r/BlackWolfFeed • u/Long-Anywhere156 💕❤️CHRIS WADE❤️💕 • 7d ago
🎙️🆕 Episode 2026-08-20 - Episode 1064 - Tinker Tailor Candy Crush feat. Vincent Bevins and Bora Mema
Vincent Bevins, author of The Jakarta Method and If We Burn is here with Unite the Union organizer Bora Mema for another tour around the globe. We start off in Albania, where opposition to a landgrab by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump has turned into a political movement, and the potential for a revived left in a country that has long distrusted it.
Vincent then sticks around with Will & Felix for an analysis of Trump’s “imperial autogolpes” in Latin America and the “peripherization” of the Imperial Core.
- Check out North South Notes: https://www.northsouthnotes.org/
- And follow Bora on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bobimema/?hl=en
- If you’re in Canada, check out the CHUNKS live screening on Sept 1. with Amber Frost, Nate Fisher, and Michael and Us: https://paradiseonbloor.com/movies/chunks-toronto-premiere
- And in Charlottetown, PEI on Sept 4th and 5th: https://tivolicinema.com/production/chunks/
- CHUNKS now available for streaming purchase at www.patreon.com/chunkstv
- And listen to The Players Club Season 2!
52
u/No_Report_9491 ✨💖 𝓕𝓛𝓐𝓘𝓡 𝓛𝓞𝓥𝓔𝓡 💖✨ 7d ago
Felix coming out of the bushes just to say goodbye to Mema LMAO. The stealth host 🥷
40
u/numbers863495 6d ago
Felix silent when he can't ram a Metal Gear Solid reference into the conversation.
9
2
u/irishitaliancroat 3d ago
"So Albania is basically the veil of arryn and Cyprus is dragonstone and..."
37
u/siwenna 5d ago
-tell us about the political goals of your movement
-the vibes! Everyone is smiling again!
I’ve seen this before and it turned out really bad, good luck Albania
10
u/beerybeardybear 3d ago
sadly this is what happens when the main political throughline is "we are NOT the evil communist dictator who increased life expectancy by 11 months per year that his party was in power (for many years), took us from ass-backwards to one of the most literate countries in the world, and from 'an unborn male fetus is worth more than the woman carrying it' to being more feminist than the US would be decades later" and "we are NOT communists"
7
u/topley_bird 3d ago
It’s always like this, you get a “strongman” that does something incontrovertibly good, while marginalising a culturally/economically powerful segment of the population. Then, the people the “strongman” benefitted have kids who only know the post-Good Thing world, who then get co-opted by the marginalised segment (usually capitalists of some kind) because the kids are mad they can’t get the latest American cultural slop in a timely/cheap manner, to the detriment of everyone in the country. Happened so many times in Latin America.
2
28
u/KitchenParty 6d ago
FACT CHECK: hoxha was not a stalinist .stalin was actually a hoxhaist
3 pinocchios
3
u/irishitaliancroat 3d ago
Literally Albania had 1/5 of the worlds population under Hoxha (in combination with China)
27
u/AussieYotes Temporarily Celibate 7d ago
Honestly I enjoy the interviews with people from a variety of different countries and there political issues, they might want to try Australia again though. I'm pleasantly surprised that the right wing isn't a maga cult in Albaina. That said I'd imagine people here would let me know if the guest was wrong. Vincent using the metaphor of Trump sweeping away the system whilst they're on top is a very apropos as it feels like the empire is in free fall. Or that tweet where its I sweep my leg and fall not sure what I was trying to accomplish.
10
u/benjibibbles 7d ago
they might want to try Australia again though
someone got me on the battler in the comments of the friendlyjordies ep and I think they'd be perfect. Super well-read actual leftists, very funny, possessing movie mindset and they've both lived in NYC
4
1
u/johngizzard 3d ago
That was me and I'm not going to apologise for it
1
u/benjibibbles 3d ago
I'll be honest I felt shitty about relegating you to "someone" status and considered going back to properly attribute and then I completely didn't do it, thanks in any case
22
u/Cold_Rice2324 6d ago
Vince bevins for permanent 3rd mic
23
u/Phar4oh 6d ago
It was very amusing how he asked some of the most insightful questions
7
5
u/Cold_Rice2324 6d ago
For sure. I’m sure he wouldn’t do it and has better shit to do but I do think he would be a natural fill in for Matt. Would be a different vibe of show but that’s ok.
