The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 151
Click here to listen

What is "Woke"? What is its relationship to "Social Justice"? Why did so many people explain Woke as "Critical Social Justice" for several years? In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay takes you into the book that first opened his eyes to what "Woke" really is: Ozlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo's Is Everyone Really Equal? (first edition). This book could truly serve as an eye-opening "Woke for Dummies" guide to where Woke comes from, what it really means by "Social Justice," and how it thinks about the world. It, like all Woke books, is also a Woke grimoire, drawing the reader in and putting a Woke "spell" on her as she reads it and considers its contents. Join James for his introduction of this book to you, so you can better grasp the basics of Woke Marxism.

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 150
Click here to listen!

Cultural Marxism is a challenging term that refers to a broad Leftist social phenomenon that took place in the West through the twentieth century into the present. Based upon but modifying the Communist religion of Karl Marx, Western (Cultural) Marxism sought to find a way to infiltrate and seize the means of production of Western Civilizational culture in the hopes of opening it up to socialism (or Communism). In the 1910s through the 1930s, the Western Marxist movement truly was a Cultural Marxism. From the 1930s to the 1970s, this line of thinking was developed primarily by the Frankfurt School, which developed Critical Theory, or Critical Marxism, sometimes referred to as Neo-Marxism. Since the 1970s, it has gone Woke, adopting Intersectionality as a form of American Maoism. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay offers a thorough beginner's overview of the whole of Cultural Marxism in four parts: Marxism and the relevant historical context; Cultural Marxism; Critical Marxism; and Woke Marxism, connecting the highlights of this movement to the challenges of the present day. Join him and share this with your friends who are looking for a good starting place to learn about his work!

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 149
Click here to listen!

Vladimir Lenin established the Bolshevik Party in 1912 to seize control of the socialist movement in Russia and to plan and execute a violent revolution against the Tsar, and by 1917 he was successful in this attack. Also in 1917, on the eve of his victory, he wrote his thoughts about the organization of the state and how the revolution should proceed, both to box out his socialist competitors and to establish a theoretical baseline drawing from Marx and Engels for how to organize what became the Soviet Union. That document bears the title The State and Revolution, and in this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay reads through the first chapter of Lenin's key work to expose to you what Bolshevik Communists think a state exists to do: repression. Join him to learn how history today is rhyming with Lenin's evil.

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 148
Click here to listen now!

Karl Marx characterized Communism as "the negation of the negation," which is a peculiar turn of phrase he borrowed from his theoretical predecessor G.W.F. Hegel. What that means is that propertied societies, whether slave, feudal, or capitalist, negate our innate Communist ("social") nature, and then Communism in turn negates capitalism as the highest form of development of the productive organizational modes of society. Well, the negation of the negation experiment was run in various parts of the world through the 20th century and failed everywhere, and what we learned is that the negation of the negation is actually either collapse and then control by an oligarchy or, in other cases, Fascism. These two can be synthesized to create a negation of the negation of the negation, so to speak, that takes Communism as the theoretical ideal and "basic spirit" of historical development while utilizing Fascism as its practical mode of production, and that's exactly what we see in China following the rise of Deng Xiaoping. It's also exactly what we see in the West under the ESG scoring model for corporate behavior and the United Nations Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals that it services. In this important episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay makes the development of "Communism 3.0," a Corporatist Communism for the 21st century clear. You won't want to miss it.

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 147
Click here to listen now!

We're hearing a lot about "joy" now that the Kamala Harris and Tim Walz campaign have made it a byword of their project, so we have to ask what they mean by it. We all know, by this point, that Communists share your vocabulary but do not share your dictionary. So what might they mean by "joy"? Well, it appears what they mean by joy is "radical joy," which is a kind of religious ecstasy associated with believing they are going to accomplish Communism, or at least their revolution. Radical joy is rooted in "critical hope" together with a certain anger, hatred, and libido dominandi, all as expressions of "erotic" energy seeking liberation. In Herbert Marcuse's words, it is "the joy of rebellious victims." In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay walks you through a variety of Marxist sources to discuss the concept of "radical joy" and reveal it for what it is. Join him to see through the mask of "joy"!