In this episode, I’m joined by Pawel Wargan, Coordinator of the Secretariat of the Progressive International, to discuss the past, present, and future of left internationalism and international solidarity. In this wide-ranging conversation, we unpack what ‘internationalism’ really means, how debates over internationalism have evolved on the left over time, and what a politics of solidarity across borders can and should like amid the present moment of global upheaval.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
Vladimir Lenin and M.N. Roy — Theses on the National and Colonial Questions (1920)
Progressive International — The People’s Academy
Aditya Iyer — The Indian Radical Who Helped Found the Mexican Communist Party (Jacobin, August 2021)
Religion Dispatches coverage of the 2024 National Conservatism Conference
Domenico Losurdo — Western Marxism: How it was Born, How it Died, How it can be Reborn (Monthly Review Press, 2024)
Paris Yeros — A Polycentric World Will Only Be Possible by the Intervention of the ‘Sixth Great Power’ (Agrarian South, December 2023)
Jason Hickel — How Unequal Exchange Shapes Our World (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, July 2025)
Vijay Prashad — Resurrecting the Concept of the Triad (Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, June 2023)
Nick Burns — Never Forget Portugal’s Revolution (Jacobin, April 2024)
Aimé Césaire — Discourse on Colonialism (1950)
Robin D.G. Kelley — Fighting Fascism: Lessons From the Colonies (Lecture at Socialism 2025 conference)
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Twitter: twitter.com/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_somayajula
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/
Pawel Wargan:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/pawelwargan
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pawelwargan/
Progressive International:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProgIntl
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/progintl_en/
Website: https://progressive.international/
In this episode, I’m joined by critical development economist Jayati Ghosh to discuss the complex relationship between imperialism and international development. In this wide-ranging conversation, we explore the problematic assumptions underlying mainstream ideas of ‘development,’ why GDP is a profoundly inadequate measure of a country’s economic well-being, and how the globalization of the international economy has shaped the structural dynamics of imperialism as a world system—as well as some of the ways that the global economy needs to be restructured in order to deliver genuine justice and sovereignty for the Global South.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
Amiya Bagchi — Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital (Bloomsbury, 2008)
Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, Surbhi Kesar, and Devika Dutt — The Colonial Origins of Economics (Economic and Political Weekly, October 2024)
Jostein Hauge — This year’s Nobel prize exposes economics’ problem with colonialism (The Conversation, October 2024)
Benjamin Selwyn — Walt Rostow’s Development Theory Shows That Capitalism Relies on Brutal Violence (Jacobin, June 2023)
Walter Rodney — How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972)
Daniela Gabor and Ndongo Samba Sylla — The Global South Must Be at the Center of the Making of a Just Global Economic Order (interview in Jacobin, February 2023)
Jayati Ghosh — Let’s Count What Really Matters (Project Syndicate, June 2022)
Jayati Ghosh — Globalization and the End of the Labor Aristocracy (Dollars and Sense, March 2017)
Jayati Ghosh — A Life in Development Economics and Political Economy (Real World Economics Review, 2022)
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Twitter: twitter.com/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Website:
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_somayajula
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/
Jayati Ghosh:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jayati1609
In this episode, I’m joined by Samar Al-Bulushi, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UC Irvine and author of War-Making as World-Making: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror (Stanford University Press, 2024), to discuss how the United States outsources the violence of empire to countries in the Global South—particularly in Africa—in the context of the War on Terror. Focusing on Kenya as a case study, we explore the nuances and contradictions of the United States’ so-called ‘security partnerships’ with Global South states, examining what this cooperation looks like in practice and how the governments and populations of these states navigate the complexities of this dynamic.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
