitism to seek similar ends. Pappé also forays into the paradox of language which has been used to cover up certain actions on behalf of the Israeli state while also providing a “comfort zone” for extending these same abuses of power into the future. Exposing how language has historically been employed to cover up war crimes, Pappé elucidates the current paradigm whereby it is no longer necessary for Israel to cover up its crimes against humanity analysing the shift in political discourse and the tragic reality that the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has now been firmly placed on the table. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe