Under Putin’s Thumb: War, Repression, and Resistance

Over the last two decades, Vladimir Putin has transformed his government in Russia from a managed democracy into an authoritarian regime. Many now view it as neofascist. Abroad, it has launched war after war to rebuild Russia’s former empire, while, at home, it has crushed the democracy movement, repressed all protests against Putin’s imperialist war in Ukraine, and jailed thousands of political prisoners. Two Russian dissidents, Ksenia Kagarlitskaya and Ilya Budraitskis join Ashley Smith in this episode of Solidarity Without Exception.Resource links:Freedom Zone: https://www.futurerussia.ch/en/freedom-zonePosle Media: https://www.posle.media/?page_id=136&lang=enIlya Budraitskis, Dissidents Among Dissidents, https://www.versobooks.com/products/913-dissidents-among-dissidentsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/solidarity-without-exception--6535723/support.Become a member and join the Solidarity Without Exception Supporters Club today!Follow Solidarity Without Exception on Spotify or Apple PodcastsSign up for our newsletterFollow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetwork

Throughout 2025, the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela has faced growing and violent pressure from the United States, with President Trump’s administration deploying naval fleets in the Caribbean, ordering lethal and illegal strikes on suspected drug trafficking vessels departing from the Venezuelan territory—and, most recently, seizing a massive oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast. In response, Maduro has invoked emergency powers, mobilized militias, and signaled that his regime is preparing for military confrontation rather than compromise with the US, all while Trump and Maduro face waves of popular dissent and unrest within their own countries. In this urgent episode of Solidarity Without Exception, co-host Blanca Missé speaks with Venezuelan journalist and researcher Simón Rodríguez about the decades-long path that has led us to the brink of war between the US and Venezuela, and about the need for working people around the globe to oppose Trump’s imperialist aggression and stand in solidarity with the Venezuelan people without excusing or ignoring the political crisis within Venezuela itself.  Guests: Simón Rodríguez is a Venezuelan journalist, researcher, and editor at Venezuelanvoices.org.Credits: Pre-Production: Blanca MisséAudio Post-Production: Alina NehlichBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/solidarity-without-exception--6535723/support.Become a member and join the Solidarity Without Exception Supporters Club today!Follow Solidarity Without Exception on Spotify or Apple PodcastsSign up for our newsletterFollow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetwork

From military invasions, occupations, and annexations of Mexican territories in the 19th century to the post-NAFTA capture of Mexican industries, resources, and labor markets by American companies and investors, US-Mexico relations have always been defined by American imperial domination. “Mexico's economy has been economically dominated and incorporated as a kind of subsidiary or an extension of the US economy,” labor activist and scholar Justin Akers Chacón says, and that relationship of domination “determines the politics of Mexico” to this day. In this episode of Solidarity Without Exception, co-host Blanca Missé speaks with Chacón about the colonial roots of US–Mexico relations, how that relationship has evolved over the past two centuries, and how it continues to shape the politics, economics, and immigration policies of each country today.Guest:Justin Akers Chacón is an activist, labor unionist, and Professor of Chicana/o History at San Diego City College who lives in the San Diego-Tijuana border region. He is the author of The Border Crossed Us: The Case for Opening the US-Mexico Border and Radicals in the Barrio: Magonistas, Socialists, Wobblies, and Communists in the Mexican-American Working Class; he is also the co-author, with Mike Davis, of No One is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the U.S.-Mexico Border.Credits:Pre-Production: Blanca MisséAudio Post-Production: Alina NehlichBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/solidarity-without-exception--6535723/support.Become a member and join the Solidarity Without Exception Supporters Club today!Follow Solidarity Without Exception on Spotify or Apple PodcastsSign up for our newsletterFollow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetwork

Israel’s US-backed genocidal destruction of Gaza has exploded the fiction of the “rules-based” international order and exposed the violent, people-destroying, land-grabbing imperialism it was always based on. Over the last two years, the US and Israel have carried out a genocidal war in Gaza, officially killing over 60,000 people, bombing Gaza’s cities to smithereens, and displacing 90% of its 2.1 million people. Their blockade of almost all aid has caused a famine that threatens to kill hundreds of thousands of people. Now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced plans to invade and occupy all of the territory while he greenlights more repression and colonial settlement in the West Bank.In this episode of Solidarity Without Exception, Palestinian scholar-activist Eman Abdelhadi speaks about how we reached this grim threshold, and what comes next. Abdelhadi details the history of imperialist support for Israel’s colonial conquest of Palestine up to the current genocide, the Palestinian people’s steadfast resistance, and the urgency of global solidarity with their freedom struggle.Guest:Eman Abdelhadi is a Palestinian academic, activist, and writer who thinks at the intersection of gender, sexuality, religion and politics. She is an assistant professor and sociologist at the University of Chicago, where she researches American Muslim communities. She is co-author of Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052 – 2072.Additional resources: The Real News Network, Israel’s War on PalestineBrett Wilkins, Common Dreams / The Real News Network, "‘Colossal level of destruction’ as Israel ethnically cleanses Gaza City neighborhoods"Spectre Journal, Building the Palestine Solidarity Movement - An Interview with Eman AbdelhadiSpectre Journal, Palestinian Liberation: “We Teach Life” - An Interview with Rafeef ZiadahCredits:Hosted by Ashley SmithStudio Production: Ashley SmithAudio Post-Production: Alina NehlichMusic Credits: Venticinque Aprile (“Bella Ciao” Orchestral Cover) by Savfk |https://www.youtube.com/savfkmusicMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/solidarity-without-exception--6535723/support.Become a member and join the Solidarity Without Exception Supporters Club today!Follow Solidarity Without Exception on Spotify or Apple PodcastsSign up for our newsletterFollow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetwork

Today, Taiwan is caught in the crosshairs of two imperial rivals: the US and China. This is nothing new for the island nation, which has been a battleground for competing empires for centuries, but what is new is the critical role Taiwan plays in the 21st-century world economy. For example, Taiwan manufacturers 90% of the world's most advanced microchips—the key component in everything from consumer electronics to the US military’s F-35 fighter jets. In this episode of Solidarity Without Exception, co-host Ashley Smith speaks with Brian Hioe, journalist and editor of New Bloom magazine, about the history of Taiwanese struggles for self-determination, the country’s position in the contemporary US-China rivalry, the increasing threat of imperial war, and the urgency of building solidarity among working-class people in Taiwan, the US, and China.Guests:Brian Hioe is a freelance journalist, translator, and one of the founding editors of New Bloom, an online magazine featuring radical perspectives on Taiwan and the Asia-Pacific. A New York native and Taiwanese-American, Hioe has an MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University and graduated from New York University with majors in History, East Asian Studies, and English Literature. He was Democracy and Human Rights Service Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy from 2017 to 2018 and is currently a Non-Resident Fellow at the University of Nottingham's Taiwan Studies Programme, as well as board member of the Taiwan Foreign Correspondents' Club.Additional resources:New Bloom website, Facebook page, X page, and InstagramEli Friedman, Kevin Lin, Rosa Liu, & Ashley Smith, Haymarket Books, China in Global Capitalism: Building International Solidarity Against Imperial RivalryBrian J. Chen, Boston Review, “Semiconductor Island: The colonial making of Taiwan’s chip supremacy”Credits:Pre-Production: Ashley SmithStudio Production / Post-Production: TRNNMusic Credits: Venticinque Aprile (“Bella Ciao” Orchestral Cover) by Savfk |https://www.youtube.com/savfkmusicMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/solidarity-without-exception--6535723/support.Become a member and join the Solidarity Without Exception Supporters Club today!Follow Solidarity Without Exception on Spotify or Apple PodcastsSign up for our newsletterFollow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetwork

During its reign as the dominant global superpower, the US imposed its will and wreaked imperialist havoc around the world. But as the power of US empire declines and the global order is restructured, hypernationalism and violent competition between imperial and regional powers are surging around the world, like they did before the great world wars. Can an internationalist, working-class movement of movements for peace, prosperity, and self-determination help humanity avoid a future of imperialist plunder, planetary destruction, and escalating violence?In this episode of Solidarity Without Exception, cohosts Blanca Missé and Ashley Smith speak with TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez about the dire need for such a movement in our terrifying new age of global disorder, and they discuss movement-building lessons that have emerged from the conversations they’ve hosted on the podcast so far in Season One.Additional resources:Eli Friedman, Kevin Lin, Rosa Liu, & Ashley Smith, Haymarket Books, China in Global Capitalism: Building International Solidarity Against Imperial RivalryUkraine: A people’s peace, not an imperial peace (joint declaration by ecosocialist, anarchist, feminist, environmental organisations, and groups in solidarity with the Ukrainian resistance and for a self-determined social and ecological reconstruction of Ukraine)Credits:Audio Post-Production: Alina NehlichMusic Credits: Venticinque Aprile (“Bella Ciao” Orchestral Cover) by Savfk |https://www.youtube.com/savfkmusicMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/solidarity-without-exception--6535723/support.Become a member and join the Solidarity Without Exception Supporters Club today!Follow Solidarity Without Exception on Spotify or Apple PodcastsSign up for our newsletterFollow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetwork

