Know Your Enemy30 Apr 2022

The Right Kind of Worker (w/ Gabriel Winant)

Since Donald Trump was elected president — partially on the strength of white working class support in the Rust Belt — we've heard that the GOP is a working class party; that liberals sold out American labor to globalized capital; and that American workers are too socially and culturally conservative to remain within the increasingly progressive Democratic tent. According to the populist right, the culture war is itself a class war, waged on behalf of real workers against a secular, libertine professional elite who control the commanding heights of the economy, government, and media.

What's wrong with this story? Labor historian and essayist Gabriel Winant joins Matt and Sam to answer that question. Using Gabe's award-winning book The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America as a guide, we tell a different story about working class formation in this country, about the forces that led to the decline of America's industrial base, and about the prospects for renewing labor's power relative to capital. Along the way, we take on figures of the newly labor-curious right — Oren Cass, Sohrab Ahmari, and others — explaining how their vision is based on ideologically motivated elisions that seek to resolve rather than energize class conflict. It's a hot one, folks!

Further Reading:

Gabriel Winant, "We Live in a Society," n+1, Dec 12, 2020

— "Professional-Managerial Chasm," n+1, Oct 10, 2019

— "Coronavirus and Chronopolitics" n+1, Spring 2020.

— "Strike Wave," New Left Review, Nov 25, 2021.

Sohrab Ahmari, "How America Kneecapped Its Unions," Compact, Mar 31, 2022.

Julius Krein, "The Real Class War," American Affairs, Nov 20, 2019.

Alexander Riley, "Labor Betrayed by the Progressive Left," Chronicles, Mar 2022.

Landon R.Y. Storrs, The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left, Princeton U Press, 2012.

Melinda Cooper, Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism Zone Books, 2017.

Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America, 2001. Oxford U Press. 2001.

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(266)

The Seven Year Anniversary Mailbag Episode

Not only was May 6th the seven-year anniversary of Know Your Enemy, an occasion to celebrate your support of our work, but it's been nearly a year since we last opened the mailbag and answered listene...

11 Maj 1h 16min

Reasons To Believe [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy. REMINDER: COME SEE KYE x MIKE DUNCAN LIVE IN NYC Given the string of recent episodes that, in various ways, grap...

4 Maj 4min

Peter Thiel and the Antichrist

Over the course of the past year, Peter Thiel—the Trump backing, Vance boosting gay tech billionaire—has been delivering a series of lectures on the Antichrist, using an examination of the Biblical an...

27 Apr 1h 30min

The Pope and the President [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy. Once more we take up religion and politics, this time a conversation about President Donald Trump's attacks on P...

17 Apr 4min

The Bund: Fighting Fascism, Fighting Zionism (w/ Molly Crabapple)

In 1897, a small group of Jewish Marxists on the outskirts of the Russian empire founded the General Jewish Labour Bund. The Bundists were revolutionary socialists, unapologetic internationalists, cha...

10 Apr 1h 25min

Misogyny, MAGA-style [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy. Last month, our very own Sam Adler-Bell published a deeply reported article in New York magazine about "the wome...

1 Apr 5min

From Neocon to Never-Trump (w/ Bill Kristol)

There’s perhaps no living person who better embodies the themes, contradictions, ethos, and pathos of “Know Your Enemy” than William Kristol, this week’s guest. Today, Kristol is editor-at-large of Th...

23 Mars 1h 10min

James Talarico and the Politics of Progressive Christianity [Teaser]

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy. In this episode, we shift our attention from the Trump administration to the winner of the Democratic primary fo...

16 Mars 4min