Knowledge Fight - #881: Chatting with Brandi Collins-Dexter

Episode Date: December 27, 2023

In this installment, Jordan sits down with Brandi Collins-Dexter, author of Black Skinhead and host of the Bring Receipts podcast, for a riveting conversation about Ye, feminism, and the relationship between the Democratic party and Black Americans.

I Ready Not knowledge fight Damn and Jordan I am sweating Knowledge fight that come it's time to pray I have great respect for knowledge faith knowledge fight I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys. Chang Lee are the bad guys knowledge 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. Chang-ee are the bad guys.

Knowledge, Faith. Dan and Jordan. Knowledge, Faith. Need money. Need money. Need money. Need money. Andy and Pansley.

Andy and Pansley. Stop it. Andy and Pansley. Andy and Pansley. Andy and Pansley. Andy. It's time to pray. Andy and Pansley. I'm Jordan unfortunately alone without my co-host today. However, I am joined by Brandy Collins Dexter the author of Black Skinhead the host of the Bring Receipts podcast founding

Director of Color of Change Other incredible accomplishments and I'm a clown. So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. I'm not a founding director. I have to say. Sorry.

All good. No misinformation, but yes, senior, I was senior campaign director and kind of founded our media justice department. So my mistake. I apologize for that. So the reason that I reached out and the reason that I wanted to talk to you is actually I had read Black skin had quite some time ago. But I had followed up, I can't remember why, but I had followed up on your coverage of COVID disinformation, specifically in the black community. I was hoping that you would be able to better describe

like the the notes wherein that is best expressed, if that means. Yeah. So what do you think is the first like major starting point for disinformation? So I mean I think that so a couple of things like I think there's you know the different categories so like misinformation unintentionally shared inaccurate or out of context information and then there's disinformation, which is intentional, you know, creation of campaigns to forward a certain narrative. And so I think one of the big pieces of this is that I don't, I think most people, you black and any other community, share misinformation at some point. I know I've definitely shared misinformation. It's really easy to in the kind of information economy we live in, but this idea of disinformation and how intentional hostile narratives are

planted for often like political brand damage or sort of financial ends is something that we see a lot of across different communities. I think one of the things that I've been thinking about lately is that because of the way that internet research studies, which is a lot of what I do, is often disconnected from community-based research and organizing, we actually don't have a lot of data on how disinformation may drive political activity per se, and so we've got a lot of correlations and not necessarily causation, but one of the things with the Canary and the Coal Mine report, which was looking at the early days of missing and disinformation around

COVID. I at that time was working at Colour of Change which is the racial justice advocacy organization and we had been in a lot of conversations with tech companies around disinformation online and I started to notice that there were these narratives popping up that black people could get COVID. And the initial, you know, different categories that we saw were, you know, one example was that COVID comes from 5G. And because black people don't have a lot of black, 5G in our communities, people don't have a lot of 5G in our communities. We weren't susceptible that melanin kept black people protected all sorts of stuff

around Bill Gates' conspiracism. And so we actually documented some of this at color change and sent it to Twitter. And this was like February of 2020 about. And they didn't take any action to deal with anything online. They said that they didn't see it was a problem. Now that's gotten better now. Yeah, shocking, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think to me, like so I started this report because when I wanted to document this, because we knew that that was not true and that was a really dangerous narrative, that was putting people in danger in that black people have certain amount of disproportionate pre-existing conditions that actually make us more susceptible. And one of the layers that I uncovered around that was a story around media failures essentially. And that the gap in story is what allows conspiracism to fill it. And so in the early days of reporting of COVID, there wasn't any, there wasn't many articles that were talking about the race of people or even placing them in

neighborhoods. And so what we found out later is that actually a lot of the early deaths in the US were black people, but it wasn't, those numbers weren't being like reported. Right. And because of the lack of Black-owned and controlled media within communities, and these paper like maybe Chicago Defender back in the day that would have been doing that work, they're not able to do that same work anymore. So, so the, so people were going online for information, and it was spreading really rapidly, and you had like really public figures That we're putting out you know in some cases misinformation and in some cases with folks like Candace Owens What I believe was intentional disinformation. Sure, and so that's that's how we wanted to kind of like talk about that space and so for me when I think about What happens with black communities?

what happens with black communities is that oftentimes our stories are not told holistically and certain like mainstream media outlets. We're losing local owned and controlled newspapers which is happening across the board across different groups, right? And because that gap is there people are choosing different like broadcasters and spaces to go to collect information. And that's where you see a lot of disinfo spread. And so now, part of what we saw was like a flip from black people can't get COVID to conspiracies around black genocide and that black people were being targeted as kind of a specific bio weapon if you will. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, or you see, you know, kind of in political discourse,

a lot of stuff around like, you know, how a black genocide is happening in all these different ways through different political figures. And I want to say this too, like one, I love conspiracies, first of all, so let me start there. But also, when I think of conspiracies, I think of them as some ways an untold story or an unproven story. And so in some

instances, I think that there are things that have a kernel of truth to them, but they haven't been legitimized. And in some cases, we're just talking like, that shit crazy things, right? And so like, how do you parse through that? And then how communities are taking that in? And then how they're responding either politically in public safety mechanisms in all of these other ways. And so that's a lot of the work that I think about and I do. Right, right. Well, and I wanted to, I mean, the thing that I followed up on, or I want to follow up on

with that is I've spoken to many disinformation experts and researchers, people who've gone undercover and all of those things, and the under-arching theme, I say, under on purpose, is that kind of goes unspoken, is that kind of goes unspoken is that most of these conspiracy theories that are spread do have the kernel of truth. Yes. And in general, that kernel of truth comes down to something the United States government did to black people. Yes. And so, and so what I found and I still find so, And so what I found and I still find so I suppose compelling and obviously is the largest challenge is that with other conspiracy theories You know if you're talking to somebody you can say oh, that's ridiculous. They don't do that But for a lot of black people you have to say they don't do that anymore Right so that's a unique challenge in terms of fighting disinformation, right?

Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, I think, so the data is mixed on black people and belief in conspiracies. I mean, oddly, most of the research that I found that's really delved into this in a meaningful way comes from the 80s and 90s, which I think is interesting in and of itself. But there, there, there's been a couple of research findings that have suggested at times that people that are, that black people that are more educated and more politically connected are actually kind of more inclined to believe certain political theories.

And again, that's like one or two studies that's not full thing. But I definitely put myself into the category It's like when you know kind of this shit that government has done You know, it makes it a lot easier to believe certain things now. What does believing it actually mean? And how does that destabilize institutions and what is like Institutional responses. I think that's kind of the trouble point. And I think in the field of disinformation, part of what I think some of the failures have

been is that it becomes a conversation solely about the tech or the information itself and not the ways in which government or certain institutions have failed communities. So going back to the COVID example, one of the early things that was being said was that black people were under-vaccinated because they didn't trust getting vaccinated because of things that had happened like the Tuskegee air experiments. Sorry, the Tuskegee air experiment. You know, the Tuskegee experiment. When they shot them up in planes to the moon and nobody documented the black people were the first ones on the moon didn't you know? But like, but that's why I had to fake it later. Right, right, right, right.

We'll get there first, you know, you gotta. Yeah. Okay, you can't have that. But like, but like for example, in Chicago, one of the things that was kind of discovered is a lot of the early vaccination sites weren't even on the Southwest side or in black communities or they were kind of only open during the day where working people didn't have a chance to go there.

Yeah. Or people weren't getting that information and a lot of people, one of the things that we kind of saw was like next door would post a pay you can get vaccinated here. And then people that were on next door, typically like sort of middle class urbanites would then go brush to those sites and get shots. And so there were a lot of practical reasons why people weren't getting vaccinated other than just not trusting the shot. And when you don't tell that part of the story or confront that part of the story of government failure, and then some of the actions of a mayor

lightfoot at that time, then it leaves people almost like gasset in a way about it and more and then even more inclined to give into the sort of like conspiratorial mindset. Right, right. It's the twin truths of this conspiracy isn't true. This conspiracy is true. Yes. Yes. You can't listen. You can trust the government, but you can't trust the government. Yes, yes, yes. Or like this thing happened, but maybe why it happened is not because there's like, you know, lizards, you know, probably in the earth, maybe there's another reason for it. So yeah. And that kind of gets again, uh, to a deeper, a deeper layer of well, the narrative that is built up around not getting vaccinated being because of distrust, which is also somewhat infantilizing.

