Knowledge Fight - #812: Jeff Sharlet Returns

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

Today, Jordan continues his thought-provoking conversation with Jeff Sharlet.  Be sure to check out Jeff's book, The Undertow: Scenes From A Slow Civil War.

I Ready Not knowledge fight Damn and Jordan I am sweating Knowledge fight, it's time to pray. I have great respect for knowledge, Faith. Knowledge, Faith. I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys. Shang-ni are the bad guys. Knowledge, Faith.

Dan and Jordan, Knowledge, Faith. N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N And the end of the game. And the end of the game. And the end of the game. And the end of the game. And the end of the game. And the end of the game. And the end of the game. And the end of the game. And the end of the game. And the end of the game.

And the end of the game. And the end of the game. And the end of the game. And the end of the game. Welcome back to Knowledge Fight. I am Jordan and once again, I am alone without Dan. However, I am joined by Jeff Charlotte once more to complete the the two part series that we agreed to While back Jeff. Welcome back to the show. How are you Jordan good good good to be back with you good good? Wonderful. I mean, I suppose let suppose let's start with the first question. Of course, what's your bright spot today? Oh, that's right. That's right. That trick question.

That's our tree. There are no bright spots. My bright spot today. My bright spot today is, well, you know, I, okay. All right, I got one. I teach writing. That's okay. Day job. I teach writing in Dartmouth College and I'm coming to you directly from a meeting with a student. And I got to tell you, it is thrilling to me, not just as a teacher, but as a person and these frightening times when you see a student, it's nonfiction. I teach the same kind of writing that I try to do.

When you see a student writing about connections and the connection suddenly is starting to make, this is a person trying to write about sex trafficking in our region where we are, right? And talking about the stories that we tell ourselves in order to live, like that famous Joan Didian line and the scary narratives and the Christian nationalists who come in with stories about that too

and putting all this together. And that's a lot of ugliness for a bright spot, right? But when you see a young person discovering that they have the power to put these things together, to juxtapose them on the page and to make a story that brings clarity to someone else, and that this is what they want to do, and they're going to keep going with this. You're like, oh, thank God, right? It's always thrilling when you encounter someone else

learning to tell stories because it's, it's, it's cheesy, but you feel less alone, right? Like, right? Because my story alone is not going to do it, but we have this great cacophony choir and good come into the choir. And when you see someone coming into the choir and joining this sort of storytelling world, you have some faith that, you know what, if I miss it, if I screw it up, that's all right. Someone else will get it right. Sure, sure. Yeah, you're part of a larger tapestry of efforts and goal, right?

My bright spot is the movie Renfield, starring Nicholas Cage. All right, now we can move on. What are you talking about it if it's really good uh... no i have it i haven't actually seen it yet i just uh... i just were recording this earlier than uh... than normal and i just found it on the internet and a totally one hundred percent legal way uh... and uh... so i'm looking forward to it because

uh... aliex uh... many, many people as run fields. You know, they're the big vampires, the globalist vampires who drink all the blood. And then they're all the red fields of whom can, can be different every single day. Some people were a run field two years ago. And now they're the king. You know, it's, it's random. But it's out. Joan fans are going to go see this Nicholas cage movie because they're going to think, wow,

this is great. I mean, I have probably that we're talking, they love movies. Most of their reality is based on movies. So they might go into this thing and I can't wait to see this great documentary. Well, I mean, directly by David Ike. It's. I mean, most of our reality is, right, so there's a segway, right? Most of the reality is based on movies. And, you know, I read a lot about movies in this book.

Yes, you do. Because the people I'm talking to are basing the reality on movies. And they're not weird. I too draw on this, right? Like we draw on for the stories. These stories we have away of telling things. We're always looking for these metaphors. It is the primary granary of metaphor from which we draw.

So, you know, but but draw carefully, I guess I would say, the Red and Field thing. Like, don't. Toko O'Hawk. Well, that is actually where I wanted to start. You know, we went through a lot of the content of the book on our last interview. So I think the one thing that I really want to start with

is, well, I mean, kind of what we were just talking about. Ashley Babet as martyr. When I read the book, I feel a certain ambivalence about Ashley Babet as martyr because, to a certain extent, their martyrdom of her is completely fictional, right? But there is also a very real martyrdom that she went through.

So I'd like you to kind of talk about your feelings on that. Well, I mean, this is the thing that I get pushed back on a lot like Ashley Babitt's not a martyr. Well, we don't get to choose the martyrs of other movements, right? You know, if you're a Roman, there aren't, you know, a couple thousand years ago, don't tell me about the

Christian martyrs are not martyrs, they're assholes. We got a good thing going here. We got sewage. We got everything is great. There's some voting. It's not perfect. It's not the diamond ideal democracy, but we're getting there. And then look at these assholes and they're talking about someone raising, rising from the dead. Now, that's absolutely ridiculous. That's not a martyr. That's that's that's that's that's delusional, right? martyr, of course, and you know this means witness. And Ashley Babid did die a witness to her cause. She's a martyr.

I mean, she's a martyr by any definition that her cause is false and fake makes it no less true. And if we want to do that, then we basically get rid of the word martyr altogether. The problem is when we assume that martyr is a good thing, right? Sure. A martyr is a politically agnostic term. It is what you make of it. And what I was fascinated by Ashley, when you said the completely sort of fictional moderate, I'm like, what's the non-fictional moderate? She was brought up by the cops, you know?

To a certain extent that is, that is fine. Yeah, right. Right. Oh, you know, your book is covered with her weapon a night and she was shot. Yeah, so I don't see too much, you know, there is a difference between people who were shot by the cops, for sure. There is a difference in murder, but they were still murdered by the cops.

So I do think that there's something to be said about that. Yeah, and I think that's actually really, that's actually the key point, right? For understanding what's, to me, this key point to understand what's going on in the Trump scene. So I think last time we talked about like, like, there's the prosperity gospel of 2016, the bastardized gossips of 2020. American fund journalists. Yeah. Yeah. And then then January 20, January 6, 2021, we enter this age of martyrs and Ashley becomes the first martyr. and she's an ideal

martyr for that movement partly. She's a white woman and a veteran. So she's gendered both, right? The veteran is stabbed in the back, a male, but she's a white woman who they instantly start aging backwards. If she were on 30 rocks, she'd be called a tofer. If you were a tofer, yes, right. And they she's not 35. She's in her 20s. She's 16. She's just a little white girl and the man who shoots her is an ever larger black cop. Right. And so this is the old lynching story, the old white innocent white woman. And this goes all the way back to Virginia dare, the first white girl born in North America, who gives her name VDare to an alley prominent right wing site. So there's that element of martyrdom. And I think the fiction versus nonfiction because what's fascinating to

me is that opens the door for martyrdom. And I think of her as essentially a placeholder on the cross until Trump could, you know, push her aside and take his place. Just what, you know, once these indictments started coming down, he starts sending out emails, friends, this may be the last time I talked to you for some time. Right. Until the email, I'm going to send you in half power. Right. She takes the nails and he gets the money. Yeah. Yeah. But the martyrdom gets extended, right? And so she opens the door to the fundamental narrative of white power that grievance. So now you can be a martyr if you get shot by the cops. You can be a martyr if you get indicted for illegal payoffs to your mistress.

You can be a martyr if you're the January 6th choir singing your song. Everybody. It's now an age of martyrs. This is the theological frame. You know, I wore my Trump hat to work and I noticed my co-workers giving me side eye. I have been persecuted for my faith. I'm like Ashley Babbit.

I too am a martyr. So right, in that fictional sense, Ashley Babbit actually was killed. And historically, that's what a martyr means. But now, martyr means anyone who suffers for the cause, which in Trumpism, in the Trumpist imagination, is anyone who believes in the cause, to believe in the cause, is to suffer for the cause, is to have a Soros-backed DA, or maybe, you know, a Soros backed coach on your son's baseball team who's not putting him in.

You know, what's that about, right? Being martyred for our beliefs, that coach is a liberal. Well, I mean, let me ask you to follow up on that is, you know, I think it's, it's suddenly far less impressive to become a martyr if everybody else you know is also a martyr. Do you know what I mean? So is that not lessening the power of your Ashley Babet

who was actually, you know, if everybody's taking some sort of stolen valor of martyrdom from her death, doesn't that make her death far less meaningful? I think in normal times, yes. And I think we've been through enough, you know, the folks I would talk to would talk about, there's there, there was some who would see her as the the first death of this new American revolution. She is our Christmas addicts killed in 1776. And of course, Christmas addicts is a black, want-a-nog man killed, I think in 1771. Of course, Chris Busadix is a black Wampanoag man killed,

I think in 1771, but you know, don't get caught up on those details. Yeah. And then there's others who would sort of see her as another entry in a calendar sort of already crowded with martyrs, Vicki Weaver, from the Ruby Ridge standoff, where knowledge fight listeners probably know what that is.

I bet. Oh, you better believe. And talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. It's so nice. And there's a conspiracy and there's a Nazi. You better believe we know about it.

We know that. Yeah. It's so nice to talk to folks who I to whom I don't have to explain it's very serious. Nope. Or Waco. Obviously. And of course, I think everyone knows that Waco now, because Trump put it back into the national consciousness. And there's other folks. What's interesting to me is actually traveling around is there are regional variations of this.

