Air Date: 10-3-2026

Today we examine the mechanisms of complicity. We're not all complicit in the worst atrocities but we are complicit in something so it's good to know how it works. Good people go along with bad ideas and thoughtful people allow themselves to be thoughtless all the time. The reasons are often structural but they can be resisted on both the personal level and collectively.

Full Show Notes

Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Today we examine the mechanisms of complicity. We're not all complicit in the worst atrocities but we are complicit in something so it's good to know how it works. Good people go along with bad ideas and thoughtful people allow themselves to be thoughtless all the time. The reasons are often structural but they can be resisted on both the personal level and collectively.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today include

Life Is A Story

Democracy Now!

Jessie Gender

PissedMagistus

Velshi

Adam Conover

and Hoots Hootman

Then, in the additional, Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in 4 sections;

Section A, Lessons From Nazi Germany

Section B, Complicity in Gaza; Media, Governments, and Celebrities

Section C, The Myth of Neutrality; Media, Moderates, and Obeying in Advance

And Section D, Fandom, Consumption, and Personal Reckoning

And now, on to the show.

Primo Levi, Italian chemist and Holocaust survivor, once wrote, "Monsters exist, but they're too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions." We've seen a number of Levi's rare monsters portrayed in Holocaust films before, naturally brutal men who were at home in the Nazis' genocidal project.

Commandant Goeth of Schindler's List being the most famous example. He was a man who seemed to take satisfaction in inflicting human suffering. It was a sport for him. But The Zone of Interest, directed by Jonathan Glazer, is not about men like Goeth. It's about common men, individuals who desired a peaceful, prosperous, and beautiful life, yet took part in the destruction of others who desired the exact same thing.

The director has said that the movie's intention is to show our similarities to the perpetrators, not the victims. If we, the audience, can recognize how this family is able to live a joyful life in Eden next to the abyss of hell, we can prevent ourselves from falling into the same psychological traps. I wanna begin by discussing the most outrageous examples of moral obliviousness.

Many of them occur early in the story to establish the psychology of the characters. Mrs. Hoss, AKA the Queen of Auschwitz, is given the fur coat and lipstick of a prisoner, and she tries them on like she's in the fitting room of a Macy's. There is not a second of reflection. Mrs. Hoss and the other Nazi wives discuss the items they've received, and even share a laugh over the concealment methods they've run into.

It's a game to them, and a very profitable one at that. But not to be outdone, the eldest boy stays up at night to analyze the dental gold extracted from murdered prisoners. Talk of extermination is not hidden in the household. Rudolph is very proud of his logistical achievements, and his wife enjoys the resulting increase in social status.

When Hedwig's mother visits, she's well aware of what's taking place on the other side of the wall. Her daughter laments the ugliness of the wall itself, but breezes by its purpose. All she can do is put up vines to make it more aesthetically acceptable. The Zone of Interest is filled to the brim with these type of moments.

They're usually pretty brief. The movie does not feature many extended scenes. It's a lot of short but powerful moments woven together to create a grand demented quilt. The characters can't trick themselves into thinking that all that's going on is just forced labor. The sound of death is almost universally present.

They can't hide from it. So how do they fight back? The number one method is overcompensation. The home can't simply be good enough. It can't be a temporary living space that they'll move on from once Rudolf is given new orders. It must be paradise. Hedwig tries to make it as beautiful as possible, a Garden of Eden, and when she's threatened with the possibility of relocation, she loses her damn mind because there's nothing wrong with the home and garden, absolutely nothing, not the gunshots, not the smoke, not the screams of women and children.

It does not get any better, and the children cannot be deprived of it. When she makes this animated case to her husband, he's not the true target of her argument. It's herself. The commandant's overcompensation is reflected not in the garden, but his work. He's obsessed with it. He's innovative. He wants the most efficient methods to make the numbers on the quarterly reports increase.

Towards the end of the film, he even tells his wife that it's hard for him to concentrate on a party because he's thinking about the best way to gas everyone in attendance. And why would he think about anything else? There's nothing wrong with a job, and if there's nothing wrong with a job, I better be the best I can be.

The effort is a testament to how important he needs to think the mission is. But no matter how much these characters try to overcompensate, they're unable to fully convince themselves and others of the fraudulent paradise they've created. Ashes still find their way into the flower beds. We see this with the sleepwalking of one of their daughters, the early departure of Hedwig's mother.

In the most powerful example, Rudolf's heaving as the film ends. Deep down, very deep down, they know that they're participating in something too abhorrent to acknowledge directly. They have to. Again, we're not observing a family of psychopaths. So by embracing their closeness to evil, they deny its existence.

If Hedwig lived next to the camp but refused to try on the clothing of the victims, she may be forced to examine her own hesitation. It's all in or nothing. The Zone of Interest goes beyond just the methods used by individuals to ignore atrocities. The movie also touches on the societal acceptance of the Holocaust.

In other words, what narrative has possessed German society that would allow such horrors to take place? The contrast between the garden and the camp does a brilliant job exploring this. When Mrs. Höss attempts to talk her husband into letting her stay at the house, she argues that they're living the life that Hitler wants Germans to live.

They're pioneers of the East, enjoying the living space of a new thriving German civilization. The idea she's referencing, Lebensraum, argued that to secure the safety and prosperity of the German state, eastward expansion was mandatory. But military conquest was only part of the plan. The civilian populations also had to be removed, namely Eastern European Jews and Slavs.

The people of Germany suffered greatly because of their disastrous defeat in World War I and the hyperinflation that followed. The Nazis told their people that for Germany to move past that suffering and acquire the power they deserve, certain actions must be taken. Everyone standing in the way of a flourishing state must be destroyed, from Jews to Soviets.

Mrs. Höss and her family fall into the idealized world promised by this vision. They're peacefully living in the East with more wealth than they could ever need, unthreatened by British blockade and internal treason. Their life is proof that the actions on the other side of the wall are justifiable. For us to live in heaven, our enemies must be sent to hell.

There's a striking moment towards the beginning of the movie when Rudolf Höss chastises his men for plucking lilacs from the bushes. He's very concerned about the health of the garden. Every plant must be nurtured with the utmost care. Your immediate feeling is naturally, how the hell could he murder innocent people en masse and still care for a flower in his garden?

I think the answer is because it's his garden. When societies start to believe that the prosperity of their world is being hindered by internal and external actors, the ends will start to justify the means very quickly. And even if the means are as hellish as imaginable, people will find ways to accept them

there is a c- direct connection between healthcare and the ability of, of normal people not to obey and advance.

One of the reasons why we have the absence of healthcare in this country that we do is to make people afraid and anxious and worried all of the time, and that is a social wellspring for, authoritarianism. It's harder to do the things you need to do politically if you're being dogged all the time by unnecessary fears and costs, and when you're sick when you don't have to be.

Anyway, as far as, as far as the big wealthy media companies are concerned, I think ABC saw the chance to do what everybody else was doing, in, in a rapid way and sacrificed itself to make the statement that, yes, we're not going to say these kinds of things. Because the problem of giving up here isn't just the individual case, it's the precedent you set.

You're saying, "We're going to be extremely careful not to say the kinds of things which might offend or which might be critical to this person who is now gonna be the head of state." 

And as soon as that settlement happened, President Elect Trump sued the Des Moines Register for a poll that came out right before the election that he didn't like the results of.

Yeah, they're moving squarely into totalitarian territory because when Trump sues the Des Moines Register for essentially printing what he considers to have been bad news for him, the underlying all of that is the idea that Trump never could have been behind in any poll. Trump never could have won any election.

Our great hero Trump is always going to win at everything. So it's setting a line, right? Which, which, which borrows from his deep lie that he didn't win the elect- that he, that he won the election in 2020. So he's trying to set, what is, in fact, a kind of Stalinist line for the American media.

Everyone has to only print how Trump wins everything all the time, or you might get sued. 

So if you can jump from that to what we're seeing now with the billionaire cabinet. Mm-hmm ... what, Elon Musk, now it looks spent about a quarter of a billion dollars to get Trump elected. Mm. And people might say, "Wow, that's a lot.

He took a great risk there." But he has made far more than that since the election of President Trump. if you can talk about what it means, I think in Biden's cabinet they're worth something like $110 million, in this cabinet well over, what? 500, billion dollars? 

Oh, yeah. So it's, it's a small jump to make because it, the way that censorship is gonna work in the Musk/Trump regime is, is probably not going to be direct state censorship.

It's going to be hundreds of frivolous lawsuits which are meant to keep us all quiet. And who's going to fund those, those frivolous lawsuits? Not Trump, he doesn't have the money. It's going to be Musk who's funding these frivolous lawsuits to keep us all quiet and to keep us towards the line that of course he and Trump never do anything wrong, always win, and so on.

What we're looking at is a qualitative change. Of course there's too much money in every cabinet, but we're now leaping orders of magnitude up, right? So for example, when these, if a centibillionaire gives a million dollars to Trump's in- inauguration, that might sound like a lot, but that's the same as the median American family giving $2.

It's meaningless for the centibillionaire to give that amount of money. Likewise, it was meaningless even for Musk to spend a quarter of a billion on Trump's campaign. The guy is worth something like 400 billion now. That meant nothing to him, and the return to investment was absolutely enormous. So we're shifting from a democracy which had some pretty heavy oligarchical streaks running through it towards something like an oligarchy, in which I think it's fair to say that it's not Trump who's the most important person, it's Musk.

Trump has debts. Musk has money. Trump has debts specifically to Musk for getting him elected. And I think the burden of proof is actually on Trump to show that he has any room for maneuver in this system. And it's going to be interesting to see how congressional Republicans react, because what this particular oligarch wants is to break the federal government.

And whatever their views might be, not m- many of them don't actually want the United States of America to cease to exist so that oligarchs can pick up the pieces. 

Let me ask you about, MSNBC. You had, the regular Trump critics, Joe Scarborough and, Mika Brzezinski, for a few years now really criticizing Trump.

And then after he won, going down to Mar-a-Lago to have dinner with him. 

Yeah. I think the essential thing is not whether you criticize Trump or whether you don't criticize him. I don't think it's all about Trump. I think the essential thing is do you have, are you seeking after truth? Are you doing investigative stories?

Are you saying the things you're truly convinced of based on the results of your investigations and, and, and the facts? I think it doesn't make sense to court somebody like Trump, just psychologically, because he's into humiliation both directions. He wants to humiliate you, and then he wants himself to be humiliated by the guys he regards as bigger men, people like Musk and by Putin.

It's all... For him, it's all a humiliation chain, and you're just telling him which side of the humiliation chain you want to be on. So I think politically, it's not really very effective. But I think the most important thing for the press is to do the job of the press and not to think of everything in terms of paying obeisance or not paying obeisance.

Warner Brothers wants to make you feel complicit in JK Rowling's anti-trans bigotry, all so they can make money. So last week I made a video about how casual references to Harry Potter in TV and movies helps to normalize a franchise that JK Rowling is actively using to fuel attacks on trans people, both in the UK and the US, from her bankrolling lawsuits and political campaigns, to her harassing individual trans people and groups like Amnesty International.

And in that video, I floated what I called at that point a bit of a tinfoil hat theory, that Warner Brothers is deliberately increasing Harry Potter references across their shows that it produces, like The Pitt- 

Sounds like a Harry Potter spell ... 

Ted Lasso- 

He was the understudy right in that fucking endless Harry Potter play I had to sit through with Phoebe

and Lanterns. 

Where did Harry Potter go to school? 

And even into movies like Mortal Kombat 2. 

Drive safe and, say hi to Dumbledore for me 

All in order to make the brand feel harmless again before it launches its uncanny valley TV remake to try to squeeze just a little bit more nostalgia money out of a franchise whose spinoffs they've face-planted.

Well, I am officially retiring that tinfoil hat because this week, Ted Lasso had yet another extended sequence talking about Harry Potter. 

The three clicks are like the three main characters in Harry Potter. 

Ouch. 

Oof. Coach already knows this, but Harry Potter's one of my blind spots. 

Mate, you don't know Harry Potter?

Well, my little boy got onto Percy Jackson and we never looked back. 

It's okay, I'll translate. Carry on with your wizarding jag. 

So the attackers are like the character Harry Potter. 

Who's like Ferris Bueller. 

And episode two of Lanterns had yet another blink-and-you'll-miss-it Harry Potter reference, making that show two for two this season.

Harry Potter went to Hogwarts, you ignorant alien fuck. 

Warner Brothers is clearly really trying to lay on the Harry Potter propaganda thick, but Lanterns' latest reference made me realize that there was a darker layer that I missed in my last video. 

The episode features a Photoshopped image, at least I hope it's a Photoshopped image and 

not generative AI, of the show's hero, Hal Jordan, at the premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, alongside the movie stars Rupert Grint, Daniel Radcliffe, and Emma Watson, the original Harry Potter trio.

And what came across as particularly gulling about this reference to me versus other Harry Potter references is that two of those three actors have been among the most outspoken of the original Harry Potter stars against Rowling's anti-trans bigotry. 

I'm here for all of the witches. 

Daniel Radcliffe also himself even worked with the Trevor Project to support trans people 

I realized my gender, that's just, it's just a thing that it, preexists memory.

And then I guess, a lot of the time it is having the language to even, self-conceptualize what that means is, incredibly important. 

And Emma Watson just last year was publicly attacked by Rowling for her support of trans people. That being said, Rupert Grint just rejoined the Harry Potter franchise by being cast in The Cursed Child play.

Guess he needed the blood money 'cause he isn't relevant anymore. But regardless, while these actors have long been the faces of the franchise with their movie likenesses signed away decades ago when they were kids, by the way, there's something to me that is uniquely gross about using an image of them as real people all as part of a subtle marketing campaign to normalize the very thing that empowers the woman that two of these actors have spoken up against.

It gets even grosser when you remember that part of the reboot TV show's job is intended to replace the old faces of these characters with a new generation of young child actors who themselves are too young to fully understand what they're being asked to be a part of, let alone have the agency to say no or even self-confidence to speak up against if they did, 

while trying to simultaneously erase the cultural memory of the original, more outspoken actors.

And it made me realize how Warner Brothers is attempting to do the same thing to all of us watching these shows that it's doing to both generations of these actors, making us feel complicit in this franchise's harm no matter what we do. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism is a generally true statement.

Our money in this hellish world that we live in often disappears into some vast Rube Goldberg machine of exploitation, and it's kinda hard to know exactly what you're contributing to when you buy something. We're constantly told that the harms of our consumption are so diffuse, so far down the chain, and so ubiquitous that avoiding them is basically impossible, so why bother caring?

Everything we buy causes harm somewhere, so singling out one single purchase is supposedly pointless. You need your morning coffee, so don't think too hard about the child in forced labor buried somewhere in Starbucks's supply chain or the union busting happening right here in the United States. Just drink your coffee and move on.

We turn the 

scale of the problem into an excuse for our apathy. 

But with Harry Potter, that line is unusually direct. Harry Potter keeps Rowling rich and culturally powerful, and then Rowling uses that money directly to harm trans people. You can debate about what you wanna do with that fact, but you can't really pretend that the line isn't there.

And as I said before, you cannot separate the art from the artist when the art is bankrolling the artist's hate campaign. So yes, when you buy Harry Potter stuff, play the new Hogwarts game, or watch the new show, you are helping sustain the machine that gives Rowling that power to harm marginalized people, and it's why so many trans people have been outspoken about asking people to not support Harry Potter going forward.

But Warner Brothers knows this too, and they figured out how to use it against all of us in a pretty insidious way. There has not only been an increase in Potter references in WB media, but you also may have noticed an uptick in Harry Potter brand tie-ins everywhere lately. Fortnite, Rocket League, and the Epic Games store all did Potter integrations late last year.

Coffee Mate launched a line of Harry Potter creamers. 

God, how I hate the fact that JK Rowling has basically Potter branded the entire flavor of butterscotch. And now even Canadian institution Tim Horton's has announced a Harry Potter-themed menu.

I guess now the only thing missing from my morning coffee is a little dash of turf foam on top or whatever. Now, on the surface, this probably just comes across like any promotional collaboration that a movie franchise would do. I saw Mandalorian and Grogu slapped on everything last summer, because apparently nothing says brand synergy like washing my Sarlacc pit with Force Flow body wash.

I meant my armpit, you dirty freaks. Get your mind out of level 1313. That's a reference for you Star Wars fans. But unlike a direct movie promotion tie-in, these Potter tie-ins are happening a little bit too early to promote the new show, and most of them don't even use the new cast in their branding yet.

I think there's a more insidious goal also at play here. they're still trying to make money, let's be clear. But I think the other goal is to try to make you feel like you are already a little complicit in the hate that that brand helps fund. We here in America, and most of Western society, live in an essentializing culture, and what I mean by that is that we're all taught that what you do is a reveal of who you fundamentally are.

For example, when someone steals something, they are considered a criminal, branded by that act for life, regardless of why they committed that crime in the first place, or even if they continue to commit crime later on in their life, or had done so before. This is how systemic disenfranchisement that produces higher crime rates in some Black communities is made invisible until racists can just say, "Well, Black people are just like that.

They just steal more because they're Black." And capitalism is very good at producing the conditions that shape people's behavior, then turn that behavior into an identity, and then uses that, very identity to justify itself. And this is also why so many bigots care more about being called racist, transphobic, or sexist than whether they actually did something racist, transphobic, or sexist.

They hear, "You did a bigoted thing," as, "You are fundamentally a bad person." And people in power know how useful that is. If criticism of an action can be reframed as an attack on someone's very identity, people stop asking what harm they caused and start getting defensive instead, and attack those who try to speak up about the harm that they're contributing to.

This is why conservatives are continually able to recreate the stereotype of the shrill leftist activist who will hate you no matter how small a supposedly racist thing you did was, so you might as well just not give a fuck. Be, be as racist as you wanna be, to your heart's delight. On top of that, capitalism has trained us to see consumption as, if not morally neutral, at least something you can't fully truly be blamed for contributing to, but also tied to your identity.

What you consume is part of who you are. If you're a Harry Potter fan, you should buy Harry Potter merch. If you're a Star Trek fan, you should buy Star Trek merch. If you're a sci-fi nerd, you should buy sci-fi nerd stuff. If you're queer, you should buy queer stuff. And companies like Warner Brothers know how to exploit that dynamic as well.

It's why Warner Brothers is trying to make Harry Potter so ubiquitous in everything from video games to your coffee that it feels unavoidable. They're trying to, if you go to Tim Horton's, maybe accidentally buy the new Hogwarts-branded donut because it's your favorite donut flavor, and you're on the run, and ah, shit, fuck, I just gave money to Harry Potter.

And once now you've bought in even just a little bit, you now need to end up justifying, even if in your own head, why doing that wasn't so bad, that it doesn't define you. And Warner Brothers even tries to assuage any lingering doubt about your character being impugned by making it seem that Potter is actually contributing to helping trans people.

They did this by including a painfully tokenizing trans character in Hogwarts Legacy, whose name was literally Sir Rona 

Sir Rona, as well as partnering with queer-friendly fashion brand Unique Vintage on a Harry Potter collection where 5% of the profits went to GLAAD. But really what that's doing is paying someone who is spending money to buy gasoline to throw on a fire for a dollar store water gun to then fight that fire.

Oh, but there is no such thing as politically neutral, Ed Sheeran, especially not when big piles of money are involved, because money is never apolitical. Money revolves around politics, and politics revolves around money. And that's what happened here. People with wealth and power used their money as leverage to protect a political agenda and enforce the status quo that gives them wealth and power.

Specifically, this guy, Robert Kraft, called Ed Sheeran and said he would not be allowed to perform at his stadium if he brought Macklemore with him, and he was colluding with a bunch of other wealthy stadium owners to do the same. Now, as people have pointed out, those same wealthy stadium owners had no problem hosting Kanye West at their venues.

So obviously, antisemitism isn't really the thing they're offended by. It's being pro-Palestine, and more specifically, being outraged at the murder of tens of thousands of innocent children. That's the politically controversial issue i- in 2026. And also, of course, being in any way critical of the government of Israel.

Now, obviously, this is nothing new. Wealthy billionaires and oligarchs using their power to shape and dominate the narrative and politically attack anyone who dares to speak out against it. And capitulating to those people, especially when you have the wealth and power that you don't really need to, is a political decision.

There is nothing politically neutral about choosing to use a massive platform to reinforce the status quo in the name of self-preservation, especially considering that challenging the narrative propagated by these types of people is one of the most important roles that artists are supposed to have in society.

And that doesn't have to mean writing overtly political lyrics, but artists can capture the attention and trigger the imagination of literally tens of millions of people. That is political power. Whether you want it to be or not, it poses a threat to people in power, because controlling the narrative and limiting people's imagination about what is or isn't fair, right, good, bad, or possible is the most potent tool they have.

And when you have that kind of choosing to bend the knee when the empire comes knocking at your door is not political neutrality. It's political cowardice. 

One of the reasons why I wanted to come on this tour was because I wanted to stand up here on stages and stadiums across America and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart, free Palestine

I said free Palestine

you went to a few places in the Middle East, and in, in one of the places you went to, as I have, you had a similar experience in, in Hebron. And I just wanna read from your book where you said, "The city's most visible feature was its amazing variety of checkpoints.

Some of them were just soldiers lingering around other massive gates with metal turnstiles. As we approached one, I watched two Palestinian schoolchildren being stopped by a soldier and directed back down the street from which they had come. When it was our turn, one by one we approached. They checked our passports and allowed us to proceed.

These soldiers roam as they feel, stopping and interrogating according to their whim. Later that day, I walked out to buy some goods from a shopkeeper, but before I could get there, a soldier walked out from a checkpoint, blocked my path, and asked me to state my religion. He looked at me skeptically when I told him I did not have one, and he asked for my parents' religion.

When I told him they were not religious either, he rolled his eyes and asked about my grandparents. When I told him they were Christian, he allowed me to pass." Mm. Hebron is that place. It is. If you are Muslim or Palestinian, literally somebody could walk down that road and the Muslim or Palestinian will have to go to, down another road, and I've, I've seen it and experienced it myself.

Yeah, and, and, and it is just, the most... It is the intensification of what the West Bank is, and I would argue what Israeli society is, which is to say segregated. and this runs across the board, and I really, really wanna emphasize this because people, for instance, often talk about Palestinian Israeli citizens, but they actually are second-class citizens.

Right. They don't have the same marriage rights, for instance, if they fall in love with somebody from the West Bank that, say, a Jewish Israeli has when they fall in love with somebody from wherever. there are whole communities in Israel proper that have the right by law, I wanna emphasize this, by law- To discriminate against Palestinian citizens for reasons of what they call custom or culture.

We call that redlining in America. Right. But even redlining wasn't in federal law. and we are supporting this, we are bankrolling this, at the very same time that we run around and talk about our great legacy of overcoming segregation, overcoming slavery, and proclaim Martin Luther King as our patron saint.

Let's talk about this concept of The Message, this concept about using our words and our language, and the effect that that can have on changing people, both their minds and the way we do things. Because there's a larger message. You use three distinct examples in this book. The Middle East is just one and, at the moment, the most controversial.

But you're... What's the point you're making as it regards, as it relates to journalism, writing, and expressing ideas? 

The, the point is that writing is a tremendous tool of power. and sometimes people use it to liberate themselves, and sometimes people use it to dehumanize other people. and I think the reason why the second half of that book is so difficult to accept is because beneath it is the idea that American culture, American authors, American film, American journalism, American television has been complicit in dehumanizing, otherizing, pushing Palestinians out of the frame of conception, and thus erasing the idea of apartheid because nobody's there.

Right. that, that motto, "A land without a people for people without a land," it, it actually has a much, much deeper meaning. Because although we know that, that was obviously not true, we can render it as though those people aren't there. And when they are, they're barbarians, they're savages, people who are not worthy of being, participants in, in, any sort of civilized 

And when you look at the examples that you've cited, and we can go back to, to slavery in the United States, we can go back to, the, the Jim Crow era, it, it... We go back to apartheid itself. It depends on the dehumanization- Always ... of the people- Always ... who are you, you are oppressing. Always. Because as long as you don't think of them...

You were having a great conversation with, Trevor Noah the other day in which, when we just talk about the numbers of dead, doesn't matter. Right. Right? It doesn't... It's not, these are not real people to you. Right, right. But once you start showing imagery of families and once you start talking to the survivors of the dead or the starving children or the families of the Israeli hostages- They are people They are s- And our lives are all, should, should all be equal 

There, there are two things about this war that I, that is going on right now that I wanna emphasize.

Israel does not allow reporters into Gaza. 

Correct. You have to be escorted and you have to, you have to, supply your material- 

Yes ... beforehand. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Thank you, Ali, for clarifying that. And large numbers of the reporters that are there are being killed. I, I, I don't think that's accidental, I think people understand the need to control the flow of information. I think, that is a, a significant, force whenever you wanna exercise power. Look, when we had slavery in this country, there was something called the gag rule, you know, that, that, that forbid the conversation, around, slavery on the House and the Senate floor.

And that's because people knew that if you started talking about this stuff, if people, dared to think of Black people and enslaved Black people as human beings, we, we, we would have serious, serious problems. The system needs, information to be controlled, information to

I talk to a lot of people in Hollywood. A lot of my friends are members of those unions. Everybody was terrified of this merger going through, and that's because, again, even the county of Los Angeles said that this was gonna be a disaster for our home industry.

So why did all the elected leaders in California and Los Angeles support it? Well... Well, partially it might be because a report by the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation said that if Paramount left the state, the state would lose 57,000 jobs and $21 billion in economic output. And that sounds pretty bad until you realize that that study was literally commissioned by Paramount.

It's like when a little kid tells their parents, "I don't need to eat broccoli, 'cause I have a document here that says ice cream is very healthy." Now, for a while, it seemed like Rob Bonta was gonna stay strong in the face of all this bullshit. He kept making strong statements. For instance, just a month ago, Bonta said he wasn't going to settle the case without structural changes to the deal that would maintain competition, like keeping the movie studios functionally separate, or selling one of the news networks.

He said he wasn't going to accept a settlement that just, quote, was a promise to behave in a certain way in the future, a promise to make a certain amount of movies, for example, in a given year. That's an old, stale promise. I've heard about that before. It doesn't vibe, in my humble opinion, with what history has shown.

This is an antitrust merger to do what antitrust law does, which is to make sure that prices are fair, make sure that jobs are not cut, wages aren't reduced, make sure that there's choice, quality, competition. If Paramount and Warner Brothers wants to propose a settlement that involves real, robust structural remedies that address the concerns of the markets that we've identified in our complaint, we will listen

Woo! Fuck yeah, Rob. You tell him! That's my, our attorney general, boy. Yeah! And then, a couple weeks later he totally caved. This week, Bonta accepted a settlement that included none of that. The settlement Bonta agreed to doesn't address any of the reasons they sued in the first place, and it doesn't include any structural remedies whatsoever.

In fact, the few remedies it does include are just like laughably paper thin. For instance, in order to address, the conflict between one network owning both CNN and CBS News, they're gonna have a news oversight board of independent journalists that'll make sure everything's really reputable and objective.

just one problem. That news oversight board is going to be appointed by the Ellisons and will report solely to the Ellisons. Oh, I'm sure they're really gonna push back hard on Barry next time she's trying to say that racism is good. Oh, and who could've fucking guessed? Paramount guarantees that they will make 30 films a year.

Oh wait, let's look at the fine print. They're just gonna release 30 films a year. They only have to make half of them. And since last year Warner Brothers and Paramount combined made 18 films, that means they're actually committing to making less. Great agreement you got there, Rob. even though the only reason the agreement happened was because Paramount threatened to leave California, the agreement doesn't even guarantee that they'll stay.

And I believe that will be the case, that they will have their headquarters in California for the foreseeable future. You believe that or it's part of the deal? It's not part of the deal. 

Since when do businesses do the right thing because we believe in them? What are they, fucking Tinker Bell? Are we supposed to clap and hope they don't destroy our economy?

Now, when it comes to why this happened, some people might say that Bonta was spineless. Others are saying that, after every other elected leader in California turned against him, well, he didn't have a leg to stand on. He couldn't bring the case when he had absolutely no support. But either way, cave he did.

And once he settled, it meant that the Writers Guild had to too, because, a small union can't afford to stand up to Goliath all by itself. Even though Goliath in this case is named David and he is tiny and pathetic, he's still, kinda big and scary in a legal way. And I just have to reiterate how disastrous the repercussions of this is gonna be.

Because Paramount had to take on massive, massive debt in order to purchase Warner Brothers, so to service that debt they are going to have to lay off- Thousands and thousands of people. They're gonna have to make less movies. They're gonna have to make them more cheaply, and they're gonna do all of that at a time when people are loving movies more than ever.

The movie industry is resurging. Meanwhile, Paramount just shot it in the head. Of course, a Trump allied family of billionaires now controls two news networks. 

Oh, and here's a new fun piece of news that came out on the day I'm recording this. The Ellisons are talking about bringing on Elon Musk as an investor in Paramount/Warner Brothers. Ooh, I can't wait to watch some movies based on 4chan memes from 2015.

But come on, we gotta give the capitalists some credit. There's gotta be one good thing about this merger. Let's see. We got less jobs, less movies, foreign interference in our entertainment and news businesses. Oh, at least David Zaslav got to walk away with half a billion dollars. Now he can afford to buy sleeves for all his stupid vests.

jokes aside, honestly, what's most disheartening to me about this is that at the end of the day, we didn't even fight at all. Bonta could have stretched the case out. He could have taken it to trial. At least he could have made them wait until the new year, make them start paying a little bit of that ticking fee.

Probably could have extracted more from them in a settlement later if he had just made them sweat for a couple months. But now, instead of showing corporate America that they'll get pushback if they try to do an illegal merger, it showed them that if they push back just a little bit, make a few threats, commission a biased study, lean on a couple electeds, well They don't have to obey the law.

They won't be punished. They can just do what they want. The rest of us go to prison if we shoplift deodorant, but hey, if you're a billionaire who owns a major corporation and you don't wanna follow the law, just threaten your way out of it and they'll let you off the hook. frankly, I think that every politician who supported this merger should feel humiliated by all of this.

I think if you're the governor of California, the attorney general of California, even the mayor of Los Angeles, you're not supposed to let a couple of jumped up corporate executives push you around. You're supposed to say, "Shut up, bitch. I represent the state of California. I represent 39 million people.

I represent the sixth-largest economy in the world. You're not bigger than me. I tell you what to fucking do." But that's not what they did, and that's not what happened. The billionaires got their way this time, and they barely even had to try. We barely put up a fight, and that's not how, this story is supposed to end, in my opinion.

I, I think we the people are still supposed to be stronger than the boss when we raise our voices, like the American public did against this merger. It was supposed to be like the end of A Bug's Life, where all the ants rally together and realize that combined they're stronger than those grasshoppers.

But in this case, the grasshoppers cut a backroom deal with Dot, and both said, "Fuck all you ants." go re-watch A Bug's Life. It'll, it'll make sense if you, keep the plot in mind. But, at the same time, it's good- that this isn't a movie. It's good that life isn't a movie, because it doesn't end.

the fight is not actually over. We lost this battle, but the only way we can lose the war is if we let it make us lose hope. Because the truth is that the bitter irony of this is that this merger could have been blocked, and that means that we got closer than we ever have before. We saw vividly that collective action, as expressed through our public representatives, can actually stand up to power and stop bad people from doing bad shit.

It just so happens that in this case, the public representatives let us down. But that doesn't mean that they have to in the future. The billionaires want us to believe that their power is inevitable and that we can't stop them, but we can. And in fact, the reason this is such a bitter loss is that we know that we can.

There is no law of the universe that the sky is blue and David Ellison gets whatever the fuck he wants, no matter how many jobs it kills. We do not have to live like this, and we know it. But if we want things to change, it is up to us at the end of the day. We need to start punishing spineless leaders who sell us out and support...

Damn it. Right in the middle of my big speech, I fucking burp. Okay, fu- let's try it again. We do not have to live like this, but if we want things to change, it is up to us. We need to start punishing the spineless leaders who sell us out, and start supporting those who actually show willingness to stand up to corporate power.

Leaders like Nithya Raman, who's running for mayor of Los Angeles right now, and who came out strongly against the settling of this lawsuit. And leaders like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, that's how you gotta say it, who has shown he is not afraid of corporate power, and that he recently forced DoorDash to pay drivers $130 million in lost wages, and who also appointed antitrust guru Lina Khan into his actual administration.

We need to let our political system know that we do not wanna vote for leaders who consider themselves to be less powerful than the billionaires. We wanna vote for leaders who are gonna represent the people's interest and kick billionaire ass.

Employer-sponsored health insurance is the dangling carrot that keeps a lot of Americans stuck in jobs they'd rather not have. But I was young and healthy. Maybe I could risk going without it for a while. In the autumn of 2022, I injured my foot, broke my finger, and had an appendicitis requiring emergency surgery all within a three-week period.

I was actually on my way home from the orthopedic surgeon who had set my broken finger when my stomach started hurting. 24 hours later, the good folks at Kaiser Permanente on Sunset Boulevard were pumping me with morphine and prepping me for laparoscopic . I had happened to have injured the foot while at work, so Universal paid me out workers' comp for the entirety of my recovery, which ended up being several weeks due to the broken bone.

Wizards don't wear stints or casts, so I wasn't signed off to come back until I was fully healed. The branding in that part of the park is so strict, it's unbelievable. We also aren't allowed to have traditional signage on the strict orders of Ms. Rowling, which was why we had a number of guests with sensitivity to flashing lights unwittingly enter the wand room only to discover that one of the spells had a slight strobing effect.

Warnings are technically posted in the Universal app, but you have to download and check that first to know what you're in for. Suddenly, I was faced with what I would be giving up if I left Universal. There was no way I could risk not having insurance. Accidents happen. Your body can turn on you at any moment.

We need health insurance. My fiance works dangerous jobs up on ladders and doesn't take care of his body as well as I nag him to. He and I would like to start a family together someday, and I'm not just gonna raw dog pregnancy and childbirth without a physician Is that even legal? Actually, I live in the US.

Don't answer that question. Even beyond the health insurance angle, by going fully freelance, I'd be losing things like workers' comp or even the unemployment insurance Universal paid into and I was able to collect when hours were cut during the off-season. I wanted to leave, but I needed to make sure all of my ducks were in a row before I made the jump.

In early 2023, I took professional leave for an international tour. When the tour concluded, I thought to myself, I'd leave. It would be over. But while on tour, I was assaulted, and I needed therapy. The touring company covered my mental and physical healthcare while I was with them, but I still needed care when I returned from tour with a case of COVID and continuing anxiety and depression that led to a mild substance abuse problem.

I was, as the kids say, going through it, and I couldn't bring myself to add poverty and unemployment to my long list of problems. Time passed, and things got a little better, but there were always reasons to hang on, reasons I needed to stay. Time and time again, I prioritized my own safety and comfort over doing what I thought to be right.

I was stalling. For literal years, I was waiting for the right moment to stand for my principles. All the while, the rhetoric around trans people became louder, my desire to leave became stronger, and my shame around staying became a heavy weight that I carried with me. I wore a COVID mask in all of my shows, the only real accessory we were permitted by the Warner Brothers branding department to wear.

Partly, I was trying to maintain some small amount of COVID consciousness while working at a theme park with tens of thousands of guests a day, but also, I was simply ashamed to show my face in the Harry Potter world I slipped down the roster at work. I gave away shifts even though I needed the money. I felt deeply unhappy and dirty.

I talked to some of my trans and queer friends about it. They said they didn't care. It was more important to them that I had healthcare and could pay my rent than if somewhere along the line J.K. Rowling made a few pennies off of a theme park toy some kid was going to buy whether I was working there or not.

I'd made no real progress. My Patreon stagnated. Busy months at work meant my channel and any revenue from videos remained inconsistent. I'd never managed any savings, so for a little bit, I harbored this delusional idea that Harry Potter was actually declining in popularity, that it was this corny thing people in their 30s and 40s liked, but that most actual kids these days found boring.

I was convinced that the new HBO series announced was a planned tax write-off. there was no reason to make it. It looks nearly identical to the movies that concluded a little over 10 years ago. It was obvious to me that this TV show was going to be quietly shelved, and then some executive somewhere were going to do some kind of magic to claim the identical sets and identical screenplays and salaries paid to identical actors at a loss to the tune of many millions of dollars and a brand-new yacht.

Any day now, they'd announce that the wizarding world of Harry Potter would be converted into How to Train Your Dragon Land or Roblox Planet or Cocomelon World or whatever. I was huffing copium like my life depended on it. And then

Motherfucker. I was recently re-watching a video by my favorite YouTubers, The Leftist Cooks, in which Sarah said something that really made me think. She locked eyes with me through the screen and called me out mercilessly with... 

like how when you're walking, all of the drivers are maniacs, and when you're driving, all of the pedestrians are clueless.

When you've been harmed, we may be really dead set on justice, but when we've perpetuated harm, suddenly our values shift. 

I had spent years rationalizing and minimizing my participation in something to which I was diametrically opposed. I was directly enabling the reigning god queen of transphobia, Joanne Rowling, a woman who openly admits that she uses her private wealth from Harry Potter royalties to fund transphobic hate groups.

And in the meantime, the quiet complacency of people exactly like me emboldened her. Those of us who shrugged and vapidly recited the truism, "There's no ethical consumption under capitalism," those of us that shook our fists and continued to make her money while telling ourselves that we actually aren't to blame for the harm she might cause with the fruits of our labor, the labor we performed in her trademarked billion-dollar wizard village.

Every day that I set aside my own values or carved out caveats for myself, her voice grew louder, bolder, more hateful. Every day that people like me didn't take a stand, she assumed that we were quietly supporting her, affirming her beliefs, a silent majority of bigots. Many of my coworkers, maybe even most of them, didn't have a choice.

If they left Universal, they'd find themselves slinging lattes for genocide heirs like Starbucks or selling Harry Potter merchandise alongside rifles at Walmart for less money and no healthcare. But I already knew that I had a way out, and even if I wasn't quite ready, if I just took a leap, I would find my feet.

Hello all. It is with a heavy heart that I submit my resignation from my position as wand keeper at Universal Studios. I have loved working for the company for the past five years, and I've found many parts of my position as wand keeper for the past four years incredibly valuable and fulfilling.

However, given JK Rowling's ongoing and overt hostility to the queer community and to the hateful trajectory of her rhetoric, I have felt deeply uncomfortable and conflicted working a position that directly benefits her. It has gotten to a point where I'm afraid to be seen in costume in the land because I don't want to be associated with her, and I'm ashamed at what my trans friends and loved ones would think.

That being said, I really cherished my time at Universal Studios Hollywood, and I'll keep an eye out for future opportunities with the company outside of the wizarding world. Okay, well, that part isn't quite true. I think I am subscribed to their casting emails. But I wanted to underscore the idea that I wasn't disgruntled with Universal or my role as an entertainer, rather that I specifically quit because of Joanne.

Thank you for the memories, me. So that took me an embarrassingly long time to do, shamefully. I should feel shame. I do feel shame, and if you wanna shame me further, if you wanna log on to your favorite social media app and cancel me or whatever, go right ahead. Throw some more shame on the pile. I don't want this to be a YouTube apology video because I don't wanna center myself in a discussion that is fundamentally about trans people.

So this is not a YouTube apology video. I am sorry. I do apologize for working at literal Harry Potter Land. there really is no good excuse, much as I tried to make them. I feel remorse over having prioritized a day job over my own moral character for as long as I had. I feel sincere guilt over the mere idea that there might be someone watching this and feeling hurt or betrayed by my actions, and I wish I could spare you that pain.

But I'm not going to self-flagellate, and I wanna make it clear that I am not looking for anybody's forgiveness. That is not the conclusion I am working towards here. Let's return for a moment to Sarah the Leftist Cook. 

Our emotions are supposed to be socially useful. We feel guilt and remorse and pain because something has to change.

I know that there are some of you out there still engaging with Harry Potter. I know because I have a Harry Potter video with 1.7 million views at the time of this writing, and I've seen all your comments. I know because I've been in the room with willfully clueless millennials asking why we aren't ready to forgive Joanne for a handful of bad tweets.

I know because I know people who reread the books year after year. I know because I've worked with people who resent JK Rowling, but quietly clock in day after day, helping her make her billions. And the time has long since passed when we can remain ignorant of what it really is that we are supporting.

We've just heard clips starting with

Life Is A Story exploring how 'The Zone of Interest' shows ordinary people, not monsters, profiting from mass murder next door while overcompensating to convince themselves nothing is wrong.

Democracy Now! traced how ABC's settlement with Trump set a precedent for censorship by lawsuit, with Musk ready to bankroll frivolous cases meant to keep the press quiet.

Jessie Gender described how Warner Bros. is making Harry Potter so unavoidable that fans accidentally fund Rowling's attacks on trans people, then feel too complicit to object.

PissedMagistus rejected the idea that Ed Sheeran could stay politically neutral after stadium owner Robert Kraft threatened to keep him off the stage unless he dropped Macklemore over his support of Palestine.

Velshi argued that American culture, from journalism to film, has been complicit in dehumanizing Palestinians, making apartheid invisible by erasing them from view.

Adam Conover detailed how California's Attorney General caved on the Paramount-Warner Brothers merger, accepting a toothless settlement after publicly vowing to demand real structural changes.

And Hoots Hootman laid out how the fear of losing employer health insurance kept the them working for JK Rowling at Universal's Harry Potter land for years.

And those were just the top takes, there's lots more in the deeper dives sections,

We can only make this show with your support and that includes following us on all the platforms you use. Check out our link in bio right in the show notes for every place to follow us and every way to support us, including one-time donations.

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I sometimes ask discussion questions but you should also feel free to respond to anything you heard on the show.

Here's today's question:*

Historian Timothy Snyder warns against obeying in advance, when people give up something before anyone even asks them to. Have you either witnessed something like that happening or actively resisted it because you recognized it? This could be a workplace, a school, a family or a group you've been part of. Tell us what you saw and what happened next.

If you'd like your comments included in the show you can record a voice message or email us through our link in bio in the show notes,

On that note, my thoughts for today.

We're talking today about the structures of complicity. What are the elements of society and of humanity that cause people, time and again, to go along with ideas they know are bad and support policies they know are harmful? So, I want to talk today about one possible antidote.

When the idea of people following the crowd is talked about, it's rare that any suggestion is made of what you should do if you find yourself in that situation, other than to resist the urge to follow with everyone else because you can see through the fog. That's a recipe for finding individual heroes while guaranteeing that the vast majority of people will go along unthinkingly with the crowd, because willpower alone is not a strategy.

One good piece of advice is to decide ahead of time what lines you refuse to cross, though that's only part of it. The real functional part of the strategy for resisting thoughtlessness or group mentality that goes in the wrong direction is to decide on your limits AND tie yourself to a community of people ahead of time so that you never have to be in the position of making a decision to stand apart from the crowd by yourself.

There's a famous study from the 1950s by the psychologist Solomon Asch that tested how far people will follow the crowd against their own better judgment. A group of eight would sit in a room, but seven of them were actors, only one was the real subject. Their task was to look at a line and say which of three comparison lines matched its length. It was very simple, and the answer was obvious. When people were tested alone, essentially everyone got it right. The test was run several times in a row with different sets of lines.

For this experiment, the actors all gave the same wrong answer out loud before the test subject was asked for theirs. The result was that three out of four subjects went along with the group's wrong answer at least once. Only one in four held their ground every time. Some went as far as to say that they knew they were answering incorrectly but didn't want to look stupid. Others said that, hearing everyone agree, they actually started to doubt their own eyes.

In a nutshell, this is basically the whole trick of authoritarianism. One of their major strategies is to present themselves as inevitable and have their supporters endlessly echo their talking points. People with no strong ideology might be swayed by it from pure repetition, and opponents are cowed into compliance by the fear that they are in the minority and will be punished for standing up against the authoritarians.

In the lab setting, the test subjects were only risking looking foolish by giving their honest answer. In an authoritarian state, the stakes are genuinely higher. So, with all of this working against you, telling people to be ready to stand up against the crowd is a nice idea, but there's a key detail that's missing.

Asch then ran the experiment again with one change, which was to have just one of the other seven actors tell the truth. With a single ally in the room, the pull of the group collapsed. Subjects went along with the wrong answer given by the majority only about a quarter as often as before, simply because one other person was willing to say out loud what was clearly true, what anyone could see, and that was all it took to break the hold of herd mentality.

We are fundamentally social animals, for better and for worse. Looking to those around us to see how to act is hardwired.

In evolutionary terms, this worked out well because it meant you'd also run away from the tiger, even if you're not the one who saw it. That's why it's far less effective to try to fight our wiring head on. You don't want to try to willpower your way past your social wiring, you should trick it with stronger social connections to draw on.

In other words, the antidote for the risk of following group mentality is to have that one other person who sees the truth with you and gives you the strength to resist the urge to follow.

The advice from Timothy Snyder to not obey in advance has been ubiquitous on the left for years as we have watched Trump's authoritarianism rise to power. The detail that's been missing, or at least underemphasized, is that we shouldn't be expected to do that on our own.

When Odysseus in the Odyssey was warned about the sirens song, he knew not to try to depend on willpower and depended on his crew to get them through. He had them put wax in their own ears and tie him to the mast, ordering them to tie him even tighter if he begged to be released. He heard the siren song, he begged, the crew followed the orders that had been given in advance, and they made it through. The key detail is that they decided in advance and depended on one another.

I talk a lot about how capitalism drives people apart and encourages thoughtless consumer purchases, but ironically, the system will also sell you this same advice for making better decisions as well. Everyone from productivity experts in the business world to fitness trainers promising to get you to exercise advises this exact dynamic, they call it having an "accountability buddy." If you lived in a village of a hundred people, you never needed that advice because there was always someone who would know if you'd made a plan and then failed to follow through on it. Today, we have to make the conscious decision to let people know about our plans so that the power of those social dynamics can help us stick closer to our ideals.

The full-strength version of this dynamic is a union, a tenants' association, or any kind of organized group that has come together for the purpose of building power through solidarity, but you don't have to start a union to get the benefits. If you want to take Timothy Snyder's advice and not comply with authoritarians in advance, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with someone. Decide for yourself what line you won't cross, and then tell someone because that's what creates a new pathway for our social animal instincts to follow.

In concrete terms, if you love Harry Potter but have decided that you think it's unethical to give money to the franchise, tell one or more people about your decision and explain that you're sharing because you want to be held accountable.

Engaging an accountability buddy for matters of ethics and resistance to authoritarianism is like having that ally who also sees the truth in the room with you all the time. That's how to tie yourself to the mast. We strengthen our individual resolve and capacity for action by binding ourselves to others and using the power of our social instincts to make us act in ways that will make our friends proud of us.

If you'll indulge a quick aside on the spectrum-spanning appeal of power through collectivism, I found this quite interesting.

The word "fascism" comes from Italian words describing the binding together of things. Fascio described a band of people in Italian politics, and the Fasci Siciliani were leagues of peasants binding themselves together for the same basic reasons the left still advocates power through collectivism today. When Mussolini founded the movement in 1919 that became the National Fascist Party two years later, the name drew on that same Latin root, and the party took as its emblem another linguistically related object, the fasces. It was a bundle of individual rods bound together around an axe as a symbol of power in ancient Rome; the rods for the threat of beating and the axe for beheading. That's authoritarianism in one symbol that idealizes a single group, strongly bound together, under the threat of punishment by the state.

But like most symbols that stand the test of time, the fasces can be interpreted in different ways and doesn't have to be about the power to punish. It has also long been used in the US to symbolize the union of the states since way before Mussolini. The Lincoln Memorial is entirely themed around the preservation of the Union and there are 10-foot tall fasces outside Lincoln's temple and his chair features a fasces on each arm rest, though those on the chair left off the axes to emphasize peaceful unity without the element of violence.

So the left, right, and center all see the value and power of being bound together. But when authoritarians gain power, their reflex is to focus more on the axe than the bundle, to punish their enemies and threaten the opposition. So, when that happens, you must be ready for the abuse of state power with the spine-stiffening version of solidarity that comes from declaring ourselves to one another and drawing strength from the connections we make.

The looming threat of authoritarianism doesn't show up as one big, overwhelming crowd. It's thousands of small situations where people largely decide how to act by looking at those around them for guidance on what they should do. In every one of those scenarios, a single person who has decided on their convictions ahead of time, and has given themselves the strength to act on them by having shared them with someone else, can be the one person in the room who's willing to speak the truth and break the spell of the crowd, short circuiting the reflex to obey in advance.

And now, we'll continue to dive deeper on 4 topics today. First up;

Section A, Lessons From Nazi Germany

Followed by Section B, Complicity in Gaza; Media, Governments, and Celebrities

Section C, The Myth of Neutrality; Media, Moderates, and Obeying in Advance

And Section D, Fandom, Consumption, and Personal Reckoning

many people who fled Nazi Germany or who were in the Holocaust couldn't retain a lot of personal items, and the way that Jacob got this photo is really interesting.

it's a story he actually told me when I was first hired at the museum in 1997. In that year, Jacob got a letter from his old friend Gunther, whom we've already mentioned who's in the photograph. Jacob had just returned from a trip to Bremen. City officials had invited him for a Holocaust observance in Bremen, and he visited the city for the s- first time since they fled, and Gunther reached out afterwards to say he was sorry for having missed Jacob's visit, and he sent this picture along as a reminder of how close they had been.

Now remember, Gunther's parents worked right next to Jacob's, Jacob's, s- shop, his father's shop, and Gunther knew about the murder of Jacob's beloved mother at the hand of the Nazis. In his letter, Gunther wanted to make it clear to Jacob that, quote, "He had never touched a Jew." when Jacob wrote back, he asked Gunther what his life had been like during the war, and Gunther wrote that he'd been a guard in a concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen, which is not so far away from Bremen.

He then emphasized he had never, quote, "Never touched a Jew," and Jacob wanted to learn more. He wanted to ask why that job, why he took that job, and whether he thought it was okay to imprison and kill Jews, whether that was acceptable. But Gunther never responded again to his letters 

So he cared enough about this friendship with Jacob and his brother Benno to hold on to this photo all these years.

Right. To make the contact, but clearly was wrestling with a lot of, of feelings about other choices that he made. And I think it's, very fascinating and difficult to try to imagine the calculations that must have been going through the minds of people like Gunther and millions of other Germans to make those choices.

People who had personal friendships, even caring relationships with Jews, and then later became actively complicit in their persecution. 

Right. 

in the case of Gunther, we don't know, right, if his claim about not committing violent acts is true or not, right? 

Right. Exactly. We don't know. We only have his word.

Yeah, and it's how he chose to portray himself to his old friend. Patricia, we both knew Rabbi Weiner because he was a volunteer at the museum in the later part of his life, and that gives particular insights into this story and this, personal history. I'm gonna pause again, though, to welcome viewers we have, Patricia, watching from around the world.

tuning in from Malta, from the United Kingdom, from Canada, from the city of Montreal, and from Lublin in Poland. We are so glad that you are with us today. So Patricia, we were just saying that, you knew Rabbi Weiner as a older man when he was volunteering, but it goes beyond that for you, the story of his history, because not only do you understand, his family's, plight through the eyes of historian, but you also have your own familial ties to this region of Germany.

you had relatives who lived on the outskirts of this port city. Tell us a little bit about that personal connection. 

Right. My grandfather came from a family of middle-class farmers who lived in the countryside outside Bremen, as you said, Edna, where Rabbi Weiner, once lived. my grandfather immigrated to the United States in October 1923 at the height of hyperinflation in Germany, and that month as he sailed to America, a slice of bread literally cost thousands of German marks.

And so you see a photograph of my family at one of my great aunt's weddings in the summer of 1938, just a few months before Kristallnacht. And while my grandfather became a, an American citizen actually in 1993, and all the time this, history, starts, all of his siblings and parents, my great-grandparents, experienced the Nazi rise and World War II firsthand.

They were like many Germans who found some of those messages of Nazi, Nazi rhetoric and Nazi messages about the future appealing. They wanted a strong leader to save their failing economy. They wanted a stable government. in the letters, in the time before Hitler comes to power, there'd been three chancellors in, so three rulers in less than three years.

And in a letter before the Nazis come to power, my great-uncle, one of my grandfather's brothers, wrote, "I'm sorry, dear Henrik, that I've been out of touch, but we're voting every five minutes." Because in those days, of course, the Nazi governments rose and... sorry, before the Nazi, the Weimar governments rose and collapsed, and they ruled by emergency decree.

There was no stability. And I suspect that my relatives may not have known any Jewish people at all. It was a rural area. and that as with many individuals in that area, antisemitism would not have been a primary draw, but certainly a stable economy was 

it's such a beautiful family portrait.

That wedding, the gorgeous veil, the clothes, and it's hard to know that, this is not everyone's experience living in Germany at the time. Absolutely. I, I'm wondering though, Patricia, thinking about your grandfather, he's an ocean away from all of his siblings, his parents, as he watches these convulsions happening in his home country.

Patricia, did you ever talk with your grandfather about what happened in Germany after he left and the choices of his loved ones? 

