00:00:00: This is the Urban Political.

00:00:03: The Podcast on Urban Theory, Research and Activism.

00:00:10: Welcome to the Urban political podcast!

00:00:12: Today is July third twenty-twenty six And we're recording our first podcast in a series entitled Between Fintech & Far Right Placing Debt In New Conjuncture which we host together with Lucy Calvallero and Sandra Pulido Chaparro.

00:00:26: The episode where recording today is entitled, Placing Debt in a New Conjuncture.

00:00:30: I'm Jess Lins And i am a researcher at the University of Zurich In Switzerland.

00:00:34: My name is Anna Hilbrand and I'm also from the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

00:00:39: Before we get started, We wanted to say just a few words about the context Universidad de los Andes in Colombia and at the University of Buenos Aires.

00:01:08: Amongst which one is our guest here on the podcast today, Veronica Gargo?

00:01:13: Listeners may have been following some of the political development in some of these countries.

00:01:18: Colombia elected a far-white president in June, people in Argentina continue to grapple with the policies of Xavier Mele's right wing government.

00:01:28: and here These developments form part of the broader context for the conversations you'll hear throughout this series as we explore the intersections of debt, technology and the rise of far right.

00:01:45: With a wave of extreme-right victories in Latin America around the world it's no coincidence that researchers on debt and housing start asking questions about their relationships between the land take of the Far Right and indebtedness.

00:01:58: Today, debt is increasingly mediated through apps software digital platforms social media.

00:02:04: So to understand the relation between indebtedness and far right, we also need pay attention to rural.

00:02:09: technology plays in shaping both and intersection.

00:02:13: We ask here how do household debt technological transformations in financial sector and rise of authoritarian movements intersect today?

00:02:24: In the first episode that we are recording today, We're going to particularly unpack The connections between technology debt and the far right And lay some of the conceptual groundwork for the rest Of this series.

00:02:35: Our speakers Are joining us from Latin America Europe and United States To help us put these issues into a global context Will hear about the patterns That connect These different places but also About how these dynamics shape the urban Shape the experience of everyday living in very Different ways depending on local contexts.

00:02:53: So our guests are Erin McElroy from the University of Washington.

00:02:57: Erin, you work on issues surrounding gentrification technology race and empire.

00:03:02: You're known to urban scholars but also more widely social scientists for your book Silicon Valley imperialism techno fantasies and frictions in post socialist times that was published with Duke university press in twenty-twenty four And your new project if I understand it right investigates the urban geographies of technofascism.

00:03:22: Ben Anderson is our second guest.

00:03:24: Ben, you're from the University of Durham and he's one of the leading scholars on effect in geography And we use that expertise to cover both questions of finance and question of politics.

00:03:34: Your new book called The Politics Of Feeling Populism Progressivism and Liberalism.

00:03:40: It was co-authored with Anna Seiko and published at Goldsmiths University Press in twenty twenty five.

00:03:46: And Veronica Gago, our third guest is from the University of Buenos Aires and University of San Martín.

00:03:51: Veronica most listeners may know you as a scholar or popular economist and feminist perspectives on debt.

00:03:57: Your book A Feminist Reading Of Debt Is One Of The Key Inspirations In Our Research Projects... ...and your new book that came out in twenty-twenty five with Tinta Limon!

00:04:06: That you place these topics into context for the far right government of Javier Millay.

00:04:11: We're so happy to have three here Erin, Devonika and Ben.

00:04:15: thank you very much for joining us today.

00:04:17: So to get started with our questions we've characterized the present conjuncture through debt technology in the rise of far-right movements and authoritarianism.

00:04:27: We want you think about the intersection.

00:04:29: these three How do approach the nexus of debt technology?

00:04:35: And what perspectives inform your thinking Well.

00:04:38: Thank You Very Much For Your Initiation.

00:04:40: I'm Really Happy Of This Conversation.

00:04:43: And about the question, I was thinking that the nexus is not obvious.

00:04:47: That we have to problematize the nexus in other words how this nexus between debt technology and the far-right functions?

00:04:57: I think it really matters!

00:04:59: In that line i think political genealogy of these intersections really matter for me.

00:05:06: from my research based on Argentina can contribute with a couple elements.

00:05:12: The first one I think it is how that was incorporated into the management of precarity.

00:05:19: I think this is a very important line for us in our research the last at least five years.

00:05:26: Since the pandemic, debt became sort of crucial element to management of precarity and management of emergence.

00:05:35: In that sense household debt has built capillary network able provide very expensive help and finance solutions to resolve the problems of everyday life.

00:05:50: I am referring concretely, two problems that arise from inflation context... ...and from austerity measures in the case of Argentina.

00:06:01: But before the pandemic In Argentina since twenty eighteen Since they returned to the IMF To our country The destinations And uses Of household debt turn very quickly to paying for food and medication, particularly after COVID-death.

00:06:23: So we have this important entanglement between household debt and social reproduction which is an important element but also from a feminist reading of death that is what Lucie Caballero has been doing I think wave of financial inclusion.

00:06:44: And that is very important after the pandemic because the Financial Inclusion targeted a population already in debt.

00:06:55: So it is a way to understand how financial inclusion is the form of governments, of the emergency but also a form of expansion of household debt.

00:07:07: In the case of Argentina I think that It's crucial to connect why this discourse of Javier Millay Is organized around the notion of financial freedom.

00:07:20: It was a main concept during his political campaign, but it's also like a political interpolation to precarious and indebted populations.

00:07:30: And I think that is also understand the vote for Millet in terms of her promise or stability of dollarization on also in terms off previous training in household debt as a sort of management of precarity As i was saying at the beginning.

00:07:49: Maybe the last point that I would like to bring in this first question is, that the household debt expansion of household debt.

00:07:58: it's connected with different forms of dispossession of extractivism.

00:08:03: That organises the impoverishment every day life.

00:08:08: so after those different policies of impoverishment household debts appear as a sort of solution As a sort or concrete resource facing precarity.

00:08:20: So I think that ambivalence, it is very important in political terms how debt appears as a sort of capacity to confront austerity but also has the sort.

00:08:40: Thank you, Veronica.

00:08:41: I think before we expand on some of the topics you've brought to the table—the connection between debt austerity and perversions—I would like to open it up for others.

00:08:51: Ben, do you want me to continue bringing your back into this room?

00:08:55: Your perspective in these three keywords is where you're coming from with research when looking at them.

00:09:01: Yeah, thanks for the invitation.

00:09:02: It was wonderful to be part of this conversation and there's a lot of resonances actually with Veronica emphasising precariousness as central to the nexus between technology debt and far right.

00:09:14: that is also where I start from.

00:09:15: i see precarity in precaritisation First of all, and I think something which we'll be relatively familiar to as well.

00:09:27: In-debtedness both is a mechanism for the generation of precaritisation but also... And i think perhaps this touched on the ambivalence that Veronica highlighted.

00:09:36: for us in debtedness there's means for managing precarious situations Which might be a matter of achieving kind of survival But it could also might be holding out or attempting to retain an attachment To some good life That can be achieved through indebtediness.

00:09:51: So indebtingness has been kind of central to mechanisms or precaritisation and their management, but also indebtedness being essential.

00:09:59: something a little different which for me is precarity as something closer to a kind of shared atmosphere or collective mood.

00:10:07: that sort of conditions without determining how the present is felt and how the future's related too.

00:10:12: And I think it's in that context, we can understand some what The Far Right Offer at least in the contexts that are working...the UK and USA.

00:10:21: primarily because i think What The Far-Right Offers Is Effectively A Redistribution of who gets to feel precarious and who is made precarous.

00:10:30: And so what I'd be very interested in, my joint work with Anna Secor is thinking about how the far right offer effectively a promise of stability and a promised security... How The Far Right Offer through a kind-of time loop that finds that still remains graspable, offers as a kind of security mechanism for certain populations whilst at the same time intensified in precariousness or various marginalised and excluded others.

00:10:59: So I think it's in response to the precaritisation that indebtedness both manages and produces.

00:11:05: so we can understand at least part of the affective appeal of far right.

00:11:10: And in this context the role of technology is one if material affective conditions of present moment.

00:11:19: The present moment shifts in its intensity, In the context of the feeds of social media... ...the present moments becomes something where credit and debt through apps And their broader embedding within platform capitalism is somewhere Where one can respond almost immediately to the pressures of precarious living.

00:11:36: So that's how I see the intersection with hopefully some resonances there

00:11:41: Sure.

00:11:41: Yeah, I

00:11:46: know i'm really happy to be part of this conversation and definitely see some resonances as well.

00:11:51: For me, when I think about these terms together... ...I kind of go back to the two thousand and eight foreclosure crisis.

00:11:56: When you know this hemp-ribe mortgage became a sort of racial signifier within

00:12:00: U.S.,

00:12:01: but also globally in different ways.

00:12:02: And one thing is that i was a housing organizer at the time In San Francisco We saw this rise of racialized foreclosures.

00:12:09: Then the dawn of corporate landlords These big property management companies Ownership entities that began galvanizing all those homes Of the racially dispossessed who were already rendered indebted to mortgages that they could never pay.

00:12:22: And we started seeing this sort of rise in many cities across the US, but again also in cities like Bucharest and Inclusion where it has spent a lot of time organizing and living with the rise of evictions and racialized evictions which tenants began to be handed unpayable rents In the case of the foreclosure crisis, people who couldn't pay rents were pathologized as just not worthy living in homes.

00:12:47: And so we see these new cycles of gentrification and racial dispossession augmenting really uneven ways but also in ways that are very much tethered to histories of neoliberal globalization.

00:12:57: that kind of preceded the foreclosure crisis and created this sort global geographies of indebtedness.

00:13:02: But all of that's to say, it was after this kind of moment when we started seeing these corporate entities begin to galvanize so many homes and create new circulations of indebtedness.

00:13:13: There were two phenomenon involving technology anyway I think are important.

00:13:17: note one in San Francisco again where I was organizing We started to see the sort-of new tech boom emerge right?

00:13:24: That some people were calling the Tech Boom or the second dot com boom.

00:13:27: but this is on.

00:13:28: Twitter moved into The Mid Market region in San Francisco and created, there was a Twitter tax break zone that was actually created to incentivize tech growth.

00:13:36: And the kind of emergence of all these unicorn startups.

00:13:39: so that's when Airbnb and Uber, The Whole Sharing Academy kicked off!

00:13:42: We also started seeing Apple Facebook Amazon Google

00:13:47: etc.,

00:13:47: the big tech companies really weathered up the storm of financial crisis on the top of it.

00:13:55: On the other side and start to absorb all these smaller startups, And now some are the wealthiest people who have kind of been galvanizing wealth through techno capitalist economies.

00:14:03: Are those people?

00:14:04: Who kind of led that movement?

00:14:06: so that's what we see.

00:14:07: must you know?

00:14:08: Start too?

00:14:08: I mean this is way before he took over Twitter You know galvanize more capital.

00:14:12: We started seeing new state relationships between tech companies in The government which had already existed but new ways for them To basically avoid paying taxes and contribute two municipal imperatives into cities and people started offshoring money in ways that were already set up through neoliberal governance.

