Fourth Reich Archaeology

We are back with another installment of our ongoing series Fourth Reich Political Theology with Marcus from the Return of the Repressed podcast. Recall that in our opening salvo of this series, we laid the foundation for our excavation by exploring how the superstitious religious worldview of the feudal world order was superimposed onto the capitalist world order with “The Market” playing the role of God. The same way that serfs and peasants lived their lives in awe and default belief of a vengeful deity, we today implicitly believe in the mysterious market forces we are told move the earthly cosmos beyond the will of man.
This episode picks up right where we left off, expanding outwards on what we covered in part 1 to reach beyond the “earthly philosophers” of bourgeois political economy (Smith, Bentham, et al.), to the German Idealists from Kant to the so-called neo-Kantains, to the early sociologists, to the man of the hour himself, Carl Schmitt. In our journey, we draw heavily on Georg Lukacs “The Destruction of Reason” to trace the thread of irrationalism through all liberal political philosophizing. 
Lukacs and Schmitt see eye to eye when it comes to the hypocrisy and incoherence of Western bourgeois liberal democracy. After all, rule of by and for the bourgeoisie–and the exploitation and domination of the proletariat that entails–cannot really pursue the objectives of liberté, egalité, and fraternité. That would destroy the special privileges enjoyed by the ruling class. But from the same observation, Schmitt and Lukacs proceed in polar opposite directions. Schmitt would strip back the pretense of institutional norms in favor of the rule of raw power, which he supported in his advocacy for and membership in the Nazi party. Lukacs, good Marxist that he was, would instead expose the exploitive nature of the state and the society and, developing class consciousness through praxis, expropriate the ruling class in favor of the dictatorship of the proletariat. 
It’s another incredible conversation with Marcus, and one that has real practical implications for today when we once again find ourselves in what Schmitt called “the state of exception” where the sovereign alone makes the rules…
Return of the Repressed Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/TheReturnOfTheRepressed
Fourth Reich Archaeology Patreon: patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology

This week we have yet another guest with whom to zoom out from the present moment and excavate critical contextual information and insights. This week’s guest is the great journalist Moe Tkacik of the American Prospect, who has brought a much-needed historical materialist perspective to coverage of the government and the laundry-list of crimes that the most powerful people therein are responsible for. Particularly, we dig into the mobbed-up background and low-down gangster tactics of “Little Narco” Marco Rubio.
Moe walks us through the ways in which Rubio tanked a proposed prisoner exchange with Venezuela in order to fan the flames of war and pave the way to the regime-change operation he eventually spearheaded. She also discusses her deep research into his background and how it intersects with the OG mafia-state collaborations in the form of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Kennedy assassination, and the Iran-Contra drugs for weapons rackets. 
We talk a lot on this podcast about the King of Crime, Donald Trump, but as the great bit-character Ciccio testifies before the fictionalized U.S. Senate in the Godfather Part II, “the family’s got a lot of buffers.” And an ambitious up-and-comer like Rubio makes a phenomenal buffer.
In the second part of the discussion - currently only available on Patreon - we dig even deeper and explore the Nazi roots of the Mafiocracy and trace the unbroken continuity of mob-state relations in the postwar era. 
Music: Songs of Carlos Puebla and Zach de la Rocha feat. Last Emperor and KRS-ONE.
Moe’s Article: The Narco-Terrorist Elite (https://prospect.org/2025/12/23/narco-terrorist-elite-rubio-south-america-iran-contra/) 
Fourth Reich Archaeology Patreon: patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology

This week we are joined by a special guest, TrueAnon’s Brace Belden, to take stock of the current and impending crisis and brainstorm ways that we might think creatively to meet the moment and face off against an admittedly much better organized fascist enemy. For those of us on the left seeking to exploit the next crisis to push back against the consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of our craven overlords, we must come to grips with the fact that there currently is no organized revolutionary movement; there’s not even a revolutionary working class. But that does not mean that we should give into fatalism. There are plenty signs of hope, and the demand for a unified front against fascism is higher than it has been in generations.
We discuss all of this and much more with Brace, including the magnetic pull of the spectacle towards compatible leftism, the prospects for armed struggle (including insights from Brace’s time in Syria), and how we can learn from the past without using history as a costume for revolutionary LARPing. We don’t have the answers, but we do have the will, and we hope you’ll tune in and join us.
Links: 
https://podcast.trueanon.com/
Brace’s Baffler Article, “The Hatred of Podcasting” https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/the-hatred-of-podcasting-belden
Lukacs “History and Class Consciousness” https://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/
Herbert Marcuse’s 1969 Berkeley Speech with Angela Davis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuyWj8BtjKc
Fourth Reich Archaeology Patreon: Patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology

In Side A (listen if you haven't already!), we went all the way back to the country’s entree into modernity and its role as a nominally independent nation amidst and between competing empires in The Great Game. We also go a bit deeper into the political forces that gave rise to the first Shah of Iran, which is a real Fourth Reich fairytale involving Nazis, Brits, and of course that black gold, oil. 
You know we dug into the rise and fall of the great lost hope for democracy, Mohammed Mossadegh. All he wanted was for Iran to get half the profits from his country’s oil, and instead he got ousted and replaced by a 26-year long dictatorship, replaced by the Islamic Republic in 1979.
Basically we cover about 250 years of Iranian history and tell a story that we just have not been hearing in the news these days.
In Side B, we take it to the present day and give our analysis on the current protests and the factional formations popping up to prepare a hostile takeover of the roiling nation. It is a time for clear thinking, for historical understanding, for only through consciousness of our role in reality can we act in history. And act we must.

This week we dig deep into Iran. We go all the way back to the country’s entree into modernity and its role as a nominally independent nation amidst and between competing empires in The Great Game. We also go a bit deeper into the political forces that gave rise to the first Shah of Iran, which is a real Fourth Reich fairytale involving Nazis, Brits, and of course that black gold, oil. 
You know we dig into the rise and fall of the great lost hope for democracy, Mohammed Mossadegh. All he wanted was for Iran to get half the profits from his country’s oil, and instead he got ousted and replaced by a 26-year long dictatorship, replaced by the Islamic Republic in 1979.
Basically we cover about 250 years of Iranian history and tell a story that we just have not been hearing in the news these days. In Side B, we will take it to the present day and give our analysis on the current protests and the factional formations popping up to prepare a hostile takeover of the roiling nation. It is a time for clear thinking, for historical understanding, for only through consciousness of our role in reality can we act in history. And act we must.