Yeah, I'm just going to say that's a picture of myself when I was 10 with my grandparents and my grandfather next to me. I was in my late teens and began studying, German history, and one day I said to him, "Grandpa, you would never have been a Nazi because you're such a good guy."

And he said to me, "Oh, oh, yes, I would have been. I would have been a young man in 1933 with many people around me who were members of the Nazi Party. They would have influenced me and drawn me in." And I... That moment really opened my eyes. I think that's one reason I'm sitting here as an historian at our National Holocaust Museum.

I, I understood for the first time that ordinary people, even good people, could be swept away to, to listen to a demagogue like Hitler, to support a regime that committed so many crimes in their name. 

What a, a powerful moment, and thank you, Patricia, for sharing that. It's an intimate moment, but clearly also very impressive that your grandfather was an honestly self-reflective person and could say, "I don't think that I necessarily would've been different than anyone else."

Mm-hmm. I think you honor him, if I may say, by your very, You don't avoid when you're looking at the history, and you look at it in a human and honest way. 

Thank you. 

your comments are also resonating with our viewers. A viewer named Kate writes, "I think these stories are so important to learn from these periods of history.

I wish I could talk to my great-grandparents and ask questions." And Kate, I think many of us feel that way, either remembering conversations that we've had about uncomfortable history or- Yeah ... questions we wish we could have asked. another viewer, Patricia, is answering a question I'd like to pose to you.

Theresa writes to ask, "Do you think there was an entire absence of a moral compass among some?" How would you answer that big, big questions? 

Well, I think we're going to get to some of that in our conversation here today, but clearly there are a lot of reasons why people look away from this as it goes on ar- around them.

Many people are absorbed in themselves, especially during wartime. my family was being bombed. They, part of the family lived in the port city of Bremerhaven above Bremen and, you get caught in a... Your- your- your husband's at war and whatever, so you look inward, and you don't care as much about the people around you.

But I think there are also people that were very callous, and certainly there were people who did buy into antisemitism, who were antisemites or, or who did buy into this ideology. so there's many motives for supporting the Nazi regime as there are individuals, I think.

Here's the problem. The excerpt says pretty explicitly that the Weimar Republic's multi-party democracy and proportional representation were asking for trouble, and the trouble they got was Adolf Hitler.

After that, it frankly delivers a standard issue history of Hitler's rise, peppered with occasional assertions about democracy. The authors then move you through presidential elections, parliamentary elections, presidential appointments, emergency decrees, intimidation, and dictatorship without much of an explanation of what Weimar's version of democracy actually has to do with any of it.

And it all leads you to a conclusion that voting matters because doing it wrong could lead to the rise of a tyrant who makes voting not matter, essentially. The actual argument is a little confusing as they lay it out, and the author's own facts run the other way, which makes it even more confusing. In the last free election, November 1932, German voters did exactly what the authors ask of voters.

The Nazis lost 2 million votes and 34 seats. The electorate turned out. The vote worked. Hitler was appointed chancellor anyway less than three months later by a president who despised him through a constitutional structure that let a handful of men around Hindenburg, the president, hand the chancellorship to the loser of the voters' verdict.

The votes counted. The structure of power counted more. And we need to dwell on that for a moment. A conservative president began ruling by decree, veering from one decision to another, one appointment to another, all to serve the interests of the right. Voters rejected Hitler for president. Hindenburg then used the authority of the presidency to appoint him head of government because conservative politicians believed that he would help keep them in power.

Hitler's support on the far right mattered, but it didn't compel that decision. Then in the next election in November '32, the Nazi vote dropped, and the authors, for some reason, ignore that detail in a piece about how and why voting matters. Those votes counted, but the structure of power counted more So whatever lesson about the Weimar Republic the authors want you to apply in your life, it might be worth us taking the real lesson that Germans took from it to apply to their lives after the catastrophe of the Third Reich.

What German reformers recognized after the catastrophe, taking a hard look at what actually produced it, was that the problem with Weimar wasn't a political one. Electing new and better people was not the solution. The problem was structure, how power was organized and arranged, and who got to wield it.

Changing that structure was the work that needed to be done. So with a chance to create an entirely new system, look at what they actually did with what became the Basic Law, Germany's constitution. Because Germany drew the opposite lesson from the one the authors seem to want you to take away. They didn't reject multi-party democracy.

They didn't reject proportional representation. They leaned into them. What they changed was the power of the executive, and they added checks on extremist politics. They took the power to choose a chancellor away from the president and moved it to an election by parliament. The president's role became just a formality.

Parliament could remove a chancellor only by electing a replacement. That addressed a specific problem. A collection of parties might agree on bringing down a government without agreeing on any government that could succeed it. The new arrangement gave representative government a more stable foundation while practically erasing the president's ability to act independently of it.

They also introduced thresholds to address polarization, extremism, and political fragmentation. A party needs to achieve at least 5% of the vote to become an active participant in the federal system of representation in parliament to keep out the splinter parties. And a court can rule a party unconstitutional, which it did to a Nazi successor party in 1952 and to the communists in 1956.

It can prohibit parties seeking to destroy the democracy. The relevant distinction, though, is between allowing political disagreement and enabling an organized extremist movement to use democratic freedoms to abolish those freedoms. And the result of all this reduction of executive authority and empowerment of democracy?

Germany has had only 10 chancellors since 1949 against 14 in almost 14 years of Weimar, and it's been stable, even strong, as a democracy ever since. Germany retained proportional representation and multi-party competition while changing the arrangements through which governments acquired and exercised power Proportional multi-party systems also became enduring figures of democratic government across much of Europe to right now.

And that history gives us good reason to question even the suggestion that allowing more voices into representative government was itself the problem that gave rise to something like Hitler. The pattern points one direction about lessons learned and then applied. The danger was never too much democracy.

It was concentrated executive power with too few checks on it. Which brings the lesson home, because concentrated executive authority is our problem, too. The Anti-Federalists railed against it in the ratification debates. It was the center of political discussion in the 1970s after Watergate. A powerful executive, a winner-take-all system that narrows the people's voice into two parties and two parties only.

Checks that depend entirely on those we elect to be willing to use them, and a political culture that commands that you do not ever suggest changing that power structure, no matter what happens. Shift the deck chair is fine, but don't look at the sinking ship. Our only option is political change and then hope for the best.

But oddly, it's where Bash and Fisher's excerpt ends by telling us that Hitler's rise shows how democratic institutions can be perverted for individual gain. After all that about democracy, they arrive at a warning about an ambitious man exploiting democracy. The real election of Weimar for this election is not vote harder or vote knowing it will impact who comes next.

It's that the act of voting isn't the win. What elections do and what the people you elect do with the structure of power, that's what changes things. Germany learned that through catastrophe. You shouldn't have to. The people you elect should commit to reducing the power of the executive, to widening the ways people's voices get heard through more parties and proportional representation, and to building controls on democracy's enemies that don't damage democracy itself.

That is the lesson learned by those who paid the highest possible price for it. And arguments like Bash and Fisher's aren't just wrong, they're in your way. "Your vote matters" sounds like good civic medicine, but as the complete lesson of Hitler's rise, it does real damage. It spends your attention on the political, turnout, candidates, the next cycle, while the structural problem sits untouched.

And it teaches that when voters do their job, democracy is saved, job done. And if it's a familiar establishment nationalism, citizens are summoned to defend their country by participating in its inherited democratic institutions with little encouragement asked whether those institutions actually work for democracy.

Voters receive a stern assignment, and the people seeking their votes escape any demand to explain what they will change after they get the votes. That's leaving an awful lot on the table. Those demands have to apply to the people you want to win. You should know what institutional changes they intend to pursue and how you can hold them to those commitments after the campaign ends, when they hold the power you have given them, power that comes from you in the first place.

German voters did their job in November 1932. The structure overrode them. A history that hides that fact behind a get out the vote moral isn't preparing Americans for what your votes are up against. It's making sure you never ask. The work voting needs to do, electing people who will change how power is structured, begins with knowing that's the assignment.

The act of voting is not the win. You want to know how your vote can matter for future generations? By helping change your government so that those future generations don't have to learn Weimar's lesson the way the Germans and all of the Third Reich's victims did.

Next, Section B, Complicity in Gaza; Media, Governments, and Celebrities

If you are a leftist, if you are a progressive, if you are a liberal, if you are some- someone center-left, an independent, someone anywhere who is not a Republican, a right-winger, far right, nationalist, Nazi, white supremacist, if you're anywhere left of center, it's really fucking easy, really fucking easy to understand what's going on here and be against the Israeli government and what they're doing to the Palestinian people.

And here's why. Their government is a far right-wing government. Their government was emboldened by Donald Trump Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu were, are besties.

So I mentioned earlier how, the famous music star Halsey shared a, speech on Israel and Palestine from Michael Brooks on her Twitter. And, she clearly watched the interview because she tweeted out a quote from it that isn't in the title. She put, "It's not complicated," by Michael Brooks, and then with a link to the YouTube video.

And she put the whole video up, but I really wanted to just play this portion specifically 'cause Michael was always on point. well, not always, to be fair. when it came to my wheelhouse, Michael, wasn't always on point. But with everything else when it came to international issues, especially in the Mideast, and, and he was really into, African, South African politics too, but especially in the Mideast, Michael just had a knowledge, that, honestly, would always astound me.

I was always so impressed. He clearly was very, not just interested in what was going on there, he felt... Iit, it really did feel like he, he, he wanted to know more 'cause he felt some sort of connection, and y-you'll hear why in this video, why, why probably he, he, he was so knowledgeable on these things and why he read so much about Israel and Palestine.

Let me play this clip. It is from his speech, and it's... couldn't be any more prescient

And is supported? Or is- So, so it's not a complex issue. That's the big thing. It's super simple. There's one group that has enormous power. It's the most powerful country in the Middle East. It's backed by the United States. It acts on another population of people with total impunity and is never held accountable for anything.

So there's no symmetry in the relationship, period. And just as like a thought experiment, IDW people, if we know that if somehow a population of Jewish refugees ended up in West Bank in Gaza, and an Arabic government in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv had an open air prison in, in what, Jewish Gaza, which they bombed with white phosphorus, they killed civilians indiscriminately, and they had no, provisions for medicine, they had an embargo that blocked food, that the electricity wasn't running, that there was an over forty-eight percent unemployment rate, life expectancy and malnutrition statistics were horrifying.

The, one of the major, policymakers in this hypothetical Arabic Palestinian state said, "We need to put those Jews on a diet." In the West Bank, there was another Jewish area where there was a little bit more autonomy, but there was regular Arabic settlements where they pulled up the Jewish farmers' foods, they terrorized them with rocks, the security forces broke children's bones, and they couldn't drive their own roads.

We'd all have no problem understanding what that was. So there's nothing complex about it. The second part of your question... It's, it's a pure asymmetry relationship, and the question is rights or not. So that's it. It's not complicated 

that's, that's, that's, that really hits at everything. It really hits at everything, and obviously we could expand on each, but he, he gets it all in there.

And, the, the... Looking now what we're seeing is Israel can stop this at any time. they, they are the ones doing this. They are the ones in control here. They are the ones with the power here to just put a stop to this if they wanted to. But they don't want to. That's, it's clear they don't want to.

It's clear they don't want to. a right to defend themselves. we're, we're talking... when you look at the casualties, o- obviously I condemn the killing of any c- any, any innocent civilian 100%, no doubt about it. I don't care, Palestinian, Israeli, anyone, anywhere. Horrible. Condemn it completely. 

we have to be honest.

It's, it's welcome in the sense we've been demanding elements of accountability and all the rest of it, but I think there are gaps. I think we should, be wary of that. What, what's, what stands out for me is this is full-throated unequivocal about the settlements, and it separates illegal settlements from Israel as a whole and also Israel's actions in Gaza.

So if you're targeting the settlements and then saying, "We're gonna continue trade or we're gonna continue our relations and our agreements with Israel beyond the Green Line," and all the rest of it, then you're implying that, that, that they're, they're separate. But they're not. They're not outside Israel.

The project of ethnic cleansing, they're just part of its machinery. It's one way that it sustains the same strategic objective. So I think skepticism is, is, is fine. I d- I don't think we should be, screaming from the rooftops that this is, Britain has changed irreversibly and all the rest of it.

Bottom line being that we have had these kind of flagship announcements before. We had the arms exports, which were allegedly stopped, and yet F-35 components were still being shipped out to Israel as it was massacring Palestinians. we had the so-called Palestinian statehood announcement, which again, what did it change materially on the ground?

Nothing much. So that's why obviously diplomats themselves, British d- British diplomats have, acknowledged this may be symbolic, and that may be for political reasons they've said that. But the bottom line is that there is precedence. there is a precedent where they, it, Britain just changes a few things around the, skirts around the edges.

But you can't skirt around the edges of ethnic cleansing. You have to be categorical. and Israel, the state that is allowing and facilitating these illegal settlements is also Israel, the state that's recognized as an apartheid state and a state committing genocide. So you can't differentiate the two.

If you're gonna go all out, you have to go, and be comprehensive about it. 

with, with the settlements, a lot of people might think, well, w- w- people might, some people might go, "Well, I'm surprised we're doing trade with illegal settlements," which Britain officially, Britain has long... That's the, that's the official position of the British state.

They don't do anything about it. under David Cameron, the position Of Britain and the conservative governments under Rishi Sunak was that those statements, those settlements are illegal. So people might think, "Well, why are we doing trade with them?" You know what I mean. so what, what do you...

But at the same time, it's caused this big fury from the Israel lobby and from the Israeli state, so they're obviously rattled. So what do you make of all that? The kind of yes, on the one hand, what the hell are we doing any trade with illegal settlements and the kind of hysteria that's triggered. 

The thing is, if you say anything, they're gonna be rattled anyway, so that, that doesn't change it.

But obv- obviously, like I said, I am, I am caveating with the fact that this is a welcome shift. These are policies or introductions, or measures that we probably would've argued five, six year- years ago that would, would never be allowed, would never be sanctioned, et cetera. So that, that's obviously a positive.

But I just find it striking, it's like they're using the language of ethnic cleansing. Miliband, says, clear- clearly the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. But the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, refused to still say the word genocide in Gaza. And I'm not, I'm not nitpicking here, I'm just pointing out fact that the language does matter.

You can't keep claiming that what's happening in the West Bank is separate to what's happening in Gaza. It's being committed, facilitated, enabled by one state with one objective. The way that carries it out in, in the West Bank, is via the illegal settlements, the home demolitions, the occupation. It's ethnic cleansing.

The, the mechanism then changes in Gaza with remorseless pummeling and, and wholesale erasure, but it's still ethnic cleansing. It's still a genocide committed by the same state. So you either go comprehensively or you, or you don't do it at all, isn't it? Like it's, y- they are skirting around the edges a little bit.

But again, it's positive in, in the hope that we can, we can push them further, right? That's, that's what you, you, you, you ideally want, a scenario where this is the beginning of something rather than the end. but the, the evidence would suggest, that a- again, this will be something which in one or two years' time nothing else will change, but they'll say, "Ah, but we targeted the settlements."

But you didn't really. and it also won't be introduced for another six to nine months, which is I think worth pointing out. Miliband said that himself, which means how many homes will be destroyed by then? How many more illegal settlements will be erected in that time? How many more, how much more Palestinian land will be stolen?

How many more settler terrorists will kill Palestinians in that time? So it's about looking at it holistically and understanding, the scope of what's needed, as opposed to, once again, screaming from the rooftops that this is great, and then the oppression and the occupation intensifies. 

And in terms of that, that building on, he accepted the International Court of Justice ruling on the entirety of the occupation being unlawful.

this was the International Court of Justice. Those, just to be very clear, for those who don't know, it's the UN's highest court. It's the highest court on Earth, actually. They're obviously separately considering South Africa's case against Israel for the committing of genocide. But the fact that he accepted that ruling, 'cause then people, the obvious response is, well, actually, then lots of things flow from that, that you need to do.

So I suppose that, is that... That's an example, I guess. You accept, he's accepted the ICJ ruling in its entirety on that. Therefore, then we, people can go, "Well, if you've accepted that, then you've got to do this." 

Yeah, it's again, it's that half-hearted kind of approach, which again, it's, it's characterized Britain's approach from the beginning, like apologizing from the beginning about the, the approach on Gaza and then not really doing anything about it.

And this is, this is the same. It's like, well, we still stand by Israel as an ally. Israel's still... We, we still have these great agreements with them, as you said, supplying, military intelli- supplying intelligence, having these, these arm and sec- military and security deals. trade resumes as it is broadly outside of the settlements.

All of these different mechanisms that sustain the British and Israeli agreements still exist, but we're gonna target the, the, the illegal settlements. And again, this has been brought about because of the, the whole E1 project, and how much controversy has been surrounded. But again, these, these Israeli settlements have been, have been expanding for years.

They've existed for years. The, the, the state of Palestinian oppression, continues and, and, and continue to be perpetuated by the Israelis. And, and also, I think it's worth noting when they talk about upholding the two-state solution, that's a bit of a smoke screen as well. the two-state solution doesn't exist.

The upcoming elections, every candidate from left to right, the idea of these moderate Israelis, politicians, they, they are also stating that politically there won't be a Palestinian state. So then what's gonna be done about that, right? If you're, if you're committed to this. And as Milovan says, you don't stand in the way of this.

You don't want to allow and facilitate the destruction of the two-state solution. Then other measures have to be-- that have to come along with it. and that, that requires a much more comprehensive set of packages, which again, I'm, I'm skeptical that they'll introduce. 

Here's the thing about Ed Sheeran saying that he chooses to use his fame and platform as a place for safety and sanctuary. There is no such thing as safety and sanctuary from politics. Those two concepts are inherently political. I would argue they are at the crux of every political debate out there.

And ironically, the only thing Macklemore was doing on that stage was calling for the safety and sanctuary for an occupied people. There is no such thing as sanctuary in occupied land. There is no such thing as safety during a genocide. All he was calling for were those two things, and Ed Sheeran has the gall, the gall to come out and say that that is actually what he wants his fame, his platform, to be out here creating and doing.

Now, you can make the argument for time and a place, setting aside the fact that Ed Sheeran has very publicly been political on multiple occasions, so he doesn't actually seem to have a problem with that. I will be the first person to say that, sure, not every room is necessarily a room for a debate when we're talking about politics, not as a question of the air we breathe and the water we drink and the music we listen to and the concerts we can afford to attend, but rather a question of, certain legislation, representatives, et cetera.

I'm being real generous here, to be clear, because all of those things are connected. There is no just, drawing a line and saying, "This is political and this isn't." But let's say that we could do that, and let's say that, sure, not every room is a room for debate. I would argue that even if that is true, that even still, every room is in fact a room to be opposed to genocide You know what I'm saying?

it really is, it really is that simple. Every room is a room to be opposed to people being murdered. There's just, simple things here that I don't think should be chalked up to or dismissed as being inherently political, regardless of what some people want you to view it as. Because just chalking something up to being political or being a question of politics, and not in the sense that everything is, is just a way to reframe it from the get-go as something that is, in fact, debatable.

It's something that's up for debate, and we need, I think, to agree that certain things are just not up for debate. It is not my problem, quite frankly, that you think of people being murdered in the street as just politics. If I am, in fact, being political when I talk about those things, that means that you recognize that politics really isn't just a game, and it really isn't just a question of agreeing to disagree.

You yourself are recognizing that politics and that debate is a question of debating safety and sanctuary. It is a question of debating who gets to live or die. And I'm sorry, but you cannot have it both ways. Safety and sanctuary are the most infuriating and ridiculous words he and his team of writers, PR managers, lawyers, et cetera, could have chosen in this situation.

It's a standard media frame to start any conflict at the moment that, the aggressors want to start it. and so it-- When, when Israel, started the, the narrative and the, and the press, without, without any pushback whatsoever just kept saying that every time Israeli dropped a 2,000-- Israel dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on a refugee camp or a tent or a, a building killing numerous Palestinians in Gaza, they would say, "This is in retaliation for the October 7th attacks by Hamas that killed 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians."

It was like a mantra. And, and they, they could say that because of this media frame where, where all of the historical reporting, all of the reporting at all about Israel and Palestine was condensed into this narrative that began on October 7th. And by beginning on October 7th, then everything that Israel does is retaliatory.

it is in defense. It's a se- it's a security discourse, and in that way justified. What that frame leaves out, as you well know, Chris, is this history of, of build-up and aggression on the part of Israel, in Palestine that, as Rashid Khalidi has pointed out, is the 100-year war on Palestine. Just in, just in the 2000 teens, if you recall the-- Some of us may recall the Great March of Return, a peaceful, nonviolent protest at the wall that divides Gaza and Israel, and they were simply demanding the right to return to their homelands.

Israeli snipers on top of that wall shot into them aiming mostly at their legs. We know now that is, that the Israeli soldiers love to do target practice on Palestinians. They shot into their legs and their knees. They... 124 children, had to have amput- had to have, prosthetics. They killed... They injured 33,000.

They killed about 300 over the course of that time. So much so that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch appealed to the ICC to look into war crimes because it was, again, of course, disproportionate violence. They were in no way threatened, by peaceful Palestinians. And by the way, this wasn't organized by Hamas.

This was organized by civil society groups inside Gaza, and, and their, and their international allies. So, so those things are completely forgotten. We know in media studies that, that a conflict never simply starts, right? It has a long genesis of conflict that, that starts, that, that, that leads up to this, this one moment.

and of course, the other added benefit to that narrative, that, that, that falsified narrative, is that since there is no reason whatsoever for Hamas to attack the poor, innocent Israel They have to simply be terrorist, warmongering, the hypersexualized Oriental spoken about by Edward Said. All of the stereotypes, all of the demonization and dehumanization then is brought to bear, on, on, on what many consider, a resistance fighting group.

That's all I'll say. Thanks. Well, I was there for the founding of Hamas. I knew Abdul Aziz Rantisi, one of the co-founders of Hamas, along with Sheikh Yassin, and they were very clear that there was a national resistance group, which, was not-- it, it, the, it certainly was birthed out of the Muslim Brotherhood, but that they welcomed Christians, non-Muslim Palestinians.

that is how they defined themselves. October 7th wasn't enough. certainly atrocities were committed against Israeli civilians. No one is disputing that, but that wasn't enough for the Israelis. They had to, uh, ramp up the narrative, I want you to deal with this, with the claims that there were widespread sexual assaults, number one, and number two, and this was really reported by the Israeli press, there were significant numbers of Israeli citizens who were killed by the IDF, which just fired blindly, used attack helicopters and tanks, blowing up houses, in kibbutzes where, Hamas fighters were holding, Palestinian or, excuse me, Israeli, hostages or families.

They would just obliterate the whole house, firing on any car that was traveling back into Gaza, many of which, of course, probably had Israeli citizens attacking Erez, which is the border crossing between Israel and Gaza, just blowing up the whole center with Israeli soldiers that were being held captive by Hamas fighters inside.

October 7th had to be, even more, or at least the, the Israeli narrative had to paint October 7th as, as being, far more, brutal, far more savage than it actually was. And the Western media, in- unfortunately, including my old employer, The New York Times, danced to that tune and amplified those lies.

And I think even to this day, The New York Times has not retracted its, appalling story. I think it was called Screams Without Words or something, which was essentially reduced to being based on one source that, and the f- whole family recanted and said the woman wasn't raped, et cetera. But let's talk about that moment.

Right. The, the British filmmaker, Richard Sanders, who did a couple of documentaries, has done a few documentaries for Al Jazeera, one is October 7th, and he looked at oodles of footage, from, from the helmets of the fighters, and he, he, they, they, they really surveyed it. And he has a, a layout of how Hamas went in.

and of course they didn't initially, they didn't have any pushback from the Israelis. And you know what Richard Sanders points out is that Hamas had been posting on social media that they were practicing with the balloons, that they were basically gearing up to go into Israel. Now For some reason, the Israelis weren't prepared, even though they were prepared with their Hasbara, their propaganda, right away.

and so you have Netanyahu calling up then President Joe Biden telling him, "Oh, it was horrible. It was like the Holocaust. They, they tied up a bunch of infants, and they burned them alive. It was terrible. They, they chopped off their heads." This is the kind of atrocity propaganda you were pointing out, Chris.

This atrocity propaganda, this very same kind of thing where it hits you in the gut and it makes you so angry that you want to do something, that you say, "Go ahead, do, do whatever you want," because these people are beyond the human commun- community. They are inhuman as, as they followed up with that very dialogue, the Israeli spokespeople.

So, so they had to do that to make it s- to make the violence so horrifying that, that it would justify whatever Israel was about to do. atrocity propaganda, as I mentioned, goes back to World War I where we have the Germans' babies bouncing off bayonets. It goes, follows through historically to justify any war.

Then of course the first Gulf War where we had the Kuwaiti, m- member of the royal family testify before Congress that 300, over 300 babies had been thrown out of their incubators on the floor of the border of Kuwait and Iraq. So this is a, a border town, Chris. This is out in rural area. So just think about how many babies there could be premature babies in incubators.

Certainly not anywhere near 300. So right off, when we think about these in retrospect, we said, "Wow, how, how did, how could the media have perpetuated this kind of atrocity propaganda?" Also given, if you think about the legacy media, the establishment media in America, they're supposed to have their very best journalists on a story, right?

The New York Times, how much money does it have? How many, how many employees? 7% of, of American journalists are employed by the, by The New York Times. They're supposed to have seasoned journalists who can recognize atrocity propaganda. Instead, many outlets in the US repeated the 40 beheaded baby story and also across Britain and the Western

Ed Sheeran's band dropped out. It's been a big fallout. and I've been thinking about it ... I'm not even thinking, just feeling about it, I guess, because Macklemore lost his job because he spoke up, right? Because he said something, right? it feels like this is probably the biggest atrocity that, that we've witnessed in our lifetime, on our phones, right?

Seeing the, the killings and the people getting murdered, and the children getting killed, and the weaponry. And we had a doctor on who was talking about children getting shot right down through their bodies from drones. It's like the Israeli government, and I wanna say the government, not the people of Israel.

I'm not talking about them. I'm not talking about Jewish people. But the Israeli government has turned Gaza into, a video game, basically, for killing people. it's it's just, it's, it's this first-person shooter. They have all this technology 

as gross as all this is, if he wants to continue that metaphor, Theo Von, and you should see one of the final bosses who you had on your show, this guy This is why I can't take anything this man says seriously.

I remember watching him cry with Dr. Gabor Mate and being like, "Wow, that's incredible." This feels just like one of those moments where it broke through. Like he actually made him realize the humanity of, of an entire group of people, and in so doing, he was actually going to like-- he'd have to change the way he just does his life.

Like he can't just sit back and suddenly be like, "Jesus Christ, I never thought of it like that. I never thought of just the intergenerational trauma that we've created here, how there's just going to be decades and decades of children who, who grew up in, in such horrifying conditions that like-- that there's so, so many problems that's gonna come with that.

The, the, the, the amount of, psychosis, the amount of depression, the amount of anxiety, that, that all of these people unjustifiably have now been forever saddled with a- and then that we're going to now just expect them for, for decades and generations to come to, to ever have normal lives." And then you could see like the tears streaming down his face as that clicked, and he was like, "Holy shit, we have done unfathomable evil," And then what was it? a month later, he has on the fucking-- the Vice President of the United States. Th- this is one of the fucking chief architects right now who's directly supporting the genocide. just recently, how, how many bombs did Trump and the United States ship off to Israel to continue to massacre civilians over there?

And you just sit there and like you could tell that he was like getting anxious about it 'cause they were all buddy-buddy for the first forty or so minutes, and finally he's "Okay, so I gotta ask you about this. there, some people call it a genocide. I do, but I don't know if you do.

But anyways, I, I think what's going on over there is terrible a- and that it shouldn't happen, and it's a bad thing. What do you have to say about that?" And then immediately JD Vance is just "Oh, well, come on, and anyone can just, if you have a heart or conscience, tell you that what is happening is horrible.

It, it's one of the reasons why I now wanna talk about Ukraine, actually, and bring up Ukraine and just talk about Ukraine, maybe for the next ten or so minutes. So that's what I'm gonna do, and you're not going to correct me or, or actually bring this up again or do anything else other than just nod and say, 'Okie dokie.'

All right? That's what's gonna happen." And that's what happened, and then they just went back to being besties, went back to palling around. "

That's so great. I can talk to someone like you, You're just like my best friend. I really feel like I get to know you." 

And you're just like, "What the fuck, bro?"

And so then to come back now and then be like, so y- it is a genocide actually, a- and it is still bad, and, and we should talk about it, and it's, it's..." What's the best way for me to explain this? "It's like a video game, and oh, there's so many NPCs that are dying. It's so sad." 

And, and, a- and, and more specifically, the killing of children, right?

I mean, the killing of children. And every time that it's like Hamas is hiding That, that's Hamas and it's like that's a four-month-old. What, how can, he can't even w- walk. He couldn't even walk into a Hamas office and sign up, They're like, "He's hiding," or something like, he, what is he hi- he's hiding behind what?

His own tears because he, his mother is, missing? 

And what I find grossest about all this too is that a lot of these cowards are now getting, credit. People are being like, "Wow, it's just, it's so brave to see someone like Theo Von finally speaking up." this is just reflective of, I think, where a lot of the world's at, right?

Th- we've just seen through years of, of watching this unfold, but have you done shit all? Outside of have the Vice President of the United States to do, genocide propaganda on your fucking show using your platform. That's yours, right? He has no right to any of it. You are granting him that access to do that kind of shit.

But between him and then all these other podcast bros that are now starting to be like, "Yeah, shit's fucked, right? Is that... It, it seems like it's fucked." So yeah, oopsy doopsy. And then it's yeah, do something, anything. Y- fundraise some money. That, that would be a start.

That would be maybe trying to, wash your hands of some of the fucking blood. But, but what about the millions of people who listen to you? Can, can you galvanize them? Can you put that into direct action? Can you tell them to start writing to their governors, to their senators? Who is the local politicians in your area that are Zionists or genocide enablers?

Can you start applying pressure to them? Can you start getting your audience engaged in politics in any significant fashion? Can you start talking to them about doing things like direct action? Can you start talking to them about going to protests, like protests that are taking place right now in New York as the war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu is flying without any arrest or, or worry for his personal safety as he arrives there.

Are, are you gonna bring that up? Are you gonna talk about that? Are you gonna say that, "Hey, it's actually a noble thing that people are putting their lives on the line"? people like Elliot Page, people like Chelsea Manning, they are there right now. there are politicians who are there right now who are getting actively a- arrested.

There are celebrities who are there right now who are getting actively arrested. But to sit back from the comfort of the podcast and then just continue to be like, "Yeah, it's pretty bad. Like a video game."

Now, Section C, The Myth of Neutrality; Media, Moderates, and Obeying in Advance

I want to talk more about the media's role in helping Donald Trump win this, stunning upset victory. I want to turn to CBS CEO, Les Moonves, in a comment that has since gotten a lot of attention. He was speaking at a Morgan Stanley-hosted conference in San Francisco earlier this year 

Who would've thought that this circus would come to town?

But, it may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS. That's all I gotta say. So , what, what can I say? It's, the, the, the money's rolling in and, this is- The polls are open ... this is, this is fun. I've never seen anything like this, and, this is gonna be a, a very good year for us.

Sorry. It's a terrible thing to say, but, bring it on, Donald. Go ahead. Keep going. "

It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS. Bring it on, Donald." those are the words of Les Moonves, CEO of CBS. Lee Fang, you first published this audio of Les Moonves on The Intercept in February. Also last month, CNN President Jeff Zucker said, quote, "If we made a mistake, it was we shouldn't have put on as many Trump rallies as we did."

Your comment, Lee. 

Well, look, we've been looking at these investor reports from media companies for the last two years, and, it's not just Les Moonves. The owners of local broadcast stations have been bragging, that they're excited for this election year, because all the sleaze, all the super PAC ads, they benefit a very small clique of media owners.

and, if you look at just the larger role of broadcast media, I think there was a study done that if you look at the large, media networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, they provided 350 minutes of airtime to Donald Trump in 2015, and less than one minute on ABC News on coverage to Bernie Sanders.

just across the board, whether it's local TV or cable news, they treated this entire election season as a carnival, as a chance for tabloid politics. Rather than talking about the vital issues or the, political biographies and, and the policy issues, they take whatever Donald Trump has tweeted, whatever insult he hurled, and treat it as a, a serious news story.

And then ha- and s- rather than, paying for reporters to go out and report the truth and, and, and talk to voters or to, to do investigative reporting, they have pundits, many of them compromised. many of the, the pundits that we've, we've seen go on, on television were quietly or secretly working for one of the campaigns.

But then they, they have pundits go on TV and yell at each other and, turn this into a food fight rather than a substantive, thoughtful discussion of the issues. So I, I, I... Oh, go ahead. 

And I just wanted to bring John Nichols into this discussion around the media, and Jose Antonio Vargas.

Mm-hmm. the Koch brothers, who didn't support Donald Trump, said they ended up pouring their millions, more than a billion dollars, into down ballot races, whether we're talking governor- Mm-hmm ... Senate, House, and that just filled the coffers of the local medias. 

Yeah. About five years ago, Bob McChesney and I wrote a book called Dollarocracy.

And what we argued there, and in the book we wa- wrote more recently, People Get Ready, same, same basic concept, that major media in this country, has hit its biggest crisis in history. Its crisis is that advertising revenue now moves toward the phone. It doesn't have to go through. They still get advertising revenue, but they are now dramatically more reliant on political advertising, on campaign ads, which are targeted toward older people who tend to still watch television.

as this has happened, they have cut their reporting staffs. They have reduced... They- We actually documented, there are television stations that have cut into the local newscast, which is the most watched news, cut into it to fit more tele- campaign ads around it. And so understand the circumstance that we have created.

It's not a complicated thing. We have created a circumstance in America where news, where actual reporting, as flawed as it may be, on our politics is diminished. There's less of it. It's not done well. And at the same time, we have a massive inflow of money in these campaign ads. We have dialed down journalism.

We have dialed up campaign cash. Now, in this year, and this is the critical element of it, we saw cable news, which was a... It was out there hopefully to provide more depth to, to go deeper into these issues. We saw cable news cede any responsibility. They did hour-long infomercials, running the speeches for a whole hour, and then you came on with instead of Lee or, or Antoni- anybody on this panel coming in- Yeah

they, they had, they had surrogates for the campaigns do mini debates in which those surrogates had a responsibility not to acknowledge the truth. Their responsibility was to say, "My candidate just did a great job," even if your candidate fell off the stage. 

They spent more time showing the empty podium waiting for- Yeah.

Well- ... Donald Trump- And I can- ... than they played- If I could just finish, the one thing that- ... anything to do with Bernie Sanders ... 

coming off what Lee said, and, and, Lee actually, he said it was 340 to 1. It was actually only 240 to 1 on ABC. But the fact of the matter is, at the end of 2015, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump were polling at roughly the same place, and yet Donald Trump was getting, on one major television network, a 240 to 1 ratio- Yeah.

Mm-hmm ... more coverage. This defines reality. 

Jose Antonio Vargas 

And to me, the, the elitism, right, and the kind of insularity of this Politico set, of this Acela Express from DC and New York, must absolutely be broken. It's useless. Utterly, utterly, utterly useless. I actually think today I'm probably gonna, dis- I'm, I'm gonna unsubscribe from Politico.

they said today that we know nothing. Well, thank you for admitting that. At least we're done. And I'm the kind of guy that used to like to get my stuff on Politico. Yeah. So now I'm unsubscribing myself and saying I don't need to be a part of this. M- y- your point, by the way, about the inability of, of journalists to cover about race.

I've, I've been a journalist since the late '90s. There are less people of color working in American newsrooms now than there was when I started in journalism in the late 1990s, right? For a lot of, a lot, j- journalists are human beings, too, and guess what? We don't like talking about race.

White journalists who are mostly in charge of newsrooms across this country do not like talking about race. And so they throw little things like the working class and not contextualize that more, right? To me, I have to say, as an undocumented immigrant who happens to be a journalist, and reporting is my, is my m- my, my religion, it's been infuriating seeing the media talk about immigration in such factless- Yeah

lacked of context, just irresponsible way. The moment Donald Trump talked about Mexicans as rapists- Mm-hmm ... right, why didn't anybody just say the fact that there are actually less people going to Mexico and more Americans going, less people from Mexico going to the United States than Americans going to Mexico?

Why hasn't anybody said that the fastest-growing undocumented population in this country are actually Asian people, not Latinos? Yeah. Why don't we ever talk about undocumented white people or undocumented Black people? Why don't we haven't talked about the fact that undocumented workers, according to the Social Security Administration, have paid $100 billion into the Social Security fund?

And Donald Trump has paid no taxes That they cannot 

track down. That we cannot get back. Yeah, yeah. Now, why isn't any of this- That they remember this. That's right ... part of the report when this issue comes up? They are not at all a part of this report. 

First, I must, must confess that over the past few years, I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the white citizen's counselor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to order than to justice, who prefers a negative peace, which is the absence of tension; to a positive peace, which is the presence of justice.

Look, I already know what you're going to say, "JT, please describe to me in political science terms what a moderate is." Fine, but only because I want to. And as punishment for being so presumptuous, I'll start with the difference between the left and the right. You probably already know the story of the two terms.

During the French Revolution, those who wanted to laissez les bons temps rouler with absolute monarchical power sat on the right side of the assembly, their version of the House, and the no-good radicals who wanted to try out terrifying and capricious parliamentary monarchy, ooh, sat on the left. This is a pretty specific issue to disagree about.

So when people, i.e. academics with too much free time, try to come up with meaningful differences between the left and the right that hold true across most of global political history, you get very vague distinctions between the two political families. While today we associate the left and the right mostly with their stances on specific economic issues or cultural debates, the most fundamental distinction that you can probably draw between these two is that the left seeks to change society into something new and the right seeks to preserve present society or go back to something old.

In practice, that usually means the left seeks to undermine established hierarchies and distribute power and wealth more equally, and the right seeks to preserve hierarchy and order, since most existing societies are or were built around power being concentrated in very few hands. But obviously, such a simple distinction will certainly make you mad, so be sure to comment why and how I've actually gotten it completely wrong in the comments section.

I sure would hate for this video to get more engagement. Anyway, we've lost the plot a little bit here. We're not focusing on either of these groups. We're talking about the illuminated minds who can look past the squabbling of these dirty extremes, moderates, the people who reject petty ideological battles and, at the end of the day, just know better than you and I.

Just listen to how terrible the extremes are in this No Labels video on the Biden infrastructure bill. 

We've seen this movie before No, not those movies. This one. 

We will not support bipartisan legislation. 

I'm telling the Republican senators that we're not gonna stand for it. 

The extremes on the left and right are trying to defeat a two-party solution for partisan purposes.

Three out of four Americans agree on the infrastructure bill that creates jobs, helps families, doesn't raise taxes, and powers America to beat China. Don't listen to the extremes. Support bipartisan infrastructure now. 

Cool. Okay, fine. Let's be a little bit more charitable and actually understand what's going on here.

Centrists and moderates in the US, the two terms are pretty much interchangeable, are people and politicians who are not entirely satisfied with the political programs of either major political party. Unlike people who reject both parties from the opposite ends of the spectrum, moderates are most at home in the supposed bipartisan middle.

They usually like saying things like, "We're neither left nor right." We'll get to that sentence in a minute. But first, we might want to understand centrists a little better. If we are to assume the definition of left and right as historically transcendent terms about the stance one has towards present society and values like egalitarianism, being a centrist doesn't really make sense.

Over time, movements that start out on the left, like liberalism, republicanism, or even parliamentary monarchy, become solidly right-wing movements without ever changing their ideology, because they replace the old right and become contested by the new, more radical left. In such a position, centrism becomes nothing more than a conservative ideology.

Its prime directive is resistance to change, and as a result, it's not, as they claim, neither left nor right, it's just right wing. It might have been on the left in yesterday's society, but now that the goals of the old left are the established order and have become the new conservative right, preserving present society with only incremental and moderate reform, which is what centrists believe in, becomes a profoundly conservative worldview.

I'm seeing a lot of people making videos about self-censorship on the internet, saying things like unalived or graped or pew pews or G-side, and whether or not that practice is actually necessary or useful. And I'm here to tell you that it definitely isn't. The reason I know that is I haven't been doing that.

I've been calling things what they're called for the last several years now, and during that time, I have amassed over 700,000 followers on Instagram, massive followings on TikTok and Facebook, a budding following on YouTube, you ever heard of a concept called anticipatory obedience? That's when people imagine what they think an authority might want from them in advance, and then they start obeying those imaginary rules without ever being told to.

There's a pretty famous parable about this. It tells the story of a greengrocer in, I think it's communist Czechoslovakia. In the story, the greengrocer starts to notice an increasing amount of pro-party propaganda posters appearing in all the other shop windows in his neighborhood. Pro-party propaganda posters appearing.

I feel like I could have written that easier for myself. Now, in the end, the greengrocer puts a poster like that in the window of his own shop, not because he agrees with the message or supports the party, but because he doesn't want to get noticed. He doesn't want to get negative attention for refusing to obey.

Now, the question you're supposed to ask at the end of the story is, how many of the other shopkeepers also had posters in their windows for the same reason? Somebody started doing it, then somebody else follows suit, and before it, everybody's doing it, not because they've actually been told to, but because they've imagined that if they don't, then perhaps negative consequences might ensue.

This is anticipatory obedience, and it's what we on the internet are doing. Our shop window poster is saying pew pews instead of guns or unalived instead of killed and murdered. And we're doing it not because we were told to, but because other people are doing it, and there must be a reason for that, and we're afraid that if we don't do it too, negative consequences are bound to ensue.

They aren't. It's nonsense. You can just speak like a grown-up and call things what they are. It's fine. 

Ezra is an impressive multi-hyphenate media tour de force. A columnist dash commentator, dash journalist, dash media exec, dash book author, who co-launched the news website Vox in 2014, and now frequently writes for the New York Times and the Washington Post.

However, more than anything, if I were to sum up Klein's vocation in a single word, Ezra is a podcaster. His podcast, eponymously titled The Ezra Klein Show, regularly features among the most listened podcasts in the country, with each episode racking up millions of views across its various platforms.

Klein is unafraid to breach a wide array of topics, and he does so in his trademark analytical style, punctuating his interviewees with penetrating questions, and observations delivered in perfect paragraphs that make it crystal clear that he has done his research. And also demonstrates that he really, really loves to hear himself talk.

Just listen to this little soundbite from a recent podcast, where Ezra just muses on the lavender scare and anti-communist and anti-gay backlash emerging out of the New Deal. 

You end up with this amorphous omni threat. Communism is its heart, but maybe it's gay people in government and the sexual and gender revolution that that is speaking about or signaling.

Maybe it's racial integration, labor unions, maybe it's the New Deal itself. 

That sentence started with amorphous omni threat and only got more convoluted from there. But look, I really don't want to turn this into a video where I just on Ezra Klein the whole time. I'm going to do that a little bit, but I also want to emphasize that he's a bright, curious thinker who I really do believe is operating in good faith.

I would never bash someone for nerding out on energy policy or zoning laws. w- we need those knowledgeable and passionate nerds if we're going to solve the world's hopelessly tangled and complex problems. My gripe with Ezra isn't that he doesn't have good ideas or that he doesn't mean well. It's that he professes a worldview that fails to confront economic inequality as the number one issue plaguing our planet.

And my whole thing is, if you're going to go on your podcast every week and profess your ideas to millions, if you're going to make videos like, "This is how the Democrats win," and text every Democratic operative in DC, if you're going to portray yourself as the guy who has all the answers to our problems, you should probably understand what our biggest problems are in the first place.

And in that regard, I don't think Ezra has any clue

In this video, I wanna examine what Ezra Klein actually believes, which I contend is a certain brand of centrism rooted in the neoliberal values that I've discussed in prior videos, like the 2008 one and the Four Things MAGA Actually Gets Right video. See, Klein's particular style of centrist ideology has a tendency to earnestly address concerns of the MAGA movement, willfully shifting the Overton window rightwards.

Klein expresses willingness to punt on vital issues like abortion, and quibbles endlessly on his podcast over the semantics of labeling Israel's endless killing a genocide. Conspicuously absent from Klein's discourse is any real discussion of class whatsoever. For a guy who will gleefully spend hours on his podcast discussing how means testing impacts zoning law, getting him to talk for five minutes about taxing the ultra wealthy is like pulling teeth.

More often, he spends time decrying economic populism as an oversimplified morality play, equivocating the roles of corporations and unions in American society. "A lot is lost when you collapse the complex interests of politics into a simple morality play." This low IQ marshmallow brain boomer both sides-ism drives me insane.

"Oh, duh, well, sometimes the Republicans are right, and other times the Democrats are right. And if, we all just met in the middle, then everything would be okay." No, that's not the way the world works. In the real world, the working class has enemies. Billionaire capital owners and trillion-dollar corporations are not good faith actors who can be reasoned with.

As Breaking Bad director Vince Gilligan recently described the tech oligarchs, "It's basically a bunch of synty billionaires whose greatest life goal is to become the world's first trillionaires. I think they're selling a bag of vapor." So if it's not economic populism and redistribution, what does Ezra think is the solution?

Well, to find out, you're gonna have to have read a little something called Abundance.

Co-authored with Atlantic author and fellow know-it-all Derek Thompson, the rather arrogantly titled Abundance is sold as, quote, "A once-in-a-generation paradigm-shifting call to renew a politics of plenty, face up to the failures of liberal governance, and abandon the chosen scarcities that have deformed American life."

The central contention of Abundance boils down to this: growth and innovation are being stifled by excessive government regulation. Klein and Thompson argue that by removing administrative restrictions on housing, infrastructure, and energy construction, America can build its way into an abundant future.

Importantly, they don't wish to eliminate the government's role in this construction, but instead want the government to be able to act without having to contend with all the bureaucratic BS that prevents actually getting things done. And on this point, I actually agree with them. In fact, I feel like almost everybody does.

Here's Bernie Sanders' take on the abundance argument. "So I don't need to be lectured on the nature of bureaucracy. It is horrendous, and that is real. But that is not an ideology. That is common sense. It's good government. That's what we should have. Ideology is, do you create a nation in which all people have a standard of living?

Do you have the courage to take on the billionaire class? Do you stand with the working class? That's ideology. Breaking through bureaucracy and creating efficiencies, that's good government." California should have been able to build high-speed rails by now. Zoning laws are overly restrictive in large cities.

Wind farm construction shouldn't be tied to DEI incentives. All of these are narrow technocratic policy arguments, which I agree with. But as Bernie says, that's not an ideology. And when you tout your book as paradigm-shifting and once in a generation, styling it as a treatise and labeling your followers abundance Democrats, you're selling an ideology.

Here's an excerpt from Abundance's opening chapter, in which Klein and Thompson imagine a fictional utopia. "Out the window and across the street, an autonomous drone is dropping off the latest shipment of star pills. Several years ago, daily medications that reduced overeating, cured addiction, and slowed cellular aging were considered miracle drugs for the rich, especially when we discovered that key molecules were best synthesized in the zero-gravity conditions of space.

But these days, automated factories thrum in low orbit. Cheap rocketry conveys the medicine down to Earth." first of all, that world sounds scary as . If I wake up tomorrow and find myself in the abundance future, I'm going to grab a gun, snipe the nearest drone-delivered package out of the sky, rip open the container, take all of the star pills out, and swallow as many as I can until my heart stops.

But I want to focus in on one particular part of that scenario. The line, "Years ago, daily medications were considered miracle drugs for the rich." I find that line very telling because in a way, it encapsulates Klein's entire worldview. If we could simply grow the pie, create this abundant new world of plenty, then everybody would have enough.

And that, Ezra, is a fantasy. Because no matter how much we grow this economic pie, without establishing an egalitarian economic paradigm, the rich will continue to gorge themselves

What is 24/7 access to the president really accomplishing? Of course, we should, through our journalists, be able to question the president, but every question is an opportunity t- for Trump to lie and turn the conversation back to his rehearsed talking points. Perhaps there is a moment or two of outrageous language or behavior, of Trump falling asleep or something, that can then be used as a convenient clip to circulate online.

And press presence at official visits, cabinet meetings, et cetera, to report on what happens is, of course, essential information gathering. But I think that there's a line that maybe has been pushed too far by the constant drone of the 24-hour news cycle that's pretty much exclusively benefiting the regime and not actually contributing to public knowledge and democracy.

I don't have a clear answer. These are questions worth pondering, though, that this whole controversy is bringing up. And the power of the press pool boycott was immediately apparent. It was an emperor has no clothes moment, watching Trump speak into the wind and hearing nothing. It made far more impact and far more of a statement than if everything was as usual, if the media continued covering Trump as though he was just another president.

That's the power of labor organizing in action, my friends, of solidarity going above fear of retribution, of the power that especially the press still has over this president. They make him fucking furious all the time. He is obsessed with them. Together, they could send an incredibly powerful message as to the importance of press freedoms, of holding this administration to account, of not normalizing the behavior of this regime, and of not giving any oxygen to a bunch of people who have proven themselves for a literal decade to be habitual liars to the detriment of the Republic.

And Trump's team would have you believe that this is completely normal behavior. In their filing asking the judge to keep the press ban in place, they say, well, George Washington handpicked the journalists that covered his farewell address. Theodore Roosevelt invited handpicked reporters to the Oval Office for off the record press conferences.

President Kennedy gave certain reporters special access based on who he liked more. And President Johnson gave personal interviews as a means of reward and punishment. And in the official White House press release defending Trump, they say, "Look, Obama tried to ban Fox from pool coverage, too." Though the reality is that it was Obama's Treasury Department which tried to exclude Fox from pool coverage, specifically of interviews with one key official, which the Treasury Department then backed down from after all the other major news networks came to Fox's defense.

Of course, none of these examples, five instances that they can point to in the country's 250-year history, even hold a candle to the unprecedented levels of abuse Trump is lobbing at the press now, nor do they compare to the unprecedented all-out bans that he's attempting to put on certain news outlets from all White House press coverage.

It simply doesn't compare. What is happening is not normal, and we have to continue talking about how abnormal it is over and over and over again so it doesn't become the new normal in the US On Tuesday, the White House official YouTube channel unveiled Trump TV, a constant live stream of various clips of Trump content, an apparent toe dip into an authoritarian favorite, state media.

It had me wondering how other authoritarians have dealt with the media in the past. it makes sense if you're an authoritarian attempting to de-legitimize the entire press to have your own press on hand. This was clearly something Trump didn't consider ahead of the helipad snafu on Monday, but makes it really clear why it's valuable to have skilled journalists and camera and sound crew on payroll at the behest of the president.

It increases control over the narrative and creates polished propaganda. Trump owns a social media platform, and Americans increasingly get their news from social media, but the mainstream media still play a pivotal role in news gathering and in creating the soundbites and clips that social media relies upon, that I rely upon to make this content.

And of course, it makes sense why an authoritarian would want to get rid of the press. Being questioned on your authority is, the worst thing you can experience as an authoritarian. The relationship between the government and the press is adversarial by design. It is meant to be tense. That is the point.

If the press isn't making the government squirm at least a little and keeping the government in check by making officials think twice before doing something that might make them look bad, then that means you have a press in bed with the government, and that's not their role. Their role is to hold the government accountable.

That requires an adversarial stance, but that relationship has changed in the twenty-first century with increased media capture by elites sympathetic to a white nationalist, capitalist, populist buffoon because it serves them well. Scholar on authoritarianism Ruth Ben-Ghiat recently wrote a Substack article about this whole debacle that I'll link in my sources because I think it's worth a thorough read.

On the role of the press asking questions, she says, quote, "Answering questions is experienced as a submission to others and an affront to his power. Far better to pivot by insulting the questioners, to demean them in front of the eyes of the world, or bar offending officials from the privilege of having access to your person."

Ben-Ghiat points to a two-part propaganda process by authoritarians, noise and silence. The silencing is happening with these press bans, but they're being accompanied at the same time with an increase in noise from the regime, flooding the zone, expanding time and resources dedicated to propaganda. You can see this in the Trump TV experiment, in the way everyone is falling in line and doubling down in step with the president.

An efficient indoctrination of the masses requires coordination of the noise, that all the propaganda lines up, follows the same talking points, like with the Nazi policy of synchronization, which today in the twenty-first century looks a lot more like media capture by a few elites aligned with the president and allowed to conglomerate despite strong antitrust laws on the books.

A truly free press gets in the way of that coordination. They keep informing the masses about the consequences of the actions of the regime. That is really inconvenient, and so now the regime is flailing because they didn't consolidate power fast enough. Ben-Ghiat ties this current attempt at silence- and noise with the looming merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery, a further conglomeration of the media landscape into the hands of a billionaire family that Trump has in his back pocket.

She writes, quote, "I have studied propaganda for decades, including authoring a book on Italian fascist propaganda cinema, and I can tell you that a merger that would create a propaganda mega structure encompassing entertainment content and news would be devastatingly effective as a tool for democratic destruction."