Samar Al-Bulushi — War-Making as World-Making: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror (Stanford University Press, 2024)
Chinyere Obasi — It’s Time to Ratify the Rome Statute. No, Really This Time. (Harvard Political Review, November 2021)
Samar Al-Bulushi — The US Plan to Outsource Its Imperialism in Haiti to Kenya (Jacobin, May 2024)
Samar Al-Bulushi — The Global Stakes of Kenya’s Protests (Jacobin, July 2024)
Black Alliance for Peace — U.S. Out of Africa Campaign
International Crisis Group — Overkill: Reforming the Legal Basis for the U.S. War on Terror (September 2021)
Tim Krüger — Kenya’s Tax Protests Have Ignited a Movement (New Internationalist, July 2024)
Non-Aligned Movement — Kampala Declaration (January 2024)
Pranay Somayajula — Bandung’s Ghosts (Protean, April 2025)
Patrice Lumumba — Speech at the opening of the All-African Conference in Léopoldville (August 1960)
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Twitter: twitter.com/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_somayajula
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/
Samar Al-Bulushi:
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/samar42
In this episode, I’m joined by Hafsa Kanjwal, Professor of South Asian History at Lafayette College and author of Colonizing Kashmir: State-building Under Indian Occupation (Stanford University Press, 2023), to discuss the long and complex history of colonization and resistance in Kashmir. We explore how the rights and agency of the Kashmiri people have been denied for decades by the Indian state’s settler-colonial project, how Kashmiris have resisted settler logics of assimilation and erasure, and what a genuinely liberated future for Kashmir might look like.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
Hafsa Kanjwal — Colonizing Kashmir: State-building Under Indian Occupation (Stanford University Press, 2023)
Stand With Kashmir — The Kashmir Syllabus
Stand With Kashmir — Militarization, Surveillance, and Silencing: The 75th Year of Indian Occupation in Kashmir (May 2023)
Pranay Somayajula — Holiday in Kashmir (The New Internationalist, November 2023)
From Domicile to Dominion: India’s Settler Colonial Agenda in Kashmir (Harvard Law Review, May 2021)
Leoni Connah — ‘Everyone lives in fear’: trapped between two warring nuclear giants, the people of Kashmir continue to suffer (The Conversation, May 2025)
Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons and Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society — Torture: Indian State’s Instrument of Control in Indian administered Jammu and Kashmir (February 2019)
Nusaybah and Asfur — “We Know Where You Live” How to See the Surveillance in Kashmir (Verfassungsblog, December 2022)
Mir Aiyaz — Kashmir’s residents are living under the watchful eye of surveillance (Index on Censorship, May 2025)
Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons — Half Widow, Half Wife?: Responding to Gendered Violence in Kashmir (July 2011)
Human Rights Watch — Getting Away With Murder 50 Years of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (August 2008)
Arundhati Roy — Come September (September 2002)
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Twitter: twitter.com/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_somayajula
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/
Hafsa Kanjwal:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/colonizingkashmir
In this episode, I’m joined by Priyamvada Gopal, Professor of Postcolonial Studies at the University of Cambridge and author of Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent (Verso, 2019), to discuss the complicated and often fraught politics of decolonization. We explore how the idea of ‘decolonization’ has evolved over time, the many and often contradictory meanings that this term has taken on, and what a truly radical and liberatory politics of decolonization might look like in our present moment.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
Priyamvada Gopal — Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent (Verso, 2019)
Pranay Somayajula — Decolonization and its Discontents (Monthly Review, May 2025)
Jan C. Jansen and Jürgen Osterhammel — Decolonization: A Short History (Princeton University Press, 2017)
Priyamvada Gopal — Empire and its Enemies (interview with Jamhoor, August 2022)
Kira Huju — How ‘decolonial Hindutva’ marries nativist politics with left-wing vocabulary (Scroll, April 2024)
Mike Gonzalez — José Carlos Mariátegui Was the Great Pioneer of Latin American Marxism (Jacobin, February 2023)
Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang — Decolonization is Not a Metaphor (Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2012)
Pranay Somayajula — We Are All Palestinians: Notes on Solidarity and Collective Resistance (culture shock, June 2024)
