I've mentioned before that, while there's dozens of informative, entertaining, down-to-earth podcasts coming from the fringe right, there's absolutely fuck-all coming from the fringe left. I've tried subscribing to "The Red Scare" a few times now, but sadly, for every good episode there's at least two which are absolute dreck, and I always end up dropping it within about a month or so. Most of the others I've tried are even worse.
A while ago, I discovered Angela Nagle, an Irish author and lefty academic whom I thought was rather good. She hasn't got her own show, but regularly does guest spots. And as I was trolling through /pol/ a few weeks ago, looking for things to listen to, I found a link to an appearance she'd made on a podcast called "What's Left".
What's Left is the vehicle of Aussie political pundit Aimee Terese. I'd never heard of Aimee, but it seems she's some sort of big-wig Twitter celebrity, so maybe I'm in the minority here. Anyway, it turns out she's the daughter of Lebanese migrants, has a squeeky little voice that makes her sound like a six-year-old kid, and is a "proper" Marxist™. She's also the least interesting part of her own show.If you go back to the early episodes, Aimee had a co-host called Benjamin, and these episodes are almost unbearable. Usually, they will start off by giving a fairly sensible critique of some social problem; then they will talk about how every idea for improving the situation is dumb, because proper Marxists™ believe that the solution to every problem is to tear everything down and replace it with socialism, and true socialism™ can only work in an all or nothing scenario; and then they will usually end the episode with a spray of impentrable, theoretical, Marxist™, gobbledegook.
Fortunately, Ben left in March of 2020, and was replaced by a bloke called Oliver. This was a vast improvement. Oliver appears to live in the real world, and has done his best to drag Aimee over as well. If you do go back and listen to old episodes, I suggest you start with the one called "The Hot Takes Industry".
As good as Oliver is, he's still not the best part of the show. If you want to skip right to the good stuff, I suggest you start with the episodes that mention Angela Nagle and/or Malcolm Kyeyune in the title. Ange, I was of course already familiar with, and I'm happy to see she's something of a semi-regular in the later episodes. Mal on the other hand, is a brand new discovery for me.
Apparently, he's a half black Swede, who's a member of one of Sweden's "far right" parties. You might remember that I mentioned once before that, from what I've seen of far right politics in Europe, it seems to look an awful lot like the left-wing politics I grew up with here in Australia; that is to say, it rejects both laissez-faire libertarian economics AND globalised, liberal, multi-cultural, social policy. Anyway, he really ads a lot to the show, and in one episode, even comes dangerously close to calling Aimee out on her bullshit when she starts spouting off about having "a true worker's revolution™". Good stuff.
I know I've been saying for months that I'm going to post an in-depth criticism of woke-leftism, and I still plan to. I've had the thing 90% finished for ages now. Maybe this can hold you over until I get my arse in gear.
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