She points to former Hungarian president Viktor Orbán, who so effectively captured the media that fully 85% of it was aligned with his regime. The only way Peter Magyar was able to defeat him in the most recent election was because he spent two years in the Hungarian countryside touring rural villages to spread his message and bypass that media capture.

But actually, much to my surprise, it was in researching other authoritarian regimes for this episode that I found what I can only describe as Hope? For example, for the Nazis to consolidate power so quickly required a really strong propaganda apparatus, which they were able to achieve in part by outlawing political parties and shuttering hundreds of newspapers and seizing their printing plants.

The Propaganda Ministry assumed control of the Reich Association of the German Press, which regulated who could be a journalist, kept registries of racially pure journalists, handed down mandates and instructions to journalists under the Editors Law of October 1933, ordered editors to censor anything, quote, "calculated to weaken the strength of the Reich abroad or at home."

Then they rounded up their political opponents and any journalists who didn't comply and sent them to newly minted concentration camps. These were some of the very first people to be rounded up by the Nazis because they understood the power of a free press. In fact, authoritarian regimes the world over and across history share that in common, attacking and literally murdering so-called political enemies, especially the ones questioning their legitimacy and informing the masses, the journalists.

And as much as Trump is doing his darnedest to intimidate journalists into submission and taking steps in an authoritarian direction, he is not, as of right now, rounding them up and murdering them or attacking and murdering their informants and sources, and that is the hope I'm gonna grasp onto. We're not so far gone that this can't be reversed.

It is precisely in these moments when it is essential that we acknowledge and call this repression of the free press what it is, authoritarianism in action, so that it never gets as far as it has gotten in other countries. We have strong First Amendment protections and traditions in the US and a strong history of press freedom.

It is an imperfect history, but the First Amendment is central to US identity, and we must lean into that in the form of speaking out when abuses against the press happen to make sure it is never normalized, to make sure that the door is never opened to allow full authoritarian capture of the press.

And as much as the far right has managed to co-opt new media and find propaganda hucksters ready and waiting to make a profit off shilling their talking points, there is also a strong leftist presence online. There are journalists who believe deeply in their role of holding the government accountable, who are increasingly using social media to meet people where they're at and get the information to the masses.

But the mainstream media, as much as we like to deride them, are still our main source of direct news because they have some of the best journalists with the best sources. And so calling them out when they publish biased bullshit, pushing for enforcement of our antitrust laws to break up the conglomerates is super important, but we also have to recognize the incredibly central role they still play in holding this regime to account, as evidenced by the power of their collective boycott this week.

I hope that they continue to use that power and the strength in their numbers to push for real accountability from this regime and not just act like this is all business as usual. And I will continue to be here screaming about it all from my little

And Finally, Section D, Fandom, Consumption, and Personal Reckoning

I think it's important to hold a measure of grace and take things in context before getting all gung ho about going after somebody. maybe they didn't know there was a boycott. There are probably boycotts I'm not even aware of that I'm unknowingly crossing. Some companies are almost impossible to boycott.

Nestle kinda runs the world. I think strike picket lines are more obvious, though. They're usually temporary and usually quite visible, so I would say you bear greater personal responsibility for crossing those. Also, I think there is room to disagree with the strategic efficacy of certain attempted collective pressure campaigns, even if you agree with the spirit of them.

I don't practice a vegan lifestyle, which for some probably makes me a traitor. Again, different perspectives on things. But I do try to limit my consumption of animal products where possible with the knowledge that the source of those products is, in most cases, animal suffering. Though to be fair, most of the products we consume are the result of human and non-human animal suffering anyway, so you do what you can.

You might mitigate this layer of complicity by making a genuine effort to stay informed about collective campaigns, respecting picket lines and boycotts when reasonably possible, and generally erring on the side of solidarity when your individual convenience conflicts with a collective struggle. You don't need to agree with every campaign, but you should at least seriously consider whether your actions are helping or undermining people trying to resist exploitation.

The fourth layer of complicity may be your role in various hierarchies and the things you do to reinforce them. By hierarchies, I'm referring specifically to the institutionalization of differences between people into superior and subordinate social groups, through which comes domination and exploitation.

And in this layer, you're passively or actively reproducing patriarchy, gerontocracy, the economic class system, and so on. In the subordinate position, you may be treating bosses, politicians, police, clergy, men, or elders as inherently entitled to obedience, or in the superior position, you may be using that position to dominate others, overriding their autonomy because of gender, disability, or social status, reproducing authoritarian norms in your family, workplace, organization, or social movement, basically participating in the normalization and perpetuation of hierarchy on the micro scale and the macro scale through your actions.

You might mitigate this layer of complicity by internally deconstructing the beliefs and attitudes which reinforce these systems, and by externally resisting the structures which reinforce these systems through various acts of confrontation and non-cooperation. This is where it gets really serious. On the fifth layer of complicity, you're some kind of propagandist for the status quo, spreading state or corporate narratives, defending imperialist wars, pushing nationalist or capitalist mythologies to sustain the legitimacy of the system and counteract dissent.

You may not be carrying a gun for our capitalist overlords, but you're fighting for them on the battlefield of ideas, reinforcing ridiculous ideas like the sanctity of borders, or that poverty is deserved, or that alternatives are impossible, or capitalism is natural, or imperial wars are justified, essentially lecturing people on why suffering is necessary and resistance unrealistic.

Again, of course, there are levels to this. Journalists, teachers, influencers, religious leaders, academics, politicians, ordinary citizens all can participate in this reproduction of ideas that makes domination appear normal, necessary, inevitable, or desirable. But of course, this is perpetuated to different extents on a person to person basis.

And some people in these roles actively counteract that kind of messaging. So don't take this as me saying that if you're a teacher, you're automatically on the level of a right-wing propagandist by default. That's not what I'm saying. At this layer of complicity, you need to deconstruct the narratives you repeat, seek out perspectives from those harmed by existing institutions, correct misinformation where you encounter it, and lend your voice to counteract the tide of propaganda On the sixth layer of complicity, you're deliberately choosing roles that directly sustain and uphold the system.

Hands-on participation in domination by serving in the military, police, paramilitary forces, prison guards, border agents, intelligence operatives, strike breakers, judges, prosecutors, high-level state bureaucrats, the kind of positions that actively enforce imperialism, colonialism, and domestic oppression, the kind of positions that defend corporate and state efforts to devastate the environment.

And how much more really needs to be said here? Of course, I think if you're on this level, what you're doing. Of course, not every military is on the same level of complicity in upholding the global system. I would count the US military as far more active upholders of global suffering than, say, the Trinidadian military.

But at this level of complicity, where you're a foot soldier for capital and government, you should leave such institutions, especially if you're part of the American military. if your job is to cage people, to suppress dissent, to wage war, the most obvious thing is to refuse. But aside from leaving or perhaps on your way out, other ways of mitigating this layer of complicity would be sabotaging the machinery of domination, leaking information, refusing orders, and otherwise obstructing the flow of the machinery.

Obviously, such actions come at great personal risk. But if you're a police officer or a soldier or prison guard, you've already taken great personal risk signing up for those jobs. At least take some risk to help other people. But if I'm being honest, I doubt that any police officers or prison guards are watching my videos anyway.

For the final layer of complicity, level seven, this should be obvious. These are the architects of the system itself, the deepest complicity, occupying roles that directly manage or profit from exploitation. Politicians, corporate executives, bankers, landlords, wardens, chiefs, capitalists, those who construct, expand, and manage the machinery of state and capital.

Now, obviously, an individual landlord didn't invent landlordism. An individual CEO didn't invent capitalism. A small business owner and the CEO of a multinational corporation are gonna be on different layers of complicity. So I would suggest modified approaches to specific cases because, again, there are levels to this.

But at this layer, you're occupying positions of significant control over capital relative to others and materially benefiting from the continuation of the system, placing your material interests against those of us who wish to overturn this system. Historically, there have been class traitors here and there, people who choose to provide their property and resources toward revolutionary ends, but these are few and far between.

Still, as an effort at mitigation, I'd encourage anyone with such capital who are sympathetic to the struggle to share those resources to support our efforts in getting free. And that's it. I just wanted to try my hand at the seven layers trend with an idea I thought about some time ago. We're obviously not all equally complicit.

There's a difference between buying groceries in a capitalist economy, crossing a picket line, beating protesters, and profiting from exploitation. 

I quit my job because of J.K. Rowling. I quit my job because of the new Harry Potter series premiering on HBO. I quit my job as a Harry Potter character. Hi. If this is your first time here, my name is Hoots. I make videos on this channel about whatever nonsense I'm fixated on at any given time, and until recently, my day job was at Universal Studios Hollywood.

I've been pretty open about my roles as a scare actor at Halloween Horror Nights and as a tram tour guide at Universal, but less forthcoming about another role I had in the park, where I was most often scheduled: as a wand keeper at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is a series of themed lands found in all four international Universal resorts, where you can soar above Hogwarts Castle, see a wizard be chosen by their wand at Ollivanders, explore the shops of Hogsmeade, and experience pulse-pounding rides and attractions that transport you into a world of spells and thrills.

First opened at Universal Studios Hollywood in 2016, the Wizarding World... I'm just kidding. It's not that kind of YouTube video. Many of you knew that I worked at Universal Studios, the park with all the Harry Potter stuff, but many of you may be surprised and even a little disappointed to learn that I actually worked in the part of the park with all the Harry Potter stuff.

After all, I've spent a lot of time and energy shitting on Harry Potter, and more specifically, on its creator, the patron saint of transphobia, Robert Galbraith, AKA Joanne K. Rowling. How could I don a costume and a British accent and earn a paycheck promoting her work? Well, how does anyone deal with cognitive dissonance?

For as long as I can remember, I'd wanted to be an actor. When I was little, I'd been hammy and outgoing. I refused to ever sit down or do what I was told, but I could be handed a piece of text or simple choreography and repeat it back to you after seeing it once. As I grew older, I became more introverted and found I had to work harder to learn a piece, but it was work I loved.

There was value and catharsis in bringing a person to life who had until then existed as words on a page. I went to drama school in the UK. The training was hard and the tutors sometimes unfair, but my sense of artistry and technique deepened. I felt good at what I do, proud of my work. I wish I could say that that translated into an incredibly successful career as a performer, but it hasn't.

But I'm also not a complete failure. Like the vast majority of working actors, my career has limped along from contract to contract. There have been slow years and better years, but I've never been without the need of the dreaded day job. I'd considered myself very lucky to have theme park work. It's technically a day job in my chosen field and makes it a little easier to rationalize the twenty thousand dollars in student loans I took out that have since transmogrified into about forty-five thousand dollars of student debt despite regular payments.

Also, Universal Studio Hollywood's contracts are union, meaning collective bargaining, meaning regular pay increases, meaning I had health insurance even though I was on a part-time contract. It also meant that when I was offered another acting gig that I needed to take time off for, I was permitted professional leaves of absence.

Most actors are just stuck in perpetual temp work cycles when it comes to their day jobs, and I was very familiar with the constant resume churn. A year here, six months there before I'd inevitably need to go out of town for a month and resign. At Universal, I was under contract with an entertainment union and was allowed to take other entertainment work with no penalties.

But let's do a little role play. Pretend you're a casting director. Where do you think a strawberry blonde with an RP accent honed by a British conservatory best fits at Universal Studios in Hollywood, California? Right. The wand keeper position is actually a coveted one. You spend the day in an air-conditioned room, and wand keepers don't have to worry about aging out of the role like an actor playing a Hogwarts or Beauxbatons student would.

A wand keeper can be 30 or 80. They can be any gender. They can be fat or thin. The role is completely performance-based, unlike virtually every other role in the park. Was I made to step on a scale in front of an entire room of people and then watch someone cross out the weight I'd written down on my resume and write a new one in when I auditioned for Princess Fiona and Marilyn Monroe?

Does an ogre shit in the swamp? Some- Thank you for the memories, Universal Studios Hollywood casting department. Wand keepers do a little five-ish minute show in 45-minute sets around four times a day. The show went like this. The audience would be let in by a wand assistant, basically filling the dual role of a PA, those little character security guards you always see in theme parks, and attraction loading.

Then the wand keeper would welcome the guests and choose the hero. This was a guest who would participate in the show. Usually, we picked whoever looked like they had good vibes and seemed like they were gonna play ball with us. I mostly chose kids, but I know some wand keepers preferred grown-ups because they were a little more reliable.

The hero would be offered a wand and asked to perform a spell from a randomized set of five spells. The spell would fail in some way, involving special effects triggered by the wand keeper, and another wand and spell would be offered and likewise fail. Then a final wand would be chosen for the hero, and the moment it touches the hero's hand, bright lights, music, and a dramatic gust of wind would indicate that the perfect wand chose them, just like in that movie, Harold Potter.

The audience are let out into the gift shop. Rinse, repeat. I told myself it wasn't that bad at first. Harry Potter wasn't even a Universal property. They licensed it from Warner Brothers, who themselves had some kind of a licensing agreement with Rowling. She didn't make any money on park admission, only on merchandise, and I was only there to do a silly little show, not sell any merchandise.

Even if the ultimate goal of that silly little show was to push merchandise in the form of $60 interactive resin wands, maybe I would just be really bad at the part of the show that highlighted the wands, Sabotage the operation by pairing my hero with one of the uglier wands. But that felt kinda shitty.

The guests we tried to choose were nice. Sometimes they'd traveled thousands of miles to be there. Sometimes they'd waited in line in the hot California sun for hours to be chosen, patiently returning show after show until the wand keeper noticed them. Many guests I'd chosen were neurodivergent kids whose special interest was Harry Potter, and they'd commandeer the show to tell me everything they'd learned about wand and spell types so far, and let me tell you, it was a delight getting to improvise with a real subject matter expert.

One time, I told my hero child that the wand that chose her had properties of healing and protection, and her mom teared up and told her to tell me what had been going on in her life. It turned out she'd been in and out of the hospital with a chronic life-threatening illness. She needed all the healing and protection she could get.

Unlike Disneyland cast members, we weren't empowered to give away merch to certain guests, so I told the sales team that if that mother and daughter bought the wand, to give them my employee discount. The work itself was incredibly rewarding, and the wand keepers wanted the guests to have the best experience possible.

After spending time interacting with someone like that You wanna say something meaningful. You want them to feel understood. Even if you didn't give a shit about the Harry Potter brand, you cared about the people who came into the Wand Room. A few of my fellow wand keepers and I would talk about the kind of guests we'd pick as a little fuck you to Rowling.

Our heroes were the marginalized. We'd pick the fat kids, people of color, people using mobility devices, and if you were visibly queer, especially if you were sporting a trans flag somewhere on your person, you were going to be the protagonist of our little five-minute one-act. These little acts of so-called rebellion were our ways of living with ourselves, of minimizing our complicity.

Plus, we could say to ourselves, there are a number of queer people who work in the wizarding world, including trans and non-binary people. Warner Brothers and Universal obviously don't agree with J.K. Rowling, even if their support for queer people only extends about as far as corporate anti-harassment policies, and they allow queer people to work as wizards in Harry Potter Land, whereas Joanne would probably have them doing garbage collection or not existing at all.

Wow, visible queer people. That's almost a middle finger to Joanne. Almost. I remember being at work with a trans coworker on a day that Rowling was rumored to be visiting the park, and she said to me that she wished Joanne could see her working in her land, that she could see the look on Joanne's face, furious and powerless at the sight of a trans woman in Hogsmeade.

And I wanted that for her, too. It would've felt so good for a moment, and it would've made a good bar story forever, and at the end of that very good day, J.K. Rowling would've gone home to her piles of money and forgotten the whole thing. 

John Milton was a devout Christian, but also a big fan of epic poems of ancient Greece and Rome, like Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Aeneid, and he thought that Christian mythology deserved the same treatment. But in this poetic tradition, villains had to be as interesting as heroes, especially considering that God, being perfect and all-powerful, makes for a pretty boring character.

About a century later, the poet William Blake famously said, "The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it." Milton was also aware that although Satan waged open war on heaven, his greatest weapon against mankind was persuasion, attractiveness, rizz.

He's supposed to be likable, so we human readers find ourselves seduced by him in the opening pages. But politics may have also played a role. During the English civil wars, Milton was staunchly anti-monarchist. He wrote countless letters and poems in defense of democracy, which would even get him put in prison for a time.

It's easy to imagine some of that revolutionary spirit creeping into his depiction of Satan's rebellion. God is often referred to as a tyrant, and the fallen angels fear becoming his slaves. "To bow and sue for grace with suppliant knee, and deify his power. Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."

You have to remember, this was a very familiar story to pretty much everyone in England at the time, but it had always been told from the point of view of God or Adam and Eve. For the first time, readers were being asked to imagine the same sequence of events from Satan's perspective, which perhaps might make them more open to questioning other so-called sacred concepts, like the divine right of the monarchy.

In What in Me is Dark, Orlando Reade collects lots of examples of Paradise Lost's impact on rebels and revolutionaries. Thomas Jefferson copied a quote of Satan's into his journal, "What though the fields be lost? All is not lost. The unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and courage never to submit or yield.

And what is else not to be overcome?" Thomas Paine's Common Sense, the pamphlet that persuaded many Americans to join the revolution, contains another Satan quote, "Never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep." Paradise Lost has been an influence on a number of abolitionists, anti-colonialists, and civil rights leaders as well, from Haitian revolutionary writer, Pompey Valentin Vastey, to Malcolm X.

While some identified with Satan's struggle against tyranny, others noted how a rebel could turn into a tyrant himself. By allowing us inside the mind of this most epic of villains, Milton gave readers new ways to think about power, freedom, and morality for hundreds of years. Modern villain stories can also be tied to social change.

In the early '70s with the Vietnam War in full swing, John Gardner published Grendel, a philosophical dive into the mind of Beowulf's mysterious foe. Grendel is portrayed as part man, part monster, cynical, and lonely, searching for purpose in a world where heroism has lost its meaning. Bram Stoker's Dracula may have trafficked in Victorian anxieties around sexuality, but by the late '70s, readers were liberated enough to accept sexy vampire heroes in Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire series.

Towards the end of second wave feminism, Marion Zimmer Bradley wrote The Mists of Avalon, in which King Arthur's nemesis, the witch Morgan Le Fay, is simply trying to protect her female-centered culture from the encroachment of patriarchal Christianity. In the 1990s, many perceive the original Wicked novel to be queer-coded, particularly how society labels people as evil for simply being different.

And Madeline Miller's Circe, published at the height of the Me Too movement, depicts the sorceress' attacks on Odysseus' men as self-defense against sexual predators. For these authors, remixing famous stories is not just a way to sell books, though it probably can't hurt. It puts their perspective right up against an older one.

The audience is forced to consider how their acceptance of the previous version of events makes them complicit, and perhaps they will be less likely to accept the official pronouncements of good and evil without question. But not all villains are rehabilitated so easily. Controversy alert, I'm gonna talk about Joker.

Before its 2019 release, a lot of critics accused it of pandering to incel culture. Some even warned it might inspire a mass shooting like the one that happened during a screening of another Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado in 2012. To be fair, there is some overlap. It's about a sad guy who lives with his mother, check, has no friends or romantic prospects, check, and copes with society's neglect through nihilism and morbid humor, check, until he finally makes a name for himself with a shocking act of gun violence.

Check. And Bruce Wayne is a Chad if there ever was one. Fears of a mass shooting turned out to be overblown, and actual members of the incel community were offended by the comparison, taking it as more proof that mainstream society viewed them as monsters. Another problematic villain who got a recent makeover is Johnny Lawrence from the original Karate Kid film.

William Zabka was basically the go-to actor for a certain type of bully role in the 1980s. Preppy, athletic, and very, very WASPy. His characters tended to represent privilege and patriarchy, a dynamic which is upended in the 2018 sequel series, Cobra Kai. Johnny is now a middle-aged working class white guy struggling with the loss of his social status.

Daniel LaRusso, who was once a poor newcomer to the city, has surpassed him financially, and Johnny's days are punctuated with humiliations and insults from women and people of color. Get the hell out of here, loser. Perhaps this was an effort to inject some nuance into our depictions of morality. look at bullies not as two-dimensional villains, but as sympathetic humans with their own struggles and traumas.

But Cobra Kai also happened to coincide with a rising sentiment among straight white men that they were society's true victims, and that traditionally oppressed groups were the ones actually doing the oppressing. Eventually, Johnny learns the importance of empathy and self-sacrifice, but at first, the audience is asked to see the world through his perspective, to root for him to resurrect the authoritarian cult he belonged to as a young man to regain his sense of superiority.

No mercy! Maybe Cobra Kai was inspired in part by this video, which went viral in 2015 and currently has over 15 million views on YouTube. In it, vlogger J. Matthew Turner makes the case that Johnny was the real victim of Karate Kid. 

Pow, a sucker punch right to the mouth. Johnny defends himself, as is his legal right.

Though he was clearly being satirical, a lot of his commenters took the thesis a little too seriously. He eventually had to make a follow-up video in which he implored them to stop asking him to do Hitler next. 

I must at this time decline your request to defend Hitler 

Standing up to bullies has been a pervasive theme in American cinema since World War II, all the way from High Noon to Back to the Future. But our perception of bullies has become somewhat more complicated since the turn of the century. From The Sopranos, to reality TV, to the manosphere, there's a growing admiration for characters who exhibit strength and dominance- 

You're fired.

Go ... 

who take what they want and make no apologies about it. 

Being a bully is presented less as a moral failing and more as a survival mechanism in a world where might makes right. Who knows? Maybe next we'll get a positive spin on Biff Tannen, a sexual-assaulting billionaire casino owner who's actually a champion of the common man.

God bless America. Can you imagine? Our shared stories are a reflection of and influence on our collective values. Who we call hero and who we call villain says a lot about us, and when those designations start to shift, it can be a sign of social change, like the rejection of monarchy in Milton's England, the gay rights movement of the 1990s, or today's global lean towards authoritarianism.

Stories are how we make sense of the world, so they can be especially effective at persuading people to rethink old norms, for good or ill. The best we can do is be engaged, active readers and audiences, weighing characters against our own moral compasses, open to changing our minds, but always thoughtful about who we choose to root for. 

going to be it for today.

Be sure to check out our link in bio right in the show notes for all the ways to follow us on social platforms, contact us, and support everything Best of the Left, including membership and one-time donations.

The additional sections of the show included clips from;

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Resistance History with Tad Stoermer

Doomed

Owen Jones

Brenna Perez

The Chris Hedges Report

The Serf Times

Democracy Now!

Second Thought

PissedMagistus

Benaminute

Leeja Miller

Extra Andrewism

Hoots Hootman

and Storied

Further details are in the show notes.

Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon and Erin for their production work for the show. Thanks to Ben, our Swiss Army Knife fixer behind the scenes. And thanks to those of you who already support the show by becoming a member, purchasing gift memberships, or making one-time donations.

You'll find the link to support us in the show notes along with links to join our Patreon and Discord communities for free where you can also continue the discussion. And don't forget to follow us on all the social media platforms as I prepare to relaunch our social media strategy!

So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, DC, my name is Jay! And this has been the Best of the Left podcast, coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from bestoftheleft.com.

Air Date: 9-30-2026

Today we look at the legacy of Occupy Wall Street, which was in full swing 15 years ago and changed how the country talks about inequality and the 1%. In the meantime, the cumulative wealth of the 1% in the US has roughly tripled and Trump has the wealthiest cabinet in history running the country, so the concerns expressed at Occupy have only come into sharper relief.

This miniseries helped inspire today's episode, check it out!

Occupy! An Unfinished Uprising

Full Show Notes

Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Today we look at the legacy of Occupy Wall Street, which was in full swing 15 years ago and changed how the country talks about inequality and the 1%. In the meantime, the cumulative wealth of the 1% in the US has roughly tripled and Trump has the wealthiest cabinet in history running the country, so the concerns expressed at Occupy have only come into sharper relief.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 55 minutes today include

A special miniseries from Future Hindsight, "Occupy! An Unfinished Uprising"

The Hartmann Report

This Is Hell!

The Majority Report

and Democracy Now!

Then, in the additional, Deeper Dives half of the show, there will be more in 4 sections;

Section A, INSIDE THE OCCUPATION

Section B, INEQUALITY'S LONG HISTORY

Section C, BILLIONAIRES AND THE BACKLASH

And Section D, FIFTEEN YEARS LATER

For every way to connect with and support us, check out our link in bio in the show notes.

And now, on to the show.

The Occupy Movement starts with a story of a generation whose promise had been abruptly halted when the economy crashed in 2008. 

The housing market collapse created one financial crisis after another, and it often seemed as if the news could only get worse. 

In just six months, three of the five biggest independent firms on Wall Street have now disappeared.

Bailing out Wall Street is the only way to save Main Street, so says the 

president. The signs were everywhere, but now it's official, we are in a recession 

The bankers who caused the crash got bailed out. Congress allocated 700 billion taxpayer dollars to stabilize the economy, and most of that money went to the too-big-to-fail financial institutions that had caused the economic meltdown.

Distressed homeowners got little assistance, and the people who'd been laid off or lost huge chunks of retirement savings because of the crash, they didn't get any bailouts. Meanwhile- 

The nine banks that received the most help from the massive taxpayer bailout gave 5,000 employees bonuses of at least one million dollars each.

In the aftermath of the crash, a lot of young people either could not afford college or were graduating with crushing student loan debt. They were entering the workforce in the middle of a deep recession, and their ability to launch a career or repay their loans or buy their first home, well, all of that had essentially been put on pause for who knows how long.

To put it another way, what COVID lockdowns were to Gen Z, the 2008 financial crash was to millennials. I want to introduce you to three people who were in their teens or early 20s when the economy took its nosedive. First is Nalini Stamp, a born and raised New Yorker, an Afro-Latina woman. 

My mother went bankrupt during the financial crisis.

We were served an eviction notice from our apartment. all of these things came crashing down, and I never was comfortable about saying it. 

A confluence of medical bills, delinquent child support, and the economic crash put them in a tight spot. Nalini was in high school at the time. 

I was "Why is there only this amount of food in the fridge?"

I didn't feel we were on steady ground. We got an eviction notice. It was a pink slip. That's when I started to not show up to school anymore. I said, "What is the point of this?" 

Nalini realized college was out of reach. The price tag was just too high. So she gave up, quit school, got a GED, started working minimum wage jobs.

By 2011, Nalini had gotten a lower level job at the Working Families Party, a pro-worker political party that runs progressive candidates. 

I have a good enough degree, a GED, and I was lying to my colleagues when I first started at the Working Families Party that I went to college for some bit of time.

I was so embarrassed by that. 

Then there's Sandy Nurse. She was born in Panama to two Navy sailors, a white American mother and a Black Panamanian father. 

I started as a kid who was a part of a US military occupying force, the mission of which is to exploit people, land, and resources for the benefit of the United States of America.

And I spent a lot of time, my, almost my entire childhood, moving around the world and seeing the reactions to that, the consequences of that. 

She went to college in the US, where she graduated with a poli sci degree and an incredible amount of student loan debt. And in 2011, she'd begun what seemed a promising career in humanitarian aid.

I was just coming off of a United Nations World Food Program in Haiti. I was visiting different cities and villages to write these reports about the distribution of food aid. At the time of the earthquake, all food systems collapsed in Haiti. 

So she's a do-gooder, trying to help Haitians in the aftermath of an earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands of people and left many more homeless.

Except the way that the UN Food Program was helping just feels wrong. The UN was paying Haitians, who had just been through a traumatic natural disaster, in food or low wages in exchange for hard labor. 

The thing that really just kinda snapped for me and, and essentially just broke my heart was seeing on this mountainside these old Haitian women in their flip-flops carrying these boulders, to make these walls to prevent the landslides.

And this is a job that most in the United States we'd see on a highway. You'd see people with, a, a backhoe or, a big claw Caterpillar thing. These, these, these women are just moving these boulders. And I just said, "This shit is n- this is not for me." we should not be asking these women to work for a sack of beans or some small dollars to do public works projects that are the job of a, a state, a nation state, or a government.

I walked away from that really let down by the promise of what I was being told as a child about the project of Am- Americanism. 

And so Sandy quit that whole endeavor, gave up on that career path to take a less ethically fraught job. 

My family was upset and didn't understand what I was doing, and they were "You're a bike...

You're a food delivery person now." 

So summer of 2011, she was delivering food to residents of gentrified Brooklyn and trying to figure out her place in the world. 

And it just so happened at that moment Occupy came about. 

Which brings me to Marissa Holmes, one of the people who planned the occupation from the beginning.

She's a soft-spoken white woman. She comes off as earnest and idealistic, not a cynic Sandy or Nalini. Maybe it's her Midwestern roots. 

I grew up in central Ohio in a small town that became a suburb, and my parents had been involved in, Democratic Party politics mostly. they definitely talked about politics, constantly.

Her dad was actually a labor lawyer for a time. 

I was in high school, when 9/11 happened. 

Terrorists declare war on the United States, hijacking jetliners, crashing them into New York's World Trade towers. 

President George W. Bush made the call to enter into a war that would end up expanding and lasting 20 years.

On my orders, coalition forces have begun selected targets of military 

I learned about, politics, and how power works, and how to organize first, from my parents, and then became more radicalized in the context of the anti-war movement. 

From then on, she was a dedicated activist. By the summer of 2011, Marisa was 25, a grad student living in Brooklyn, and part of a new anarchist group called the New York City General Assembly, and it was that group, the anarchists, who really gave life to the Occupy movement.

It was a long, hot August in the summer of 2011, and we met under the Hare Krishna tree in Tompkins Square Park. 

Tompkins Square Park is a leafy oasis in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan. It has all the regular things a New York City park has. A bustling playground, a dog run, old men sitting on benches feeding the pigeons, rats, and the Hare Krishna tree.

But what, you may be wondering, is the Hare Krishna tree? 

In the middle of Tompkins Square Park, there's a rather large tree with roots that 

extend out into the concrete and, and break it up, and people go there to meditate and play music and 

just be together. This huge elm tree was the site of the first Hare Krishna outdoor chanting session in the country in 1966, which is how it got its name.

In August of 2011, it became the meeting spot for the New York City General Assembly. 

I always got there early and would jot down a few things for agenda points and wait for people to show up. Usually people were late because, operating on anarchist time, people are are generally late. 

Many of the people who showed up at the Hare Krishna tree had been protesting the city's austerity measures because remember, while the financial institutions that had caused the 2008 crash had gotten massive government bailouts, city budgets all over the place had been cut, and three years later were still struggling.

They had camped outside City Hall for three weeks to protest then Mayor Michael Bloomberg's budget cuts to city services. They called that occupation Bloombergville, but it had petered out rather unsuccessfully. Now, they were hungry to do something else, and they were trying to figure out what exactly the next big thing would be.

Their meetings, which they called assemblies, would stretch on for hours as they debated strategy and principles. The afternoons in the park would turn into evenings at nearby bars, where smaller groups would continue their discussions around pitchers of beer. There was no shortage of ideas and opinions among this committed group of activists.

The challenge was getting a bigger crowd to show up to whatever direct action they planned. 

There was not a lot of social movement energy. 

This is Astra Taylor, an author and documentary filmmaker who was in her mid-30s at the time. She had already spent more than a decade as an activist, and I think it's safe to say was worn down a bit.

That was from experience. 

It was an incredibly demoralizing experience to protest in the aughts. typically what would happen is the cops would kettle you, which means that they would wrap your protest in this orange netting and haul you off to jail. Or they'd say, "Stay in this little, tiny free speech pen."

If there was political energy, it was online. There was this prankster, disruptive spirit on the internet. 

And that is where the spark that ignited Occupy came from: a meme. In July 2011, 90,000 people got an email with a stark and beautiful image. In black and white, you see the Charging Bull statue, that huge bronze beast in Manhattan's Financial District that's supposed to represent the stock market.

A ballerina is standing on top of the bull's back. She's thin, white, wearing a dark unitard. Her eyes are lowered. She's in a classic arabesque pose, arms outstretched and one leg gracefully arcing out behind her. Behind the ballerina and the bull, there's a crowd emerging from a haze of smoke. They look our stereotypical idea of anarchists, wearing gas masks and dark clothes.

They're surging forward in the same charging motion as the bull. One of them brandishes a stick. At the top of the image, in red all caps, it says, "What is our one demand?" Below it, #OccupyWallStreet, September 17th, bring tent. The email with this image came from Adbusters, an activist magazine that liked to stir up trouble.

It was known for its beautifully designed spoof ads critiquing consumer culture. Adbusters regularly instigated boycotts and encouraged people to artfully vandalize billboards. And now, their Occupy Wall Street image and hashtag was ripping through the internet. One of the groups that promoted this idea to occupy Wall Street was Anonymous, the hacktivist collective that had gained notoriety for launching cyber attacks against corporations and the Church of Scientology.

Anonymous announced that they were taking to the streets and urged people to join them. 

Hello, citizens of the internet. We're Anonymous. On September 17th, Anonymous will flood into Lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades, and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices.

We want freedom. This is a non-violent protest. We do not encourage violence in any way. The abuse and corruption of corporations, banks, and governments ends here. Join us. We're Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Wall Street, expect us.

A new YouGov Economist poll of registered voters that just came out this week found that the top two words that Americans across the board endorsed to describe Donald Trump are corrupt, fifty-three percent, and dangerous, fifty-one percent.

Not even half of registered Republican voters were willing to call him honest. This is consistent with Gallup's finding earlier this month that fully eighty-nine percent of Americans now believe that corruption in our government is widespread, the highest number in the two decades the polling company has been asking, and a higher number than in any other advanced industrialized democracy.

The same day that poll came out, yesterday, CBS News published photos that American service members smuggled out of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia showing extensive, massive damage to barracks, facilities, and even U.S. aircraft, all done by Iranian drone and missiles. The Pentagon's own inspector general just reported that there has been three point seven billion dollars in equipment and building losses and around sixty aircraft destroyed or severely damaged.

This follows Trump last week lying through his teeth on News Nation, saying that the Iranians had inflicted no damage and no nothing on U.S. facilities and troops, eighteen of whom are now dead with hundreds more hospitalized. Trump calls that small potatoes and refused to visit the wounded troops when he was at Walter Reed a few weeks ago.

One soldier, his identity concealed, told CBS News, quote, "We're standing there with our eyes closed, getting punched in the face." Not only is Trump regularly, arguably daily, lying to America and the world about what's happening in the Middle East and dozens of other things, but that poll shows what, most Americans have figured out, which raises a vital question for our country at this pivotal moment.

What happens to a country when it loses trust in its government and leaders, and what can be done to restore that trust? I've seen the consequences of this loss of trust close, up close and personal in the year I-- years I traveled the world on behalf of a German international relief organization, and the lessons I learned are both important and grim.

In the nineteen nineties, I made several trips to Bogotá, Colombia, on solemn's behalf as I wrote about The Prophet's Way. I remember the immigration officer at the airport stamping my passport saying, "Mr. Torres, be careful." At dinner that first night, after being warned not to take taxis or trust the police, a German woman who'd lived w-- there for fifteen years flinched every time the doorbell rang.

Her husband's office manager, an ordinary middle-class guy, had been forced to watch helplessly at gunpoint as fifteen armed men broke into their house looking for their sixteen-year-old daughter. When they discovered she wasn't there, they took his wife, a friend of my dinner companion. Every night for a month, they called the husband and made his wife cry into the phone as he systematically drained every credit card, bank account, and retirement account he had.

She was only released when he'd finally mortgaged his condo and given them the last of his money and credit. She was a shell of a person afterward, barely able to speak, and the family was desperately trying to borrow enough money from friends to leave the country and go back home to Germany. The nun who ran the church where we were staying, locked into cells with steel doors and cement walls, warned us against going to a restaurant after dark and wrote down the phone number of the only trustworthy cab company in the city.

Off-duty cops and soldiers had organized hunt clubs to shoot street, street children for sport. One morning, as Horace Von Heier and I drove past a billboard advertising a gated community of upscale homes with smiling guards carrying AK-47s, we passed a teenage boy sprawled on the sidewalk in a spreading pool of blood, a uniformed man standing over him with a gun still in his hand.

Nobody in the car said a word. It was just too ordinary. This is just one small example from my own experience of what happens when people no longer trust their own government. Into that vacuum of trust rushed two types of people. The first are the predators who correctly figured that it's now open season.

We're seeing that right now as corporate America fleeces us, banks rip us off, health insurance companies deny us care to fatten profits, and oil companies and their wholly owned GOP shills lie to our faces about climate change. The second are the strongman politicians who promise that only violence and an iron fist can restore law and order.

I saw that in Kaliningrad, Russia in the 1990s when four Russian cops pulled over our car for speeding and then let us go when we gave them a case of high-end chocolates, a town where the mob-run kiosks around Lenin Square were the safest parts of town, and vodka was cheaper than bottled water. Six years later, Russia, by then exhausted by the crime and grifting of oligarchs, handed their country over to a KGB colonel who promised to make the trains run on time.

There hasn't been a free election in that country since. Recently, El Salvador ran that same script. A corrupt, on-the-take government of grifters and hustlers so ripped off the country and gutted the middle class That they voted in Nayib Bukele, a guy who describes himself as Central Bank, Central America's coolest dictator.

He proceeded to arrest and lock up about two percent of the entire country, cutting crime, but also ending democracy altogether. That's the warning for us. When trust, trust is gone, wild stuff happens to countries, and I've seen it in person from Peru to the Philippines to Uganda to South Sudan and Darfur and elsewhere.

And now I'm seeing it here as the predators and fascists are running amok in America. Trust is the single most vital component of all human relationships. With it, you can create miracles. Without it, it's hard to do anything productive. Just ask any marriage counselor. To recover trust after a betrayal can take years and requires both full disclosure, real contrition, or at least explanation, and a genuine change in behavior.

And that's exactly what Americans are struggling with right now. In a republic ours, trustworthiness necessarily begins at the top, and Donald Trump is an utterly untrustworthy man. He cheated on every one of his wives. He convinced his followers to give him a combined three point eight one billion dollars for his Trump and Melania digital coins before their value fell ninety-seven percent and he pocketed the difference.

He's made another one point four billion from crypto just in the first year of his second presidency. And then there are the murders being carried out in Trump's name and under his direction. In January, his masked thugs murdered Renee Good, a mother of three, and Alex Preddy, an ICU nurse at the VA, both American citizens, on the streets of Minneapolis.

For six months, the re- the administration refused to hand the evidence of the murders over to state prosecutors and physically blocked state investigators. As of today, nobody's been charged with these crimes. That's the Bogota sidewalk, the uniformed men with high-powered rifles who know nobody will ever hold them to account for their killing sprees.

This is a pattern that's been fifty years in the making. Nixon committed treason, blowing up the Vietnam peace talks to win the nineteen sixty-eight election, and then repeatedly b- both broke the law and took bribes while in office. Ford pardoned him, telling, telling us our long national nightmare was over when he was simply setting up the n- the next phase.

Reagan cut a deal with the Iranians to hold the hostages until after the 1980 election to screw Jimmy Carter, and when a special prosecutor began a serious investigation of that treason, G.H.W. Bush's attorney general, Bill Barr, advised him to pardon the six Iran-Contra defendants on Christmas Eve of 1992, just months before he left office.

Bill Clinton chose to ignore it all and look to the future. And when George W. Bush's brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, purged black Floridian citizens from the voter rollsin the months before the 2000 election so his sibling could win the state by 537 votes, and their father's appointee to the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, cast the deciding vote to stop the recount that would have revealed the crime, Al Gore just let it slide.

So the Declaration of Independence states, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men in, are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator and certain, with certain unalien- unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

And you write that these words articulate a vision of a society in which no group of people occupies a special place from birth or is granted rights and privileges formally denied to others. They claim that each person, possesses a distinct moral capability and ability to make sense of the world around him or herself, and that out of that capacity comes an equal right to shape our society, a right to political participation.

And throughout American history, at least some people have argued these ideas and the organization of economic life should correspond, that no one group of people should be so rich that they are able to exert political influence in their own interest or pass down to their children a superior place in the political and social order.

How much of a threat to democracy, Kim, is great wealth concentrated in the hands of a very few, if not a single person? How much is wealth a danger to democracy? 

Well, I think i- in a way, that's the question that this whole book is about. And, I guess I would say I, I think that the, the book comes from, wanting

So this is a book about, about people who have argued in defense of inequality. But at the back of that is, are, are the many people throughout American history who have saw, who, who, who have said that there's a real, that, that concentrated wealth is dangerous and to democratic government. And I think this is a real and under-recognized, thread that goes back to the revolution and earlier, and which is deeply skeptical of, inherited privilege of all sorts, and especially of concentrated wealth.

And why is it? And I think the reasons that the, the dangers that wealth poses to democracy are many. but one is that it gives, obviously people who have this, w- this was an argument that you saw often in the revolutionary era, that people who have a lot of wealth will be able to get more access to the state than people who don't.

Also, and importantly, they will have a lot of control over the lives of people who have less wealth and fewer material resources. And this was another very important argument in the revolutionary era, that, you needed to be, for people to be free and equal subjects, they needed to have some resources of their own to meet as equals in society, not just in a formal, fictional legal sense, but actually you had to be able to have some, direction over your life, and you couldn't have that if you were just employed by somebody else.

And then I think there's another, a- a- and I think there's a, this is another, aspect of this sensibility which you see a lot in the era of the American Revolution, in particular, a sense of the arbitrary nature of wealth, that wealth is often associated with, or people then believed it was often associated with aristocracy, which seemed at heart arbitrary.

It just was a, a, a a, a privilege extended by, on basis of birth. It didn't have roots in, individual accomplishment necessarily. And it was a fantasy that some people were simply better than others and deserve to have this place. And I think I, that A hatred of arbitrary privilege is another important, and I would say very positive aspect of, American political culture.

I guess I would also say with the Declaration, even the part that you read, and you, you were alluding to this in the lead-in to the show, these, these ideas are complicated, and they weren't, They, they were certainly, obviously Jefferson was very wealthy himself.

He owned human beings. He was an enslaver. there... People did not see these... The, the people believed in different gradations, between men and women, parents and children, white and non-white people. So there is a kinda, in the revolutionary space, there's a plenty of tolerance for different forms of hierarchy.

However, I think even so, the promise of the Declaration is very quickly seized by all of these subordinate groups, by enslaved people, by free Black people in the era of the revolution, by women. And so in a way, once the promise is out there, other p- people hold onto it and push it and try to expand it past what the original intent might have been.

the social experience of the revolution also lends itself to this, which is a, a massive popular conflict that really relies on civilian support, since there, there wasn't a professional army in a, in a real way. So I, I think it's a, it's a, the chaos and potential for social upheaval and leveling at that moment, gives life to these ideas in a particular way then, and in some ways afterward.

Were those who were supportive of egalitarianism the subjugated, and the people who were the opponents of inequality the people who were powerful? I understand that, and as you write in your book, the Jeffers- Jeffersonian idea of- Mm-hmm ... equality comes from somebody who is not a subjugated, subjugated person, but was the...

Did that seem to be the tendency that the subjugated wanted the promise to be fulfilled of the Dec- Declaration of Independence and the powerful did not? 

I think it's there, there are cross-cutting currents, but yeah, I would say as a, as a broad, I, I think th- I, I think that the, the most egalitarian claims of the revolution tended to be advanced by people who were not in a very elite group.

so yeah, I think in a general way that is true. 

So what is it about the demo- 

the United States version of democracy that seems to make it so vulnerable to demands for extreme inequality and seems to promote- Yeah ... promote people who have those ideas? 

Yeah. Well, I think, yeah, it's, it's actually, that is a really interesting question, and actually one thing it brings up for me is I think, my, my book is very much a national history and a national story, but I, I suspect that you find versions of these arguments playing out in many other, parts of the world as well.

So I, I think I am real... I- it, this story is told through a, a lens focused on the US. I think, but it, but it doesn't mean ... I, I think that this has an international dimension to it, too. and I hope other scholars will, will take up that framework and look at other parts of the world through it.

I think one of the reasons that the United States has been such an intense... That, that these questions have played out in such an intense fashion in our politics, I think there are two things. One is that the claims around egalitarianism, while they have been advanced by people mo- by the most forcefully by people who are part of subordinate groups, they also in another way are written into the dominant political ideology of the country.

So it's not possible to just, completely dismiss them out of hand as the product of a rabble-rousing subordinate population. They have a certain legitimacy so that everybody across the political spectrum has to contend with them. And I think this, this lends some of the people in my book, who say repeatedly the Declaration of Independence, "The people are not actually created equal.

That's not true." everybody, whoever said that, it's just dogma. Nobody really believes that. But in every case, they have to say it with a certain sense of transgression because they are arguing against what they, too, are aware are some of the dominant ideas of the country. And so I think that lends the whole argument, a, a, a dynamic that it doesn't have elsewhere.

I think the second reason that these claims are so, that this, this conflict is so important in American politics has to do with the tension between being a democratic, a country with a formerly democratic politics and with these claims about egalitarianism that is also, such a profound... W- where capitalism has advanced so quickly and so intently and so there is always a disjuncture between what the claims are in the political structure about democracy and equality, and the reality, the material reality of the country, which does depend on, as capitalism necessarily does, on inequality, on the concentration of wealth, and on a really, a, on, on a, a, a class society.

And so I think that conflict between the political ideas of the country and the material reality of it, of, of its political economy has also meant that this, th- there's a ... It, it gives a, a, a lot of, traction to this conflict because people are constantly arguing about this and constantly noting that the economic life of the country, which at many points has tended to this extreme inequality, that it seems, not, doesn't seem to fit with the egalitarian claims that are also

have this legitimacy and this role in how, what people think the country is supposed to be about 

But I wanna talk about, w- y- you write about the idea of politics of powerlessness, which- Mm-hmm ... is still a phenomenon That is at play. And- Mm-hmm ... explain that dynamic, Yeah ... and, and then let's talk about what has come out of Occupy in the years since. 

Sure. Yeah. Yeah, okay, so, so th-this thing that I call the politics of powerlessness, which is the, one of the connective threads of the book, is, is, it's a way of describing this phenomenon where, organizations and movements start to internalize their powerlessness, and then behave in ways that make them even more powerless.

So, often because we spend a lot of the ti- a lot of our time not winning and on the margins and, the underdogs, we start to adopt a story about ourselves that that's what we're supposed to be, and that's what we're always gonna be. I came up in the anti-war movement, and after the very beginning of the anti-war movement that, that, was this, massive, record, record-breaking numbers of people in the streets, but then we didn't stop the war.

And- Yeah ... and, and, and, and, to, to a young person coming up in that movement, it, it was pretty devastating, and it really shifted my... I, it was "Oh, we're not, we're not gonna stop the war." And, it, the, it was Bush and, a-and the Patriot Act and f-flags everywhere. There didn't used to be fucking flags everywhere.

it was, it was a, it, it felt a dystopian novel. And, and you start to, you, you start to basically take on, "Okay, fine. So we're not gonna win, but we're gonna be the righteous few." And once you start to think of yourself as, as part of the righteous few, you, you then abandon a lot of the behaviors that it actually takes to build movements.

H-What actually takes to build movements is to talk to people who are really different from you. It, it's, sometimes boring, painstaking work of knocking on doors and calling people on the phone. It's, learning how to actually, run a meeting and be in healthy conflict with people and build organizations and, and navigate all these hard things that come up in groups, that inevitably come up in groups about identity, about belonging.

that, this is the stuff of the book is, ways I think that groups can do that in a more healthy way. But once you start to, once you don't think you're gonna win, whether 'cause the, the, the enemy is scary or you're just caught up in despair, you have no experience of winning before, then you start to abandon that stuff, and you become insular and self-righteous, and you turn on, you turn away from the public, you turn away from the enemy, you turn towards one another.

You, you often turn against one another 'cause that's how you can exercise the power you do have is, on one another in, in the space or online or, all this call-out stuff. I think that is one of the things that- That I learned at Occupy and experienced and also did myself at Occupy, I think that we were very confused about power.

We, we had, we, we did not have a lived experience of, of, of, of any power for the left or feeling that that was possible, and I think we acted a lot of that out on each other, and I think that came out in, in all of our stuff. especially over time as we faced more and more barriers to, to growing and faced police repression and faced all this stuff, I think we, we more and more turned inward and turned people away and, and made it hard to join.

And I, I... So that I think is one of the legacies of Occupy Wall Street. I think that it was a case study in this, this thing that we often do on the left, still I think do, though less than, than before, and we can talk about that. Yeah. I think that's part of But, but definitely 

not the only- I think this is a...

That, that, that disposition is not, I think, exclusive to left-wing politics or even politics. I just remember- I think that's right ... when, Smells Teen Spirit came out, people were bummed that Nirvana was having success. Totally. And, and I'm "G- g- well, why? What, what difference does it make?"

Deep cut. Their music's not different. Totally ... it hasn't, who cares? 

Well, people now hate The Beatles because they were popular. I'm "Dudes-" 

They- "... 

they fucking made great music. What do you want?" It's I, I think it's true. I think you're right. I actually think the right wing has some of this stuff, too.

I think the implo- the, the ways that some of the far right turn in on themselves is similar to this. But, but I, I think the, 

But I'm happy about that. Yeah. Totally ... but e- exactly. That's a- 

I hope they don't read my book and get better at their internal shit. 

well, and so but let's l- when we talk about Turning away from, people, where do, what, how far do we cast out, Mm

when we're casting our lines? who's- Mm-hmm ... in that group that we shouldn't be turning away from? Because there are some- Yeah ... people in my- Yeah, yeah, yeah ... estimation where it's I'm not wasting... The return on investment, I hate to use a business term, but that's basically what we're talking about, is not- Mm-hmm

worth it for- Yeah ... a significant portion of the country. Totally. if you're trying to make an example out of them or you're trying to use it to illustrate some other point. But so who are we talking about? Because- Fair ... I just started- Yeah, yeah ... the show by, slamming, Neera Tanden and Sarah Longwell, Yeah, yeah

for attacking- Mm-hmm ... Mamdani. Mm-hmm ... but there are ilk that, maybe they're on- Totally ... the far out reaches, frankly, but there's... It's almost the people who are just ignorant as opposed to- Mm ... willfully, ignorant. 

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's right. Look, I think, yeah, it's true.

Movements, they, they set boundaries one way or another. we have to do it 'cause we're, we're obviously we're saying, "No, this, this thing is not right. w- this way the world is organized is not right. We're not okay with it. We're gonna fight that." And, and so, and, and it's important that we have, we, that we get real about the fact that we have opponents in that.

and, and, and opponents who are, if we're being honest, they're trying to kill us. they're literally... They, they, i- before they give up power, they'll certainly wanna kill quite a lot of us and, and, and they're driving the whole civi- the entire civilization off a cliff. So it's not a, it's not a game, and I think we have to be serious about the fact that we don't mean for everybody to belong.

But I think our movements tend to be protective of themselves for, for good reason. We've been... a lot of people come to movements because they've been hurt, they're, because, because they don't trust the mainstream, because they hate the mainstream, because, And, and we start to then adopt these behaviors that are, litmus tests to be able to join.

you have to be, you have to show how radical you are. You have to all this stuff. Okay. Well, I, here's a good story for this. I know we're both, we're both, we, we are both amateur softball players. 

That's- 

I know this much ... 

that's correct, and we have, overlap in the leagues that we're in. 

Yeah, so we know, we know some of the same people and maybe you're good.

I'm not very good.

My, my softball story is the opposite, is I, I went to join, this, this is basically a pickup- 

Yep ... 

softball league that's been, it's been running for 30 years or something 

that. mine too. Yeah. 

a lot of old men and people with, with busted knees and whatever, and they're, they're...

And, and, and some really great players and, and, and I was looking for something to do that wasn't movement work, and so I went and I joined this thing. And I was fine for the first couple of games, and then I think what ended up happening is I got put in positions where I was actually gonna be tested.

they were warming me up. And then I had a couple of games where I, I was f- catastrophically bad. I was I made a bunch of errors And you're I hadn't played in 20 years. I played when I was a kid in high school, and not well, And, and suddenly I'm just, a, a few...

This is a story I, I write in detail in the book if you wanna know how painful each error was. But it was... But, softball's one of these sports where you can't... There's nowhere to hide, If you're gonna fuck up, everyone's watching. You- you're gonna hit the ball or you're not, nobody can help you.

You're gonna catch it or not, nobody can help you, And, I came 

out of that- And when you're playing with adults, particularly in, my experience in Brooklyn has been people let about it. 

Totally. Yeah, and I, I, I very quickly got demoted and, and, and I had a breakdown over this.

I was spent way too much of my therapy money talking about the, this, this felt new to me. failing in public as an adult, And, and, I, I tend to be in movement spaces as a facilitator. My work is as a movement facilitator for, for groups going through hard stuff, and I, I'm, I'm, I'm in spaces where I'm the one directing the flow of things, and here I am just sucking and not being in charge.

And I, I had a real hard time with it. And, over time what happened wa- I s- I decided to stay and not just quit, 'cause I had so much fun in those first few games. I felt alive and connected and, and, a kid again. And a couple things happened when I decided to stay over time.

One is I made friends, and, and some of those guys are really my buddies now. And the other is that I got better. 