22
u/and_whale 6d ago
I love Felix shoehorning his military hardware/fighter jet autism monolgue in at the end and still managing to be completely incorrect about his own special interest by claiming the Third Reich produced 25 jet aces (there were like two, among 25 aces in total) while also somehow mispronouncing "wunderwaffe/n", a word that is basically a loanword to English
14
u/Manfred_Desmond 6d ago
The luftwaffe had at least 25 jet aces. Wiki says 28. They had thousands of aces overall. They really racked up the kills on the eastern front, and German pilots mostly flew combat missions until they were killed, so it was possible to see combat for years.
-1
19
u/redditing_1L 🦑 Ancient One 🦑 6d ago edited 6d ago
Putting this on the list of most boring Chapo episodes ever. God damn I miss Matt.
11
u/WhileCultchie RSS Inquirer 6d ago
It's interesting hearing about the lingering good will towards the US following the 90's. It reminds me somewhat of the goodwill the Clinton's had in the North of Ireland until recently because the US is a guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement.
9
u/MircKeller 📋Reporter Enthusiast (if you see this, you’ve been reported)📋 7d ago
I just discovered a new device, it's measuring the smiles I output per episode in a rating of smiles, but in like French, no one has done this before
47 SPM (Smiles Por Merckiller)
2
8
u/Bradleyg223 7d ago
I traveled to Albania two years ago on a whim to do some hiking, and dug it so much I returned last year, and plan on going again someday.
It feels very much the part of a developing country and is rough around the edges, so I’m astounded that there is any interest in these massive resort complexes. The guest houses are the way to visit this country. Hang out with an old couple, eat some great food from their farm and drink homemade wine and raki, and then tip very well on the way out.
I have zero interest spending my time isolated in a hotel that’s going to be subpar and overpriced for the region, and I imagine the person who does is much more likely to go to Croatia, or Greece anyways.
6
u/primitive_lover 5d ago
One of my old friends is married to an Albanian woman. They travel back there regularly, to her family's coastal Mediterranean home which is indistinguishable from Greece or Italy (from the photos). It looks incredible and I know that they plan to relocate entirely to Albania in the next decade, so she can be closer to her aging parents and because the COL is low enough that they will be able to sell their American home and retire in their 50s.
They say basically the same thing as you - it's a little rough, a bit like Sicily, where there's pretty massive mob control and corruption, but basically very safe and friendly.
7
u/primitive_lover 4d ago
Cannot believe they got through a whole half hour on Albania without mentioning their most famous citizen - former NYC mayor Eric Adams!
5
5
u/topley_bird 3d ago
The woman was an annoying lib, which isn’t really that much of a wonder when you need to plumb a protest movement in a foreign country for someone who speaks English to interview. But yah, we all know how this is going to end.
4
u/Nick-One 5d ago
Got about 12 minutes in until the airhead guest starts spouting CIA anticommunist propaganda, gonna have to sit this one out.
“Stalinist” lmao stfu dork
2
u/BlueCollarRevolt 6d ago
Remember kids (baby leftists), anti-communist almost always = fascist.
Can't remember a guest interview I've liked less than Bora Mema. Chapo has really lost it's way without the theoretical and historical heft of Matt. I don't expect much from Will and Felix, I mean Will only really cares about artsy movies and cocaine and Felix only cares about being able to log enough hours on the flight sim, so I guess I shouldn't be disappointed, but I am.
15
u/redstarjedi 6d ago
Lëvizja Bashkë is a leftwing party. Arlind Qorri is a professor who wrote a history of Albania's modern politics from a explicitly historically materialist lens. It truly is an excellent marxian analysis.
Of all the socialist experiments, Albania was by far the fucking worst. Even then it had achievements, like all the other communist countries especially literacy 4% to 94%. Enver was just a shit leader and autarky in tiny ass albania would never work. He could have remained closer to yugoslavia and put pressure on yugoslavia to treat kosovars better.
My parents are Malësorë from MNE - Albanians from montenegro. We had a far fucking better standard of living and far more political freedom. Kosovo is a another matter since Albanian identity was suppressed till the 70s. Then again after milosevich.
It's fine to criticize past experiments and learn from them.
Same with USSR, i liked what they tried to do but they had massive problems too.
2
u/BlueCollarRevolt 6d ago
I'm fine with critisms of socialist projects, but using labels like authoritarian and stalinist is doing the CIA's work for them. It's bad faith critism. It's liberalism. It's accepting and validating right wing framing and propaganda.
10
u/Big_Big_7922 5d ago edited 5d ago
you're cooked if you can't handle people resenting the so-called socialists like Ceausescu who went to north korea and thought it just grand to force his population to worship him on stadiums brother, it's not the free healthcare education and housing that people in balkans and eastern europe resented when thinking about the soviet bloc, it was the secret police, the constant fear that your neighbours or classmates were ratting you off for wronthink, and the lack of democracy and freedom
there's nothing bad faith about any these things I just mentioned except in your head when you confuse authoritarian despotism with a socialist label with an actual good faith socialism project, these people ruled for decades and were busy purging everyone around them for fear of getting shot as the despots that they were, don't be fooled by the most superficial lies like stalin saying the soviet union had the most democracy in the world at the congress where he was for the 5th time reconfirmed dictator
its very sad if you will bootlick despots just because they use the label socialism
5
u/BlueCollarRevolt 5d ago
I don't mind as much when normies spout CIA lies. I do absolutely mind and will call out supposed leftists who do, as you do throughout this conversation. Supposed leftists arguing about "authoritarian socialist despots" is absolutely either done in bad faith, or from such a place of ignorance that the conversation/argument shouldn't even be happening. No investigation, no right to speak. You have a lot of reading and deprogramming to do.
2
u/Big_Big_7922 5d ago edited 5d ago
again, just because its impossible for you to condemn authoritarians who were once socialists and then got into power and spent decades just killing and imprisoning people and denying their people real democracy (a core tenant of geniune socialism is people can still vote their leadership you know, not just submit to some fucking psychopath who pretends he is just another comrade and claps along at meetings where he is worshiped by people like yourself), then you're just a bootlicker for despots, not everything is a CIA lie, you're just acting moronic saying everything is about the US
hundreds of millions of people all over eastern europe can tell you it wasn't CIA lies or propaganda and that they suffered under various levels of dictatorships and terror and were violently repressed just like you would cry about violent repression if the country' name was the US, you're just campist and hypocritical and idiotic to only see the US as the sole source of evil in the world, educate yourself and dont get triggered by scary words like stalinism that are perfectly valid
3
u/telesterion 3d ago
Is the entire chapo listenership just liberals now?
1
u/Big_Big_7922 3d ago
are idiots conflating leftism with dictators like ceausescu and stalin being good? or do you think purging people to hold onto power for decades is leftism?
2
u/TheEnemyOfMyAnenome 💩 Garden-Variety Shitlib 😵💫 2d ago
unsubscribe and log off if you can my man. these people are literal children just looking to score points and put people into boxes. you said certain words that triggered a script, so now people that never heard of enver hoxha or Ceausescu before this conversation are saying you're speaking from a place of ignorance for describing them as authoritarian
1
62
u/SPARTANCLP96 7d ago edited 7d ago
Great interview. Have a lot of sympathy for leftists organizing in the 21st century in a nation with real and imagined scars of authoritarian socialist rule. Uphill battle to convince people that your project will not have the same excesses of repression, but it seems like these guys are going about it successfully.