On February 4, 2023, Platypus Affiliated Society members Diana Caudwell and D. L. Jacobs interviewed Paul Cockshott, a computer scientist, communist, and a lecturer at the University of Glasgow. Cockshott was a member of the British and Irish Communist Organisation in the 1970s, but later resigned along with other members, forming the Communist Organisation in the British Isles. He has written several books, including Towards a New Socialism (1993) and most recently How the World Works (2020).

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On June 6, 2023, Platypus Affiliated Society member Michael McClelland interviewed Sue Bradford. Bradford joined the Left in Aotearoa, New Zealand during the New Left era, participating in various organizations that recruited on campuses during the anti-Vietnam protests of the 1960s and 70s. After a brief absence from activism, she took part in 1981’s anti-racist campaigns against apartheid South Africa’s rugby team, who were then touring New Zealand. Shortly after, she joined the unemployed workers’ movement in the 1980s, before eventually becoming a household name as a Green Party Member of Parliament for 10 years in the 2000s. She now runs workshops for activists from a cooperative which she co-founded, Kōtare in Wellsford, where she also lives.

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On March 12, 2023, for episode 56 of the podcast Sh*t Platypus Says, Platypus Affiliated Society members Pamela C. Nogales C. and Andreas Wintersperger interviewed Spencer A. Leonard about the two volumes of Marx and Engels’s journalism that he has edited and written introductions for: Marx and Engels on Imperialism: Selected Journalism, 1856–62 and Marx and Engels on Bonapartism: Selected Journalism, 1851–59. Both volumes were published in 2023 by Lexington Books. Leonard is a founding member of the Platypus Affiliated Society. He teaches sociology at James Madison University.

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ON NOVEMBER 15, New York University announced the opening of a new Center for the Study of Antisemitism. Among its central goals, “the Center will research both classical forms of antisemitism as well as the ‘new antisemitism’ and its links to anti-Zionism.” With the hermeneutic suspicion of the anti-Zionist Jew and Marxist-Leninist I am, I ask: what is this “new antisemitism,” and what is to be done? Here, as I frequently do, I went to consult Lenin.

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On October 1, 2023, Platypus Affiliated Society member Ceci Chang interviewed Nick, a member and former chair of the Charleston, South Carolina chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Nick’s interview does not attempt to express the opinion of the DSA as a whole, but only one member’s personal thoughts and responses to his time in the DSA. An edited transcript follows.

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