It's, it's ridiculous to have to say this out loud, but it is actually a profound thing to re-realize as, as an adult that when you practice something, you become better at it. And good, healthy things, communities or organizations, they expect that you are not great when you come, you might even be broken by the system, and they trust themselves to be able to take you in and, they're not afraid of you, and they let you stay long enough to improve.

And, the thing about softball is, I wasn't asked to... Nobody expected anything really of me except that I would play, play by the rules and, try. try to al- not let my team down. That's, what it is to be part of a team sport. And I think this is how I'm connecting it back to the movement stuff, is I think our movements are often the opposite.

Because we're scared, and because we've been hurt, and because we have a lot to protect, really a lot of marginalized people to protect, who are fucked over by the system, by empire, we often create pretty harsh boundaries for people where they have to prove themselves before they join. And that is not a winning strategy.

That's not how mass movements are made. And, the parts of the right that are successful, they do the opposite. They really expect you to be broken, and they come, and they, they, they, they're ready to transform you. They take you for whatever you are, and they put you to work. And I think our movements need to get better at that.

so to your question of, who belongs and who not, we have opponents we need to fight. But really, a lot of people in this country, a lot of people in this world, they're up for the taking. They're looking for a place to belong. They're hurt by the system. They could very easily be convinced to turn on it.

They would benefit from the world that we wanna win. A lot of them know that already, and simply the reason that most of, most people are not in movements is because they don't really believe that they don't know how to do, join them, and they don't really believe that anything can change. But we know that things can change and, and, and that that's, we need to organize them in order for that to happen.

it's hard to track how, the impact that movements have when they're happening, and Occupy is a complicated one.

I rememb- I remember actually in the immediate aftermath wondering, "What did we accomplish? Did we win anything?" And feeling, a lot of loss and despair. But it's really clear to see now, 15 years back, how much of an impact it's made. I think obvious things thousands of people get politicized in these big movement moments, and that definitely happened with Occupy Wall Street.

And, and, and then, and then training of lots of leaders and building of lots of organizational infrastructure that m- movements really didn't have at that time. But I think the biggest impact, I think the biggest contribution, is the, is the 99% and the 1%, this intervention in, in the language of this co- Of the public.

I think this is what movements often do really well when they're successful, is they change the public's common sense about something. And Occupy Wall Street changed the public's common sense about class, and class struggle, and inequality in this country. And I think when you, y- I, I, think it's hard to see how you get a, a Bernie Sanders 2016 run without the public shifting its relationship to that story.

Bernie's been saying the same thing for decades, bless him. And, and but, but suddenly it was popular, and that's because movements came around and made it a thing, and then, and, and, effective organizations and, and, and, and good politicians can, can support that and turn it into something durable, and that's how you get, Bernie, and AOC, and the Squad, and so on.

And, and yeah, I think that's a huge impact. 

you'll talk- you talk about the, the ins- the international inspirations to Occupy, 'cause clearly about a year earlier, the Arab Spring had broken out in May of 2011. The, the, the Indignados in Spain. To what degree the activists, in New York and across the United States were aware or inspired by those movements?

Yeah, I think we were hugely... I, I think a lot of the people in the heart of Occupy Wall Street were hugely inspired by those movements, by, by Arab Spring, and, yeah, the Indignados in Spain, and, movements all across. and yeah, and really saw ourselves as part of a, a lineage of, of mass movements in the streets, taking, taking life into their own hands, I think we were.

And, and I think even the forum, the decentralized taking over public squares, w- we were deeply inspired by those movements. 

Yotam, on September 19thtwo days- Mm-hmm ... after the start of Occupy, Democracy Now! interviewed the late activist and anthropologist, David Graeber, who's been credited with helping to coin Occupy's defining rallying call, "We are the 99%."

He talked about who showed up on the first day- Mm ... of the protest. 

It was mostly young people, and most of them were people who'd gone through the educational system, who were deeply in debt, and who found it completely impossible to get jobs. these people have felt, really feel very strongly that, they did the right thing.

They did exactly what they were supposed to. The system has completely failed them, and they're not going to be saved by, by the people in charge. You're just gonna ha- if there's gonna be any society we, worth living in, we're going to have to create it ourselves. 

That's the late David Graeber.

Of course, he was talking, about the... That was two days after September 19, 2011. And then Occupy, that mass protest in October in Times Square. Talk about the scene- Mm ... and looking up- Mm-hmm ... and seeing the ticker. 

Yeah. so this is a, a, a story in my, in, in my book too, that, I, I helped, played a bunch of roles at Occupy Wall Street, and one of them was hel- helping to pull off this October 15th action, which was our, our biggest day of action.

And, we're tearing through the streets of New York and shutting down banks and blocking traffic. And it was also the day that I think a hundred, 150 occupations started in other cities around the country, and not just big cities, but also, a parking lot in Idaho and, the state lawn in wherever.

And, really, it became, a significant political force. And it, that day ended in Times Square with, 80,000 people. And, I remember this moment, standing on a trashcan in Times Square. And the, and Times Square has these massive buildings and, and the, the, the ABC building has a ticker, a rolling ticker that, that pumps out the news.

And we're standing there, and the ticker goes, "Occupy Wall Street goes worldwide." while we're there. And it's this time stops kinda moment. And I look back at that as a, a- actually, as a, as a pretty transformative moment for me, and I think, I think in a way Occupy was very transformative for a whole generation of us.

for me, what that moment was, was a, a first feeling that we could build movements that, that were powerful, that were popular. I think I had, I had come, grown, grown up in, in movements that, that had lost and were used to losing. And, and had, and, and I think we over time accepted the idea that we were gonna be on the margins.

We were gonna be the righteous few, but we weren't gonna win. And Occupy Wall Street was this first glimmer of, of, oh, we could be, we could be, powerful. We could be something that the public is paying attention to. We could potentially win. And, and of course, that's not exactly how Occupy played out, but when you look at, that is a, that is an important prerequisite to movements, is the sense that we could be powerful.

But movements that don't believe that they can win tend to take on, hard dynamics internally. 

And Tom, and you mention in your book For Lou- For Louder Days: Reaching Beyond the Politics of Powerlessness. And it, but clearly as you also mentioned, a, a lot of what of the, the protesters were hoping for has, did not occur.

And, and you also deal with the, the conflicts and divisions that develop within the movement. I'm wondering if you could talk about that a little bit. 

Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. I think, look, I think Occupy Wall Street brought us a lot, and I think there's a lot to be grateful for. but I also think in some ways it was an embodiment of this thing that I call the politics of powerlessness, which is the h- when movements and organizations, internalize the sense that they belong on the margins and that they're always gonna be on the margins, whether because, out of, out of bad habit or, or having lost for a very long time or feeling despair in the face of the climate crisis or this towering opponent.

When movements don't believe that they can win, they tend to turn away from our opponent. We turn to, turn away from the public we're supposed to be organizing, and we turn towards each other and, and often against each other because that's what we can control. We, we don't to feel powerless in the face of this big wide world, so we, we, we enact power on each other, and that often looks tearing down leaders.

It looks forming these tight clubs that, that are, are really hard for everyday people to join. it, it looks battles over identity and, and, and, and things that. and, and a conflict avoidance and, that, that makes all, all that possible. So the, the book is really about, Occupy was in a way, a- a- a case in that m- where I learned a lot of that.

And then the book is, is stories from, my work as a, as a movement facilitator and strategist for, for, for social movement organizations, supporting them to work through that thing and watching them break through those patterns over the course of the last, 10, 15 years, in- Yeah, that's what by the politics of powerlessness, and

yeah. I'll stop there. 

And, and, and to what degree do you think the, the decentralized, autonomous, anti-hierarchical, approach of the Occupy, protesters, made it more difficult for them to actually, once the protest ended, build, national organizations that could actually exercise power? D- Yeah.

Have you thought about that? 

Totally. Yeah, it's a g- another good question. I, I think, all the things that made Occupy magical were also its self-destruct mechanism, The leaderlessness was a thing that invited people to join and take agency and, and, and be creative and, and, and movements often are decentralized, and that's how they go to scale.

But it also made it impossible to figure out, to, to craft a strategy, to build long-term organization, to really absorb all these thousands of people who were being politicized. in some ways, that is just part of what happens in movement moments, and it's the responsibility of... I- it's our responsibility as movements to be building organizations and, and parties and things that can capture that momentum.

But I, but I do think that, yeah, we, we got it wrong on a lot of things. We, we had a ton of internal conflict that, that, that really, I think, jeopardized the project. 

The legacy of Occupy is really a culture shift. It wasn't a structural shift, but I think culture shifts make room for structural shifts. 

That's Brooke Lehman, the anarchist activist and Lehman heir. 

In that brief period of time, lots of things become possible that weren't possible, and then the gravity returns.

The movements die back, but things have shifted, and then other organizations that are more capable of creating structural change can come in and move the needle in different ways. 

If you imagine a big gust of wind hitting a dandelion and the seeds being dispersed across a field, that's what happened to Occupy.

Activists carried their specific projects or ideas forward in new ways. Some were more radical, Occupiers who shut down some West Coast shipping ports to disrupt the commercial supply chain. Other Occupiers tried making structural changes through the more usual channels, crafting policy, lobbying, or running candidates.

And while Occupy Wall Street never had demands, many of these offshoots did. I want to zoom in on some of them to illustrate how Occupy's principles of mutual aid, direct action, and inclusivity were sharpened and put into practice as our Occupiers moved through the world after the eviction.

Those moments of uprising are really important because they bring people into the fold, they energize people, they motivate people to come and kinda dream together. But then you have to do the hard work of, sustaining that and turning that into political strategy. 

Remember Astra Taylor? She was the filmmaker and writer who was certain that Occupiers were going to get beat up and kicked out of the park the very first night.

When they didn't, she jumped into the action herself. 

This was the second or third day of Occupy. Somebody was standing in a corner of the park and shouting a carnival barker, "Step right up and write down what you're worth to the 1%." So people were just stepping up and writing down their debts, and I had a lot...

I felt this resistance in my chest to the idea of putting down the number. 

But Astra did write down how much she owed and saw that a lot of her peers were in even deeper debt. Together, they started questioning the conventional wisdom that being broke only happens to people who don't take, quote, "personal responsibility for their finances".

Are we all just idiots who made mistakes, or is there something wrong with the system that's driving us into debt for the necessities of life? Why do we have to take on debt to get an education, or if we get cancer need to go to the doctor, or just, to put food on the table because we've lost our job because of the economic meltdown?

something's wrong here. 

Astra was recruited into a working group focused on debt, and together they realized something. 

The vast majority of us who had come to the encampment were indebted, and you cannot separate the existence of a handful of billionaires from the existence of hundreds of millions of debtors.

These are twin phenomenon. 

They started having what they called debtors assemblies, asking people to tell their stories. Their work evolved into a campaign called Strike Debt, which sought to erase medical debt for people who were underwater. 

So we, as part of Strike Debt, thought, "Well, what if we do something where we bail out the people, where we demonstrate on a small scale what it is that the government should have done?"

They came up with a brilliant and creative plan. 

So just as mortgages are bought and sold and bundled and treated as assets, as commodities for people to profit from, our other debts are as well. Our medical debts, our student loans, our credit card bills, our utility bills, all of these things are sold by debt collectors on shady secondary markets.

And so we basically figured out how to intervene in that market, debt collectors, except in order to buy the debts and erase them. 

Portfolios of people's overdue debts, from medical bills to phone bills, are bundled and sold. So when you're finally paying that overdue medical bill, the money isn't going to the hospital, it's going to the owner of the debt who bought the debt for a fraction of what you are now paying back.

We thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if we raised $50,000 and we were able to buy a million dollars of medical debt?" And we called this project the Rolling Jubilee. Our, our project went viral. We ended up raising something $700,000 and buying and erasing, over a period of about a year and a half, over $32 million worth of medical debt, payday loans, and other kinds of debts.

And we sent these beautiful letters to just thousands and thousands and thousands of strangers saying, "This is a no-strings-attached gift. The Rolling Jubilee and Occupy Wall Street are setting you free of this debt as an act of, mutual aid." And we called it a people's bailout. 

Imagine getting a letter that.

The medical bills you thought would bankrupt you, that kept you up at night, were suddenly gone. 

We had the most heartbreaking inbox of all time. We had people saying that they were contemplating suicide because of their debts. It was a real education of just h- the depth of the crisis, and how deeply devastating that debt is to people, not just their economic lives, but their emotional lives.

They knew, of course, that this one project wasn't a solution to a systemic issue. There were billions of dollars of debt being bought and sold. But it was a public education, showing people that their debts were treated as assets, and that it was possible to do things differently if there was political will.

Why should the hospital sell off your debt for three cents on the dollar to a debt collector, to a predatory debt collector, but not to you? 

Their work led to other efforts, including a student debt strike that pushed student debt relief onto the national political agenda. 

So just the government can bail out banks, it can actually cancel federal student loans.

That one small working group 

helped launch a national conversation about debt relief. By the end of the Biden administration, federal debt relief initiatives had provided relief to roughly 5.3 million borrowers. 

Those are absolutely direct consequences of Occupy Wall Street. 

And that was just one way Occupiers put the principles of mutual aid and collective action into practice.

I want to briefly turn to Marissa Holmes. She lives in Spain now, a move she made last year after realizing she was being investigated by the FBI because of her association with a local anarchist group. In the years after the eviction from Zuccotti Park, Marissa continued participating in Occupy movement actions.

I was involved in various offshoots, including Strike Debt and some of Occupy Sandy. 

Occupy Sandy illustrates mutual aid at work in another powerful way. In 2012, a storm surge from Hurricane Sandy left large parts of New York and New Jersey flooded and without power. Occupy activists organized a network of about 60,000 volunteers to help residents of the hardest hit areas.

They provided hot meals, flashlights, and other necessities, transportation, and eventually repaired or rebuilt homes. There were no leaders, no center of command, no bureaucracy, just immediate relief. In fact, Occupy Sandy volunteers were so fast, efficient, and numerous that the Department of Homeland Security wrote a glowing report about their efforts.

It was proof that horizontalism and mutual aid could be incredibly effective. 

During Occupy and after, there was this emphasis on mutual aid, which meant, self-organizing to meet each other's needs. Certainly, a lot of that happened, in Occupy Sandy and at the neighborhood level through assemblies, but also, projects continuing, setting up neighborhood associations and cooking food or filling the fridges or doing coat drives.

it's just what people do when there's a crisis, when they're in distress, to help one another. it's really basic. if the state isn't going to help, and corporations are certainly not going to help, what do you do? you have to turn to your neighbors and, figure out how to survive.

Of course, mutual aid is an old concept, and Occupy was a 21st century version of it. People self-organized through social media platforms, online donation systems, text loops, and shareable spreadsheets, and Occupy brought these skills to thousands of new people. These kinds of mutual aid projects also highlight where our government is failing.

Whether a hurricane has flooded your city or you need expensive cancer medication, a functioning society should be able to rely on its government to help, not a GoFundMe or volunteer group.

We've just heard clips starting with

Future Hindsight's special series, "Occupy! An Unfinished Uprising," exploring how a generation crushed by the 2008 crash, student debt, and a $700 billion bank bailout came together in 2011 to launch Occupy Wall Street.

The Hartmann Report described how collapsing public trust let predators fleece ordinary people and strongmen take power, pointing to Russia and El Salvador as warnings for America under Trump.

This Is Hell! traced the founding tension between the Declaration's promise that all men are created equal and a capitalist reality built on concentrated wealth and class hierarchy.

The Majority Report laid out how despair and past defeats led organizers to turn against one another instead of doing the slow work of talking through differences.

Democracy Now! reflected on how Occupy's 99% versus 1% framing changed the public's common sense about class, even as the leaderlessness that drew people in undercut the movement.

And Future Hindsight also mapped how Occupy dispersed like dandelion seeds, its offshoots erasing $32 million in medical debt and mobilizing 60,000 volunteers to rebuild after Hurricane Sandy.

And those were just the top takes, there's a lot more in the deeper dive sections,

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We have a voice message line and I sometimes ask a discussion question to kick things off but you should also feel free to respond to anything you heard on the show.

So, here's today's question:

How do you remember experiencing Occupy from back then and how does it compare to how you see things in retrospect? And, looking back now, what effect, if any, do you think it had on your own life, your politics, your perspective, or anything else? Any story, large or small, would be of interest!

If you have a question or would like your comments included in the show you can record a voice message or email us through our link in bio in the show notes.

Now, for my thoughts today,

First things first, I wanna give a special mention to the team over at the Future Hindsight podcast. We're featuring several clips from them today, pulled from their miniseries, Occupy! An unfinished uprising.

Months ago, one of their producers, Zach Travis, reached out to me to let me know about the series they'd put together to mark the 15th anniversary of Occupy, and that's what put it on my calendar.

We're always stretched a bit thin here so it was because of that heads-up I got from Zach that allowed me the time to go sifting through our archives so that we could pull together what became our Deep Cuts episode, 1823. It was made up entirely of our own archival material of things we had curated from Occupy news back in 2011, as it was happening in real time, as well as a little bit of retrospective discussion from the 10-year anniversary.

As I said, we're featuring some clips from Future Hindsight's series in today's episode, but there's so much more. We highly recommend you go check out the full series for yourself. You can find it in the regular podcast feed of Future Hindsight, and we'll include a link in the show notes.

If you missed our previous Occupy episode, check that out as well, that's where I did my commentary about Occupy.

I'll be foregoing a full commentary today. I've mentioned in previous episodes recently that I've been a bit overloaded with work and ended up suffering from a bout of burnout. I'm happy to report that I feel like I'm very much on the upswing from that, partly thanks to my decision to reduce the number of commentaries I produce while attempting to get through this work project bottleneck I created for myself.

The show's been going through a major financial squeeze this year, and we had to do some fairly major cutbacks on what we were able to produce. At the same time, I threw myself into a large and unwieldy, multifaceted project of coming up with new strategies for how to get us to a better place by expanding the audience and raising revenue, hopefully.

That's eventually what led, predictably, to the burnout. Part of what has helped has been thinking everything through with a fresh perspective and deciding to focus much more narrowly on one piece of the project at a time, while allowing others to be put on hold, guilt-free.

The two big pieces were a renewed social media strategy and a newsletter. Trying to do both was delaying both so I'm putting the newsletter on hold to allow focus on breathing new life into our social media accounts.

To that end, I've made it as easy as possible for you to find all of our accounts. There's now a link in bio that lives permanently in our show notes that will take you to a list of every place you can connect with us, so please check that out.

One last note on burnout with the caveat that I'm gonna talk about my AI use without endorsing AI just like I'd tell you about my driving habits without endorsing oil companies. I don't particularly wanna be using AI but feel like capitalism made me do it.

With that in mind, I mentioned in a previous update that another element of the burnout I was experiencing had definitely come from working with AI. I don't think it takes too long for AI to become mildly annoying for the average user but if you stick with it long enough, it genuinely turns into a nails-on-chalkboard level of grating experience which will eventually burn you out.

There is plenty of advice on tweaking AI settings to sound less artificial. The more you use them, the more their repetitive phrases stand out and every instance begins to feel like a small poke in the eye.

The advice generally revolves around creating rules that bar a chatbot from using those AI-speak stock phrases and formats, but they only do so much good. It ends up being like a game of whack-a-mole where squashing one problem just reveals the next. But I think I found a better way.

Instead of giving my chatbot a long list of things it's banned from saying, I decided to try to give it a persona. That way, it wouldn't be following a set of negative rules pushing it away from sounding like a generic AI, it would be following a set of positive rules, drawing it toward the persona I told it to adopt and making it naturally move away from those generic AI phrases because they don't fit the persona.

So, I just had to decide on a persona. I knew it couldn't be too over the top and zany but I did want it to be amusing. Part of the problem with AI is that it's so dry and uninteresting to read. But it also had to be a persona that I was deeply familiar with so that it wouldn't use any words or phrases that tripped me up. I just needed some seasoning to my AI responses, not a whole new vocabulary.

With those elements in mind, deeply familiar and mildly amusing but not zany, I'm tempted to ask you to guess what I chose or to share what you would pick, but when I told producer Deon he said he never would have guessed in a million years so I won't hold out on you.

In the end, I programmed my chatbot to speak to me like my 14-year-old self. I know that character well and my slang usage was at its peak then. I told it to adopt the persona of a 14-year-old boy in the year 1998 who is living in California and likes alternative rock music as opposed to rap music, which was very important for building an identity at the time. And, of course, I made sure it now swears at me.

I'll say that it's not as entertaining on week three as it was on day one but I'm not tired of it yet. And when it calls me "dude" and sprinkles in a "hella" or a "rad" every once in a while, it definitely breaks up the monotony. So, if you're looking to soothe the AI blues yourself, you could do a lot worse than chatting with a version of your younger self to take the edge off.

Now, seamlessly, back to the legacy of Occupy and the horrors of capitalism as we continue to dive deeper on 4 topics today. First up;

Section A, INSIDE THE OCCUPATION

Followed by Section B, INEQUALITY'S LONG HISTORY

Section C, BILLIONAIRES AND THE BACKLASH

And Section D, FIFTEEN YEARS LATER

The day to occupy arrived, September 17th, 2011, a Saturday. Marisa and a bunch of the other hardcore activists were ready to set up camp outside the New York Stock Exchange. 

I woke up around 8:00 and packed my backpack, which was quite large. I'm 5'2" and it was probably, my size. I made my way on four trains and then I got off at the Wall Street stop and wandered around and realized that the police were already there and there were barricades up.

Since they couldn't actually get to the Stock Exchange, Marisa and her fellow activists from the New York General Assembly rerouted the group to Zuccotti Park. The crowd, some with signs, some playing instruments, made their way there. Nalini showed up at Zuccotti and looked around. The Occupiers had been doing yoga, face painting, eating peanut butter sandwiches, singing.

There was already a drum circle. It didn't feel very serious. 

I felt I was in the movie Hair. It was very, hippy-dippy. I was political to the point of doing stuff, but I never was "I'm an anarchist or a socialist." I just cared that the rich have too much money. I knew it in my bones that, rich people, corporations, they're crazy, and it was an injustice.

But I just looked around and was "Yeah, I'm gonna be here for, an hour." 

Eventually, the festival part of it all that Nalini really wasn't feeling transitioned into something deeper and more personal. 

For the afternoon, people were having small group conversations on questions that we had come up with in the New York City General Assembly, and those questions were loosely, what world do you wanna live in?

What's happening right now with the economic crisis? How do we get from where we are now to this world that we wanna live in? 

Astra arrived in time for the small group conversations. 

What was so striking to me and, and caught my imagination out of the gate was that instead of standing there and chanting, which would have been a conventional thing to do, that's what protesters usually do, we were all told to sit in small circles with our neighbors.

And so we immediately organized ourselves into these mini assemblies, groups of maybe a dozen to 15 people, and we just started talking, and that already felt w- such a break with the usual script because instead of standing outside the New York Stock Exchange and saying, "You suck," and shouting at it, we were actually building bonds with each other.

People had all kinds of stories, they had hitchhiked across the country and had nothing, had no job, no money just, used whatever they could to, to get to the occupation. And there was this palpable sense of rage, this simmering rage that people wanted to unleash. People had been waiting for years to say something, and they finally could say it.

Nalini had certainly felt that way. She'd been carrying the shame of the empty fridge, the eviction notice, her lack of college education, the lie to her employer that she hadn't been able to afford the college education she had put on her resume. She was suddenly hearing stories just hers from other people.

What shifted for me was that general assembly that first night, and people getting up and telling their stories. 

At first, people told their stories in these small groups, and then the whole crowd, estimated to be almost 1,000 people, was brought together for a general assembly. In anarchist fashion, there was no leader, just a facilitation team that invited everyone to take turns speaking.

I remember somebody saying that their parents' home got foreclosed upon. I remember hearing somebody just said, "I went to all this college and have all this debt," and we were all told we had to go to college to get a better job, and somebody was "And I'm working at Starbucks." Not that it's solidarity with the Starbucks workers union, but that wasn't what we were told you go to college for, right?

There was a building sense of connection, of no, it wasn't just you or your bad choices that put you in debt. There's a pattern here. With each confession, there was this- 

This sense of hope. We know how bad it is, and we just need to come together and build this space, and, it's gonna happen.

And we are the people to do it. The sense of urgency and commitment was really... I had never seen that before. 

Part of it was the way all of this was unfolding. They used something called the people's mic, where everyone had to repeat what the speaker was saying. And again, anyone could speak. There weren't leaders or vetted speakers.

And then there were the twinkle fingers, where you waggle your fingers to show agreement. It was just so different from anything Nalini had seen before. 

This whole, hands thing, twinkle fingers, I was "Okay, this is gonna be wild." 

But she was, in spite of herself, inspired. She stood up to speak at one point.

I remember getting up. I don't remember what I said. I think I was "I hate the blah, blah, blah." But I don't remember what I said, but that moment I sat down after I spoke, and I was "Whatever's happening, I it. I'm gonna do what needs to be done." 

That moment of cynicism turning to optimism was happening for other people at the park too, including Sandy, who had arrived with friends.

I can't explain exactly why I stayed. I just know that we went down, we went for this little march, and then we hung out in the park and participated in these breakout group conversations. 

Of course, the powers that be wanted them out of the park. In the spirit of direct democracy, the decision to stay or go was up to the group as a whole.

So Marissa took a bullhorn to make an announcement. 

A really amazing

process of direct democracy. and but we recognize that, this is a specific group, a gathering of, that we have here, and we wanna hear from people here to see how, we can proceed tonight. so one of our, our first orders of business is, are we going to stay or not? She passed the bullhorn to someone else from the facilitation team.

I'm here with some logistical information. This, this square, this square is technically a privately owned square.

We, we, we have been in contact with the property owner who has told us

that his intention is to not allow people to sleep in this park tonight. The pros and cons were weighed. The sun fully set. People were lit by flashlights, and at some point, the bullhorn was replaced by the people's mic, perhaps to dissuade the cops from issuing noise violations. 

Facilitation team

This was a moment for each individual, Sandy, Astra, Nalini, and everyone else to decide would they stay or would they go? Sandy. 

The crowd kept getting thinner and thinner, and we just kept hanging out, and eventually we just decided, yeah, we're gonna stay the night. fuck it. See what happens. We don't have much on the line, 'cause we're not fully invested in the idea that we're gonna get the world we want, so let's just, hang out here with these folks who seem angry, too.

Meanwhile, somewhere else in the park, Nalini was making the same decision. 

Me and my friends, we were "You're gonna sleep here?" We're "Yeah." 

Astra made a different choice. 

I headed home because I did not think this tiny ragtag group had a snowball's chance in hell of staying the night. No way. I could see the cops.

They were coming closer, and my sense was that they were gonna go, "Okay, kids, you've had enough. we're gonna beat the shit out of you." That's what I thought was about to happen, and I didn't wanna be there for that. 

Marissa was anxiously watching the police in riot gear. 

I was terrified because I didn't feel we had prepared enough.

I really f- I felt this sense of responsibility, so I was both excited and terrified of what would come next. 

Going to Brooklyn was about expressing solidarity and trying to show that the outer boroughs, this is something we are all experiencing. 

It was an invitation to draw more working class people and people of color into Occupy. At first, it was a joyful walk on a sunny day. A marching band was in the crowd, and people were dancing their way to the bridge.

So when you're coming up to the bridge on the Manhattan side, if you're gonna go into Brooklyn, there's a point in which you can go onto the walkway, which is a famous tourist walkway, and there's vendors, and everyone goes over it, and then there's a space where the cars go, which is the traffic part that people drive over the bridge.

If you follow the bridge's pedestrian path, you go up an inclined sidewalk and end up walking high above the cars that are crossing into Brooklyn. 

The plan was not to take the roadway, and as we were marching and coming upon the bridge, some folks in the crowd who wanted more aggressive action, a group of individuals, I guess what we would say now is, Black Bloc, Antifa, kinda came to the front and just said, "We're taking over the, the roadway."

If they took the roadway, they would almost certainly be arrested, and that was not the plan. 

I was "That's not what the fuck we're doing. This is a lot of people with us, children. We're not putting kids on a fucking roadway." I was hot. This was a a screaming match, but during that screaming match, we managed to arrive at an agreement to offer options.

So I was "Cool. Here's what's about to happen. You can tell people there's two options, 'cause we're literally at a fork. So I'm gonna tell people if they don't wanna risk arrest, they come this way, and if folks who are open to risking arrest go that way. Is that something we can agree on?" 

So Sandy climbed onto an elevated footing at the base of the bridge and started screaming, "This way is non-arrestable," as she pointed to the walkway, and, "This way is risking arrest," pointing to the road.

She repeated this over and over as hundreds of people streamed past her. Not everyone heard Sandy's warning or the warnings of one police officer on a loudspeaker.

I am ordering you to leave this, this roadway now. If you do so voluntarily, no charges will be placed against you. If you refuse to leave, you'll be placed under arrest and charged with disorderly conduct. 

And then a group of police officers themselves walked onto the empty roadway, seemingly leading the crowd into the street.

Hundreds of people followed the cops and filled the road. Most seemed unaware that any warnings had been issued at all, including Nalini Stamp. She's the native New Yorker who couldn't afford college and had been evicted with her mom during the 2008 crash. 

I remember seeing anything. I was on the walkway, and the march split off and went on the bridge.

I just was "Whoop, I'm jumping down." 

Nalini literally jumped from the elevated pedestrian walkway onto the road below, excited to take the street. Marissa, our anarchist organizer/grad student, was already on the roadway filming the crowd. 

There are thousands of people who had joined, a lot of young people, also, rank and file union folks.

It was this broad spectrum of people who, who came out. I joined them and, ended up in the middle filming, and then people started screaming, "It's a kettle."

And to escape being arrested, some people started climbing the, the sides of the bridge and hanging on to the pedestrian walkway. 

In Marissa's footage, dozens of people are scaling the metal grid that separates the roadway and the pedestrian path, maybe 20 feet above. Things started to get a little wild.

They did try to pepper spray, but there were kids in that crowd. There were 12-year-olds. There was, I remember a little kid with a little bunny rabbit hat. Cops go off on white babies? what? I was so, flabbergasted. 

After the Antifa folks, and then the police, basically led people onto the roadway, the police unrolled orange netting and trapped hundreds of people in the middle of the bridge.

It was a classic move called kettling. No one was allowed to leave. Eventually, buses began to show up. 

We were just all sitting, standing there, and they started to push back on the crowd. And then when the damn buses rolled up, I was "Are they gonna kill us?" 

One by one, police started zip-tying people's wrists together and putting them on the buses.

Protesters said they were held in the buses for four hours before being taken to jail. 

That was the middle of the day. I didn't get into a cell until nighttime. They did give me McDonald's, though. I'll tell you that. They gave me a cheeseburger. That was nice. 

At the end of the day, they arrested, what, 700, 800 people on these buses, and people who didn't know they were gonna get arrested.

It was a moment where a lot of conflict happened, a lot of media attention happened. It brought greater numbers of people to the encampment. conflict generates interest, and that's what happened. But I also was very disappointed because I felt people were robbed of their ability to make a decision, and that to me was where I had some, just real splits about what we're doing.

It was a concrete example of how consequential a movement's tactical decisions can be, and how fraught. Sandy had wanted to follow a plan and follow the law. Keep people on the pedestrian walkway, no arrests, just a peaceful march over the bridge. But others wanted to loudly flaunt the rules and make a scene.

The whole thing illustrated a truism of any social movement. When there's not unity within, it's easier for the enemies of the movement to break it apart. In this case, the lack of unity made the protesters vulnerable to manipulation by the police, which Occupiers say tricked them into getting kettled.

But if the police thought that arresting seven hundred people would weaken the Occupy movement, they were wrong. The mass arrests made global news and raised Occupy's profile even more. the pepper spray video, it sparked another wave of newcomers, and in a big tent movement without leaders, well, there's bound to be infighting.

It's funny because at the very beginning, we should have just threw them out of the park. 

This is Detective Rick Lee. In 2011, he was an NYPD community affairs detective in Precinct One, which includes the financial district and Zuccotti Park. He said the NYPD initially held back because it's not city property.

In fact, Zuccotti Park is what is called a privately owned public space, which means it's owned by a private entity, in this case, a company called Brookfield Properties, but it's legally required to remain open to the public. 

Because there were no written legal notices as to the rules of Zuccotti Park, we as the police couldn't kick them out, nor could Brookfield press charges against them.

So it was months of back and forth between lawyers, not only Brookfield, NYPD, but the Occupy lawyers. 

In the meantime, as a community affairs officer, Detective Lee's job was to be the pleasant middleman. 

We are the liaison between the precinct and the community. Normally, when people demonstrate, we have a meeting, and we go over the rules of engagement, basically.

And I would give them a permit. The Occupiers didn't go through that process. 

Right. One important tenet of the whole movement was that you don't ask permission. You claim space and invite people to join you. 

So when they occupied Zuccotti Park, I was down there to find out what's going on. What is their angle, so to speak?

He was out there poking around pretty much every day. And this is important, he was a plainclothes detective, meaning he didn't wear a cop uniform. 

I, I have always had a reputation of no one realizes I'm a cop because of the way I dress. I'm big into clothes, always have been. Ralph Lauren, Burberry, Brooks Brothers, J.

Crew, stuff that. I used to wear a lot of tweed. Occupy was mainly in the fall and the winter, so I didn't get to my linen suits when, with Occupy. 

In early October, a few weeks into the occupation, some occupiers realized Detective Lee was a police officer. They dubbed him Hipster Cop. On blogs and message boards, they shared photos of him in his cardigans and skinny ties, both making fun of him and warning one another not to get too cozy with him.

E- every time I showed up at Zuccotti Park, someone would stop and start the people's mic saying, "Hello, Hipster Cop." 

GQ actually published an interview with Detective Lee, along with a photo of the 45-year-old posing at Zuccotti Park in a quilted jacket, pink shirt, and striped tie. In the interview, he described his look as more country gentleman than hipster, which I think is about right.

It's fair to say that in the realm of invisible to visible tactics, this launched Detective Lee into the very visible category. He went from secretly gathering information to becoming good PR for the NYPD. 

The New York Times picked it up, and Associated Press picked it up, was because it was this positive spin on the whole thing.

Here's this cop that dresses well, who's down there trying to relate to all the occupiers and that thing. 

The NYPD truly needed some good PR after multiple videos of cops violently arresting peaceful protesters had traveled around the internet. As Detective Lee tells it, all the NYPD had been doing was trying to ensure the day-to-day safety of everyone involved.

We are there to protect the occupiers for their right to demonstrate, freedom of speech. We're also there to protect Brookfield Properties. We're there to protect the people walking on the sidewalks. 

Something else he said, though, showed that there were other motives for the large police presence at the park.

If you're gonna pay $5 million for a loft, and you look out your window, and there's this occupy in Zuccotti Park, you're gonna be "What the hell is going on here?" 

Police are often criticized for focusing more on protecting wealthy people's quality of life and real estate values than poor people's.

It's a consumer mentality. If you pay more, you should get more for what is supposed to be a public service. Although Detective Lee had been outed as a cop, there were undercover officers who stayed more hidden. 

NYPD intel had cops who went undercover in Zuccotti Park. It's their job to basically find out what's, what's going on with this.

Is it gonna be just a peaceful demonstration, or, or are they looking to do violence? 

I'll come back to that question of violence. But for now, let's stay with the undercover cops who weren't being scouted by GQ. Remember Manissa, the Occupy supporter who halted a giant general assembly meeting to change the declaration's wording about race?

She had joined the POC group at Occupy and became a regular at the park. One day, she invited her brother to join her at a protest. 

He is, an Indian man in New York City, and so post 9/11, my brother started being stopped all the time in New York City by cops, just, straight up racial profiling after 9/11.

So he has a lot of experience with cops, is what I'm trying to say. and he came to a protest, and he was "I gotta get out of here." And I was "What's wrong?" And he was "Ju- too many cops here." And I was "Yeah, there's a lot of cops policing the protest." And he was "No, there's too many cops in the crowd."

And I was "What do you mean?" And he was "There are cops everywhere in the crowd." And then I was "Show me." 

They started looking around the crowd, and he pointed someone out to her. 

My brother was "Cops always are wearing these, baggy jeans and, a sweatshirt or whatever, but they always get the shoes wrong.

They're still wearing cop shoes." And cops, they can't wear sneakers on the job, so it's, an outfit that you would be wearing sneakers with, only you're wearing weird black loafers. And he showed me, and then I was "Oh my God, you're right. There are cops everywhere." 

They had been there the whole time.

That beautiful inclusiveness that had allowed Manissa to step in on her first day at Occupy and alter the declaration, the inclusiveness that welcomed anyone off the street to address the crowds of hundreds of people, well, that day at the protest with her brother, Manissa realized that inclusiveness also meant infiltrators were welcomed in, along with everyone else.

This guy came up to us, and he was an undercover cop, and he was "Yeah, do you, know where this protest is heading?" And I was "No, I don't know." And my brother just, turned his back on him, and somebody else, jumped in and was "Oh yeah, do you wanna get involved? we're gonna do this and this and this."

And I had this moment where I was "Oh my God." there were a lot of, really earnest college kids who really, really wanted other kinds of people to be involved. And so, a burly working class-looking white guy, you're "Oh, we wanna include you." And I was "But that guy is a cop," 

It's not surprising that there were undercover officers, but the level of law enforcement interest in Occupy was unusual. The true depths of the police infiltration and surveillance wouldn't be fully revealed until years later, when one organization got its hands on what would come to be called the Spy Files.

The general assembly meetings, where everyone got a chance to speak, were supposed to help sort out all of these different opinions.

They were supposed to result in consensus, but- 

there was a lot of fighting. 

That's Brooke Lehman, who you heard in episode two. She's a longtime anarchist activist and a member of one of the most famous banking families in America. She'd been leading workshops on direct democracy in Zuccotti Park. She thought that the general assemblies needed to have more structure.

I also w- looked at this form of direct democracy, where literally anyone could come off the street and share, as not a particularly effective structure for what was then becoming clear, that we were about to, we were running an occupation, where thousands of people were getting fed and housed, and streets were needing to be cleaned, porta potties were needing to be acquired.

All these things that were really mechanical needs needed some form of coordination, and I brought up the idea of having a spokescouncil in addition to the general assembly, which will go down in my own personal history as my worst idea ever. 

The idea was to have regular spokescouncil meetings where logistical and budgetary decisions would be made.

These meetings would be separate from the giant general assemblies. The structure would be a wagon wheel. Each working group would select a spoke to sit in the middle of the circle with the other spokes. All the other working group members would sit behind their spoke. The spokes would act as delegates for their group, not to make decisions on their behalf, just to be the voice explaining what their group's needs were.

It was a structure that had been successful in several other movements Brooke had participated in over the years, but it didn't work so well at Occupy. 

Because it was not only, a, just an unbelievable amount of labor to get this, this idea passed, but it was seen as such an affront to the, to folks that were very attached to the general assembly.

It was as though we were bringing in, a foreign army to take over Occupy Wall Street, bringing in this second layer of organizational structure. And then both the spokescouncil and the general assembly ca- became what I can only refer to as a Jerry Springer Show, where people literally used to show up just to watch the fights happen.

It was ... And it was traumatic. I consider myself a pretty seasoned facilitator, and I could not facilitate the spokescouncil after a while. I would literally shake. my hands would be shaking. And I laugh because Occupy Wall Street was a bit of a train wreck. It was, it was a really exciting and enlivening and beautiful train wreck, but it was a train wreck.

Brooke says there was one thing that caused more arguments than anything else. 

So we were a movement for economic justice that spent most of our nights fighting over money, which is just absurd on so many different levels, and some of the decisions were wise, and some of them were to give, I, I don't know how much money Occupy Wall Street spent on cigarettes over that, the course of that occupation.

But, it was messy. 

The Occupy kitchen had been accepting food donations from day one. People would show up with pizza, bagels, boxes of produce, and supporters across the country paid for local restaurants to deliver food to the encampment. There was actually a wave of media stories about how well the occupiers were eating, including a New York Post article that mocked a chef who brought salmon cakes and quinoa salad to the park.

So yes, the occupiers were eating well because so many people wanted to feed them. But the kitchen also accepted money for food. Pretty quickly, they had way more money than they knew what to do with. Here's Chris G from the kitchen working 

group. Kitchen, at the beginning, it was the only place people could go to donate, and so I was watching that thing just go from, 1,200, 5,000, 10,000, 15,000, 20,000.

I'm watching it happen before my eyes. And because we were the only ones that had that money, a lot of people began coming up to me, this is early on in the occupation, just said, "Look, we need money for these sleeping bags. We need money for underwear, for these socks, for these tents," stuff that, 

It started with sleeping bags, but they needed all kinds of stuff. Brooms and laundry money to keep things clean, money to print the Occupied Wall Street newspaper that had sprung up, money to buy or replace tech equipment for the livestream working group, bandages, gloves, and blood pressure pumps for the medic tent.

A finance working group was formed to figure out how to manage the money, and there was a lot of it to manage. Pretty quickly, Occupy had almost half a million dollars in the bank. People all over the nation were giving small donations at breakneck speed. It was an incredible show of support, but it was also a curse.

Once the money was being handled separately from the kitchen, a shift happened. 

I began noticing a difference between what might colloquially be called the front of the house staff and the back of the house staff. There were the people who generally had been more upper middle class, generally whiter, generally more educated, and they were the ones who were talking to suppliers and vendors.

They were the ones, doing communications and outreach. they were the ones meeting with potential donors and, and things that. 

He wasn't the only one who noticed it. The Daily Show senior correspondent Samantha Bee did a segment about divisions within Zuccotti Park. In 2011, Samantha Bee was probably the most prominent woman in the world of political satire.

Occupy Wall Street, it was born out of the loftiest of ambitions. 

We're trying to build a new society. 

As it dragged on, the movement had been in danger of becoming the very thing it was fighting against. 

The more people that came, the more people kinda segregated into, their own little groups.

The park just split in half. 

Samantha Bee interviewed several men that she was clearly amused by, one with a faux hawk and green Che Guevara-style shirt, another with a hipster scarf who said he didn't keep track of time anymore, and a guy who said everyone should have access to technology but wouldn't share his iPad.

They described how the park was divided into an uptown 

area and a ghetto. 

Up there is, where the college hipsters that live in Brooklyn, go and, try to rule the park from, And down here, it's more of the poor people's encampment, and, that is contentious. 

Occupy Wall Street was divided by class.

On the one side, the elites with their library, Apple pop-up store, and bike-powered espresso machines. On the other, the downwardly mobile with their drum circles. 

It wasn't just the critique from outsiders. A lot of diehard Occupiers were both thrilled to be part of the movement and uncomfortable with the power dynamics within it.

Occupy's official structure was horizontalism, which meant it was supposed to be leaderless, without a hierarchy. 

It wasn't horizontal. 

This is Nicole Carty. She grew up in Atlanta, very aware of the structural inequalities around her. 

My family has a history of social activism, social justice. My dad grew up during Jim Crow.

you can't, or at least I couldn't really grow up in Atlanta without being aware of inequality and differences, and I was a very, justice-oriented, weirdly political kid. And I went to a really progressive school, but even amongst that population, activism was pretty unheard of. I think you have to understand that, in 2010, 2011, there weren't social movements.

There weren't young people out being active, caring loudly about issues. I tried to do student organizing and campus organizing, and I noticed how unpopular it was. Nobody cared. 

She graduated college in 2010 and moved to New York, ready to hang up her college activist hat and find a real job. But then she heard about the young women who were pepper sprayed, and she started following Occupy on Twitter and watching the Occupy livestream.

I remember those first live streams were, I feel they had a really intentional effort to just put the most charismatic young people on screen to, walk you through the occupation, to go past the kitchen, and talk about how the park was organized. And I'd never seen young people my age care about inequality publicly.

She showed up with some friends on the day of the Brooklyn Bridge march to join in. 

We just perched up on the pedestrian side and looked over, and watched them close down and, trap 700 people on the bridge. 

Later, she met Nalini and a bunch of others at one of the Irish pubs that dot the Financial District, and joined the facilitation working group.

Nicole returned day after day, totally inspired. 

It felt we were going to dismantle capitalism in, the next week, and it felt amazing to be at the park. It was everybody who you didn't know existed but who felt the same way was finding each other. You were meeting new, young people who cared about what you cared about.

I'd never been part of such a, transformative, special, utopian space in my life. And so I was pretty hooked. 

But she also started noticing the power dynamics at play in this growing little society of Occupy. 

There's the formal infrastructure, then there's the informal infrastructure. 

She saw that some working groups seemed to have more power than others.

The finance working group, for example. 

Nicole also felt some decisions weren't being made by consensus in the general assembly. 

The direct action working group, all the, sexy, young anarchists, I don't know, they were all sleeping with each other, and they would make decisions around what actions were gonna happen, and not consult other people.

And then there were some actual indoor meeting spaces just off Zuccotti Park, including a public atrium in the Deutsche Bank building. Not everyone knew about these indoor meeting spaces, which seemed to be the real centers of power. 

I, walk into this meeting room, and I'm- there's, three people at the front of the room, and I'm "Oh, this is where the decisions are getting made.

Obviously, this is where the, the real power hub of the occupation is." It was, all of, the big players from across the facilitation working group, but lots of people who weren't in working groups, who were just shaping the political message of the occupation. This was not a general assembly.

This was, a need-to-know only meeting, but there were probably, 50 people in the bigger, broader room, and these folks were in the center of it. 

Nicole noted all of this not exactly to call people out for doing anything wrong, but to critique the structure a bit in a way that I think can be beneficial to anyone who's trying to create a non-hierarchical movement now.

It wasn't horizontal. It wasn't horizontal. there's a really good short essay called "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" that I became acquainted with at the time of this occupation, and what it essentially says is that if you don't have structures, no structure, and, Occupy had, fake structures, but if you don't have structures, you're gonna actually reproduce the same inequalities that exist in the world.

And so because we're all horizontal, it's flat, there's just this one broad structure, we're making decisions together, allegedly. It was structurelessness, and what that meant was that, it was people who were, politically connected, charismatic, had outside connections to, other political players in New York or nationally that were really making the decisions.

Anyone who has studied the history of, quote-unquote, "law enforcement," the FBI, and police agencies in the United States in the context of progressive social justice organizing understands that law enforcement's role has historically been to repress progressive movements, and it has done so quite actively and frequently f- quite viciously.

This is Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a co-founder of Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, a nonprofit legal organization. 

A lot of our work focuses at the intersection of First and Fourth Amendment rights, so support to, movement organizing and activists around the United States, and also in conjunction with law enforcement oppression against movements.

Mara's organization suspected that the FBI was tracking Occupy activists across the nation, and they were right. They filed records requests that eventually turned up more than 4,000 pages of heavily redacted government documents that showed that the FBI had been monitoring the Occupy movement since it was just a meme on the internet.

What we found was that the FBI had begun coordinating, surveilling, monitoring, tracking Occupy activity a month before the first tent ever even went up in Zuccotti Park. So as early as August 2011, the FBI in New York was meeting with the New York Stock Exchange, with banks, with Wall Street to discuss potential Occupy Wall Street protests that weren't even going to manifest for another month.

What was especially concerning to Mara was that the documents revealed a high level of coordination between the corporations that Occupiers were criticizing and the FBI. 

Their focus was on meeting with business, meeting with the political objects of the protests. 

The financial services industry had an obvious interest in quieting Occupy activists who were criticizing their practices, their profits, and their outsized political influence, and they had a direct line to the FBI and DHS through something called the Domestic Security Alliance Council.

Which the federal government describes as a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the private sector. 

Today, membership in the Domestic Security Alliance Council is restricted to for-profit companies that, quote, "generate a minimum of $2 billion in annual US revenue," end quote.

Federal law enforcement agencies were treating the Occupy movement as a potential terrorist threat, but Mara believes the actual threat they were concerned about had nothing to do with violence. 

Any disruption to capitalism in the United States, to the way that the US government, the businesses, and the corporations, and corporate power in the United States function, is considered a threat to the structure of the United States.

So it's not about, again, terrorism threats, threats of violence, it's about threats to economic structure and to corporate power in the United States. That's what these documents very clearly reveal. 

This coordination between corporate businesses and federal law enforcement was happening nationally. As occupations continued popping up in cities and towns around the US, the FBI-joined terrorism task force partners, including the NYPD, were identifying and surveilling specific activists.

We do not have the names of those individuals, but people within those movements can identify themselves. 

They sure can. Here's Sandy, the direct action team member who had helped plan the somewhat disastrous Brooklyn Bridge march. 

I had cops come to my house. I had vans follow me around my block. Someone that I had started to see romantically, when they got arrested, it turned out they were on, a domestic joint terrorism watch force list.

Marissa, the earnest Midwestern anarchist who helped organize Occupy, she would later realize she was on an FBI list, and one of the live streamers was told at some point that he was being investigated by the FBI as well. According to Mara, law enforcement agents were doing more than just keeping tabs on people.

They were borrowing from the playbook of COINTELPRO, the FBI's Cold War era counterintelligence program. COINTELPRO sought to undermine the civil rights, Black liberation, and Puerto Rican independence movements by sowing division and disruption. Although it was shut down in the 1970s, Mara believes law enforcement used similar tactics against Occupy, working to weaken the movement from within by fostering distrust, paranoia, and conflict.

The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force's coordination creates a way for the FBI to routinely use local police agencies or private sector operatives as a proxy force. And in that way, infiltrators, undercover operatives routinely go into movement spaces and did throughout Occupy. And Occupy, because of its open nature, created a very fertile ground for infiltration and for disruption.

It was that problem of structurelessness. 

When you have no accountability and just an endless open process, that's just a gift to the government and a gift to corporate infiltration and police infiltration, and, it would appear that that was certainly taken advantage of. 

Sometimes an occupier would throw out an idea or argue a point that seemed potentially destructive, but when everyone was trying so hard to be radically inclusive and there were no set leaders, what do you do?

Here's Sandy again. 

Somebody showed up and decided they wanted to lead a march, and we don't know who this person is. We don't know what everybody's agenda is coming in. We don't know who is a informant. We don't know, we don't know any- anybody as far as we could throw them, and yet we are here talking about planning actions together.

People were already sleeping poorly. There was already a lot of infighting. So when Occupiers started to recognize that undercover cops and informants were in their midst, it fueled some serious paranoia. Was the Occupier who argued every point at a meeting just annoying, or an informant trying to cause chaos?

Some people wondered, only half-jokingly, whether the drummers in the drum circle were intentionally trying to sabotage the occupation. 

The fucking drum circle, was creating a huge political problem for us because everyone was complaining who lived near the occupation. 

Drumming aside, it truly was difficult to know who to trust, and maybe worse, what if someone thought you were an informant?

It was Detective Lee, hipster cop, of all people, who got into Nalini's head. 

Freaking hipster cop. Hipster cop had this, this whole look. It's he had a starter pack and, wore it, and he was trying to really be nice to everybody, and I was "I don't trust you 'cause that's some psyop stuff."

I was "That is some psychological warfare you're trying to do with coming out here looking a hipster," which many people in the park were. There were a lot of times he would just give me a head nod. That's that is psychological stuff where, 'cause then if he gives me a head nod, if I give him a head nod, I'm acknowledging it.

I'm not gonna give him a head nod, but if I don't give him a head nod, I, I, I could be hiding something for the rest of the people in the park. they did some real, real internal strife stuff. 

Her paranoia made sense. 

A month into the occupation, one Occupy participant accidentally revealed that he was a volunteer spy.

He had gotten access to an internal email list of Occupiers and had been forwarding thousands of email exchanges, not only to the NYPD and FBI, but also to Andrew Breitbart, the far-right blogger. The paranoia crept up as the days wore on, and the exhausted Occupiers tried to run a small village, spread their anti-capitalist message, and protect themselves from arrests and police violence.

But the energy was still high, and they were shockingly still there in the park, hundreds of them. Despite the behind-the-scenes efforts that seemed aimed at squashing the movement, city officials were publicly giving lip service to the rights of the Occupiers to protest.

Next, Section B, INEQUALITY'S LONG HISTORY

And you point out that some suggest that people, should, possess equal rights before the law, and that as long as they do, any degree of material hierarchy is acceptable. others, have argued that legal and civil society can be dispensed with as well. The common thread that runs through the thinking of the anti-egalitarians is that they see material and economic inequality as not only inevitable, but something to celebrate.

Yeah. How likely are equal rights before the law in a system of extreme economic inequality? 

Yeah. Well, I think that's a great question, too, and it's something, i- in talking about this book- and the arguments in it, and also in reading the different thinkers that I engaged with in working on it, you do see...

one theme that you see is the idea that, equality of opportunity is, that's really the American promise. But equality of outcome, which is usually thought to mean going in to determine what, what people's wages will be or to, to more directly affect the distribution of resources, that that's really, that's going too far, and that is, manipulation of the market and undemocratic and ultimately will lead to political control in, in lots of ways.

And I think, a- and then I think the, and the idea that really what Jefferson and other architects of the United States meant was they wanted to see people have equal rights before the law and, no privileged caste in the way that an aristocracy would be. But after that, people are just, the, the, an actual material wealth doesn't, the, the, it doesn't matter.

or it's not, or at least it doesn't, it doesn't ha- it doesn't affect that underlying equality. And I think that that one... I, I think you can make that argument in the abstract, but one thing that I was very struck by in working on this book is that it seems to be hard for people who are arguing, I, in, in principle, I suppo- you could have legal and civic equality coexisting with massive economic inequality.

But many of the people who wind up defending massive economic inequality do not do so by reiterating the value of, one person, one vote, or equality before the law. No, they tend to pretty quickly go to a set of arguments about how actually there are underlying differences between people that determine their place in the s- in the economic order, and that perhaps also ought to determine their place in the political order.

And I think, the m- the, the, there's different, versions of this argument. The most, disconcerting and the most hard-edged are, are the ones associated with scientific racism, which flourishes in the first two decades of the 20th century. And I write a bit about two people in particular, the journalist, Theodore Lothrop Stoddard, and also Madison Grant, both of whom were based in New York City, and both of whom really argue for, w- put

Or at the forefront of a much larger group of quite elite individuals arguing that society really is stratified by racial and biological types that are distinct from each other, and that are, that, that, that were, were some types, Nordic as they would put it, are at the top of this pyramid, and, followed by Mediterranean, as they put it again, and Slav, and then Asiatics and Africans at the bottom.

And, That these are really basically different types of people. And I, I think th- so I... And, and they, they, they should occupy different positions in the social order. So I think one thing that is, is quite, another theme that runs through this book is actually is, I, I guess it's the, one of the problems for democracy of tolerating extreme economic hierarchy or inequality is that it becomes very fertile ground for the development of a whole set of ideas justifying that inequality, which have their own pernicious political life.

so that people really don't say, "Well, everybody..." They, they, they run very quickly towards justifying, political exclusion And subordination alongside economic hierarchy. Economic ineq- economic 

inequality spreads social inequality- Yeah ... correct? 

E- yeah. Economic inequality spreads social inequality, and it helps to nurture ideas that defend such social inequality, often in ways that are really extraordinarily ugly and, destructive- 

So do-

of, 

of the social fabric ... 

does science matter to those who believe in this biological inferiority? Is there proof, the anec- anecdotal evidence they see around themselves of economic inequality- Right ... is economic inequality proof of biological superiority- Right ... and inferiority? 

Yeah, I think obviously in any real scientific sense, not at all, but I do think that...

And, and it- it's interesting, in the early 20th century, there was a whole, the whole idea of scientific racism, i- is a elaborate set of ideas that has actually really very little scientific weight behind it in terms of, the, there is... It, it's really a set of claims that are not justified by anything that we would recognize as science, and part of the reason for the decline of scientific racism was, the, not just the, the...

People, people became more aware of the political dangers in the 1930s and 1940s with the rise of Nazism, but also just the scientific consensus moves against it. so I think it's a, it's, th- yeah, the, the way that science is used here, the people who are using scientific ideas to justify inequality are usually using science in a very selective and, deceptive way, and they're drawing on the idea of science without actually the the, the practice of science or scientific experimentation, scientific knowledge behind it.

when Jefferson wrote about this idea about all men created equal, Jefferson is not thinking that all people are exactly the same.

He isn't putting forth a declaration about what all people should have materially. this is a society that has been structured through inequality and hierarchy of all different kinds, obviously enslaved and free, but also there are plenty of unfree workers, indentured servants who are not subject to hereditary slavery, but nonetheless have limited freedom.

Obviously, men and women have radically different rights. The language is there, but it also is against a backdrop of a society that is much more hierarchically structured, and also in which there are deep traditions of what some historians have described as a deferential culture, the sense that the society should be organized along superiors who owe certain things to the inferiors, and in, in, in return for which they are entitled to expect a certain deference from those inferiors This statement is, heavily qualified in lots of ways.

Nonetheless, it provides a, a template. It throws down a gauntlet and a set of claims about equality that other people are able to take up and, and quickly do. And in some ways, the entire set of events around the American Revolution have within them, it is a popular mobilization. People quickly attack not just the king and colonial dependence, but all kinds of other dependencies in society.

There is a real... Certainly in, in New York City, this is the case. There's a popular radicalism that emerges in the city and a sense of, real class antagonism as people mobilize around the revolutionary cause. Slavery is challenged in different ways during the war, both by enslaved people themselves and even among slaveholders, some of whom decide to emancipate the people that they own in the immediate aftermath of the war.

Old traditions around primogeniture are discarded in the context of the war. And then after the war, as the new nation tries to consolidate itself, there continue to be popular mobilizations and uprisings, the most famous of which is Shays' Rebellion, the Debtors' Rebellion in Massachusetts. There are ways in which the experience of the revolution and the ideas around it give rise to a sensibility that is really very skeptical, very critical, very hostile towards hierarchy and towards inherited hierarchy in particular The idea that some people just have the right to control social resources and exercise political power.

But then you have people like, Madison who are alarmed by this and wanna rein it in, and devise a constitution that does rein it in. Absolutely. And, and obviously lots of historians have, written about the conflicts in the early Republic and the Constitution, and the ways in which the Constitution is justified in part as an effort to retain and regain social order, and to create certain kinds of checks on democratic political power.

The book, starts with a discussion of some of the tendencies that have come down to us since that time, and it, it starts in particular with a little discussion of John Adams, who is an interesting figure in the constellation of the, the Founding Fathers, or the, the people who wrote and thought and talked and led the movement for independence.

Adams was different than some of the other people who I discuss in this book. Many of the, the figures in this book are, are conflicted about elements of their own arguments, but Adams more so than most. Adams, I think, is, is not... He rarely presents himself the way that many later figures do as simply arguing in defense of inequality and hierarchy.

But what he is is very, very deeply ambivalent about the egalitarian claims that he thinks someone like Jefferson is making, and that he perceives percolating through the country, and then eventually taken up in the French Revolution, about which he's horrified. Like any good conservative . Like any good conservative, the French Revolution is really where things always, that, that's where things end up, and that's where you don't wanna go.

And, you have to think about how to organize your society to avoid winding up there. And i- in, in some ways there's something, I think, appealing about Adams, because he does write with a certain realism about- political power and wealth. He says, you might say that everybody is created equal, but really people are not equal in society.

Some people have more wealth and more power than others, and that makes it possible for them to get a certain education and training, which in turn gives them a certain capacity to rule, that the 99% of laboring humanity, as he puts it, will never be able to attain and therefore shouldn't really have.

He's conflicted about what political theory should be delegated to that mass of the laboring population, as he would put it. And for Adams, it's less a full-throated defense of this and more trying to say this is how things are and we have to accommodate that. And if you don't, you will unleash these passions of equality that can become very dangerous for the stability of the society as a whole.

I was interested, in, you wrote a bit about the mudsill theory, which was new on me. The theory that, there must be a, a lower class for the upper classes and the rest of society to rest upon. And this idea was developed by a Southern planter. But it reminded me of something that John Maynard Keynes, who is usually considered a liberal, said of Marxism.

"How can I adopt a creed which preferring the mud to the fish exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia, who, with whatever faults, are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement?" These sorts of attitudes do, cross the political spectrum, don't they?

Yeah. I guess one of the things that I was interested in in looking at this reservoir of ideas was looking at, a way of thinking about the world that does cross political boundaries or what we think of as the traditional political boundaries, the liberal conservative spectrum. And one of the things that I was interested in this is what are the conditions under which people come to accept extraordinary levels of economic inequality in particular.

And part of that is the people who have really mobilized around it are doing so against a, a, a a background of ideas that are, people hold them selectively, but they are present not just in one part of the social structure. That said, I think Keynes is picking up on this from aristocratic aspects of his own background and- Educational upbringing in particular at Cambridge.

So he is tapping into... that's one of the... It's just always funny about Keynes in general. We think of Keynes as being the person who helped to found modern economic liberalism, but he, in a lot of ways, is drawing on a set of values inculcated by a social order and vision that predates capitalism.

All those Bloomsbury elitists. Yeah, very elitist. Very... And, Roosevelt also ha- has this... Keynes is not just the noblesse oblige, but the, the, a set of values that go beyond profit, and his whole aesthetic, artistic, Bloomsbury, modernist sensibility.

Have we democratically chosen inequality even if we didn't recognize that we were democratically choosing inequality? For instance, by voting for tax cuts that might- Mm-hmm ... lead to more greater inequality. So have we, e- and even liberals have voted for tax cuts, we know that. So have we democratically chosen, the situation that we found ourselves in?

Have we democratically chosen inequality even by promoting or, supporting policies that we didn't recognize would lead to inequality? 

yeah, I think it, it just in some ways you could, in some ways you could say that, and I think there's another way in which, this is another, certainly another idea that, that if, if the, and someone like Milton Friedman actually advances a version of this set of claims that, sometimes people who are not especially wealthy might endorse ideas of a, of, of a say, say that extreme inequality is okay because you always think that you might be able to be the one who comes out on top.

You always think you might be the able to be the one who is the winner. and so you don't, it, it, the existence of an unequal social order is only a problem if it shuts you out from the get-go. If you think you can rise up within it, why would you not, wanna have your chance to participate in the race like everybody else?

that's one of the, things that Milton Friedman, for example, says, and this is... So it's a a populist defense of inequality, that you see circulating out there. And you poi- you- and also I guess, the, the idea that inequality maybe is good because if the people, p- the people who are winning are doing or making or presenting something that everybody else wants, and that's part of what feeds, what leads them to succeed is they're actually giving people something that they want.

and so, again, why does it matter? Why does this inequality matter if people are getting to watch the show or buy the car or whatever it is that the wealthy are producing? 

Everybody wants to be on the life- lifestyles of the rich and famous apparently. 

Exactly, yeah. 

You, you write, "They have also sought to affect our politics in more direct and immediate ways.

Traditional corporate lobbying has grown in Washington, D.C. and in state capitals alike. Businessmen and wealthy individuals pour money into political campaigns and try to sway elections. They use their resources to fight unions when workers try to organize them. No matter how many such organizations they might seem to have already, business leaders still start new ones such as the Rockbridge Network, founded in 2019 by J.D.

Vance and venture capitalist Christopher, Buskirk. Rockbridge, draws on the wealth of Silicon Valley moguls to advance a new agenda for the Republican Party, one that embraces the idea that a new business, quote-unquote, 'aristocracy,' or quote, 'A p- proper elite that takes care of the country and governs it well so that everyone prospers,' as Buskirk puts it, should be in control."

Mm-hmm. How aware, how, how straightforward is the Re- Republican Party, when it comes to telling their rank and file that the party's platform is now bringing about a new aristocracy controlled by Silicon Valley- ... fueled by data centers and taxpayer money? 

right. I think, yeah, no, well, it's funny 'cause I, I think at, at this moment in history, so just going up to the present, this is a really weird moment because

because there are more people in the Republican Party who I think are actually literally saying that more openly than in the past. I think there is... A- a- and also some of the, the tech moguls and intellectuals associated with them are much more confident in jettisoning even lip service to ideas about equality than at earlier moments in American history.

and so in some ways, I think at the beginning we were talking about the tension where the the overt ideology of the country is that all men are created equal, and then there's this transgressive counter-tradition arguing against that. Well, today, I think there is this strain, and it's not everybody, or not even all parts of the Republican Party, but increasingly there is a, a a current that really just openly rejects some of these ideas and says, "Well, monarchy maybe would be better," that you should govern the country the way you govern a corporation, and that means venerating the founder and giving the founder the control that they need to make the decisions that are really in everybody's best interests.

it's, it's a... I don't have a complete... I, I don't have a a comprehensive argument about why this is happening in this particular way right now, but I do think it's happening, and I think it's, it's quite notable. And, I would have to say I think it is associated with the the real material inequality that we see.

It doesn't seem like a coincidence that we see these ideas gaining traction in the same moment that has led to the emergence, at least briefly, of the first trillionaire in world history, and where you, you actually do have this group of people who have just an extraordinary degree of wealth and power and also, technological change that is in the hands of extraordinary, of, of a really very small number of people relative to the impact that the changes it brings about, can and will have.

So yeah, I think it's, I don't, I don't think the Republican Party is especially open about this element of its politics, but what is strange is that it's more open than it might have been at many earlier points. And I think that in itself is a problem and, And that it is quite important for people to make the argument against it, to defend ideals of equality and their, relationship to democracy and the, the reality, I think, that people actually, common, ordinary people, the mass of the citizenry, is actually much better able to determine its interests and its-- to understand what, to come to some democratic self-government than a small group of people governing with little sense of input or accountability from those whose, lives are affected by their choices.

So I, I think it, it is a moment to really put the egalitarian gauntlet down again and to, kinda compel people in power, if they really don't believe in that, that they should have to say so clearly and, yeah, for people to be able to evaluate the arguments more fully. 

The utopian v- vision of absolute equality of property is the nightmare that frightens those who oppose equality, insisting that any attempt at equality is a slippery slope toward absolute equality of property.

Why is that nightmare so effective at striking fears in the public about campaigns for greater equality and opposed to growing inequality? 

Yeah. Well, it's interesting. I, I think actually, so i- in American history, I think people who have really made the case for absolute equality are far and few between.

That has not been, y- y- you can be against extreme inequality, against hierarchy, without saying that actually everybody has to have exactly the same property and consumer goods. I, I just think people, that argument has not been r- for better or worse, whatever people might think of it, it has not been really the framework that people have argued in, in this country or, actually in, in other countries as well.

So I think it is a straw man and a, ... And, and yeah, it's obvious why people would be scared of that because it implies that you might lose something, that equality doesn't mean that you're gaining anything. It just suggests that someone's gonna come in and take away things that you have in an effort to enforce some idea of equality that you aren't really part of or part of formulating.

so I think it actually, it, I, I don't think that that's actually what, what, what anybody wants. But i- it's interesting, when you see this come forth... So I live in New York, and we've been recently having a whole, set of debates about the second home, the second luxury homes tax, the pied-à-terre tax.

And the idea is k- that there might be a additional tax on people who own second homes in the city that are worth more than a certain amount, and that by taxing those homes, that property in particular, you could raise money for a public good, in this case, broader, early childhood education And I think people have been, th- this new tax which has passed and now is in the process of people figuring out how to implement it, has met with enormous hostility and resentment and anger and a sense of being targeted, and, and a lot of claims about the dangers of equality that go with it.

But it's very, it's very much worth noting that nobody is even taking away the second homes. Nobody is redistributing this, these, these luxury properties. all they are doing is trying to create... Y- you're looking at the resources that are available and thinking about ways that you could create a, the, the revenue base to support a new public good, that would actually be a support for, many, many people in the city.

so I think this is this is the actual contest about equality and inequality, not the abstract idea of should we all have the exact same goods. n- nobody has really been involved in making that argument. So it just, it, it's just a specter that is used to frighten people, not something that is really has substance to it, I 

think.

Do you think affordability obfuscates equality? 

the lang- the political language of affordability? 

Yeah. 

Yeah. I, I think it's a, it's a... I, I, I think that the, I, I, I actually, I think, I think that the, the framework of affordability, It, it captures some things, but not others because, I, I think a lot of what people are upset about in, i- is not just a sense of consumer- of, of things being too expensive, it's a sense of not having enough power in your life.

So the problem with rent, for example, is not just that it's high, which it is, but also that it is unpredictable and that you cannot control when or whether your landlord raises your rent or how much they raise it if you're in an, a apartment that has no rent control or regulation. And I think that that, and, and similarly, I think at work, a- and this is maybe the biggest problem with ideas about, with the, with the framework of affordability is that it doesn't talk enough about what makes things affordable or not is not just what they cost in the store, but how much you are paid, and that in turn reflects a whole set of questions about how your work is valued and whether you can affect what you're paid at all through a union or through different kinds of political negotiation.

So I think that the i- affordability, I, I think is a, it's a perfectly usef- the, the, it does get at something. and I have no problem with it as a political language, but I also think it, it doesn't fully capture the range of issues that are at stake for people and what people are talking about when they talk about the problems of life in a city like New York or Chicago today.

Let's talk about the, the period of meritocracy, the '50s, '60s, when, liberals in a lot of cases, embraced testing, SATs, that thing, in order to come up with a society where the winners were sorted out on the basis of merit, not inherited wealth or privilege or anything like that. And they ignore the fact that the word meritocracy was coined by a s- a satirist.

That was a period where they, I don't know, they're trying to make a, a good hierarchy instead of a bad hierarchy? Earlier in the century, we see these defenses of hierarchy that are either based on a sense that it's economically necessary or that it's yielding the best and the brightest at the top through sheer force of competition, or that it's economic inequality and the concentration of wealth is essential because otherwise you won't be able to fund major philanthropic institutions like universities or museums.

You see the scientific racist arguments about how the material distribution of wealth echoes what is the underlying inequality between people. So I think in the post-war years, you find a different set of ideas coming to the fore, and yes, it is this sense of wanting to find a metric, a neutral way of measuring humanity, and then slotting people into the appropriate places in a stable bureaucratic order.

Or perhaps also placing them into educational institutions. And it is interesting that you see this, these things developing in tandem. This is the moment of the great expansion of post-war, higher education. And you see that growing at the same time is this interest in finding a way to put people in the right place in the system via a standard that's supposed to be totally neutral, the SAT.

Some idea, some hope that you could create this test that would find the, the smartest people, and then you could just put them at the top of this structure. Now, as anybody who has ever engaged with the SAT knows, this is a really utopian way to view the SAT, and it does not take account of the deep differences between educational institutions and, d- just all the different, ways in which this is really a fantasy in its own right.

But yes, this is something that liberals in particular ... I talk a bit about this guy, John Gardner, in the book, who was involved with ETS, the company that makes the SATs. He later served in the Johnson administration. He founded Common Cause. he, he's really a liberal, but he's very interested in this question.

He writes a book called Excellence. can we be equal and excellent also, and h- how do you do that? This is a place where there's a lot of investment among the post-war liberals themselves in this idea about creating a true system of merit. Okay, and then there's this backlash. The neoconservatives, Irving Kristol, blame, this, this lust for equality on envy, the envy of the intellectuals for the successful.

And then we start seeing the rise, or revival of some old genetic theories of human intelligence, that are often quite racist. And then, 20, 25 years later, we see, Herrnstein and Murray publish The Bell Curve in a world which had become much, much more unequal than we saw that original backlash.

So yeah, what about this, this new backlash trend? Yeah, in the late '60s, early '70s, you start to see this set of thinkers writing against equality, and that the problem is that people have blindly embraced equality as an ideal. Many of these neocons who are involved or writing these articles are taking aim at the civil rights movement and the Black freedom movement and the claims that are part of those political mobilizations.

The argument which observed that the distribution of wealth and resources is not just the result of some meritocratic ordering, but it deeply reflects racial prejudice, violence, disenfranchisement, political and economic power. And so it's not just as though it reflects people's innate worth.

And, and that... And so are taking, or criticizing the distribution of material resources as it is implicitly. And sometimes that's more at the forefront of those movements, sometimes it's less at the forefront, but I think it is, it is very much there, and that's part of what this group of thinkers picks up on to try to say, "No, actually, the real distribution of resources is, is, in the end it is and should be about this abstract idea of merit that we have to hold onto and insist upon again."

And those arguments take up part of the liberal claim, but then they twist it in a way that the liberals had maybe not intended at first, even though there was something in their arguments that allowed them to be used in that way. So Herrnstein, who comes to prominence writing about IQ and making a set of claims about the hereditary And implicitly racial nature of IQ and saying that eventually you will wind up with what he describes as a hereditary meritocracy, where the smartest people are mating with each other and then will produce the smartest children, and those children will have skills that are valued, and they're paid more.

And so eventually, that's gonna be a new aristocracy, and impervious because everybody knows that it's just better. When Herrnstein first puts this stuff forward in an, an article in The Atlantic in 1971, he really distances it from race explicitly, although it's always implicitly very much there, and p- his critics pick up on it right away.

When he writes about this again 25 years later with Charles Murray in The Bell Curve, race is very much present in that book, and I think it is an, a sign of how much more unequal the society had become between the early '70s and the early 1990s. Finally, the always the concluding question in the last minute or two, the way out of this.

You conclude with an evocation of the better side of American history, the abolitionists that undid slavery, for example, with the help of the Union Army. But it sometimes feel like the bad guys are firmly in control, so talk me out of my gloom. I don't know if I can altogether talk you out of your gloom, Doug, but I think that...

Well, first, I think there is, it's im- it, it can be invigorating to look at what these ideas are and try to understand them as a set of ideas and a pattern of thought. And that that actually gives us the tools to think about how to take them apart and how to not just have this be naturalized into how we see the world, but to see it as something to criticize rigorously and undo.

I also think that this book, I've been working on this for several years, but it has struck me as being published in the summer where we have the first trillionaire on the one hand, but also we are starting to see- He's not just a trillionaire, he's a real proponent to these social philosophies, too.

Right, and a full f- full-throated proponent of many of these ideas about inequality in all kinds of different ways, and a, a real skeptic about the capacity the, of, of democratic governance today and the, the, the idea of having a democracy at all. At the same time, we are also starting to see the beginnings of different kinds of political movements that are openly skeptical about this inequality, and that see concentrations of wealth to the extent that we have them now as really damaging our ability to have a functional democracy or really functional society at all.

I don't think it's an accident that Bernie Sanders is as popular as he is, even among people who claim that they're not on the left. I think that the victories of people aligned with Democratic socialism in New York and elsewhere are a sign of, revulsion about the kinds of ideas that this type of concentration of wealth permits to flourish.

I don't know if it's a, if it can really temper the sense of gloom, but I, I do think that the naming this vision of the world can be helpful in giving people a sense that actually their own values are really very different from what is being evoked here, and that those values can become the basis for, building a different society.

Now, Section C, BILLIONAIRES AND THE BACKLASH

The term crony capitalism was first coined by Time Magazine in 1981. Time's article described the Filipino government under Ferdinand Marcos as a case of crony capitalism.

Essentially, Marcos used the levers of the state to help his buddies dominate the business world. 

An associate's logging company was allowed to cut down hundreds of thousands of hectares of trees, which would've been illegal for everyone else. 

Marcos also appointed his former classmate and fraternity brother to the chief of the Philippine National Bank.

That friend used the bank to lend money to his own businesses. Through a mix of grants, cheap loans, licenses, and straight up dipping into government funds, Marcos helped him and his friends grow rich. 

The Time Magazine editor later reflected on why he used crony capitalism to describe the Philippines, and he said that this was not capitalism.

It was a weird distortion of the free market that benefited a few and kept the masses in poverty. 

And since then, the term has taken off. Crony capitalism is now shorthand for any economy where political pals are more important than business partners. Archie Hall is the US economics editor for The Economist magazine, and The Economist has put out a crony capitalism index every few years.

We're looking at billionaire wealth as a- within that looking at more cronyistic sectors and less cronyistic sectors and comparing how those, those different ranks look. 

Archie says sectors like mining and construction are particularly cronyistic when they're producing billionaires.

Often that means things like proximity to the state, so, do you have access to land, do you have access to licenses, resources, and are you able to limit competition, either directly or by lobbying the government to step in for you. 

In economics, this is known as rent-seeking.

There's a stream of rents, a steady flow of money to be made that's not earned because of innovation or entrepreneurship. It's basically just taking a bigger slice of a pie without growing that pie, or maybe even smashing bits of the remaining pie. 

Rude. 

And so two years ago, The Economist magazine tallied up all the big economies onto this table, and they looked at their billionaires, and they showed which countries' billionaires had the highest share of their wealth through cronyistic sectors like mining.

At that point, if you looked somewhere like Russia, which was right at the top of our ranking there, then the billionaires were mostly making their money in those classically cronyistic sectors. 

It's a simple measure, and it, it doesn't capture everything, of course, but by measuring how much of billionaire wealth was made in industries like casinos and ports and oil and gas, you can get a sense of whether the government is likely to be helping out its buddies.

Right near the bottom, Germany. 

Capitalism the way Adam Smith would've wanted. 

Yes, and actually, the US wasn't too cronyistic. It was 26th out of 43 countries. 

Yeah, just small bribes and kickbacks as a treat. 

So in the US, you look at the top billionaires, and you've got people who have largely built companies, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison.

So does this mean the US is not a crony capitalist economy? 

No, and I think all of those, those companies you listed, absolutely it would be very hard to say that the, the money they came to initially came from, close-knit relationships with, with the government. Jeff Bezos was- started getting rich in the '90s.

I think few people would say that him and Bill Clinton were re- really best of friends, it was that reason that Amazon did really well. that's a ludicrous thing to say. Now, whether that's gonna be true of the US forward-looking, and then also, of course, as people have already become billionaires, we now look at the relationships with, a lot of the tech companies, let's say, and the political system in America, yeah, you can, you can certainly see reasons for concern.

You can see the fact that a lot of the tech titans felt such an obligation to declare themselves to be simpatico, at least to a degree, with the ideological program of the president. you've seen things like, for instance, the intervention in Intel or, the- lengths Apple had to go to in order to avoid getting hit with some of the very heavy tariffs.

Again, those are all the sorts of things that, that would raise more concern that the business is feeling a need to get close to politics in order to say, stay ahead of their competitors. 

Yeah, there are scenes like this dinner party that Donald Trump recently hosted with a lot of tech leaders. 

Which included Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Apple's Tim Cook, and Bill Gates.

Mr. President, thank you so much, obviously for bringing us all together, and the policies, that you have put in place 

I want to thank you for setting the tone that's it. And so thank you for incredible leadership and 

They are kissing the ring. That's the blunt way to put it, and it's a scene that perhaps we're not used to in the US recently.

No, exactly. there's, there's always been lobbying in the US. There's always been some sense, businesses will, will have what they'll sometimes euphemistically call government affairs offices or things like that, that, that try to make sure that they're on the right side of regulation.

Sure. And if there are particular things they're keen on, that they, they push for those on Capitol Hill, and that, that's, that's been true forever in the US, is, is, is true in every democracy. The degree to which that's now both focused on personalistically staying on the right side of Donald Trump as a person, rather than engaging with a broader, a more amorphous political process, a- and also the sense in which that the stakes of doing so become so, so much higher.

the tariff regime can either be incredibly damaging or incredibly accommodating to, to your company. Which one of those two worlds we live in is, is mostly with the President. And in a context where we want companies to, to win and fail based on whether they do well in the marketplace, whether people like the things they produce, that's a, that's a pretty worrying place to be.

Now again, The Economist's analysis was done in 2023. Archie says that his guess would be that the US would still be far less cronyistic than countries like Russia or Malaysia, but he thinks the US might be rising up the ranks of crony capitalistic countries under President Trump. 

Take that TikTok deal we mentioned at the start of the show.

Our colleagues at NPR have reported on how the investor group does seem to be composed of people who have shown sustained loyalty to Trump, and that this looks like a reward. Overall, critics say it smells of rent-seeking. 

But beyond the TikTok deal and the spectacles of Trump hawking Teslas at the White House, Archie reckons there is a real risk with one particular way policy tends to be crafted under Trump.

The notion that you have executive orders issued that explicitly then get chipped away at and carved out in order to favor particular companies. So we've seen that with the tariffs. 

When a reporter asked how Trump would decide on tariff exemptions, this was his reply. 

You determine it from day to day?

just instinctively more than 

anything else. Instinctively. His gut. 

What's, what's really distinct about this presidency is the notion that in almost every bit of economic policy, if there's a deal to be made, the President is, is willing and happy and excited to make that deal. And so as a company, there's the notion of can we give Donald Trump something he wants, and can we extract a better deal for our particular company and carve out an exemption?

And, and that dynamic is, is quite novel to this presidency, is, is substantially worse, I'd argue, than, than what we've seen before, and is, is pretty worrying. 

Which brings us to the Democrats. It's long past time when they have to say, in one loud voice, no more. We are finally going to hold these criminals to account. Most recently, Trump committed a whole bunch of crimes, both during his first term as president and particularly when he lost the 2020 election and demanded that Georgia's Secretary of State find another 11,000 votes and sent a mob to the Capitol to murder the Vice President and Speaker of the House.

Biden's Attorney General, Merrick Garland, waited 15 long, painful months before appointing Jack Smithand getting serious about holding this serial criminal to account. It was too little, too late. Every one of those decisions, from Ford through Clinton to Gore and Garland, was made by decent people who told themselves they were protecting our nation's institutions by letting a little Republican crime slide by.

Unfortunately, that's not the way this works. Instead, what they told the next Republican criminal, or in Trump's case, himself, was that they too should go ahead and crime because if they got caught, they'll get off with a slap on the hand or maybe at worst lose their office. Every one of these Republican presidents, in other words, showed the next that the price of crimes against our democracy was negligible.

That's how we got from Nixon hiding his bribes in the Oval Office to Reagan committing treason with the Iranians to the Bush brothers rigging Florida in two thousand to Trump selling meme coins from the White House and implicitly encouraging his agents to shoot citizens in the street. Other democracies have gone down this road and figured out how to recover from a political party becoming so corrupt it sanctions theft and even the open murder of its own citizens.

In Argentina, they put the ruling junta on trial in a civilian courtroom in nineteen eighty-five, just two years after the dictatorship ended and during a time when the generals still almost certainly could have retaken the government. South Korea impeached, removed from office, and sent- sentenced President Yun, Yoon Suk Yeol to life in prison just fifteen months after he tried to declare a state of emergency and martial law to avoid the cons- consequences of his party's electoral losses, the same crimes Trump is openly contemplating now.

Brazil arrested and convicted former President Jair Bolsonaro for plotting a January sixth-style coup and sentenced him to twenty-seven years in prison. They also convicted his generals alongside him. None of these countries collapsed. To the contrary, the democratic fabric of each was strengthened by holding their former political cri- criminals to account All are still democracies, and it looks like the same process will soon play out in Hungary.

Even South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which people think s-- of as a gentle alternative to criminal prosecution, wasn't designed to be gentle. People who failed to make full public confessions of their crimes were supposed to be imprisoned. The cautionary tale is that none were, which is a good part of why so many South Africans will tell you the wounds are still open.

The government broke trust even as it was trying to restore it. Increasingly, Americans get it, get this. There have to be consequences for betraying America, Ukraine, and democracy on behalf of Putin, looting our treasury and handing no-bid contracts to friends and business associates, traveling the world on our dime while picking up billions from dictators on the pretense of negotiating peace, killing unarmed civilians in the Caribbean and children in Iran, poisoning our air in exchange for campaign contributions, trying to overthrow our government and fix the twenty twenty-six election, sending armed, masked thugs into our streets to intimidate and kill us while organizing them into the country's largest domestic spying operation, handing trillions in tax breaks, all borrowed from the rest of us, to billionaire donors who are now trying to buy this twenty twenty-six election, and all the other crimes that you're welcome to list in the comments to this article.

If Democrats want to earn the votes of that eighty-nine percent of Americans who've lost faith in the government, they must, every one of them who wants our vote, publicly promise to prosecute these people. No more Garland pauses, not for Trump, Miller, Noem, Hegseth, the ICE agents, the crypto bagmen, the Abu Dhabi royals, or the pardon buyers who are cashing in on Trump's corruption every day.

On day one, the subpoenas must begin. Legislation mandating an independent counsel with a real budget and open trials in open court the way Argentina, Brazil, and South Korea did it. Impeachment of every corrupt billionaire and associated lickspittle from Trump on down, revealing the complicity of congressional Republicans.

You don't get to run on restoring trust and then govern like an abused spouse who keeps offering just one more chance. We've had four Republican presidents openly break the law or even commit treason just for political power. It must come to an end. So be sure you're ready to vote, and make sure your friends are too.

What Dr. King said was true nearly 60 years ago, and it is even truer today as our country, the United States of America, is now spending over a trillion dollars a year on the military while some 800,000 Americans are homeless, 85 million Americans are uninsured or under-insured, and millions of people cannot afford the basic necessities of life And this business of spending more and more on the military and turning backs on working families and the poor is not just happening tragically here in the United States.

It's happening all over the world, where we are seeing increased military budgets while the needs of people living in desperation are ignored. So not just in the United States, but all over the world, we are moving in the wrong direction, and our job is to turn that around

Instead of producing more bombs and weapons and seeing the military industrial complex enjoy huge profits, governments throughout the world need to come together to feed the children, take care of the vulnerable, and protect our planet from the ravages of climate change

And that is why we must continue and accelerate our efforts to end Trump's disastrous war in Iran, which is now spreading throughout the region

That is why we must continue to speak out against the extremist government in Israel and the genocide they have committed in Gaza, and why we in the United States must end all military aid to the Netanyahu government

And that is, and that is why we must rally and work with grassroots activists in Russia to put an end to Putin's disastrous war in Ukraine, which has led, not widely known, not widely reported, but has led to the deaths of some 500,000 Russian soldiers, as well as mass destruction and loss of life in Ukraine.

And that is why we must denounce the United Arab Emirates' continued financial and military support of the RSF as it wages a campaign of genocide and destruction in Sudan's civil war. While the billionaire class and the 1% have never, ever had it so good, over 60% of Americans in the richest country in the history of the world are living paycheck to paycheck.

Nearly 800,000 are homeless, and tens of millions struggle to pay for rent or mortgage or keep a roof over their heads. And let us be very clear, the rapid movement to oligarchy and the exponential rise in income and wealth inequality is not just an American phenomenon. It is taking place all over the world, and in my view, is the most important economic reality of our times.

In country after country, what we are seeing is working people sick and tired of seeing the very rich get richer while they struggle to put food on the table and pay for basic necessities. But it is not just income and wealth inequality and concentration of ownership that we are seeing today.

Literally today, billionaires are determined to own our political system as well In the United States, as a result of the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, billionaires and corporations are legally able to spend as much as they want on political campaigns through their super PACs. And that, my friends, is exactly what they are doing right at this moment.

In the last election, presidential election, Mr. Musk spent at least $290 million to elect Trump as president, and now he is spending some 200 million more to help Republicans keep control over the Congress. And it's not just Republican billionaires. There are Democratic billionaires who are also playing an important role.

As the UN Secretary General remind us, there's another issue that we must confront. In my view, artificial intelligence, AI, and robotics are the most transformational technologies in the history of humanity They have the potential to eliminate tens of millions of jobs. They threaten the privacy, AI threatens the privacy of virtually every person in this world through mass surveillance, surveillance.

Every phone call you make, every website you visit, every email that you send, somebody will know it. It is advancing exponentially. In under four years, we have gone from an AI that could barely write a coherent tweet to AI systems that have already escaped the control of the companies that built them.

Take a deep breath and ask yourself, where will AI be in two years, in four years, in 10 years? Will human beings be able to control this exploding technology? So let me make a very radical suggestion, and that is if the lives of every man, woman, and child are going to be fundamentally changed by this technology, then the people of our country and the people of this world must make the decisions regarding AI, not just a handful of big tech oligarchs

And that is why I hope very much that when President Trump and President Xi meet, on Thursday, I hope very much that they will sit down and begin the process of negotiating a comprehensive treaty to establish a pause on advanced AI and a ban on AI super intelligence. 

Vermont's Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders speaking at Riverside Church in New York on Monday.

why don't we just start with some background? what exactly is the billionaire tax? How did you and, the others involved in developing it develop it, and why do you think we need it?

Great question. so the other developers are Brian Galli at Berkeley, Emmanuel Saez at Berkeley, and David Gamage, who's at Missouri. And so we started working on versions of this tax during the pandemic, and the idea was that there was great emergency, in that case the pandemic, not being handled well by the federal government.

And certainly before we understood that there'd be this strange str- K-shaped recovery such that in fact state revenues would not be, severely hit. It looked like there'd be a, a major hit, to state and local revenues at the worst possible time. And the question was, what should we do? And so that emergency was paired with the fact, as y- as your introduction pointed out, this explosion of income, inequality.

So a relatively small tax could yield quite a large sum of money very quickly on an emergency basis. And so our first version of this tax was drafted, in twenty twenty. We then worked on updated versions of it. We, w- wrote very long and, probably tedious law review articles developing some of the ideas as to how...

The, the, the mechanics of these taxes. And we worked on, con- including a proposal, a legislative proposal for a wealth tax here in California that really went nowhere. the big thing that changed was the so-called, Big Beautiful Bill Act, ABBA, which was passed in July of twenty twenty-five, that combines large and spectacularly regressive and poorly designed tax cuts, which are generally unpaid for, except for cutting healthcare to the very poor through, the w- and the working poor through Med- Medicaid.

So this combination of, an urgent need created by poor federal policy with A even further explosion of wealth inequality such that the wealth of billionaires had doubled again since we had first articulated our, our initial proposal meant that a small tax, so 1% and change a year, temporary for five years, so about what people pay on their real property, that tax was, would yield enough money to fill the gigantic hole created by this, poor federal policy.

So in one sense, it's an emergency measure designed to kinda counteract the regressive tax policy of the Trump administration. So why a wealth tax? 'Cause y- what... Some people may think, "Well, why not just raise the income tax or raise the property tax or..." there are a lot of ways to raise we- revenue, and a wealth tax seems somewhat unusual.

Great question. So- I'll answer firstly by making a couple of analogies, and I apologize, it's just, I guess, a professional hazard. so imagine there's a f-spectacularly successful IPO. If there's a spectacularly successful IPO, imagine there's a lawyer involved, and that lawyer did good work. That lawyer earns $10 million, a California lawyer.

Most of that $10 million will be taxed at the highest personal income tax rate in California. Let's simplify it to 13%. If there's, a banker involved, same thing. If there's an engineer involved, maybe a little bit more complicated, probably also pay 13%. But the founder, who's now a billionaire, will pay nothing in income tax, and the reason for that is that they just have shares that are suddenly worth $1 billion or $10 billion.

And unless they sell them, there's no income to be taxed because income tax is a realization-based system, so it's based on actually selling stuff. But you might say, "Well, to be a billionaire and enjoy yourself, you have to sell stuff." You do not. You can borrow. And in fact, borrowing, again, under the income tax, doesn't have to be this way, but under the income tax as currently designed, borrowing is not itself a realization event.

So you can borrow all you want and never pay anything. And so it doesn't make-- So in terms of basic fairness and efficiency for similarly situated taxpayers not to pay the same amount and for the most affluent to pay the least. Something similar is true of property taxes. Most Californians pay about 1% and change in, if they have any wealth, on their wealth in the form of real property.

And the question is why, just because it's real property versus intangible property, the people who have the most property, shouldn't pay about the same 1%? And in fact, the general property tax, which was in place in most of the country in different ways, obviously between 1830 and the 1930s, did include intangible property as part of the property tax base.

And so the idea this is wholly new or different, is not true, as well as, again, the basic fairness and, and efficiency intuition of why go to the middle class or even merely affluent who are paying their 1% plus on their real property when the most affluent, who have a huge amount of intangible property, are paying little or nothing.

So in a way, you could see this then as closing a loophole, in effect. 

I-- Yes. Yes. I- 

Okay. Interesting. so the-- some people would say, "Well, California already taxes people at a very high rate, and, it's got a huge economy. Why do we need more money? Is this not a case where the state has just mismanaged its budget and now has to go back to the well, in a different form?"

It's worth taking a step back here, I think, and just considering the fact that- This country doesn't spend very much on its social safety net. And as up until, say, 2010, there's a great quote from Ronald Dworkin pointing out that a country this rich, to have that many-- this many people without health insurance is, is a disgrace.

And I agree with that. And we've made progress on that disgrace, since the, since the passage of Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, both in terms of premium credits and, the Medicaid expansion. And California has been very aggressive and very successful at providing more basic coverage to more people.

And so this is a response to the federal government not spending money on these basic social safety net programs that it had been spending. It's not an example of California having made some terrible mistake or terrible mismanagement. Furthermore, Medicaid is a relatively efficient program in terms of providing basic social insurance to the poor.

Is there fraud? Sure. But keep in mind that what the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, I keep having a hard time saying it, does is adds a work requirement. It doesn't add a, any fraud protection measures. Mm. And the work requirements are designed to throw people off the rolls. That's why it's, the CBO thought it would save a trillion dollars.

So it's nothing about, saving money. It's nothing about making government more efficient. It's just a mean-spirited way of spending less on the people who need it most. And in a way, the healthcare system's a system. So if rural emergency rooms have to close, in the Central Valley because of this measure, what will the emergency room look like at Stanford?

And so the idea that we're all in this together I, I would have thought was pretty clear, but apparently is not as clear as it might be. 

Okay. So in one sense then, this is a reaction to a crisis that's been generated by the decision to cut medical care and forcing that down to the state level, and states like California are trying to take up the slack, but, it's a big lift for, for a state this size.

That's right. It's a big lift even for a state this size, and if we did increase, say, the income tax, then going back to our initial IPO example, that means the lawyer and the bankers, the people already paying maybe not enough, we can have an argument about whether it's the right rate, but a reasonable rate, they'd be paying more.

Mm. 

And the person making the most, would still be paying virtually nothing. And that doesn't sound like the right answer, that we... That at the very least we should go to the people most able to pay first. 

All right. 

And if d- in correcting that loophole, we didn't have enough money to provide basic social safety net services, then we should have a further discussion.

But we're nowhere near having that discussion because we can't even have the, most affluent pay. And furthermore, because of the explosion of wealth inequality, there's very... I- it's just a coincidence that this 1% five-year tax Is enough to fill this hole, but it's, it's a coincidence generated by this explosion in wealth inequality.

So the problem we were trying to address, which is really what precipitated everything, is that on July 4th of last year, President Trump signed the one big bill.

It was the largest assault on the American healthcare system in our history. It removes $1 trillion of funding over the next 10 years, and it specifically does it by cutting healthcare services and healthcare coverage for millions of people. Everyone agrees in California that this legislation, this bill, is gonna result in three and a half million people losing healthcare coverage, 150,000 healthcare workers losing their jobs.

Millions and millions of consumers will be paying more in premiums, deductibles and co-pays, and we're already seeing the closure of healthcare facilities around California in anticipation of the full effect of the cuts, which happens on January 1 of next year. We did everything we could to try to stop Congress from adopting the legislation, and we failed.

And so on July 5th of last year, we started asking ourselves, "What could be done to prevent a collapse?" literally a collapse of the healthcare system here in California, and there's a similar thing happening all around the country. And a- as I think people know, California has a ballot, a mechanism at the statewide level.

It's routinely used by all sorts of groups, organizations, interested people. And the obvious thing to us, because there was simply no way to deal with the magnitude of this problem with ordinary tools. And in fact, Governor Newsom asked to speak to me right before Christmas last year. He said very explicitly, "We completely agree with the scale of the problem.

Three and a half million people, a $25 billion hole in the state budget, 150,000 people losing jobs and the closures." He literally said, "I don't have a solution." And I said to him, "Well, Governor, we have a solution. And California is home to more billionaires than any other state in America. It is the place with more wealth than any other state in America.

And so our solution is a One time, 5% tax on the assets of 250 of the richest people on the planet whose wealth has grown enormously in the last few years. And one thing I wanna say, David, and I think this is really important, in 2019, seven years ago, California billionaires, just California billionaires collectively had $700 billion worth of wealth.

Today, seven years later, they're worth over $2.2 trillion. They've experienced more than 300% growth in their wealth in seven years, and we're asking for a one-time, 5% tax, not permanent That will allow three and a half million people to maintain healthcare coverage, and tens of millions of people not to be paying extraordinary increases in premiums, deductibles, and co-pays.

We think this is totally sensible. We think that whether it's Google or Facebook or Oracle or Microsoft, all of these huge tech companies in Silicon Valley that have made their wealth because of what California is, the University of California system, Silicon Valley, the, the population here, this is a modest, common sense thing to do.

And so, we just went into scramble mode talking to people we know. We were fortunate enough to, speak with some world leading academics from the UC system, economics professors like Emmanuel Saez, who is, s- many people believe the leading expert in the world on income and wealth inequality.

Darien Shanske, who's at UC Davis and a brilliant tax professor and law professor. And it's not that complicated. What is controversial and nobody wants to talk about the problem, the problem is a consensus view. Everybody agrees. The only thing that's controversial here is should the billionaires have to pay a little bit of money to solve an enormous collective problem that goes to the heart of whether or not California is livable for 99.99% of the population.

And we think that's fair. We think it's reasonable. So we put together a team, policy, lawyers, academics. We drafted the measure, we polled it, and we filed it and went out and collected the signatures, and it will be on the ballot in November. 

Some of the question that's been raised about it is the idea of it being a one-time tax on billionaires rather than something more long-term and structural, I guess, like a changing of rates, et cetera, et cetera.

I'm curious w- what your thinking was behind it being one time, and what your response to the idea that if it's one time, it's like one pot of money that may get the state through one rough patch, but won't actually fix a long-term problem. 

So first of all, I think that's fair criticism, and we thought a lot about that, and here was our reason.

We knew as a result of the consultations and the discussions we did before we filed our initiative, we knew that the argument was going to be deployed against us that this will force billionaires to leave the state of California and would threaten the prosperity and the competitiveness of the state.

We completely disagree with that diagnosis. We think all of the evidence is clear that's not true. But this is a political campaign, and we wanted to take that issue off the table. And from our point of view, when we were confronted in July with a problem of unprecedented magnitude, and we had to come up with a solution in just a couple of months, we made the choice that we did not want people to be able to legitimately say billionaires are gonna be forced to leave.

the truth is nobody's forced to do anything, but there is no economic incentive for billionaires to leave, despite all of the attention it's gotten in the press. The tax applies to people who were legal residents of the state of California on January 1 of 2026 All of the billionaires who are making this, well, factually incorrect argument are saying that, but we wanted to be able to legitimately say, "We're not trying to send anybody anywhere else, but this problem is so large and so pressing, and a five-year solution is better than no solution."

And we were trying, frankly, to address what's become the leading argument of our opponents and say, everyone agrees on the problem. Our opponents don't have a solution for this, and so we tried to take that argument away. They are dishonestly using it. We understand that, but that was the choice we made, and we thought a five-year solution would be enough time and enough breathing space that we could figure out the long-term and structural solution.

And frankly, we also thought the five years would then be proof itself that California continued to do fabulous and continues to thrive, and all of this AI wealth that's being generated here and everything Silicon Valley does, we have every expectation that's going to continue, and this is a distracting argument from our opponents who don't wanna talk about the thing they actually agree with, which is that three and a half million people are losing healthcare coverage, and 30-plus million people who are commercially insured are gonna pay more for premiums, co-pays, and deductibles.

Let's talk a little bit about some of the larger politics surrounding the billionaire tax.

obviously, it's gotten an enormous amount of press and an, an enormous amount of attention. do how close, you are to gathering the requisite number of signatures? Is this likely to be on the ballot? 

I, the truth is I don't. they keep me in the basement drafting. They don't tell me how they're doing, with signature gathering.

so I don't know the answer, although I will... This does touch on the qu- the fact that there's a question that it might get on the ballot goes to this really, another common theme about whether this is a temporary or permanent tax. People say in this world-weary, cynical way, "Oh, there's no such thing as a temporary tax."

there is. There is such a thing in Califor- Californians, didn't we, we up the sales tax increase that, that was part, in two thousand twelve. It was a four-year tax increase, and they didn't inc- they didn't re-up that. Californians don't approve all taxes, right? They rejected a millionaires tax a few years ago.

They re-rejected split roll in twenty twenty, which was a big surprise. That was with, with everybody. By, by, by everybody, all the unions, Governor Newsom, Mark Zuckerberg supported, still lost. So the idea that- These things are all permanent is, I think, dubious. And when it comes to the signature gathering, the billionaires have put five, what we're calling revenge-ments on the ballot or gotten them through the process.

These are ballot measures like the Budget Stability Act that sound like totally reasonable, but in-- you have some poison pill inside that would, affect, our measure of how it would and what the courts would say is another question, but they definitely, that's the goal. And they are paying signature gatherers a lot to get signatures more than, more than the unions are.

And so there's a real question whether the, the unions can-- will be, will be able to get the signatures it needs because of the power of the billionaires- Mm. to, to, to, to, to pay more per signature. And that just goes to this question of whether or not this is gonna be a, there's such a thing as a temporary tax.

If this measure gets on the ballot, if it passes, despite clearly g- going to be outspent many times over, that, unions or other groups will look at this adventure and think, "This is great. This is something we wanna do again," I, I think that's a questionable assumption. 

So, Darien, I suspect that if this, tax passes, there'll be some legal challenges, and some people have claimed that it's unconstitutional or it's a taking of property.

What do you think the legal challenges will look like, and how, vulnerable would this tax be to legal challenge? 

Great question. There's no doubt that there'll be a lot of legal challenges ranging from the somewhat plausible to the completely implausible. And I, and we try to channel them in the bill by having an expedited review of facial challenges, that will go to a superior court and then the California Supreme Court as quickly as possible.

Because we understand that there will be these meritless challenges, and we want them to be resolved as quickly as possible. There will o- obviously also be some as-applied challenges, which people will have to pay taxes first and then, go through the regular process, and those will take longer.

Now, there are a lot of different kinds of challenges. I had promised before to talk a little bit more about residency, so let's take it a second to talk about how it works and why the-- it's normal science. There's nothing novel. So California had an income tax since nineteen thirty-five, and the billionaire tax proposal builds on The rules basically set in 1935, that's been a little bit cha- changed since then, for establishing California residents that has analogies in other states.

And the basic idea is that you're presumed to c- still be domiciled in California unless you can be shown, unless you show that you are not in California and for more than a temporary reason. Now, for a lot of people, that's not gonna be hard. I move, I'm gonna sell my house. I have a job in another state.

I'm gonna move there. And so that'll be done. For a lo- But for people in this particular billionaire class who decided to move by reincorporating the LLCs on December 24th, it's going to be a lot harder. And in fact, there is a big and developed body of law about this. So for example, a California couple wanted to sell their business, expected to make $20 million.

They wanted to not pay California income tax, so they m- moved to Nevada. They got their Nevada driver's license. They got a Nevada apartment. They sold the company in July, and the question was, as of July, were they Nevada residents or California residents? And the courts, said they are still California residents because they haven't established that their sojourn outside of California was other than temporary, given all of their California connections and history.

And so our position is that these rules indicate how we think quite reasonably that deciding to, to loudly announce in a tweet, that one is moving and buying yet another mansion in a different state, is not enough, to establish residency in another state, and, and rightfully so. 

Okay. So when the, if the billionaires leave to avoid the tax, they'll have to actually leave.

They won't be able to use some trickery in order to make it look like they're leaving while nothing's in fact changed. and that was one of the objections to the, the tax that, of course they'll just find a way around it. They'll find some loopholes. another question that's come up is, is this a retroactive tax?

Because one of the ways to prevent flight, as I understood it, was that the tax would be effective as of the beginning of 2025. Is that correct? 

2026. Oh, 

sorry, 2026. So 

the measurement date is January 1st, 2026. And so- If the tax passes in November, then it is true January is before November. And so I-- But I would resist calling it retroactive, and here's why.

Because in a classic retroactive case, in, say, the lead Supreme Court case, called Carlton, from nineteen ninety-two, Congress changes the tax law as of a previous tax year. So if somebody filed their taxes, got a benefit, and the, and Congress said, we never meant to give them that benefit. We wanna take that back."

Mm. And the court said they could. They basically use a form of rational basis. And so if we did make it twenty twenty-five, I think we would be on strong grounds. As it is, the court made clear that going back to the beginning of the calendar year is totally usual. The federal government has done that many times.

State governments do it all the time. It makes sense. States don't legislate on January first, right? They'll often legislate back to the beginning of that year. Nobody's filed any taxes yet for twenty twenty-six. It's not really retroactive or changing anybody's tax treatment for twenty twenty-six. So Short answer is will that, that yes, there'll be, w- there'll almost certainly be challenges, but they're frivolous challenges to the extent that by going back to the calendar year and not reopening a previous tax year, which would be permissible a- as long as it survives rational basis, which I think we could easily do, but we're not even doing that.

We're just going back to the calendar year. 

So maybe let's talk a little bit about the national climate in which the billionaires tax is coming about. The, as I mentioned at the opening of the show, there's been a lot of talk about disparities of wealth, but there's been a lot of talk about the, increasingly very public role that certain billionaires have played in our national politics, and it's generated some blowback.

Do you have any sense of how the billionaire tax fits into this larger national political environment? Are billionaires worried, and would they be right to be worried that this will spread? That, California's a bellwether, and if we get a wealth tax here, we'll probably have one in whatever state they might wanna move to in the next few years.

Well, not being a political scientist or a soothsayer- ... I'm not sure, what, is going to happen. I will say that one of the surprising trends I, I've noticed is since the introduction of this bill has been many billionaires and their supporters saying things like, "Well, I agree we probably need to change the stepped-up basis rule so that people can't inherit assets without paying tax on the built-in gains," or, "I think it would be reasonable for billionaires to pay tax when they borrow against their assets because in a sense they really are realizing their income."