You'll find somebody who was killed by cops and a standoff maybe because they didn't pay their taxes or something and there was a foreclosure and so on. This doesn't become national news, but in this region, you got Chris Bessadix, you got Ashley Babby, you got Vicki Weaver and Joe X, who's our local martyr, right? And normally Joe X goes the way of Vicki Weaver, which is to say, and Vicki Weaver, you could argue, really good, legitimate martyr. I mean, that is kind of where we get into the ambivalence part, right, is they create a fictionalized version of a real martyr.

And I think almost part of that is to avoid from actually having to deal with the real reason that the murder was created. All right. Well, let me let me detour on that for a second. I want to talk about like the proliferation of martyrs and why I think they're not becoming devalued in this current moment. But let me just sort of say about that. I mean, there's a section in this book that I think and I'm so glad that people aren't attacking me for it, but I thought they would. One, I thought, you know, people would say, you're humanizing Ashley Babet.

I can't, she's human. I, you can't humanize anybody. She is human and, and so am I. And so I wanna understand how she comes to this place, not as a, and some kind of common ground bullshit, but because Because look, that's her knife on the cover and she was there in the Capitol. Sure, but there's the killing and I have done a lot of reporting on police killings and and have helped bring some to light and and have learned a lot about Where that wall is why that wall is fucked up, you know,

with Kyle Rittenhouse, people say, travesty that he was acquitted, it's not a travesty that he was acquitted. It's a travesty that the law was written and such that there was nothing to do but acquit him, right? He was within the law. I mean, it's a travesty that he's a murderer. I think that's the place we start with.

That the child became a murderer because of bullshit, you know? I mean, that's a fascinating. That think that's the place we start with that the child became a murderer because of bullshit. You know, I mean, that's a fascinating. That's the first, that's the first travesty, but then the law is written. And now the law is written such that people say, well, Ashley, but of course he had to kill her. She was breaking into the Capitol. And this drives me nuts.

Because no, that was not probably, we'll never know, because there was no real investigation. That was probably not a legitimate killing. I talked to a man named Seth Stoam, literally wrote the book on police use of force. Former cop became a law scholar was, and former cop, well of course he's on there side. He was the expert witness in the conviction of Derek Shovon.

He was the guy who said, let me explain to you in every little nuanced way why this was not legitimate use of force. Right. That's usually the side he is on. He is usually testifying as an expert witness in trials against cops saying, no, they crossed, they crossed the line.

He looks at the video and he says, look, this is an accord, we can't do this, but yeah, this does not look legitimate. And people say, but she was breaking into the capital. Do we want to live in a world where cops can shoot to kill anybody who breaks into a house? No, they stand your ground does not apply to cops. And it shouldn't. And in fact, cops, cops legally, if there's a back door, someone breaks in the front door, and there's a back door, rather than killing you, they're supposed to go out the back door.

And they have to evaluate on three criteria, right? Is this part, can you remember them all? Ashley Babbit does not meet all three, right? She has, we don't know, she might have a weapon. The weapon's not visible. Sure. But she's not in a place because she cannot get over this barrier. He had other means of stopping her before she got to that, right? So he shoots now. Here's the complicated part.

Well, I mean, he could have just fucking left. They all could have just fucking left. And by, yeah, and by the shot her as her family's lawyer, who is a police violence lawyer, he's not some bright-wing fascist lawyer. He's a lawyer who represents people who've been brutalized by police. So this is not to say, look, Ashley Babid is, I said, I said, Stoten, I said, you're saying she's not a domestic terrorist? And he says, no, she's, yeah, she's a domestic terrorist. And so people say, don't we get to shoot domestic terrorists? So she's, yeah, she's a domestic terrorist. And some people say, don't we get to shoot domestic terrorists? No, no, we arrest them.

We arrest them and try them. And if there's nothing else in its alas, incident, and someone is about to be harmed, then we currently under a law say the police have the right to use violent force. This guy would have been indicted if it had happened anywhere, but in the capital, which is this very weird gray area of law. And it's almost sort of like this gray area where criminal law doesn't quite apply, right? So he was found not guilty. He was just found like, we can't be sure that he wasn't afraid for his life. Sure. And so, can't be sure that he had malice based on a civil rights violation. Mm-hmm. If you would pass the George Floyd

police reform law, that guy would have been indicted. Right. So, the very Republicans who said, how come there's not justice for Ashley because they rigged the law so that they're can't be? Right. They make the laws to protect the police. Right.

I mean, and this is sort of a long, wonky detour, but I think when you talk about the real, like just the way you said it, like that they, uh, they shake. Well, it's murder. It's no murder. Because they don't want to talk about the real ones. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, that is, that is kind of it.

And it is, uh, it is something that I, I think is quite funny to me. Just the way that we think about things is that assumption. I don't think there's anything morally wrong with invading the Capitol. It's our fucking building. That's a point of view that we keep avoiding is like, it is not inherently a bad thing. It's not. No, I think about like my lefty friends in Wisconsin. And because remember when Scott Walker was trying to break the unions and trying to,

he did. He did. Yeah. In Wisconsin. And the last end of organized labor and all its allies was a sit-in at the Capitol, right? Yeah. The same logic that leads some liberals to say, I wish they had just open fire on Ashley Babin. All of them is the same logic by which, oh, that's you. What? Who is saying that? Oh my God.

This is so common. It's out there. This is so I'll tell you what, if go back and look in that early, like say, Washington post coverage of Ashley Babitt and read the comments. You want some blood? Read the comments. And now here's an interesting thing. And then you see, like, for a while, there was these sort of fake accounts mocking Ashley

Babitt. And they would always say, and I'm going to quote here, some variation, some paraphrase of, I'm glad they shot the bitch. And the bitch is not accidental. The misogynistic language, which it would come into this, right? This was sort of giving some liberals license to feel that anger and hate.

And look, it's a witch side, look, I'm not gonna argue. This is not a main argument in my book, like Ashley Babich didnuch had been shot. Uh, I don't think she should have been, um, but I do think she should have been arrested. Um, and I think they should have, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm not a com abolitionist of the justice system. I think she should have been arrested and put in jail and same with the J sixers. Um, and if she had gotten over that barrier and pulled her knife and been about

to stab that cop, then yeah, then I think it would have been a legitimate shooting, but that's not where it was. Right. Um, but I think that, uh, um, well, I'll stop there because I know. Actually, you know, that, that suddenly jogged my memory about something that I wanted to talk to you about, um, is you recently did a salon interview, uh, and they're the, the interviewer, uh, said a few things talking to Vega. Really great writer. Yeah, I was a little bit way by, uh, yeah, knowledge fight listeners would like Chanty De Vega. And I feel like the conversation is a little bit like the conversation I've had with you and Chanty is like one of those journalists out there who is not bullshitting a bullshitting. Right.

Well, one thing he said was that Trump and Republican fascists are doing exactly what I would do if I were in their situation. And then he's talking about liberals and the like and he's saying they're lucky I'm not on the other side. Now, your response to that is when you boil it down is that America is going to have to experience and go through fascism. Yeah. You didn't say like, maybe. You didn't say it's possible or the future or etc.

You are saying definitively that is going to happen. No, I'm going to say go further than that definitively. It is happening. And I think we talked last time, I can't remember about the F word fascism, which I don't use lightly. I can't stand the way, you know, I'm a lefty, but you know, every fucking president you dislike is fascist. And then one hand, yes, there's always been fascism in America. And as I write in the book, you know, I mean, you go, I say, I say, it's fascism's multiculturalism now. It's gravitational pull with which is able to pull in people of color into a white supremacist movement. That's as late as contribution to fascism.

The earliest contribution, you know, you had the Nazis studying Jim Crow laws. And then this is actually true. Nazi jurists saying, looking at Jim Crow laws and one drop of blood and saying, that's a little too much. We can't go that far, right? It seemed extreme to them. So one of the one of the congressional reports says that Alexander Hamilton is one of the underpinnings of the ideological Nazis. His writing. So it's been there from the jump. It's it's it's it's always been there, right? But it has not been dominant, right? And it has not been you could find counties that wonder, fascist control, we could

we could look at the segregation of self and see elements of the fascist control. We still don't have a full fascist regime. And I think a lot of liberals are doing this thing of saying, yeah, but America is not like Nazi Germany. No, it's not because there was not just in power, but consolidated in power. And that we may not go through. But we're going through the fascism right now, in the sense that I think of queer and trans folks being criminalized in 20 states, right? You have people moving for basic healthcare. You have all these casualties of this slow civil war.

You have that fear. You have, you know, a and new Hampshire where my kids go to school There's a snitch line you can call you don't something like something that the teachers say and you can report them and teachers Know that and teachers are towing the ground and shaping their lessons and what am I going to say about the past and did the past even really happen? People have got that's not like fascism that is fascism. It's not a fascist regime. New Hampshire is not a fascist regime But it is a fascist movement that is growing that is growing power and I think that's where Chauncey and I Come down. I think I think maybe knowledge fight folks are in the same way of sort of saying like Well, you've got your bright spot, but like let's not do the thing of like well, it's a kind of bright side Yeah, you know, oh no, no, the reason we do the bright spot is because we're

relentlessly, and horrifically terrible. Right. We're living there is a corner of liberalism that wants to keep sort of saying like, I want to say kind of with a whole, the center won't hold. The center didn't hold, right? The center is gone. Well, I mean, the system is, the system is there, but the center is gone, right? And part of the difference is, the center is, the right wingers I've written about for years and years would support these fascist overseas, Saharto and Indonesia, Subbar and Somalia.

