In this extended Trip, Keir Milburn, Nadia Idle and Jeremy Gilbert wrestle with the idea of “the long '90s”: a set of cultural, political and affective assumptions that have outlasted the 20th century, and from which a certain cohort of today's politicians, commentators, columnists cannot seem to escape.

With music from Massive Attack, Stereolab and Kula Shaker, the gang discuss to what extent the long '90s were shaped by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the Chinese Communist Party, how "new laddism" emerged as a riposte to cultural pluralism, and what people really meant when they declared "the end of history". Finally, they agree to disagree on the musical and social value of Britpop.

Music: Roni Size - 'Brown Paper Bag' / M-Beat ft. General Levy - 'Incredible' / Kula Shaker - '303' / Spice Girls - 'Wannabe' / Stereolab - 'Ping Pong' / Asian Dub Foundation - 'Fortress Europe'

Books and articles: Eric Hobsbawm - The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 / Gavin Mueller - 'Stereolab's Revolutionary Horizon' / Francis Fukuyama - The End of History and the Last Man

Produced and edited by Chal Ravens and Matt Huxley. PRS Licence Number: LE-0016481

Novara Audio: Radio for a Different Politics

#ACFM Trip 16: The Long '90s

It's cleaners all the way down!

How can we care for each other within a system that doesn't care about us? In this episode, Nadia Idle, Jeremy Gilbert and Keir Milburn get to grips with birth, death and all the social reproduction in between.

When did we start putting our elders in care homes instead of our own homes? What happens when childcare is socialised instead of privatised? And why do we seem to be talking about "self-care" more than caring for others?

The gang consider these questions and more in a suitably extended episode, with help from Foucault, feminist theory and caring tunes by Kate Bush, Bill Withers and Rihanna.

Music: Vashti Bunyan - 'Lately' / Bill Withers - 'Lean On Me' / Kate Bush - 'The Man With the Child In His Eyes' / George McRae - 'Rock Your Baby' / The Beatles - 'When I'm 64' / Sam and Dave - 'Hold On I'm Coming' / Rihanna - 'Umbrella'

Books, podcasts & videos: Joan Tronto - Caring Democracy / Michel Foucault - The Care of the Self / The Care Collective - The Care Manifesto / David Graeber on Novara FM / Plan C - WTF is Social Reproduction?

ACFM Trip 26: Care

We live in irrational times. From the resurgence of interest in astrology, tarot and occultism to the deepening influence of conspiracy theories and positive thinking, culture is experiencing a turn towards the magical. What does that mean for those of us on the "weird left"?

Nadia Idle, Jeremy Gilbert and Keir Milburn gather round the cauldron for an episode that will challenge believers and rationalists alike, with music from Siouxsie, Queen and The KLF. Up for discussion: Sigmund Freud, the I Ching, Puritanism, crop circles, Psychic TV, modern macroeconomics, the Pendle Witches, the fake religion of Discordianism and much more.

An ever-expanding playlist of all the music discussed on the show can be found on <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1Wv61PS6qItwCBUluNcSFx">Spotify</a>.

Music: The KLF - 'Justified &amp; Ancient (Stand By The Jams)' / The KLF - '3AM Eternal' / A Guy Called Gerald - 'Voodoo Ray' / Miles Davis - 'Miles Runs The Voodoo Down' / Screamin' Jay Hawkins - 'I Put A Spell On You' / Queen - 'It’s A Kind of Magic' / Siouxsie &amp; The Banshees - 'Spellbound' / MC 900ft Jesus - 'Truth Is Out Of Style' / Lisa King - 'You’ve Got Magic'

Produced and edited by Matt Huxley and Chal Ravens. PRS Licence Number: LE-0016481

Books and films: Sigmund Freud – The Unconscious / John Higgs – The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned A Million Pounds / The KLF – The Manual: How to Have A Number 1 The Easy Way / K Foundation Burn a Million Quid / Ben Myers - The Perfect Golden Circle / Robert Shea &amp; Robert Anton Wilson – The Illuminatus! Trilogy

ACFM Trip 27: Magic

In 2011, while working as a City trader, Gary Stevenson joined the ranks of the ultra-rich with a single bonus cheque. Not long after, he was named one of Citibank’s highest-performing traders worldwide. Stevenson made millions for his employer by betting on one thing: that inequality would worsen and living standards would fall. It made him rich, but miserable. Stevenson left his job to campaign on inequality. In this interview with Aaron Bastani, he tells the story of his ascent to the peak of the financial world and reveals the plan to destroy the middle class.

Novara Audio: Radio For A Different Politics

Downstream: The Plan is to Make you Permanently Poorer w/ Gary Stevenson

The welfare state was founded in the postwar period, seemingly as payment for a profound national sacrifice. Strengthening it has been a goal of the Left for decades. The argument is as simple as it is radical: the wealth of the nation must be shared among its people. But where did its wealth come from?