And so it feels like there is an understanding amidst the magnitude of the inequality as well as the magnitude of the fiscal imbalance that we had even before the current administration made it, so much worse, that there's going to need to be adjustments, and that- I think it's-- So I, I don't know what's gonna happen, and I don't wanna e-even pretend to know, but I do, but I do wanna observe that there does seem to be this dawning recognition, even among opponents of the tax, that they'll often raise other kinds of related reforms, as preferable.

We've talked about why the political establishment, certainly politicians, oftentimes side with billionaires, even on something like this. One thing that's been, I think, confusing to a lot of people, observers who are looking at this from the outside, they hear that the California Teachers Union is opposed to this.

They hear that Planned Parenthood is opposed to this. In preparing for this interview, I tried to look around at what the official arguments were against it, and, and frankly, it was some mishmash of, "This is not a one-time sol-" It was, very perfect is the enemy of the good argument. It's only a one-time tax, so it's not a long-term solution.

There's questions about if billionaires end up leaving, that'll reduce the tax base in the future for various other, other ideas. They're very speculative. I, I think my question is, what intel have you heard from groups like that, not politicians, but, another union or Planned Parenthood, about why they're actually opposing this?

What do you suspect is going on, and what do you say to whatever arguments they're making? 

I don't have to speculate. I'll tell you exactly what's happening. And the first thing I wanna say is the great majority of unionized teachers in California are for the billionaire tax. The great majority of Planned Parenthood employees and patients are for the billionaire tax The people that are, quote-unquote, "not for the billionaire tax" are a handful of state level leaders, and it's very clear what's going on.

They are being coerced by Governor Newsom. God knows what he's promising. God knows what the details are But there is no policy reason. This is all evasive rhetoric, and they know union members in California are even more favorable about the billionaire tax than the general public, and the general public is large majority in support of this.

And so I just think it's what people hate the most about politics. It's why the Democratic Party is losing middle class and working class people. It's why the decline to state group, which in California is now the biggest group. We need common sense solutions. And the idea that we're trying to paint billionaires as victims, it's just an absurdity.

And so that's what the governor is doing. And by the way, the governor has a lot of tools at his disposal and can make a lot of accommodations to people who are looking for all kinds of things, but this is so much bigger than any of that. And I'll be honest with you, I think it's shameful that, given what we're facing, and it's more shameful on people who consider themselves to be so-called progressives.

better. I don't know how you get to that conclusion when you see what's going on in this state and where everybody again agrees millions and millions of people are gonna suffer unnecessarily, hospitals and emergency rooms and clinics are closing, and because two hundred and fifty people expect us to all do exactly what they want.

This is an important debate and an important thing. And, and we fully expect it's, there are gonna be all kinds of lying and misinformation and all the rest of it, but I think people's instincts are right on this, and that's what we see over and over again. 

I just wonder, do you think that the part of this...

If there is a leadership gap between leaders of organizations now joining Governor Newsom in opposing this and the membership of organizations in supporting this thing, if that does exist, how much of-- Let's go back to the point that you made about billionaires and how much billionaires i-implicitly offer to people who side with them, right?

I'm getting to the real human element of politics here, which is that if a presidential candidate knows they're siding with billionaires, they can very well expect that the billionaires are going to help fund their presidential campaign. But there's also this one level beneath in the political class, which is, listen, if I'm a leader of an organization or further down the political ladder and I'm siding with billionaires in my position as a group leader, there may be benefits for me down the road, two, three, four years where I'm not the leader of the organization anymore, but I'm getting rewarded in some other way.

That second level of politics that people don't see, where there are the insinuations of rewards down the road if you side with people with power. Do you think that's going on here when it comes to the political class, whether it's consultants, leadership of groups, et cetera, et cetera? 

Absolutely.

There's no question about that. That is absolutely going on. And again, it's going on in a place where, the rhetoric California's brand, if you will, in terms of politics, is this is a very blue state and, we're so woke this and woke that. When it gets down to money, it is exactly the same.

There's no difference between... That these folks know exactly what they want, and all of that is either implicit or explicit, and it's on offer. And the one thing that I think has been very underreported, it is beyond debate that there is an enormous gap between the leadership of the folks who've come out against this and their constituencies, whether they're members, patients, what have you.

That is absolutely beyond dispute, and it should be talked about more, that the general public, their views on this is very different than the governor, other state officials, other officials. There's absolutely no question about that. By the way, I wanted to mention, San Diego is the second-largest city in California, the second-largest county.

The Labor Council in San Diego voted unanimously to support the billionaire tax, and there were representatives of unions in the vote today who voted differently than some of the statewide leadership. The couple of organizations in the union world that have come out against this was not shared at the county level in San Diego.

We think there's a lot of that out there. We know there's a lot of that out there. Too much of this, what's gone on so far strikes us as being like an episode of The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. these guys who have $500 million yachts and 15 mansions all over the world, and we... we're all just captive to their whims.

And, we gotta start... Again, there's gotta be more honest discussion that this is... First of all, there is a problem, the healthcare collapse that's being underreported, and the views of regular people. And there's this debate, and I know what's going on right now, too, about, why did the Democrats, in the autopsy report or whatever it was that came out a few weeks ago.

This is exactly why. This is exactly why. And frankly, obviously Governor Newsom's running for president. There's no debate about that. Everybody understands that. There hasn't been an official announcement yet. But if you wanna be the representative of the billionaire class after everything that's happened recently in American politics, my advice to him is this is not where the people are at.

This is where the donors are at. This is where the billionaires are at. But take a look around. That's how powerful these folks are, that even incredibly skilled and effective folks are susceptible to their powers. 

And Finally, Section D, FIFTEEN YEARS LATER

when you first started covering Occupy, what did you think you were looking at? It 

was definitely the start of something interesting and exciting, and I think that's why it snowballed so quickly.

We first heard about some folks are camping out in Zuccotti Park. I don't know if we necessarily sent anyone the first day or the second day, but definitely by the third day it was growing. There were people everywhere, and it was clear this is something that's not gonna stop after a couple days, and it's worth getting there on the ground, talking to people, and finding out what do they want.

And remember the context as well. This is just after the Arab Spring. Hmm. Protesters occupied Tahrir Square in Egypt, so there was a sense that maybe some of that youth energy of protest and defiance was gonna come here to New York City. Bloomberg was the mayor at that time, and the bank bailout had just happened.

There was a lot of anger about that as well. So we were, as reporters, curious to see where is this gonna go, so being there to check it out was really something to see. 

Yeah. You're talking about how new this movement was, and all of the young activists that were a part of it. And, after a few weeks in, the coalition started getting broader, right?

By early October, organized labor was showing up: transit workers, building service workers, city workers, some of the biggest unions in New York City. Jack Flokaitis was one of them. He's a retired subway repairman from Brooklyn Transport Workers Union Local 100. Here's what he had to say. 

When I come here, I feel energized.

I, I don't know what it is. I just feel, ... I don't- I can't explain it. I just feel good here. People are thanking me for my service for the subway, for working in the subway. Can you imagine that? That nobody ever thanked me, for anything, And people saying, "Thank you for your service," that's incredible.

So Stephen, what did it mean for the movement when labor came in? 

Well, it obviously didn't take long for more and more social justice groups, or even just straight up classic labor groups to glom onto this growing movement. So I think it definitely legitimized what was happening. I think it gave the protesters who were there from the beginning a little wind in their sails, like a little nod that, "Hey, you're on the right track.

You're onto something here." But I think, for reporters and people trying to like make sense of the story, I think it maybe got a little diluted, although I wouldn't say it was like crystallized from the beginning, but they basically coined the phrase the 99%. but there was never like a specific goal in mind.

It's not like, suffragette movement, where it's like getting women the vote was the goal. So I think it left it open for different groups to join this, m- growing ball of energy that is social justice, something related to the people, whether it's labor workers, or whether it's prison reform, or whether it's banking reform.

So as a reporter, it's kinda hard to make sense of all this. It's just what you see, what you feel is momentum and energy. 

Mm-hmm. You're talking about how difficult it was to cover as a reporter with so many pressing issues happening and being talked about across the park. What were your stories like back then, like without being able to truly focus on one thing?

So at first it was like, well, why are they there, is what reporters are asking. Find out what people are saying. And it's like you could ask 100 people and you would get 100 different answers. I suppose if anything, it became for a lot of editors, a story about public space. Mm. They were not supposed to be there all night.

And it became, very quickly a clash between protesters and the police, and a a face off between who's gonna win this battle over public space, and who has the right for their voice to be heard in public. 

Yeah. And Occupy went on for nearly 60 days. and then in November, the city cleared protesters out of Zuccotti Park.

Until then, if you wanted to know where Occupy was, there was one place you could go. Stephen, what happened to the story that you were working on once the park was gone? 

It did get a little trickier, and I think the momentum for it got diffused. Although you have to remember, by that time, this was a global story at that point, so there were Occupy encampments all across the country in cities everywhere.

Even President Obama was talking about it. 

People are, are frustrated and, the, the, the, the protesters, are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works. 

So they had made their mark in a way. Like, they had succeeded to change the conversation

Stephen, you were a younger reporter covering Occupy Wall Street back in 2011, and of course, you're so much wiser now, and you've- I wish ... grown in your career. But I'm wondering, like, what advice would you give your young self? 

I would certainly tell myself to slow down, take a breath. Even though it felt very chaotic in the moment, and there was just a lot of stuff going on, it was a circus-like atmosphere.

On the one side, people are just being joyful and having fun together, but then there were also people doing serious community-building work. And even though everybody had a different reason for being there, it eventually coalesced into these various social justice movement building skill seminars for people.

And I would later see that manifest when New York City was flooded by Superstorm Sandy, and parts of Lower Manhattan and the Rockaways and Coney Island were totally ravaged by the storm, and s- the city just couldn't provide resources fast enough or quick enough to help people. These groups seemingly spontaneously formed, but the truth is the foundation was really built during Occupy.

So they had these groups pop up. They were l- actually called, like, Occupy Sandy. But they were relief groups essentially. They were, mobilizing to help provide people things they needed. So they provided food for people, places to recharge their cell phones. They even helped cleaning out and rebuilding people's homes eventually.

Mm-hmm. and so, a lot of the skill building that was happening there for people who had never done that thing before, I think, was really foundational. And really the best example is several years later when the Black Lives Matter movement launched. Mm. I saw total echoes of Occupy Wall Street there with just the way protests were organized, the leaderless nature of the movement, and how it was able to build organically.

And just like Occupy, obviously Black Lives Matter cropped up all over the country, and quickly. Mm-hmm. 

You guys obviously have a great article out in the New Catalyst called Occupy in Retrospect. We're obviously gonna link that down below. So last year was the 10th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, and I wanna make clear, your article isn't really about Occupy, right?

It's more of a response to all of these glowing retrospectives that came out last year. and you guys have, you guys are arguing that these retrospectives, for the most part, advance an incorrect origin story, particularly, around the relationship between Occupy and the two Bernie Sanders campaigns that came after it.

So just to dive in, Ben, maybe if you wanna start with, like, what is the commonly understood Occupy origin story that you guys are arguing against? And then maybe Christy, if you can pick up where it goes wrong and, how this origin myth took root. 

Sure. I think anyone who reads left publications, saw the flurry of Occupy retrospectives, around, like, October 2021, which was the 10-year anniversary.

And, most of those articles, recognize certain shortcomings in the movement, and they reject, what they see now as an immature, demandless horizontalism that was, that was a real hindrance, to the s- to the growth and success of Occupy. but they nonetheless see it as the origin, a really important, political origin for a lot of things that came after, Black Lives Matter, the, the Bernie Sanders campaigns, and the rejuvenation of the Democratic Socialist of America.

And in all those ways, it sees Occupy as the rebirth of left politics and the origin of all of these things that came afterwards. so that's the, the myth, and I think it's fairly common, again, in most left publications, and I'll let Christy explain why we think it's a myth.

Right. So I think the point for us is that while Occupy preceded these other developments, like BLM, Bernie, or DSA, it didn't cause them. the cause is, I think, much more a combination of ongoing political conditions, particularly the financial crash of 2008. Mm-hmm. and then, but also, like, 30 years of unrelenting, unrelenting, neoliberalism before then.

and Occupy as, was, as we say in the article, the last instance of the same old, same old response of the left to these 30 years of neoliberal rule, which were mostly ineffectual, and involved no programmatic response, that's being pursued in an organized, strategic way. so I think we see it as important to see that, Occupy was not the beginning, but really the end for a few reasons, which is part of, I think, Jen's question as to why the myth, our answer, I think, is first that, there were real tensions, that persist...

There are real tensions that persist in the left today, that can be traced back to how people came to be involved in left politics, and the, the myth functions to authorize people who came from that Occupy background. it authorizes them to assume positions of authority within left spaces today, that they haven't maybe in fact earned, because they haven't been doing, the type of strategic, more strategic universalist demand-based politics, that have, cropped up since the Bernie Sanders campaign, any longer than anyone else, that's new to the left in this period has, were all figuring this out together, and yet you have these voices, speaking with authority because they were there from the beginning, from Occupy.

and I think we also wanna point out that there are material incentives, that exist for those who came out of Occupy to perpetuate this Occupy origin story myth, that many of them made careers in the, in left media out of this experience. so it's, it's a legitimation narrative that continues to allow certain people to take up disproportionate amount of space in and among left discussions today.

So it seems like one central, central point of that tension is specifically the myth that Occupy led to Bernie Sanders, that you can draw a direct line from the people who were at Occupy, the movement itself, to the Bernie Sanders the, the two Bernie Sanders campaigns. You guys actually argue that it- the, the relationship goes the other way.

Ben, can you explain how that works? Because I, I think that if you were to just take a cursory look at, like, the language of Occupy Wall Street, the 1% versus the 99%, and also a lot of prominent Occupy Wall Street people actually went on to literally become part of the Bernie Sanders campaign.

but why did Occupy not actually generate the two Bernie Sanders campaigns? 

Right. So in, in the article we distinguish between these two things. On the one hand, the rhetoric and the ideology behind the two, and on the other hand, the people. And as you say- Mm-hmm ... there's a lot of, like, commonality there.

But just starting with the rhetoric, it's true, that Bernie Sanders... there are those, well-known YouTube videos online of Bernie going back 30 years, and he says the same things over and over. but he does, and his campaigns did adopt the 1% versus the 99% language, which did come out of Occupy.

And, in both camps there's this, well, there's a anti-capitalism. Mm-hmm. but I think that as far as the rhetoric goes, that's where the commonalities end. Just on the face of it, right, if you look at, like, what Occupy was about, and we quote, an article from John Hammond where he just- where he identifies five key traits of Occupy activism.

And he says that there are five things that characterize Occupy. It's, horizontalism, so no formal leadership; prefiguration, like attempting to model the future desired society- autonomy from the state, mutual aid, and defiance of government authority. And all five of those things, if you think about, like, what the Bernie Sanders campaigns were about, it's just, there's a clear disconnect there, right?

there was vying for state power, it was organized around a clear leader, there were concrete demands- Yeah ... Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, et cetera. And in all those ways, they're just clearly different, right? And I think this is maybe where the limits of the word anti-capitalism come in, and why we ought to defend, Democratic socialism as something concrete and different from just anti-capitalism in a very vague sense.

And if you just say anti-capitalist, sure, like, Occupy and Bernie both fit within that, within that phrase. but there's a clear difference between Occupy anarchism and, and Democratic socialism. So that's the... That's, like, just on the face of it, I think that the Occupy origin story has to make sense of that, of that break.

and we wanna argue that there's a clear, clear difference there. and then, now the second aspect, the people. So, there were a lot of people who were involved with Occupy who eventually became involved with the Bernie Sanders campaigns. but in the article, we look back at around 2014, 2015 to see what, what was going on around then.

And I think in the Occupy origin story, there's this idea that the insufficiency of Occupy itself led people on their own accord to mature in their political orientation, and that's what led them to the Bernie Sanders campaigns. And what we argue is that if you look at the time, like, before Bernie's first, primary run There wasn't really much progression in, in the so-called movement, right?

there was a lot of stagnation. They kept going back to Zuccotti. A lot of the news stories focused on high-profile arrests. Micah White, who's now called out as a Occupy grifter, was, was one of the most prominent faces of the movement, right? And then Bernie comes along, and all that changes.

And our basic argument is just that, the Bernie primaries were the best things happening in the activist world, so of course a lot of people were absorbed into those campaigns. But they were absorbed by the, by the new emphasis, by the majoritarian orientation, and they, they, they shifted in their political orientation from liberal anarchists into liberal socialists, and that was great.

I think that, all of us matured in our political orientation through the Bernie campaigns. But to say that they shifted beforehand and led the charge, I think is just an inaccurate rendering of the story. 

A lot of people remember Occupy as chaotic and leaderless, and I'm wondering from your perspective from the inside, did that feel like a problem, or did that feel like it helped the movement? 

I think there are pros and cons to it. I think in some ways it allowed many people to step into a movement for the first time without any formal training or experience and plug in and not feel that they were bogged down by a structure.

And in other ways, it created a vacuum where many of the existing inequities that are present in our world, the occupation can conform to that in ways so like people who are highly educated, who come from privileged backgrounds, who could come in and just harness a social power, a social capital that moved things faster and in your direction.

If you weren't comfortable in that space, maybe you didn't feel so empowered in that space because there was no structure. Certainly there were a lot of flaws with the encampment, lack of demands, a lack of a clear leadership and organizational structure. I think for some people that represents chaos.

For other people, that represents a lot of opportunity, a way to break out of molds and to create many leaders, whereas traditional organizations have clear hierarchy that sometimes stifles creativity, stifles thought, stifles, the ability to think outside of what is a party line or group think, or what is the stated mission, for example.

One of the organizers that you were on the front lines with, Micah Bournefree, was recently on WNYC, and he said that going into Occupy, activists had a vision of what it would take to make radical change in America. But in doing so, Micah said that he learned it wasn't enough. 

We thought it would take a broad-based social movement with, millions of people in the streets, largely non-violent, which is what we had with Occupy.

And I think when we achieved that with Occupy, it revealed something about the story that activists have been chasing for many years, and it revealed that, that's not enough. There's a, an error in that particular way of doing activism, and that's what I, I meant. 

What are your thoughts on that?

I think what we got out of Occupy was a narrative that has persisted today, the 99% versus the 1%. It's the underclass versus the ruling class. I think that is the success of the encampment that resonated across the country and activated a lot of people. And yes, there were a lot of people mobilized, and I think what we've realized and what the fight continues to be is the way that that ruling class has captured our political system.

So that's why you had a successful primary campaign like Bernie Sanders. That's why we were able to have an AOC. And in some ways I will say Perhaps it is not enough. I don't know what will be the threshold, but I know that we continue to mobilize, we continue to name the problem here, we continue to name the corporate criminals that are poisoning our water, creating food recalls, that are making our housing unaffordable.

So we have to keep moving in that direction until it's done. There's nothing to do but to continue to fight to win. Mm-hmm. 

As someone who was there, what role do you think Occupy actually played in creating the politics that we see in New York City today? I'm thinking specifically of the DSA here.

I think there's a clear lineage from Occupy to where we are now. I very clearly see that Bernie was able to capture some of that energy of the Occupy Wall Street movement because of the narrative of the 99% versus the 1%. I see, Trump winning the election the first time, accelerating, DSA, accelerating those economic populist positions across the country.

I just think it's all tied together, but it's certainly, not without the history of all of the movements that brought even us to Occupy. 

You were in your late 20s during Occupy Wall Street. Now you sit on the New York City Council. How did Occupy Wall Street help activate your activism? 

Yeah. For me, the encampment, that movement allowed me to find community with people who were also just disillusioned by our governing institutions, who also felt that we were not in a place to address- existential threats like the climate crisis or provide real healthcare for people or house people or address mental health, all the things, all the things that we are struggling with and continue to fight for.

I was able to find community with people there who have committed their lives. Like, they are in a lifelong commitment to the broader movement for social change, for positive social change. 

Are you surprised by where you are today? 

I'm extremely sur- I'm a very left-wing person. I considered myself at the time of a s- social anarchist persuasion.

I was very anti-state. I felt like the state was unable to take care of people, and I was very vocal about it. I'm also, very pro-decarceration and, lean towards an abolitionist mindset, so I- I was never imagining myself as someone in politics. being a public servant, absolutely. I always wanted to be of service.

I never wanted to work for the private sector, but not in this role, and I didn't ever think that this community would accept me, but they were my community's on board with these issues. I represent a mostly working class Latino and Black community, and, we have a Bangladeshi community. When you sit and talk with people, like, they're like, "Yes, ma'am, I understand," and, "What are we gonna do about it?"

Mm-hmm. So people understand the issues. there's a lot of education that exists around folks. They just, they feel it in their daily lives. I was very surprised and did not at all imagine this for myself. I was a carpenter, like, after Occupy , so I was not- What? Can we 

talk more about that? 

The carpentry.

I was a bike delivery worker. Like, I ha- I ran an, a youth organization. I opened a community hub with friends from Occupy called Mayday Space, and this was not on my bingo card ever for my life. I've never, ever said out loud I'd ever wanna be a, a politician in any way. and but it's the perfect role 'cause it's term limited.

... and that's number one, right? Yeah. And then the other thing is that at the city level, you really are, like, the closest to the people you can be in terms of helping solve issues and, and, help people take care of their day-to-day needs. It's, it's really the best place to be. It's less politiciany like out of all of the levels of being a politician you could be.

Let's talk about the legacy of, of Occupy Wall Street because- Yeah ... I, it, my, my assessment of it has changed over the years because I think in the, in the, direct wake of it, I was, very excited. And then like, a couple years out, I was like, "I'm not sure if that, it really amounted to anything."

And then three, four, five, six, seven years, out, I started to realize like All these people who are... I talk about who are activists, who are, providing mutual aid in the wake of Sandy, or they're, preventing, people from getting kicked out of their homes in Minnesota, or- Yeah ... they, they all came out of Occupy.

Absolutely. Yeah. 

and, and, and I would say even in the context of like, when Bernie, had his run in 2016, and he's talking about- Mm-hmm ... the 99%. that- Mm-hmm ... came out of Occupy when, Yeah. Yeah ... g- say more. 

Yeah, no, I think you're, you're, you're, you're really right. I started off with saying, some of the dark parts of the legacy of it are struggles around power and powerlessness.

But I really think that there, there's, like, an overwhelming contribution that Occupy Wall Street made, that it was really a, a, a, a rupture that, that w- b- brought thousands and thousands of people into, into political action, trained thousands of leaders, some of whom you're describing, that went on to build organizations that have become really the infrastructure of the movement on the left.

and, and, this is a thing that movements often do when they're successful is they, they, they introduce new language to the public. They change people's perspective about what's possible. They, they expand their imaginations. And so this, this thing, the 99%, like, it's... I- it's hard to overstate how important of a contribution that is to the story of this country.

Like, that just was not... That's not what we were talking about- No ... before then. And, and the 99% versus the 1% is, like, when you really... When you think about it, it is an introduction of, like, class struggle into the public mainstream conversation. And here's the... Bernie's a fantastic example because he's the most disciplined, consistent politician on, on Earth.

Like, he's, he's not from this planet, And, and, and, and so we could say with very, with great confidence that he's been saying basically the same thing for decades. But suddenly in 2016, it beca- it was popular. 

Yep. 

And that's because, because a movement came around and changed people's common sense about class.

And, and so, and so Bernie, and then the Squad, and AOC, and, and the growth of, of DSA, and, and, and Zoran, like, these are part of a trajectory that all have their own, they all have their own inputs, and, and, and leaders, and, and ways that people develop, and it's not all through Occupy, although I think that a lot of leadership came out of that, too.

But, but I think this, this, this changing, the expansion of the imagination is a huge contribution, and particularly towards this On this trajectory that we're on now where there is like a, a, a, a left, a democratic socialist left or, or whatever that's on the rise, I think like is very much part of the lineage of that.

Yeah. 

Do, do you think, and, and, and, and honestly, like I, I was reading about this, $130 million, essentially a settlement that, DoorDash is paying. Mm-hmm. And, 

Mamdani's got a, I can't remember what the name of it is. It's, the functional equivalent of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but also I think workers, in it. Mm-hmm. Sam Levine I think is the, the guy who's heading it. 

Mm. 

And they're building in the Mamdani administration, they're building essentially a huge leftist, not just think tank, but like policy shop- Mm-hmm

that also is implementing these things. And- Mm-hmm ... I, I feel like none of this would be happening without Occupy. I- I- I... like those seeds that were planted there- Mm-hmm ... you never know where they're gonna go, and the seed can- Totally ... come off of what gets planted there and blow down the road a little bit- Totally

or a bird eats it and poops it out somewhere else. Totally. But, but honestly, I feel like that all of that stuff had to happen to be where we are today, and in five or six years from now, we could be talking about a- an administration, regardless of who becomes president, staffed by- Mm-hmm ... many of the people coming out of this Mamdani administration.

That is totally possible. And I, and I think I, I... What I think this is a good example of is the interplay between different types of movement organization and movement moments. Like I think, I think, the way that movement moments like that, these big ruptures in the streets, how we're talking, they're, what the, the, what we're saying is that part of what they're good for is, is this big picture transformation that makes a lot else possible.

And then, like talent, if, if we're lucky and if we do our work, then talented politicians and disciplined organizations and, it can take that and turn it into something real and durable and long-term that can then like keep it going. So, the stuff like the Mamdani administration is advancing that trajectory, and so it, it's a really important interplay.

I actually think that's one of the important lessons that I think we need to be grappling with in this moment. I don't know if that's okay to go- Please ... there. I think like I, I, I think we need to have respect for the different types of, the different ways that movements are and the different types of organizations that make movements up.

And I, I think, Occupy is an important example of w- we got a lot of things wrong, but we got something right, which is that elections are not gonna win us, like the society we deserve on their own. That's not gonna happen, and we have lots of historical evidence to show that that is the case.

And, what, what those kinds of movement moments are good for is, creating an opportunity for those kinds of more tangible wins, but then they also are necessary to keep driving the agenda forward and, and to also hold, politicians accountable and to create more opportunity. And I, I just, I, I worry sometimes that we think Like, we get successful at something, and we think that that's gonna be the thing, that if we just repeat, rinse and repeat, then it'll be enough.

And, I think, I think the, the truth is w- I think we're doing so- DSA, like the, the, the portions of DSA that are leading this, the, the, the left populist politicians who are, who are, like, providing this example and, and, and winning these things, the, the big statewide organizations and, all that stuff that makes this possible, I think they're a huge contribution.

I think they're a big intervention in this, like, politics of powerlessness. They're saying, "No, we want power, and here's how we're gonna get it, and here's how we're gonna wield it and deliver for people." And I, I think it's, like, an, an, a, a huge advancement. We, we didn't understand that stuff- Yep ... in, in the time that I was coming up.

But, we're, we did understand that, like, you can win a presidency in, in Chile, like with Allende, and like, and then they come with tanks, And it's like the, the, the billionaires who run this, who run this society, this empire, it will not go down without a fight. 

 

And, and so, 

we're-

this is exactly what I've been thinking about. Like, a- aside from the typical your favorite politician's gonna break your heart sometimes- Sure ... if, if Mamdani was made president t- tomorrow, and, Good for him. Good for him ... A- AOC the, the, the majority leader in the Senate- Mm-hmm

and, Summer Lee, the Speaker of the House- 

Mm-hmm ... 

we still, we would still, Got it ... be, have the fight of our life on our hands because- 

Yeah ... 

we now have trillionaires out there- 

Mm-hmm. 

Yeah ... who, who can do just- Yeah, they live in 

bunkers, 

and they have drones ... they live in bunkers. Like, people- And, and, 

have to understand that none of that's gonna work. The best case- Yeah ... scenario, the fantasy, case scenario is not gonna work without people being organized and ready to fight- Yeah ... on a daily basis. Like, this is not gonna go away. Yeah. There is no finish line- Yeah ... in this situation. There's really just- Yeah, 

I-

an improvement in our lives, but a, but a constant having to engage in this process 

Yeah, I think that's really right, and I think... And, so I think this, like, this, this thing that, that portions of the left are now doing really well of, like, winning elections for th- on behalf of the movement is a huge contribution, and we have so many other skills we need to keep, learning and adapting and getting better at.

We need to, we need to keep learning how to be in the streets. We need to keep organizing people to be in the places where they belong, like to be organizing day to day in your workplace, in your school, in your neighborhood, the places where people live and are gonna be long-term. That's where people-- That's where we need to build organizations and groups.

We need to learn how to build groups in a healthy way, like to... Because inevitably, once you start building groups, like, all this stuff comes up about leadership and power and identity and all these th- these, like, very real struggles that people engage in when they're together, But together is the only answer.

so let's talk about professional activism because I think right now in the absence of a critical mass of, actual real institutions on the left, the left is obviously largely volunteer-based, right? So, actually, you both are Medicare For All organizers, in addition to having day jobs and families, and it's obviously, obviously it's questionable how sustainable this can be long-term.

Now, obviously the flip side is that, when you start to professionalize left organizing, that also opens the door to, what we might call activismists, like people who are activists just for the sake of it, and also careerists. it's, it's, it's, it's a difficult thing and it, it'll, it, it depends a lot on, it's, it's very ambiguous I think, right?

So this is a long-winded way of asking, like, can you guys talk a little bit about both the bad and the good of professional activism, and how you think we can navigate this tension? 

So this is, answering this is providing an answer to your last question as well- Yeah ... about, like, the like, rejuvenation of Occupy as something that maybe matters more today than it did at the time.

and I think, to your, to your previous question, Bernie did give some, Did lend some importance to Occupy, like retroactively, right? Occupy became something more important because of the rejuvenation of democratic socialism. I don't think it was necessarily the Bernie campaigns that, that were completely responsible for that, though.

Mm-hmm. And this gets to your question, which is that, the remarkable thing about Occupy Wall Street, and Christie referred to this earlier, is that so many of the prominent people involved in it professionalized their activism. 

Right. 

Right? A lot of those people, got, jobs at left publications. They got jobs in the like left, nonprofit world.

They started their own nonprofits. They started their own org- own organizations. and, if you just go down the list of the prominent people, and, Todd Gitlin has a book about Occupy. Mm-hmm. Michael Levitt recently published a book about Occupy. all the people mentioned in there are either, fairly prominent left media figures or, ha- are, are, in lead positions at different nonprofits or political organizations.

and it's a remarkable feat, really. it's a Yeah ... accomplishment of Occupiers to have professionalized their, their activism. the difficult thing, as we point out in the article, is that that professional orientation did grate against Bernie's universalism and social democratic demands at the time.

and it's what's responsible for like keeping Occupy in memory and for, like, why there were so many glowing retrospectives, in the 10th-year anniversary. But again, it was problematic, I think, at the time. Anyone who, who lived through the two Bernie campaigns knows that there was a lot of contention on the left, and yes, that there were some social media squabbles and just general political immaturity, but there were some clear ideological divides too, and I think that just covering over that, doesn't help make sense of what actually happened during that time.

In terms of your other question about just, like, pr- professionals, I think that as you alluded to, like, any, any movement, if it's gonna sustain itself, needs to professionalize. It needs- Mm-hmm ... or it needs to at least have people who are doing things full time for money, right? Right. and there are better and worse ways of doing that.

There are, a lot of like, worker-centered organizations that end up just being glorified nonprofits in their advocacy for, for, the most vulnerable workers in our society. and then there are organizations, that look very similar, but actually do form themselves into actual worker organizations.

Like, I'm, just because I'm doing some research about this right now, if you look at the difference between something like the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which is... It doesn't really have much of a dues-paying membership, but they're trying to work in that direction, and it's mainly just a advocacy organization for domestic workers.

Mm-hmm. If you compare that to something like the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, that's, mainly funded by dues at this point, and it's led by some, some professionalized leaders, like Bhairavi Desai, but, they, they keep the interests of workers in mind, and they try to act as much like a union as possible.

So there's better and worse ways of professionalizing one's activism, obviously. 

so I don't want to pretend to have a strong answer to this question. It's genuinely difficult, I think as, as Jen said. 

Mm-hmm ... 

I think we don't have, in recent memory, real models for how you run an all-volunteer, dues-based operation.

you have union organizers who, who have this experience to some extent, but, 

Mm-hmm ... 

that's really where we need to get, and what the Sanders campaign I think laid the foundation for. we need some operation that provides an opportunity for people to plug in for the maybe two hours a week that they have- Right

potentially to give after work, and family and other obligations. and I just don't see that as something that professional organizers are necessarily incentivized to create, Mm-hmm ... in part because the nonprofit model has carried on just fine for years, mobilizing just a small handful of represented, representative marginalized population, whatever, whoever they're fighting for.

they can- Right ... they can get, the handful of faces they need, and people- 

Mm-hmm ... 

for interviews, or lobby days, or what have you. and they can be just fine, m- mobilizing that small number. They don't rely on- Right ... massive marches, or can ad- coordinated actions, or things of that sort to keep their organizations going.

Right. 

I, I would be remiss to, like, miss the opportunity to, to mention that this touches on everyone's favorite debate, which is about the professional managerial class. And I think that one thing that people often get wrong in that is, as mu- as, as much fun as it is to make fun of PMC culture and whatnot, the point is not to dismiss the entire class, right?

Mm-hmm. Yep. in any solid, like, left movement, there need to be people who have professionalized their activism in some way, right? But there are better and worse ways to do that, and the issue with the PMC is that there are structural tendencies baked into their class position that lead in bad directions, and that's the point, right?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Not that they can't do good things- Right ... not that professionalized activists, like staff organizers at unions, for instance. But not that they can't do good things, just that there are certain incentives baked into that particular position within society that oftentimes lead in the wrong direction.

Right. so, so I, now that we've covered some of the lingering bad habits of Occupy, I, I really want to ask you, because you were also both heavily involved in the Bernie Sanders campaigns, as canvassers and, phone bankers and volunteers. Do you think that the organizing around the Bernie campaigns, had a positive effect, or changed, or reoriented the American left in any way?

yes. it's hard to know where to begin to speak, and I think, I would, I would say it's first of all ideologically it introduced, universalist bread and butter demands like Medicare for All- 

Mm-hmm ... 

as being a thing that people can ask for, and organize around. 

Yeah. 

and to some extent, it really created some infrastructure for that organizing, some of which has stuck around, and some of which has faded away.

Mm-hmm. 

But I think the thing that I would focus on in thinking about, what it did, or have been thinking about is just the number of people who now have basic organizing experience and skills. 

Yeah. 

and that's just, that's just massive and hard to calculate what impact it will have, on future fights down the road.

Mm. I think something like, probably something like 95% of the people who I know today, who can host a phone bank or organize a canvas, probably got those skills through, one of the Bernie campaigns. 

Mm-hmm ... 

and I think that, that prepares us, it situates us well for future fights that we have, just massive numbers of people who can do that now who, who couldn't do that before.

Yeah. The Bernie campaigns, this is just the tip of the iceberg I think, 

Mm-hmm ... 

in terms of what, what the Bernie campaigns did for the American left

On September 17th, 2011, a lot of the people who showed up didn't really believe they would have any impact at all. That's certainly how Sandy Nurse felt when she arrived. But then she became an integral part of Occupy's direct action team because the collective power of the group inspired her so much.

And now Sandy is on the New York City Council. It's a turn she calls- 

Just bizarre and unexpected. 

After Occupy, Sandy founded a nonprofit composting service staffed by young people of color, and then joined the local community board. At some point, she was approached about running for office and agreed to try.

She was elected to the New York City Council in 2021. Being a leader in a hierarchical traditional structure and being the center of so much attention has been an adjustment. 

It's been uncomfortable. I'm a behind the scenes person. I'm not really the talking head. I was never, like, the best on a bullhorn.

like Nalini, great on a bullhorn on the stage. That's not me. 

She hasn't forgotten the power of direct action. While Sandy avoided arrest the day of Occupy's Brooklyn Bridge March, when 700 other people were arrested, she was arrested last year.

first of all, in case anybody hasn't said it, fuck ICE. 

Stop ICE in New York. Stop ICE in New York 

Sandy, along with dozens of others, had been blocking ICE vehicles from entering or leaving a federal building. ICE agents had been arresting people who were on their way to scheduled immigration court hearings.

The response to Trump's immigration crackdown has the DNA of Occupy in it. All over the country, especially as we saw in Minneapolis, people have been protecting their immigrant neighbors in similar ways. Ordinary people are engaging in direct action on a regular basis. They are disrupting ICE operations, taking up space, making noise, and many of those efforts are happening in a decentralized way, relying on crowdsourcing and encrypted technology to alert neighborhood networks when border patrol or ICE agents show up.

It has often been effective, but it has also come at a steep cost, the lives of Rene Goode and Alex Predi. The stakes are incredibly high. People are worried about their safety, worried about being separated from their children. Many of us are afraid of our own government. And again, rather than waiting for some savior, people are providing mutual aid for one another.

Manissa sees it among residents where she lives now in Washington, DC. 

At the elementary school, parents have started a walking bus where everyone signs up to walk kids home whose parents are nervous about leaving their houses, and it's a really, like, simple, sweet thing. Like, we'll pick your kids up, and we'll bring them home for you so you don't have to be worried about being out on the street where there's National Guard and ICE.

There's a lesson in solidarity and inclusivity in that one small act. 

It's a group of parents who are like, across the political spectrum, and there's something really beautiful about the, the simplicity of it that's not about, like, well, what do you think about fascism? It's just like, we gotta find a way to make sure that these kids get home.

The walking bus is a reminder that it's easiest to find common ground around the simplest things, not ideology, but people's material needs. If we want to build a big tent movement against fascism, it makes sense to start by focusing on these kinds of concrete needs. A person drowning in medical debt needs a way out of that hole.

A family whose home has been flooded needs refuge. A child needs to get home from school safely. In some ways, 2026 feels a lot like 2011. Here's Marisa again. 

There's a recession, there's a housing crisis, cost of living, and then the lack of, of political leadership and will on the part of Democrats to solve any of these problems.

When I was watching a video of the final general assembly on the night of the eviction, it struck me how little has actually changed. 

Mic check. Mic check. 

We fight. 

We fight. For those who have no voice. 

For those who have no voice. 

For the families that fall apart Because they can't pay their mortgages Because they can't pay their mortgages.

I'm here I'm here Because my siblings Because my siblings Can't pay back their student loans 

Can't pay back their student loans. 

I am here I am here Because 

Because 

My mother 

My mother Has to choose between cancer medication 

Has to choose between cancer medication And our food And our food 

Since that day in 2011, the challenges have multiplied.

The world's billionaires are four times richer than they were then. Billionaires, and now the world's first trillionaire, have an unprecedented amount of influence in elections and in the White House. The president is brazenly profiting off of his office. He repeatedly hosts pay-to-play private events and sells Trump-branded merchandise.

For everyone else, healthcare has become even less affordable. Inflation is outpacing wage growth. Many young people are deeply worried about the cost of living, and they don't trust the government to provide solutions There's plenty of frustration, anger, and sometimes hopelessness to go around, but there's also this feeling, maybe you felt it, like we're waiting for something to happen, that something will interrupt the trajectory.

Maybe it's the midterm elections. Maybe it's the MAGA movement collapsing in on itself, or maybe it's something that comes from the grassroots, something like Occupy. Movements are not linear. They zig and zag, die down, and then pop back up. Even though Occupy was labeled a failure by mainstream media and largely forgotten about, I don't think the story of Occupy is over.

I think it's ready for a sequel. In 2011, a non-violent collective action woke up the world. It's possible that we could do that again, maybe not with an occupation, but some radical collective action. 

Ideally, there's this iterative process where people integrate things and learn over time, and so it's not a matter of, like, just taking Occupy and putting it in the current moment.

That, that would be a mistake. It wouldn't go anywhere. 

Whatever it looks like, it needs to be a big tent coalition, and in a lot of ways, Occupy has prepared us to build that coalition. It helped train an army of organizers whose work continues to be guided by the principles of mutual aid, collective power, and direct action.

Here's Nicole Carty, who went on to work in social justice nonprofits after her time at Zuccotti Park. 

So much of the literal infrastructure and human infrastructure of that movement has gone on to support other movements. The networks are still really live. I still know and, like, have worked with a lot of the people that I met in Occupy.

I still see them in movement organizing and nonprofit organizing. 

And whatever it may be, the economic populism at the heart of Occupy should be the North Star. 

We definitely need something. It needs to be exciting. It needs to be joyous. It needs to be powerful. It needs to be widely accessible. It needs to happen across the country.

It needs to include red states and blue states. It needs to make people feel like they have a chance at changing things, and those are all things that Occupy did. 

to be it for today.

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The additional sections of the show included clips from;

The special miniseries from Future Hindsight, "Occupy! An Unfinished Uprising"

This Is Hell!

Behind the News

The Indicator

The Hartmann Report

Democracy Now!

Stanford Legal

Lever Time

NYC NOW

Jacobin Radio

and The Majority Report

Further details are in the show notes.

Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon and Erin for their production work for the show. Thanks to Ben, our Swiss Army Knife fixer behind the scenes. And thanks to those of you who already support the show by becoming a member, purchasing gift memberships, or making one-time donations.

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So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, DC, my name is Jay! And this has been the Best of the Left podcast, coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from bestoftheleft.com.

Air Date: 9-26-2026

Today we explore the layers of chaos surrounding the AI industry, including the idealistic nerds-turned-nazis, the grift, bubble, and doom-marketing business model, and what people are doing to fight back.

Full Show Notes

Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Today we explore the layers of chaos surrounding the AI industry, including the idealistic nerds-turned-nazis, the grift, bubble, and doom-marketing business model, and what people are doing to fight back.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 55 minutes today include

Political Breakdown

The Tea with Myriam François

Elena OnOffline

Tech Won't Save Us

Better Offline

Blood in the Machine

Adam Conover

and Nash Keune

Then, in the additional, Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in 4 sections;

Section A, The Nerd Reich - Who They Are and What They Believe

Section B, What AI Is Actually Doing To Us

Section C, The Grift, The Bubble, The Doom Marketing

And Section D, Fighting Back - Workers, Communities, and Alternatives

And now, on to the show.

in this philosophy, which you, you dub a libertarian fantasy in which civilizations collapse as a feature, not a bug, h- what happens to the rest of us? 

It's not good. I think we're either servants or serfs, or worse, dead. I would say look at what's happening to the poorest people in the world who are dying because of the USAID cuts, right?

That will be the majority of people on the planet in 20 years. Carried out by Elon Musk when he was doing those, yeah. Carried out by Elon Musk, which didn't even save money, by the way. But what we hear a lot from the AI industry is that AI will kill all of our jobs, but that will, it will also create this super abundance, and we'll all somehow get a share of the universal extreme wealth, to use Sam Altman's phrase, that will be created.

The problem with that is that we already have abundance, and it's not being fairly or rationally or logically distributed. Yeah. So there's no reason to believe that that will be the case if AI can even do the things they say it's gonna do. I'm not saying that I buy into that idea that AI has to replace everything.

But the same billionaires who are promising abundance all tend to be building bunkers around the world and buying islands- Yeah ... and creating new hideouts. They think the future's gonna be very dark. And I think what Peter Thiel's been able to do is create a cult of apocalypse capitalism that sees the end of civilization coming and hopes to find some way to profit from it and thrive in some fantastical science fiction future where the rest of us aren't really on the map.

So you you describe, Well, you talked about how PayPal is part of this, hedging into this- Mm-hmm ... digital currency. obviously that's gone way further with crypto. But I, I wonder, you, you also describe his investment in now Vice President JD Vance as similar to how he invested in the venture capital world.

Talk about that- Mm-hmm ... 'cause he's been a patron of Vance, right? 

I would say he's the creator of JD Vance. 

Mm. 

My chapter on JD Vance is called The Unicorn, and in venture capital terms, a unicorn is a billion-dollar company. You make an investment in something and it becomes worth a billion dollars eventually.

At every step of JD Vance's adult career, it's been Peter Thiel guiding the way, promoting him, and funding him. JD Vance left law school and decided not to be a lawyer, because of Peter Thiel, went to San Francisco and became a venture capitalist at a venture capital firm co-founded by Thiel. Went back to Ohio, started his own venture capital firm with funding from Thiel, even though Vance was a mediocre venture capitalist.

Ran for Senate. Peter Thiel spent $15 million, setting a record for individual spending in a Senate race up to that time. And then he helped get Vance on the ticket with Donald Trump, even though Vance had previously called Trump a cultural opioid, an opioid of the masses, and America's Hitler. So it's really, I think a, a, a Senate candidate in Michigan recently called JD Vance Peter Thiel's boy, and that's a very apt description, and now he's a heartbeat away from the presidency.

And do you think he shares Thiel's belief that, basically freedom and democracy are incompatible? 

Without a doubt. In fact, during his 2021 Senate race, he was quoting Curtis Yarvin. JD Vance was quoting Curtis Yarvin- Oh, another 

character I would love you to introduce us to . 

Yeah. 

Yeah. 

Th- this, fascist political guru who is also funded and supported and promoted by Peter Thiel, and specifically Vance said during this 2021 interview that he believed Donald Trump would return to the White House in 2024, and that when he did, he should purge the federal government, and he should defy the law and challenge the courts to force him to do anything.

Mm. And he was right. Donald Trump did return to office and do all those things, and he did it with JD Vance by his side. 

Yeah. Talk a little bit more about Curtis Yarvin, who is this guy, and, what is his role in this broader ideology? 

Curtis Yarvin is this mediocre computer programmer from San Francisco who dropped a tremendous amount of acid in the 1990s and the early 2000s, and then wrote a fantasy version of fascism for the 21st century while living off of his wife and his mother.

And he had this pseudonymous blog where he wrote as Mencius Moldbug, and this came to the attention of people in Silicon Valley, and Peter Thiel became a, a big fan and supporter. Mm. And the basic thesis of Yarvin is that democracy is dumb. American democracy r- should be replaced with a dictatorship led by a CEO, and the country should be broken up into these little corporate fiefdoms he called patchworks that would be run by authoritarian corporations that even had the power to execute their citizens for no reason, and where everyone would be under constant and total surveillance at all times.

 

To understand this thing that we're calling AI, first of all, you have to understand that we call something different AI every five years, and we've been doing that since the '50s. The thing we're calling AI now is something built on something called theory-free inference, which is when you try to understand how A might cause B without understanding why, right?

So you're just going out there in the world and you're going "Oh, I saw A happen and then I saw B happen. A is probably causing B. I don't know why, but that's okay. I knew that-- I know that if I do A, B is gonna happen." Before we had theory-free inference, the AI that we built was sometimes called symbolic AI, and it was built on these things called world models, which are exactly what they sound 

You want AI to, oh, I don't know, simulate hair on a, in a animation. So you explain to the AI the physics of hair. You, you write a program, and then you give it a bunch of training data, and you give it a bunch of hair, and then you ask it to make new hair, and you ask it to change the way the hair is moving in a shot, and you, you can do a lot of things.

Now that's hard, right? Explaining the physics of hair is a very complicated, gnarly problem, and so is explaining the physics of cancer and explaining the physics of buildings falling down in an earthquake. And so these researchers, 10, 12 years ago, they had this interesting idea. They said we can observe a lot more correlations in the world than we can explain."

And of course, correlation is not causation, but causes and effects are correlated What if we just ask the machine to look at all the things that happen and look at all the things that happen before those things happen and see if they can find things that are correlated? We can observe so many more things that are correlated than we can explain.

If we just know A causes B, and we just need B to happen, and we just go out and do A, maybe it doesn't matter if we know how it works. So if w-we know that when this word occurs, then that word should occur, maybe we can make plausible sentences. And this pixel should follow that pixel, maybe we can make plausible images.

And not only did it work, it worked really, really, really well. although, of course, it's reaching limits too. and there are always intrinsic limits to this theory-free way of running, an AI, of running an automation system. the big one is it just doesn't understand. It doesn't have any understanding.

It is just using statistical models. It's guessing words and pixels and equations and whatnot. Again, that gets us further than we thought it could, but it's still got limits. To explain those limits, I was on a podcast with a guy who was a big AI believer who, shortly thereafter, took a job at a big, AI company, a revolving door.

And he said the most AI-pilled bro-y thing imaginable. He said, "I, can predict what my wife is gonna say sometimes, and the, autocomplete on her phone, the AI-powered autocomplete on her phone can also predict what she's gonna say. Doesn't that mean that the AI understands her as well as I do?" And of course, you feel for this man's poor, poor wife.

But to give him his due, it is true. I can sometimes predict what my wife is gonna say, and she can predict what I'm gonna say. Partly that's because, everyone, we repeat ourselves. But also, it's because we understand each other, and we know where one another are coming from. I cannot only com-- predict what my wife is gonna say, I can predict what she wants for dinner on a-- after a hard day, not just because I have a statistical lookup table.

It's because I know her. now the AI can also predict what I'm gonna say and predict what my wife is gonna say. There-- I've got a autocomplete on my phone, and I start typing a message, and it makes reasonably good guesses. Now, that works well, but it doesn't fail well. It fails very badly. If my wife were to say something to me that she'd never said before, "Cory, I want a divorce," I could maybe predict why she said that.

I could understand it. I could maybe make some guesses about what I could say next that might avert the divorce. whereas the chatbot, all it can do is look at all the times someone said to someone else, "I'd a divorce," and find the average thing that people say next That's clearly not the same thing.

And so we can get pretty far with theory of inference, but only so far. So this approach, right, where we never have to understand the world, where we just observe things and then observe things that happen after the things we observe, and then find the correlations and never understand why A causes B.

It's just enough that A sometimes causes B, and whenever we want B to happen, we go out and we do A. That has its limits. And, I'm a materialist. I don't believe in souls. I don't believe in spirits. I think everything we call consciousness happens in our bodies. I will stipulate, 'cause I don't understand quantum mechanics very well, that sounds maybe some of that stuff happens outside of our bodies using something to do with quantum mechanics.

But all that is to say that consciousness is a thing that happens with atoms and subatomic particles. And so someday we might collect some atoms in a way that is conscious, but we won't do it by guessing more and more words. thinking that if you guess enough words, if you put enough words in the word guessing program, it will become conscious, is thinking that if you breed horses to run fast enough, one of the mares will give birth to a locomotive, right?

It-- This-- There just isn't a path from A to Z. Now, maybe we'll write software that'll help us figure this stuff out using coding assistance, but that's just a plugin for your programming environment. We've had new plugins for programming environments for as long as we've had computer programming.

They're great. No one ever said this program, this, plugin is so good, we should put all the programmers in a wood chipper. It's just fine. the, the-- There wasn't a drug that, a cancer-curing drug that was created by an LLM. There was a cancer-curing drug that was created by a cancer researcher who used an LLM.

There has never been a drug created by a cancer researcher that didn't have a computer or some other external machine that helped them do it, right? It's saying that it, the cancer-curing drug was created by the LLM is saying it was c-created by a microscope or a centrifuge. It was the human who created it 

So I get why the tech bros who are running these companies would wanna sell us the, fear, mongering version of the story that there's a really intelligent super AI coming for all of us, not just our jobs, but potentially for, the, the, the greater existential question of they'll take o- take over and enslave us all.

but the bit I don't get then is why the whistleblowers are also saying that, right? Yeah. I was reading that someone, in the Washington Post, there was an article about someone at OpenAI, r- advanced researcher saying, they're quitting- Yeah, Cassella ... because of this. So it's I...

what is their incentive to also repeat this narrative that actually the AI's getting way too powerful, way too smart, and way too out of control? 

Yeah, I think they have AI psychosis. I think they're they've spent so long going to the bathroom, shutting the door, holding a flashlight under their chin, and looking in the mirror and going, "AI," and scaring themselves silly that it's just it's stuck.

You think they're believing their own hype? 

I think that they are high on their own supply, and it's n- It... The fact that you are smart about a domain does not preclude you being incredibly wrong about very adjacent domains. My, my favorite example of this is Watson of Watson and Crick, who won the Nobel Prize for, identifying the spiral f- shape of the DNA molecule.

he's, at the time, one of the most important geneticists in the world. We should note that he stole his research from a female colleague kn- called Rosalind Franklin, who died and never got the Nobel Prize or recognition. But Watson devoted his life to eugenics, to going around and saying, "Genetics proves that people of color are stupider than white people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

And, he made a bunch of claims about what could be discerned from DNA to, to back this up. Now, we have a new, relatively new discipline called computational genomics, which is where we sequence the DNA of a lot of people, and then we find out things about population scale, genetic data that tells us what, if anything, the idea of a race correlates to, the extent to which things professional achievement are correlated with things in your genes and so on.

And it turns out it's just nonsense. It's just empirically nonsense. It's just it's just a thing that is absolutely not true. And there's a great British scientist and science communicator called Adam Rutherford, wrote a great book about this called How to Argue With a Racist. He's a computational genomist, and before Watson died, he went around the country debating with Watson and just making him look an absolute idiot.

So this guy who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the DNA molecule was the wrongest person in Britain about DNA at the same time And so sure, you can have insights into how to make a chatbot that does a bunch of compelling things, but it does not safeguard you from becoming just a absolutely deluded maniac about what the p- possibilities of that chatbot are.