I mean, these real, and they knew what they were, right? They weren't deluded about these. These were elite American congressmen and so on. Mike Penn supporting, arming up the Sri Lankan government that would then use it to slaughter its own people that had hurt it onto a beach. He knew that they were doing this, right?

But there was a way in which they somehow drew the string climb. They wanted power in America, but no, not until Trump comes down that goal in escalator in 2015, bringing with him the fascist aesthetic, does the creation of a full fascist movement become powerful and do they embrace that?

There's enough of those folks now that the center is what led them to believe, I can't quite let that in the door. Not quite that, Reagan maybe, but not that. Sure. System now has room for that in the space, right? And I think that, so the center, the center is gone. The system is still there, but the system is now up for grabs.

Right. Well, I mean, I feel like when we talk about that, that's an important thing to put in a historical context. So if you say to me, we're going through fascism, we're in this place where we don't have a fascist regime yet. Are you telling me that we're, you know, the German commies and the liberals unable to get together to vote out the Nazis. You know, like, where are we in that scenario?

I mean, the sure are echoes of that. There's a terrific book called, Ernst Block, what's the name? It's got a terrible title collection of essays. Let's see, Heritage. It's got a terrible title. Oh, I'm just like, I can never remember the title of a book, it's got a terrible title, you know, sure.

It's called Heritage of Our Times, right? Bad title, Heritage of Our Times. It is a bad title. And it sounds like a Nazi book. Ernstbock was a great radical German journalist in the 1930s, but also sort of a he became actually a prominent American scholar after after the war. Also, Operation Paperclip. No, no, no, he's a good guy. He's a good guy. And unlike so many the German radicals of that time, he was a real student of religious studies. And so he was always looking at in and ways that some of which seems obvious to us now fascism's mobilization of the mythological and so on. And some of it, when I read this book, it's astonishing to me because partly it's also granular detail. He's talking about like what's happening in one smaller German city because these are essays written in the moment before Nazi before the regime is fully in power and

You see so many resonances and you realize I mean it's from reading that book that I realized like oh the Trump rallies It's certainly never ended and and how did I miss this? I remember in 2016 I wrote a little essay trying to encourage my lefty friends, all right, let's vote for Hillary. And the problem isn't just Trump, it's the million little Trumps are going to be unleashed. Well, now we have Trump, we just had one in New Hampshire, but you want to go to Trump, probably no problem. Go to your school board meeting. Go to many city hall meetings. You've got a million little Trumps, not all the same charisma, but the same rhetoric. The Montana State Legislature, that's a Trump rally.

The Tennessee State Legislature, that's a Trump rally. And when I say it's a rally, it means that they're no longer interested in even the veneer of governing. It's the performative rejection of the other, the black legislators in Tennessee, the trans-legislator in Montana, and I think there's another one in Iowa has been silenced. I think a mother of a trans person,

I think it's in Iowa has been silenced. Right. And I wanna say also, like we hear about those national stories, there's more, there's always more. Every journalist knows this, right? The stories that make that somehow catch the national eye. Right. I mean, I suppose, I suppose where I get into, where I get into trouble here is if what

you are saying is true, right, if, if we are doing these things, then what is now justified? If we're there, if we're in the situation, you know, you've said it's inner out time on multiple occasions, there are, it's criminal to exist if you are a trans person in some places. Once that happens, why care about any laws? It is against the law for you to live.

So at what point do we just say that there's no point? There's no law. I guess that's a personal decision, Jordan. You tell me. That's a personal decision. Well, I mean, but that's what I mean whenever I talk about you saying it's in or out time. Yeah, because it is time. Something it means it's time to make it has to take it take place. It is time to make that decision and look. I mean, I open the book with Harry Belfonte who who dies last week at 96. And he's the bright spot of the book.

And it's a pretty bitter bright spot. He's a man who died angry, right? Right. And he hated the Hollywoodization of the Civil Rights Movement. He spoke to Martin Luther King, who was his, you know, he was really many people don't realize that how close they were, how instrumental they were to each other. He speaks to, when I was spending time with him in the present tense, and he's haunted by him. And he's not saying, Oh, MLK, what a great American. He's like, this was lost. This was was bitter, right? Right. And Belfani was not a nonviolent man. And that's actually part of why he's in the beginning. Like he, he, uh, uh, uh, well, and I, I, I, I, I, won't get him pushed back real quick on that is I think that it's going to be easy to assume that when I'm talking about inner out time action

time or or or anything like that, that I'm, that I'm instantly talking about violence. I'm, I'm talking more about something that needs to be done, that we can't say in or out time without then taking an action in that regard. If that makes sense to you, do you understand? Yes, yes, but I am also, I mean, another lesson we can draw from the 1930s and the fact that the United States didn't get a fascist regime and people don't realize that it was much closer to that potential. Oh, it was right there.

Yeah, it was right there. And what did the United States have that Germany didn't have? All kinds of complicated things, but one thing was on the left something called the popular front. The popular front was all hands on deck. People that I do not agree with. What's making fascism powerful now? Proud boys working with Pius Evangelicals, right-wing Catholics working with right-wing Protestants.

These are people who don't normally talk to one another. Joe Rogan fans lining up with the Family Research Council, a convergence of movements, right? To fight back, you have the popular front. So in that sense, when I say it's all in, look, if I'm not going to tell, if someone says like, hey, we're going to have a drag show and we know the problem is going to show up with our guns. So we're going to show up with our guns. I'm not going to tell them not to do that. If someone says, I am going to go and campaign for my senator Maggie Hassan and to Hampshire

who is completely inadequate as a democratic senator, I'm not going to tell them not to do that. Oh, I'm not for fine-stestein for president in 2020 for that's my plan. Yeah. Yeah. It's all hands on deck. And the pop that was the popular front, which was communist then because it was a different time in the 1930s, but they were working with they were working with Democrats. They were working with people of conscience and all these kinds of things. So yeah, it's all in. It's all in for me, which is sort of why I'm writing this book. I've been writing about right wing movements for 20 years.

I thought I was done. Right, done a bunch of books and so on. But I had other projects I want to do. This is what I can do. There's kids in the book that we meet in Wisconsin. These wonderful kids, Black River Falls Wisconsin, which is not hipster Wisconsin. It's not Madison, it's not Milwaukee.

It's a small little town. And I pull in right after dobs, the fall of row. And there's this woman, very small under five feet tall standing on the bridge by herself, holding a sign that says your misogyny is showing. And I circle around and now there's a couple of other kids. They're high school kids, young college kids, not the town radicals. These are the student body presidents. There's a cheerleader't getting anything. If you're going to do this, who means it means rage. She means sex strike. She means I'm not being part of this world in which there's a gender expectation of me

if my rights are not going to be protected by those who are older, right? Right. Now, these kids who I love, what courage they have, I talked to them later that night. I say, you know, a lot of these folks in the right are talking about civil war. And I think this is going to horrify them. Instead, they're like, bring it on. Well, I mean, I believe the quote is from Theta. Is that the way?

Yeah. Yeah. It is, you know, it's either we fight against them. We possibly get killed in a civil war or we suffer like this. A right stripped away from us minute by minute, and I don't know if that's a life worth living. Yeah, and that's the right heart. Now, theta, they were all this whole gang of sweet little kids having, going up on carbs and, you know, waffles, they didn't night at Perkins, which is where you can go in the small town. They were all Wisconsin,

one is constantly, I say, all knew how to use guns, except theta, theta was an archer. And now there's a clue here, right? Theta's an archer, like Katniss and Hunger Games. Sure, sure. You remember that these are kids, right? And that their imagination of Civil War is just that. An imagination shaped by movies, right? And so as it is for the militia man and Marinette Wisconsin who his imagination of civil war and he's got Plenty of guns and so on a shake by red dawn Move or 300 movies, right? These stories that people are telling themselves about the world The difference is though what I took heart from those kids and why there are bright spot even though I do not not want them shooting anybody. And I don't think that will win. I mean, just practical. Right. Right. Yeah. They're just going to keep you the endless cycle. Yeah. Is that I'm going to continue? It's going to get squashed as a romanticism, right? Sure. There's 393 million guns and civilian hands

in America and lefties. And I just was talking to some graduate students who's like it's time for the left to arm up and I'm like I if you want to go down that path That time was about 150 years ago And yet you're really not gonna catch up Yeah, the reconstruction era really was where it all went wrong Right, right you're way down your guns what and was where it all went wrong. Right, right. You're right down your guns. What? And but you can't catch up. But I take great heart from them because right,

Theta is thinking and I think in the correct terms, right? You know, it's time to fight. The protest sign is not giving me my rights. It's fuck off. Right. It's you have failed. And when I say you, I mean you Jordan and me, because we're older than that, right? Sure. We have failed. That's what these kids are saying. I think too, what's interesting to me, did you see this thing yesterday?

And I'm just free of sociating, so you should cut me off. But did you see Deesnider of Twisted Sister? Who is, no. You don't follow Deesnider? I'm not. Oh, that's right. I'm nowhere. You cannot find me. So, but it's a real, it's a real fast. Any move. So, so deesniter twisted sister that 80s rock man. Remember, we're not. Oh, I'm well aware of twisted sister. Yes. And we're not going to take it.

And, uh, has in the Trump years sort of emerged as a surprising kind of left ally, partly because so many Trumpists assume that like 80s metal was all in for them. As a fair amount of it turned out to be, but not deep snyter. Until yesterday, when Paul Stanley of Kiss puts out of things as like look, I love dressing up and so on, and adults should be allowed to transition,

you see where this is going. It's the curve. Like, young people, parents making a game or just acting as if transitioning is just fun and games and so on. And Dees Knighter breaks my heart. He says, he says, you know, when I was young, I felt pretty too.

Thank God, you know, my parents didn't, you know, as if like cut off as dick. We're all gone, elic boots. Yes. We're all gone, elic boots. Yes. We're all gone, elic boots. Yeah. I like it. That's a good song.

I don't know if it'll sell as well, but I don't think it's bad. But the point of it was I'm looking at this. I'm like, here's a guy Snyder who has actually become this weird kind of prominent ally in the way so many of these old celebrities like George DeKai have, right? And then he split off. And I look at the way fascism works, which is that finds a story that can sort of sliver liberals like that and say like, well, I'm not certainly not against trans people, but. And now here you are. And now this movement, and so then you get some 16 year old trans kids saying, fuck off, de-snider, just the way he would of when he was 16

and be more extreme, right? Sure. We can say, hey, some of those kids are gonna cross the line. Like, you know, there's people who are gonna say stupid things. 16 year old saying stupid things, that's amazing. How could it happen stupid things. Sixty-year-old saying stupid things. That's amazing. I'm going to happen, right? And then the right then takes those stupid things and feeds them to people like D Snyder

and says, you know what? The trans movement is entirely people who want to cut off their dicks for fun and games. Sure. Which is just false. But Snyder says, that sounds horrible. Well, you know, I mean, if you ever met a trans person who was like, just in this for fun and games, I think I will go through this incredibly difficult medical procedure and make myself visible as part of the most targeted community in the United

States right now so that the guns will be aimed at me. That'll be fun in games. Nobody. I mean, you know, sometimes you get to around Tuesday at three and you're like, I got to do something today and I can't take another shower. So, but that's that slivering and I and I see, I mean, this is happening in a very sort of accelerating way right now. And that's why I talk about all hands on deck. That's why I talk about the popular front, right? The answer to that is the old labor song, and I write about it in the book, which side are you on? 1930s, Harlan County, people don't realize it. One of the very first uses of air power in the United States by the United States was strafing striking minors. Sure. Airpower in the United States develops with planes flying over Tulsa, Oklahoma, strafing black folks, bombing black folks, and strafing minors in Kentucky. Right? And there's an old, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, us. So if you're like, well, it's complicated. I support labor, but I don't know which side are you on? There's a AR 15, the men with AR 15s outside, the the library or the school, and there's kids inside. Which side are you on? It is a which side

are you on? And that's what I think what you are getting to. It's a which side are you on moment? You have to decide which side are you want. But then you're right. It's not necessarily violence. I'm there with the kids inside. What are you doing? Maybe, maybe you're the person that says, I'm going to bring my gun and I'm going to stand facing off with these guys, or maybe you're the one who's in there and saying, like, I'm going to be in drag reading a story to kids. Well, maybe we just, but maybe we need an underground railroad to get trans and LGBTQ people out of these horrible places without that's already, that's already happened. Exactly. That's, that's what I'm saying. Like as far as,

it doesn't need to be a violent response. It needs to be one that is aware of the moment. And if we're in a historical context, we can kind of guess what's going to happen next. So if we prepare, as opposed to just we can kind of guess what's going to happen next. So if we prepare as opposed to just being like, let's hope it doesn't happen this time. Yeah, no, no, it is happening now. We are, you know, you're in Missouri, right? Where they've now just outlawed trans healthcare for, for not just kids. Dare you say I'm it from Missouri.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no of like I want the book is called The Scenes When It's Loose of a War right because and I'm going around trying to get folks to realize this. I'm fascinated and a story I'm going to speak a little bit out of school but I'm not going to give too many details. An acquaintance happens to know Paul Ryan and you know the acquaintance is sort of like sort of is friendly with Paul Ryan. So it's a, you know, put it, but not a fascist. And as Ryan is not a fascist, he enabled it, but he's not there, right? I mean, that's that's denying your inner outtime conversation right there. No, well, no, wait, wait, because of inner outtime, especially with Paul fucking Ryan. He's out and hears hears why this guy is saying to him, you know, Paul you understand you're never getting back into politics and he's like yeah, Paul gets that He says, but I think it's important to maintain a you know a place in the room

And with guys is like you know Paul doesn't understand if he's in the room It's not the room Right that's not the room, right? That's, this is what I mean about the center, not holding. These, you know, these old establishment guys, they're not maintaining a place in the room. If they're in the room, but now they're fascist, Paul Ryan, he's not even, he's not, he's not going to let him in that room. So whatever room he's in, he's looking around, this is not the room of power anymore, right? You don't get access, Paul Ryan to that room. So whatever room he's in, he's looking around, this is not the room of power anymore, right? You don't get access, Paul Ryan to that room. Yeah, they get rid of people who are useless

very quickly. It turns out they're not very loyal, weird about fascists. Right, right, right. But you know, or like I think of, uh, uh, uh, uh, well, I'm, and then I get into such an only wonky political stuff. I'll stop there. But I think that like that in an hour, our fans are literally called policy walks. All right. So, so, so governor Chris, the new, in New Hampshire, right, uh, running for president, uh, who knows why, um, and, uh, he's the moderate lane and so on. Um, although he has said he will vote for Trump if Trump is the nominee. All right. Your passion.

Not see. Right. Right. He's chosen which side he's on. Right. And he wasn't always on that side. And I think, but that's also part of the which side are you on thing. And I think he's very tempting to the left is this kind of essentialism to assume like, well, that person's chosen. That's what they always were. If only was that simple and that safe, the reality is he looked at this situation and he was sort of, he was sort of standing in the middle. He figured out that it was untenable and he chose that side. So when, and that's the story of Ashley Babet, Ashley Babet was not always a fascist.

A lot of the people celebrate are killing just like, you know, and usually in very misogynistic terms, um, say she was always that. Ashley Babet, and that's why I'm sort of interested in this. So that's, we want to pay attention to the movement, right? Under Toe is a, is a movement metaphor. It's pulling us out to see, right? But it's also what do you choose to do with that undertone? I think for so many people like Ashley Bad that they're sort of resisting the whole life so trying to be a good person. You know, she's like a liberal Democrat, very proud

of Obama loves, Obama second favorite president after Trump. And some people say, well, that just means she's stupid. Well, no, it means that there's emotional affect is going in all sorts of different ways. After she, I just 14 years in the Air Force, a lot of people mocked the fact that she had not gotten very far and said, that just goes to show you the kind of person who invades the Capitol. So in Idiot, it was so bad that they can, why did she not get very far in the Air Force because time and time again, she was a person who would stand up. She's like, you know,

she, a little person, but not afraid, an officer, there's plenty of officers who are assholes, would be berating somebody and Ashley would get in the middle. She would choose which side she was on. Right? She's like, I'm on the side. Like, I don't care about chain of command. I'm like, that's wrong. What you're saying to that person. So she just get, you know, bump down and rank again and again and again. She was the person who she literally did.

It was a, I think was a personatcher. Ashley sprints down the street and stops the thief and gets the purse back for the victim. She's the person who doesn't look at that and saying, that's horrible. She shows the fuck up, right? Right. And she tries to be a good person. And I think of this sort of turning point. I think, and of course, she's not alive.

So we can't know, but it comes up in some of her writing and videos. And so on this point, she lives in Southern California, very blue Southern California. She's gone in for Trump. No one's really followed her. Her husband and her girlfriend, because she's both, they are a thrupal. They're kind of a queer thrupal. Those videos they make of Ashley watching Trump rallies,

they just think it's her weird thing, right? They're like, let's go to the beach Ashley. And, you know, we don't really follow that, but there's a point, a houselessness is a huge problem in Southern California and it's growing, right? And that has all kinds of structural issues, right? And Ashley tries to remember that

and tries to be compassionate and one day a guy shits on her lawn and She just gives up goes leans back into the undertow. You know, I'm not paddling I'm not trying to be the better person. I'm not trying to see the larger problem I just want to fucking hate this dude who's shat in my lawn and Trump comes along and he tells me it's okay And not only not a bad person for hating that I'm a good person, I'm a victim, right? Hashtag love, that's her first tweet on behalf of Trump, right? Sure.

...side, that's movement. Chris Sanunu, who was, he has governed as a moderate, in fact, until now was actually sort of pushing back against our very occasionally far right legislature, New Hampshire, not anymore. All that's stopping. He's choosing a side. We got to pay attention to that strategically because that means powerful people who aren't stupid, but our selfish are saying, huh, which side of my on, I think I better go over on that side, right?

It also mean that that's why I wanna keep, that's why I keep going back to Ashley Babet with you, is I mean, when you say that it was the houseless person that shout on her lawn, I mean, to me, that's an insane thing to say. What it was is a entire lifetime of institutionalized misogyny kicking her ass left and right until finally something like that happens. And then my question to you from there is this, why do people choose to go with Trump

when it's that kind of in or out level. What is it that the left is not providing that would be an option for her because she wasn't getting any options from the left? No, she was getting a kind of a neoliberal governance system that wasn't taking care of homeless people. She was getting your favorite president was Obama. He was getting a neoliberal, a government system that wasn't regulating banking so that she could get alone, because she didn't know what she's trying to do for her pool business. It would suddenly put her in incredible interest that there's literally, I mean, it's a mafia loan. There's no way for her

ever to pay. She was getting a, yeah, misogyny all the way through. She was getting, you know, she saw 9-11 and decided to join the Air Force at 17, convinced her parents to let her go down and join early. And like so many people in the Trump world, and I think the right, I mean, you can talk to folks in the Trump world. And they sound like they've just come from a screening of democracy now, right? They will talk about blood for oil and the and and what they lost in the Iraq war and how bitter they are and how that war was for Halibur and that diagnosis is fairly accurate. And then and that is why I support Trump, right? Partly, right? And like, when you said that, right, when I say the man of shit's on the lawn, right, that's not that this,

this, this is the narrative. I understand. Yes. And I sort of write in the book about like, what is it? And like to name any one thing, like, is it, she gives into a racism too? And the racism has always been there and it's always been there, right? Is this race or is this class or is this misogyny? Yes, yes, yes, that's called intersectionality. And it's a million other little things. It is the disappointments of life. It's it's a marriage that didn't work. It's it's the shame she feels a lot. So many people made this marriage that didn't work. It's the shame she feels a lot. So many people made this a lot of the fact that she, I think in 2016, the man shined at marrying Aaron Babitt. It was a complicated transition. Who knows if there was some cheating or whatever involved and Ashley Babitt loses her temper and's found, uh, not guilty later, rams the other woman's car. Um, that's fucking horrible. What a fucking horrible thing to do. Um, this is, this is also,

she's not proud of that. You know, people like, look at that. That's the way that person is. Well, we on the left, on the liberation aside, we are the ones who are supposed to own the idea that you are not defined by your worst act. This is why we oppose the carceral state, which is why we oppose the essentialism of American caste. And yet she is. And I think why does she choose Trump? You're right, there's an absence. There's an absence.

It's there on the left, but you have to go looking. It's not as visible. Trump is more visible. I think about this in a previous book of mine. So we haven't wanna die. I wrote about a movement called Battle Cry. And what Battle Cry would do in the early 2000s is they would have these like three day rock festivals for evangelical teens, 70,000 folks.

And they would go out there. And I remember there was one stick they would have, they would have a cattle hide and they would talk about, and they would be projecting on the screen. They said, you know what corporations are doing to you? They're branding you. They would brand the hide and they would put up on the screen, Oakley or Coca-Cola. They're branding you. They're branding you, they're branding you, right? It could be adbusters. This is a leftist critique. And yet then they swoop them up. And

battle cry, you can hear it in the name. Some of the other states, the one thing they did is they bring a mannequin on and each part of the mannequin would be labeled like pornography or some other thing that they did. And then they would take this biblical story about a concubine who was given by a figure to the mob to be torn up and that this is somehow the good thing. Which story was that? There's too many of those. It's the minute. But they lead the thousands of kids and chanting a tear up the concubine, tear up the concubine, and they rip an arm off and throw it to the crowd.

And the kids are all screaming and who wants, you know, I want a hand, I want this and so on. Right? This is fascism. I love people who think that we didn't evolve behaving exactly like a giant shit ton of apes. But this is fascism, but look at what they've just done. They've taken like, hey kids, I bet you hate that you're fucking corporate branded. And they do. And the left isn't saying that,

right? Not at that time. There is a left that's saying that, but it's not visible enough. Adbusters are saying it, but these kids in Texas aren't getting ad buses. They're getting battle cry, right? And they're becoming trumpers. And so when they come on, the story on the left is, is an offer of slow, incremental change to people as you know, who have recognized that the center doesn't exist anymore. So there is no slow incremental change.

There is. I'm gonna disagree with you there. Okay, no, no, I'm not saying that from my point of view. I'm saying that from the story that they are getting is if you go with Trump, we can do it now. We can do it now. And if you go with fucking Joe Biden, Jesus Christ. I'm, nobody can sell can do it now. And if you go with a fucking Joe Biden, Jesus Christ, I'm nobody can sell Joe Biden on you. That's not gonna happen, you know?

Right. Democracy is dull. We know this, right? I mean, it's why there's a chapter in the book called the Great Acceleration. And let me find this passage. So accelerationism. And speaking of which, I was going to ask you

if you were a closet accelerationist. So we'll get there eventually. So accelerationism. And speaking of which I was going to ask you if you are a closet accelerationist. So we'll get there eventually. There's my elegant answer. No, I'm a closet liberal. Like I'm a closet slow incremental change. That's why Harry Belfonte. Sorry, long struggle, man. The long struggle. The struggle is long, right? Sure. And it's why I reject the language of crisis. And you with your root is background, understand the eschatological nature of that, but it's the crisis of democracy.

It's the crisis of climate. Sure. It's the final battle, as Trump says, right? This is it. You're all in or all out or a long struggle because we are going to go through fascism and I don't know if it's going to be a fascist regime, but if we're like, God damn, I'm going to fight so hard. We didn't win. What's the vote at point? Harry Belfonte stayed in the struggle for 96 years. A stronger soul than me, yes. But one who had also many more temptations and most of us

as a superstar, easy for him to walk away. He stayed fully 100% in the struggle. He stayed in the anger for 96 years. That's the long struggle, right? That's the struggle against fascism. That's the struggle for the democracy. We have not yet enjoyed in the acceleration, as he says, time to give up democracy doesn't do enough. What fools we haven't had it yet, right? Wouldn't it be something? That's why there's a chapter in the book about occupy to and the pleasures of physical democracy as one person describes it of like the democracy of we're going to sleep together and the park we're going to cook together, we're going to make a library together. We're going to have really clunky boring slow consensus meetings and consensus meetings are fucking boring. They are not as thrilling as the strong man. And accelerationism says, accelerationism says, though, let me find this little accelerationist passage.

Take your time. I'll edit this part out and it'll look like you opened the book to the right page. It'll be beautiful. Yes. So, there's in Waukesha, Milwaukee. Waukesha, Milwaukee. So Milwaukee is a very blue city and a purple state. And Waukesha is one of the counties that used to be the most right-wing counties in America.

It is the purest white flight. And yet it has been giving up on some of that conservative and over the years, as it does, though, the fight gets sharper. And in Waukesha now, there's a, I mean, the school board, the school board, we have school board people there saying we should just not teach science, sciences of the devil. I mean, it's really, oh yeah, I think they, I think the walk to school board, there was a little scandal recently, there was a somewhere over the rainbow that we can't say that. It's gay. But I get to wash it, walk us. Uh, and walk us is also this place.

I think it's sort of useful because it is this place of kind of mythological violence. It's where, uh, in 2021, uh, a man, uh, who called himself math boy fly. He plows through a Christmas parade. Remember the Christmas parade in six people. Yeah. For sure. And the dancing grannies, right? Um, and this looms so large on the right.

They say, you just want to talk about Carl Rittenhouse. Let's talk about math boy fly, math boy fly, who is essentially an asshole, right? But he's an asshole of his times. And sometimes he talks online about black guys matter and so on. So they conclude that he is doing this for black guys matter.

In fact, this man lacks any ideological principle. He is a domestic violence guy and he's fleeing from the cops. And he's just like, he is the absolute narcissism. People in my way, I'm driving through them and he kills them, right? Walkish is also, and I think even maybe more important, where in 2014, we have the Slenderman attempted murder. And this is a sort of looming story too. There's great, by the way, people wanna go and look

for Alex Mar and a magazine called VQR, writes a piece called Outcame the Girls. And it's so relevant, actually, to understanding the martyrdom cults and innocence of girlhood, a legit innocence of girlhood. Two, 12-year-old girls were their third friend into the woods to kill her for Slenderman, who they had read about online. I mean, and this is Alex Jones' territory, right?

And it's swirling around both like the conspiracy myth of Slenderman and then the conspiracy myth of sort of liberal anxiety, which is that the internet is myth of Slenderman and then the conspiracy myth of sort of liberal anxiety, which is that the internet is in fact Slenderman, the boogie man that's going to take our kids. And it will happen sometimes. That's the thing. That happened there. Weirdly, most kids on the internet have not attempted to sacrifice anyone to Slenderman, right? Sure, sure. But that one incident looms so large. And so I get to this town and you get off the highway and where there's normally like the champion baseball team signs, there's just this,

and I can't show it on here, but there's just like this photograph in the book. The entire hillside is covered with fascist billboards. Some of them make sense, some of them don't. Some of them are about Obama, some of them are about Biden, some of them are about COVID. Here, I'm reading one that says, Group Morality goes to Orgi giving you, and then the rest is cut off by grass, Tony the taxer, their Democratic governor, literally dozens and dozens of boards. And I think about it in this terms of sort of this overflow

of all the signs that have been seeing around the country, the Let's Go brand in signs, the Fuk Joe Biden signs, the AR-15 signs, people making totem poles to celebrate Trump painting silos, the vast outburst of very dark and frightening creativity, but it is creativity, right, versus prifex. Sure. I mean, I assume in like 40 years, people will collect those the same way they did Soviet era. Oh, friend of mine. Friend of mine is a Smithsonian curator.

And he's already on it. He says, this is fascist folk. This is fascist folk art. This is, you know, I mean, he was on it in January 6. He was like, we got to get for this Smithsonian. We got to get the shattered Nancy Pelosi. The Smithsonian is filled with dank memes. Bank memes, right? But, you know, our mind is filled with dank memes, right? And so this is where I start to, this is where we get around to it, accelerationism, right?