Priyamvada Gopal — On Decolonisation and the University (Textual Practice, May 2021)
Frantz Fanon — The Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press, 1963)
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Twitter: twitter.com/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_somayajula
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/
Priyamvada Gopal
Twitter: https://twitter.com/priyamvadagopal
In this episode, I’m joined by Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa Region Director for Research and Policy at the International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs), and Farwa Sial, Research Associate in the Department of Economics at SOAS University of London, to discuss the international financial system and its role in upholding empire. We explore how this system has been structurally designed to keep Global South countries trapped in a state of perpetual dependency and underdevelopment through predatory lending and unsustainable debt burdens, and discuss what a more just global financial order might look like.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs) website
Ndongo Samba Sylla and Kai Koddenbrock (editors) — Delinking and Global Reparations (Transcript Publishing, 2025)
Maha Ben Gadha, Fadhel Kaboub, Kai Koddenbrock, Ines Mahmoud and Ndongo Samba Sylla (editors) — Economic and Monetary Sovereignty in 21st Century Africa (Pluto Press, 2021)
Ndongo Samba Sylla (editor) — Imperialism and the Political Economy of Global South’s Debt (Emerald Publishing, 2023)
Dan Smith — How Capitalists Created International Financial Institutions to Rule the Planet (Jacobin, October 2022)
Jason Hickel — Apartheid in the World Bank and the IMF (Al-Jazeera, November 2020)
Vladimir Lenin — Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917)
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research — How Neoliberalism Has Wielded ‘Corruption’ to Privatise Life in Africa (November 2024)
James Baratta — Activists Are Challenging Laws That Enable Vulture Funds to Exploit Global South (Truthout, January 2022)
Bodo Ellmers — Vulture funds: US court ruling on Argentina enrages debt justice campaigners (Eurodad, September 2013)
Eric Toussaint — The World Bank and the Third World Debt Crisis in historical Perspective (CADTM, March 2002)
Michael Galant — The Shackles of Debt in the Global South Weigh Down Workers Everywhere (Jacobin, June 2021)
Larry Elliott — Developing countries face worst debt crisis in history, study shows (The Guardian, July 2024)
UN Trade and Development — Debt crisis: Developing countries’ external debt hits record $11.4 trillion (March 2025)
Ndongo Samba Sylla — The Conceptual Roots of the Global South’s Debt Crisis (Project Syndicate, January 2024)
Jason Hickel — How Britain stole $45 trillion from India (Al-Jazeera, December 2018)
Daniela Gabor and Ndongo Samba Sylla — The Global South Must Be at the Center of the Making of a Just Global Economic Order (Jacobin, February 2023)
Ndongo Samba Sylla — Live as African: On the Relevance of Thomas Sankara‘s Agenda for Economic Liberation (University of Bayreuth, 2022)
Thomas Sankara — A United Front Against Debt (1987)
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Twitter: twitter.com/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_somayajula
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/
Ndongo Samba Sylla:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nssylla
Farwa Sial:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/farwasial
International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs)
Twitter: https://twitter.com/deveconnetwork
Website: https://www.networkideas.org/
In this episode, I’m joined by Tim Sahay, co-director of Johns Hopkins University’s Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab and co-editor of Phenomenal World’s The Polycrisis newsletter, to discuss the many interconnected crises facing our world today, from the climate crisis to the rise of the authoritarian far-right to the collapse of the liberal international order—an intersection that some have termed ‘the polycrisis.’ We dig into the scope and meaning of this concept, its usefulness as a tool to make sense of our shifting global order, and the ways it can help us deepen our understanding of global imperialism.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
Adam Tooze — Welcome to the world of the polycrisis (The Financial Times, October 2022)
Kate Mackenzie, Tim Sahay, and Laura Merling — Polycrisis 2025 (The Polycrisis, January 2025)
Vijay Prashad — Beneath the Polycrisis Is the Singular Dilemma of Humanity Called Capitalism (Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, September 2023)
Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay — Europe Enters Its Metal Era (The Polycrisis, February 2025)
