Thawra

Thawra

The Dig's mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Across hours of finely detailed inquiry, Daniel Denvir and Abdel Razzaq Takriti chart the emergence and evolution of revolutionary currents in the Mashriq, including nationalism, Nasserism, Ba'athism, communism, and Islamism-set in the context of imperialist power politics and predation. Every episode emphasizes the critical history of the Nakba and the Palestinian national liberation struggle which have decisively shaped the region -and, obviously, continue to do so today. This pod is an ideal resource for academic courses, activist political education, and anyone interested in better understanding the making of the modern Middle East.

Episodes

Introducing Thawra

August 7, 2024 • 30 mins
Introducing Thawra, a miniseries on 20th century Arab politics. Over the coming 16 episodes, host Daniel Denvir and historian Abdel Razzaq Takriti delve into the history of the diverse political radicalisms and revolts that have swept across Arab lands in the past century. Denvir and Takriti demystify the fundamental coloniality of the modern Middle East—including of Israel, the Zionist settler colony launched by the British. ...
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Ep. 1 – Europe’s Imperial Juggernaut

August 8, 2024 • 79 mins
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the first episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment sets the stage: European imperialism in the Arab Mashriq from the late 18th century through the early 20th.
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Ep. 2 – Birth of Arab Nationalism

August 8, 2024 • 104 mins
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the second episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out 20th century anti-colonialism, including Iraqi, Syrian, and Palestinian Great Revolts, the birth of Arab nationalism, Islamic resistance, Ba’athism, and communism.
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Ep. 3 – The Post-Colonial Arab State System

August 8, 2024 • 131 mins
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the THIRD episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment is a comprehensive overview of the Middle Eastern Arab state system that crystalizes with the end of British and French colonial rule.
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Ep. 4 – From the Nakba to Nasser

August 8, 2024 • 91 mins
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FOURTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the politics surrounding the Zionist settler colonial destruction of Palestine, the Nakba of 1948, and the ground-shifting event that followed in its wake: the Nasser-led 1952 Egyptian Free Officers Movement coup that would set the tone for two decades of rev...
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Ep. 5 – The Struggle for Syria

August 8, 2024 • 159 mins
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FIFTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the early years of a struggle for Syria that would decisively shape the Arab world: the fight for independence from France, the first (CIA-backed) coup of 1949, and the rise of the Ba’ath and Communist movements.
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Ep. 6 – Cold War Heats Up

August 8, 2024 • 128 mins
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the SIXTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the intensification of the Cold War across the Middle East. Western imperialist powers attempted to recruit Arab countries to the Baghdad Pact, a Middle Eastern NATO. Nasser rallied the Arab masses in opposition, becoming an anti-imperialist icon. In 1956, Nas...
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Ep. 7 – United Arab Republic Against Eisenhower

August 8, 2024 • 85 mins
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the SEVENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the the US’s Eisenhower Doctrine, which in 1957 inaugurated a new era of imperialism in the Middle East; the Ba’ath Party driving Syria and Egypt into the United Arab Republic, a superstate under Nasser’s rule, in 1958; and, later that year, Eisenhower landi...
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Ep. 8 – Origins of the Arab New Left

August 8, 2024 • 70 mins
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the EIGHTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. This is a compact introduction to the Movement of Arab Nationalists, which in the 1950s built a presence that stretched across the region, from Beirut and Jordan to Cairo and the Gulf—becoming a truly powerful force in Kuwait. Led in significant part by Palestinians, its early history of...
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Ep. 9 – Palestine on the Road to Revolution

August 8, 2024 • 121 mins
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the NINTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment covers the creation of a Palestinian national liberation movement throughout the 1950s by a people dispersed by the Nakba: organizations, alliances, and theories of change assembled in the universities, cities, and refugee camps surrounding Palestine. We end with the 1...
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Ep. 10 – Iraqi Revolution, Communist Power

August 8, 2024 • 120 mins
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the TENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment tells the story of Iraq’s 1958 July Revolution: a Free Officers’ coup overthrew the imperialist-aligned Hashemite monarchy and brought nationalist Abdul-Karim Qasim to power alongside a surging Communist Party. Revolutionary currents soon turned against one another, ho...
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Ep. 11 – Ba’ath Seize Power

August 8, 2024 • 158 mins
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the ELEVENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment tells the story of the destruction of the two giant revolutionary projects of 1958: the union of Egypt and Syria under Nasser’s United Arab Republic and Iraq’s July Revolution that brought Qasim alongside communist allies to power. The rival radical projects of pan-...
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Ep. 12 – Origins of Saudi Reaction

August 8, 2024 • 155 mins
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the TWELFTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment tells the story of Saudi Arabia, a country whose reactionary, US-aligned trajectory was throughout the 1950s and 60s challenged by labor strikes, dissident currents, rebellious princes, and an anticolonial oil minister. But Saudi royal conservatism asserted itself and a frie...
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Ep. 13 – Revolutionary Arabia

August 8, 2024 • 169 mins
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the THIRTEENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment covers the armed left-wing revolutionary movements that challenged British imperial power across Southern Arabia, with the National Liberation Front taking over South Yemen and Dhufari rebels in Oman waging a liberation war against the Sultan. Today’s alliance of reaction...
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Ep. 14 – The Palestinian Revolution

August 8, 2024 • 168 mins
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FOURTEENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment covers the rise of the Palestinian Revolution and then its explosion after the Arab defeat in the June War of 1967 with Israel. Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation and Palestine, and other factions launched an armed guerrilla struggle against Israel, engaging the Pales...
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Ep. 15 – Black September

August 8, 2024 • 170 mins
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FIFTEENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment addresses the Palestinian Revolution’s project in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan—leading up to the 1970 conflict with the Jordanian state and the violent expulsion of PLO guerrillas during Black September. Then, Egypt and Syria checked Israel’s power in the October War of 1973—only...
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Ep. 16 – Siege of Beirut

August 8, 2024 • 153 mins
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the SIXTEENTH and final episode of Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment traces a massive defeat for the Palestinian Revolution: Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and brutal siege of Beirut. Under severe pressure and isolated in the wake of Egypt’s normalization with Israel, the PLO evacuated its headquarters. What followed was a giant mas...
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Thawra Epilogue: Islamic Revolution and Gulf Wars

September 5, 2024 • 201 mins

This is the first of a two-part epilogue to Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment covers the Iranian Islamic Revolution’s huge impact across the Arab East alongside Saudi and Egyptian efforts to foster religious conservative movements in an effort to supplant and suppress the secular nationalist left. Plus the Iran-Iraq War, the mujahideen in Afghanistan, the First Intifada, Ira...

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Thawra Epilogue: Decades of American Destruction

September 19, 2024 • 179 mins
This episode takes us from the disastrous Oslo Accords through the 2000 Camp David Summit and the eruption of the Second Palestinian Intifada. Then the 9/11 attacks, the War on Terror, the US destruction of Iraq, the Arab Spring, the Syrian Civil War, and the rise of Islamic State. A century of Western imperialism had undermined Arab revolutionary movements and governments; the new millennium brought two decades of US-led war that ...
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Thawra Epilogue: Genocide and Resistance

October 11, 2024 • 152 mins
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the third and final part of the epilogue to Thawra (Revolution), our epic series on the history of revolutionary Arab politics. This episode takes us from Hamas’s victory in the 2006 legislative elections, through the siege on Gaza, to October 7, the Gaza genocide, the Axis of Resistance, and Israel’s attempt to draw Iran into a massive regional war with the US. Share Thawra with a friend ...
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