00:14:30: And at any rate, there are now all of these weird tech gated utopias that we're seeing pop-up around the world whether that's in Prospera or Roton Honduras or right outside San Francisco on this new city being proposed to be developed called California forever which is serving as white flight spaces for tech elites basically places where they don't have to be troubled by those, that there need to be inferior who are often in their words.

00:14:57: Those who are homeless—those whom I think should be incarcerated or pushed out of the homes and contexts of tech-led

00:15:03: gentrification.".

00:15:04: So yeah...I think about this moment also as Pippetal is my own work…as this was transforming into the twenty-tens we started seeing when it comes by property, technology companies and firms.

00:15:24: We call these landlord tech companies the work that I do.

00:15:26: but basically new systems get implemented in order to allow these big corporate landlords to automate property acquisition and management.

00:15:34: And so through this whether thats with their eyes of virtual payment platforms or a new facial recognition system that tenants need to subject themselves too just enter there own homes.

00:15:43: Or new forms are basically automating evictions if tenants don't pay rent on time all began to get used in mass, and allow these big entities too.

00:15:51: accumulate more property, but also more data about tenants.

00:15:54: And so the new economy of landlordism emerged very much abetted by technology.

00:16:00: Of course, technology wasn't the same at fault when we could blame global capital or monopoly capitalism and racial capitalism.

00:16:07: that also took no capitalism if you want to break down these different ways.

00:16:11: Capital continues to dispossess tenants and benefit landlords which has a very long history.

00:16:16: But there was definitely transformation in the twenty-ten so I think it rode off back up the indebtedness created by the foreclosure crisis.

00:16:22: So those are kind of these moments that I think about when trying to piece these puzzle pieces together, so happy to expand on any of them.

00:16:29: Thank you to all three of your for this introductory remarks.

00:16:32: We were wondering if maybe we want respond one another in some way pick up Some themes have been heard already throughout like these introductory remarks and perspectives.

00:16:48: Yeah, I would like to say a couple of things.

00:16:50: First continuing what Ben talked about the affective appeal of the debt, I think it is interesting how through that and through financialization of everyday life we can connect this effective interpolation with concrete conditions for social reproduction.

00:17:10: So there's a sort of entanglement which isn't only affective in the sense of immaterial elements but also connected to the condition every day.

00:17:21: so as means reproduction in the midst of dispossession, in the middle of precarization.

00:17:30: Of

00:17:30: course

00:17:31: produces a sort of affective attachment to the idea off on power-off management In the midst critical conditions.

00:17:40: So it is very active interpolation so that political subjectivity of the indebted people not only as a passive subject rather an active subject.

00:17:53: So the ambivalence of empowerment off that is very paradoxical, but very powerful and very much capitalized by the ultra right wing.

00:18:06: Also thinking when I was listening to Erin, now in Argentina we have the personal installment of Peter Till.

00:18:15: So Argentina is a sort of laboratory for this connection between ownership technologies and also the extraction data.

00:18:24: so i think that it's very much important.

00:18:27: For example In Argentina Now technology of Palantir has been fused with state architecture.

00:18:35: So the government is offering all public data to Palantir in order to reorganize their state infrastructure.

00:18:43: And also, the far-right government is offer resource extraction household finances and public data as a sort of entire territory of destruction.

00:18:55: so I think that it's very interesting how we can connect those different forms of technology hit the ground in different geographies.

00:19:08: Yeah, I think some really interesting questions there about the specificity of the subject of debt and anger entirely with your kind of articulation have been incredibly material.

00:19:19: interpolation through technologies.

00:19:21: of that i think back to some research i did with james ash rachel gordon and paul langley on-debt.

00:19:26: then what was interesting there was Like in the future, there was almost like a reluctant or kind of like ambivalent subjectivity.

00:19:36: This was high cost short-term term loans and basically The indebted subjects needed Or felt at that time they need to use this form of credit And therefore particular kind of indebtedness, both to survive but also to maintain their attachments to those aspects of life they wish to attach.

00:19:55: This just didn't fit with any of the kinds of accounts that were given up at this point as an investor in through themselves.

00:20:03: so I wonder if there's something here about not only how material that interpolation is and particularly forms of subjectivity emerge around indebteds where people have frankly a really ambivalent hesitant relation kind of feeling of dependence, a feeling being out-of-control.

00:20:21: A feeling that it's the only option left.

00:20:23: and how The Far Right might some of their promises... ...and some of they're affective appeal might be understood.

00:20:30: in the midst off that ambivalence I'm also really struck by Erin's account this new urban geography of flight and exit taking form around the tech elite And those fantasies of decline and fantasies at end and identification with various dangers subjects who should be eradicated.

00:20:48: Again, a part of the kind of broad sort-of narrative or affective structure that makes various far right narratives and calls to exclude violently other salient in somewhere another

00:21:02: I can jump in.

00:21:02: Well, for stuff that Palantir is being kind of celebrated so much by the government and Argentina's no surprise—I didn't realize some of those, unfortunately what Palantire does with governments especially when they're led by far-right leaders like New Wave.

00:21:14: but there was something interesting about the PayPal mafia and sort of white flight escapeism from context or racial justice organizing in South Africa at this post apartheid moment where we have Teal Also, you know David Sox who's like the crypto AIs are of The Trump administration in Joe Wandsdale.

00:21:34: He also was part of Pollinter right?

00:21:35: a bunch of these guys come out to California thinking it's going to be this sort of techno libertarian utopia that-in which they can actually not feel impeded upon by government regulations and basically manifest sort of California ideology or the California dream.

00:21:51: But then we hear about, you know all this escapism from California to Texas.

00:21:55: Lonsdale went there and Musk has moved his operations there because people don't want to pay taxes also.

00:22:01: Of course, Teal has moved some of its household.

