Return to Bandung

In this episode, I’m joined by returning guests Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert, both Venezuela-based scholars and Chavista activists, to provide an update from on the ground six months after the United States’ illegal invasion and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro in January. We discuss the current state of the Bolivarian Revolution, the challenges facing Acting President Delcy Rodrí...

In this episode, I’m joined by Ashwin Shantha, PhD student in politics at York University and host of the International Solidarity Podcast , to discuss their recent article “ China’s Green Development is Both Anti-Imperialist and Socialist .” We explore the history and current state of China’s green industrialization, its implications for energy sovereignty in China and across the Global South, an...

In this episode, I’m joined by David Ramírez Álvarez, Second Secretary and cultural attaché at the Embassy of Cuba to the United States in Washington, D.C., to talk about the history of Cuba’s socialist revolution and the ongoing fight to defend it in the face of escalating imperialist aggression from the United States. We discuss the history and effects of the blockade, the current situation on t...

In this episode, I’m joined by Peter Mertens, general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB), to discuss the current situation and future outlook of the European left. We discuss the PTB’s meteoric rise as one of the most prominent and fastest-growing left-wing parties in Europe today, the fight against a rising tide of militarism and far-right nationalism, and the role of parliamentary...

In this episode, I’m joined by Marxist theorist and anti-imperialist revolutionary Torkil Lauesen, author of numerous books including The Principal Contradiction (Kersplebedeb, 2020) and Unequal Exchange: Past, Present, and Future (Iskra Books, 2025), to discuss the challenges and contradictions of anti-imperialist resistance in the imperial core. We explore key concepts such as the labor aristocr...

In this episode, I’m joined by Alexander Aviña, historian of Mexico and associate professor of Latin American history at Arizona State University, to discuss imperialism and anti-imperialist resistance in Mexico. We discuss the long history of revolutionary struggles in Mexico, the imperial origins and present-day violence of the U.S.-Mexico border, and how Mexico’s relationship with the United St...

In this episode, I’m joined by guest host Ashwin Shantha of the Journal of International Solidarity podcast to interview Gabriel Rockhill, professor of philosophy at Villanova University and author of Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? (Monthly Review Press, 2025) about how the ‘imperial theory industry’ has served to undermine actually-existing socialist projects and national liberation stru...

In this episode, I’m joined by Guillaume Long, former Foreign Minister of Ecuador and current Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, to discuss the ‘Monroe Doctrine’ and its role in shaping the trajectory of U.S. imperialism in Latin America. We discuss the history of this foreign policy doctrine, its evolution over the last two centuries, and why it is so important...

In this episode, I’m joined once again by Ashwin Shantha, host of the Journal of International Solidarity podcast, to revisit a crucial but often-overlooked episode in international left history—the 1920 debate between Vladimir Lenin and the Indian Communist leader M.N. Roy over the national and colonial question. In this conversation, posted as a collaborative episode with the Journal of Internat...

In this episode, I’m joined by Laleh Khalili, Professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter and author of Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula (Verso, 2020), to discuss the incredibly important but often-overlooked role of international shipping and logistics in the capitalist-imperialist world system. We discuss how the global shipping industry relates...

In this episode, I’m joined by intellectual historian Sam Klug, author of The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization (University of Chicago Press, 2025), to discuss the idea of ‘internal colonialism’ as it applies to the situation of African Americans and other racialized peoples in the United States. We explore how this concept developed within the Black radical...

In this episode, I’m joined by political theorist Adom Getachew, author of Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton University Press, 2019), to discuss the politics of ‘anticolonial worldmaking’ that swept across the Third World throughout the latter half of the 20th century, when Global South leaders envisioned new ways of radically reshaping the international...

For this special one-year anniversary episode of Return to Bandung , I’m joined by my comrade Ashwin Shantha to discuss our shared project of anti-imperialist political education. In this conversation, posted as a collaborative episode with Ashwin’s excellent International Solidarity Podcast (itself a part of Ashwin’s larger Journal of International Solidarity project), we explore the importance o...

In this episode, I’m joined by scholars Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert, coauthors of Venezuela, The Present as Struggle: Voices from the Bolivarian Revolution (Monthly Review Press, 2020), to discuss the history and current situation of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. Situating our discussion in the context of escalating imperialist attacks against Venezuela’s socialist project, this w...

In this episode, I’m joined by economic anthropologist Jason Hickel, author of The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets (W.W. Norton, 2018), to discuss the complex and interconnected relationship between imperialism—both past and present—and global economic inequality. We examine why mainstream liberal frameworks for understanding the divide between rich and poor countries inevi...

This is the recording of a lecture that I gave in July at the Socialism 2025 conference in Chicago, titled “‘This is the Human Race Speaking…’: Reviving the Bandung Spirit in a Multipolar World.” In the lecture, which I also published as an essay on Substack, I reflect on the 70th anniversary of the Bandung Conference and the legacies of the Third Worldist movement, arguing that the global left—pa...

In this episode, I’m joined by Pawel Wargan, Coordinator of the Secretariat of the Progressive International, to discuss the past, present, and future of left internationalism and international solidarity. In this wide-ranging conversation, we unpack what ‘internationalism’ really means, how debates over internationalism have evolved on the left over time, and what a politics of solidarity across...

In this episode, I’m joined by critical development economist Jayati Ghosh to discuss the complex relationship between imperialism and international development. In this wide-ranging conversation, we explore the problematic assumptions underlying mainstream ideas of ‘development,’ why GDP is a profoundly inadequate measure of a country’s economic well-being, and how the globalization of the intern...

In this episode, I’m joined by Samar Al-Bulushi, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UC Irvine and author of War-Making as World-Making: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror (Stanford University Press, 2024), to discuss how the United States outsources the violence of empire to countries in the Global South—particularly in Africa—in the context of the War on Terror. Focusing on Kenya...

In this episode, I’m joined by Hafsa Kanjwal, Professor of South Asian History at Lafayette College and author of Colonizing Kashmir: State-building Under Indian Occupation (Stanford University Press, 2023), to discuss the long and complex history of colonization and resistance in Kashmir. We explore how the rights and agency of the Kashmiri people have been denied for decades by the Indian state’...

In this episode, I’m joined by Priyamvada Gopal, Professor of Postcolonial Studies at the University of Cambridge and author of Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent (Verso, 2019), to discuss the complicated and often fraught politics of decolonization. We explore how the idea of ‘decolonization’ has evolved over time, the many and often contradictory meanings that this ter...

In this episode, I’m joined by critical development economists Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa Region Director for Research and Policy at the International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs), and Farwa Sial, Asia Region Director for Research and Policy at IDEAS, to discuss the international financial system and its role in upholding empire. We explore how this system has been structurally designe...

In this episode, I’m joined by Tim Sahay, co-director of Johns Hopkins University’s Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab and co-editor of Phenomenal World ’s The Polycrisis newsletter, to discuss the many interconnected crises facing our world today, from the climate crisis to the rise of the authoritarian far-right to the collapse of the liberal international order—an intersection that some have termed...

In this episode, I’m joined by Radhika Desai, professor in the Department of Political Studies and director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group at the University of Manitoba, to discuss dollar imperialism and the key role that the U.S. dollar plays in upholding American dominance on the world stage. We dig into the history of the dollar system from the early 20th century onwards, examining...

In this episode, I’m joined by Netfa Freeman, Coordinating Committee member of the Black Alliance for Peace and Co-Coordinator of BAP’s Africa team, to discuss the history of imperialism and anticolonial resistance in West Africa, with a specific focus on the developments in the Sahel region over the last few years. Examining the ongoing legacies of French colonialism and neocolonialism in this re...