Dear friends,
I’m writing today to share some very exciting news:
I’m starting a podcast!
The show is called Return to Bandung, and it explores various important questions relating to imperialism, resistance, and internationalist solidarity throughout history and into the present day. Through historical analysis, interviews with expert guests, and deep dives into classic works of anticolonial theory, Return to Bandung seeks to make the case for why anti-imperialist politics are as important in our current moment as ever before.
The show takes its name from the Bandung Conference of 1955, which kickstarted the Third Worldist movement and inaugurated a radical new era of international anticolonial solidarity. In his opening address to the conference, Indonesian President Sukarno told the delegates:
We are often told “Colonialism is dead.” Let us not be deceived or even soothed by that. I say to you, colonialism is not yet dead . . . Colonialism has also its modern dress, in the form of economic control, intellectual control, actual physical control by a small but alien community within a nation. It is a skillful and determined enemy, and it appears in many guises. It does not give up its loot easily. Wherever, whenever and however it appears, colonialism is an evil thing, and one which must be eradicated from the earth.
It’s been nearly 70 years since Bandung, but those words still ring true. Far from the ‘postcolonial’ world that we are constantly being told we live in, the truth is that the moment we find ourselves in now is a fundamentally colonial one. It’s a moment of deepening crises and heightening contradictions, in which new forms of imperialist violence continue to facilitate the coercive extraction of incredible amounts of wealth, value and resources from the exploited periphery—the vast majority of the world’s population—by the entrenched powers of the imperial core. And above all else, its a moment that demands new forms of internationalist solidarity and anticolonial resistance.
In the pilot episode of Return to Bandung, out now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, I lay out this analysis in more detail, and make the case for why I think the left urgently needs to recenter anti-imperialism and internationalism as a core tenet of our politics.
Listen to the pilot now:
I’ll be following this pilot up next week with the show’s first guest interview. After that, new episodes will be released every other Wednesday, so be sure to subscribe to Return to Bandung on Spotify and Apple Podcasts to stay up to date with new episodes as they drop! I’ll also share new episodes with my Substack subscribers, and you can always find them on the “Return to Bandung” tab on culture shock’s homepage as well.
I’m envisioning this show as being complementary to my writing, and serving the same overall purpose of anti-imperialist political education and revolutionary consciousness-raising. Now more than ever, as the genocide in Gaza enters its thirteenth month and threatens to spiral into a devastating regional war, I think its crucial that we build on the momentum of the past year to develop a genuine and coherent internationalist analysis, and I hope that this podcast will contribute to that project in its own small way.
In the coming weeks and months, the show will cover topics ranging from the decades-long campaign to construct a New International Economic Order to the history and politics of the BRICS alliance, with a combination of solo episodes and guest interviews. If you have a suggestion for a topic you’d like to see covered, leave a comment below or email returntobandung@gmail.com!
To stay on top of important updates and new episodes as they are released, don’t forget to follow Return to Bandung on Instagram and Twitter—and of course, please leave a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts!
That’s about it for now. Thank you all so much for all your support over the last few years—I can’t wait to see where things go with this new project!
Solidarity forever,
Pranay
aaa this is so exciting! love the podcast name (im indonesian)