00:22:03: I think too Argentina right?

00:22:04: So it's a sort of billionaire escapist is really interesting to think about.

00:22:09: And just this white flight escapists that kind goes on repeat Because That was actually even House Silicon Valley formed initially in part, there was a lot of white flight from San Francisco and the context of racial justice organizing.

00:22:20: And the suburbs around you know, Stanford University were seen as better place for the tech elite to live into kind of create laboratories of technological experimentation.

00:22:30: so I think that's something interesting.

00:22:32: It is such a global geography that often just gets thought about in kind of US frameworks or in California frameworks.

00:22:38: But yeah, South Africa comes into play and Argentina come to play it.

00:22:41: I mean i think A lot of what Milton Friedman was dreaming about In terms of you know Hong Kong And Singapore Dubai et cetera These kinds of tax-free escapism zones.

00:22:49: I Know Pennsylvania's work looks at this quite well but Kind of these kind of serve as these templates for some Of the contemporary forms of escapisme?

00:22:56: But then I find What Is also so interesting.

00:22:59: There s like oh we don't want To Work with The government We Don t Want to Work with regulations.

00:23:03: These techno-capital estutes think they're better than that, but at the end of the day, further that sort of contradictory positionality, that a lot of them are kind of upholding when it comes to the state.

00:23:34: And even with AI stuff I think there's a lot to say about that idea that anthropic or open AI should be regulated by this data.

00:23:42: now apparently Trump is trying to do that but not really.

00:23:44: and so right now they're like you know at Topics one of the top unicorn companies in San Francisco accumulating all of this capital um paying up on all of these data stolen from people against their will.

00:23:55: a sort of indebtedness to these companies in terms of our

00:24:00: own data

00:24:01: that's being used to train basically algorithms that are pinpointing where bombs should be dropped into Iran.

00:24:06: So it becomes real creepy really quickly.

00:24:09: but I guess just the last thing I'll say is related to what you were saying about subjectivity, i think there's something really important there too.

00:24:14: and when it comes to some at The Landlord Tech that we've been studying a lot of times this comes with kind of new surveillance technologies being deployed in tenant housing in ways that are being used to automate evictions and gentrification.

00:24:26: But some of what we've been looking at, the Landlord Techwatch project I'm a part of is just how it impels tenants who want to perform as quote-unquote good tenant assuming that they're being watched all the time.

00:24:41: And I think this leads out of the space at home, but it definitely takes place in these really intimate spaces of the home too and also just in cities with a widespread diffusion of surveillance technology.

00:24:51: At this point, intimate household data is going straight to ICE In the US To determine if folks can be abducted.

00:24:57: So iIthink there's kindof these new subjectivities and performativities That alot of those are impelling in ways thats very problematic But hard to organize against because their happening in such intimate way of minor registers but with mass implication.

00:25:12: We've already laid the ground for talking about quite a few topics that really open up very interesting different aspects of this nexus, and I wondered if we could pause to unpack perhaps each one by one.

00:25:29: I'd like to suggest starting with these ideas on certain subjectivities associated and gain voters.

00:25:43: And if we stay with these questions of subjectivities, maybe you could explore about how technology comes in here to really create the structures or feeling.

00:25:52: Ben I think you've mentioned social media networks.

00:25:55: at least that is a topic in your book?

00:25:57: Maybe you can also talk a bit about how FinTech does this.

00:26:00: Aaron In Your Work Surveillance plays a big role.

00:26:03: so in order... This my question like as putting it more briefly for whom the far-right has an offer through these feelings of stability.

00:26:16: How does technology help the far right to mediate that?

00:26:20: Well, I can say a couple things from certain Marxist perspective... ...I think we can conceptualize all technological innovation as sort of move against working class.

00:26:35: So I think that this framework could be useful for our discussion, how capital responds to the struggle of workers but also to the struggles women queer people indigenous communities in the terrain of labor.

00:26:50: In the terrain social reproduction and the terrain structure activism.

00:26:55: i think all those struggles are being contested with new technologies.

00:27:01: For me, it's very interesting to analyze for example how financial technology is really infiltrated in social reproduction.

00:27:09: So I think that this term is important to analyze how financial technologies are translating desires but also capitalizing dispositions.

00:27:21: so at the same time we were talking about before So now we have this digitalization also of financial technologies that is really playing a role in the velocity, but also new frontiers of structure.

00:27:38: So, you know, Silvia Federiti and other researchers are saying once again digital technologies are eating up the world.

00:27:49: The very material infrastructure of technology is sustained by an expanded extractivism that is looting the third world.

00:27:59: In Argentina we're part of a so-called lithium triangle with Chilean Bolivia.

00:28:04: So we should analyze the impact of those technologies in terms of a very concrete forms of extraction.

00:28:13: And I think that these forms of extractions are very much entangled with the world capitalism, which is living ink.

00:28:23: to analyze how those technologies are again capitalizing, certain political technologies for survival.

00:28:36: For example... How these technologies are capitalizing all the forms of producing incomes or producing networks of solidarity and translating that common knowledge into a new source of profit?

00:28:56: Yeah, it's interesting because I think my interests here are complementary but not quite the same.

00:29:00: so i'm interested in how that material infrastructure of fintech of social media, in other words the material infrastructure associated with platform capitalism changes the feel of everyday life for people.

00:29:12: So if these are technologies which inhabit... If you like the nooks and crannies of every daylife they inhabit that kind of in-between spaces of waiting They shift.

00:29:20: what kind of a leisure practice is?

00:29:22: I'm interested how That kind of material infrastructure Which has bound up to various forms of extractivism ends producing a kind of like, different feel for people's everyday life and how part the sort-of affective appeal are far right occurs in the context that is generated.

