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In this episode of 1Dime Radio, I am joined by Jack Ross, an independent historian, acquisitions editor at Sublation Media, and author of The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History and The Strange Death of American Exceptionalism. We compare today’s DSA with America’s Old Left, recovering the forgotten non-communist and anti-communist socialist tradition of Norman Thomas, A. Philip Randolph, and Bayard Rustin while discussing DSA 2.0, Zohran Mamdani, the Old Left–New Left rupture, the Popular Front, Cold War liberalism, Stalinism, the CCP, Hasan Piker, and the crisis of the contemporary online left.
In the Patreon-exclusive Backroom, we discuss Jack’s theses on Trotskyism and neoconservatism, the infamous Trotskyist-to-neoconservative pipeline, and the complicated history of Jewish anti-Zionism, American Zionism, and Zionism more broadly.
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Timestamps:
0:00 Backroom Preview: Tankies and American Socialism
2:36 Intro
3:34 Jack Ross and America’s Old Left
15:07 Anti-Communist Socialists and DSA 2.0
26:13 Norman Thomas, the New Left, and the Popular Front
35:38 Woke Left, Stalinists, and Cold War Liberalism
45:19 McCarthyism, Foreign Influence, and the CCP
50:16 Hasan Piker and the Crisis of the Online Left
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Jack Ross, independent historian, acquisitions editor at Sublation Media, and author of The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History, The Strange Death of American Exceptionalism, and Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism
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Outro Music by Karl Casey
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