WorldWideScrotes

WHAT IS POLITICS?

Education EN ↓ 40 episodes

Politics is one of the only practical disciplines where none of the main concepts have clear, coherent definitions. We define ourselves with terms like "left” and "right" and we believe in things like "democracy," “markets,” "capitalism" and "socialism" even though we don’t really know what any of these words actually mean. This series aims to make sense out of the political muddle that we've inherited from media, academia, and from decades of cold war propaganda, so that we can figure what it is that we want when it comes to politics, and how we can achieve it.

Author

WorldWideScrotes

Episodes

10.1 Graeber & Wengrow’s “The Dawn of Everything”: What is an “Egalitarian” Society? 27.10.2021

In this episode we read and critique the conclusion of Chapter 2 of Dawn of Everything, “Wicked Liberty: The Indigenous Critique and the Myth of the Noble Savage”, which was previously released in French in 2019 as La Sagesse de... Continue Reading →

10. David Graeber & David Wengrow’s The “Dawn of Everything”: The Wisdom of Kandiaronk 04.10.2021

A critical reading of “The Wisdom of Kandiaronk, The Indigenous Critique, the Myth of Progress and the Birth of the Left” from David Graeber & David Wengrow’s upcoming book The Dawn of Everything. In this chapter Graeber & Wengrow argue... Continue Reading →

Interview: Fight Like an Animal / Arnold Schroeder 20.07.2021

Interview with Arnold Schroeder of Fight Like an Animal, a wonderful and endessly fascinating show that looks through 20 years of experience of hardcore climate activism, at why left political movements are so weak and ineffective and how to change... Continue Reading →

9.1. Cancel Culture is Corporate Management Culture 15.07.2021

The terms “cancel culture” and “political correctness” are used to delegitimize ideas like gender equality and racial equality by conflating them with toxic dominance behaviour practiced by up-and-coming elites who disguise their power plays in egalitarian social justice language. In... Continue Reading →

9. The Real Cancel Culture is At-Will Employment 07.06.2021

The foundation of “cancel culture” and “political correctness” is the wage labour employment contract. ARTICLES QUOTED: Corey Robin, Chris Bertram and Alex Gourevitch 2012 – Life at Work, Crooked Timber Amanda Hess 2013 – How Sexy Should A Worker Be?... Continue Reading →

8. Idealism vs. Materlialism – How History is Made: Haudenosaunee Women / the Suffragettes / the Double V Campaign / The English Peasant’s Revolt of 1381 / The Anarchist Revolution in Spain 1936-39 19.03.2021

Human beings have free will, but our actions are constrained by material realities.  Understanding how material and practical conditions shape human behaviour can make all the difference between success and catastrophic failure when it comes to the whole spectrum of... Continue Reading →

7.1. Material Conditions: Why You Can’t Eliminate Sexism Just by Eliminating Sexism 27.11.2020

What would happen if you could end sexism overnight by giving everyone a magic pink pill? Why we need to target material and practical conditions if we want to eliminate cultural hierarchies. A thought experiment about political strategy which lays... Continue Reading →

7. The Origin of Social Hierarchy and Male Dominance: why David Graeber and Jordan Peterson are Wrong 26.11.2020

Why are hierarchy and male dominance so prevalent in human societies?  According to anthropologists David Graeber & David Wengrow, it’s because people were “self-consciously experimenting with different social possibilities,” and then we somehow got stuck this way.  Meanwhile according to... Continue Reading →

6. Political Anthropology: When Communism Works 10.09.2020

Everywhere we look, past and present we see hierarchical societies where some people have more wealth, more power, and more rights than others.  Was this always the state of the human world?  Is hierarchy in our nature?  Are egalitarian societies... Continue Reading →

5. How Do We Know What Left and Right Mean? Who’s who on the left and right: 1789-1917 10.09.2020

This episode is for everyone who keeps writing to me to insist that one or the other wrong, incoherent, popular definitions of Left and Right is actually the correct one. How do we know the left and right refer... Continue Reading →

Understanding the News: How Tax Cuts Fuel Police Brutality 09.06.2020

Politicians’ dependence on police as a revenue stream, prosecutors’ dependence on police for convictions, and falling tax cuts on the wealthy combine to give police incredible power. This is a key reason why they’re rarely punished, even for the most... Continue Reading →

4. How Political Definitions Shape Reality 31.05.2020

Definitions of political terms affect what we see and don’t see in the world around us, and turn us into effective or ineffective communicators and political actors. The definition of government that journalists and academics use makes us blind to... Continue Reading →

3. The Left-Right Political Spectrum is About Class Conflict 28.03.2020

Most journalists and Doctor-Professor academics don’t really know what the left-right political spectrum is about, but you will after listening to this episode! FULL TRANSCRIPT tweeter: @WorbsIntoWords help! http://www.patreon.com/whatispolitics video version: https://youtu.be/P3cmjNrXWms https://archive.org/download/03leftrightandyou/03%20-%20LEFT-RIGHT%20AND%20YOU.mp3

2. What is Politics and Why Should I Care? (video) 15.01.2020

How can people who don’t have official decision-making power exert their influence over those who do?  A quick overview of some basic political concepts: POLITICS PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE POLITICS POLITIES GOVERNMENT DEMOCRACY AUTOCRACY CONSENSUS POLITICAL CONSTRAINTS ECONOMICS CAPITALISM IDEOLOGY CLASS THE... Continue Reading →

1. Worbs: when political terms have no meaning 06.12.2019

Politics is unique among practical fields in that almost all of the main political terms are worbs: words that everyone (including academics and journalists) uses without really knowing what they mean. This rots our brains. It makes us easy to... Continue Reading →