00:29:40: once something likes social media becomes –for many–a key way of mediating their relation with the world.

00:29:46: And as an example one thing I'm interested to know about it of social media.

00:29:54: So a kind of endless without limit stream of content that can never be exhausted, there is always more.

00:30:01: how they inhabit them feed through what are now really taken for granted at least in the UK context practices of scrolling of liking.

00:30:09: This is like a dramatic transformation in everyday life, but how the far-rights affective appeal occurs and the midst of whole series mixed affective states that on one hand involve feeling strongly and little or nothing at all kind of simultaneously.

00:30:22: so you can be both bored and engaged Both stimulated and unstimulated.

00:30:27: And So if The Far Right's Promise Is Partly A Type Of Security We Could Probably Talk More About How That Promise Varies.

00:30:33: Because That Promise Of Security Is Also already a promise of disruptive change.

00:30:38: A promise that the present will no longer be as it is and secured in the future or come from some kind of dramatic change, but then The Promise Of The Far Right Is Also Intensity.

00:30:47: It's Donald Trump dancing to the village people.

00:30:50: its various stunts and antics are popularist politicians.

00:30:54: And how that intensity kind of disrupts this sort of feel of peoples everyday life?

00:30:58: And of course value was created through intensity on social media which works Through Circulations Of Outrage reaction, what matters is not content.

00:31:07: What matters is intensity and kind of distributions of intensity which the far right have been incredibly good at harnessing and directing.

00:31:13: so I think it's complementary but almost a different side to sort of affective infrastructure that coexist with material infrastructure you set out for us there

00:31:23: Ben, perhaps we can go from here a tiny bit back to debt.

00:31:25: I wondered maybe just directly asking you again because this is so much what you've been thinking about in your past book?

00:31:39: But for me, there's an interesting difference between them.

00:31:47: So what does debt do?

00:31:48: Debt ties a present to our future and action in the present is necessary to pay one's obligation but to the debt as it were.

00:31:56: What Is The Feed?

00:32:05: through an algorithm that we are kind of unaware off.

00:32:08: So there's a relation of disavowed or repressed, or present dependence in both of them.

00:32:13: so I think this is interesting difference between on the one hand the feeling of indebtedness tying people tied us to our future constraining holding the present in a certain relation.

00:32:25: And then, The Feed which one could say can be an habitative as way of exiting and introducing some kind difference into people's everyday life As a way to inhabit a situation where there is open horizon or be it the kind of an open horizon on the basis of the dependence that we have when we inhabit virtual space like that, On The Algorithmic.

00:32:44: So maybe one could say to understand the affective appeal it's really about... ...the kind of nexus between two different temporal forms?

00:32:51: The relation between present and future produced through indebtedness?

00:32:54: The relationship between present-and-future produced through social media.

00:32:58: And how?

00:32:58: what the far right promise at least in the context I know well is actually a disruption.

00:33:03: They promised that the future can be different And they sort of make the future possible again.

00:33:08: You know, The Far Right is kind of like anti-the whole end of or loss of the future.

00:33:12: This is why the far right which are most troubling thing have language of disruption now Have a language revolution.

00:33:17: They've expressed certain desire for change.

00:33:20: Unfortunately

00:33:22: While we're on topic of feeds I want to direct question about them to Veronica.

00:33:27: What would you say intersection between social reproduction and feed?

00:33:36: Yeah, I think that researching and speaking of debt in different moments.

00:33:41: And also in different political scenarios but from a feminist perspective enables us to see what is seeding the global flows of financial capital on platform capitalism which seek to appropriate pensions, data wages territories precarious work and driven as I was saying before this structuralist disposition.

00:34:07: And enable the extraordinary profits of the platform corporations.

00:34:13: so i think that these sort of circuit of debt is very important, but taking into account the particular forms of being grounded in social reproduction.

00:34:27: So... The other point that's connected with this is maybe that debt it a global process and we are talking about that But its politicization isn't too global.

00:34:38: So we can talk about the global far-right and how the far right is capitalizing debt, and the effective attachment of that.

00:34:47: And different uses of temporalities in order to organize a sort of horizon of promises... ...and at the same time I think it's interesting to analyze how politicization of debt is different on each territory.

00:35:02: For example, in Argentina we have coined the concept of taking debt out-of-the closet.

00:35:08: In order to produce a connection with queer struggles also but also highlight this process of political visibilization.

00:35:18: that is very important as sort political move against guilt, but also against the abstraction exercised by the domination of finance and against the moral argument.

00:35:31: For example that women are good payers.

00:35:35: so the far right uses this argument as a sort of propaganda targeting feminized bodies ,but as a kind of good payer who is responsible for financial obligation.

00:35:49: So I think that the feminist politicization around debt is really important, at least in our experience in Argentina.

00:35:58: In order to produce certain initiatives against guilt and this sort of financial harassment or violence.

00:36:08: I think that is the other point very interesting, how debt lands in different economies.

00:36:15: Previous economies...I'm thinking about how debt is reshaping and reorganizing popular economies single parent household economies cooperative economies And a different precarious sector.

00:36:29: so this capacity to re-organize and reshape other forms of political territories of economies is very much connected, in the case of Argentina with a cycle off struggles.

00:36:44: In the last twenty years against neoliberal austerity.

00:36:49: I wonder if we could follow now with a comment from Erin as there's this expansion of surveillance.

00:36:56: What are the new threats when debts are taken into that cloud of information?

00:37:01: That's absorbed about people and especially vulnerable people, low income populations tenants and others.

00:37:09: Yeah sure i suppose.

