The Dig Folgen

What are rights worth when government denies people the very right to have rights? Political theorist Hannah Arendt recognized this loss of “the right to have rights” as millions of refugees found themselves without a national home in the wake of world wars. Human rights, it became clear, proved to be an empty promise for those excluded from citizenship—the foundational right to be a member of a political community. Today, this insight remains a critical one as a record number of humans transit the globe in search of economic and physical security, and far-right nativists and establishment liberals alike scapegoat them for the chaos and precarity unleashed by neoliberalism and war. As a result, migrants are condemned to second-class citizenship or even death in the Mediterranean and desert Mexican-American borderlands. My guests today, Stephanie DeGooyer and Astra Taylor, just wrote a book about this for Verso, called the The Right to Have Rights. This is part 1. Part 2 will be posted on Thursday or Friday. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Hara Hotel: A Tale of Syrian Refugees in Greece by Teresa Thornhill versobooks.com/books/2713-hara-hotel. And Work: The Last 1,000 Years by Andrea Komlosy versobooks.com/books/2608-work. And please make a contribution to support the long-run viability of this show at Patreon.com/TheDig

James Comey is liberal America’s favorite cop and now, as a result, a bestselling author as well. Patrick Blanchfield returns to talk about his Baffler review of Comey’s new book. It’s awful, of course. But it’s bad in productively revealing ways. Comey has become an icon of the liberal fetishization of the national security state as a bulwark against Trumpism—when it fact it is that very national security state and its rampant abuses that are deeply implicated in Trump’s rise. The elevation of police as a model of duty and leadership contrasted against Trump’s vulgar monstrosities renders invisible not only why Trump won but why he is so dangerous.   Here’s Patrick’s review: thebaffler.com/latest/prig-and-pig-blanchfield   Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che by Max Elbaum versobooks.com/books/2707-revolution-in-the-air And Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21st Century State Extremism by Nisha Kapoor versobooks.com/books/2551-deport-deprive-extradite And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig

It’s yet the latest installment in our ongoing series on the left and electoral politics. Dan’s guest is Chokwe Antar Lumumba, the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi. Last year, Mayor Lumumba pledged to make Jackson “the most radical city on the planet.” Lumumba, who comes out of a decades-old revolutionary black nationalist movement, is serious about that. But he also faces serious challenges: Jackson is a majority black city which, like many such cities, has much of its wealth appropriated by its largely-white suburbs. The human and infrastructural needs are enormous, and the tax base is thin. This is precisely why so many on the left have found what’s going on in Jackson to be so interesting, and why Dan was eager to invite the mayor onto the show. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21st Century State Extremism by Nisha Kapoor versobooks.com/books/2551-deport-deprive-extradite. And Hara Hotel: A Tale of Syrian Refugees in Greece by Teresa Thornhill versobooks.com/books/2713-hara-hotel. And please make a contribution to support the long-run viability of this show at Patreon.com/TheDig