So, I'm not going to be able to get over. Our mind is filled with dank memes for a while. That was good, man. I've found so much like Alex Jones. And, you know, I'd like to show you, Jordan. I've got this Zeevi 0 calorie drink. And if you drink this and you can order directly from me, I'm, you know, yes, yeah, I got you. You're, all right, it's a name joke.

I'm not the comedian, man. Sorry. I'm really interested in your soda for a second. Oh, it's good soda. No, there's a Zee-Dee zero sugar, but without that chemical stuff, it's delicious. Cream soda, yeah. That's not stuff. Yeah. But I'm starting to look at these sort of killings and if there's a killing that has already faded, Bobby Crimmo III, who kills a bunch of people in Highland Park, Illinois, Chicago, right? Seven people who once attended a Trump rally

dressed as Waldo of where's Waldo fame and who may or may not have been truly aware of politics. And that's gotta be in quotes as such at all. And the same way that we're talking about Jack Texera, the airmen, and I blowing my mind, the New York Times, will say, well, he posted a lot of memes about hating the deep state and about Jews and racists and about, he called Ukrainian's pigs, but I guess we'll just never know

why he did what he did. You know, I am. Yes, he may be a 21 year old fool, but this is the sort of the poison that's in the air. And so it was for Bobby Krimmel, right? His online life rippled with right wing hatreds, but he dedicated the panicked days before his crime to a sped up aesthetic of images and ideologies,

crashing into one another, sometimes called skitzowave. It's a bioterm, a grotesque romanicization of mental illness, an awful metaphor for the quickening of our fragmentation, the great acceleration, simultaneous explosion, and collapse of meaning. Like skitzowave in its verb form, skosting. Accelerationism is a relatively recent term, allegedly coined or at least brought into contemporary use in 2013 by two Marxist political scientists via the influence of a two-volume work of 1970s French theory called capitalism in schizophrenia. And this wonky audience might even know to lose a guattari, right? Well, crisis gathers force and speed, politics, whithers, and retreats, the political scientist, hashtag, accelerate, manifesto for an acceleration's protest, politics announced, and the

overwhelming privileging of democracy as process needs to be left behind. It was rejection of the slow, small work of solidarity in favor of a quote, future more modern. Yes, said the fascist intellectuals, adapting the concept to their own ends. Yes, let's leave democracy behind the new fascists like the idea of hastening the end of a liberal order, right? And. And that accelerationism, and that's, and so no, am I a cause of accelerationist? Let's democracy as process. Well, I mean, I feel like what you just explained was the non-ideological nature of accelerationism. It's not owned by an ideology. Like let me ask you a question.

What do you say to somebody who is 16, uh, who about slow incremental changes, they're looking down the barrel of climate change. Like, nobody's done anything. You know, when we talk about slow incremental progress, we, we were like, okay, well, we can't elect Bernie Sanders because that would make rich people mad. So we'll get Joe Biden in there and he's going to help us with the climate. And then he sells more land to oil, you know, like what do you say to them as far as I say everything I'd say everything shrinks in the wash. So you go and throw some paint on a painting and you go and blockade a road and you do all this kind of stuff. You occupy something with a sit-in and so on.

You do all that so that you can get slow and criminal change. I wouldn't say, no, hey, hey, hey, don't block the road. Don't worry, we're gonna have another, I wouldn't say that. Everything shrinks in the wash. You make the biggest push you can and it will only go so far. That's Harry Belfond, he put his life on the line. I get literally on the line, chased by the clan again and again and again.

Oh, well, the Civil Rights Movement was a great success, right? Hell no, he doesn't think so. You put everything, you put your life on the line and you accept that the movement will be slow because revolution, the idea of the overnight, which is right now, the Trumpist idea is, that's a romance. That is the romance of American Communist, Vivian Gornix, great book coming out of that world.

But I think that you said right, accelerationism is a depends on what you do with it. This is what the left has failed to understand. It's all politically agnostic, right? Solidarity, I love solidarity, not so much when it's between proud boys and mega churches. The left imagines that we own these terms. The left imagines that we own imagination. The right is filled with imagination right now. The left seeds terms, we've let the right have freedom. Now, that doesn't even struggle for freedom, right?

We still freedom dreams, but you pay attention to the migration of language and you start to see the patterns. So I don't say, when I say slow incremental change, it's not because I believe that that's the way to go. It's because I recognize that that is what happens. And that only happens if you go all in, right? And so that's why I love the Wisconsin. The Wisconsin who are ready to fight, right?

Right. We are ready to fight. Now, okay, they've got their guns. Oh, the kids in Wisconsin got their guns. Well, probably we'll get we'll get reproductive rights back tomorrow. No, that commitment is necessary and now that's gonna be the long struggle. Let's look at how they took row down, right?

Row, which was always inadequate to begin with, but let's how they took it. They organized for 50 years and they killed a lot of people along the way and they bombed a lot of things along the way and they heard a lot of things along the way and it took them 50 years and they stayed in that their struggle and they won. And at no point did the Susan B. Anthony list or any of these other right-wing groups say to the army of God, well, you blew up your 200th abortion clinic and we still have it. So what's the point?

They're like, no, we're just going to keep fighting. Now, I'm not saying that's the model because I'm not into blowing things up. Well, I mean, in a certain way, you've described all of the different ways that the left has failed. And then you described the way that the right succeeded. So there is a little bit of an argument. No, the last chapter of the book is called, the last chapter of the book is called, The Good Fight is the One You Lose. The Good Fight is the One You Lose. And I'm writing about Lehigh's,

and nobody knows who Lehigh's is. But even the last line of the book is, I always knew it was me the first line for why it was possible to not be scared even. And this is Lehigh's, Lehigh's who wrote, if I had a hammer. And I got interested in the if I had a hammer because I grew up in this little all-white town in our elementary school and our music class. We sing, if I had a hammer, a hammer in the morning. And this is a sweet little song. And then you go and you discover Peter Paul and Mary singing it. And it's like, if I had a

hammer, it's like I'd build a tree house and we'd make love and be sweet and everything. But the first performance of it, if I had a hammer in 1949, first public performance is at a concert in peak skill, New York, where Pete Seeger lived. Peak skill, New York, Paul Robson is the headliner, the so-called Russia-loving Negro Baratone as the local newspaper puts it. They try to have it the concert twice. First time the town's people shut it down because they think these are communists. And why did they think they're communists? Because they're communists. But they don't want any communists. And they shut it down, and they burn crosses. The second time they come. They come prepared 3000 union members come as security.

They managed to sing the song time to get the hell out, but the town has organized as well. 5,000 people organized with piles of rocks and strategic places with air power from the New York State police, not keeping the peace, protecting the attack on the yeas and Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie and so on, right? Leehaze. That's a guy who put his life on the line. I mean, don't go and say, don't call Leehaze a liberal, right? And that wasn't the first or the last time he would do it. In the end, he was broken. He was called before the House on American Affairs Committee. He was a gay man, he had things to hide.

Wait, what, what you laughing at? I'm sorry, you were like, oh, okay, no. Okay, Jordan, you just said that I described all the way that the left loses and that the right one. Now I'm gonna tell you an incredibly depressing story about how this loses all the time. No, no I'm not gonna give you cheap grace. I'm not gonna give you cheap grace I don't want it. I don't want it. What which is oh the left wins powers in the barrel of a gun that worked out for fucking Mal The left didn't win there. The left didn't win in the Soviet Union. It didn't win. We haven't won yet, right? This is the

long struggle. We haven't, we've won in places, but we haven't won yet. So if the idea is that you look at me getting broken and you say, well, I'm honest, we'll just take up my arms or some of their equivalent thereof as opposed to saying like what can I learn from this man who was brave in the struggle who put himself on the line more than most of us have. It's that line for while it was possible not to be scared even and Lee is describing he's an Arkansas where he's from. And he's riding with a group of union organizers and what he calls a rump sprung car beat up all car and gun thugs are on their tail and they are singing. And what they would do back then is they would say, take, they were all raised in the church. They would sing hymns, but they would turn them into labor songs. But that night he says we sang the old hymns, right? Not because they're going back to conservative, but but they're drawing on the deep struggle,

right? And he says for a while, it was possible not to be scared even. For a while it was possible not to be scared even now Let me put this in the context of why the good fight is the one you lose the struggle that he fought that's the fight to be in Years ago, and I'm gonna do this from memory and I'm probably gonna get a little bit wrong I met an amazing activist also from Arkansas named Suzanne Far And we were doing a thing where we were talking to young journalists and activists. I was the journalist part. She was the activist part and there's a lot of people and radicals, very radical, not liberal, not... Sure, sure, sure, I got you. I got you.

