Return To Bandung

A podcast that explores questions of imperialism, resistance, and internationalism throughout history and into the present day. Host: @p_somayajula

[The Syllabus @syllabus_tweets]

Through strategic planning and a developmentalist ethos grounded in socialism, China has become the global vanguard of green industrialization. Our podcast of the week traces the rise of the PRC's green revolution.

With Ashwin Shantha on @ReturnToBandung

https://t.co/DryasV8tVR

[Ollie Vargas @Ollie_Vargas_]

During Bolivia's general strike against neoliberalism, there are workers' assemblies almost daily in the indigenous city of El Alto that surrounds the capital.

This is where the people vote on strategies and analyse how the strike is going. The new popular democracy takes shape.

[Paweł Wargan @pawelwargan]

China’s “whole-process people’s democracy” is a far more robust democratic model than anything on offer in the West. Read the paper I wrote with @jasonhickel to see why: https://t.co/uRZq3LqUG8

[Return To Bandung @ReturnToBandung]

🚨🚨RETURN TO BANDUNG EP. 37 OUT NOW🚨🚨

In this episode, I'm joined by my comrade @revintlist to discuss their recent article on why China's green development must be understood as fundamentally socialist and anti-imperialist in nature.

Listen now: https://t.co/P2BPUtKaqB

[David Ramírez Álvarez 🇨🇺 @DvidTwit]

Honored to join the Return to Bandung podcast—an important space for reflection on solidarity, sovereignty, and the enduring relevance of Bandung’s spirit in today’s global challenges. 🎙️🌍

[Return To Bandung @ReturnToBandung]

🚨🚨RETURN TO BANDUNG EP. 36 OUT NOW🚨🚨

In this episode, I'm joined by @DvidTwit, Second Secretary at @EmbaCubaUS, to discuss the history of the Cuban Revolution, the effects of the blockade, and the current situation on the ground in Cuba.

Listen now: https://t.co/4UdARsVOUv

[Rania Khalek @RaniaKhalek]

I have not seen a single mainstream media outlet give this the attention it deserves.

Israel blew up an entire Lebanese town, an ancient place. It should be headline news. There’s footage of it happening.

Imagine this was your town, and you saw every building blown up by a terrorist army to prevent you from ever returning. You would at the very least expect wall to wall coverage. Instead it passes without a word.

It’s not the only town Israel has blown up. And sadly it probably won’t be the last.

[Branko Marcetic @BMarchetich]

Muted reaction from world leaders to the US president threatening to obliterate Iran in one night. When Putin hinted at nukes, there was talk of sanctions, international isolation, even threats of WWIII. We don't even get words of condemnation in response to this.

[Return To Bandung @ReturnToBandung]

"They are not just going to bomb Gaza, not just the Caribbean, as they are already doing, but humanity itself, which cries out for freedom."

- Colombian president @petrogustavo in his September 2025 UN General Assembly address

[Jehad Abusalim @JehadAbusalim]

Everything we are seeing, or are about to witness, every war crime, every atrocity, was committed against Palestinians, tested on them, and, because there was no accountability, became a precedent to be replicated.

The Israelization of the world is the application of the Israeli model of political exclusion, violence, and oppression, rendering millions of people rightless and stateless, and enabling genocide against them, while limiting rights, freedoms, and privileges to a small minority living behind fences, walls, and inside fortified settlements.

This is the Israeli model, and it is being globalized before our eyes in the most brutal and tyrannical way possible. Palestine is, and has always been, a universal battleground for a struggle with far-reaching consequences. It is either a free Palestine or a “greater Israel,” not only on a regional scale, but on a global level.

[David Ramírez Álvarez 🇨🇺 @DvidTwit]

66 years ago today, the U.S. gov issued a memo detailing the means to destroy the Cuban Revolution.

"The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction."

In 2026, the strategy hasn’t changed.

[Prem Thakker @prem_thakker]

The world not screeching to a halt when the US killed more than 100 little school girls on the very first day of this "liberating war" led us exactly to this moment

[kev joon @never_oppressed]

I genuinely feel sick. This is just beyond anything the mind can fathom. And I keep thinking of what Ta-Nehisi Coates said. If you can’t draw the line at the genocide in Gaza, you can’t draw it anywhere else. Moral failure, on a mass and collective scale, brought us here.

[Return To Bandung @ReturnToBandung]

🚨🚨RETURN TO BANDUNG EP. 35 OUT NOW🚨🚨

In this episode, I'm joined by @pvdabelgie General Secretary @peter_mertens to discuss what lessons the remarkable success story of the Workers' Party of Belgium holds for the broader European left.

Listen now: https://t.co/WbUEwqU7KH

[Return To Bandung @ReturnToBandung]

🚨🚨RETURN TO BANDUNG EP. 34 OUT NOW🚨🚨

In this episode, I'm joined by Marxist theorist Torkil Lauesen to discuss the challenges and contradictions—as well as the crucial importance—of anti-imperialist resistance within the imperial core.

Listen now:
https://t.co/9jHJzKT5Ue

[Return To Bandung @ReturnToBandung]

🚨🚨 RETURN TO BANDUNG EP. 33 OUT NOW 🚨🚨

In this episode, I'm joined by @Alexander_Avina to discuss the history of imperialism and resistance in Mexico, and how recent shifts in Mexican politics are shaping broader dynamics in the region.

Listen now:
https://t.co/yRbdN28PGW

[Return To Bandung @ReturnToBandung]

🚨🚨RETURN TO BANDUNG EP. 32 OUT NOW🚨🚨

In this episode, I'm joined by @revintlist to interview @GabrielRockhill about his new book, Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?, and the political economy of academia in the imperial core.

Listen now:
https://t.co/xNU88MCYE0

[Return To Bandung @ReturnToBandung]

an update from RTB land!

[pranay somayajula 🇵🇸 @p_somayajula]

beyond thrilled to announce that my first book, THE SUN NEVER SETS, will be out late next year from @haymarketbooks!

i'm so incredibly grateful for the opportunity to write this book, and i can't wait to work with the brilliant folks at haymarket to get it out into the world ❤️

[Guillaume Long @GuillaumeLong]

Great pleasure to be a guest on @p_somayajula’s podcast @ReturnToBandung. We talked primarily about US hegemony & counter hegemony in Latin America in the context of the US attack on Venezuela. Also, the importance of regionalism in the forging of the strategic autonomy of LATAM

[Return To Bandung @ReturnToBandung]

🚨🚨 RETURN TO BANDUNG EP. 31 OUT NOW 🚨🚨

In this episode, I'm joined by former Foreign Minister of Ecuador @GuillaumeLong to discuss how the Monroe Doctrine has shaped the long history of U.S. imperialism in Latin America.

Listen now: https://t.co/M5FFRPH2ll

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

WOW!!!

Never thought we would hear this level of honesty from a Western leader, and certainly not Canada, given the direction of Canada in the past 25 years. Canada's shift towards multialignment is quite clear - and this level of honesty from Carney on Western "fiction" about the old order will be warmly welcomed in much of the Global South:

"We knew that the story about the rules-based order was partially false... We knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused and the victim. This fiction was useful [because of the goods provided by American hegemony]... So we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition... You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination."