Colonial Psyops with Lara Sheehi in conversation with Nick Estes
In this special episode Lara Sheehi will return to the platform for a conversation co-hosted by Nick Estes, and co-streamed on The Red Nation podcast. We will talk about some elements of her new book From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures. And specifically we will dig into some of the work she does in the book discussing the history of the development of the fields of Psychological Operations and Psychological Warfare and how those fields were shaped by psychoanalysis in the 20th Century. We will get into the current implications for “domestic counterinsurgency,” colonialism, and imperialism, including in the settler colonial contexts on Turtle Island and Occupied Palestine. Pre-order a copy of From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures.
Lara Sheehi is a Research Fellow at the University of South Africa’s Institute for Social and Health Sciences, a licensed clinical psychologist, and the host of the Psychic Militancy podcast. Lara’s work focuses on psychoanalysis, the psychic refusals central to liberation struggles and life-making in the Global South, the psychic dimensions of resistance and revolution, and critical Zionism studies. She is co-author with Stephen Sheehi of Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine which won the Middle East Monitor’s 2022 Palestine Book Award for Best Academic Book. Lara is a member of the founding collective for the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism and is on the advisory board for Forensic Architecture.
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@girlstillevolving
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
pre ordered the book. So grateful for Lara and their work
@2nd3rd1st
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
This format would work much better if you structured it not as 10 minute monologues, that are hard to focus on as a viewer and hard to respond to as hosts, but as regular interviews with shorter but focussed answers that also allow for follow-up questions. I found myself getting lost in the words a lot and frustrated when important points made by the speaker were not picked up by the others.
@Dawt_Calm
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
I was researching "Colon Polyps"" how the hell did I end up here?
@Porifera-Jaymen
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
🔥
@tyfromuzi5871
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
Super looking forward to continuing parts
Great thanks for all your works
@bpalpha
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
Why do I have to keep subscribing to your channel?! 🤨
@larryparis925
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
Monotheistic religions, and especially Christianity, have been psyop programs throughout history, and still going strong.
@Mhm5213
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
Militancy is the appeal to power.
@michaeladdison2609
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
3 people saying nothing for an hour and a half is a psychic intrusion. Problem in the US is lack of universal healthcare, car dependent burbs, and factory farming. Laws on the books mandate sprawl and that fosters car dependence and owning a car is expensive. The solution is to organize locally to upzone and eliminate minimum parking requirements. Personally most anyone reading this might choose to stop buying animal ag products (meast/eggs/milk/fish/etc). Because most all animal ag is factory farmed and because factory farming is cruel and contributes to global warming and because factory farms are breeding grounds for pandemics. Animals think and feel and suffer if animal don't matter why should humans matter? What are we fighting for?
@joeyrufo
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
Yo! This is great! I also highly recommend Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Gauttari! 👀
@lorilea3188
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
1:05:22 don't despair. these things work. thank you Red Nation.
@emmaboyd7908
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
Great discussion – finally academics joining the dots in a practical way explaining without patronising, exhorting action without expecting miracles… more please 🙏
@eyedownload
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
And does anyone EVER mention that the Ayatollah has had a Fatwejh on nuclear weapons for over two decades? Weapons of mass desruction 2.0!
@camelliajd
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
"That these structures own evey possibility not just now but into the future". Distinguishing psy-op with psychic intrusion has really helped me so thank you. And thanks for relating this issue to organizing, which has been a such a struggle with compatable left sucking the energy of any mere revolutionary goal for the past 2 years of organizing.
@fun_ghoul
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
Lara didn't want to correct you, Nick, but I've heard her thank others for pronouncing her family name "SHEE-high". 😙
@karincarl4535
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
Wow, Great Subject. Thankyou for Discussing this.
❤🎉
@Walter-vi3vh
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
Heard no mention of the two revolutionary psychologists in our midst, Drs. Amos Wilson & Bobby E. Wright.
@JeruBeru-i6q
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
Right on , keep going, you beautiful revolutionary voices
@JAllanG1
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
Love to here how Yurok tribe is buddy buddy with Clinton’s under sex trafficking scandals and freeing a river, or we gonna snuff that under the rug if you’d like I can share the photo
@End_Colonial_Epstein_Regimes
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
We have a problem with White Marxism attacking Maori Sovereignty again. Acting like Chosen People. Acting like common, underhanded white power colonials. Are there any examples of particular Psyops and countering them, and creating our own counters for people to recognise these attacks?
