I've seen a lot of reference to it lately so I gave it a try, listened to the first ep about the Russian Revolution. He said something about how opposition to socialist utopia was "human nature" which seemed :LIB: but wondering if I should give it another chance. Or is there anything better in the same vein? Also saw Tides of History mentioned
Mike Duncan is a liberal who seethes every time the Communists win by doing something "wrong".
(I still look forward to the pod every week)
He might do extensive research for each season of the podcast but in this one there is very much a gaping hole that could have been filled by reading Red Petrograd.
He at least did a good job of emphasizing how every non-Bolshevik faction completely fucked up their position in between February and October 1917, thus throwing support to the Bolsheviks. But he pretty firmly turned against the Bolsheviks in his narrative after October in a very Orlando Figes kind of way. Thankfully he is covering how the Whites continue to be so incompetent and reactionary that everyone else has no choice but to support the Bolsheviks as the lesser evil. But a major tell is that he puts a lot of emphasis on the Bolsheviks dissolving the Constituent Assembly, ignoring how if the Constituent Assembly was even remotely relevant to the interests of the masses it would not have been so trivial to dissolve it.
The funny thing is that he acknowledged that the Provisional Government never had much legitimacy to begin with, yet highlights the Bolsheviks dissolving a process of said ProvGov as some sort of implicit crime. Cognitive dissonance aside, really goes to show you where Liberals have their priorities.
Propping up illegitimate governments and siding with reaction? Hmm...
I'm so used to being the enemy of whatever culture I'm watching, it doesn't matter - as long as enough fact is there I'm happy
There's plenty of fact, I think you'll enjoy it like many of the rest of us do.
dipshits dont want to be authoritarian. well what do they think the capitalists would call them when they are in prison or redacted?
Mike Duncan is a lib, but it can still be a good podcast if it doesn't 100% reenforce your beliefs.
I laughed out loud when, sometime during the series on the Russian Revolution, he was talking about how wealthy liberals aligned with the fascists to stop the communists by "striking" from their comfy white collar jobs, and he took time to liberal finger-wag about how communists shouldn't "complain" about this because they also did strikes. Like he wasn't talking about it in context, he didn't say the communists couldn't criticize then, he said it in the present tense, trying to tell modern communists we couldn't find fault with this. Like took time out of the purpose of his podcast, going over the history, to insert this epic own of his.
Such a stereotypical dumb liberal misunderstanding of how literally anything works. Yeah, I'm not gonna complain about it because of their "hypocrisy", you dork. It's bad because it's bad.
Lol not understanding of the difference between "believing in the efficacy of a tactic", and "believing in an ideal", belief is belief. You don't believe in "workers' rights" you believe "striking is good, it's always good, it's never not good!"
Hey commies...
sides with fascists and reactionaries
Checkmate.
My impression is that Mike Duncan has far fewer brainworms than the average liberal
He's a lib, but his history is really good and really detailed. I would recommend listening to another of his series though if the anticommunism bothers you too much, since he doesn't mince words about the number of ways that bourgeoise revolutions failed to live up their ideals.
He's a Lib, but one with only a small amount of the kneejerk anti communism others have.
The reason Duncan is so liberal is because his research stops after the end of the Russian Civil war and reverts to the default liberal position. You can't think Stalin was a horrible evil dictator who murdered ten billion kulaks and simultaneously recognize the Bolsheviks were right, but it is exactly the line he is trying to toe. If he actually went into the Stalinist period I think he would turn red real quick.
But he doesn't think the Bolsheviks were right about everything. His critique of the power of the politburo and orgburo is fairly scathing.
Dollop is great. I kind of feel like Behind the Bastards tries too hard to copy their formula.
Yeah I listen to them a lot they cover good stuff. The Bezos episode was good and this week they had an episode about the trans child services in Texas which none of my other pods were covering.
I don't know some times I get a little cringe vibe from that crew though. Maybe it's a little bit of PMC thing? Or maybe it's just not my style of humor? Or maybe they try too hard to be cool? Idk. The commercials are also annoying as fuck. Sucks to be working out and having to skip.
i've been afraid to check out the russian revolution eps because he's definitely lib. i greatly enjoyed the english and french revolutions though, he has got a great narrative style and definately does his research. i think he does some material analysis, it's not all "great man theory" idealism shit.
Ugh me too. I look at it as a good overview. Not C. L. R. James or John Reed level, but at least lays out a timeline where you can fill in more specific histories and draw in for context when reading theory.
The series on the Haitian Revolution is pretty good if you give up on the current one and want to try another