Yes. You, blah, blah, they can't get over, you know, there's definitely a ton of they can't blank about that. Um, is that that helps overlay the fact that it is the economic injustice that leads to the very distrust that continues the cycle that then they create again. You know, yeah, I mean, often economic distress also kind of like bread and butter racists. I'm like, it, not directly related, but I think there was a recent report that came out that was talking about still with mortgages and who's given um, you know, access to to certain loans at a favorable rate still breaks down along um, race lines, but not necessarily class lines. So black people that make more money are still less likely to get sort of like favorable loans for housing. The Navy federal. Yeah, yeah,

that made me want to start fires. I wanted to start fires. How do you not start fires after rating that, right? It's kind of like it's like it's sort of my numbing sometimes. And that's why it's so important to have media spaces, alternative media places where people can not just make sense of what's happening around them, but kind of build an agenda or power to counter some of these systemic inequities. But it's hard to do the work to fix the systems and then just be like, oh, but we're going to pour like millions of dollars into studying

disinformation and then finger away that people based on, you know, perceptions around perceptions of an increase in like a black male conservatism and saying that it's because of the disinformation and not because of maybe some other underlying frustrations. and saying that it's because of the disinformation and not because of maybe some other underlying frustrations. That is a great, great transition into your book. That's the high-dead, that's it. I don't know if it gets much better than that. That's pretty fucking solid.

So, Black Skinhead is the title of your book, taken from the track, what? Track four. Ooh, are you that good. Yeah. I want to say it might have been drunk. Or I could be wrong. Yeah.

Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Um, could you, uh, well, in the book, which was written in 2021, I assume the definition of black skinhead was written in 2021. It was actually written before that. It was actually, I started doing the research for what Skinhead was written in 2021. It was actually written before that. It was actually, I started doing the research for what became Black Skinhead in 2019

and it was right around the time. I'd already been studying online, Black Political Discourse, I'd already seen some of this up with Kanye obviously, but I think it was right around the time that he did the visit to the White House, which Trump and Cheney makes sense of some of that. And I was thinking about this and I was listening to,

I don't know, a lot of his music for whatever reason. And Black Skin had just kept coming to me as a perfect concept to define some of the phenomenon. And so a lot of the book was actually written itself in mid 2020 through like 2021 and then got released and came into print in 2022 and the same week the book dropped was when Kanye did the White Lives Matters fashion show. So I was like, oh cool. That's right. Well, that's what I was wondering. Your definition and your relationship to the words black skin had changed. No, I think in a lot of ways that's actually been reinforced, reinforced.

And so like when, when I use the definition of, black skin head or, you know, what I'm talking about is a certain amount of like political homelessness and isolation that brings together, maybe use a strange bedfellows around the idea of grievance and often with a sort of underpinning of economic loss. And so when you don't have those spaces to go to to make sense of what you're seeing or even be confronted on some of the things that you're seeing and you're kind of just like left out there where you'd go.

And so Kanye to me in a lot of ways is like a quintessential black skinhead because I think he is somebody that operates in a lot of like political and community isolation. And you can tell that by the way in which some of his ideas have developed and redeveloped and who has become like his community or his people, it looks like Nick Quintez and Milo and and cannoes and others. And so that that idea, like it's not one that's that definition is not one that's meant to describe black conservatives per se, like there's a lot of like black conservatives and even mega people that I interviewed that I wouldn't define as black skinheads. And there's a lot of leftists that I would define. And even myself included, I think that I have a certain amount of at times, a feeling of political homelessness.

But it's like, what is the kind of late stage version of that? When you're almost to the point where you can't be brought back. And I think everything that happened the week, months, and years following the release of the book to me reinforces what that means. And I think to me, it would be, I love talking about Kanye. I want to talk about Kanye, but I think in a lot of ways the book is using Kanye as an example, but I think every day we see a lot of people that feel disillusioned, a political homelessness and are looking for something and are being anchored to grievance. And you see that playing out in a number of ways, whether that's like Ryzen's school

shootings or a number of other things like increase of death, so despair from black youth and the age of first attempt has dropped significantly. I think all of that is kind of signs of what we're seeing. Yeah, when you, I mean, you obviously, as you said, you interview a lot of young black conservatives, speaking specifically of rain, who you mentioned, I found that so fascinating because that was maybe the most real politic view you've I've ever heard from a teenager that was essentially boiled down to have you looked outside money equals civil rights. Yes.

You know, yeah. And I'm I was I'm I'm wondering I'm wondering what is there to offer to that person from the democratic side, you know, from the left. What do you have to offer to a person who is that practical about the United States? Right, I mean, I think that's, I mean, it's an interesting thing because that's kind of two different questions.

So it's kind of like, what does the Democratic party have to offer something like that versus what does the left have to offer something like that versus what does the left have to offer something like that. Obviously those are too vague. No, no, I know I got you, but I think part of the reason why that came up for me is because I was listening to, I was going back to listen to some different interviews of Connative Fashion, to freshen up for this interview. And I heard someone speculate that like had a Marxist gotten to him as opposed to someone like a Candace Owens that the direction that he goes in might be slightly different. And I'm not sure I totally buy into that. But I think that

there's a lot to offer about a value proposition that we can all expect a certain minimal quality standard of life and ability to thrive in community and ability to have our own autonomy in different ways through meaningful governance and social projects and proof of concept. But now I think since we've kind of moved away from a lot of new deal error policies, we haven't seen that play out.

The government and the Democratic Party hasn't played that role or offered that value proposition. So I don't think at this point in time there's anything the Democratic Party can offer someone like that. But what I do think is interesting about him is, and I'll say this for folks that that haven't read it, so I introduce Rain in a chapter. I'll say, read it. Yes, read it. Please read it. Leave a review. Or don't read it and leave a review, as long as it's five-star. But like, you know, he was like my, I talked to like a group at that time of 10

black, mag of people that were ranging in age rain was the young guys. So he was like 18 or 20. And then the oldest was like in their 50s. And he was the only one, maybe in a, maybe Lisa, who I talk about at a different point that I would consider a black skinhead. And like there were people in there that was like we think the Republican Party has

something to offer black people and if Trump brings people in that's cool but the thing about magna thing also about skinheads is that they're not tethered to party they're kind of like who is a candidate maybe a cult of personality figure or something that's offering something to them. So I think if he were presented with, part of what I heard in some of what he was saying is that he could get down with, you know, Laptop. He's not a guaranteed vote for the Republican party, but right now the candidate, the slate of candidates that are putting in front of him from the local to national level are not offering anything. And I think that's really alarming because I think there's a lot of young voters that

feel that way. And especially in the black community, part of why I'm delving into this is that I don't think that this quote unquote phenomenon or theory is exclusive to black people. But because black people are such a large voting block for so long, you can see the cracks. It's almost like putting it, you can put this under a microscope more easily with that voting block. And I think with there are a lot of young voters that do not feel like their parents, policy or their grandparents, politics or their democratic party is a space for them. They will not vote for them or they will not vote at all. And I think even more with

things that are happening around Palestine, I think that's also opening up this like wedge in that space. So I don't fully know what the party, especially when you think about money and politics, and necessarily has to offer someone like that. But I do think that there's an energy around political organizing that in my most optimistic state, I would like to think could help us get to a different place. Okay. Okay. I don't know.

What do you think? What do you think, actually? About what? About, I mean, what does, what does, you know, the Democratic Party of the Laft have to offer someone like rain or anyone? Um, you know, I, I would say that if I was going to trace the history, especially using, you know, your book, and, and frankly, you know, maybe the simplest guiding light to me is always going to be, you know, whiteies on the moon, frankly. Right. Just like, can I ask you a question? Is whitey on the moon? Yes. Are rats still biting now?

