#251 | Lifting The Shroud: Pandemic Capitalism & The Uprisings Of 2020 w/ Gerald Horne
Intro: 13:08 | Book Pre-sale
In this episode, I speak with Dr. Gerald Horne, Moores Professorship of History and African American Studies at Houston State University and the author of ‘The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century.’
In this discussion, Dr. Horne examines the material conditions that have precipitated the uprisings across the United States the past week, in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25th. His analysis includes how the novel coronavirus pandemic has led to the "unmasking of capitalism” stemming from the U.S. government's altogether lack of economic support for the majority of U.S. citizens in wake of this unprecedented crisis; the far-right political and economic policies of the Trump Administration and his recent decision to defund the World Health Organization, in turn instigating a new Cold War with China; and the hundreds of years of white supremacy and class conflict the United States has grappled with up to the present moment. Dr. Horne frames the wave of uprisings across the nation within a deeper and broader context of previous uprisings (e.g. the Watts Riots of the 1960s in Los Angeles and the nation-wide uprisings that occurred after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.), and points to the impacts the "Long Sixteenth Century" had in the formation of white supremacy, as explored in his book ‘The Dawning of the Apocalypse.’
Dr. Gerald Horne holds the Moores Professorship of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, is the author of more than thirty books and one hundred scholarly articles and reviews. His research has addressed issues of racism in a variety of relations involving labor, politics, civil rights, international relations and war. Dr. Horne received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and his B.A. from Princeton University.
Episode Notes:
- Learn more about and purchase ‘The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century’: https://bit.ly/2U4UXkA
- The audio sources featured in the introduction: https://youtu.be/CCkj89HJSTY / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLDxMn8_vYo / https://youtu.be/qtokoFjyuvo?t=643
- The song featured in this episode is “Backlash Blues” by Nina Simone from the album Sings the Blues.
