For episode 210, William C. Anderson comes back to The Fire These Times to talk to Elia Ayoub about the current crises in the US and how we should try and understand our current authoritarian moment.

Anderson is the author of The Nation on No Map (AK Press 2021) and co-author of As Black as Resistance (AK Press 2018). He writes a column for Prism called Another Way Out and is the co-founder of Offshoot Journal. He was previously on TFTT (episode 107) to talk about Black Anarchism, Abolition and the Radical Tradition.

More:

Elia

• Support Elia through Ko-Fi

• Check out the Hauntologies newsletter

• Info on the Lebanon masterclass: article and podcast

• Follow Elia on Bluesky

• Follow Elia on Instagram

William

• Follow William on Bluesky

The Fire These Times is a proud member of⁠ ⁠From The Periphery (FTP) Media Collective⁠⁠. Check out other projects in our media ecosystem: Syria: The Inconvenient Revolution, From The Periphery Podcast, The Mutual Aid Podcast⁠, ⁠Politically Depressed⁠, Hidah: Jewish Counter-Colonial Thoughts and ⁠Antidote Zine⁠. If you’re not a supporter yet, please consider doing so with only $5 a month on Patreon.com/fromtheperiphery

Transcriptions: Transcriptions are done by⁠⁠ Antidote Zine⁠⁠ and will be published on⁠⁠ The Fire These Times' transcript archive⁠⁠.

Credits:

Elia Ayoub (host, producer, episode art), William C Anderson (guest), ⁠Rap and Revenge⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (Music),⁠ ⁠⁠Wenyi Geng⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (TFTT theme design),⁠ ⁠⁠Hisham Rifai⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (FTP theme design) and⁠ ⁠⁠Molly Crabapple⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (FTP team profile pics)

Hey everyone,

I wanted to let you all know that I’ll be giving online classes starting this January, and that I’m still accepting new people for the very first class. I recommend doing so asap as I’ve already had to open up a second class due to that amazing response I’ve received so far. All details below.

The class is entitled “Beware of Small States: An overview of Lebanon from 1975 to 2025.”

We will go beyond sensationalist headlines and shallow coverage, and beyond simplistic, top-down explanations for the country. Instead of a linear timeline of events, which you can get from Wikipedia anyway, you will get a messy one. After all, politics is not linear. Political actors evoke events from the recent or not-so-recent past as part of their politics in the present. In addition to the structured syllabus, I will use personal stories as someone who grew up in Lebanon in a very conservative, at times even Far Right, Christian environment, to explain how my own personal journey away from right-wing and towards left-wing, quasi-anarchist, politics has helped me understand Lebanon better, and hopefully help you too.

Register

Just send me an email at ⁠ayoub@thefirethesetimes.com⁠ or a Signal message @ ayoub.02.

I will send you the syllabus as well as all the required details including how to pay for the class if you're interested in taking it.

When?

Weekly from Saturday Jan 17th, 4pm UK time. 5 sessions.

Week 1 (Jan 17): The stories we tell ourselves about this painfully ordinary country.

Week 2 (Jan 24): Five academic-y concepts that are easier to understand than they seem.

Week 3 (Jan 31): We Are the Children of the Children of War.

Week 4 (Feb 7): From Life in the Midst of History to The Collapse

Week 5 (Feb 14): Lebanon yesterday, today, tomorrow

Fees: $300

Discounts: For Hauntologies (my newsletter) subscribers (past or present)

• 50% off for paid subscribers
• 100% off for Founding Members

Anyone joining the class will get:

• Access to all 5 sessions

• Lifetime access to the Google Drive

• Lifetime access to the Hauntologies newsletter without paying extra (subscribers pay $50 a year on average)

• Discounts on future classes

• An invitation to join a Signal group

More classes to come

In addition to repeating this class, here are the titles and brief descriptions of the other classes currently being prepared. You can already register your interest by email or Signal to those as well - and I’ll just send you an email or text when they’re ready.

• The Ghosts of Israel’s Future, looking at what the horrors unleashed by Israel during the ongoing genocide reveal about that country’s politics, and the people, Jews, Israelis and Palestinians alike, who predicted it. Estimated fee is $300 for 5 sessions.

• Against Multipolar Imperialism, looking at why we cannot accept multipolarity as a valid alternative to a US-dominated world, especially as that involves accepting authoritarian states and effectively sacrificing whole populations as collateral. We will look at China, Taiwan, Ukraine, Russia, so-called Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, Hong Kong, Syria, Israel-Palestine, Iran, El Salvador, Argentina, Tigray and Ethiopia, Bosnia and of course Lebanon. Estimated fee is $300 for 5 sessions.

• Cancelling the Apocalypse: From James Baldwin to Solarpunk and beyond. Estimated fee is $300 for 5 sessions.

• Postwar Hauntings: Modern Lebanon Through Its Cinema. This will be a much more in-depth exploration of Lebanon post-1990 through its cinema, which was the topic of my PhD dissertation. We will watch movies, discuss them, and explore Lebanon through them. Estimated fee is $600 for 6 sessions.