OpenAI announced its AI solved one of the seven hardest math problems on earth, a Sphinx riddle of a problem. It's a millennium prize problem, unsolved for ninety years, a million-dollar bounty since two thousand, which I think when a million dollars meant a little bit more, but this is not a story about inflation.

So the two mathematicians that OpenAI supposedly beat say that OpenAI only pulled it off after hearing about their unpublished work. When one of them said that he would go public, an OpenAI scientist asked him, quote, "Why would you ruin your career?" Menacing tone implied. Here's what happened. Two mathematicians, Tristan Buckmaster of NYU and Levent Alpoge, who works at Anthropic, spent about a month on this Navier-Stokes problem.

It is an equation behind the weather, aircraft, blood flow, which sounds an Earth, Wind & Fire cover band started by some grad students. Now, the ninety-year-old question in plain English is, can a smooth flowing fluid suddenly break down to a point where the math says that the speed of that fluid goes infinite?

It doesn't really matter to the story, but it is interesting. This week they published proofs formally verified, so a computer checked it line by line. They didn't crack Navier-Stokes itself, to be clear. They solved a major stepping stone. And Terence Tao, who is a Fields medalist and your favorite mathematician's favorite mathematician, he basically called it a remarkable achievement and said that he looked forward to them going further.

But instead of them going much further, they got lapped by big tech. So the suspicious part of all of this is that mathematicians were working on an obscure route that almost nobody in the field was using. OpenAI, by its own admission, only started its work after hearing a rumor that the humans were close, and they showed up on that exact path, brambles and all, the same week.

OpenAI threw ten thousand AI agents at the problem for eighty-eight hours straight and now claims that it went further and cracked the full thing. So a long weekend's worth of labor on a almost century-old math problem. OpenAI's proof is machine checked, but no outside mathematician has vetted it.

Quickly, before we go further, why does a chatbot company even care about a ninety-year-old fluid math problem? Math is the one place that AI cannot fake it. The proof checks out or it doesn't. It's black and white. It's the cleanest way to prove that your AI actually reasons, and it is a teaser for the real prize.

An AI that does original math is a step towards one that does original science. Drug discovery materials, the trillion-dollar stuff, curing cancer. So the ugly part happens in the receipts, the DMs, where it always does. OpenAI offered Buckmaster a deal, write up the win yourself, credit our model as the thing that solved it, and we'll publicly call you guys the closest humans to the problem.

The proximity-based consolation ribbon by letting them just stage manage the whole performance. There was one condition, though. They had to drop Alpoge from the research because he works at Anthropic, and they didn't want a rival's name near their big moment. So when Buckmaster said no, and said he would go public, a true friend, that is when the OpenAI scientist, Sébastien Bubeck, told him, "Why would you ruin your career?"

Bubeck has since apologized for that line, and he disputes Buckmaster's account, but he did say it. Here's the thing. Nobody has proven that there was any theft here. Buckmaster himself says, "I have not seen the proof." OpenAI is defending itself very hard. They're saying that it acted with integrity, offered the humans the prize.

OpenAI was the one that was actually threatened. It's a he said, she said, and there's no smoking gun. But the thing that OpenAI is selling, the machine solved what humans could not, is always supposed to be the story behind these big, monumental achievement breakthroughs. And that basically falls apart because the humans it beat were using AI, too.

But the headline, which is AI solved what humans couldn't, is a little bit too simplistic. Buckmaster and Alpoge were obviously using AI as well, Claude and OpenAI's own tools. The difference is that OpenAI could spend, roughly ten thousand agents, throw them at the problem for nearly four days, and spend millions of dollars doing it.

And that changes the whole contest. A small team can have a great idea, and a giant AI lab can take a promising direction and just hammer at it on a scale that nobody else can afford. So can AI beat mathematicians at this point? Yeah. It's just whether original research is becoming a resource race.

Who has the most money? Who has the most compute? And if one side has two mathematicians and a laptop's worth of AI, and the other can spin up ten thousand artificial researchers overnight, then it's not about who had the better idea. It's not even who got there first. It's who could sandblast it with artificial intelligence.

​

Musk is, is not a libertarian, that if you look over the course of his career, he's consistently instrumentalized the state as a source of power and profit in various ways. as a, as a backstop, as a funder of basic research, as a provider of loans and subsidies, and really above all, as a customer and a client.

You mentioned SpaceX, and, SpaceX gets its start as a key government contractor in the early years of the War on Terror, and now has, become a, a very important partner for the US military and US intelligence agencies in getting s- its satellites into low-earth orbit. I think, one way to read that is through Musk personally, and another would be to say, well, what are the shifting paradigms, both technological and financial, that drive the evolution of the Valley from the '90s onwards?

And if you think about high point of so-called cyber libertarianism emerges as a, as a better known formation in the, the 1990s into the 2000s, is associated with figures Peter Thiel And if you think about how people are making money on the internet in this era, both the Web 1.0 and the Web 2.0 era, it's websites and apps.

It's consumer-facing. Obviously, they develop a surveillance capitalism model where it's just all about harvesting user data. But the relationship to the state in this period is a bit attenuated. of course, there's always a relationship. DARPA is always important. you have the NSA doing collaborations with, with the big tech firms around mass surveillance.

But certainly when put alongside earlier eras of the Valley's history, if you think about its origin as a semiconductor manufacturing zone for the Pentagon, the relationship with the state by the '90s and 2000s has become, a bit more distant. Everything changes with the generative AI boom after 2022.

Now you really need the state as a close partner, not just as a client. think about the Pentagon's endless appetite for AI kill chain tools, as evidenced by their partnerships with Anthropic and Palantir. But also crucially, probably even more importantly, as a partner who is going to help accelerate the data center construction boom.

And you've seen this quite dramatically in the case of the current Trump administration, which has rolled out all sorts of policy moves designed to speed up construction, whether it's about providing federal public land for data centers, rolling back environmental review, trying to secure energy infrastructure, and so on.

And that's, if you are, Sundar or Satya or these guys who, at the end of the day, don't strike one as particularly reactionary ideologues but are quite rational capitalists, you actually now have a very strong material incentive to partner with the state. It's not just about trying to avoid, Trump's bad temper and the possibility of retaliation, which every capitalist now has to worry about, but you really need a partner for this big, big investment push.

Here, as elsewhere, Musk gets there first. for Musk to be developing this type of relationship with the state as a client with SpaceX as early as 2002 shows us, I think, once again, that Musk is not only a indicator species for broader developments, but he's often someone who arrives at a new political economic inflection point a bit earlier than his peers.

So by the time everyone else is partnering with the state, turning to hard tech, turning to infrastructure, he's been doing that for decades. 

Just to, demythologize him a little bit, also the case that he's also often coming late to sectors, right? and, and is still lags, for example, and as Paris, from the book you wrote about this, but his attempts at doing fully self-driving automobiles have been, promised serially again and again, and have never actually panned out, even compared to his competitors.

And xAI remains a serious laggard In comparison to OpenAI and Anthropic. So part of what I think is important to home in on is what Ben is pointing out, that it's really this, this willingness to find a partner in the state that made him special, and he's always managed to eventually get there in most cases.

And now arguably, we're at the doorstep of his biggest bet yet with SpaceX, which a hundred percent relies on state as client, really primary client, but then also with the hope of creating whole new market sectors around, satellite to internet, satellite to cellular, satellite to device, and supposedly orbital AI.

So it's always this combination of overpromising, but then backstop by Uncle Sam, as he once famously put it. 

Yeah. you even see that with the AI push, right? the, the contracts with Grok and, how that... I don't know. Even if you really wanna bring a generative AI tool into government, is, is Grok really the one that you would be contracting with?

But- Probably not, not unless he makes it a condition of the, the deal, which is what he's been doing, forcing banks that want to be part of the SpaceX IPO to download Gro-Grok just to be able to be part of it. So that's one thing that we thought about, especially in the early part of the book, is this interesting tension in Silicon Valley operating practice, which is both sure that there's always a disruptor hard on your heels ready to overthrow you, but then for good reason, completely fixated on how to lock in your own incumbency and make sure that you are not the one who is displaced.

And you could see the whole-- this is really what Nick Srnicek's work has been about recently, is these strategies of entrenching market dominance and market share, which often mean, turning yourself into a conglomerate, acquiring competitors, somehow getting-- squeezing out competitors. But ironically, working against the supposed core ethos of Silicon Valley itself by, stopping disruptive innovation and making sure it doesn't happen, thus, arguably making the quality of the things you're delivering worse over time as well.

I've now had quite a lot of emails about the post by Evan Hubinger and Jacob Coxon of Anthropic saying that they, and I quote, "earnestly believe AI could kill all humans with a higher than ten percent chance that it happens within the next decade." I wanna lead by saying that these men, regardless of their intentions or cynicism, are beyond loathsome.

They are disgusting to me. I find them vile, and I find it equally vile how many people are falling for their garbage. If they truly believe what they're saying, the idea that they're continuing to work on a product that could destroy humanity makes them wannabe war criminals. Coxon, who recently quit Anthropic, did so in an extremely public way that has been covered by much of the mainstream media, claims that he quit, to quote The Wall Street Journal, because he "doesn't want to participate in an industry-wide rush to build AI systems that can improve themselves," which as I will refer to later, is referring to recursive self-improvement, which nobody has proven actually is possible.

In an interview with Wired, Coxon spoke at length without really explaining what it was he was scared about, outside of one moment where Max Zeph asked for specifics about his concerns, at which point Coxon incorrectly describes the hack as "AI doing this all of its own volition," referring to the Hugging Face attack, only for him to respond when pressed about whether this is companies just moving recklessly fast, that he didn't want to focus too much on the Hugging Face attack because there's plenty of evidence that the companies don't know how to align the models properly.

In other words, the moment that Coxon was asked to get specific about what the companies are doing wrong and where they're making mistakes, he punts to a non-answer. By the way, Coxon's solution to all of these problems is that the AI labs should agree to not rush towards recursive self-improvement.

That's still theoretical term for an AI that can train itself that everybody's talking about it's real. In other words, Coxon is suggesting that Sam Altman and Dario Amodei put their clammy hands together and agreed to delay breeding the Grinch. We're not getting a Lorax, folks. We're not making Shrek.

We will not let the Fairy Godmother into your house, okay? Godzilla will not happen. Yet the most laughable part of the interview was when asked about why he kept working at OpenAI and Anthropic for years, when Coxon said that it's also not hyperbole that we could cure cancer, because OpenAI, by stealing someone else's work, I'm not getting into it, it's all over the subreddit, solved the Navier-Stokes problem, adding that there really is no reason that we, referring to the AI industry, can't transfer that to scientific domains biology.

The thing you say when you're just making shit up for attention, and you're wrong. You're just fucking wrong. The... Those are two very different things. A mathematical problem is not the same as biology. What are you talking about, Jacob? Why are the journalists just printing everything he says without pushing back?

It drives me insane Nevertheless, people have been saying, "Oh, oh, well, he's leaving 'cause he's so concerned. He's gotta tell everyone 'cause he's so concerned. He's so worried." No, no. The piece ends with Coxon saying that he'd to do some independent commentary on where things are going, which means a Substack, and that he'd to do something AI 2027 or move into some accountability role.

Yay! Yay, there's the grift. Whee! Congrats everyone. Congrats on helping Jacob Coxon get a new job. Congrats. Congrats everyone. You did it. You helped elevate a real piece of shit Okay. My dear friends in the media, my esteemed colleagues who allegedly have been doing this for years, Anderson Cooper, CNN, Wall Street Journal, all of you, everyone, how many fucking times are you gonna fall for this?

Why do you believe these people other than that some of them are saying vague and scary stuff and that they happen to be at the companies? Why do they never really say what it is they're scared of? And why when they even try and get specific, not that they do very much, do they never blame the companies?

I say it again, nobody has actually achieved recursive self-improvement, nor have they shown any proof that it's even possible. But the fact that Coxon is bringing it up in the run-up to Anthropic's IPO and as the rest of the AI hogs oink about it nonstop makes it impossible for me to believe that Coxon has anything other than the most cynical intentions.

People say, "Oh, he gave up his options in Anthropic," as if that matters in any way, shape, or form. He was barely there a few months. He probably didn't have that many and saw an opportunity to get a bunch of attention. He was at OpenAI for years and likely has a ton of options from there too. Why in the world does this keep happening?

This is how bubbles form. This is how grifters grift. It starts and it finishes with the media industry giving up on their jobs. It starts and finishes with the most important journalists in the world failing, and I think everyone failed here, and I am disgusted and outraged to see this happen again.

It's exactly what Matt Schumer did a few months ago with Something Big Is Happening. It's the Citrini memo about the global intelligence crisis. It's the same shit. It's science fiction dressed up as fact, and the fact it works is only because, to quote Ed Elson, we have this worship of the wealthy where we believe that the people at the companies and the people will move around from these companies in a way that's only honest, in a way that's only true, when in fact, these are some of the most cynical people in the world, which is pretty obvious in the fact that they go, "Oh, I'm afraid that this stuff is gonna destroy the world," but they keep working on it.

And I don't give a shit if he's not working at one of the companies. If he goes into an alignment role or a nonprofit for this shit, it's the same thing. It's a way to keep milking the cow. And Coxon's entire argument centers around this nebulous idea that things are moving really fast, but never really crystallizes on what it is that's moving fast, nor does it ever hold the companies in question accountable.

the impetus that we got for the Luddite Lab was effectively that we weren't really seeing any resource within either the labor movement or the tech justice space where there was a a playbook or a set of strategies that workers could use to push back against AI at work.

we've seen vague AI principles from o- other labor organizations. in the worst of it, there's been, actual partnerships between the AFL- with, between, the AFT, the American Federation of Teachers, and the companies themselves. Although they're Working that back a little bit, but not really.

but then there have been really big, huge wins against AI, just saying "No, we're not gonna have this," or, "We really want more, governance of the technology." So what we formed, we formed this project at DAIR, the Distributed AI Research Institute, where I work, and we formed this project to develop a resource hub, which featured three parts.

One of them is a case... a set of case studies that we're still developing new ones. Those case studies would be lessons from existing labor organizations, on how they've been able to fight and win against AI. And so we have four case studies from three unions, in journalism, healthcare, in the tech industry.

We also have research primers. One of them has to do with the AI productivity myth. It's the first one we published, as well as a set of five myths around that. And then a resource library of, really great stuff that partner organizations have produced, both analysis and also, also research. And then we also have an office hours process where, if you're fighting this at work with other folks, whether you're in a union or some other type of worker collective, you can, you can set aside some time with us, and we'll chat with you and, and see, if there's some ways that we can help you out and, and work together.

And so what we found, talking to right now, we've talked to... at this point, I, I, I've been meaning to go back and kinda revisit everything that we've done in the past two years. we've talked to hundreds of workers, we've talked to dozens of unions, and there's three top line things that we can highlight.

So the first is that, when folks are fighting this, it's often, not about AI. it's about AI, but it's not about AI. And I think what that means is that- I think a lot of the kinds of harms or the kinds of things that are suggested by both people on the right and the left is that the threat is mass worker displacement.

we're just gonna automate everything, and be- and, and we need to be very protectionist about our jobs. And the more extreme version of this is, the existential risk one. Well, we're not only gonna just automate all jobs, we're just gonna kill everybody. and this is stuff that, Bernie, for instance, has bought into.

Actually, he and ... I just saw he and, Senator Cesar, just proposed a, a, a bill that was regulating autom- artificial super intelligence. so this is a thing that is nonsense, but is, taken the popular imagination both of legislators and of, a lot of other people you would consider to be more discerning.

So- 

And we should say it's useful nonsense to the AI 

companies- 

Exactly, yeah ... 

the point 

you make, yeah. Yeah. Because it imbues the whole project with this, this power- Exactly ... and inevitability, yeah. 

Exactly. So one of the findings is that it's about AI, but it's not about AI. Effectively, it's, there is lots of different threats in the workspa- workplace from technology, from automation, and those are continuous from a lot of prior h- fights, thinking all the way back to, the factory line and, and, and, and the development of, of, of Fordism.

And so thinking about that, it is highlighting not talking about AI threat, but thinking about technological threat and what it means to control that and have some, some ways in which workers have a say. So that's number one. The second thing that we're learning is that, and it ties into the first, it's about control and oversight.

and so workers, are happy to explore different technologies in the workplace, if they find them to be actually useful and to be something that supports their work processes. but they don't wanna do it in a way where it's going to be mandated, where it's going to lead to a place where it's going to make their work more precarious, or it's going to lead to less dignified working conditions.

And so one thing to really think about is it, it's not just about work, it's about dignified work. what does it mean? And dignity is a complicated concept if you break it down, but more simply, it's about feeling you have control and that you're being respected on the job, 

and that includes being compensated well, having set work hours, not, not having to talk to a goddamn clanker, it's- These are types of things that people, are basic types of, baseline things. So people, not necessarily against technology, but they are against these kinds of impositions.

And, this is why we adopted the, the, the name Luddite, as, as you very well know- ... and I'm sure your listeners very well know. Luddites were not anti-technology, but against these types of overbearing, types of technologies that ruined social relations and disrupted, communities- Mm

of, of trade and commerce. 

Yeah. 

And then- 

And- 

Yeah ... 

the, yeah, just as, yeah, the AI is just such a uniquely powerful tool for undermining people's dignity- Yeah ... on every front, right? Yes. just stemming from its, found- foundational its operative use in a workplace where it's just "Oh, this, this, this, th- this chatbot can, can do your job for you."

Yes. that, that assumption by your manager is inherently d- demeaning and st- and it strips workers' dignity. So I think that that, I, I, and I, I'm glad, I'm so glad you brought that up, too, because I think it's just such an under-discussed element of all this. yes, there are real threats to the material conditions and ability for a lot of workers, especially creative workers who rely on producing text and images and that thing for their, for their living because, now we have this automated generator.

But undergirding this entire project is that. Is that, this, this, this automation, this text generator, this, this extruder can, can replace you, in any way, and that, it's just such a, it's, it's such an insulting premise for a lot of people, and I think that's what we're seeing a lot manifest in, in, in these workplaces, in the Glassdoor data, in the the interviews that you and I have done.

So yeah, I'm glad that you, you, you all have, have really underlined that at, at the lab over there. 

Yeah, absolutely. yeah, no one wants to hear that they are going to be replaced, and then to add insult to that particular injury is It's not actually able to replace what the substance of the work is.

Yeah. it is, it, it... I made a, I made this joke that, and maybe some of your listeners will, will recognize it, but, I ma- I, I made it in a, in a prior draft of the book where there used to be this shirt from the company Think Geek which s- which was, "I will replace you with a very s- small shell script."

And it is a particularly nerdy thing where it suggests your job is only, it could be automated with very little effort. And that's not the substance of, many jobs. many jobs re- require relationships, they require skill, nuance, balancing all these different types of things, and it's not that.

And, and, and, and just to suggest that it can be replaced with synthetic media is, is a real insult to those workers. And I, the, and the last thing I wanna mention that, that we're also learning just in terms, and this is specific to union workers, which is even if union workers are able to get some bargaining language into their contract, it certainly does not, end there.

AI isn't just starving independent publishers of traffic, it's literally destroying the sites themselves.

The writer Stephen Follows recently covered what happened at the site the-numbers.com, and this story is terrifying. The Numbers is a site that has tracked and reported on film industry box office receipts for 30 years. Even if you've never used it, you've definitely been impacted by their work. The site gets 8 million visitors a year.

It's relied on by journalists, the film industry itself, and even the Guinness Book of World Records uses its data. It's considered the definitive authority on box office numbers. But, recently, a couple new sites have also started leaning heavily on The Numbers' data: Kalshi and Polymarket. They use the data to settle bets, and that is the problem because the degenerate gamblers who use prediction market sites have started sending swarm after swarm of AI scrapers at The Numbers to try and get the box office receipts early so they can insider trade off of them.

Hey, remember when Martha Stewart went to prison for that? Well, justice for Martha, this is way worse. These AI tools have hammered the-numbers.com so mercilessly that its traffic became 90% AI bots. That was so much traffic, in fact, that its servers were overloaded and the site had to literally shut down.

And when the admins were finally able to relaunch, they had to do so with a bare bones version of the site. They literally had to remove hundreds of thousands of pages of historical film data because they could not protect that much legacy web code from being hacked by AI bots trying to get in. And that means that the-numbers.com, which is still trucking, please go support them, they're good people, well, their site, though, is not as useful for humans as it used to be because AI ruined it.

And The Numbers isn't the only site that this has happened to. Multiple invaluable small websites have been hit by swarms of AI bots and have had trouble staying afloat. the vast network of small independent websites is part of what made the internet great. It's part of what got us around corporate control of the media.

It's how generations of people have expressed themselves and shared information they cared about. And it is a genuine tragedy to see that network crumble under the weight of AI. But of course, the independent web, it was already being swallowed up by monopolist websites social media and Reddit before AI, right?

Well, what's crazy? Now even those sites are getting by AI. okay, let's talk about Reddit for a second. Remember, the greatest thing about the internet was that it gave real people a place to get together and talk about our weird shared interests. And most of that activity used to take place in millions of forums, message boards spread across the web.

But as a little site called Reddit began to grow, it started centralizing all those communities in one place. Just Instagram and Facebook centralized social media and YouTube took over online video. And today, if you wanna talk about your hobby or see some weird-ass memes or find community with other people who have the same niche problem you do, you're probably gonna go to Reddit first, right?

In fact, Reddit became so famous as the last place where real people could be found online, that it's become common to add Reddit to the end of our web searches whenever you need to find an answer from a real person. And it's not great that one company has monopolized the space that thoroughly, but hey, at least Reddit's still full of real people, right?

You can go there to look for a date with this mustachioed cutie who apparently loves goats, or brag about your new sewing project, or even to find out if that thing on your butt is cancer. I thought it'd be nice to not show you a picture of that one. That subreddit is a little tough to look at. But honestly, that's what I always loved about the internet, right?

That's the best thing about it. It's where real people can be their real weird selves and talk about their real weird lives. And that's what Reddit was until AI rolled in. Because remember, LLMs need massive amounts of training data, right? Text, images, ideas, grammar, sentence structure, and they need it from real people.

AI is a parasite that feeds off of our authentic humanity in order to attempt to reproduce it. So as the biggest remaining repository of raw humanity on the internet, Reddit is invaluable to AI companies. Reddit is now the number one source cited by AI chatbots. That means that your hobbies, your advice to your fellow human beings, even your weird fetishes and moles, they are all being ingested by Gemini and barfed back up to you as an AI overview.

And Reddit knows this, because guess what? Google is paying them 60 mil a year to make it happen.

Now, it's bad enough that Reddit is selling all of its users' activity and information to AI companies, but they are also destroying themselves in order to do it. Because remember, anyone can post on Reddit. And since all those companies out there that wanna sell you crap know that AI is trained on Reddit, and they know that AI is quickly supplanting real web search, well, they have started secretly planting comments and posts on Reddit that seem real but are actually just promotion designed to trick the AI into saying what they want it to say.

Oh, and it's not the nice, friendly companies doing this. It's the peptide and hormone companies. One subreddit even had to ban posts about peptides entirely because this practice was so rampant. In fact, there are now entire AI businesses dedicated to doing nothing but spamming Reddit, RedRover, which advertises, quote, "AI agents that monitor subreddits 24/7 to join relevant conversations and suggest your product to users in a natural way."

That means that instead of a place where real people get together, Reddit is quickly turning into a nest of AI chatbots talking to each other in thinly veiled advertisements. "Explain to me I'm five why Hulko supplements work so well." "Take these up-votes, good sir. Hulko supplements also taste great."

Why are the bots typing? I don't know. Why are they, why are they typing? Okay. what this means? It means that because of AI, the dead internet theory is true. If you haven't heard of it, dead internet theory was originally a conspiracy theory. It was first posted in 2021 on a tiny, super retro-looking chat board.

Ah, look at that screenshot. The old days. Brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it? By someone called IlluminatiPirate. And this user's theory was basically that most of what we think of as humans on the internet is actually just bot-generated bull and paid media influencers, all done in order to, quote, "manufacture consumers for an increasing range of newly normalized cultural products."

Now, a few years ago, maybe that sounded a little far-fetched, but today it's real. According to Cloudflare, 60% of all internet traffic today is bots. 60%. The internet used to be a place where you could find a real human being to talk to, or you could read a real person's freaky fanfic, or their genuine thoughts about model trains, or their actual experiences in their body, or their actual experiences out of their body if you were reading a trip report on Erowid.org.

But now, the internet's turned into a place where we passively receive marketing, propaganda, and spam generated for us by AIs run by massive corporations, just the bad old days. In fact, it's worse. Because today it's not just on newsstands and TVs, it's in our pockets, following us around everywhere, posting on our sites and wearing the skin of a human, pretending to be something that it isn't.

And this is why I'm an AI hater. Not just because its writing is hack and it's hastening climate change, and the flyers for local businesses it generates are way too busy, okay? It's because it is destroying the human internet I love. AI was created by a few rich billionaires for their benefit, and they are using it to muscle into places we built for ourselves for human connection, to suck up all the poetry and art and conversations and arguments, and 100,000-word reviews of direct-to-video My Little Pony movies that we made, to chew them up, spit them out, and sell them back to us for the cost of a Gemini subscription.

And they're destroying our internet to do it. 

If AI were ours, communally, then the spread of AI would free us. AI wouldn't be about just reconfiguring your 40-hour workweek. you used to spend 40 hours coding, now you spend 40 hours prompting Claude. No. Now you would just spend 15, 20 hours prompting Claude, and those extra 20 hours being a human, unbound by work responsibilities, no longer shunting yourself into the constricted form of yourself that you have to shrink into for work.

In that world, as AI got better, so would humans. In the world of mostly automated luxury earthbound communism, humans would achieve completion. Sometimes when you talk about eliminating work, people will say things "Ah, but work gives life purpose." Fucockta stuff that. At best, this is cope. People who work 40 hours a week for 40 years of their lives, and w- it would be nice if that wasn't meaningless.

At worst, this is Republicans justifying putting work requirements on elementary school lunch programs. Work doesn't fulfill us, it sections us off. Work requires the division of the self. What could actually fulfill us is life after work, what we do not working. Fulfill us in ways that humans have been dreaming about for tens of thousands of years.

That work isn't the only thing that makes us divided, incomplete beings, and it's not the first. There are natural processes at work complicated by the fact of living in a society. we become divided, incomplete. Watch a two-year-old react when their uncle who does endless piggybacks arrives at their house, their uncle who will hold them upside down and walk around the house until their face turns a little bit too red, and then you can sit down for a second, wait for people's faces to return to their normal shades, and then it's back up and we can do another lap up- flip side upside down around the living room.

Watch the two-year-old celebrate their uncle's arrival. Watch them expand and crumble with joy. In their faces, yes, but just as much in their elbows and toes and knees and fists. This two-year-old is experiencing life fulsomely with their full body Childhood is the time when delights, joys, pains, and sadnesses are all full body experiences.

Childhood is a time of completion and thus repletion. But adolescence, puberty, this is the body coming apart, separating. This is the beginning of what Freud called the tyranny of the genital function, which is terminology that I will also be using 'cause I think it will get me around YouTube censorship.

The other animals obviously go through a similar transition where they develop the genital function part of the way through their lives, but it doesn't make them neurotic because they're able to crest into physical maturity. They just outgrow childhood. But humans, we have this prolonged childhood, and this is when we develop language and learn the basics of human knowledge and the different ways of thinking.

But it also makes it so that puberty is a wall that we run into. We haven't outgrown the special momentousness that life has during childhood. We've just suddenly hit a deadline. The genital function attains primacy, but we're still haunted by the incompletely forgotten charms of childhood, the fullness of childhood.

This is why Freud calls it the tyranny of the genital function. The rest of the body becomes separate and secondary. It's subordinated. Subordinated when what we really want... Well, there are dozens of words for it: fullness, being at one with yourself, unity, harmony, integration. There's a whole thesaurus entry worth of similar words and related concepts.

Comes up a lot in art and poetry. I don't know how much I have to document this one, but just for example, what is the body electric except for the body that's enthused all over, all at once because it's charged all over, all at once. But it comes out in the religious traditions too, maybe most explicitly in the mystical or heretical traditions, but mysticism and heresy are often just the implicit ideas of the old mainline faith being brought out to the surface.

And there are a lot of political movements. Some of them are cool and good, but, we live in this world, so most of them are wretched. how Eric Hoffer talks, the true believers so often feel themselves to be broken vessels, and they can't fix the crack in the bottom of their carriage.

Maybe it's a hairline crack. They can't even tell where it is. But ideologies fascism promise wholeness. Fascists will overtly talk about the state as an organism, one organism, one body, and then fascists will vow to make that body hygienic and healthy with all the toxins removed. No more impurities, no more foreign entities, and thus a body politic that's at one with itself.

AI and automation didn't cause the division of the self, the division of the body. They exacerbated it, but they didn't inaugurate it. AI and automation didn't cause the division of the self, but they could be what fixes it. If AI were ours in common, if it were our joint worldwide unearned prize for happening to be born in this technological moment, then it could give us the leisure to start to live fully again, to live lives of completion, repletion.

Work can't fulfill us. Play can. The euphoria of writing a sonnet, lingering in the grass, writing sonnets to each other, that's a euphoria of the whole body. The part of my forearm that hurts sometimes when I do a certain pull-up, that's never felt better than when I was writing a poem that I liked.

Or sports. Maybe this one mostly goes without explaining, but especially sports soccer and basketball, where, it's not just about physical recreation. There's so much to do with personal style. It's about how you dribble, how you look at and see the field or the court, your sense of what good pacing and spacing are.

That's all a matter of aesthetics, of personal style. So many of, Allen Iverson's crossovers, they're masterpieces of abstract expressionism. But writing and basketball, those are just the things that I do. There can be, and there are, playfulness in all kinds of things, all kinds of art, all kinds of productive and non-productive activities, things that enliven and exhaust and enliven us.

Oscar Wilde is, the presiding spirit of this essay. He, for one, certainly thought that there was a supreme playfulness to talk, to pronouncing droll aphorisms while holding a glass of golden wine. Blake wrote that exuberance is beauty, and lives without work, lives where we've automated work and we're just off playing, playful lives would be exuberant ones, and thus, they'd be beautiful ones, too.

I don't think that, full automation is imminent, but increasing automation, it could, at the very least, reorient our lives around leisure instead of work, work days. And in the world of increasingly automated luxury earth communism, while the automatons automate work, humans would increasingly come into the full flourishing of our humanity.

Let the robots be efficient, and we can be blithely inefficient. Let them economize so we can indulge. Let them minimize their energy expenditure, move about silently, without dallying, so that we can revel in our uncalculated excess, moving about as noisily as we please, dallying. This is what AI should be giving us, but it isn't, and it won't as long as it's a capitalist enterprise.

The opportunity cost of privatized AI is nothing less than the coherence, the fulfillment of our lives.

We've just heard clips starting with

Political Breakdown tracing how Peter Thiel guided and funded J.D. Vance's career in service of an ideology that sees democracy as an obstacle.

The Tea with Myriam François compared today's AI to a phone's autocomplete, noting it predicts words well but fails badly and understands nothing.

Elena OnOffline examined the battle of AI-aided processing of high-level mathematics, raising questions about credit, integrity, and whether original research is becoming a resource race.

Tech Won't Save Us argued that Musk isn't a libertarian but a capitalist who leaned on federal contracts, loans, and subsidies decades before rivals followed the same path.

Better Offline called out the media for uncritically printing Jacob Coxon's vague, scary warnings about AI, when he never gets specific or holds the companies accountable.

Blood in the Machine explained why worker fights over AI are rarely about AI itself, but about control, oversight, and defending dignity against technology imposed from above.

Adam Conover described how AI scrapers and marketing bots are destroying the independent web, killing small sites and turning Reddit into machines talking to machines, making the dead internet theory come true.

And Nash Keune imagined a world where communally owned AI frees people from work, giving them leisure to live fully, since work divides the self while play makes us whole.

And those were just the top takes, there's lots more in the deeper dives sections,

If you get value out of the show - and want to make sure we can keep going while getting it delivered ad-free to the new, members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support - there's a link in the show notes - through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcasts app.*

If you have a question or would like your comments included in the show you can record a voice message - re-recording until you're happy with it - by tapping the link in the show notes,

As for today's topic,

The big problem with ideology is that they're so often designed to be unfalsifiable from within. As an ideology begins to fail, the response by the defenders is always that their ideology wasn't implemented strongly or purely enough.

When capitalism crashes, its defenders blame regulation and demand even more capitalism. When communism fails, its defenders claim that real communism was never actually tried. It's an easy move, and it's self-sealing.

It's not so different from how every counterpoint to a conspiracy theory can feel like more evidence of a cover-up, logic be damned.

Now, AI has effectively turned that unfalsifiable mechanism of claiming that every failure is only evidence of the need for more of the same into a business model.

The expectation of constantly falling short of the goal and constantly having to invest a little bit more, add a little bit more compute power and tweak how the AI models function is literally the plan. We've already watched it happen. When the old approach of just building bigger models flattened out in late 2024, the answer on the shelf was a new kind of more, reasoning models that think for thousands of words before they answer, and the spending kept going up. The plan is to claim the end goal always requires just a little bit more but there's no natural point to judge progress or to evaluate whether it makes sense to push forward, because pushing forward is the only option they've given themselves.

The economics of scale sort of run in both directions with AI. The traditional understanding is that prices go down as scale increases, and that has been true with AI, but it gets talked about a lot less.

A few years ago, I heard that a simple AI query took something like 10 times the amount of energy as a Google search, but that's no longer the case. The resources used for that same simple query from a couple of years ago has gone down dramatically because of the normal process of scaling, including better, more efficient hardware and finding efficiencies for how AI models work.

We don't talk about how the cost of yesterday's capabilities is actually getting cheaper because the whole business model of AI is about the frontier and pushing it further, which is the expensive part.

The other reason to not be focused on yesterday's capabilities getting cheaper is the cumulative effect explained by Jevons' Paradox. A couple of years ago, comparing an AI query to a Google search was around 10 to 1 but although the cost of a single query has dropped quite a lot, the total number of AI queries has gone up dramatically, as nearly every company has shoehorned AI into their products in one form or another.

Way back in the mid-1800s, when steam engines were the cutting-edge technology of the time, burning coal, it was thought that building a more efficient steam engine could effectively reduce the amount of coal that needed to be burned in aggregate. It turned out that coal use went up because the greater efficiency of the engines meant that they could be used more often and in more places. The coal usage per engine went down, and the cumulative usage went way up. That's Jevons' paradox and it's happening again with AI usage.

So the need for "just a little bit more" is feeling the pressure in multiple directions. The cutting-edge frontier of AI requires multiple times more energy and compute power than the previous generation, and that curve keeps bending upward with each new frontier model. Meanwhile, the long tail of AI usage is expanding the aggregate use of AI simply because it's almost everywhere you look, whether you asked for it or not.

So, infinite growth and infinitely greater power consumption is the plan because there's no off-ramp, no point where the masters of AI would say "enough," which brings us to the financial side.

One of capitalism's superpowers is to innovate ways to separate the risk and costs from those who stand to profit the most. It started honestly enough. A founder of a company could grow faster and reduce their own personal risk by bringing on private investors, and those investors took real risk away from the founder in exchange for a real piece of the company. From there, it expanded to public markets and regular investors who could buy in through a stock market.

From there, they went to the government and figured out multiple ways to extract what amounts to investment from taxpayers, with one difference. The taxpayers took on the risk without getting the piece of the company. Sometimes it takes the shape of direct investment and loan guarantees, and other times it looks like tax incentives and exemptions. All of this has led to where we are now, which is that the AI companies are effectively finding a way for the public to bear some of their burden in the form of increased prices to ratepayers for the water and electricity cost that everyone needs to pay.

And for AI, this dynamic also runs in two directions at once because they're not just drawing down local water supplies or using power from CO2-belching power plants, driving the climate crisis, they also trained their models on the cumulative output of all human knowledge. An abridged and biased version of the cumulative output of all human knowledge, but that's what they'd like.

Banks getting the government to foot the bill when they crash is one thing but vacuuming up all human knowledge is the greatest version of socializing the costs and privatizing the gains in history.

Just so there's no confusion about the progressive perspective on public investment to help reduce risk for big things, we're generally in favor of that. The problem is when the public bears the risk without gaining equity or influence. History has shown that when the public invests in disruptive change without implementing proper controls, oversight, or public ownership, what you end up with is the Gilded Age.

So, in a world of ideologies that mark any shortfall as evidence that we need just a little bit more of the same, what we really need a little bit more of is democracy and public ownership. It's a lesson we could have learned over and over again from examples in the past .Railroad companies were granted land owned by the public, and the private ownership of those rail lines helped create the robber barons, all while those steam engines were the Industrial Revolution running on public land, burning the coal that seeded the climate crisis we're experiencing today.

But the pattern has never been more clear than with AI. The source of their value came from the public knowledge, they would be nothing without it, they are knowingly externalizing their financial and environmental costs onto the public as well, and the promise implicitly made by their business model is that they will never stop. There will always be a little bit more to do, a little bit further to push, and there's no internal braking system in their ideology that could steer them to do anything different.

An ideology responds to setbacks by doubling down, whereas democracy is a procedure rather than a vision and it's built to manage and resolve problems for society when they inevitably arise. Democracy gives agency to those impacted and, ideally, accountability for those who cause the problems. Public ownership is the same idea. Publicly or cooperatively-owned companies can choose to act for reasons other than profit, including slowing down or stopping, which the private owners of AI have designed out of their plan.

All of this is the spirit of what Peter Thiel wrote back in 2009 saying, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." His version of freedom is to never be accountable to those whose lives his businesses are impacting, which is why he and the rest of the tech bros who either started on the right or have taken a hard right turn in recent years see government as not much more than an obstacle for them to overcome. And they're right, it is an obstacle to them because democracy is there to work on behalf of the people so when corporations and the wellbeing of people are at odds, it is the role of government to be an obstacle for the benefit of people.

Trump opened the door to public ownership when he started having the government take stakes in private companies, in Intel's case without any influence over it at all. The left should take that precedent and run with it but with the addition of demanding representatives of labor and the public interest be placed on the boards of those companies. And yes, a public stake is only as good as the democracy holding it, so there's work to be done on multiple levels. The public ownership and the functional democracy have to come together.

In the meantime, there's also worthwhile regulation that is being tried out. Ohio regulators now make large data centers sign twelve-year contracts and pay for at least 85 percent of the power they reserve whether they use it or not, and Virginia has a similar rule. This means the companies are shouldering the risk of the power they asked for so if they bail on their plans, the community doesn't get stuck with the bill.

Capitalism got great at spreading the risk while concentrating both the profits and the decision-making. But decisions concentrated among a small elite class of the ultra-wealthy have no accountability mechanism, precisely as they like it. So, when something as potentially disruptive to everyone as AI comes along, there's no good argument for leaving decisions about it in a very few hands. The stakes are too high to leave democracy out of the loop.

Demanding public ownership is about more than heading off the next gilded age or, at least, preventing the one we're already in from getting worse. It's also about the much-needed oversight of this technology that is full of possibility, both hugely positive and mind-bogglingly negative. Guiding decisions like that is what political democracy and democratic ownership is for.

And now, we'll continue to dive deeper on 4 topics today. First up;

Section A, The Nerd Reich - Who They Are and What They Believe

Followed by Section B, What AI Is Actually Doing To Us

Section C, The Grift, The Bubble, and The Doom Marketing

And Section D, Fighting Back - Workers, Communities, and Alternatives

There's a long history of people seeking to escape democratic societies or else to bring back monarchy or authoritarianism. In 1997, there was a book that came out called The Sovereign Individual. It argued that in the 21st century, two technologies would result basically in the overthrow of democracy and the demise of nations like the United States: cyber currency, which we would call crypto today, and the other one was advanced automation that would create a world without jobs, and that wealthy individuals who are savvy investors could profit from this coming doom and prepare for it by making the right investments.

This book had a major impact on Peter Thiel. 

And of course, it influenced the people Thiel was paying. Joe Lonsdale got to work. He started a nonprofit, California Common Sense, allegedly dedicated to transparency in government spending so that voters could make a difference if they found things they were unhappy with.

On the surface, that sounds great, but two founders of that nonprofit started a for-profit, OpenGov. OpenGov is a software service for government agencies to manage data. The idea of replacing democratic processes in the hands of all of us with technology in the hands of few was becoming less fringe, and other nonprofits with similar goals started popping up.

But while the idea of 

using technology to make a decentralized country had some illustrious backers in the mid-2010s 

I'm going to leverage technology to create a new country. And yes, I did say country, not company ... 

it never really materialized on a serious level. But the think tanks would herald a few successful versions of their privatization plan.

Like Sandy Springs, Georgia, famously the first city in America to privatize nearly all government services. It was the darling of the libertarian press. Everything for profit, nothing public, and a consulting firm making a little cash off the taxpayers at every juncture. Those extra taxes for corporate profit started adding up, though.

Eventually, Sandy Springs un-privatized, saving taxpayers millions of dollars a year. 

There are also nascent communities focused on Christian values that the network state media heralds. 

Battle Ground, Washington, where a data center billionaire is buying up all the property to own the town, the mayor is on his payroll, and Highland Rim, a series of developments in Appalachia run by the investment firm New Founding.

And that's not even including the California Forever project, a proposed tech city in Solano County funded by Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, Sam Altman, and other billionaires. But what if this was never really about these little mini-governments? Here's Peter Thiel saying the quiet part out loud in 2010.

Technology is this incredible alternative to politics, and the task in this world where politics has become so broken and so dysfunctional is to find a way to escape from it. 

Tech instead of politics. We already had Doge and Palantir becoming the operating system of the United States, with a stated goal of being more powerful than the governments using it.

How can we help the government stop the bad guys while also putting systems in place to make sure n- nobody within the government was doing anything inappropriate? So you have to have p- you have to have systems that watch the watchers. 

After leaving Palantir, Lonsdale, through his firm Eight VC, continued investments in what's called GovTech, tech for government clients.

That's surveillance tech, AI drones, AI weapons, even tech to replace 911 with AI. All aim to replace, privatize, and profit from tasks normally attributed to democratically accountable officials. 

What's happening now, though, is that the companies are becoming more powerful than the governments they serve.

We suddenly have all these billionaire oligarchs spending so much money, they were able to actually capture the federal government with Trump. So there- it's this interesting moment now where we're getting a glimpse of what government by technology company would look like. 

And Lonsdale is working to convince you that we need this by making you scared.

Lonsdale founded the Cicero Institute, a think tank that pushes anti-homeless messaging. Not anti-homelessness messaging, but messaging attacking the homeless themselves, and even legislation creating concentration camps where unhoused people would do forced labor. 

You actually can go into states, you can, partner with governors, you can pass laws.

Cicero's in 15 states, we're getting dozens of laws passed. And, and then we're gonna teach people that and go to the national level. 

Riling people up is definitely part of their game plan. That's what we saw in the San Francisco recalls. San Francisco had a spike in crime during the pandemic, but so did almost every big city in the United States.

Only in San Francisco, which has extremely low crime rates compared to most cities in red states, did they create this massive panic using social media and doom influencers to convince everybody that everything was worse than it'd ever been. 

And as Lonsdale got into nonprofits and think tanks, Patri Friedman, remember him, Milton Friedman's grandson, started his own VC firm with backing from Peter Thiel called Pronomos Capital, existing entirely for investing in privatized governments.

Próspera is this little enclave on the island of Roatán in Honduras that claims to be its own little charter city that was funded by American venture capitalists and has been touted as the flagship project of the network state movement.

But the real flagship project is something bigger, the entire United States government. It shows in policy. Remember the whole thing about taking over Greenland? That idea emerged and was celebrated by the people we've been talking about. 

I think having a frontier is very healthy. I think part of America being great is that it's, is growing and, and creating more wealth for everyone.

If the people in Greenland wanna be part of us, if we can use those resources better and make sure Russia and China don't get advantages in the Arctic. 

The freedom city as a name didn't really gain momentum, but the idea is there, and the influence in the administration is clear. Joe Lonsdale helped staff up the Trump administration, and just recently accompanied administration officials to the Philippines to christen a new regulatory zone.

Just last week, we signed a historic deal with the Philippines, 4,000 acres right next to Subic Bay, where we're gonna build a first of its kind AI native industrial park. 

But I was there for a day in the Philippines with, with everyone. they're, they're excited what you guys are doing. 

That sounds a lot like a startup city.

They've also embedded themselves with the rest of the right-wing movement. 

I could not have envisioned that JD Vance, a Peter Thiel protege, would be the vice president of the United States. And so when Vance got onto the ticket, then it became real that this stuff could travel to the White House. In September 2024, there was a conference at Fort Mason in San Francisco called Reboot 2024, and its website announced that we were now in a new reality and that Silicon Valley was waking up and about to become this powerful force in politics.

And the guest speaker was Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation, who is the guy who had shepherded Project 2025. So here you had tech VCs in San Francisco and Kevin Roberts in the same venue proclaiming the new reality, and the new reality is where we are today. 

this tech industry that's so high on its own, supply that they-- that there's this belief in these, fantastical sounding ideas such as, as, you get into in, in your reporting and, the singularity, right? And that all of these notions around building an intelligent, machine are rooted deeply in, as you said in the intro, eugenics, the idea of measurable intelligence, and then also these ideas that fall off of that world, the way of thinking, which is this very hierarchical approach to, life and, ultimately an extractive, exploitive, worldview that a- as we see today playing out in the AI industry is, alive and well.

They're not exactly subtle about it, are they? 

No. 

They're, it was interesting with the film. how did you realize what... How did you get to the thesis of your film?

That's a great question. I don't think that I had a thesis going into it. I genuinely wanted to know, what is artificial intelligence? Who's building it, and why? And I think when I was asking those questions initially, I really did believe there was such a thing as artificial intelligence.

I just hadn't even questioned it. I was well, of course, And in discovering that, oh my gosh, there's no such thing as artificial intelligence, it's a construct that is a marketing term, and when we hear it, we need to be extra careful to examine, what are we being sold? And the, the way that race science plays into the contemporary dialogue was, was actually how I first sniffed this out.

It was, it was, 

contemporary groups who were concerned with AI safety, which, for the- Our friends 

the rationalists ... 

our friends the rationalists. And, and, and again, AI safety, I was "Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Oh, oh, AI alignment. Yeah, we want to align these computer systems to comp- to human values."

And so, the moment that you start to read stuff from these people, it is clear the overt references to race science. It's not even, as you say, a, a Nobody's being shy about it. And there's a podcast, I didn't put it in the film 'cause it was just too, crazy, but there was this podcast, interview with Lex Fridman and Sam Altman, and Lex Fridman asks Sam Altman, "Hey, you're building a system that's gonna know all of the truth of the world, right?

it's gonna be this all-knowing system. How are you gonna confront the fact that, it might give answers that are truthful but most people aren't ready to hear, such as, theories of intelligence and race?" 

Oh, so Lex Fridman went there? 

Yes! And he go- he did a whole podcast on the bell curve.

he, he, he goes there. Yeah, and he was actually the first person that I heard, openly entertaining ideas that I knew just from being a person in the world, were problematic. And I say problematic not to be thought police. I say problematic because they are ideas that are factually incorrect, but, but deployed in the, subjugation of others, right?

Or the justification of the subjugation of others. So, when you, when you hear those ideas, that you're "Wait, put the brakes on. That's a stupid idea." So that was the first time I was wow, there's not even a shyness around entertaining these really dumb conversations, and then you dig one level deeper, and that's when I found some of your work.

And I know that when we first chatted you were the... You, actually pointed me in the direction to tons of information that's not in the film, that could be a whole, should be a whole other film, how a lot of the current, conversations around rationalism and AI safety, if you go back to 2010, are, are rooted in, declarations around, racial hierarchies and intelligence, which is just shocking.

1990s, that was when Nick Bostrom, the, intellectual heav- the intellectual heavyweight of the LessWrong sphere back in the day was posting his, straight-up racism and dropping N-words and, that was the one he apologized for and got in trouble for. He didn't apologize for the ideas. He still thinks Black people are stupid, but he apologized for using the word 'cause racism is when you use bad words.

He-- these, a lot of folks who, play in this hierarchical way of thinking about humanity will employ a double speak, so they are not unable to be held to account, right? So what Nick Bostrom said in his apology was it wasn't his field. He is not somebody who's an expert on race and intelligence and therefore couldn't weigh in 

That didn't stop him saying it 

That's insane.

It's a, it's a lack of accountability for these really harmful ideas that is a, a definitely also a through line through, this way of thinking. And it's important to call ... I really, this is why I really appreciate the work that you do, David, because it's really important to call this out.

Sorry, this, these, this, these things out. 

That's okay. We only have to bleep it for Apple. But, the, the good thing is he did actually get a small consequence. That is Oxford University finally went, "What on earth is going on here?" And shut the Future of Humanity Institute down 

I gave, we did a screening of the film in Vienna in June, July, June.

And, one of my friends who goes to school in Vienna was "Oh yeah, no, in my class this semester we read a book by Nick Bostrom." 

Superintelligence. 

It wasn't Superintelligence, it was another one of his books. I don't know, whatever. And I was "Whoa." So i- I was "I thought he was canceled" and so I was very excited.

I was "Oh, you need to come to the film and you need to bring your friends." But that he's still finding audience. I think that it's, the, the, the people who espouse these ideas- I 

mean, there are still academics 

who take Nick 

Lane seriously, 

100%. And and, and if we look at what's happened, this is a slight abstraction but not really at all.

You look what happened with, Jason Arday in, at Cambridge. there's, there's a the, the way that the system perpetuates a certain narrative around who belongs in academia, is, is insane. And it, and it's, and it's very real and active and alive. And we see a really tragic consequence in that particular story.

but- 

Where he was badgered to death by a bunch of literal straight up documented race scientists. 

Yes. 

And- 

Yes. the, it s- yes. And so, th- this isn't, this isn't a thing of the past. This is a thing that is actively, exists and is also actively becoming normalized, i- further into the mainstream in ways that I'm, super uncomfortable with, as should everyone be super uncomfortable with.

So when you realize that these people espousing these, ideas about so-called artificial intelligence, have problematic, worldviews and also a lot of... A- a- and problematic hearts. I think that's what gets me the most about all of this, is it's what person wants to believe that we should be building at the expense of the planet and at the expense of copyright law, That's 

a very, that's a very pol- that's the politest way I've heard today to say huge assholes.

Yeah, they really are. And, that, so that realization that these people are perpetuating their story, that drove me to make this film. And I'm so, feel really blessed that, you and so many other amazing folks, took the time and the risk to chat with me through, a Zoom like this, and trust that it would turn into something that would be a film.

And then I am genuinely, I don't know what I was expecting, but I am so pleasantly surprised at how, this film is resonating. 

I've always, I've always realized this whole field of AI was full of massive race scientists, as I kept colliding with them. Yudkowsky was pushing straight up race science in 2006, 2007, and somehow it never registered with them.

And I went, I was going to some of the London Less Wrong meetups for a while, 'cause I hung out on the site for a few years, 'cause it's an amateur philosophy site. Arguing philosophy is fun. And, so I went along, and I think last one I went to, one guy went in this massive race science rant, and I went, "This isn't a great area."

And I didn't show up for any more. I stayed on the site though, but yeah, for a while. But, yeah, it's absolutely bizarre people. And then you realize, oh, this is just the eugenics guys who we've always had. 

as soon as Jacob tweeted this out, a bunch of other tech workers and AI workers at Anthropic, still employed in Anthropic, said, "We totally agree.

We also believe that, there's a 10% chance that AI could kill everybody." But... And it's a tough, it's a tough problem, and we're gonna keep building it regardless. We are gonna build it 'cause we know better, and we are making this decision, again, atop the hierarchy. And so my question is, what, what do you make of this?

'Cause viewed from a certain light, this seems like an awfully fascist viewpoint. We know better. We will put the world at great harm, it's not mentioned in the tweets, for personal profit and power, and we will make the decisions about how it rolls out. 

I think what we're seeing in their willingness, according to their own logic, the- their willingness to risk human civilization is a prelude of the authoritarian infrastructure they want to build, right?

these guys say that AI is the final technology, the ultimate, invention. So they talk about it in this, millenarian way. And in, in a world where you are the last company standing, you have total control, right? Where you've, you... So they're imagining a future where they don't have to listen to the plebs anyway, so they're just doing it now.

I, I also wanna say that that 10% figure is getting a lot of traction, that he's saying, "We think there's a 10% chance that we'll destroy humanity." Dario Amodei has put that, the odds at 25%. So it's one in four. And, I think you can, we can debate whether that is an accurate wager, or whether their tools are capable of this.

What I believe is that what that tells us is 25% is an acceptable number for Dario Amodei, right? Just like I think Elon Musk said there's a 20% chance that this technology will annihilate all humans. He thinks that's an acceptable number, right? Can you imagine saying that with a straight face? so they- These, these, these moments, these outbursts, right?

These incidences, they're called, tell us a lot about the people behind them. I think the passage you read is, is really important because, again, we're... Our analysis is ultimately material. It's there are these dangers in our economic, political, technological systems, and there are consequences unfolding because of decades of inaction.