And Suzanne Far had been part of a queer, a queer women's commune in rural, I think, Rowe Arkinsa in the 70s and 80s, right? And they just wanted to live by themselves. But pretty soon, local women, who cis-hat women, in need of help fleeing violent relationships, come to them, right? And so they decide which side are they on? And they let them in, right? Now, the men come after that, them, right? And so they decide which side are they on? And they let them in, right? Now, the men come after that too, right? And this is a rural area. The police there are not going

to be coming out to help the, the lesbian commune, right? I can't remember if Suzanne and her comrades armed up, but they definitely stood their ground. They stood the ground and they protected those place. Now, there was a young radical activist who says to Suzanne. And Suzanne, by this point is, although as radicals can be, has just, if you think sweet Southern grandmother, you got the right picture, um, white haired, very gentle voice, just, just, just really just lovely and, and gentle and so on. And, and, and this young radical activist says, that's so amazing that you build a safe space. And Suzanne says, oh honey, there are no fucking safe spaces. That wasn't a safe space, it was a safe

moment and it was made. A safe space is in there, it's just there, right? A safe moment for a while, it's possible not to be scared even that is the hope. That's the best that we have right now. We can create these safe moments actively and hold on to them and remember them. And instead of saying, that's just a goddamn failure. Say, Hey, wait a minute. Look at that. Lee Hayes. Have you created a moment where it was possible not to be scared even? Probably you have have this show has. I tried to, right? We try to do that. Count the victories, count the small victories and don't embrace the nihilism of we have not won because that's the eschatological. That's the big final battle

bullshit that fascism wants us to believe. I mean, I agree with you a lot. And yet at the same time, we celebrate a violent revolution every single year. What you do. I mean, I don't personally. What do you mean we, you know? Yeah, no, no, absolutely not. But it's, it is why you and I have a comfortable life, as compared to a lot of other people by which I would argue is a 90% of people or something along those lines. So I keep coming back to this, this idea of what do you tell

somebody who is young staring down the barrel of climate change who just watched people almost successfully overthrow the United States government and celebrates a violent revolution every year. I don't tell them what to do because if I'm not asking you, I'm again, I'm not telling you that you have to do something. I'm asking you. I mean, no, but I did. I got what I did. What I know how to do is make this book, right? And so I'm scared for my kids. And so I go and I make this book. This is what I know how to do. But to be in the end of the beginning, which is called our condition, and it's against the crisis, this climate is our condition, right? What do I get there with the clock? It's going to be so bad. No, the climate is bad.

And there's nothing you can do to bring back those glaciers, right? Right. There's very little we can even do right now to slow shit down. This is a condition we are going to have to learn to live with. And this is the metaphor of the book partly because I keep running into these fascists. I had hit the genetic jack pot lottery, two heart attacks at 44 in Yamita fascists. And you got a hard trouble. I got a hard trouble. And something we're talking because you understand when that happens, people say, Oh, don't worry. Your heart is going to grow back. Just your heart's gonna grow back.

What the fuck, kind of biology class did you go to? No, there's dead wall in your heart. It's not gonna grow back. Latias aren't gonna come back. The assumption of normality, Joe Biden's not gonna bring it back. We're not going back, right? We're going to have to get into the space. But I don't have those answers.

Where do I say to a young person? I said, we will need new songs if we're to make it through. What is to come? What is already here? I am not the one to write them. My hope is less than that. Only that this book may reveal fault lines within our fears in which others will find the better words

our children may one day sing. It's why, you know, I mean, in the same flip side, when I do liberal interviews, people ask me about those Wisconsin kids with their guns. They said, did you, when not, did you tell them that that's not the way? No, I didn't tell them that's not the way. When I go into Sacramento, and there's a brawl between crowdboys and Antifa, and it's the dumbest brawl I've ever seen because they all know each other. And it's like rules of engagement. They know where they can't have weapons on the capital and so on.

And look, Antifa being assholes too. Antifa is yelling, Faggot and Proud Boys are yelling, Scum and boom, boom, boom. I'm not going to tell those Antifa. That's just not the way young people. How could I say that? How could any of us say that we know the way young people. How could I say that? How could any of us say that we know the way, right? All I can do is I can write a book. You can have a podcast. They can brawl on the streets. Theta can practice with her bow and hold up a sign that says, fuck off.

And who knows what else she's going to do. And I mean, that literally who knows what else she's going to do. I think there's some dumb shit. I mean, I'm in Wisconsin. There was great, my David review of the books in the Washington examiner, the right wing paper. And I'm trying to remember the line. He says like, this book is the purest distillation of leftism. It does not mean it's the compliment at all. I mean, I know plenty of leftists who would say it's a little wobbly, but um, um, it's like, he doesn't talk at all about the history of leftist violence. I'm like, no, that's true. That's this is a book.

Did you see this is a book about this thing? It's like, my book, my idea is I don't talk at all about elephants. Um, but there is I do talk with a chapter about John Brown in there. I'm just throwing that out there. Or I could have mentioned as I did, the assholes who bombed the army, Math or Cruting Building in Wisconsin in 1971 or two or something, which led to the creation of this book called Wisconsin Death Trip, which I carried with me through Wisconsin by my mentor and thinking about the struggle as long the violence had been there, stupid moves have been made. They were going to do this in a way that nobody gets killed. Well,

they kill a young physicist. They had a plane that they were dropping bombs from. I'm not big about dropping bombs from planes, even if you believe in violence. That's just not for me. They were fools. The ones who blew up the building in, I mean, there's a lot of killing. On the other hand, there's a lot of killing. I'm written elsewhere about the Vietnam GI movement. I'm named Jeff Charlotte because my uncle was one of the founders of that movement. And it was a mutiny movement by GI's.

And they weren't mutiny against their commanders, and they sometimes killed commanders. This is what we call treason, and I'm not gonna say it was wrong. No, it's totally right. The American Revolution. I'm not gonna say that was wrong. World War II, I'm definitely not gonna say that was wrong.

And World War II was, there wasn't a single government in World War II that I would admire, World War Two was, there was a single government in World War Two that I would admire, including FDRs, right? Of course. So what's the importance of that? Which side are you on, right? You know, laughing. And then you sift it later. So to the young person, right, I say, I guess the one thing I would say to them is which side are you on. And I think they know that, right? But now look around and figure out who else is on that side and figure out who is moving to that side. And aim my thing, aim your

fire rhetorical or artistic or if you must violence at the other side, please. That would help. Like, you know, and look, but if you must, if you must like police the kind of the nuances of language on the left and the failures there, okay, that's fine. It's not my project now. I'm not in the project. Why don't you write an article about what a jerk Chuck Schumer is? Sure, sure. I will get to that. It's on the list of things to do. Sure. Yeah. But I'm worried more about the guns literally aimed at people I love right now. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean, aren't we all? I mean, that's, that is kind of the situation there is when we talk about war in this context, you know, you're bringing up war to describe what's going on right now. It's kind of hard to accept people saying that the flow of violence can flow from the state to the people without any pushback whatsoever. I think it's hard to accept those clear lines

about state and people and those terms, which are terms from another world that we are no longer in. The fascism of the moment has affinities with the fascisms of the past, but it is of its own time. I think we talked about that. That's a good question. That's a good question. I'm interested in that. Is it? Yes. Like I think of, I think of the no nothing party right before the first civil war, you know,

I think of the no nothing party. And I think of the way that went, I think of how John Wilkes Booth was a big no nothing or a finity. Here we are. You know, a finities, a finities of finities. Yes. But and here's like the definitive thing.

And this is where the American left is as guilty as the American right. And yes, motherfuckers, I am both citing this. The American exceptionalism of believing that this is somehow a uniquely American thing. As if there is not a Trump of turkey named Erdogan, a Trump of Brazil named Bolsonaro. And Myanmar, a self describeddescribed trunk of Myanmar, a Buddhist monk who leads a genocidal mobs, a Buddhist monks to massacre the Rohingya Muslims, as if there are not the Philippines,

as if there is not Indonesia, which has been fascist since the American supported coup in the 1960s, which to this day celebrates, celebrates its genocide. Fascism is a global moment and what is different now than in the past is in the 1930s, you had contending powers. Right now, what have you got? China is a fascist regime.

The fuck this state communist and whatever. It's a quality around G. It wasn't always, but it has become one. Russia. Russia is, and we can quibble over details, but Russia is, and I would say they are fascist regimes of the moment, right? So people say this is how it is different than Germany, right? Because it's called Russia and it's 2023, not 1936.

That's why you're right, it is different. Fascism like anything else of all. And so we have all that. We have European countries sort of toppling. We have the great victory of Lula in Brazil, but let's see how long that lasts. We have a lot of fascist regimes in Africa right now. Uganda is a fascist regime. Sudan is, tell me that Sudan's gonna come out looking pretty from this one. Sure. He came out of a fascist regime and it struggled,

the long struggle. So do young Sudanese people say, holy shit, we overthrew Omar, what's his name? Omar Bashir, we overthrew this guy. We did it, We did it. We did it. And we even muted the military and got them to be on our side. And then just a few years later, look at this.

Well, can't join them. Can't be a minus, well, join them. I guess I'm minus, we'll just go for a authoritarian rule. That's Chris Sinoon who's deciding which side is the, no, we lost. The good fight is the one you lose. The good fight that the Sudanese who overthrew that dictator, they fought the good fight, the Egyptians who overthrew Mubarak and now suffer under Al-Sisi. They fought the good fight. The Arab Spring was the good fight, right? So there's all these kinds of struggles. And I think that the state versus, this is

where fascism is different now because there are no contending powers, right? There's no Soviet Union. And there's no, there's, there's, there's an America or America's fat. No, we're not fully given in. We are not as given in as Russia or Hungary. We are still contending. And one of the mistakes that the left has made, I'm writing from the right for a long time, the left is terrible at recognizing the ground that occupies, right?

The ground that it owns. And I think about this for so many years, liberals would say the universities were neutral. No, they're not biased. And leftists would say, no, bullshit, they're just right-wing tools, right? And the right-wingers I write write about the guys who founded Liberty University and Regent University and Orroborid's University in Hillsdale College, which is now giving its curriculum to public schools all over the country. They understood that these crappy elitist universities, nonetheless, they were part of the center that was holding.