00:37:10: one of things I've been thinking about a lot is the tenant screening industry in the

00:37:15: U.S.,

00:37:15: which began in the seventies, actually after a lot of tenant protections were passed and a lot after The Fair Housing Act was passed into different kind of civil rights legislation that made it harder for landlords to just blatantly, racially discriminate.

00:37:28: And this idea if the tenant's screening industry emerged as a way To create what got sort-of sold As a race neutral tool but of course reproduced historic circuits Of racial discrimination by basically pretending That data was abstract enough to not carry the embedded NSLAB had long laid out in terms of their rental market.

00:37:46: So, the tenant screening industry basically there are over two thousand companies in the US.

00:37:50: it's like a huge unregulated industry that nine-out-of-ten landlords use so basically most people who don't own their homes are subjected to it and if a tenant applies to rent or particular housing unit all this data gets amalgamated by these tenants screening companies and data brokers about them including they've ever been affected in the past record filed against them in a court, but also their credit rating data.

00:38:14: So if they're poor and all of that data gets kind of amalgamated through a series of algorithms then get spit back out to the landlord tech company which then sells that answer to the landlords and tenants actually have to pay themselves.

00:38:30: or if you've been incarcerated, it's likely that those cycles will be reproduced through this industry which is a massive.

00:38:47: industry, and I think it's actually a site where i really hope that more organizing can take place.

00:38:52: because I do you think that tenants are huge organizing block?

00:38:56: That aren't organizing through tenant unions.

00:38:58: They're organizing for rent control in certain tenant protections but so much data is being used against them often unwittingly... But most people don't have any choice.

00:39:07: if they're trying to rent a place-they have to subject themselves to the system!

00:39:10: It is a place we need to intervene upon because then just kind of bleeds out.

00:39:15: So cycles of housing precarity, but also carcerality and indebtedness just get reproduced in the space at home or trying to obtain a home.

00:39:22: And then if you're living on rentals like the price goes up and you got evicted.

00:39:26: that is a mark against you.

00:39:28: so all these histories have been reproduced.

00:39:32: now after nine eleven actually a lot of tenant screening companies started advertising to landlords they could detect terrorists basically in positions to traffic this data, so that undocumented folks and immigrants on different visas might be evicted from public housing.

00:39:51: To say I think housing didn't used to be a place where organizing is really important and imperative given how it's at the nexus of what we're talking about.

00:40:00: but I have been inspired by the rise of tenant unions or the rise for tenant organizing against this sort-of data capture.

00:40:06: But i think were in an interesting moment when real estate property was basically housing rendered property through centuries of propertization, in the case that

00:40:15: U.S.,

00:40:16: Stolenland is merging with a sort-of new form of data capture and data capitalism which people's lives are also being rendered as properties used so those who have historically benefited from it can accumulate more properties.

00:40:30: So there's really material way in which property making is expanding to the notification for those who don't own their homes.

00:40:38: So that's some of what I've been thinking about and working on.

00:40:41: And as I mentioned to you, there are all sorts of new subjectivities that form through this process in which tenants think they have to perform in particular ways to not end up negatively impacted.

00:40:51: We've always been joking people need start performing being the bad tenant but it comes with risk could come really real risk in terms incarceration or deportation.

00:40:59: so risks of resisting is something we do.

00:41:02: a lot more work.

00:41:05: I'd love to take that topic of risk, precarity also dispossession.

00:41:11: but stay with this topic of organizing.

00:41:13: and maybe Veronica, from what I know of Buenos Aires and your work.

00:41:23: From the research we're doing in our project people face multiple risks And this is not only through surveillance but it's also through multiple jobs badly paid precarious jobs Then on top of that debt and the whole dependency of debt The need to pay back or at least an idea one needs to payback.

00:41:41: How is organising even possible?

00:41:44: What risks are people taking?

00:41:46: and how does maybe financial technologies networks of social media help organizing, financial technologies helped not paying back the debt.

00:41:55: Now.

00:41:55: so how does technology maybe also have this positive possibility?

00:42:01: Yeah, I think it's nowadays after two years and a half of this far-right government.

00:42:08: It is happening something very singular that is that debt is becoming sort of common language against the idea of debt as a device for extreme individualization At the same time.

00:42:23: now everyone is talking about debt.

00:42:25: So a TV show or channel, or radio they are doing interviews and all the people at train station At school Or different locations They're talking about debt And how that is becoming unpayable.

00:42:42: I think it's interesting How this sort of limit Of over indebtedness Is arising.

00:42:50: Of course, this is a sort of explosion of crisis in an everyday life with your capacity to repay debt or take new debts in order pay other previous debt.

00:43:04: So we are facing now I think the limit over indebtedness and to quote Deniz Ferreira da Silva, this new form of unpaved debt in a way that all the dispositions, all the austerity during years for far-right governments are producing like a new threshold off indebtedness.

00:43:28: And also another threshold on impoverishment.

00:43:32: So this is a very difficult moment in order to organize, but at the same time it's a very vital moment because all people are completely committed with these issues of debt.

00:43:46: For the first time there was like public debate about household debt in Argentina.

00:43:52: Now we have official numbers that twenty million people are indebted in Argentina so its half population almost.

00:44:01: And these numbers are indicating that for everyday life, not mortgage debt or not.

00:44:09: That four exceptional issues are dead for every day of the live off course.

00:44:15: we have been developing a big public discussion about interest rates in Argentina and how it is an index of a very racist, sexist-classist form of exploitation.

00:44:28: The differentiation in interest rates are like dividing the populations into different forms of debt.

00:44:36: but also how financial technologies are the privilege actors.

00:44:42: at that moment for far right We're seeing this sort of displacement from banks to financial actors organized through fintech.

00:44:50: We have our own Elon Musk here that is called Galperin.

00:44:54: His surname, he's the owner of Mercado Paivo.

00:44:57: it's a big platform operating in all Latin America.

00:45:01: his name also appears on this list still secret meetings.

00:45:05: so we have these sort global network of platform capitalists investors.

00:45:11: And I think that we have a very important experience from the feminist movement in organizing against debt.

00:45:19: The feminist movement has been producing lots of material, political slogans but also different devices for popular pedagogies to talk about household debts as a political issue And I think there is a lot of our contributions that are really shaping the political narrative nowadays against it.

00:45:42: I think there is a sort of accumulation after ten years of different struggles, different political forms of organization around debt.

00:45:51: That we are now in the moment that it's really incredible how debt is a popular issue and we're also intervening on different institutional projects to act against household debt.

00:46:05: Well, at the same time I think it is a crucial conflict against the far-right that is proposing financial mode of existence.

00:46:15: That's great Beirut and you and Lucy have written a lot about general strikes.

00:46:21: you know, how people think about their responsibility in relation to debts both when it's formal and goes onto your credit record but also informal.

00:46:30: And is owed to other people in the community.

00:46:32: I'm thinking about The quote at the beginning of David Graber book on debt.

00:46:37: that kind of breaks down is commonly shared about debt, that it's not a risk to the lender.

00:46:46: It is an obligation.

00:46:48: for play this off to Ben now, and ask you.

00:46:54: You write a lot about responsibility in the politics of feeling under different political

00:46:59: formations.".

00:47:00: And so I wondered if you had thoughts from what you've researched both on politics and these different structures of feeling as well as on finance and debt and payday loans and others?

00:47:11: What are your thoughts about how people think about their relationship And maybe this is a bit of spitball for you under different political formations and what that kind of theory brings to the question.

00:47:25: Do have thoughts on this?

00:47:26: Yeah,

00:47:26: it's interesting.

00:47:27: I think my thoughts begin from actually a difference in the UK context From how Veronica articulated.

00:47:33: for us have the question of the unpayable debt has become a political issue.

00:47:36: And what was striking as ours here and you talk?

00:47:39: Was that this is not the case in the u.k.. i think What we're witnessing In The uk Is a politicization Of the forms of indebtedness That have enabled middle-class social reproduction in particular which pretty similar to some of the discussion in the US around university debt.

00:47:54: And then, in that context we're also witnessing a kind of sense that debt is technology to enable continued participation and consumer culture in the midst of a downturn—is fraying!

00:48:06: So basically you have the emergence or cost of living as a crisis formation.

00:48:11: I think it's both this anxiety about middle-class social reproduction... ...and the fraying of debt as a technology consumer culture, which has clearly been there since the sort of mid-nineties in UK context.

00:48:24: I think both for these are important kind of structural conditions for The Emergence to the Far Right ,which is not necessarily to answer your question directly but it's too get me down... Which is to say when we were doing research and only speak from that project There absolutely was a sense!

00:48:39: There was a double sense of kinda unfairness particular kinds systems And yet at same time an obligation to pay that these contradictory, divergent things kind of coexisted.

00:48:48: And I think that is partly because of quite kind-of deeply rooted including theological kind of senses.

00:48:55: and what debt is in what responsibilities we have now In the book as you sort of hint at it We argue that part of the appeal today of right wing populism in particular Is that it breaks with the neoliberal Responsibilization Of The Self.

00:49:09: i think this is absolutely critical.

00:49:10: effectively Right-wing populism, as it merges and blurs with the far right.

00:49:15: It says to its people you are not responsible for The misfortune that befalls you or whatever You attach do and care about.

00:49:23: two other things are responsible one the elite the establishment however That is framed.

00:49:28: who were other to the people?

00:49:29: And on the other hand the racialized minoritised Other Who the right wing popularist politicians claims has either been given or taken too much.

00:49:38: So it basically is a completely different structure of Responsibilization and Blame than the kind of neoliberal structure.

00:49:44: And I think perhaps in the context that sort of ambivalence about debt, to kind of sense that It should be paid A sense of its own fairness at the same time In the context of anxiety About debt as a mechanism for The reproduction Of good life Where middle class social reproduction Participation consumer culture.

00:50:01: Its'in That Context where i Think the far right slash Right wing populist almost kind of offer to people.

00:50:07: You are not responsible, I think really is kind of affectively powerful.

00:50:11: now i don't know whether that same offer is there in the Latin American context?

00:50:14: Whether it's one of the promises that far-right politicians offer.

00:50:17: There could be some differences here.

00:50:19: That will be and how far right politicians exactly what they promise as a solution for particular problems Of each context.

00:50:26: I don't think progressive logics or kind of liberal centrist logics are as powerful here in terms with the questions on how they absolve, hold people to their responsibility.

00:50:39: Thank you, Ben.

00:50:40: That's so interesting and I think it also brings us a tiny bit back to the freight question of technology which we've left behind for quite some time.

00:50:48: So if responsibility sort of pushed away through political discourse how does technology help do that as well?

00:50:55: And maybe we could move back to The US Aaron If You Want To Jump In or Also Then Maybe To Close Go Back To Argentina Because i'm aware that We're All So Almost At The End Of Our Time.

00:51:07: Sure, it's easy to fetishize technology and intend to blame at all for these things.

00:51:12: And I like to think of as something that mediates existing power relations.

00:51:16: but we are in the sort of crux with speed which a lot of algorithmic data capturing software is speeding up so rapidly.

00:51:26: its been really hard for organizers.

00:51:28: I have been really heartened by how much resistance to data centers we're seeing in the U.S right now and elsewhere too, but there's been over-the last year a proliferation of movements that are actually sometimes bringing people together across different political ideologies not through a sort of NIMBY politic The ability to pay for the water or kind of weather the environmentally harmful effects that these data centers will produce, but also people who are very much aware that this data center is being used to capture information about them and too about accumulation of wealth.

