Cultural Dementia: How the West Lost Its...

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“

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• The specificity of the US constitution (and how it is outdated and embeds conservatism)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