Yes. Then we fucked up the end, you know, we've, we've still, if you haven't changed anything since then, right. And then the Democratic party has essentially in that time period coalesced around They're gonna fucking kill you unless you trust us, right? Yes. Yes And which and now and now it's like well, it looks like they're gonna fucking kill us anyways, right? So you guys failed so now we have new ideas, right? Yeah So you guys failed. So now we have new ideas, right? Yeah. What I think is so interesting about it

is that in a way, you're kind of documenting almost a new flowering of 100 schools in 300 BC in China. There are all these different thought processes going on, geared towards finding a way to unite people. Yes, and all of it is segregated. And that's kind of the difference. That's one of the differences between in the past, you could you could engage in like a business, church, space, or news publication. If you look at like old editions of, you know, Chicago defender or Pittsburgh career or others, you have all of these different political

identities, you know, going back and forth with each other. And then galvanizing this around this idea of racial egalitarianism. So in the book, and again, I, or I didn't mention this book as essays, which I really like because you can kind of come, you don't have to read it from front to back, you can pop into what you want to. But one of the places that I start is outline what has traditionally been seen as like the wide range of black political identity. And black conservatism is definitely not a new thing. But what reign is kind of exhibiting, which is more libertarian politics, is something that in some ways, you know, folks like Thomas will not

withstanding a little bit of a new thing and kind of what it speaks to is like he's not somebody that's like the family family values guy necessarily or, you know, getting into some of the like certain types of like cultural war fights. Like he's like, it's money. Like what government hasn't proven anything to us. So what do we need government for? And I think that that growing sentiment that government hasn't proven anything to us? So what do we need government for it? And I think that that growing sentiment, that government hasn't proven its value proposition. I think it's a real challenge for leftist politics. If you can't figure out a way to make people understand

what government can do for us, why would people necessarily choose big government over no government? Right. I think what people aren't... I mean, you know, the different schools that people are kind of grouping themselves around. You have the Marxists, the MagaPokes, you have all of these things. I think what I find fascinating though is that ultimately the goal of all of them

is to create unity among all of them. In a kind of strange, even insane way, the young black conservatives support a white nationalist regime because they'll bring in all the black people together. Yeah. Yeah, which is kind of an interesting thing that I would say put Srin on the kind of like borderline or what I say, the black skinhead spectrum, like he's the closest thing to it, but I think in somebody like a Kanye, like I don't, he uses the language of black, you know, autonomy and all of these things. But when you listen to what he actually says, what his grievances are around, some of the conspiracism he, like, names, it's actually,

it has nothing to do with like, uplifting black people. It's about his like, kind of personal grievances and his gripes with Nike, Adidas, you know, Kim Kardashian, like all of these people. And so that's to me, that's what I call like the kind of late stage. When you're not even thinking about what will be the best pathway to black collective, you know, improvement autonomy or whatever, but you're just out for yourself. And I think those are some of the trends that alarm me more. Yeah, the, so do you believe that that kind of idea of I'm out for myself, that kind of, um, that brain didn't quite express, but didn't quite not express. Right.

Do you think that's on the uptick? Yes. I do. Yeah. And I think part of it is what though? Is my you know compared to when or you know? Well, I would say definitely with when you talk about Black voters, one of the things I talk about in there is that the Black vote traditionally has been driven by this concept of linked fate. And so it's this idea that I'm not seeing my vote as an individual vote. It's more tied to what the collective power brings to it, which is part of how you get a democratic voter block like you have because there was a calculus made at a certain point

in time that, you know, consolidating votes into the Democratic party could actually demore to improve things for folks than not. But I think what we're seeing now, what data from Pee and others is showing is that this concept of link fade among younger black people is going down. They're less likely to learn black history or something that creates this like shared identity or shared fate through family and more likely

to learn it online and then when you go on and you think about what content gets optimized and algorithmically you know widespread. It's often not necessarily content about, you know, by or for, you know, necessarily black people is like, Prager you. It's like, you know, some of these other places. And so I think that idea of a vote meaning something for the collective, I think that's something that's, you know, starting to shift in little ways. And I think broadly, I think people are starting to think more about their vote less about like, what does that mean for the collective versus, you know, self, more self-interest. And again, like that's not necessarily directly new. There's always versions of that. But I think

more and more as certain people feel like even now, like, if I vote for Biden, but my material conditions don't change, then what is the point for voting for Biden? I might as well either vote for someone else like Cornel Waz or not vote opt out, which is where voter depression comes in. And so I think that's some of, and I will say this, like I think I haven't looked at the most recent data, but I do think there's something about the long tail effect of COVID and existing and isolation for so long for so many people. That does drive a certain amount of self interest that you see not just in the political realm, but things like I've seen data about how crashes have gone up and the way that people drive on highways. And there's like all of these different signs of ways in

which people are not thinking about the community good. And slightly more solipsistic as a whole because we've spent the past two years looking at everybody through a screen. I think so. I mean, and again, I haven't seen some of the most recent data about that, but I know certainly I feel that and I've seen some data around it. And I think I even act more in a lot of ways self-interested coming out of COVID. There's a lot of things I give less of a shit about. Thank you for me.

Well, I mean, I wonder so much if it's that or if it's so much like we really discovering the limits of what it is we can do. Yeah, sure. Ultimately, we can say, you know, the vote makes my material conditions change or anything like that. But the more we look out at what we can materially change, the way we can influence things, you know. Yes.

You do your best, you vote your ass off and then Joe Federman shows up and goes, I'm not a progressive anymore. So you're like, all right. Yeah. That one's new. We were laughing about George Santos, but this guy's way fucking worse and it's not funny.

Yeah, you know. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean that's real. Yeah. So, so in that sense, how is it possible to sell somebody on voting? I don't say that it's like, like, let me try and put it this way because I'm not one of those people who's like don't vote man It's right. That's don't know yeah, yeah, but I'm also going to look somebody in the eye and tell them you should vote And I'm not going to believe it. Yeah, yeah No, I mean, it's funny because I was I was telling someone the other day that I am that this is kind of this upcoming election is the first time where I'm really kind of like

having to really think about you know whether or not I want to vote at the top of the ticket and I I think I've been there's been times where I've been on easy certainly I talk about that in the book but it's like ultimately you do you do you do diligence and you do the thing and also ultimately you do your due diligence and you do the thing. And also in 2020, there was a lot of things that happened around protests in the street and things that made made those like lines much more clear between, you know, Biden and Trump at the time. And not that I would ever vote for, like I would go laughed, I wouldn't go right. But I think to me, there's a couple of elements to hear. Like so there's a lot of energy politically out there. And I think to me, whittling down the ability to be politically powerful to whether or not you vote,

I think is not the best answer. I think there's a lot of ways to harness some of that energy and really productive ways that can shift culture, shift kind of penalties, shift the stakes in a way that can kind of like move politics. And a lot of ways like cultural change precedes political change, right? So you can you can ship the cultures. I mean, I think that's something that shouldn't be disregarded

and that should be like activated. And I think in terms of like voting, I mean, I mean, you know, can we repeal so since United? Like, I, you know, I think that it's like, it, it feels challenging, but I will say this to kind of like Biden's credit. I think there's a lot of ways in which he has not shown up well for certain types of voters, including my own, you know, me as a sort of self-identified leftist. And there's some things that he actually has been good on, which I would say, I would name as anti-trust.

I think he's actually been quite good on anti-trust and some of these other issues. And a lot of ways, some of those fights are some of the most important fights that we can engage in and win. And the other thing I'll say is like we should not whether or not you vote the top of the ticket versus whether or not you vote locally or in different ways where there are, you know, more ways to apply a certain amount of pressure to political figures.

I still think it's a worthy endeavor to like all the things you can go for like you know Baltimore just legalize you know marijuana this past year. You don't need you don't you don't get a say in that and so there's different thing school boards. There's a lot of like district attorneys. There are a lot of really important high-stake fights, high-stakes fights that are happening at the local level where you can actually see the change more profoundly. That's that is another thing that I found kind of interesting. In some of those Black Maga conversations that idea of like, well, I mean, the local Republican party is up for grabs.

We can just steal it. Yeah. I find such a great and fascinating idea. Can you just show up and steal a political party and just say, I'm Republican and then do whatever the fuck you want? Because if you look at the Democratic party, it feels like that's what they've done the whole time. Yeah. Why not? I mean, why not? And even like going back specifically to, you know, black

voters, there's a lot of interesting data that says that if you ask black voters what policies they support, they actually support more left policies than maybe indicated. There's a lot of assumptions about black conservatism. But one of the things that Leah Wright-Rigur writes about in the loneliness of the Black Republican, which was one of my source materials, is that the actual modern black conservative strand of voting is like the legacy of black voters, leaving the Republican Party, and essentially hijacking the Democratic Party.