David Adler, Vanessa Romero Rocha, and Michael Galant — The Fourth Transformation: The Political Economy of Claudia Sheinbaum’s Popularity (Phenomenal World, April 2025)
UN Trade and Development — Debt crisis: Developing countries’ external debt hits record $11.4 trillion (March 2025)
James Sundquist — Bailouts From Beijing: How China Functions as an Alternative to the IMF (Boston University Global Development Policy Center, March 2021)
David Landry and Keyi Tang — Calculated Capital: The Business Logic Behind Chinese Lending in the Global South (Boston University Global Development Policy Center, March 2024)
John J. Mearsheimer — Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order (International Security, Spring 2019)
Spencer Ackerman — Gaza Shows the Difference Between International Law and the “Rules-Based International Order” (The Nation, November 2023)
Richard Kozul-Wright and Kevin Gallagher — Restoring Multilaterism: A Reformed Global Agenda Built on Public Foundations (Phenomenal World, April 2025)
Pranay Somayajula — Bandung’s Ghosts (Protean, April 2025)
Arundhati Roy — The pandemic is a portal (The Financial Times, April 2020)
Fidel Castro — Imevision Interviews Castro on Guadalajara Summit (1991)
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Twitter: twitter.com/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_somayajula
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/
Tim Sahay:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/70sBachchan
The Polycrisis:
In this episode, I’m joined by Radhika Desai, professor in the Department of Political Studies and director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group at the University of Manitoba, to discuss dollar imperialism and the key role that the U.S. dollar plays in upholding American dominance on the world stage. We dig into the history of the dollar system from the early 20th century onwards, examining the significance and contradictions of the dollar’s status as global reserve currency in the capitalist world system, and explore the concept of ‘de-dollarization’ and what it means for the future of American empire.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson — Beyond dollar creditocracy: A geopolitical economy (Real World Economics Review, September 2021)
Radhika Desai — Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (Pluto Press, 2013)
Alex Kozul-Wright — Is the US dollar at risk of a ‘confidence crisis’? (Al Jazeera, April 2025)
How a dollar crisis would unfold (The Economist, April 2025)
Dominik A. Leusder — Trump Has Exposed the Fragility of the Global Dollar System (Jacobin, April 2025)
Tim Smith — How The Triffin Dilemma Affects Currencies (Investopedia, May 2024)
US ‘neo-imperialist’ dollar scheme explained by economist Yanis Varoufakis (Geopolitical Economy Report, March 2023)
Saleha Mohsin — How the Dollar Became America’s Most Powerful Weapon (interview in Current Affairs, May 2024)
Marco Rubio — Tyrannical China wants to topple the US dollar (The Telegraph, May 2023)
Yanis Varoufakis — Imagining a new Keynesian Bretton Woods (Project Syndicate, May 2016)
Petition calling on George Washington University to fire Professor Joseph Pelzman
Karl Marx — Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist (from Capital, Volume 1, 1867)
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Twitter: twitter.com/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_somayajula
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/
Radhika Desai:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RadDesai
Website: https://radhikadesai.com/
YouTube show: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDAi0NdlN8hMl9DkPLikDDGccibhYHnDP
Geopolitical Economy Research Group:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/GERGconf
Website: https://geopoliticaleconomy.org/
In this episode, I’m joined by Netfa Freeman, Coordinating Committee member of the Black Alliance for Peace and Co-Coordinator of BAP’s Africa team, to discuss the history of imperialism and anticolonial resistance in West Africa, with a specific focus on the developments in the Sahel region over the last few years. Examining the ongoing legacies of French colonialism and neocolonialism in this region, and the current upsurge of mass anticolonial sentiment that has manifested most recently in the rise of military leaders like Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traoré, we situate these developments within a longer history of West African resistance to imperialist violence and exploitation.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
Tanupriya Singh — Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger form Alliance of Sahel States to advance collective defense (People’s Dispatch, September 2023)