For the last two years, the civil war in Sudan, the largest contemporary war in Africa, has ripped the country apart. As Beverly Ochieng, Wedaeli Chibelushi, and Natasha Booty report at the BBC, “The war, which continues to this day, has claimed more than 150,000 lives. And in what the United Nations has called the world's largest humanitarian crisis, about 12 million people have been forced to flee their homes. There is evidence of genocide in the western region of Darfur, where residents say they have been targeted by fighters based on their ethnicity.”In the latest installment of Solidarity Without Exception, we examine the roots of Sudan’s social and humanitarian crisis today, the domestic and international dimensions of the political revolution that swept Sudan in 2019, which led to the overthrow of Omar Al-Bashir, and the violent counterrevolution that, since 2023, has been led by two military factions (and their international allies), deepening the oppression of the Sudanese people and enabling genocidal actions by said military forces. Cohost Blanca Missé speaks with: Nisrin Elamin, assistant professor of African studies and anthropology at the University of Toronto and a member of the Sudan Solidarity Collective, who is currently writing a book on Gulf Arab capital accumulation and land dispossession in central Sudan; and Ibrahim Alhaj Abdelmajeed Alduma, a Virginia-based human rights advocate for Sudan and a communication and disinformation specialist with years of experience working in NGOs with a focus on community development, youth capacity building, and strengthening the role and impact of civil society institutions.Credits:Hosted by Blanca MisséAudio Post-Production: Alina NehlichMusic Credits: Venticinque Aprile (“Bella Ciao” Orchestral Cover) by Savfk |https://www.youtube.com/savfkmusicMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/solidarity-without-exception--6535723/support.Become a member and join the Solidarity Without Exception Supporters Club today!Follow Solidarity Without Exception on Spotify or Apple PodcastsSign up for our newsletterFollow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetwork

Since 1565, the Philippines has been in the grip of one imperialist power after another. Even after independence, the archipelago remains a kind of functional US colony. Now, territorial conflict in the South China Sea could turn the Philippines into a battleground for US-China war. Josua Mata joins Solidarity Without Exception to discuss the Philippines long history of colonization and resistance.Credits:Pre-Production: Ashley SmithAudio Post-Production: Alina NehlichMusic Credits: Venticinque Aprile (“Bella Ciao” Orchestral Cover) by Savfk |https://www.youtube.com/savfkmusicMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/solidarity-without-exception--6535723/support.Become a member and join the Solidarity Without Exception Supporters Club today!Follow Solidarity Without Exception on Spotify or Apple PodcastsSign up for our newsletterFollow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetwork

Puerto Rico first became a US colony in 1898—and remains so well into the 21st century. Today, that colonial relationship is structured through PROMESA, an unelected board that controls the island’s budget and has unleashed a vicious cycle of debt and privatization that has mired Puerto Ricans in poverty, unemployment, and underdevelopment. Rafael Bernabe joins Solidarity Without Exception to discuss PROMESA’s role in perpetuating colonialism in Puerto Rico, and the longer history of the island’s oppression under US rule.Rafael Bernabe is a Puerto Rican activist, sociologist and historian. He was one of four island-wide representatives of the Movimiento Victoria Cuidadana (MVC) who won office in the 2020 elections. He is the author of Walt Whitman and His Caribbean and co-author of Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History since 1898 with César J. Ayala.Read the transcript of this podcast here. Credits:Hosted by Blanca MisséPre-Production: Blanca MisséAudio Post-Production: Alina NehlichMusic Credits: Venticinque Aprile (“Bella Ciao” Orchestral Cover) by Savfk |https://www.youtube.com/savfkmusicMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/solidarity-without-exception--6535723/support.Become a member and join the Solidarity Without Exception Supporters Club today!Follow Solidarity Without Exception on Spotify or Apple PodcastsSign up for our newsletterFollow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetwork

Editor's note: This episode was recorded on March 4, 2025.In Syria, Assad is gone, but the country's challenges remain. Over a decade of civil war and foreign intervention has devastated the country's economy and politics, but a fragile optimism still exists. Joseph Daher and Ramah Kudaimi join this second episode of Solidarity Without Exception for a discussion on Syria's long journey from the 2011 revolution to today, and what solidarity with the Syrian people should have looked like then, and could look like now.Credits:Hoisted by Ashley SmithPre-Production: Ashley SmithAudio Post-Production: Alina NehlichMusic Credits: Venticinque Aprile (“Bella Ciao” Orchestral Cover) by Savfk |https://www.youtube.com/savfkmusicMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/solidarity-without-exception--6535723/support.Become a member and join the Solidarity Without Exception Supporters Club today!Follow Solidarity Without Exception on Spotify or Apple PodcastsSign up for our newsletterFollow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetwork