Link Roundup: February 11

Another link roundup! Excuse my radio silence last week, I was going completely out of my mind watching the “results” of the Iowa caucus. Or lack thereof. Whee! I’m now on a self-imposed moratorium when it comes to Iowa (cut to my friends and family breathing a sigh of relief) but luckily I did record a podcast at perhaps the height of my madness, with some Flood friends who were in a similar state, and you can listen to it here.

Now we move onto other things. I found this piece on ‘The pitfalls of symbolic decolonisation’ to be extremely sensible and useful. Decolonisation is a bit of a buzzword on the left at the moment, but as Mukoma wa Ngugi argues. “decolonization that does not address economic inequality will be meaningless.” He is writing from an African perspective, but I think the framing is useful to Australians, too.

“Symbolic decolonization is useful, but it is also useless without material decolonization ... Therefore, yes, let us decolonize the universities but let us also make sure that they are paying their fair share of taxes in the towns and countries they are in. Rename the streets, but also struggle for economic justice—that means calling for redistribution of wealth.”

Congratulations to our comrades in the Republic of Ireland for delivering an election result that did NOT make me feel afraid and sick to my stomach! (A new sensation for me recently.) Next time just make sure you run a candidate in every seat, mmkay? Anyway, if you weren’t already an expert on Irish politics, here’s Dawn Foster explaining it for you in Jacobin. I also recommend Novara’s coverage and discussion in a recent Tysky Sour.

Alright FINE, two bits of Bernie content just to keep you (me) going. Ryan Grim at The Intercept has been pumping out the good stuff over the past few weeks and actually I recommend everything he’s written, but a day before the New Hampshire primary, this piece on youth movement organising in NH was awe-inspiring. Also, this piece on why Medicare For All matters left me with tears in my eyes (especially the last lines).

I really enjoyed this piece by Zhandarka Kurti on ‘Warding off Loneliness at Walmart’. It’s a funny and affecting portrait of the ‘mall culture’ of America’s outer suburbs, which manages to capture both the exploitation of mega-corporations like Walmart and the crucial role they play in providing a space for basic social life, especially for the working class:

“The featured Walmart shoppers are the poor, the overweight, the under-dressed, generally photographed in awkward positions or carting around exotic pet animals ... It’s no wonder, NPR recently termed Walmart the “high-def pageant of popular culture”where the strange realities of American social life make themselves visible.”

Finally, a bit of healthy self-promotion to round out this … roundup. Last week saw the debut episode of our new three-part series ‘Flood Summer Nights’, a broad political education series aimed at defining (broadly) the problem, the aim, and the strategy. In this first show, we defined the problem, i.e. I got Dave and Robbie to explain capitalism. Worth a listen!