Ndongo Samba Sylla — The CFA Franc: French Monetary Imperialism in Africa (Africa at LSE blog, July 2017)
Achy Ekissi — “People make the revolution:” charting an anti-imperialist path in West Africa (Interview in People’s Dispatch, October 2023)
Burkina Faso Launches $12 Million Tomato Factory (CGTN Africa, December 2024)
Black Alliance for Peace — ECOWAS Fact Sheet
Kwame Nkrumah — Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (1965)
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and The Socialist Movement of Ghana’s Research Group — Defending Our Sovereignty: US Military Bases in Africa and the Future of African Unity (June 2023)
Samar Al-Bulushi — What Is AFRICOM? How the U.S. Military is Militarizing and Destabilizing Africa (Teen Vogue, July 2023)
AnneClaire Stapleton and Mitch McCluskey — Mali severs diplomatic relations with Ukraine for providing intelligence to rebels for Wagner ambush (CNN, August 2024)
Black Alliance for Peace — US Out of Africa campaign
Black Alliance for Peace — Join the US Out of Africa Network
The anti-imperialist upsurge in the Sahel is irreversible, say leaders at historic conference in Niamey (People’s Dispatch, November 2024)
Antonio Cascais — How Sahel states ditched Western mining interests (Deutsche Welle, February 2025)
Abhijit Mohanty — Uranium in Niger: When a Blessing Becomes a Curse (Geopolitical Monitor, April 2018)
Niger revokes French nuclear group’s licence at major uranium mine (Al Jazeera, June 2024)
Jasper Saah — Why is the U.S. government targeting African Stream? (Liberation News, October 2024)
Black Alliance for Peace US Out of Africa Network — Report: The Anti-Imperialist Upsurge in the Sahel and the Historic Conference in Niamey (Black Agenda Report, November 2024)
Martina Schwikoswky and Philipp Sandner — Are Niger's uranium supplies to France under scrutiny? (Deutsche Welle, September 2023)
Sean Jacobs — Sankara: daring to invent Africa's future (The Guardian, October 2008)
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Twitter: twitter.com/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_somayajula
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/
Netfa Freeman:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/netfafree
Radio show: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wpfw-voices-with-vision/id1155206169
Black Alliance for Peace:
In this episode, I’m joined by Tings Chak, Art Director at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Editor of Wenhua Zongheng: A Journal of Contemporary Chinese Thought, to discuss China’s role in the shifting global order. We examine the achievements of China’s socialist revolution, its meteoric rise on the world stage in recent decades, and the complex dynamics of the ‘New Cold War’ that the United States is waging against China. In particular, we focus on the most common myths and misconceptions regarding China’s engagement with African nations and other countries in the Global South, and work to break down some of the anti-China propaganda that is frequently spread in American media outlets.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
Jayati Ghosh — Interpreting Contemporary Imperialism: Lessons From Samir Amin (Monthly Review, March 2021)
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research — Hyper-Imperialism: A Dangerous Decadent New Stage (January 2024)
Yao Zhongqiu — Five Centuries of Global Transformation: A Chinese Perspective (Wenhua Zongheng, March 2023)
Deborah Brautigam and Meg Rithmire — The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth (The Atlantic, February 2021)
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research — How Neoliberalism Has Wielded ‘Corruption’ to Privatise Life in Africa (November 2024)
Li Minqi — China: Imperialism or Semi-Periphery? (Monthly Review, July 2021)
John Kerry — Remarks at the U.S.-African Union High-Level Dialogue (May 2014)
Full text of Li Keqiang's speech at Africa Union (China Daily, May 2014)
Xiong Jie and Tings Chak — Reviving Erhai Lake: A Socialist Approach to Balancing Human and Ecological Development (Wenhua Zongheng, December 2024)
Tings Chak — Creation is a Political Action, and a Writer is a Politicised Person: The Eighth Tricontinental Art Bulletin (Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, October 2024)
Mao Zedong — Statement Supporting the Panamanian People's Just Patriotic Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism (January 1964)
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Twitter: twitter.com/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_somayajula
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/
Tings Chak:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/t_ings
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tingschak/
Tricontinental Institute for Social Research:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/tri_continental