00:52:01: For particular companies.

00:52:04: so whether it's an AI were crocked or anthropic or what have you?

00:52:08: So there's something there I think.

00:52:10: I think it's been really hard for people to figure out how surveillance is being used to stifle their organizing within, you know in the

00:52:17: U.S.,

00:52:17: just than they last couple weeks if people have been following what has happened with the Prairie Land Detention Center and elsewhere where people are getting sentenced to thirty years plus in jail for carrying some anti-fascist scenes.

00:52:28: so i think that the surveillance state has really augmented.

00:52:31: People are getting objected from there homes by eyes.

00:52:34: There was a big surge over the past five or six days In part because more funding had gone towards DHS sent this sort of abduction machine.

00:52:42: But the ways that those kind of objections are being coordinated is through technology made by companies like Palantir and we were also at the same time, been used to orchestrate projects which integrates with other AI systems to coordinate militarism and kind of genocidal technologies abroad.

00:52:58: So I think there's this moment in which actually people are going into debt as their parents, they're being abducted and sent to different countries just got different requests mutually for teenagers who were now you know the US without parents and having to figure out how to pay rent.

00:53:11: so all of us is very complexly and intimately connected from the space-of-the-home to that bizarre ways in which the U.S aims to protect its homeland colonial concept.

00:53:23: I'll just leave it there, that's what we do need to think intimately and globally at the same time when you're thinking about the technologies being used for reproducing cycles of debt and

00:53:32: dispossession."

00:53:42: Maybe also thinking in the exercise of comparing and contrasting different territories.

00:53:49: In the case of Argentina, I think that authoritarianism is deployed... ...in relation to this libertarian intensification of austerity as a sort of offer of sacrifice here and now with this promise to the future.

00:54:05: But also it is, I think an important point here that Millet Is offering all the time The horizon of dollarization Of the economy.

00:54:15: So i think this another element of these colonial context That we are living in Where dollarization It's a sort of promise of future stability In an economy that is in fact dollarized Because you have rent for example Here its dollarize but also the food and medicine prices are dollarized.

00:54:36: So this is one point that I would like to establish as an element of Argentinian situation.

00:54:44: The other thing, in our history... aspect at the first moment financialization was offered as a sort of or presented itself, as a way to access two rights.

00:55:02: So you can access to the right of housing or to the Right of consuming or democratizing consumer through financialization of everyday life.

00:55:14: and also That offer from democratic and popular governments, a decade ago produced political subjectivity that is completely attached to the idea of the entrepreneur.

00:55:28: So we are touching there this political subjectivities nowadays against social rights So this de-placement from financialization as a way to access two rights.

00:55:43: To now that it is producing political subjectivity against social right, I think its something i am very much interested in elaborate more on That.

00:55:55: and the other element The last one that could like add is the notion of financial freedom as a sort of core, or new definitions for authoritarianism.

00:56:09: So we have this idea of authoritarianism related to the notion.

00:56:22: It is how financial freedom is a form of operation, your empowerment in order to not only survive as we were discussing but also as the sort of entrepreneur.

00:56:35: So I think that those elements are for me very important.

00:56:43: this entanglement, intersection between that austerity technologies far right and in the case of Argentina also I would add anti-feminism as the other element really connects all those important political issues.

00:57:02: Yeah, I just conclude by affirming that call for kind of cross-cultural comparison.

00:57:06: Of this nexus because as you are speaking i could think some commonalities and differences with the UK context.

00:57:12: clearly we haven't got time to go into them in any detail but as an example there's very little sacrificial narrative populist right slash far-right in the UK.

00:57:21: The narrative of sacrifice was absolutely central to the elaboration of austerity measures from around two thousand and ten onwards, but in some ways the emergence of populous rights has been absolute a counter to the logic of sacrifice that kind of animated that political project.

00:57:35: however at cause for progressive change, both an extension or kind of embedding of trans rights but also the sort-of afterlives and black lives matter.

00:57:52: And that backlash is not only a UK issue it's a differentially articulated global backlash.

00:57:58: so any cross cultural comparison has to understand these important articulations with their local specification.

00:58:07: But one thing I think you shared was how the right capture and articulate the language context is very much freedom as a freedom from complexity and a free movement from dependence.

00:58:19: It's the freedom to act independently with autonomy again, which of course is articulated without backlash as it feeds into particular kind in particular masculine subject positions.

00:58:30: Thank you so much to all the three of you.

00:58:32: For me, this has been a truly geographical conversation in various meanings at that time.

00:58:38: It's been quite comparative and multi-scaler Very relational And also opened up many different theoretical perspectives.

00:58:45: I think never the less you've done brilliantly bringing them together some good groundwork for our next episode.

00:58:53: So we'll speak about the spread of financial technologies in Episode Two, where we're going a bit deeper into these questions of FinTech and the technology that we've covered here so broadly will translate them really on that notion.

00:59:06: And then in Episode Three We go much further into organizing and potential non-payment also in context of increasing packerization.

00:59:14: I want to thank all three again for your wonderful contributions.

00:59:17: Jess if you won't give last word Just a big thank you to the three of you, come together and let us pick your brains about different perspectives on the same nexus.

00:59:28: It's been really wonderful conversation with you.

00:59:31: I wish that we had another hour-and-a half And feel like could keep going for awhile But were just so grateful taking time to think with me about these topics and share what you know What have learned from each investigations.

00:59:47: Thank You

00:59:48: So much for protecting him.

00:59:50: Yeah,

00:59:57: thank

01:00:08: you.