This is a conversation with David Andress. He is a Professor of Modern History at the University of Portsmouth and is the author of the book “Cultural Dementia: How the West has Lost its History and Risks Losing Everything Else“
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Music by Tarabeat.
Topics Discussed
What is Cultural Dementia? And why use that term instead of Amnesia?
Why focus on France, the UK and the US?
The current crises in the three countries
George Orwell’s reflection on the relationship between imperialism/colonialism, the UK’s welfare state and the white working class
France’s Trente Glorieuses
Prospects of Le Pen and the far right winning in France
The ‘Brexit spirit’
Impact of Trumpism on US politics and what might come next
What is neoliberalism and how is that term (mis)used?
What is populism and how is that term (mis)used?
Berlusconi, the five star movement and racist politics in Italy
Canada, Australia and New Zealand’s specific contexts with regards to immigration and racism
Cambridge Analytica
The delusion of ‘socialism in one country’
The realities and delusions of Brexit (including example of CANZUK proposals and how India is excluded)
Ladybird libertarians (term by Otto English)
Isolationism within the British Labour Party
Weaknesses within Left parties, especially Labour (Attlee, Wilson, Blair)
The specificity of France and republicanism there
How Melenchon and Le Pen agree on Vichy’s status as ‘not France’
Chauvinism on the Left in France
The metaphor of the mansion
The Rhodes Must Fall protests in the UK
The ‘race question’ and white supremacy in the US
The specificity of the US constitution (and how it is outdated and embeds conservatism)
How history is taught (I gave the example of Lebanon)
Recommended Books
Priya Satia, Time’s Monster; History, Conscience and Britain’s Empire (Penguin/Allen Lane, 2020)
Priyamvada Gopal, Insurgent Empire; Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent (Verso, 2019)
Olivette Otele, African Europeans (Hurst, 2020)
I also added:
The Good Immigrant by Nikesh Shukla
Afropean: Notes from Black Europe by Johny Pitts
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