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetricontinental/
In this episode, I’m joined by Erica Caines, Coordinating Committee member of the Black Alliance for Peace and Co-Coordinator of BAP’s Haiti/Americas team, to discuss the history of imperialism and anticolonial resistance in Haiti. We explore Haiti’s historical position as the world’s first Black republic, and the imperialist onslaught that has continued unabated against the country from the moment it first won independence from France in 1804. Delving into the complexities of the current crisis in Haiti, we examine how Haiti has come to function as a key laboratory for imperialist violence and aggression in the Americas.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
Black Alliance for Peace — Zone of Peace campaign
Black Alliance for Peace — Haiti resources
Black Alliance for Peace — Haiti and Colonialism
Black Alliance for Peace — CARICOM and Haiti: Integration or Imperialism
Black Alliance for Peace — Fact Sheet on the Core Group
Black Alliance for Peace — BAP Backgrounder: Haiti Behind the Headlines (March 2024)
Erica Caines and Austin Cole — The Unspoken Colonial Contradiction of Haiti (Hood Communist, October 2023)
The New York Times — Haiti ‘Ransom’ Project
Jake Johnston — How US “Foreign Aid” Has Helped Destabilize Haiti (Jacobin, March 2024)
Samar Al-Bulushi — The US Plan to Outsource Its Imperialism in Haiti to Kenya (Jacobin, May 2024)
Jemima Pierre — Haiti as Empire’s Laboratory (NACLA Report on the Americas, September 2023)
Nato Koury — Guantánamo Bay’s forgotten history of detaining Haitian migrants (Liberation News, February 2025)
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Twitter: twitter.com/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_somayajula
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/
Black Alliance for Peace:
In this episode, I’m joined by Nick Estes—associate professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota, cofounder of The Red Nation, and author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (Verso Books, 2019)—to discuss the long and rich history of Indigenous resistance to colonialism in North America. We explore the different ways that Indigenous peoples have stood up against settler-colonial displacement and erasure, both historically and in the present, and situate this history within a broader international context, tying together Indigenous struggles for land and liberation across the globe—from Turtle Island to Palestine.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
Nick Estes — Our History Is the Future:Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance(Verso Books, 2019)
Indigenous Environmental Network and Oil Change International — Indigenous Resistance Against Carbon (August 2021)
Julian Brave NoiseCat and Anne Spice — A History and Future of Resistance (Jacobin, September 2016)
Julian Brave NoiseCat — When the Indians Defeat the Cowboys (Jacobin, January 2017)
Kyle Stokes — The long, bitter fight over Minneapolis’ Roof Depot site, explained (MinnPost, February 2023)
Nic Sanford Belgard — The Land at The Center of Cop City and Why We Must Defend It (Indigenous Peoples Power Project, March 2023)
Delilah Friedler — What Will Replace the Minneapolis Police? The City’s Native American Community Has Some Ideas. (Mother Jones, June 2020)
American Indian Movement — Trail of Broken Treaties 20-Point Platform (1972)
NDN Collective — LANDBACK website
Nick Estes – The Radical Origins of International Indigenous Representation (Verso Books blog, December 2019)
Nick Estes — interview with Daniel Denvir (The Dig podcast, June 2019)
Nick Estes — Settler “Self-Defense” and Native Liberation (Indigenous Solidarity With Palestine, October 2024)
The Red Nation — Leonard Peltier is going home! (January 2025)
Leonard Peltier — Prison Writings: My Life is my Sun Dance(St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000)
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Twitter: twitter.com/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_somayajula
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/
Nick Estes:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nickwestes
Substack: https://nickestes.substack.com/
The Red Nation:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/The_Red_Nation
Website: https://www.therednation.org
In this episode, I’m joined by Julian Go, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago and author of Policing Empires: Race, Militarization and the Imperial Boomerang in the US and Great Britain (Oxford University Press, 2023), to discuss the intertwined relationship between imperialist violence abroad and fascism and state repression here at home—a concept known as the “imperial boomerang.” We explore the concept's origins in anticolonial analyses of Nazism’s rise in 20th-century Europe, as well as the ways in which this important idea can help us understand the resurgence of fascism and neo-fascism in our current political moment.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
