Episode 89: Four Open-Letter Authors Speak Truth to Historical Materialism
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The co-hosts are joined by four authors who have recently written open letters to Historical Materialism: During the segment, reference is made to Marxist-Humanist Initiative’s perspective on “Combatting ‘Post-Truth Politics,’ in Practice and in Theory,” as well as Andrew’s article that first called on Historical Materialism to retract the paper and his response after it refused to do so. Plus current-events segment on the continuing “F-word” controversy. Brendan and Andrew discuss Jacobin author Daniel Bessner’s recent dismissal of “fascism” as a meaningless term and Jonathan Chait’s revelation of the self-interested “Left-First” agenda underlying that dismissal. Radio Free Humanity is a podcast covering news, politics and philosophy from a Marxist-Humanist perspective. It is co-hosted by Brendan Cooney and Andrew Kliman. We intend to release new episodes every two weeks. Radio Free Humanity is sponsored by MHI, but the views expressed by the co-hosts and guests of Radio Free Humanity are their own. They do not necessarily reflect the views and positions of MHI. We welcome and encourage listeners’ comments, posted on this episode’s page. Please visit MHI’s online print publication, With Sober Senses, for further news, commentary, and analysis. |
I wasn’t impressed with Bessner’s arguments when he appeared on “Left Reckening”. Defining Fascism as only the historical movements from 1930s doesn’t make sense, because even Italian and German Fascism are very different. His goal of making this argument to shift concern away from the right wing and towards liberals completely goes against my politics, because I believe in attacking the right first and foremost.
Commenting again because I had forgot to include my question. What would you consider to be the differences between illiberal conservativism and fascism? How should we approach such movements and concepts?