And that was really interesting when I heard and sat in thought about it. And there's a lot of different examples, even like this appeal to whatever the Lincoln Republican or this invisible like movable middle that I feel highly skeptical of there's a lot of examples of conservatives hijacking the Democratic Party so What would it look like to attempt to hijack the Republican Party? I have no freaking idea Honest and the people that were proposing that are not necessarily

the people that I That I would want to vote for. It's also interesting to me, though, that a lot of those folks were based in Chicago. And so I didn't fully get into it in the book, because I didn't want to make it a fully Chicago-focused book. But when you look at the history of the Democratic Party in Chicago, there's no like republic. I don't know how many, but I don't think there's very many. If any like Republican older men or anything, you know, or anything like that. And so the idea that black people in, you know, Chicago or some are gary or like some of these other places where these folks are from are like, hey, the Republican party could be up for grabs. And then we could

shift politics in that level. There's something about that that feels both scary and interesting today. Yeah, I mean more scary than interesting. Well, it is, it is so much like asking yourself the question over and over and over again, you know, can we make change from inside? Yes. Well, you're going to make compromises when you make change from inside anyway. Yes. Yes. It's just a matter of if you try and make change from inside the Republican Party, the number of compromises you make goes through the goddamn roof, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So

as you make goes through the goddamn roof, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like a cost benefit thing, maybe. Right. Yeah. For, like, you know, unless you truly are like a sort of conservative Republican,

the interesting thing about it to me, though, too, is that right now or for a long time, I think that's shifting in a lot of ways with national politics in particular. You have one party that doesn't feel like it has to negotiate with a group at all. They say that as a lost vote. And then one party that is kind of like, well, what are you going to do? You don't have anywhere to go.

So if you shake up politics in that way where like the Republican party has to somewhat negotiate for a black vote, and then the Democratic party has to somewhat like negotiate for a black vote. And then the Democratic Party has to like sort of actively lobby for a black vote beyond like a finger wagging. And the blue no matter who, that is interesting. I mean, I'd rather see that haggling going on on it, you know, maybe further left into the spectrum. But I do think it sort of changes the calculus

and the stance that certain decision-makers can take if they have to rely on your vote to win. Yeah, I mean, I find it so interesting because it works way better one way. If you can trace slave owners over the years through the words they won't say. And then now we backslide a little bit and they take those words back. Like the amount they backslide is the amount of words they say. They haven't changed their thoughts on anything. So though plenty of those people have been in the Democratic party for the longest time, right? Yes. Yeah. So they can infiltrate us. And we're like, yeah, because you're not murdering people. That's great. But if we try and infiltrate them, then it's like,

well, now I got to murder some people. That sucks. Yeah. I mean, even like, I mean, slightly different example, but even like the whole conversation around Donald Trump versus Rhonda Santis is what kind of wild to me, because I think people are like, oh, he's more, there's like this idea that he's like more palatable or that he's a return and normal. I'm like, the man was like, when he like a torture and go with Tana Moe Bay,

like, I mean, he is not like, he's not, and what he'sanamo Bay, like I mean, he is not like he's not, and what he's doing in Florida, like this is not a good dude, just because he's more coded sort of, not even that coded, but because he's more polite about what he says or who he says it to or who he's willing to piss off, that somehow feels like a return to normal because we're focused more on the civility of discourse

than the civility of policy making and like what we need to do to create a society that actually feels stable. So yeah, no, I mean, it's extremely interesting. That is, and that's the thing, that's the thing that the Maga offers, right? If that makes sense to you. Yes.

The Maga looks at Trump and Ron DeCentus and says, Ron DeCentus is weak. We will not reward them. Yes. Yes. And that is, that is a attractive thing. Yes. That's an attractive thing because isn't what we really want out of the Democratic party

consequences for the shady job they've done. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And he speaks in a language of populism. And I think one of the things going back to the moment where Kanye comes to the White House and has this like conversation with Trump and the things that they're talking about around like criminal justice.

And I think they were talking about like, can't remember if it was Larry Hoover or Jeff Fawre, but like some of those things, he's done some signaling to like certain black communities and what's also I think interesting about him is the more I've been doing this project I'm working on about the history of Chicago kind of politics and the implications for now is I don't think I realized that Verdola and this is getting way deeper at Berk who's on trial now I didn't realize how many people from the old democratic machine in Chicago We're actually have been working with Trump for a long time And there's something about the was some of his but when I've heard, there was something about his language in a way that he speaks and like what that signals to a wide group

of people that feels very familiar to me. And there's a certain amount of he is a party onto himself. Like a lot of people are not necessarily going to vote red, no matter who. It has to be Trump as a speaker and So the way in which he's able to move these kind of like Networked factions are strange bad fellows. There's skinheads how it is very interesting to watch Well, I'm yeah, I mean again. I think he's the only one offering what so many people are have been denied for our entire lives, which is if not consequences, if I can't get legal consequences, if I can't get electoral consequences, well,

this motherfucker is going to provide retribution. Yes. You know, and that's that is part of what people are looking at now. Yeah. Whenever they say, well, I've made all the compromises I can. I'm not going to do it again. Biden, right. If Trump hangs everybody in the Democratic party, you shouldn't have done it.

You know, right on you. Right. Yeah. And he wants to bring chaos. And I think when people feel like the status quo is not working, they want chaos. They want something different. They want something shaken up. My cousin, who was actually in this maga group

She was but didn't speak because she said they were to She's more radical than them, but she's QAnon. She was at January 6th And you wouldn't necessarily think that a black woman would feel at home in a maga space But there's something about the way in which she feels like worn down and let down by life in a lot of systems That makes that feel like it's a space for her and she's on meetings every week with them like Smoking weight-high dying her t-shirts and China would raise money for the MAGA movement And I think when you think of it that kind of person can find this attractive You know, there's a lot of ways in which he can feel appealing to like

an odd group of people and drive political motivations in a way that I don't think that either party fully knows what to do or grapple with. But then there's like the people that are going to vote for him. And then the people that don't like him, but will vote for him anyway. And to me, some of that feels real scarier. Like, you know, this is bad dude doing like that things that should be in jail. But if he's on the top of the ticket, you're still going to vote for him regardless. Well, like, you know, yeah, that's just extortion. That's yeah, let's just call that. Yeah, wait, let's just pack it in

then why not have an actual dictator if we're just going to do that? I mean, you know, why not? Yeah, yeah, why not? Let's revisit this conversation in 2035 when he's still in office. You know, I'm wondering, just, I'm wondering just how long these people are going to live. I'm not talking about any kind of violent things happening to them.

I'm just wondering how long people live these days. I mean, I don't know, but I think that's the other kind of uncomfortable truths about the history of the world is there's like, I don't know that there's many examples of radical change without violence and so trying to kind of think that we're not heading off. A lot of what I foresee is like, you know, violent conflicts or even this idea of a civil war, i i frankly think that we're already into a certain extent we just don't know it like i just i think that the only way that some of this ends is through um you know some really rough stuff happening unfortunately that forces things to ahead and and that's that's the thing that

i don't think that the people that are trying to do civility in Congress are really fully prepared for. Yeah, I wonder all too often if this is exactly the same amount of political violence that the United States has always had. If less. Same one. Yeah. I mean, at any point in time, I think a lot of our history and a lot of our shared understanding of the United States is obfuscating all the things that have made the United States,

the United States, totally in order to keep us going. Totally. In order to keep us going. As long as we have a shared lie, this Rickety-S machine will keep rolling along. Yes. Which goes back to, yeah, I know our earlier thing about conspiracies and like, when you know that some of these things have happened, then it makes a lot more things believable. Sure, and it's, I mean, conspiracy theories are comforting on so many levels or different people for different reasons. I think the easiest and the simplest one is not a conspiracy theories are comforting for people because the world is ordering or whatever.

It's because it makes people feel really uncomfortable when you have to really stop and think about the FBI murdered Fred Hampton. It makes you really uncomfortable. To the point where you have to stop and you have to wrestle with, I'm gonna sit here and do nothing about this, right? Yeah.

