we mention it briefly in the conversation, but you're right it's important. I wonder whether Tony would consider it a downstream expression of other fundamental changes. I think it's an important motivating factor in its own right (as well as a link to reactionary politics in the US)

one day I will do something fun and gay, but we have to hit our annual misery quota first!

The other is the criminally underread (in English) literary critic Roberto Schwarz, and in particular the title essay in @versobooks.bsky.social 'Misplaced Ideas' on the results of grafting of liberal-constitutional political superstructure to a slave economy. www.versobooks.com/en-gb/produc...

I revisited (inter alia) two favourite books preparing for this conversation. You can only really hear them under the surface of the questions, but... One is the Cardoso and Faletto book on Dependency and Development, a really compelling piece of economic history: www.ucpress.edu/books/depend...

Vergara's scepticism about the so-called 'second wave' of pink tide governments - including the constitutional debacle in Chile - is well warranted. Lulismo is having a very difficult second round in power, including the current miserable news out of COP30.

One important thread in Wood's telling is the role of Vox as a coordinating force for an international hispanidad reactionary, as if Farage were the coordinator of reactionary politics across the former British Empire. Linked to LatAm right's virulent hatred of pro-indigenous policy.

I keep trying to find an English-dubbed video of the Kirchner '05 speech where Bush looks completely horrified & furious, but it's surprisingly difficult! The wonder of the internet... As TW points out, Argentina is odd - its neoliberal and pink tide turns were conducted by the same Peronist party.

You can read Tony's superb dissection of the Latin American new right in the Novermber 6 issue of the @lrb.co.uk - or online here: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Thanks Fraser! V glad to read this

You can listen (and SUBSCRIBE) to ON POLITICS through any good content distribution nexus, so please do. Thank you for your attention to this matter! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...

One thing Alan really is right about: most journalists, academics & politicians who treat the online world as a *supplement* to print & broadcast discourse fundamentally fail to grasp how profoundly media consumption has changed. Politics requires a public sphere & changing one changes the other!

the dream gig! Couldn't hack the impartiality + gag rules though. After the revolution!