It wasn't a very good center, but they were part of that. Leftist, and I have colleagues now who think that fighting our administration at Dartmouth, where, you know, the full spectrum of political views is kind of like, are you a Bernie Democrat or maybe more of a like establishment Democrat, right? That's what you get, and that's fine. That's fine. I'm not like there should be intellectual diversity, We would ever you think, right? But they think that fighting that administration puts them on the front lines, the ballwork of the battle, right? No, that's not the battle, right? That's as this is Dartmouth College super problematic institution, students should struggle for it and so on. But the front line right now is in teachers and New Hampshire, afraid for their jobs.

In some cases, afraid for their lives just because they're teaching the history of slavery. And some people are going to say, well, if we can't address these other issues, when, right? When the gun is not anyone who's asking that is someone who's never had a gun pointed at them, right? When you've got a gun pointed at you, you don't say, well, there's some structural in Omaha, Nebraska in this book, right? And they bring out the gunman. I didn't want to say, well, let's talk about the ways you're church, you know, you're pointing a gun at me. Right. I got to do something about that, right? And so I think that state violence, like I am not

as opposed to the state right now. And I think we need to look at this right now because this who owns the state capitalism, but capitalism leaves the fascism. But it is not the same thing. Biden is not the same as DeSantis. And if we come to the real fear that I think is there and that you're seeing generals say and, you know, not all generals, but, right, the military is not monolithic. If we come to a real chain of command dispute in 2024, the fear is not the malicious. And the, the resistance is not the John Brown gun club. It's an Air Force base in one state that believes that Trump is

president and an Air Force base in another state that believes that Biden is president and follows the the change of command rules from whoever gets to whoever. And at this point, the John Brown guncub is going to look as ridiculous as the proud boys with their AR-15s. And that is on the table. And the military is talking about that internally, right? They're saying, this is a real issue. We need to figure this out. It's what General Milley did on, and, and, and 2021 when he said, don't take the orders from anyone but me. Sure, sure. A mutant is act. Hey, you can go all the way back to Smetley Butler. Why not? Let's have fun with that one. There's a lot, there's a long history of this stuff. So I think

like, like that state, the state and the people, those terms meant something at one time. And we should recognize that they mean something now because of fascism is different now. And the key differences is that it is a global movement without a counter-vailing force. And when by significant, I don't mean like the people, I mean like the industrial base of the United States or the Soviet Union, right? Right. Well, you know, boy, that's, that is probably why we are bad at telling a good story for the Ashley Babits,

you know, if if our story is the good fight is one you lose, that's not going to bring Ashley Babit over. Do you know what do you know what I mean? Like it is. Yeah, no, I disagree. I disagree. I disagree for the story to be so, so different. I disagree. I disagree. And I think about just looking at the death of Harry Belfonte, which has been very moving to hear all the people. Harry Belfonte brought a whole lot of people over. He brought it because the story he tells, the story he tells is, Dale, right? Dale, like, come, I want to come home, which the banana boat song, yeah, you didn't beat all Jews, right? Um, this is the fun goofy song. No, it's a boat song. Yeah. You didn't be able to do this, right? This is the fun goofy song.

No, it's a freedom song, it's a work song. He learned it on the docs in Jamaica. He learns it from, come Mr. Taliman, Taliman the banana, that's called capitalism. That's the boss. Harry, Harry Newt, I was like, I want you to enjoy this song. The deep pleasure of describing present day evil.

Taliman is bad, right? Cornell West, why a great affinity for a great fiction for, and this book there's a lot of right wingers talking about prophecy, right? And Cornell also his first book, Prophecy Deliverance. Prophecy, he says, is to describe concrete evils. Prophecy is democratic. It's available to everyone. You don't have to be a mystical pastor, right? Sure. You have to keep your eyes open to describe

mystical evils, every day evil, concrete, evil, real life, evil, the structural system, right? Come, Mr. Tallyman, Tallyman, Banana, Daylight, come and want wanna go home, right? I wanna go home, I wanna get out from under. That's a good damn story, right? That's a beautiful story. And that story has moved a lot of people, it has put people on the line. And if I have to choose between that story, between Deo and Donald Trump, it's easy for me.

Now, it gets complicated. And that's why the second section of the book is named after a song you hear at Trump Rally's Dream On by Aerosmith, right? Sure, sure. Which I think is a great song. I'm gonna put, I grew up in Upstate New York, Classic Rock, right?

Aerosmith's Dream On, it's an awesome arena rock song. At Trump Rally's people spin in circles. And I call this the section on vanity, right? It's the vanity of arena rock. It can be gorgeous and beautiful, right? But it can also be vain. And it's okay to be vain, right? Pride. Pride is a like, like, rebel in our beauty, right? Right. You're saying that these people probably think the song is about that You mean to do that yes, of course I did Thank you. Thank you very much

Lapsed and failed so there you go My nine-year-old has gotten that song into his head And just sing that you And then you old has gotten that song into his head and just sings it. You're so. What did you do to that night? He just heard it. He just heard it. And it was like that's it. I mean, that's bad parenting.

You let him hear the song too soon. Too soon. I got that. I'm not. But you know, my dad should be a populous now when I was nine. So it just wasn't of a never too young to learn. Mr. Kurtz. Oh, no, I mean, Kurtl Kurtz.

Well, I mean, the rank man. Yeah, exactly. My bad. I was I was going off the original heart of darkness. No, I think I think talking about Harry, you know, it was so strange. He died so shortly after we spoke. And you taught me so much about him that it hit so much harder. And it was a lot more difficult to kind of reconcile the way that you can remember him being portrayed as like so many other people,

like watered down, he's just this entertainer, he's somebody who has rubbed elbows with civil rights icons in the past. And then to hear about his truth, his true life, that spending your life on the front lines, as you said, that's the most inspiring story in your book. And maybe that I've heard in a long, long time. So that's the best stage there is as Harry puts it, right?

Like he's talking about the march from someone among Gumrie. And the first march had ended in violence. And then they come back just like in peak skill, they come back with more and they march out. And there's George Wallace, the little segregationist troll governor, and he's afraid to come out of his capital and Harry and Joan Bias and Mary from Peter Paul and Mary. They get up there and they sing and you can see some old CBS footage of this. They sing so badly because they're exhausted because they've been marching because

there's been guns aimed at them, but they sing their song and he says, that's the most beautiful stage there is. You tell, for a while it's possible not to be scared even. Is that stage a safe space? Hell no. And right after that stage, right after that march, he knows, you know, one of the protesters was killed. He says every time Harry Bell finally never forgets. He's that, you know, the violence is there.

But I think like, I'll say his death at 96, I didn't experience it as hard. And I don't think that's the good fight. There's the one you lose, right? 96 years, right? Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Go right. I mean, what a life. And then he never, never, never gave up for a second. Here's how much Harry Bell Fawni scares the right, believe it or not, even now. That Washington, the one right-wing review of the book I get, Washington Examiner, and just crashing the book, you know, the fascism of the left and so on. Who do they focus on?

Harry Belfonte. The whole damn review is about Harry Belfonte, right? Sure. And that's fascinating, too, to know that, hey, the other side, they know which side they're on, and they know which side Harry's on. They know he hey, the other side, they know which side they're on and they know which side Harry's on They know he's not on their side. Yeah, right? And they'll take another 40 years before they start naming streets after him and pretending that he was not a Oh, no, that'll happen.

So always gonna try, always gonna try and sweeten it up and and and smooth it over and and sand it down and so on. But the other thing to remember is that you can then go back. Like I do with if I had a hammer, wait a minute, this is a radical song, Dale, the serratical song that we can't just the struggle is not just on the horizontal axis, right? Forward. I mean, the forward is important, right? What do we do next?

The struggle is vertical too. We draw from the deep well, right? We draw from the time, like the good fight is the one you lose, but it wasn't always lost. It was these moments of victory and you hold on to those and let them inform strategically, psychologically, spiritually, right? You let them inform you as you go forward.

I mean, this is why no one's going to believe this, but this book, which really reads like a doom scroll. Doesn't not. It's a doom scroll. Doesn't not. Of course. It's a hope book. It's a hope book. I swear to God, but you got to dig for it. It's not gonna give you hope.

The same way that you're not gonna have democracy, right? It's gonna be something you do, right? We're gonna see these folks, we're gonna find these beautiful little moments even within these fascist spaces. And so I'm not gonna see these folks. We're gonna find these beautiful little moments even within these fascist spaces. And so I'm not gonna give you hope. You can use this to manufacture your own, right? That's wonderful.

I mean, I don't think there's a better place to end on. I mean, we've already gone for almost an hour and 45. Yeah, you ready? So I don't think there's any better place to end. I won't keep you too much longer. Jeff, thank you so much for coming back on. The book is the undertow. It's out now.

I'm very grateful. Well, thank you, Jordan. I mean, this is one of the best and most honest conversations about the book I've had. So, I don't have a boss. I don't have a boss. I don't have a boss. That helps.

But you're pushing me to ask these questions and you're challenging. And we're thinking about the book not just as an object, but as this thing that's in this moment that we're all living through. And I really appreciate some things. That's the best way to do it. Well, thank you so much.

And hopefully we'll see you again for your next book. Andy and Kansas, you're on the earth thanks for holding. So Alex, I'm a first time caller in my huge fan. I love your work. I love you.