But a conspiracy theory, a conspiracy theory is shadowy billionaires and there's nothing to be concerned about there because it's either not true or there's nothing I can do about it anyways, right? Right. Do you like conspiracy theories? Do you have like any like conspiracy theories or like a conspiracy theory that you sort of are like I can actually believe this even though I know it's a conspiracy theory. I mean, my conspiracy theory is probably different from everybody else's. And it's just very simply, I think that John Wilkes Booth and the no-nothing party performed the most successful political assassination in the history of the world. By killing Lincoln, they effectively ended reconstruction and are a bit put the country where we are now. So that's what I would say.

I would say that the biggest conspiracy is people trying to hide the fact that political assassination was the absolute most successful thing that the right has ever done. I've thought about Garfield actually, but yeah, that's James Garfield or the cat. Both. Did you see what they did? No, no! Again with the assassinations! Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's that's interesting actually on my on my you know podcast bring receipts we did an episode like it's my friend and I basically debate

Unpopular opinions about pop culture or super random things and we kind of tie it back to like then an investigation about Where does this come from and we did one about? and then investigation about where does this come from and we did one about the national anthem. I think it was called Star Spangled Bangers. But like in thinking about how even the original sort of, you know, Francesca Key song was originally, you know, I had racist lyrics and was not accepted. Like part, the different ways in which Confederate nostalgia and softening and reframing of history

has worked its way into like sort of mainstream. I totally, I totally get you. And now that's a good one. That's a good one. Yeah. I think, I think ultimately that is kind of like a... That's the smart one. That's the smart one.

Well, if we talk about America's been in a civil war or it's we're in a civil war secretly right now or it's all underneath the I mean I don't know if it ever ended you can't end a civil war on an assassination right? Yeah, no starts a war Yeah No, I think that's a good. That's a good point. Now. I feel really basic with mine That's No, I think that's a good that's a good point now. I feel really basic with mine Well, that's not what I was hoping for No, I mean, I think that's I mean, I think that's a really Important thing to think about and I think the way in which even we talk about things like this

You know school board fights are curricula or critical race, so you're in a way that term's been repackaged. There's a lot of we've been here before. This is the same fight that was had over Catholic schools and through an anti-immigrant slant and what went into the curriculum in the 1920s and there's been a lot of iterations of this fight and there's a lot of ways in which you know people have

You know form this kind of like Union consensus that didn't actually leave a complete union or left a lot of people out of the idea of what makes You know a union or what makes the United States. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you know, you're, you're, what's, you've got a new investigative piece that you're working on for a, for a new show about the 80s and one thing that you reference specifically was the satanic panic. Yeah. And, and the way that that's, it is, it is fascinating to think about the satanic panic now because it seems like it lasted so long Yeah, you know now we have so many satanic panics, but they lost a day, you know, yeah

Yeah, yeah or alternatively maybe never stops to tears That's my question for you. What's your favorite thing Satan does. Um, my favorite thing, Satan does. Uh, I mean, he makes for interesting art. That's what I think. So, you know, I think, you know, it is kind of the thing That's sure. I think so. You know, I think, you know, it is kind of the thing that's like convincing the world that Satan is in and in and not the everyday people walking amongst us is kind of like, you know.

That's what you're a fan of. Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, I'm not a fan. Massive species wide scale. That's what you're fascinating to see how he does it. Well, actually, I mean, I'm not a fan of species wide scale. That's what you're asking. It's fascinating to see how he does it. Well, actually, so this is this is going to be kind of like a this is going to circle back. But like one of my conspic when I talk to people like when I talk to classrooms and stuff around like the history of conspiracies. One of the examples I give is Robert Johnson. So, blues musician, that is considered, you know, one of the pioneers of rock, and died early. And there's a lot of, but like, he was kind of like a mid musician, and then he disappeared for a while. And then he comes back and he uses great musician that has, you know, some different recordings. Oh, he's the sole to the devil.

Yes. So that's the conspiracy that he went and he sold his soul at the crossroads to the devil. And then he became this like, immaculate musician. And then he had to pay the cost by dying too soon. Right. So it's like this conspiracy about this deal with the devil. That's kind of really interesting to unpack because one part of what's really hard

and white people didn't like that. Exactly, but like part of what allows the conspiracy to live is that it was kind of this every day working class black man who lived and died in a way that would have gone unnoticed by a lot of media and of the day and spend a lot of time in Mississippi where black newspapers weren't really allowed, were kind of like burned down. So where there would have been documentation of his life interviews, him talking about oh I practice really hard or I went with these musicians, those none of that's

there. So we're left with these kind of like artifacts and then what are we filling in with? It must have been the devil. Like I think that's kind of like the interesting ways in which, you know, the devil and Satan kind of like come into play in all these different ways. But yeah, also like the traditional satanic panic and how that was used to go after a practical gamble. Also interesting. Yeah. Yeah. We we talk a lot about the wetsumment, you know, after after an event happens, Alex Jones's most powerful tool is the wetsumet, you know, there's not enough information that the media hasn't gotten everything right yet. And as long as he gets his stamp in there, then that is going to stay there. Yeah, That's the power of the wetsument.

Is it doesn't matter what happens the next day, the stamp is there. And what I find so interesting about that story is that that cement never dried. And because that history is lost and oftentimes suppressed, that's the idea is that doesn't never dries. And we can always rewrite over and always steal something else from this man's effort, from this man's legacy. And that is the thing that you know, you described earlier about being online and losing that shared identity due to the algorithm, you know, just pushing Prager You in front of you. Yeah, and that's how you find out about, you know, Frederick Douglas. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God, that is, that is about the worst thing I could imagine. It's it's that and finding out about Martin Luther King Jr. through the

What is it the John Birch Society? Those are right. That's not the way to do it. Yeah. Yeah Well, I suppose I suppose the only thing that we haven't talked about Yeah, it is I mean Kanye really so when Kanye went on info wars. Yeah, I is, I mean, Kanye really. So when Kanye went on Info Wars, yeah, I assume you watched with trepidation. Yeah, that'd be a good way to put it. Yeah.

That was, how does it feel? Because for me, it recontextualized the past in a very instantaneous way. Yeah. So I'm interested to know how you reacted to that. And so I think one, there was a lot of things that kind of locked into place for me. So one of the things that I talk about in the book is I recount things that I talk about in the book is I recount when Kanye went to TMZ and said slavery was a choice and got into like a back and forth with Van Lathen. And I like mention in the book that it was edited, but this is the read on it, you know, based on surface level. And then we kind of find out around the time that my book dropped was that the reason why I was edited is because he was saying this like wild anti-Semitic stuff, right?

And all of that was edited out in a lot of ways to protect him. And so there's all of these ways in which a lot of different like media networks have this kind of awareness of certain things that he was saying and let that out of his story. But if you look at the company he's keeping, he shows up to TMZ with Candace Owens and she had long been trafficking and anti-Semitism. So it's kind of like a, oh, that locks into place in a different way now. And then you kind of see him have this mask off moment where he shows up with, you know, Nick Fuentes, who, you know, has always been, I knew that Nick Fuentes was always a Kanye fanboy. Like he's talked about in the past how Kanye wasn't some ways his his gateway to Thomas Soul. I think on January 6th and in different times, he's used remixes of Kanye's music on his like broadcast or whatever.

