Coming up in June: the Right, the Left, the top and much more

Hello again to existing Bunga supporters and a big welcome to all the newbies, lovely to see you here.

Just wanted to let you know what we’ve got coming up in June:

• Are the Erdogans, Modis, and Bolsonaros of this world different from your Trumps and Le Pens? We have the authors of a book on the radical right in the global periphery to ask whether what’s going on in Turkey or the Philippines is coming to a Germany, say, or a Canada.
• Did anyone say ‘degenerate radicalism’? We examine what happened when an earlier radical wave lost its bearings by re-examining the Uli Edel film, The Baader-Meinhof Complex
• People talk about ‘legitimacy’ all the time but what does it mean? And how is it lacking today? We kick off the second section of the 2023 Reading Club by examining Jurgen Habermas’ classic, Legitimation Crisis
• Is the NGO boss more powerful than the hedge fund manager? Who is the ‘new elite’ and is it that new?
• How to sell out: Rock and pop in the 21st century.
• Didn’t like what we said in May? We'll we answer your questions and criticisms in another Aufhebonus Bonus.
• And more on gender/feminism/the family with Amber A’Lee Frost

Also, if you’re in London, Bunga George and friend of the pod Catherine Liu will be in conversation on the PMC and their politics at Housmans on 28 June.

ICYMI

A whopping eight episodes this month, with three of them exclusive to you, our dearests.

• Alex interviewed the great social critic and intellectual historian Russell Jacoby about psychoanalysis, individualism, and utopianism – and in the After Party we debated whether there were green shoots of utopian thought anywhere today.
• In global affairs, we did deep dives on Nigeria and its ‘end of the end of history’ and Turkey in advance of elections that saw Erdogan victorious and set to rule for a third decade running. Is his socially conservative authoritarian populism now the standard model in world politics?
• How did middle-class work, and middle-class trade-unionism, become all about self-exploration? Phil did the work with his former colleague Ben Hickman.
• What would a politics centred on our finite time look like? We concluded our reading of Martin Hägglund’s This Life by trying to put his concepts to work.
• Matt Huber gave us the class war version of climate change politics, and explained why energy is at the very centre of it.
• And we examined a very bad book on family abolition together with Amber A’Lee Frost

And George was busy, with several sharp pieces out.

• Bosses now cry while they sack you, and politicians institute authoritarian decrees while flaunting their vulnerability. This is ‘Authoritarianism without Authority’ (Compact Mag).
• George wrote about a ruling class that externalising decision-making in the new-look Damage Magazine (which will be coming out with a PRINT ISSUE shortly)
• And for Sublation, George dives into Mouffe and her theory of green democratic revolution.

As always, this is all there to be debated. We look forward to engaging with you all over the next month, so do make sure to post your thoughts and send in your questions.

Love from the Bunga boys,

Alex, George, Phil