Doug Henwood's Blog, page 4

Fresh audio product: the lesser, meaner generation of neolibs

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link):

April 17, 2025 Quinn Slobodian, author of Hayek’s Bastards, talks about the IQ- and race-obsessed goldbugs of second generation neoliberalism

Fresh audio product: financiers on university boards; the politics of climate

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link):

April 10, 2025 Charlie Eaton and Alina Gibadulina on the increasing prominence of hedge fund and private equity titans on elite university boards (paper here) • Malcolm Harris, author of What’s Left, on a trio of political approaches to the climate crisis

Fresh audio product: the tariffs

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link):

April 3, 2025 Jason Wade of the UAW explains the union’s endorsement of Trump’s auto tariffs • Sam Gindin, author of this article and former long-time adviser to what used to be known as the Canadian Autoworkers Union, on what issues the tariff controversy obscures

Fresh audio product: Trump & the courts, class & elections, hipster nihilists

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link):

March 27, 2025 Samuel Moyn on Trump and the courts • Chris Maisano, author of this article, on class and politics • Evgenia Kovda on hipster nihilism (article here)

Fresh audio product: professional-class liberalism (and the PMC)

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link):

March 20, 2025 Brent Cebul and Lily Geismer, editors of Mastery and Drift, on professional class liberalism • a brief reprise of a 2019 interview with Gabriel Winant on the PMC

Fresh audio product: Marx’s ethics, and the effects of the BLM demos on police budgets

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link):

March 13, 2025 Vanessa Wills, author of Marx’s Ethical Vision, on the morality behind Marxian “science” • Mathis Ebbinghaus on the effects of the summer 2020 anti-cop protests on police budgets (paper here)

Fresh audio product: Silicon Valley politics, neofeudalism

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link):

March 6, 2025 Ben Tarnoff on tech worker militancy, the bosses’ crackdown and hard turn to the right • Jodi Dean, author of Capital’s Grave, on neofeudalism

NYC murder count revisiting old lows

Donald Trump and his loyal army of right-wing blowhards like to scream, as he did back in 2023, that “MURDERS & VIOLENT CRIME HIT UNIMAGINABLE RECORDS!” in New York City.  Of course he had a particular interest in making that claim—he was being prosecuted by both state and city back then, and he thought false claims about violent crimes would me him look innocent and prosecutors look unfairly obsessed. But despite being fictitious, this sort of bloviating did have broader unfortunate effects, scaring suburbanites and winning votes for right-wing politicians in and around the city.

Actual statistics from the NYPD tell a different story: the pandemic surgelette has largely been reversed, and the murder rate in particular is revisiting old lows. Here’s the story in a picture:

Connoisseurs of crime stats recommend looking at the murder rate as the best measure of serious offenses. Victim reports of other kinds of crime can vary with time, as can police classification of those reports. Murders are generally very well reported and there’s much less room for classification errors: a corpse has an evidentiary status that a missing wallet lacks.

As the graph shows, 2024’s body count of 382 was the lowest since 2019’s 319, and is well below 2012’s 419. And it’s down 83% from 1990’s peak of 2,262. Recent numbers are far from “UNIMAGINABLE”—one can imagine nearly anything—but they’re certainly nowhere near a RECORD!

We’re only a couple of months into 2025, but the stats so far this year are looking even better: murders are down 25% from the same period last year (ending March 2, to be precise). If this trend holds for the rest of the year—a big if, for sure—there will be 288 murders, which would be the lowest annual death toll since 1951.

Let’s see if this enters The Discourse.

Fresh audio product: worker-led organizing, the German election

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link):

February 27, 2025 Eric Blanc, author of We Are the Union, on worker-led organizing (Amazon, Starbucks, etc.) • Molly O’Neal, Quincy Institute fellow, on the German election

Fresh audio product: Trump and empire, is King Donald a neoliberal?

Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link):

February 20, 2025 Anatol Lieven looks at the global dimensions of Trumpism • Quinn Slobodian muses on whether Trump is a neoliberal, and examines the three major strands of DOGE-ism (NYRB article here)