And so, and I knew that he was a Kanye fan, and in a lot of ways it seemed sort of inevitable that those roles that those worlds would come together, because as Kanye is kind of like losing community, credibility, like people that can kind of check him in a certain way, he's gonna be drawn to kind of like this, like I've answered the people that still demonstrate a certain amount of love or loyalty to him in a similar way to Trump. And it was also very clear that even in his support of Trump,

again, he's talking more about himself. He always sees himself as the president or as the center. And like Trump is an example of turning things upside down, which is almost proof of concept that he himself can do it. But it was never about him being like a Trump supporter. It was about how can I wield this energy, you know, for myself. So seeing those roles come together, seeing him talk about some of the conspiracism

that he was delving into. And then seeing Alex Jones kind of play the straight man role was a little bit of an interesting dynamic and him being like, oh, well shit, like where are we going? But like that felt like, you know, kind of like interesting to me. But it all the sudden made sense. All of the different kind of like artifacts or drops of things that he said and how it all came together. I think one of the things that I did not necessarily, that I feel like is worth noting about that is that at the time, a lot of his anti-semitism and still was described to like a history of Black people being anti-Semitic, and particularly

that's coming together around the same time that Kairi is, Irving is saying, and I cemented stuff so those things get kind of like conflated. But what I heard in his, the type, first of all, black people were anti-Semitic. So obviously, all black people were standing towards. Right, and what are you people talking about? But I'm gonna be honest, I mean, I think there is a history

between black and Jewish communities in America that are at a bredcer in moments, in a way that felt familiar in what Kyrie was saying. But like, Kanye on the whole Hitler tip, that is actually not a comment. That was not a thing that felt familiar to me and it queued me instantly to oh you can tell where he's been unfortunate you can tell what he's been reading you can tell what type of

content he's consuming and who he's surrounding himself with because the conspiracies that he's going off on aren't kind of like for like sort of lack of a better turn of phrase at this moment, a bread and butter thing that felt familiar about the ways in which some black people talk about like power and their relationship to Jewish-American community. Like what he was talking about felt like oh this is what I hear or this is what I see when I'm looking at all these neo-naught scenes. Like the stuff that he's talking about here is like these sort of global conspiracisms that

feel a lot of these like alt-right things. And so like hearing him and seeing him and then seeing the response to him from Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, and even Gavin McGinnis, who like brought him on his show to do a like, let me talk Kanye out of being a not-she-like-explaining. They all wanted their little cash out of the Kanye machine at that point. How did you? I didn't get a chance to listen. I'm assuming you guys definitely covered that that episode and get a chance to listen to it. What was yours when you? There's a long one. Yeah, what did you think? What were you thinking as you were listening to it? I, you know, I hadn't first off. I don't know if we're going to agree on this, but Jesus' king was absolute trash.

but Jesus' king was absolute trash. I hated that album. It was absolute trash. There's one good track on it, but otherwise it is fucking garbage. Wait, what is the salvageable track? Because I may agree with you based on what you say. Because I follow God, I actually really like. Yes, but I am in agreement that the rest of it is trash.

Yeah, no, it is very, very good. And since then, everything he's made has been very, very bad. Yeah. Even with, even with nots. See what happens when you lose community. Yeah. When you lose your community, you start making bad shit. Well, see, that's the thing that I started thinking is because I was match it. Well see that's the thing that I started thinking is because I was for this for this I went back and it started listening to a bunch of old Kanye and when was the last time you listen to B? A common's album. You know I listen to song I always have like chaotic you know, I listen to song, I always have like chaotic, you know, mix list. So I still listen to songs from it. I haven't listened to it as a whole piece in a long time.

Well, I listen to they say, yeah, and Kanye's verse. And in fact, I want to say, I think that whole album after listening to it from since the finish again today, four shadows where we are. And I'm looking forward to 2025, whenever a bunch of writers do the 20 year retrospective and they all agree that he told the future of everything that was going down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That'll be fun for me personally. But Kanye's verse on they say is the best advice anyone could ever give Kanye. is the best advice anyone could ever give Kanye. Remind me of it, what did he say? I mean, it is,

Oh shoot, now I need to go back and listen. Yeah, you do. It is basically, you know, when you're black and famous and rich, people will drive you crazy and you'll lose your mind and you'll et cetera. Yeah, fair enough. And then et cetera happened to come.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it is really, really fascinating. Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc.

And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc.

And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. And then Etc. Are you still there? Yeah, I'm still here. Sorry, my uh... You got something pop up? Yeah, my husband started calling me on my phone.

But um... As opposed to like my dark twisted fantasy or eases or or even some of like, cruel summer or some of those, it's interesting that you pointed to be because that is this like really particular moment in time, right? Because that was the one that was developed right around the time of Obama right. No that was 2005 so that was shortly after or that would have been developed concurrently

with George Bush doesn't care about black people. Ah okay okay, okay, okay, okay. And what I find so fascinating about that is that it is kind of a timeline for Kanye early on of in response to negative attention does his best work. Yeah, because that's right. That's also right after then her king to Trina. Yeah, or around the corner. I thought to us to write after then her king, Katrina. Yep. And yeah, or around the corner. Beautiful dark twisted fantasy right after. And then use this and you know, and then life of Pablo

is fantastic, but you know, 50% of his fantastic. Yeah. But wait, what's the common album that has, um, it's not be the one that he did that's where like water chocolate no the the one where he did the video with Obama or the people that wasn't be was that was that be oh you're right I was thinking no I was thinking when Obama became president you're right yeah whole yeah I see it everything is in there.

Everything is in that out. The future is in B. Holy shit. Because it's like, it's actually like, invented it all out. Yeah, I know. Right. And putting that in the context of like,

where black people are at politically, in terms of disillusionment with political systems, after her kinkatrina, it kind of hits this low, where there's a lot of data that says that the number of black people that think that racial equity will be achieved in their lifetime or in several lifetimes, it drops at the lowest that it's been in a while. And then you see the kind of like emergence of Obama

as this figure and there's this like hopefulness and passability of something new and that's just supposed against like kind of rise of new media technology and all of these different ways and when she can kind of like experiment with different, you know, sounds and ways of communicating with audiences and so that's that's interesting. That's so interesting to hear you say that now I want to go back and listen to it. Oh, you have to. You have to. I mean, it's it is if you want another conspiracy theory for me.

I mean, it's it is if you want another conspiracy theory for me. Okay. It is that Osama was really just trying to distract from how much great music was released on September 11 because you got the blueprint, you know, you've got the yeah, yeah, yes, first album. I don't know, but fuck it. Why not? Fronology was released on that. I don't care. Oh, why is it? Okay, she could be always a journalist. Okay, because he only, that's so why I'll do you sit at because the only other that was coming to mind was like, Mariah Carey's glitter. And I was like, that, that was where he was trying to distract us. He could have been, he could have been. If he was trying to distract us from. He could have been.

He could have been. I've even tried to distract us from how bad. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah, that could be. It is fascinating to, you know, see just that weird kind of coincidence of Kanye exploding. Yeah. To use the wrong word. Yeah. Yeah. To use the wrong word. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not era. Like I actually had,

so I had so much, by the time I got down with my bug, the editor was like, you actually have enough material for a three bucks because it was so much. But one of the essays that I wrote that got cut was called I Can Make You a Celebrity Overnight. And it talks about like this era of the particular period of, yeah. This is famous cyber. Of like Rise of Kanye as a producer. This like, it's sort of national such global platforming of all of these like known Chicago artists like common twist at and others and that Jack's opposed against the rise of like the Cam girl and sex tapes in a different relationship to celebrity and actually really like that structure, but yeah, it didn't make the kind of fortunately. Oh, oh, well, give me that one. I'll take that. That sounds really good. I mean, we didn't even talk about the incredibly sex positive

points of view from the only fans that you interview. I mean, we're already at two plus hours or something. Are we? I only have like an hour and 11 minutes. I've seen some of your, I've listened to some of your podcasts. I know you go for like two hours, 30 minutes. We could keep going. Yeah, no, you're incredibly embarrassing. No, I love it because that's, I mean, it's just especially the way that you dissect like these different pieces of, you know, Alex Jones stuff, because usually when I'm,

you know, listening to ever research purposes, I mean, they usually when I'm listening to research purposes, I mean, they're just kind of listening to it by myself and documenting and noting things, but I'm not necessarily breaking it out and having a discussion around certain things. You guys catch, I mean, you know, obviously, you know, there's you catch a lot of stuff around it that's interesting, but yeah, we're only an hour and end.

We're good. How long can your audience go? Ha ha ha. Oh boy. That is, you know, that's a good question. I imagine when we did we did the end game documentary and so we wound up recording a nine hour straight or something covering yeah What with a 10 minute break for pizza in between

We released it in chunks over a week. And I really wonder how many people would have tried to listen to the whole thing. Marathon. Now I'm going to go back. I'm going to try to do that. It's like how people try to watch all of this. Our worries. Yes. We're thinking about doing something like that again, but it's, it's, you know, it's harder when you get older. It's fair. So then yes, that's do that. I do want to talk about sex positivity and the way that

creates friction there too, because that is another aspect of black conservatism that is almost separate from the political. That's almost, well, you know, that's almost, that's, well, I mean, that's mostly in the religious, right? Yeah, yeah. So I mean, to take it kind of back to what I mentioned earlier, I start the book, one of the early essays talks about

the different categories of black political identity. And if I were to, like, I had, I did do some rewrites, but I wasn't fully allowed to do, like, you know, large rewrites, but I think I didn't do a good job of communicating that each essay is meant to represent a facet of that of the different, like, spectrum of black political identities. So I have, like, my black conservatives,

I have, like, you know, my black Marxist. And then there are. I'm not allowed to say it like that, by the way. I'm not allowed to, I have my, I'm by who? I have my black conservatives. I don't think I'm going to say it like that. I don't want people.

Okay, that's fine. That's fine. I'm not going to be one of those people. I'm a professional. Yeah, I'm not going to be, I'm not going to be one of those people that tries to get permission and have a bunch of people online be like, no, bitch. So one of the, you know, one of the, I didn't, one of the categories in there. And this is based off of Dr. Michael Dawson's research, who's at University of Chicago and

has done like a bunch of studies around black political identity. One of them was a black feminist category as its own unique politic. And I kind of grappled with that for a while and almost instinctively pushed back against it. And I was kind of like, why isn't there like a black man is very category. But I was trying to capture what it means to have a black feminist politic and then to interview somebody who represented that. So just also for folks that haven't read it,

I interviewed like 50 plus black voters between the ages of 18 to 108 of every different political identity and then did a bunch of other research. And so Lotus Lane is a porn actress, a black queer porn actress from the Bay Area, that I wanted to talk to you as a representation of what are the kind of like modern black feminist fights

and just as a side note. I knew I wanted to talk to a sex worker. I went on to Twitter and was like, are there any sex workers that are willing to talk to a sex worker. I went on to Twitter and was like, are there any sex workers that are willing to talk to me? And I got a lot of DMs from people that are like, I'm not going to talk to you on record. But like, you know, here's some different folks you could talk to and like none of those interviews panned out. And so I was like, okay, I'm just going to shoot my shot with a couple of my favorite porn actresses. Um, and only fans were where they are, so Lotus Lane and another one were on only fans.

And so I went on to Oling fans, but I didn't actually know how it worked. I didn't know it was quite so dynamic. I thought it's like, you leave someone a message. I didn't realize it was gonna be like real time, a bunch of stuff sent. So I get on, I pay. And she's sending a bunch of content. And then in the middle of that, I send this long, rambly message. Sure. That was like, I want to interview you for this. And she didn't respond for a while. And she told me later, she thought it was spam. I also didn't, I like left some words out. So instead of being like, I don't

want to make this weird for you. I actually said being like, I don't wanna make this weird for you. I actually said to her, I'd love to make this weird for you. So there was a bunch of weird stuff in there, but despite that, she like, I don't know, journalists in a strip club in the seven. It was, it was so, I understand this is awkward for both of us right now.

Yes, yes. Here's a dollar, but also let's talk, Siri. Yeah. Which is actually my inspiration because a lot of my primary source material for the book were old Playboy archives. It was weird, because I was like, oh, actually these articles are great

and these are some of the most amazing journalists like James Baldwin and like all of these other people. And so I was kind of in a little way, is trying to do that. So I reach out to her, she gets back to me. And what she talks about, like one, she talks about the experience of being a porn actress and talk about this in 20 questions with Lotus Lane, what it means to be a sort of like

black sex worker and how that's seen publicly and how a lot of sex workers are the forefront of technology. And there's this process of like making technology viable to the masses and then being displaced from it and There's a lot of also stuff around how Sex workers can and and have historically been a vital part of different Of economies and different communities and so I was able to she she got back to me I was able to interview her But it really made me think about the way in which one the way in which we stigmatize sex work and who benefits from that also the way in which the idea of protecting sex workers is often wielded or protecting it's not protecting sex workers. It's like protect our girls or there's always this an out this idea that like we have to like protect women from something. Once again infantilizing

yes yes as an able to make its own decisions. Yes and oftentimes the face of that is white women but then the policies that get put into place are not actually around protecting those folks. It's like, it's about incarcerating, and it's about criminalizing, and subjecting a lot of vulnerable communities to a lot of abuse from law enforcement, from Johns, from all of these spaces. And because often there's this underlying conservatism

in America, and then also within the black community We don't see those fights around things like I don't know if you guys have talked about you know fast assessor But like we don't see some of those fights that are opportunities to kind of Either legalize sex worker actually make it truly safe for people like we don't show up often for those fights. And so that kind of like black feminist politic was part of taking on some of these different dirty fights that are not seen as respectable, but are actually really important for us from both an economic criminal justice and tech justice standpoint. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think I would agree just based almost entirely on the fact that if I go back through history, I can't find a group that didn't exclude

black feminists. You know, like first wave feminism, woo, not a fan. Yeah, yeah. The way feminism still not fans, you know. Yeah. And then you have religious communities, which were always a high source in any queer activists that popped up were roundly. Yeah. So that's probably one of the most isolated groups ever on so many levels in a few of by so many systems and then it's like when we say black lives matters What does that mean because oftentimes like even in the you know summer of 2020? It was interesting to see there was a lot of conversation about You know police killings that were happening and a lot less conversation about The number of like black trans women that were also murdered that summer or the

number of like sex workers. It was like we had to identify who felt like in some ways an ideal symbol to organize around. And that's not everybody in a lot of the spaces I organized in. There was a lot of organizing about that stuff. And then even, you know, conversations around, you know, Brianna Taylor and others, which was a lot of organizing about that stuff. And then even conversations around, you know, Brianna Taylor and others, which was uplifted by the WNBA that summer. But like, I think, you know, when we have these different

conversations, when I was at Color of Change, one of the campaigns that I ran was around our Kelly. And so Color of Change is a racial justice advocacy organization, and we run these like sort of corporate accountability campaigns. And we decided, my team decided to run this campaign around getting our Kelly dropped by RCA. And we were working with lifetime on surviving our Kelly, which hadn't come out yet.

And when we first started doing that campaign, we got a lot of pushback, really shocking amount of pushback from like our members we had at that time, one million members, I think now it's like seven million, but around, you know, well, these girls are making that choice. Like there was no nuance conversation or, you know, important conversation about the levels of sex abuse and grimming and all of these other things that were happening. It was only after that came out with surviving our Kelly that we could even begin to move the needle on some of those conversations.

And again, it just reminds me how thoroughly unprotected, you know, members of our community, whether it's like black women, whether it's, you know, queer transwigs, whether it's like class lines, there are just so many people that are left vulnerable every day. And what does it actually mean to show up for those communities? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you see, if you hear that response, how is that different from a microversion of slavery as a choice? All those women, that's slavery as a choice, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's the same words. Yeah. And you condemn from other lips. Right. And it's a duality of one unpacking how much of that is a choice. But then also if it is a choice, it should be a choice.

It should be seen as a protective year like in the case of Lotus Lane, she didn't get into porn until she was in her 30s. And one of the things that she said was like she was like, you know, growing up, had kind of, you know, blood sag. She had our kids and she felt like this was a thing that she wanted to do and that she would be almost dishonest if she didn't pursue something that felt like it was like her dream or her bucket was how could she then tell her kids to pursue their dreams. And I mean, you know, for some people it would be like your dream is to be, you know, important. But I mean, I think, you know, to respect that as a choice in a field that should be protection, that deserves protection, that should, you know, not have to allow, you know,

array, array sexual abuse and some of the things that happen even online in the ways that black women are depicted, important, or even the names of porn. She talked a little bit about how a lot of videos will circulate and she thinks she did this romantic sex scene and her name isn't and it's prominent and then it gets recycled on porn hub or like some other places and it's like black bitch takes it in the face,

her name's out on it and she gets none of that money. So it's like how do we talk about, you know, these different things as a certain level of work that needs to be protected and should be a choice and if it is a choice, it's respected. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's that's such an interesting point of view on that of I want to do this as yeah and and like I I was listening to Jesse wears most recent and and there is a point at which they is that one of her lyrics is pleasure is a right yeah and the more I thought about that the more of a transgressive statement that truly is yeah if you stop and think about the idea of pleasure being a right, most of our rights are actively

devoid of pleasure and most of our laws are trying to destroy pleasure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So reading these, reading these interviews with, you know, reading interviews, and like the one that you gave with Lotus Lane, it's always interesting to see that both like, the amount of effort demanded of her,

