2025 Reith Lectures. Rutger Bregman situates the current crisis in the context of Gramsci’s Time of Monsters but BBC deletes reference to Trump
The historian Rutger Bregman is giving the 2025 Reith lectures and the first is now available on BBC Sounds
The Reith Lectures – Rutger Bregman – Moral Revolution – 1. A Time of Monsters – BBC Sounds
Bregman opens by referencing Gramsci’s well known phrase ‘the old is dying but the new cannot be borne, now is the time of Monsters’. As he notes Gramsci wrote the words from a fascist prison cell. Bregman, who describes himself as an old fashioned social democrat underlines that fascists ideas are again in the rise, mentioning US Tech giants. He also argues that Trump is the most openly corrupt President in American history but the BBC deleted this line not wishing to tell any more truths about Trump it seems
While Bregman so far has got away with just one line being cut in 1981 when the late socialist historian E P Thompson was commissioned to give the Dimbleby lecture on nuclear weapons the BBC banned it altogether.
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