Julian Go — Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US (Oxford University Press, 2023)
Ammar Ali Jan — The US protests and the echoes of imperial violence (Al Jazeera, June 2020)
Aimé Césaire — Discourse on Colonialism (Monthly Review Press, 2000)
Seth Stoughton — Law Enforcement’s “Warrior” Problem (Harvard Law Review, 2015)
George Padmore — Fascism in the Colonies (Controversy, February 1938)
Jessica Katzenstein — The Wars Are Here: How the United States’ Post-9/11 Wars Helped Militarize U.S. Police (Brown University’s Costs of War project, September 2020)
Tynetta Hill-Muhammad — Chicago Nixed Its Racist Database of Gangs. Other Cities Should Follow. (Truthout, October 2023)
Nick Turse — U.S. Military Service Is the Strongest Predictor of Carrying Out Extremist Violence (The Intercept, January 2025)
Researching the American-Israeli Alliance and Jewish Voice for Peace — Deadly Exchange: The Dangerous Consequences of American Law Enforcement Trainings in Israel (September 2018)
Angela Davis — Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (Haymarket Books, 2016)
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Twitter: twitter.com/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_somayajula
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/
Julian Go:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jgo34
In this episode, I’m joined by Sai Englert, lecturer in the political economy of the Middle East at Leiden University’s Institute for Area Studies, to talk about the frequently invoked (but less frequently understood) concept of settler colonialism. We explore the nuances of what the term ‘settler colonialism’ really means, as well as how this phenomenon has historically manifested and continues to manifest in different contexts—from North America to Palestine and beyond. We also discuss the framework for understanding settler colonialism that Sai puts forth in his book Settler Colonialism: An Introduction, and how this framework overlaps with and differs from dominant understandings of this crucial concept.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Pranay Somayajula:
Episode summary:
In this episode, I’m joined by Vijay Prashad, Executive Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and author of forty books including The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, to talk about the history and contemporary legacies of Third Worldism. We discuss the origins and trajectory of Third Worldism and the ‘Bandung Spirit,’ what became of this radical worldmaking project, and what lessons this rich history holds for anti-imperialist organizing and internationalist solidarity in the present day. We also discuss the challenges and contradictions of internationalism, and what it really means to stand in solidarity with anti-imperialist struggles in the Global South from within the imperial core.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
Vijay Prashad — The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (The New Press, 2007)
Hyper-Imperialism: A Dangerous Decadent New Stage (Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, January 2024)
The Churning of the Global Order (Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, January 2024)
Vijay Prashad, No Cold War, and West Africa Peoples’ Organization — In Africa They Say, ‘France, Get Out!’ (Tricontinental newsletter, May 2024)
Vijay Prashad — Ten Theses on the Far Right of a Special Type (Tricontinental newsletter, August 2024)
Fidel Castro — Speech at the 4th Conference of Nonaligned Nations (September 1973)
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Twitter: twitter.com/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_somayajula
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pranay.somayajula/
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/
Vijay Prashad:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/vijayprashad
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/possiblehistory
Tricontinental Institute for Social Research:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/tri_continental
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetricontinental/
In this episode, I’m joined by Tiana Reid, an assistant professor of English at York University in Toronto and a member of Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG), to talk about WAWOG’s work organizing a revolutionary cultural front against Zionism and imperialism. We discuss the crucial role that cultural production and political education have historically played in anti-imperialist struggle, and the urgent need for writers, artists, musicians, and other cultural workers to use their art and their platforms to stand in solidarity with Palestinians against apartheid, occupation, and genocide.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
