All in Arun Gupta
Investigative journalist Arun Gupta returns to the podcast to report on the pro-Palestine student encampments that have bloomed on university and college campuses across the United States and around the world over the past several weeks. He has been documenting the protests on campuses across New York City, including Columbia University and City College of New York (CCNY), which has seen some of the most high-profile repression from police and counter-demonstration agitators.
In this expansive discussion, investigative journalist and food columnist Arun Gupta tackles the extremely online drama between "progrowth" and "degrowth" leftists about one of the cheapest fruits you can find in the supermarket: the banana. Will we have bananas under socialism?
Capitalism and its global distribution networks do more than just transport criminally cheap goods from the so-called “Banana Republics” of South and Central America to Global North markets, it works to disperse the responsibility for such a ruthless system: no consumer is completely to blame, nor completely blameless, either. Some are more than others, sure—like the corporations and their government partners—but we’re all implicated, just by the mere fact we need to eat.
We can make better choices when we consume. Instead of plastic, I can use a paper or metal straw to drink an iced coffee. I can go vegan. I can source all my food—meats and produce—from local farms and growers. These choices matter, but frankly, most of the choices most human beings can ethically make are terribly limited under capitalist hegemony. These are lifestyle choices, and are not liberatory in the truest sense.
None of this was inevitable. Other horizons exist. So, when the “banana discourse” erupted on one of the hellsites many of us frequent, the question became: will there be bananas under socialism? And Arun Gupta, who thinks and writes a great deal about food, in more or less words, answers: well, yes, of course we’ll have bananas. But frankly, this not really the right question, or even the right framing.
Journalist Arun Gupta returns to the podcast to discuss the "very corporeal ideology" of fascism, the so-called "Great Replacement Theory,” the recent mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, and how each of these subjects tie into the broader sociopolitical project of the far right in the United States.
The ideological and conspiratorial framework of the “Great Replacement Theory” has motivated numerous individuals to commit racist mass violence over the years, with one of the most prominent examples being the recent massacre in Buffalo, New York by an 18-year-old white man on May 14th. It also, as Gupta lucidly articulates in this interview, informs the underlying white grievance politics and goals of the conservative right in the United States, informing the rhetoric of the most popular political commentators in the country, namely Fox News star pundit Tucker Carlson. With the stated aims and motivations laid bare in the manifesto of the mass shooter in Buffalo, and Carlson mainstreaming these ideas in more digestible and politically friendly terms to millions of regular viewers, fascism is alive and well in the United States.