Gurminder K. Bhambra, Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies at the University of Sussex, argues that the wealth of the welfare state was plundered from the British Empire. Colonial subjects were made to pay taxes and give it their work and resources, but they were then refused its help. And now, migration politics in Britain assumes that the descendants of colonial subjects are entitled to nothing.

So if the wealth in the welfare state was stolen, what should the Left now try to do with it?

In this week's Novara FM, Gurminder K. Bhambra takes Eleanor Penny from a history of global plunder to a future of global justice.

Novara FM: History's Biggest Benefits Cheat w/ Gurminder K. Bhambra

Welcome to Pro Revolution Soccer, a football podcast that doesn't leave politics at the turnstile. In the first episode of a five-part series, Keir Milburn and Tom Williams confront the most corrupt, rapacious and deadly World Cup in sporting history. 

Repulsed by football's hyper-capitalism but compromised by their desire to watch Wales v England, Keir and Tom bring together political and tactical analysis in an episode of two halves. 

They're joined this week by Novara Media's Ash Sarkar and writer and tactician Alex Stewart, formerly of Tifo Football, to talk sporting boycotts, World Cup players-to-watch and the missing England song.

Catch a new episode of PRS every Friday until the end of the World Cup. 

Music by Matt Huxley. Produced by Chal Ravens. Design by Pietro Garrone. Name by Tim Burrow.

Pro Revolution Soccer Ep 1: Should We Boycott the Qatar World Cup?

Jeremy Gilbert returns to PTO for the final part of our conversation on his new book, co-authored with Alex Williams, Hegemony Now: How Big Tech and Wall Street Won the World (and How We Win it back). In this part of our conversation we talked about some of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's key concepts, including the assemblage and multiplicity, and how their ideas inform Jeremy and Alex's understanding of political change and left strategy.

Hegemony Now (part three) - w/ Jeremy Gilbert

Ash is joined by Novara's own Aaron Bastani, Moya Lothian-McLean, Michael Walker and James Butler to talk about what was bugging them in the year 2022.

From landlordism to normativity and a nasty turn in identity politics and from the declining fortunes of Europe to the absolute state of the discourse, the Novara team summarises the year that was and looks forward to another bumper year of fighting back.

Happy New Year!

Downstream: Novara's 2022 Roundtable Review

The ACFM groupmind went into overdrive on last week's Trip, a wide-ranging conversation about the long and violent history of strikes. This time, Nadia, Jem and Keir take a closer look at cultural representations of worker organisation – that is to say, they sat themselves down with a huge stack of old movies and an extra-large bucket of opinions.

From blacklisted Hollywood dramas to bawdy British comedies, the gang survey nearly 100 years of strikes on screen – courtesy of directors like Danny DeVito, Sergei Eisenstein, Barbara Kopple and Boots Riley – and consider the changing public attitudes to labour and capital.

This episode contains some spoilers, so if you're not sure what happens to Billy Elliott in the end, proceed with caution...

Get bonus content from this episode and enhance your weird left experience by signing up to the ACFM newsletter: novara.media/ACFMnewsletter

Films: Strike / The Man in a White Suit / Salt of the Earth / I’m Alright Jack / The Working Class Goes To Heaven / Carry On At Your Convenience / The Rank and File / Tout Va Bien / Norma Rae / Matewan / Riff Raff / Hoffa / Billy Elliott / Made In Dagenham / The Full Monty / Pride / Sorry To Bother You

ACFM Microdose: Strikes on Screen

Adam Tooze returns to PTO to discuss the key causal factors that allowed fascism to emerge in the early twentieth century and whether conditions that would enable fascism on the interwar model exist today. We also talked about whether describing the Bolsanaros, the Le Pens and the Orbans of this world as fascist may be analytically wrong but tactically effective, and about how close the Latin American dictatorships of the 1970s and 80s are to the fascist model.

Links:

Adam's chartbook post:

https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-166-19222022-the-centenary

Eurotrash podcast episode:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/ep-6-sex-fascism-73970252

Adam on The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy:

https://soundcloud.com/poltheoryother/adam-tooze-on-nazi-ideology-and-the-german-war-economy

Adam on Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World's Economy:

https://soundcloud.com/poltheoryother/adam-tooze-on-shutdown-how-covid-shook-the-worlds-economy

Part one and two of Adam on Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World:

https://soundcloud.com/poltheoryother/20-adam-tooze-on-crashed-how-a-decade-of-financial-crises-changed-the-world

https://soundcloud.com/poltheoryother/23-adam-tooze-on-crashed-how-a-decade-of-financial-crises-changed-the-world-part-2

Fascist echoes w/ Adam Tooze

In The UK, the last few decades have shown the steepest decline in trust in the media globally, second only to Egypt. How did we get here? Is it as simple as Rupert Murdoch wielding his malice more fervently here then elsewhere? Or are there insidious cultural factors that meant our newspapers, and increasingly our broadcasters, were destined to be made more boring, inaccurate and corrupt?

Pro Revolution Soccer Ep 1: Should We Boycott the Qatar World Cup?

Novara Media

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