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- The specificity of the US constitution (and how it is outdated and embeds conservatism)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