For episode 190 of The Fire These Times, Dr. Michael Paarlberg talks to Dana El Kurd about El Salvador’s ‘state of exception’ under Nayib Bukele, how Trump sees that as a model, the conditions of Salvadorian prisons and what happens to the Venezuelan and other refugees and migrants deported from the USA by Trump and the unaccountable state actors doing his bidding.
Paarlberg is associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and non-resident fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. He was previously on TFTT in August of 2024 (episode 164) to talk about how Bukele created a ‘Gang State’ in El Salvador. As that was before Trump’s election, it is a good primer into what is it about El Salvador today that makes it so appealing to the maga movement.
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The Fire These Times
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Recent Articles
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Recent Interviews
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Highlighted Hauntologies articles
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- Israel’s Lebanese Ghosts (March 2026)
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From The Periphery
TFTT is a proud member of From The Periphery Media Collective, which you can support on Patreon and follow on Bluesky, YouTube and Instagram.
Check out other projects: Politically Depressed | Syria: The Inconvenient Revolution | From The Periphery Podcast | The Mutual Aid Podcast
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Credits:
Dana El Kurd (host), Elia Ayoub (producer, episode designer), Rap and Revenge (Music), Wenyi Geng (TFTT theme design), Hisham Rifai (FTP theme design) and Molly Crabapple (FTP team profile pics).
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