the amount of efforts that is beyond, you know, the physical transformations that often porn stars are expected alone. She's expected on top of that to never have a chip nail, you know, right? Yeah. That concept is so fucking cruel. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She talked about that. And that's's her dream and she follows through with it. That's a powerful, you know, pleasure is a right. Yeah, you gotta work and it's up for it. I mean, and hey, like even if you get your dream job,

like nobody wants to, very few people wanna do that job every day, sometimes you get tired of doing like, your dream job, right? But we actually had a whole bunch of stuff that didn't make it in. But we had this funny conversation about deep fake videos because she was kind of like, you know, if you can, if I can like trademark way image and they did deep fake videos and I could, I got money off of that. Hey, I would have mine not doing the work. And if you can, if you can create fiction indistinguishable from reality,

at that point, let's all just hang out and have a good time. Yeah, yeah, there you go, except not in the, what is that weird metaverse thing, but... Oh, yeah, no, no, that's no good. I wouldn't mess with that. Yeah I keep thinking sorry to go back further a little bit about that you know Arkelli about all of that is one of the one of the things about my dark twisted fantasy one of those one of those things about my dark twisted fantasy one of those one of those lyrics that stuck with me is not so much anything other than at the end of the day God damn it I'm killing this shit yeah and when when I listen to

that the first time yeah that was a bad fuck, yeah, man. Fuck yeah. And then whenever I listen to the interview of Kanye on Info Wars, it was very much that same thing that you have to constantly realize is that that is why they get away with this shit, you know? Mm, because at the end of the day, you don't care. You care about he's killing it, you know? Mike, Dr. Twisted Fantasy is a fucking killer album.

In the same way that people are like, fucking, beat it crazy good. What do you want for me? I wasn't there. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, I think it is kind of interesting to think about in a couple ways. So I mean, I think when he did my dark twisted fantasy, it was right after which I talk about in the book, he had the moment with like Taylor Swift on stage. Got to hate Taylor. Which, yeah, me too, to be honest, but like where he gets up and in an interesting part about it, he's kind of like defending the merits of single ladies, which I can't say I love that video either, but like, you know, and he gets up and he has all of this condemnation, this new president, Obama, who in a lot of ways ways he was almost creating the soundtrack to and giving Obama a lot of

like cool credibility through like the comments, you know the people and like all of this stuff and Then he calls them a jackass and he has this moment where he feels like he lost his community And then he goes to this island and makes my dark twisted fantasy and all of his community comes around him Like all of the new artists he had been talking to, they come and they hold him down and he makes what a lot of people consider to be one of his greatest albums I'd be curious about yours, but then I juxtapose that with...

I think it's the greatest albums of all time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but then you juxtapose that, and when he's talking about it, there is a little bit of like false hyping himself up. It's like I have to present this because, you like, I have to present this because you know, I need to feel this, but I'm at my lowest point. When I see him on Alex Jones sitting there with Fuentes with a kid, it's like, what are you doing, bro? You're like in your 40s and you're

hanging out as like kid that like picks his nose and is kind of like a loser, but but like and that's your people. Like it's just like I'm sitting and then and Alex Jones is like looking like the reasonable one while he's sitting there also kind of proud that you're doing his work for him in a lot of ways. It's like that felt like the loneliness most isolating moment to me. And I think if he was like at the end of the day, I'm killing this. Like it just wouldn't be believable.

And I think that's part of the reason why, you know, so much of his art has not just gone down creatively, but who's willing to engage with it? It's like, these seem like guhaz of desperation. It doesn't seem like anymore. You're passionate about something, you're building up your community, like you're trying to do this.

You're giving everything for your art. You're reading this really bitter man that has now this twisted perception of your relationship with your mother that has put this weird stuff around Kim Kardashian which is, you're talking about, I'm not sure if he gets into it in Alex Jones or somewhere else like you're talking all of this stuff around porn and the juice

creating porn and all of this wild stuff. Then it turns out later that it comes out that you're showing porn to people in your workplace. Like it's just like so cheap and kind of like really hard in a lot of ways to watch. And he seems, again, not to, I understand why people don't want to mess with him and I don't like when people use mental illness as an excuse for certain actions because I think there's people can be mentally ill and it doesn't necessarily

mean that they do certain things, but he just comes off as so like unhinged and not in the, you know, tether to the real world in any meaningful way, and that feels so different from his earlier work where it even uses, where it feels like he's very much tethered to this, to this world in a different way. Yeah, I mean, I, it, it is hard to think of the guy who made blood on the leaves. Yeah. Now, yeah. You know, like, that's too close around a black to the side. There is, but yeah, no, no, I mean, that guy, that guy now shouldn't be allowed to touch that. So, you know, right, that's what the, I mean, that's, he's the only guy who could touch that

song back then. Right. Those horns were the only thing that could ever, you know, everybody else would have treated that track so somberly or such a slowed down beat or anything. Yeah. Only Kanye would be like, this song should be in your face. Yeah. It should be breaking your ear, Dr. Yeah.

Yeah. And then it makes it even harder, like, because you still see glimpses of that, like, I didn't realize that he worked on industry, baby. And it's hard, by little, not as X. And again, it's hard to parse out, you know, who does what? But when you listen to industry, baby, and then I found out that he worked on it, I was like,

oh, that's that glimpse of, like, what made me fall in love with him musically. Like Like it still feels like it's there and it's so painful that it's like whatever dark place you're in that you can't get out of. That's so trash. It's like, we still see that those glimpses of greatness, but it's so buried under all of this trash stuff. Yeah. I want to did. Did you read his new autobiography is out? Slime the Family Stone. Have you read that yet? I bought it. I haven't read it yet. I haven't read it yet. I'm ready yet. You know, I was I was thinking about that in the context of like what happens if Twitter exists in 1981. What happens? What happens when I have officially run out of ideas? I am the preeminent musical genius of my time.

Right. And now I'm out. Yeah. I got nothing else to contribute. I just made Jesus's king. I got nothing else to contribute. I just made Jesus's king. You know, right? There, you know, he gets to disappear only to be discovered every time somebody's like, I wonder how he's doing still drunk. Yeah, you know And and I wonder what is the difference, you know, we, I can read his autobiography without judgment. Despite you know, for a fact that during that time period, that dude said some crazy shit for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

And it's interesting to think about because, excuse me, because Kanye, he's one of the few celebrities that had achieved a certain amount of fame, pre and post internet and also a lot of what the making of Kanye has been in a modern era is because of his relationship and experience with media. So like the Taylor Swift moment becomes one of the first major water cooler moments of Twitter. He's like making the news and he's like redefining that's part of what I was talking about in the in the last essay. I can make you a celebrity overnight. He's part of that

Remaking the idea of what a celebrity could and should be. And so that vulnerability was a premium for him until it wasn't. And so it's almost hard. Like part of me almost wonders, could Kanye have lasted this long as a relevant figure without, you know, social media and what are kind of some of the, like, pros and cons of that. But his relationship to technology is really, you know, interesting, grew up like a middle class kid. He had a computer in the 80s at a time where computers class like $4,000 like he lived with his mom in Asia.

So he's always been on like kind of like cutting Egypt tech and part of his persona has always been adept of staying just ahead of the tech to wield it powerfully. So it's almost hard to disconnect his legacy from that for better or worse. Yeah. Yeah. You just, what I mean, is it just that you got to die before you go crazy? I mean, I mean, it's, yeah, I mean, it's either before you go crazy or before you start making shitties, that's then all that we like remember Yeah You gotta you gotta tap out before Jesus is king That applies to just about every situation you can think of right yeah, you gotta tap out before Jesus is I think I think as far as a place to end an interview goes, it doesn't

get much better than that, right? Yeah, yeah. Brandy, thank you so much. This has been an absolute delight of a time. Again, Black Skinhead podcast is bring receipts and then look for the upcoming podcast that you'll be releasing. Yes, that's going to come out later. It's called Killian Harold Washington. And it's about some of the conspiracy involving local mayor and whether or not he was assassinated. But that's going to come out in fall of 2024 around the DNC, which is in Chicago's look for that. And if you're on Blue Sky, Brandy CD, also I should mention to my soft back comes out in early January and there's some some updates in there. So if folks folks are thinking about the book, please buy, please support.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Hopefully we'll have you back on whenever that's released. Yes, nine hour marathon. Get happy. Andy and Kansas, you're on the earth. Thanks for holding. I like some of my first time calling my huge fan. I love your work. I love you.