Bang-Bang Podcast

• Downfall (2005) and Triumph of the Will (1935) w/ George Dardess | Ep. 50

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.bangbangpod.comVan and Lyle are joined by the literary critic George Dardess to talk about Downfall (2004) and its grim mirror, Triumph of the Will (1935). Where Leni Riefenstahl turned the Nazi project into divine spectacle, an ecstatic choreography of power and obedience, Bernd Eichinger and Oliver Hirschbiegel stage its total collapse. The conversation moves from the bunker’s suffocating intimacy to the ruined streets of Berlin, tracing how Downfall strips away the mythic machinery of fascism and leaves only exhaustion, delusion, and death.They linger on the film’s most shattering scenes: Hitler’s tender affection for his dog Blondi, Eva Braun’s manic dances above the bombs, Magda Goebbels forcing cyanide into her children’s mouths, and the “Albert Speer myth” of the good technocrat who resists too late. In contrast to Triumph of the Will’s mobilized masses (“You are not dead. You are Germany!”) Downfall exposes fascism’s inner logic from purity as self-destruction to discipline as despair. It’s not redemption or sympathy the film offers, but a study in the banality of evil, the smallness that remains when the spectacle ends.Further ReadingGeorge’s writings on the Slant Books website“Turning Hitler into Art?” by GeorgeUntil the Final Hour: Hitler’s Last Secretary by Traudl JungeThe Führer Bunker: The Complete Cycle by W.D. Snodgrass“Fascinating Fascism” by Susan SontagThe Wages of Destruction by Adam ToozeEichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah ArendtBehind the Scenes from the EpisodeDownfall Trailer

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• Emergency Politics, Revolutionary Gen Z, General Strikes, and Business School for Leftists | Ep. 49

  This is where the liberal resistance people were always right.The US is an insane nuclear power. How do you revolt against that?If change is going to come, it’s going to come from the periphery of the world-system, not the American core.The majority of the people in the military…do not actually want a civil war.There’s two ways that this gets resolved. There’s going to be a clash of forces, which is actual violence, which sucks…or we’re gonna do a general strike, finally, and we’re gonna shut this s**t down and we’re gonna have a critical mass of people withdraw their labor. Politics behind the scenes! A rare glimpse behind the curtain as Van, Lyle, and guest Andrew Facini got together to record an episode on Crimson Tide (coming in due course!). As sometimes happens, their conversation took a massive detour into the politics of the day, and it was urgent enough to share now as its own episode:* The folly of investing in nuclear “deterrence” while America makes an authoritarian turn; * The politics of emergency that Trump is mobilizing to deploy the US military in US cities;* Why a general strike in America is both inevitable and impossible;* What it means that MAGA is a counter-revolutionary force;* Why civil war depends on whether the military follows/keeps following unlawful orders;* Why Trump’s unlimited national security powers have everything to exaggerating the China threat; and* Why MAGA intellectuals are bad military strategists.For only $2 per week, you can access our vast (and growing) archive of anti-imperialist film conversation and much more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.bangbangpod.com/subscribe

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• Part II: WarGames (1983) w/ Sam Ratner & Andy Facini | Ep. 48

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.bangbangpod.comVan and Lyle are joined by Sam Ratner, Policy Director at Win Without War, and Andy Facini, Communications Director at the Council on Strategic Risks, to discuss WarGames, John Badham’s Cold-War techno-thriller that accidentally foresaw the age of algorithmic warfare.What begins as a teenage prank—Matthew Broderick’s David Lightman breaking into what he thinks is a computer game—quickly becomes a meditation on automation, deterrence, and human judgment in systems built to annihilate. Together, the group unpacks how WarGames’ “WOPR” supercomputer prefigures today’s AI decision-making, where machines learn to “take men out of the loop.” They trace how the film’s closing revelation (“The only winning move is not to play”) echoes across four decades of nuclear strategy and modern debates over escalation, autonomy, and control.The conversation ranges from NORAD and machine learning to the moral limits of deterrence, the psychology of Cold-War adolescence, and the comic absurdity of believing one can win an unwinnable game. Like Dr. Strangelove before it, WarGames shows us a military machine that runs on fear, faith, and code, and a civilization learning to live with its own programmed self-destruction.Further ReadingSam’s professional pageAndy’s professional page“Strategy & Conscience (The Book Review We Need),” by VanTelehack, a retro internet simulator recommended by AndyThe Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, by Sharon WeinbergerThe Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America, by Paul N. EdwardsThe Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, by Daniel EllsbergTeaser from the EpisodeWarGames Trailer

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• Part I of II: WarGames (1983) w/ Sam Ratner & Andy Facini | Ep. 47

  Van and Lyle are joined by Sam Ratner, Policy Director at Win Without War, and Andy Facini, Communications Director at the Council on Strategic Risks, to discuss WarGames, John Badham’s Cold-War techno-thriller that accidentally foresaw the age of algorithmic warfare.What begins as a teenage prank—Matthew Broderick’s David Lightman breaking into what he thinks is a computer game—quickly becomes a meditation on automation, deterrence, and human judgment in systems built to annihilate. Together, the group unpacks how WarGames’ “WOPR” supercomputer prefigures today’s AI decision-making, where machines learn to “take men out of the loop.” They trace how the film’s closing revelation (“The only winning move is not to play”) echoes across four decades of nuclear strategy and modern debates over escalation, autonomy, and control.The conversation ranges from NORAD and machine learning to the moral limits of deterrence, the psychology of Cold-War adolescence, and the comic absurdity of believing one can win an unwinnable game. Like Dr. Strangelove before it, WarGames shows us a military machine that runs on fear, faith, and code, and a civilization learning to live with its own programmed self-destruction.Further ReadingSam’s professional pageAndy’s professional page“Strategy & Conscience (The Book Review We Need),” by VanTelehack, a retro internet simulator recommended by AndyThe Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, by Sharon WeinbergerThe Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America, by Paul N. EdwardsThe Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, by Daniel EllsbergWarGames Trailer This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.bangbangpod.com/subscribe

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• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) w/ Dan Borus | Ep. 46

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.bangbangpod.comVan and Lyle are joined by historian Dan Borus, Professor Emeritus at the University of Rochester, to discuss Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, a film that continues to define political satire as much as it mocks the very impulses that make satire necessary. The conversation revisits the Cold War’s toxic blend of paranoia, sexual repression, and bureaucratic madness, drawing from Borus’s essay “The Love That Dared Not Speak Its Name in the War Room.” Together they trace how Kubrick and screenwriter Terry Southern transformed the age of McCarthyism and “moral hygiene” into a Freudian nightmare of militarized masculinity, nuclear brinkmanship, and closet panic.What does it mean that the “rational men” who planned for nuclear annihilation also spoke in the language of purity, fluids, and perversion? How does Dr. Strangelove turn Cold War homophobia back on its accusers? And what do the film’s grotesque sexual metaphors—its refueling scenes, cowboy bombs, and “ten women per man” survival plan—tell us about a society that loves peace through domination?Further Reading“The Love That Dared Not Speak Its Name in the War Room,” by Dan“The Dark Satire of Pete Hegseth’s Quantico Speech,” by Lyle“Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals,” by Carol CohnThe End of Victory Culture by Tom EnglehardtWar Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination by H. Bruce FranklinTeaser from the EpisodeDr. Strangelove Trailer

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