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Ajamu Baraka of the Black Alliance for Peace joins Dimitri Lascaris and me for a conversation about something Western publics have not yet come to terms with — the fact that resistance to the current system is not going to be cost-free, and that the political culture of polite protest is no longer adequate to the moment we are in.

Baraka’s recent writing has argued that what we are watching is not a series of isolated authoritarian tendencies but the consolidation of a globalised fascist formation — a system in which the imperial violence long directed outward has begun to come home, and in which the legal, administrative, and ideological scaffolding of repression is being assembled in plain sight. His framing is deliberately uncomfortable. It names capitalist elites who cannot stomach the loss of their position as masters of the universe, and who are now willing to drive the ecological, economic, and human-rights foundations of life off the cliff rather than share the world with anyone else.

Here are relevant links to Ajamu’s work:

First this is the bulletin on domestic repression:

https://peoplescenteredhumanrights.co...

Second, a link to the international network that people can join to receive information and support PCHR campaigns around the world:

https://peoplescenteredhumanrights.co...

Third, a piece that addressed today’s topic but in relation to Iran. In here, Ajamu discusses white supremacy as a form of psychopathology:

https://www.blackagendareport.com/ira...

Dimitri Lascaris brings a complementary analysis grounded in his reporting over the past two years from Iran, Lebanon, and the broader resistance axis — societies that have paid, and continue to pay, enormous costs for refusing Western hegemony. One of the arguments he has pressed consistently is that Western publics have the luxury of imagining resistance as a weekend activity, a signature on a petition, a march that ends at a designated point. The societies on the receiving end of imperial violence know that resistance means something else. If anti-imperialism in the West is to be serious, it will have to learn what those societies already know.

The conversation moves through the criminalization of anti-fascism, the normalization of mass-casualty weapons in official discourse, the collapse of ecological and economic baselines, and the specific question of what Western publics will actually have to be willing to give up if they want to meaningfully resist what is being done in their names. It is not a comfortable conversation. It is not meant to be.

Ajamu Baraka is the national organiser of the Black Alliance for Peace, an editor and columnist at Black Agenda Report, and director of the North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights. He was the 2016 Green Party vice-presidential nominee and has written and organized on US empire, Black radicalism, and anti-imperialism for four decades.

Dimitri Lascaris is a Canadian lawyer, journalist, and former Green Party of Canada leadership candidate. His reporting from Iran, Lebanon, Russia, Venezuela, Palestine, and Cyprus can be found at dimitrilascaris.org and on his Reason2Resist channel.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Cold open
01:23 Introductions
02:32 Rubio's Munich speech and the call to defend "Western civilisation"
07:24 The State Department's 100-page document on the left
10:03 Hegseth, NATO, and the real division of labour
11:32 "They cannot stomach not being the masters of the universe"
12:21 Propaganda, denial, and the European uprisings breaking through
14:38 The rightward danger inside the discontent
17:03 The criminalisation of anti-fascist opposition itself
17:39 The Guardian, Mélenchon, and manufactured consent
20:05 Whiteness, race, and the architecture of empire
23:49 Where do we go from here?
25:55 James Baldwin and the material privilege of whiteness
30:09 The labour aristocracy and cross-class white supremacy
31:33 Why the West tried, and failed, to absorb Russia
36:41 Dimitri Lascaris on the end of cost-free resistance
40:36 Gaza, dehumanisation, and the "killable" category
45:02 The UN, the November 17th resolution, and institutional collapse
48:50 What a democratised international architecture would look like
52:30 The ICC, Africa, and the double standard
56:13 Russia, China, and the trade that continues with Israel
1:01:50 Dimitri on hope from the resistance axis
1:04:34 Ajamu on power to the people, globally organised
1:07:06 Resources and how to get involved