@davidmarston207
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
30:00 Nothing can get me high enough or low enough where I couldn’t agree more with Lara Sheehi!
@davidmarston207
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
27:45 Lara’s response hits the Target!
@LaLasta
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
🙌🏽❤️🙌🏽❤️🙌🏽❤️
@davidmarston207
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
Right on Red Nation, thank you for this conversation about Psyops and its relationship with Settler Colonialism.
@EWooten
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
Lara, Nick, Jared, (and Sina!) I'm about halfway through the episode and I'm loving it! I want to plug two psyop-focused podcasts that I started listening to in 2021 and have really held up over the years: (the now discontinued) Programmed to Chill and Subliminal Jihad. I'm surprised that the hosts of Subliminal Jihad haven't made it over into the tankie therapy extended universe, but I imagine it's only a matter of time. In fact, they're connected by the Trillbillies podcast, which regularly has Professor Aviña on, so they're connected in a way. They are a treasure trove of sober analysis and hands-dirty deep research. Much love from occupied Cherokee-Muskogee!
@jdcjr50
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
In no way should you say, 'Propaganda- in a good way."
@J.D.Ruybal
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
Them things we know that we didn't know we knew
33:16 1:29:49 Here she describes co-opted environmental efforts. This includes the 'Big Greens' and others, that keep the people negotiating, active, distracted and preoccupied while the power's that be buy politicians who make laws that in-prison them that care.
As revealed; throughout history: Most REFUSE to see and are comforted by inactive action. Satisfied with the crumbs. 'Domesticated'.
Related: Counterpunch
February 13, 2026 MAGA Aesthetics and Fascist Power: Spectacles of White Supremacy
Henry Giroux
"Under the Trump administration, aesthetics itself becomes a battleground, a weaponized field where power works on desire, memory, bodies, and pleasure to consolidate domination."
@charlenegraham1923
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
At one point Laura said "…learning how to track that intrusion" and I misheard track as trap. I like the thought of trapping an intrusion as the immune system traps and encloses intruders, sometimes destroys them and sometimes gives them a tel so that the body recognizes further intruders. Like Laura said, inoculation.
@southpaw786
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
The subject of psyops is crucial, not just for people on the left but for us all. Psyops are the bread and butter of the far-right and the white racists in the west, and it has evolved greatly since the days of these racists rolling around in the streets, pouring fake blood on themselves, and shouting ‘look what these brown people did to me.’
Here in England where I live, psyops are very advanced, where the far-right is embedded within the state and media apparatus on a granular , and societally on neighbourhood levels . Here, the latest of iteration of distorting reality by the far right is the use of street theatre for example. As a case in point, something that ppl can check by simply googling, is where their has been a rash lately, and in various cities throughout the country, of a high profile presence on the high streets of these cities of homeless veterans. These veterans usually are sat in the busiest part of these city and town centres, and usually dressed in full fatigues, some adorned with medals. In tandem with these are newspaper campaigns, where these supposedly homeless veterans are featured, which whose subject is immigration and specifically immigrant housing at the expense of the indigenous population.
That’s just one example, and like I said people can look into this for themselves. The far-right have been faking, hoaxing and false-flagging for decades now, and it thus that we’ve arrived at the broken world we’re in….because none of their devious psyops devices have truly been correctly interrogated because left intelligentsia are fearful of being called conspiracy theorists, and thus the insanity goes on unchecked.
@ForgeInTheFlesh
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
This was a good talk
@Megamuser
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
Lara's book on psychoanalysis under occupation is essential reading..than you for this conversation
@brandonbeachum6430
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
Yeah don't give your patients the wrong idea by not being objective with them, they might start thinking you're on their side!
@helloInternets
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
The moment may be hard, but it's not as hard as the intro beat.
@apollicino2824
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
Laura, thank you for making those connections with UK and US psychoanalysis history and anti-trans movement. I'm working on a paper I can directly add that too. 🙂
@Macazak
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
And then over a few decades the psy-op gets co-opted into something different to make sure the people are further sidetracked.
@lrwsf1
May 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm
Christianity is a colonial psychological operation.