Christina Sharpe — The Shapes of Grief: Witnessing the Unbearable (The Yale Review, September 2024)
Cedric Robinson — Capitalism, Marxism, and the Black Radical Tradition: An Interview with Cedric Robinson (Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, Spring 1999)
Amílcar Cabral — National Liberation and Culture (Lecture at Syracuse University, February 1970)
Fayez Sagegh — Zionist Colonialism in Palestine (Palestine Liberation Organization, September 1965)
Remi Kanazi performing “This Poem Will Not End Apartheid” (2011)
Pranay Somayajula — "To Make Revolution Irresistible": Notes on the Politics of Literary Production (culture shock, August 2024)
Fargo Nissim Tbakhi — Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide (Protean, December 2023)
Printing the Movement (WAWOG Bulletin, November 2024)
Lylla Younes — “Think of It as a Genocide of Journalists”: An Interview With a Member of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate About the Unprecedented Killing of Reporters in Gaza (The Nation, January 2024)
Marina Magloire — “Moving Towards Life” (Los Angeles Review of Books, August 2024)
Basel El Araj — Exiting Law and Entering Revolution (The Bad Side, April 2024)
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Twitter: twitter.com/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://x.com/p_somayajula
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/
WAWOG:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wawog_now
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wawog_now
WAWOG Toronto Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wawog_to
Episode summary:
In this episode, I’m joined by Jia Hong, an organizer with Nodutdol for Korean Community Development, to discuss the history and contemporary politics of imperialism and anticolonial resistance in Korea. We dive into the long history of foreign imperialism in the peninsula, from the Japanese occupation in the early 20th century to the ongoing U.S. military presence and its role in inflaming North-South tensions, and discuss the impact of the incoming Trump administration on Korea’s future. We also discuss the U.S. Out of Korea campaign that was launched earlier this summer by Nodutdol, a grassroots organization of diasporic Koreans and comrades organizing against imperialism in Korea and around the world.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Pranay Somayajula:
Nodutdol:
In this episode, I’m joined by Alex Press, a staff writer and labor reporter for Jacobin Magazine, to examine the complex relationship between the U.S. labor movement and anti-imperialist politics—its history, the current situation, and where we go from here. We discuss the historical entanglement of American labor with imperialism during the Cold War, the complexities and contradictions of anti-imperialist labor organizing in the imperial core, and the role that labor unions have played in the ongoing Palestine solidarity movement over the last year.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Twitter: twitter.com/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://x.com/p_somayajula
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/
Alex Press:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexnpress
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexnpress
Episode summary:
In this episode, I discuss the BRICS—what it is, where it came from, and what significance it holds for the future of international politics. Reflecting on the bloc’s history and the most recent BRICS summit that took place last month, I explore the BRICS’ relationship to the emerging multipolar world order, and tackle the question of how we on the anti-imperialist left should think about projects like the BRICS, which pose a threat to Western hegemony without directly or explicitly challenging the capitalist-imperialist world system.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Pranay Somayajula:
In this episode, I’m joined by Aline Batarseh, Executive Director of Visualizing Palestine, to reflect on the past year of genocide and resistance in Palestine and beyond. We discuss the current state of the global Palestine solidarity movement, the importance of the information front in the fight against Israel's occupation and apartheid regime, and the crucial work that Visualizing Palestine is doing to combat propaganda and shed light on the truth about what’s really happening in Palestine.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Pranay Somayajula:
Visualizing Palestine:
