Democracy, Counterrevolution and the Rhetoric of Anti-Imperialism w/ Rohini Hensman (E58)

Today we’ll be talking to Rohini Hensman. She is an India-based Sri Lankan labor activist and feminist and an  independent scholar whose book “Indefensible: Democracy,  Counterrevolution, and the Rhetoric of Anti-Imperialism” I’ve reviewed some years ago, and which will be the topic of our conversation today.In that book, she argues that the apparent anti-imperialism of many  self-professed socialists amounts to explicit or implicit support for  totalitarianism, fascism, Islamist theocracy and, ironically enough,  imperialism.She goes through the examples of Syria, Iran, Iraq, Bosnia, Russia and Ukraine.This has been a concern of mind for a few years now and I wanted to  take this opportunity to bring it to a wider audience, so I invited  Rohini on to explore how such a supposedly noble political position –  anti-imperialism – can be so easily corrupted.You don’t have to identify with any -ism to find this topic  informative. You just need to be someone who opposes authoritarian  politics.