The Radicalist

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theradicalist.com Kris Goldsmith is an Iraq War combat veteran who came home from serving as a forward observer in the slums of Baghdad only to realize he had signed up after 9/11 but never had a chance to do the job he was trained to do. When he came home, he fought in veteran advocacy for 15 years before using his military trainin...

The writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once said, “The duty of the survivor is to bear testimony to what happened. You have to warn people that these things can happen, that evil can be unleashed. Race hatred, violence, idolatries—they still flourish.” Yet the history of the word holocaust itself tells the story of our collective refusal to learn this lesson. This feels to me the proper way...

Yevgeny Simkin is a contributor at The Bulwark and co-founder of Samizdat Online . During the Soviet Union, samizdat was the grassroots practice of evading censorship by reproducing banned publications, often by hand. Samizdat Online is the digital incarnation of this practice, publishing articles from an array of outlets while bypassing firewalls and protecting readers’ anonymity to bring truth t...

We can defeat Hamas on the battlefield, but we must also fight the rot in Palestinians culture, and in our own, that embraces such ideologies. We must counter those who think Vladimir Lenin, Adolf Hitler, Hamas, and Osama bin Laden are the good guys. These people are our enemies. Thankfully for us, the truth is their enemy. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscri...

In the wake of the October 7 massacre in Israel, we have seen pro-Hamas activists on the political left celebrate the atrocities. The problem of left antisemitism seems worse now than ever before, or perhaps it has always been lurking just beneath the surface and now the mask has finally slipped. This week, I spoke with the British sociologist David Hirsh , a senior lecturer at Goldsmiths, Univers...

There can be no more essential reading now than the 2018 book Contemporary Left Antisemitism by the British sociologist David Hirsh, whose brings to the subject the level of academic rigor required to truly unpack and understand the issue. It is astonishing to see how perfectly Hirsh outlined everything we see before us now. For anyone paying attention to the protests in the West and pro-Hamas rhe...

Geoffrey Cain is an award-winning foreign correspondent and scholar of East Asia. His first book, Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech , is the definitive text on the world’s largest tech conglomerate. His second book, The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future , is th...

Arash Azizi is a writer and historian whose commentary has been published in The New York Times , New York Review of Books , The Washington Post , Newsweek , BBC, Haaretz , The Daily Beast , Guardian , Vanity Fair , The Nation ,  Al-Jazeera , and more. He holds a PhD in history and Middle Eastern studies from NYU, where his dissertation examined the communist movement in the Middle East during the...

In this episode, I brought Razib Khan, writer in population genetics and consumer genomics, back on the show to discuss the genetics of Israelis and Palestinians. Razib explains the genetic differences between various Jewish communities as well as the differences between people from the West Bank and from Gaza. We discuss which groups are most closely tied to the region, where other groups involve...

In this episode, I explain my personal connection to Israel, discuss how recent events prove the argument I made that got me fired from The Seattle Times , reflect on my feelings of betrayal by those on the left who have celebrated atrocity in recent weeks, and by those in journalism who helped bring us to this moment. This is an improvised episode with no notes, and my unprepared thoughts wander...

Chloé Valdary is a writer and founder of the company Theory of Enchantment, which provides an innovative form of diversity and inclusion training to companies and government agencies without the toxic ideology that has given mainstream DEI a bad name. Rather than treat people's racial or gender identities as political abstractions, she focuses on the individual and uses and combination of classica...

David Volodzko talks to Kevin Ray about the philosophy of teaching, how Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” has changed education in America, the harms of woke pedagogy, the tragic death of Richard Bilkszto after enduring genocidal rhetoric at the hands of a DEI trainer, and more. Kevin Ray is a theater director and teaching artist with over 20 years of arts education experience in New York...

David Volodzko speaks with historian Bradley Hart about major Nazi American movements, the religious right, the reaction of the U.S. government and American media, and historical lessons that can help us navigate political challenges in our time. Bradley Hart is the author of Hitler’s American Friends: The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States . He and his work have been featured and quote...

This begins my letter exchange with Margaret Anna Alice on fascism, censorship and humor. Margaret Anna writes about propaganda, psychology and health with a focus on COVID at Margaret Anna Alice Through the Looking Glass . Enjoy. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theradicalist.com/subscribe

David Volodzko speaks with Freddie deBoer about the origins of cancel culture, the failure of the Black Lives Matter movement, the impact of education on politics, and more. Freddie deBoer is the author of The Cult of Smart , a book on meritocracy and education, and regularly writes his own Substack . His new book, How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement , explores the failure of the Black Live...

The morning after Russia invaded Ukraine, news reports emerged of African and Indian refugees being turned back by Ukrainian border guards for no reason other than sheer racism. I was at the border as those reports were coming out, and as is often the case with such claims, I found there was more to the story. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get ac...

Folks tend to resist oppression, which is why totalitarianism requires the indoctrination of children. Think of the Hitler Youth. Or the Great Japan Youth Party. Think of the Communist Youth League of China. Or the Komsomol, the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League. Part of this indoctrination process includes doing away with classic children’s stories but then you need to replace those stori...

Is Vladimir Putin a fascist? Is China fascist? Is my neighbor who supports mandatory Covid vaccinations a fascist? What is fascism? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theradicalist.com/subscribe

Florida's new school curriculum on slavery is making headlines and part of the discussion has included the claim that the practice of slavery ended with the Emancipation Proclamation, the conclusion of the Civil War, or the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Today on The Radicalist, David reads “We Had Only Our Ignorance,” the personal story of an anonymous former G...

On my bookshelf there is a copy of “Ten Poems & Lyrics by Mao Tse-tung,” translated by Wang Hui-Ming with images of each poem written in Mao’s own brushstrokes. None of the poems are any good. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theradicalist.com/subscribe