Fourth Reich Archaeology
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Bracing for Revolution w/ Brace Belden
🕑 Added 2026-01-23 22:02:12 +0000 UTCThis week we are joined by a special guest, TrueAnon’s Brace Belden, to take stock of the current and impending crisis and brainstorm ways that we might think creatively to meet the moment and face off against an admittedly much better organized fascist enemy. For those of us on the left seeking to exploit the next crisis to push back against the consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of our craven overlords, we must come to grips with the fact that there currently is no organized revolutionary movement; there’s not even a revolutionary working class. But that does not mean that we should give into fatalism. There are plenty signs of hope, and the demand for a unified front against fascism is higher than it has been in generations.
We discuss all of this and much more with Brace, including the magnetic pull of the spectacle towards compatible leftism, the prospects for armed struggle (including insights from Brace’s time in Syria), and how we can learn from the past without using history as a costume for revolutionary LARPing. We don’t have the answers, but we do have the will, and we hope you’ll tune in and join us.
Links: TrueAnon Podcast https://podcast.trueanon.com/
Brace’s Baffler Article, “The Hatred of Podcasting” https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/the-hatred-of-podcasting-belden
Lukacs “History and Class Consciousness” https://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/
Herbert Marcuse’s 1969 Berkeley Speech with Angela Davis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuyWj8BtjKc
Comments
nikodem dyzma
unsubbed
Rebolledont
never mind the bad faith comments trying to divide what should be a constant dialogue between media that, like or not, is spreading leftist ideas in mainstream spheres. i think this was a fenomenal episode and you guys should keep it up.
MD
I say this in good faith and I don’t mean any insult to you all by it. Just my few cents. I’ve been watching TrueAnon retweeting lies about the shooting all day and it’s been disgusting to watch.
MD
Gotta say it is a bit disappointing to see you platforming TrueAnon when they’re retweeting presidential administration’s lies and propaganda about the most recent murder in MN like there’s no tomorrow. I love your show Fourth Reich Archaeology, and I deeply appreciate the work you do, but this collab was a mistake.
Don and Dick
A very oversimplified response is that precisely because the Democratic Party is a capitalist party is why AOC’s positioning for the party’s nomination is not something to pour energy into. All the talk of “pushing the Dems left” is just that: talk. Will never, ever happen since the party is run by its ruling class owners at the institutional level and always will be.
Shartfield
I say this in good faith and a desire to learn more: I don’t understand why the hosts are so defeated by the lack of results from this tiny post-Bernie social democratic front. Would anyone expect great leaps and bounds by a minority facing near-total opposition from their coworkers, all in less than a decade? Moments later it’s stated how we need larger scale thinking, we need to shift norms with decades-long efforts much as the fascists have. I agree. But why does this mean we dismiss AOC’s presidential positioning against Vance? To compare to the slow fascist takeover: do we not expect a Reagan well before a Trump or Vance? Is the sense that all members of this front are compromised? I understand AOC is, at least with respect to Palestine. Certainly the Democratic Party at large is bourgeois controlled opposition. I need to read and research more.
Don and Dick
One positive development that didn't get mentioned is the Brazilian case of jailing Bolsonaro and his coup-plotting generals. TBD how much of it sticks, but it is a bare minimum to actually conceive of a way to bring these criminals in power to justice because the brazenness of their crimes is just a refection of the very real possibility that they'll get away with them.
Don and Dick
I ripped the logo from the cover of one of the printings of Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness. Definitely recommend reading it - lots of good insights in there.
MOLTEN
How would you call in air strikes secretly
Shout Shout Let It All Out
“The bums will always lose!” Impeccable use of that Lebowski clip 🤣
Fergal Schmudlach
I must say, the current crisis is precisely when we shouldn’t be looking to a guy who bragged about meeting with CIA handlers and calling in American airstrikes behind his YPG comrades’ backs (Chapo #82) and showed remarkable foreknowledge for a bright-eyed “revolutionary” of the chaos into which the Syrian civil war was designed to descend (Delete Your Account #49, 58:50)—in these early appearances he hadn’t yet developed either his Opperman accent or his backstory where he’s a recovering opioid addict who spent years homeless and now won’t touch drugs, because he brags about taking ketamine from his med kit. Cue the old photos of him performing in front of an Israeli flag with his band Warkrime, holding up an SS flag with the Red Scare girls, Belden Manufacturing Company chairman Charles S. Craigmile serving on the National Strategy Committee of the American Security Council, his father serving on the board of KPFA together with Michael Aquino’s mother———very Fourth Reich–relevant, I’ll give you that!
Joan Guenther
not to get all Kantian I want to know what are the conditions of possibility that frame the reality of Liz and Brace - their discourse, decency, intelligence and wild enjoyment of the current catastrophe of the American empire in its terrifying decline … hope in the Maxwellian face of despair defiant laughter rising above the stupid grunt of the powerful … it serves its purpose … and jung chomsky
Modokk
This is the team-up I've been hoping for. Absolutely love the logo!
devils cherry
YAY!! 😺
EJK
Man, what a great conversation. Thank you. At this point, as someone who's spent waaay too much time organizing for complicit unions and the Dumbo Party, I believe there is only one first step we can take: to make folks such as Kushner, Witcoff, Hegseth, Loomer, Rubio, Larry Fink, Jamie Dimon etc feel physically unsafe. It's Luigi Time.