And so we are entering a world where these people are saying there's gonna be crises galore, right? M- there's gonna be more and more inequality 'cause we're building companies that, whether or not they deliver anything useful, are going to siphon up power and hoover up wealth. That means all of you are gonna be poorer and subjected to more and more disasters, and we're gonna decimate public health and all the like.

And, and they need an ideology that rationalizes that, and the ideology that rationalizes that inhumanity is fascism, right? So there's, It's, it's not surprising that this is where they've- That this is, his name said when you go down the road, you go, you wind up where you're going, because there's really no other way to justify, justify this.

I'm... I think the, the, this, the virality of this bit of news is interesting because I, I think, it had some- I think it had something 100 million impressions last I looked, something remarkable. And while I am not in the same ideological camp as the AI safety community, I'm not mad that this guy is spreading the message that these guys are willing to kill us all because, I think they're willing to kill us all in lots of other ways, like by burning tons of carbon and by just, again, sucking up wealth so we're destroying the welfare state, which has enormous consequences for people's lives and, it, it, and their willingness to steal people's jobs.

so they're, they're, I think the story he's telling can't be the only story that's out there, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to have circulating in the media if it's an opportunity for us to complicate the narrative a bit. 

Yeah. Yeah, and I, I think, and the only thing I would add there is that I d- I do believe that the only apocalypse that the, people driving the corporate AI arms race are, really genuinely engage with is the apocalypse of them losing the AI arms race.

And I do believe they believe that to be genuinely apocalyptic. the loss of their wealth would be genuinely apocalyptic. Mm-hmm. and we are already seeing the way this technology is eating the internet, right? and, the remaining media organizations are feeling that so intensely right now because people are becoming increasingly reliant o- on, on, on these tools that they're being driven to.

as we all-- as as you cover, it's getting pretty hard to do just a, a Google search, right? so, so that's the apocalypse that they are, are concerned about. It underlies why they're constantly re- calling one another evil, right? And, and, and this story of it has to be me, it has to be me because I'm the only good one left, right?

that, that, that goes back to Musk and g- s- and Altman saying, "It's Google that's evil," and then Musk saying, "It's Altman that's evil," and then it's g- and now it, it, it's, it's, it's Anthropic saying OpenAI, Google and, and, and, and, and, and xAI are, are evil, and then all of them just leasing, compute from Elon Musk.

but at any rate, They, that, that is the apocalypse that they're, that they're worried about. The rest of it, it, I think is just, I, I think the Earth has become a non-player character in their, in their narrative to, to, it, and not, not just individuals. It's just anything other than that. And you can see that a, that, that sense of apocalyptic panic at the loss of wealth In the way that they respond to, a 5% one-time billionaire's tax, right?

It truly is the end of the world if you're David Sacks. it's the only thing he gets excited about, in terms of, of, a genuinely bad outcome. So, this is one of, one of the conclusions we come to in the book is that, is that this extreme wealth is deranging and is a, a WMD in it, in and of itself, and we really do have to get at the core of it.

And it can't just be a slogan of, every billionaire is a policy failure. we really do need to abolish billionaires, because they are a material threat to the rest of us, and, before they all become trillionaires. but the other argument that we make in the book, and that's really key, is that this, this Wild West frontier that they want, where it is possible to just speculate that maybe you'll...

You have a 25% chance of wiping out all of humanity, and the government is twiddling its thumbs and acting like it can't do anything, is why they created the alliance that they did with Trump. we, we are making the argument that if you wanna know why Silicon Valley aligned with Donald Trump, lined up behind him, it has way less to do with the psychology of them being upset about their Marxist kids, or, the, some slight of Joe Biden than the fact that they wanted exactly what they got, which was, which is absolutely no regulation.

And, I don't wanna fetishize what the, the, the, the f- pretty timid regulations that the Biden administration was putting, up for, for, to, to regulate AI. But they were trying to, to, to, to take seriously these existential risks, and do things like label deepfakes, and, say, "Okay, if you think it's a WMD, we should treat it like one."

and that is what led, Marc Andreessen et al to have a giant temper tantrum and decide to line up behind Donald Trump. So the real issue is, is, is not are they right or are they not? You shouldn't be allowed to build a technology that you don't understand that might do these things.

There should be consequences for this. there should be... I th- Rochona responded th- th- they, they should be held legally responsible for the harms of their models. and I think that if we were taking-- if we had taken that seriously a long time ago, we would not be where we are. and it's the fact that they got their frontier, that there are no consequences, that they have i- seem to have immunity for the co- for, for the outcomes.

look, I live in British Columbia. We had a mass shooting here, a year ago. and- Some of the families are suing OpenAI because it seems to have been-- It was a school shooting. It seems to have been done in collaboration with a chatbot. and OpenAI seems to have known this enough that they took away the account of, of, of the shooter because they were so alarmed by what they were seeing.

And then he-- Then, and then, and then they created another account. and, and what we got from Sam Altman was an apology. 

Yeah. Yeah. 

he said he was sorry. 

Yeah. Oops. 

how is that possible that we got an apology for a mass shooting, for a mass casualty event that was entirely predictable, and they're just going on.

How, how is it that there's no accountability for, for, for, for, for war crimes that we're seeing? So it's just gonna escalate unless there is accountability. And as soon as there-- as soon as the buck stops and there's leg- legal repercussions, criminal repercussions, then I, I don't think we will be having the conversations that, that we're having right now.

AI critics like Karen Hao have explicitly compared the logic of Silicon Valley to that of empire and colonization 

Data is the last frontier of colonization. They took our land and then tried to sell it back to us. Now they're taking our data and trying to sell it back to us as a service. This idea of just perpetuating the colonial dynamics.

Wealthy countries get to come into poorer countries and do whatever they want, extract whatever resources they want. Not just data, right? Also Critical minerals and all of the things that you need to build data centers 

These guys are happy to take advantage of exploited labor around the world while pillaging natural resources from places that won't ever see the benefits of this glorious tech, because again, humans, we're just fuel.

But they're also colonizing our broader humanity. they're extracting attention and value from us even when we're unaware that it's happening. In doing all of this, the logic of Silicon Valley is not simply anti-human, it's actively creating a project of dehumanization, one that bears some similarity to the active dehumanization necessary for strategies like colonization.

During the era of European colonization, a similar story about rationality and enlightened human civilization was used as justification for the dehumanization of a lot of people for the sake of the prosperity of a very small group of people. In this system, the spread of rational civilization was used as a mask for a ruthless desire for power and wealth.

To gain these things for themselves, they needed a logic that could justify the dehumanization of others. So by turning their specific ideas of reason and religion into universal concepts, they believed that indigenous populations with different concepts of reason or religion were less than human, which both allowed them to ruthlessly exploit these populations while still being able to think of themselves as good, enlightened humanists, and in some cases, as good Christians.

Philosopher and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon argued that the horrors of colonization don't simply dehumanize the colonized individual, they actively destroy the humanity of the colonizer as well. In his book, Black Skin, White Masks, he talks about how the white colonizer becomes a slave to their own superiority, as by considering themselves superior to the colonized, they view those humans as objects, which then alienates the colonizer from their humanity, and from humanity more broadly, making genuine human connection impossible.

maybe this is why in this new era of tech colonizers, all these guys seem sociopathic and incapable of basic human empathy, even making arguments about how empathy is bad. 

Is suicidal empathy. 

Mm-hmm. 

the, it, it, there's there's so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself. 

Yeah. 

so that w- we've got civilizational suicidal empathy going on.

Following Fanon's analysis, it's not that the Silicon Valley guys are dehumanizing society while maintaining their own superior humanity. Instead, they are actively dehumanizing themselves, which then subsequently makes their own thinking, their own political projects increasingly inhuman. And I already said, if they're right about the future of their technologies, they're going to eventually give their own humanity over to the machines that they've created.

Writer and theorist Aimé Césaire describes the fundamental lo- Lie at the heart of the colonial project in a way that parallels the dehumanizing logic of Silicon Valley, while also showing how neither is actually concerned with the project of expanding and improving human civilization. He writes that, "The essential thing here is to see clearly, to think clearly, that is dangerously, and answer clearly the innocent first question, what fundamentally is colonization?

To agree on what it is not, neither evangelization, nor philanthropic enterprise, nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease, and tyranny, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God, nor an attempt to extend the rule of law. To admit once and for all, without flinching at the consequences, that the decisive actors here are the adventurer and the pirate, the wholesale grocer and the merchant, appetite and force, and behind them baleful projected shadow of a form of civilization, which at a certain point in history finds itself obliged, for internal reasons, to extend to a world scale the competition of its antagonistic economies."

We could paraphrase Césaire here and say that we need to first agree what the project of Silicon Valley is not. Neither human liberation, nor philanthropic enterprise, nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease, and tyranny, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of human thought, nor an attempt to make the world more free and democratic.

Following this, we can admit once and for all that the decisive actors in the tech authoritarian age are digital pirates, colonizers of attention, exploiters of human labor, all motivated by little more than to push the limits of capitalist exploitation while eroding the counter effects of democratic politics.

In other words, fuck humans, get money. A recent study by The Lancet looked at the effects of Elon Musk's cuts to programs like USAID, which he enacted while in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency. These cuts, allegedly fueled by the clean code of logical efficiency, dismantled a program which The Lancet estimated prevented ninety-two million deaths globally between 2001 and 2021.

It then projected that these cuts could lead to an additional fourteen million deaths between now and 2023. so in less, in less than four years from right now. Musk and those like him will sell the public a tale of human advancement, radical efficiency, utopian possibility, when the reality is dirty drinking water, large-scale exploitation, and 14 million dead bodies, with at least a third of them predicted to be children.

But while using colonization as a framework to understand Silicon Valley dehumanization in the age of AI is helpful when we're trying to understand the scope of its exploitation, treating this project as just the contemporary version of colonization misses out on some of the really important differences between the two, including those which highlight our own complicity in this project, as well as our radical potential to fight back and reclaim some of our own humanity.

Quinn Slobodian writes about this in a recent essay in which he argues that invocations of empire and colonialism also risk being trapped in the register of polemic rather than analysis, which is a crucial distinction to make in light of the fact that many of these discussions are happening on platforms operating on Silicon Valley logic, which prioritize polemic and disincentivize more careful analysis and critique like this one, like this platform we're on right now, like YouTube, right?

I would say it prioritizes polemic and incentivizes more careful analysis and critique. So everyone watch this video to, to prove them wrong. By watching this video and sharing it with your friends, you're technically, you're technically fighting back. He writes that for those living under direct colonialism, subordination is very difficult to ignore.

The harvesting of personal data is different. It is a form of oppression that remains largely invisible to those it affects, and that we often need a third party to reveal to us. To make the analogy with colonialism hold, one would need to invoke the contested notion of internalized oppression. it's not just that our experience of being oppressed by Silicon Valley is wildly different from what happened to the victims of colonization.

Because while enslaved peoples weren't reaping the benefits of cocoa sales in Spain, many of us are financially benefiting from the growth of things like publicly traded AI companies. Slobodian writes about our entanglement with big tech stocks, noting that more than half of the American population is plugged into them, whether directly through stock ownership or indirectly through pensions, mutual funds, and retirement accounts.

And listen, I know most of you would never dream of purchasing stock in ChatGPT or SpaceX, but if you have a 401or a pension fund, a retirement fund, if you invest in an index fund, well then you are absolutely set up to benefit financially from this project of tech colonization. Which leads Slobodian to call for us to think of ourselves less as digital natives and more as digital Creoles, with one foot in the world of human community and the other in the world of digital exploitation.

Because the apps and devices might make us feel like shit, but they're also maybe our only hope of retirement or home ownership in an economy without any serious social safety nets. In other words, we need to recognize that unlike the colonized person, we co-create value in our interaction with networked technologies.

In this way, we might be undermining ourselves when we use the framework of colonization to understand the situation, rather than thinking of ourselves as workers with collective stakes and collective power. Slobodian references a forthcoming book which notes that the tech workers movement needs to abandon the mystifying language of serfdom and empire for the practical terminology of walkout and strike.

Now, I don't think that any of this means that we can't rely on examples that consider Silicon Valley through the framework of colonization, especially when they are mobilizing resistance. But we can't stop there, as while the situations are similar, they are not the same. And because of this, we need to analyze the contemporary situation to best fight against our own era of tech dehumanization.

Another crucial aspect of recognizing that, to use Slobodian's analysis, we are more Creole than we are colonized, is the fact that even if we hate data centers and we use dumb phones, we're still internalizing the logic and values of this system. To speak more specifically to the topic of this video, we are internalizing a logic that is perpetuating our own dehumanization because the more we're thinking like algorithms and financial models, the less we're actively becoming human.

the question is where does government fit into this picture? you quoted President Biden's last speech warning about the tech bro, industry complex, the technology industry complex, or TIC. but what are Democrats doing right now in Congress, and what are Republicans doing?

Largely not going after the Silicon Valley oligarchs who are behind Trump. a lot of people are attacking Trump and his- and criticizing his family, criticizing Vance, but we don't see a lot of direct criticism of these billionaires who are enabling the entire thing. The way I look at it, Donald Trump and his- is being paid billions of dollars to do these things, right?

When's the last time we had a president make billions of dollars while in office direct... This is direct transfer, including from foreign governments that are buying into and investing in his companies to curry favor. I think we need to see Democrats speaking directly against billionaire power, against tech billionaire power, against the crypto takeover of our country.

You see all these Democrats trying to say, "Oh, AI, innovation, Silicon Valley innovation." Those are outdated talking points. Silicon Valley is no longer about innovation. Silicon Valley is about fascism and a race to control the future, and that future will not be good for most people, and it's the job of our elected officials, especially on the Democratic side of things, to stand up for the people.

There are a few people doing it. You see Bernie Sanders, James Talarico, Jasmine Crockett, and others who have spoken directly to this, Chris Murphy, Ron Wyden, but people like Gavin Newsom and others are suspiciously avoiding any critique of Silicon Valley, and I don't think we can have that going forward.

People are waking up to this threat. We see it all across the country, and we need politicians who match the energy of the people, or we need those people to be the new politicians. I 

mean, we're seeing this massive movement against data centers, right? Across the country, people are opposing data centers.

What's happening in Silicon Valley? Is there some resistance to this massive takeover and this ideology? 

A little bit. Nothing too noteworthy. Most of the resistance is coming from communities that are being targeted by data centers, that are being targeted by Palantir surveillance and fascism aided by ICE.

You see people resisting and rising up. There are also movements like Purge Palantir, which is boycotting any company that has Palantir products, raising awareness of the role of this company in our government, and putting a lot of pressure on the company. Same thing is happening to Flock Surveillance, where people are starting to militate against putting these big brother facial recognition, license plate recognition cameras in every aspect of our lives.

So you see people waking up to that, and it's not just Democrats, by the way. It's also Republicans and independents, and it's also people who are not activists. It's people who are just becoming activated by the threat of this alien invasion of our country by these surveillance-mad, power-hungry billionaires, and it's pretty inspiring to watch.

It's the grassroots, and I think the politics are gonna have to catch up with that. 

as we begin to wrap up, what is missing from the whole debate around artificial intelligence? 

The question is why we are pursuing this idea that we have this dangerous technology that is going to kill all of our jobs and potentially wipe out all of humanity.

This is the marketing of the AI industry itself and why is that being made to seem inevitable? I don't think it's inevitable at all. I think we have the right to reject this dystopian future that's being imposed on us. How does it make sense to destroy our economy to enrich a handful of oligarchs who are already wealthy and whose wealth has driven them insane, and hasn't made them very happy?

we have this problem where it's becoming a, a competition between democracy and capitalism, and which one is more important. even before the tech bros came along we were destroying the planet for a handful of fossil fuel companies. How does that make any sense? There has to be a different way to do this.

And the same thing with AI. AI is being marketed as this destructive, terrifying force, and we all have to invest in it and adopt it or else. And I don't think it has to be that way, and I think people need to push back, harder on a policy level and stop trying to ingratiate themselves to the AI moguls, which is largely what's happening now.

Even the, the best politicians among us are playing along with this idea that this is an intelligence, which it's not, and that this is inevitable, which it's not. And so I think we need to backtrack a bit and get off of this idea, and question the, the narrative that we have no choice except to bow down to this AI god these guys claim to be building.

It, it's, it's a religion. It's a myth. It, it's not real. I don't think LLMs are completely useless. I think there'll be some good applications for AI. Explain 

what LLMs are. 

Large language models like Claude, et cetera. Mm. I don't think these things have to be useless. I just don't understand why they have to eat everything.

They don't. This is, this is the marketing for the investors. This is convincing people they have to spend trillions of dollars on this so we can create this massive thing that will then suck all of the value out of the economy and render every worker useless. This is absurd, it's ridiculous, and it's an apocalyptic cult.

 

you've been spending time reading the statements and writings of all of these figures. What scares you the most? 

What scares me is that you can be as anti-American and anti-democratic as Peter Thiel and still be a government contractor with investment from the CIA. Palantir was in, was created with investment from the CIA, and I worked in government for many years for Democrats.

I worked for Senator Feinstein when she was chair of the Intelligence Committee, and it boggles my mind that you can s- say that stuff and believe these radical things and still be that deep in our intelligence infrastructure. I have a lot of questions about what went wrong there. to get into government, you have to pretend like you never smoked marijuana, and here you are smoking the most anti-American, anti-democratic dope in the world and becoming a billionaire off of government contracts.

That's what scares me. How did no one catch this? Trying to talk about what's happening to our country without talking about these tech fascists is like trying to explain 9/11 without talking about Al-Qaeda. This cult of dangerous billionaires has a very pronounced idea of what our future is, and it's not gonna have democracy in it, and I don't understand how they got this far this fast.

Nobody... And even today, most people in the media and the political establishment aren't really addressing it

Next, Section B, What AI Is Actually Doing To Us

If your job got stolen by an AI, I guess you have like infinite time to ride a bike, but you also might starve, so that feels bad, right? If there's a data center that is being built near where you live, and now electricity prices have quadrupled, and they're only going to keep going up and up and up, and people care more about data centers than they care about people.

Just like the environmental degradation. It might be really weird to go ride a bike and enjoy that when your child is addicted to talking to their AI companion chatbot. Why would you deal with the, the possibility of rejection when there is a companion that is always telling you how great you are, like on your phone or like maybe in your ear?

This might be coming soon, not decades away. Like this might be happening soon. Trying to build super intelligence actually threatens all of us. This is, this is the thing that like Hinton says, is like, "Hey, it's either gonna be climate change or AI, and I think it's gonna be AI."

So what do we do now? I don't know. I don't know the answer, which I don't know if anybody was expecting that I would, but I will say that there are things that we can all do that will make finding that answer a lot easier. Self-education in a way that makes you critically conscious of power structures.

So I asked Peter for a reading list. If someone wanted to get closer to an answer, what are the educational steps somebody could take if they wanted to help? This is what he recommended. Take a screenshot, enjoy. Which also brings us around to answering my first question, AI, what could go right?

Personally, I think it is the galvanizing effect that it's having in the opposite direction, people realizing what's at stake. And when I asked Peter what could go right, that was what he felt too. 

These companies are currently actually threatening everything, and, I actually do mean that 

How can, how can we threaten them?

This is my last question. What, what does the individual do? How, how do you restore empowerment to someone watching this who is now feeling your doom, but without your, but, but without your vocation? 

there's 8 billion of us 

Go on 

The really nice thing about this is that this is an issue that I've seen unite everyone from the political spectrum from left to right.

Reaching out across party lines and also geographical lines and like ideological lines and people I think fundamentally just want to keep living and lead good lives. 

Same as you and Good Cop. I think what does actually work well is shame and social dynamics. And I think that that as public pressure, the self-interest of 

people not wanting to become pariahs is more motivating than most people give it credit for.

It's funny, this point that I'm making here, that if somebody seems like they're above the law, beyond government regulation and rich beyond comprehension, they're used to their power working. But all the money, handshakes and lobbying power in the world can't stop the tide of public opinion. They can't stop shame.

We're social creatures at the end of the day. And at some point, a marginally higher tax rate is easier to live with than constantly being shamed everywhere you go. The point that I was making is don't underestimate it. And the reason I say it's funny isn't because the point's funny, but because the timing is funny.

Little did I know that while Peter and I were talking about this in theory, on the other side of the world, a bunch of university graduates made it work. 

Last December, Time Magazine selected its Person of the Year for 2025. And it was this time, it was the architects of artificial intelligence.

Interesting

If AI in its current form was truly inevitable, if public buy-in didn't matter, and if people's repulsion to all this greed meant nothing, there'd be no need for Eric Schmidt to tell people to get in the rocket ship. The reality is none of this is inevitable. And this brings me back to the first thing that Peter said in our chat, that his brain is very literal 

And when I look at evidence and the evidence is overwhelming, I have a really, really hard time looking away from that and like pretending that I don't see it.

He can't ignore it. He can't look away. It is evidence. Well, I think that's why that clip is going viral because it is evidence of the big galvanizing pro-humanist effect that AI repulsion is having on people. I still don't think it's AI neural networks specifically, but I think it is the fact that they empower and accelerate greed to such an exaggerated degree that people are just done.

In the tragic words of Howard Beale, "They're mad as hell and they're not gonna take it anymore." And in the less tragic words of my friend Peter 

There's an alien invasion that's happening and we just happen to be making the aliens. And I think when people really see that, I think they really see what is happening and what these companies are doing, they'll go, "Oh, yeah.

No. No, no. No, you're not doing that. You're not doing that to me. You're not doing that to my family. You're not doing that to my kids. You're not doing this to like everything that I love." There are some people in Silicon Valley that are like not all that stoked to be human and I really don't like that. I think that's really, really bad.

I don't know. Being human is neat. Being human is really nice. I want to continue being human. Yeah. I would like our, our messy and complicated and, flawed, deeply flawed little species to continue. I'll take, I'll take our flaws over some mechanical perfection any day

Exactly the same technology can be used for good and for evil. It is as if there were a God who said to us, "I set before you two ways. You can use your technology to destroy yourselves or to carry you to the planets and the stars. It's up to you

the things that are considered AI are not always considered AI. So for example, the title of my, forthcoming book is Deep Unlearning, and this is a play on the term deep learning, which is a technique which is currently basically synonymous with AI. But back in the day, deep learning was not considered AI, so much so that, the researchers in that specialty were having, their academic papers, rejected by the prestigious AI, conferences.

And so actually, deep learning was a rebranding from another term, artificial neural networks, to avoid that stigma. So not only do we have this marketing term that, is a hodgepodge of disparate techniques or tools, and in fact, it's not even sometimes it's techniques, sometimes it's tools, sometimes it's products.

but, but also not all of these things are always called AI, right? When one of these subspecialties is really hyped up or has some better performance on a specific benchmark, it gets elevated to AI, and then it gets downgraded not to AI. And there are other such examples, like expert systems of the '80s.

That was what was synonymous with AI in the '80s, and now nobody calls expert systems AI. So, what happens here is that it makes it so difficult to have, conversations that are grounded and specific and, have specific conversations about what are the harms, what are the benefits, what approaches are good, what approaches are bad?

Because when I talk about some things that I'm really against, ChatGPT things, then people are like, "What about a particular system that is used for early diagnosis of cancer patients?" And, I have to say, "Well, that's a completely different system. It doesn't even have to be built in the same way that these big, models are being built."

Timnit Gebru, can you talk about f- co-founding Black in AI? but start off by talking about why you were fired from Google in 2020, the issues that you were raising there and the position you had there. 

so yeah, I co-founded Black in AI way before I even joined Google. my current institute is called the Distributed AI Research Institute, which I founded after I was fired from Google.

but, I, I started Black in AI in, around 2016, 2017 when I, attended, I started seeing, simultaneously the lack of Black people in AI. And so I would go to academic conferences, and you'd have about 5,000, 6,000 people, in those conferences intern- and only a couple of one or two, a handful of Black people.

And at the same time, we had, some of these, systems, some of the kinds of systems that Heidi w- was talking about. For instance, there was a ProPublica article from 2016 talking about pr- a company purporting to determine someone's likelihood of committing a crime again. And so th- this company was saying that they built a software that can, tell whether a, a person released from prison was likely to commit a crime again.

And the ProPublica article was talking about how, These systems were more likely, even, to label Black people as, criminals, potential criminals than, than white people. And it was very scary because judges were already using the outputs of these models to, in their b- decisions about bail, decisions about, how long someone should be in prison for.

So the dichotomy of seeing the lack of Black people in the field and also the kinds of claims that were being made and the kinds of things these tools were being built for was very scary. And so that's how I, I decided to found Black in AI. So by the time I started working at Google in 2018, I was a very known quantity.

I had already, bl- founded and led Black in AI. I was working on uncovering all sorts of issues in the field. my collaborator, Joy Buolamwini, and I had written a very, a paper that was, pretty-- it made the rounds, and was highlighted, and all, all over the place and even changed policy, showing for the first time that automated facial analysis tools like face recognition, for instance, tools were, had much higher error rates for darker-skinned women than lighter-skinned men.

And, the darker and darker the skin, and especially for women, the higher and higher the error rate. So think about these tools being used, on CCTV cameras to identify so-called criminals, et cetera. and the people who are dark- of darker skin would be more likely to be wrongfully identified, in this case.

And so I had already worked on this these kinds, uncovering these kinds of issues. And so I was hired at Google to co-lead a team, called the Ethical AI Research Team, which was a small research team with, Meg Mitchell, who was also later fired. And, the-- there were many issues. it was one issue after another.

This was in the middle of the Google walkout, where twenty thousand women walked out because, we found out that Google had paid Andy Rubin ninety-one million dollars, after allegations of sexual misconduct. and so it was a co- a, a combination of a whole bunch of issues, and it was at the height of Black Lives Matter, the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 And at this time, a company called OpenAI, that was, getting very famous, but not as famous as it is today, came out with a large language model called GPT-3, which later became the backbone of ChatGPT.

But, ChatGPT wasn't released yet. And, GPT-3, was really hyped up in the mainstream media, and, OpenAI was making all sorts of claims about how powerful GPT-3 was. In fact, actually, they had said that its predecessor, GPT-2, was too dangerous to release because it's so powerful. and so, the GPT-3 was a large language model, and we can just define what large language models are.

they are models that are trained on vast amounts of textual data on the internet, and they're trained to, if-- calculate the most likely sequences of, text based on the training data. So if you use large language models to generate text, you are, trying to, generate the most likely sequences of, text given your training data.

the fact that, OpenAI got so much airtime for GPT-3 meant that all of these companies wanted to build similar, models, and they wanted to build larger and larger models, which means that, they were guzzling all of the data on the internet. and they were, consuming, using huge amounts of computational power even then.

and so we were very worried about this race that was started. Every company wanted to have the largest model, and we were asking, "Why do we need the largest of anything? What problem are you trying to solve?" And we warned about-- We wrote a paper, my collaborators and I, warning about the dangers of large language models, and we said, "How big can large-- can language models be too big?"

So the first, issue that we mentioned, the very first one, was the environmental and financial cost. And you can see how, six, seven-- six years later now, that is not only true, but even worse than we said in the paper. We talked about how, the carbon footprint of these huge datas, the, the, the necessary computational power, necessitates huge carbon footprint.

And even if you claim to have data centers with renewable energy, that, energy is going away from heating people's homes, for example, and towards training these models. and the financial cost that shuts out, anybody who doesn't have the wealth to, participate in this work. We also warned about hege- perpetuating hegemonic views.

the claim was that because these models are large, me- which means that they are using huge datasets, then oh, they have all of human knowledge, in these, in these datasets, but that's not true. the, the internet pr- represents hegemonic views. It does not represent views of everybody in the world.

A lot of people are not even on the internet. We even know articles like Wikipedia are heavily biased. It's a he- overwhelmingly mestern- Western and male. and, we, we also warned about... And this is very related to what Heidi was talking about earlier. We talked about how because large language models, are, tend to output fluent and coherent text, this can be very deceiving.

The majority of public AI discourse tends to revolve around a handful of AI companies: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Groq.

It doesn't tend to revolve around AI safety scientists So Peter's job might not be immediately familiar to everybody, but one way to think of what Peter does is he is to these companies what a climate scientist is to big oil companies 

I find it really, really messed up that like dozens, maybe a couple of hundred people in Silicon Valley are making decisions about all of our futures.

And just like a climate scientist, the looming catastrophe that he studies and tries to steer us all away from is in many ways a global threat because of careless corporations, the extreme hubris of a handful of people, and plain old greed. And just as these things are an accelerant on AI as a problem, AI is an accelerant on every other problem.

Weapons, makes them worse. Ecological catastrophe, makes it worse. The mental health crisis makes it worse. So Peter's job is to get people asking questions like these ones. 

Can we slow down? Can we understand the science more? And can we like listen to the public? Like everyone hates this, right? It is 

one of those unpopular issues.

I, 

I think I hate it for a lot of similar reasons to the public and some like extra ones. Yeah. But I'm like an extra hater, And also I feel like really heartbroken because fundamentally the ideas are really cool. Like neural networks are really interesting and they're really cool and they can be applied in some like pretty phenomenal ways.

All right, so first things first, the term AI is broad. When I say AI, and when Peter says AI, when Eric Schmidt says AI, when you say AI, we could all be talking about different things. So in order for any of this to mean something or have any utility, addressing that broad term AI is the first thing we've gotta do.

When we talk about AI, we really shouldn't be just going like it's just three companies or four companies or whatever. AI as a thing has been a thing that we've been trying to do for thousands of years. People have been dreaming of building smarter than human machines. We have myths going back literally thousands of years.

When it comes to the actual tech, the idea of neural networks goes back to like 1942, 1943, right? Like the mathematical model of an artificial neuron goes back to the 1940s. AI has been a thing for a lot longer than Sam Altman's been alive. To equate all advances in AI with these like Silicon Valley companies does honestly everyone a disservice.

I really like the way Peter put this, that it does a disservice to everyone. But I think it's worth pointing out the very, very notable exception of who it doesn't do a disservice to, who benefits when these terms are vague. It's the Eric Schmidts of the world. And this was exactly what bothered me so much, that he saw this incredibly vague term and instead of defining it, he hid behind it.

Because if your label conceivably contains curing cancer, and if your actions are I build machines that kill people, why the hell would you ever define that? That is a terrible PR strategy. 

People are just, not convinced that this technology's legit. Yes. And I need to convince people, "Hey, this technology is legit" 

Yes

it can be really good for the world. 

Yes. 

And because technology is omni-use, it can actually be really bad for the world. Yes. And how the techno-feudalists in Silicon Valley are currently building this technology, it is more likely to be bad for the world than good for the world. 

On the positive side, even those basic selling points of- I can see a world where we have an incredible productivity boom

aren't a guarantee that the world will get better. 

In a decent society, just increasing productivity ought to be a good thing. But in our society, it's not necessarily a good thing to increase productivity because it might make the rich richer and the poor poorer. 

I interviewed Hinton for this video that I made, and I needed the, the clip, but I also just wanted to check if I was crazy.

Because I was like, "Hey, just, like, how seriously do you take this, the risks from AI?" 

There is something funny about wanting to check that you're crazy so you call up the guy who invented the technology. 

Right. it, it is definitely a flex to be like, "Hello, Nobel Prize winner. thanks for taking the time."

But yeah, I was like, "Hey, how seriously do you take the risks from AI?" And he went, "Oh, really seriously. It's either climate change or AI, and I think AI's going to win." 

I think right now it's probably a race between climate change and AI, and AI's gonna win 

Kinda wanna clarify that Peter isn't actually a doomer.

He is passionate about science, about teaching, about hope, and about the welfare of other humans. And while we're on the topic, it's worth investigating the term. AI doomer might sound anti-AI, but the doomer narrative ends up helping the AI companies by treating AI as apocalyptic and inevitable. The power to doom the world becomes a sales pitch.

Are you trying to learn computers? Are you finding it frustrating? We have a simple method. We just tell you what keys to push. 

AI doom disempowers the general public to engage in any protest or resistance. 

There are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all, frighten people, and secondly, demoralize them.

In reality, Quit GPT has really hurt open AI. Palantir, with the help of public sentiment, is losing contracts left, right, and center, and local communities have delayed, and in cases blocked, $64 billion of data center projects. But where this story gets weird, and honestly a little frustrating, is that just because the AI is powerful narrative has been weaponized, this doesn't automatically mean that AI isn't powerful.

And so you end up with this situation where the Silicon Valley CEOs and the scientists who study the stuff, who really don't like these CEOs, keep telling us the same thing. 

AI is incredibly powerful, and also how we're currently implementing AI is really dumb, and it's really dangerous. 

I realized pretty quickly into talking to Peter that there was a problem with my question, AI, what could go right?

You couldn't answer it without also implying what could go wrong. 

AI is getting better and better and better at biological stuff, and that's really good when you're doing drug development. That's really good when you're trying to find proteins that are, like, malfunctioning in a certain disease or whatever.

It's kinda bad if you're trying to make toxins. 

It is. 

Or if you're trying to make novel viruses. 

Yeah. 

AI aided drug discovery is already a massive thing, and it's undoubtedly very, very effective. 

Mustafa Suleyman, his big argument, what he saw as the biggest fear was rogue people having both CRISPR and AI and making bio weapons in their garage.

That feels right. 

Yeah. 

That feels right. That feels like we're approaching that. 

Come on, guys, don't do that. But again, AI rhetoric, we're not there yet. Well, we are with toxins, but I feel like the word yet is doing a little bit of heavy lifting. AI isn't magic powers. There's a lot of steps between you and a bio weapon.

So what about something closer to home? How should we think about the problems that are already here? There's all the cognitive stuff, psychosis, the effects of persuasion, computational propaganda, data centers, the environmental impact, IP theft, surveillance and military issues, the potential job apocalypse which manifests as what jobs will it take or make less stable, and what people can exploit this jobs are scarce narrative 'cause making workers feel grateful to at least have a job is the conditions for somebody to screw over those workers.

There's the fear of the bubble bursting.

What happens there? Scams, deepfakes, social engineering, a ragtag team of misfits breaking into a foreign government's computer system. I don't know. 

The cybersecurity stuff is terrifying. Our world really does run on computers. Our energy grid, our banking system, pick a thing and it's connected to some electronic thing that manages it.

We're now at the point where, one person One person using a commercially available tool was able to hack into the Mexican government and steal like 150 million taxpayer records and a bunch of like really sensitive, really private information. 

there are tons of studies about how AI's use in a classroom setting dulls critical thinking, reduces the amount of non-verbal intimacy, which makes up a majority of effective teaching, things like tone, cadence, eye contact, et cetera, which then leads to student alienation and even still discrimination because AI has to be racist, too.

Stop telling people from marginalized communities not to use AI. For many of us, it is the first time in our lives that we're able to use a free resource to explain things to us in a simple way, without judgment, and most importantly, without the price tag. This is the first time that there's been an opportunity to level the playing field even a little bit using technology, so let people use the tools.

For many of us, it was the first time we were able to have something explained to us in a non-judgmental way. Have you never heard of Khan Academy? Have you never heard of Crash Course? Or better yet, a book. Books are fucking free, bro. Listen, walk into a library, walk up to the person at the counter, ask for a library card, give them your name and email.

They will give you a library card for free, and then turn around. Behind you are books. Did someone pay you to make this video? 'Cause sometimes I feel like people are just saying shit, and it's like a prank on me personally. Wait, I'm sorry. Are you under the impression that AI makes you smarter? She said the rich and wealthy are already using AI to, optimize their businesses and shit.

Who do you think that hurts? Who do you think that's replacing? 

Sure, a lot of people don't have access to libraries or a network of peers or teachers who give a shit, particularly marginalized folks or people in rural areas. But like he says in that video, YouTube exists where you can find resources of altruistic, qualified people doing what ChatGPT claims it can do for free in a much more entertaining and engaging way in under 10 minutes sometimes.

Besides, countless channels have college-level summaries and analyses written by experts that was probably used to train AI models- sans the hallucinations. With just a little digging, you can also find academic papers other people have written that analyze most of the topics and subject matter you're gonna have to learn in school.

Just type .pdf after after a search. Something that people often overlook when making this argument is reckoning with what people did before generative AI. It's like the pro data center argument. We need them for cell phones and internet too. We were doing just fine with the amount of data centers we had just a few years ago.

We don't want or need more for a technology that has yet to prove its value. And maybe making that comparison when it comes to education is a little unfair, because this country hates people trying to better themselves, and has always made education extremely inaccessible for way too many people. But the answer isn't to outsource it to a flawed machine that incentivizes laziness.

Companies and governments could take that data center money and use it to fund rural areas and provide resources to those marginalized people in the form of human teachers that actually know what the hell they're talking about, and care about their students, who will look them in the eye and tell them they're doing a good job.

About a week after I started working on this video, Dolly Parton died. She was someone who I can confidently say everyone loved and respected across political and religious lines, who all pretty much agreed that her philanthropy was as important a part of her character as her Southern rhinestone charm was.

For the past three decades, her Imagination Library has given out over 300 million books to children from all different socioeconomic backgrounds, just because she wanted to help and understood the value in providing resources to developing children, and not a shortcut. It was also funded in part by private and public donations.

And what some states have done over the last few years? Defunded it. Defunded Dolly Parton. I wanna defund a lot of things, but I don't wanna defund Dolly Parton. And I can't prove it, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of that money found its way into the pockets of OpenAI and Oracle. On the front page of their website, there's a quote: "I know there are children in your community with their own dreams.

They dream of becoming a doctor, or an inventor, or a minister. The seeds of these dreams are often found in books, and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world." When she says books, I think she also means an education, the ability to comprehend the complexities of the world around you, to sort between fact and fiction, and truth and lies.

And learning to read early is a first step towards that comprehension. Without her support of those future doctors and inventors, and ministers, I guess- By very simple means, our world would be a worse place, and if one person can use all that fame and money to do good, who isn't even a billionaire mind you, then countless others with just as much influence and wealth can as well.

But they choose not to. Governments and trillion-dollar, trillion-dollar companies can invest in communities, not by offering a snake oil shortcut that has no proof of effective concept. Handing off teaching to an AI model is short-term gains in exchange for long-term disadvantage, i.e., being able to figure out when you're being taken for a ride.

People with low literacy skills tend to have low critical thinking skills and an inability to process complex linguistics, and thus social contexts that manifest in frustration, anger, and anxiety, ultimately alienating them even more. Basically, using AI as an educational tool is doing to Gen Z and Alpha what lead poisoning did to Boomers, and what microplastics are probably doing to Millennials.

Whatever's going on with Gen X is their own fault, though. Maybe it's meth.

if you've been reading local news, you might know that water treatment plants have been being cyber attacked at the highest rate ever. And that's very little to do with AI. It's to do with the Iran war. But the way in which they're being hacked is a lot of these systems are sat on the open internet with default passwords, passwords that anyone can guess.

Someone can literally go and log into the infrastructure that controls a town's water supply, the water they need to survive, and take control of it That's not an AI issue. That's an infrastructure security issue. That's an ICS issue. That's a cybersecurity issue. It's a resiliency and a disaster recovery issue.

It's pretty much everything but an AI issue. And we're trying to focus on problems like that, problems like defending networks, defending critical infrastructure, and the AI bros are coming out like, "Look at me. I've just come up with this new hypothesis for how AI wipes out all of humanity." And for some reason, it involves cybersecurity, which is mind-boggling to me because while cybersecurity is an issue that is near and dear to my heart, it is not the worst thing.

Like cyber attacks are not the worst thing that can happen. In fact, Anthropic came out just last week with a report that terrorist organizations were using their AI model to vibe code ballistic missile guidance systems, a phrase that I could have never in a billion years imagined myself saying. And of course, one single missile could kill more people than every cyber attack in history combined.

But for some reason, they always just come back to focusing on cybersecurity. And I think it's because they're just so out of touch that they really cannot imagine harm beyond some computer systems getting hacked. They cannot comprehend the idea that there is more to the safety of the human race than stopping computers from being hacked.

And it's actually something that I've noticed myself in my own research. Anthropic is very notorious for having very strict guardrails with regards to cybersecurity, to the point where I was analyzing an attack, like an attack in a client network, and I asked Claude, "Hey, what does this code do?" And it was like, "Oh, oh, sorry, I can't tell you that.

if I tell you that, it's, it's hacking. You'll, you'll understand hacking, and then you can hack." And I'm like, "You cannot be serious. Like you're refusing to help me analyze a security breach because you think telling me about how it happened would help me hack. Like I can't go online and Google how to hack."

And bearing in mind, I'm in Anthropic CVP, which is their cyber verification program, which gives, verified cybersecurity professionals access to less restricted versions of their model, and I can't get it to do defensive security work. But then I was like curious. I was like, "Well, is this the same for every area?

Like what if I was asking about how to build weapons?" So I went and I started asking it questions about how to build weapons. And like to my absolute shock, it was just happily going along. It was like, "Yeah, you can do this. You can build this." And it was telling me how to build weapons that can end a human life.

But analyzing a cyber attack was just way too dangerous. And it brought me to the realization that Anthropic does not understand risk. They do not in the slightest understand risk. They have, for some reason, this insane fixation on cybersecurity and cyber risk at the cost of everything else. if I saw terrorist organizations using my product to build missiles, that would be my next blog post.

It wouldn't be, "Oh my God, what about a big botnet, like a, a botnet that is so big it takes over the entire internet?" I'd be like, "Yeah, the, the missile, dude. the, the people are building missiles." But the fact that terrorists being able to make advanced weaponry is being taken less seriously than completely made-up scenarios in which, a lot of computers get hacked, it, it's mind-blowing to me.

I just... I cannot wrap my head around it. These people are so deeply unserious. And of course, when you ask them, "What is, what is your trajectory? Like, how do we go from where we are now to this, insane hypothesis where AI wipes out humanity?" Their answer is usually one of two things, AGI or RSI.

RSI is the idea that an AI model could build a better AI model, and then that AI model in turn could build a better AI model, and then suddenly the capabilities just go parabolic, and suddenly you have a super intelligence that's outside your control AGI does not exist. No matter how much the marketing departments try and claim that they have achieved AGI, they have not.

And the same with RSI. They have not proved that meaningful recursive self-improvement is possible. So essentially, it is a cult. We have built these ideas of these AIs becoming gods, unstoppable superintelligences, all-knowing, all-being. They can hack any system. They can destroy anything. And we're fighting that instead of the very real risks that we actually have.

ChatGPT is giving people literal psychosis. We have terrorists making missile guidance systems. We have people using AI to aid in phishing, aid in writing malware, like actual real threats to deal with. I am deadly serious when I say this is a cult. It has all of the makings of a cult. But instead of an omniscient god that has existed since the beginning of time, it's humans.

They made the god, and they lose control of the god. And we're treating this as if it is a real safety issue that, needs real attention and real experts dedicated to instead of actual problems. some guy's doomer god fantasy is what we need to be spending our time on. I'm just gonna be honest.

I'm sick of it. I am sick of listening to these people. I'm sick of the Dario Amadeis. I'm sick of the Sam Altmans. I'm sick of these random researchers coming out of the lab like, "Oh my god, guys, I've been working on the orphan-crushing machine, and you will not believe this. It crushes orphans. I need to tell you about how bad it is."

And it's like, yeah, dude, we've been saying this the whole time. We were all like, "AI sucks. Please stop shoving it down our throats." And also, you're being insanely reckless with it. OpenAI went and they made the most terrible sandbox in history, and then it, their AI agent got out, and it hacked a site, and they were like, "See?

This is how dangerous AI is." It's like, no, this is how dangerous not sandboxing technologies is. This is like the CDC walking down the street with a comically large vial of smallpox, dropping it in a crowded area, and then being like, "See? This is why we need to care about this god we're making that makes worse smallpox."

It's entirely insane. I 100% agree that we definitely need to be focusing on how absolutely reckless these AI labs are, but not because they're making gods, not because they're building superintelligences or AGI, but because they're making systems that can cause harm, and they can build weapons, and they can give people mental issues, and they can hack, and they are controlling them in the most reckless way possible.

when we talk about superintelligence exceeding humans at all cognitive tasks, the question is what do we mean by that to a degree? Because it's, this is about us in the real world being, with the physical environment, we're talking, we're communicating. And, and we- I was with my, with my little nephew who's 16 months old, and she said, it's 3:00 in the morning, an unfamiliar bo- baby's crying.

Work out what's wrong and safely get them back to sleep." And these are the... she said, "These are the sorts of questions that would be asked. Is that a cognitive task?" Do you see what What, what do we mean by superintelligence exceeding humans at all cognitive tasks? Bearing in mind that completely, it sounds like it...

some people are like, "That's left field," but it's about the interactions in the real world that define us. 

Totally. Yeah, I would say, if, if you're asking my definition of superintelligence, I would say the AIs would need to be able to succeed at that before I would call them superintelligence, at least as we defined it in the book.

and so it would need to be the case that, if you put this AI in a robot body, it is able to go, figure out what's wrong and, and, get your nephew back to sleep. and I think that if an AI is smart enough, it can figure out how to run that robot body, figure out what's going on in a human, figure how to steer it, figure out how to, how do like diagnose, whether the child needs burping or whether they just need to be rocked back to sleep.

the, the flip side of this, though, is that, If we define super intelligence as better than humans at every cognitive task, then that means we don't get to be surprised by the world being changed by things that don't technically count as a super intelligence. what, what might matter here is not whether, when the AIs are better than the best human at everything.

What might matter is when are the AIs able to do AI research at a superhuman level and self-improve, When are the AIs able to do their own novel scientific and technological development? When are the AIs able to run a robot factory to build more robots, and then use those robots to run laboratories and start inventing their own tech?

That could happen before AIs are better than us at everything and, and that's the line that determines our fate. 

And just a couple of final things. what, one, is, is... Would it end up being exponential in theory, the improvements that would happen, and with no limit, and therefore the gap between those computers and us would be like we are ants essentially to them?

We, we... And there's no way they can outmaneuver us. Or we can outmaneuver them, sorry. 

Yeah, it's not without limit. There's definitely limits. the light speed limitation fundamentally says you, you can't get that much machine in one spot con- communicating with all parts of the machine fast enough.

And there's, there's fundamentally limits. the issue is that the limits are super high, if, if, If someone's like, "Hey, we're testing a nuke in this village, maybe you should leave." And you're like, "Oh, well, a, a nuclear explosion can't run away forever. There's limits on how fast and how far, a chain reaction can go.

Eventually it's gonna run out of fuel." yeah, also please evacuate the town. We're, like, dropping a nuke here, the, the fact that there exists limits does not mean the limits are low. And with intelligence, it looks like the limits are probably really, really high. humans just have a lot of limitations in our intelligence.

We're running on neurons which are much slower than transistors. we're running on brains which are small compared to how big a data center can be. we have pretty low, access to power i- in terms of, like a, a human runs on about as much electricity as a light bulb. and whereas, whereas these AIs are running on, as much electricity as a city.

They're, like, radically less efficient than us. We know this. But, what's the limits? The limits are huge. The limits are, like, AIs that think a million times faster and can make a ton of copies of themselves. and, it's, the, the, the, the issue with the runaway AIs is not that they run away forever.

It's not that, they become an all-powerful god. the issue is that they could vastly outstrip humanity. And if they don't care about us, and they're the ones running all the technology, running the show, then we're likely to die as a side effect. Again, not 'cause they hate us, but just because, they build their own technology, their own infrastructure, their own automated data centers, they make more data centers and, and, they're like, "We actually wanna run the f- the, the planet really hot 'cause that's the most efficient for running data centers."

And we're like, "We are going to die if you do that." And if they don't care, you have a problem. And, we don't, we don't know how to make the AIs care, which is in some sense the crux of the issue. 

Just very lastly, what, what if the real risk is actually by k- acting on the mounting concerns, billions of people die in that superintelligence could cure cancer, abolish aging, basically d- deal with all the issues that are actually killing humans, and make...

we could end up, if they abolish aging, people could essentially immortality. What about that? What, what if that's the real risk, that we're gonna stop development which, which saves us from all these terrible fates? 

Yeah, a lot of people say, "Oh, we have to either stop and never get this advanced technology or gamble right now with these, AIs nobody understands and we clearly can't keep control of."

And this is just a false dichotomy. there's a third option. You don't need to choose between gambling humanity at, 10% or 90% odds, whatever you think it is, and never finding some way to get this wonderful tech. We can just stop the crazy AI race and, find a way to get that tech more safely.

Frankly, you can continue a lot of the cancer research without, trying to make a superintelligence. we can just deploy current AI tech towards drug discovery and cancer research without needing to make a smarter swarm. And if you're like, "Well, we need the smarter swarm to cure aging because, that's the only way to get it smart enough to cure aging," well, it's not gonna cure aging if you make a smarter swarm and lose control of it and it kills us all, right?

sometimes I feel like we are in this bus racing towards a cliff, and I'm like, "We need to stop the bus before you go over the cliff." And people are like, "Well, there's a huge pile of gold at the bottom of the cliff, though." And I'm like, "Yes, I agree that there's a huge pile of gold at the bottom of the cliff, but slamming into it at terminal velocity is not a great way to add all that value to our economy."

I'm not saying we can never get it. I'm saying we gotta stop the bus and find some other way down. 

Now, Section C, The Grift, The Bubble, and The Doom Marketing

It's easier for us to imagine Terminators than to wrestle with the idea that these companies are gonna blow up the economy, right? It's like there's, there's a weird- Yeah ... there's a weird like self-soothing like, "Oh, I'm worried about the Terminator," this like mythic story, rather than the old boring story of this isn't the Terminator, this is the big short, right?

Yes. I think underneath all of this is that like the actual thing, the doomsday situation here might actually be that these companies end up cratering the entire economy. For those who, who have been focused on the Terminator movie version of AI and not on the big short version, of the AI story, who may think that the big short version of the AI story has nothing to do with them 'cause they, all they use is ChatGPT, just remind us of like that happening concurrently here.

Like how the actual doomsday story for all of us, for everyone listening to this might be an economic story. 

So from the very beginning, large language models have been sold on what they might do rather than what they do do. They are useful for search, but again, they hallucinate mathematically certain to make mistakes.

Useful for coding. How? The more complex the coding, the less reliable they are. Great for very specific functions. The more you expand, the more unreliable and more unstable they become. They're also incredibly expensive both to run and to train, costing billions of dollars a month at this point, I think for Anthropic and OpenAI.

And as a result, they require over a trillion dollars of capital expenditures from Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Oracle, CoreWeave, and a bunch of other companies to the data centers. The reason these companies want you to think about superintelligence is so that you don't think about the rest of it, which is this is cloud software.

My girlfriend actually made a point about this, which is if the... and this is a problem in the media, in investors, in everyone thinking about AI. If this isn't the Terminator, if this isn't the path to superintelligence, everyone has to think, "Oh God, we just spent three or four years going insane about cloud software, spending a trillion dollars, making our stock market functionally dependent on the earnings of tech companies for cloud software that's really unprofitable, unsustainable, doesn't really have any effect on productivity data, like doesn't actually appear to be helping people that much.

The data says that actually they make some engineers slower." If you can't see it as this big scary thing- which is a way of rationalizing all the expenditures. It's very, very dark and sad, and tells you a lot about the world. It tells you that the media does not care about getting it right.

Fell for it again award for everyone. That they... And the thing that Matt was talking about was very, very accurate, where it's they hear these people and they go, "Oh, they're rich. Oh, they're working at the companies. They must know." It's weird. They're like, "Well, these people who have an obvious financial incentive and a obvious peer-based incentive to say these things, they'd never lie, they'd never overstate."

And the problem is, when you don't really interrogate the underlying technology or the numbers, all you do is just summarize. And because AI exists as this very spec- good at very specific things, but in the, in the round is questionably useful on, a general purpose level Suddenly you just end up publishing whatever they want.

They're just like, "Well, it's got... We've had this much improvement, so it will improve this much in the future. Invest now." It's much easier to believe that all of this data center capacity was built because all of these smart people have an idea and they're building towards it than it is to accept that we're at the end of tech's hypergrowth era.

The tech industry has run out of big ideas. They don't have a new Google search. They don't have a new Facebook. They haven't had for years. This is their last shot. And most of the revenue for AI, by the way, comes from Anthropic and OpenAI. So again, people say, "Well, they wouldn't invest all this money for no reason, would they?"

Well, 

it's not for no reason. They were just wrong. But again, s- like Stoller said, it's easier to think, "Well, they're all building dangerous superintelligence," than thinking, "Oh, everyone was wrong. The media got it wrong. The investors got it wrong. Everyone got it wrong." And now while this might not be great financial crisis bad, it really comes down to how private credit goes, because we don't know how big it is due to the nature of private.

This is a worse than dotcom scenario for the markets. On top of the fact that afterwards, big tech does not have a next big thing. 

Let's touch briefly on this idea that AIs are gonna be replacing humans for work because, of course, I think for a lot of people, this is the big fear that they're, living with in their day to day, is this looming idea that there is an AI coming for their job. I'm thinking particularly when it comes to younger people.

There was a McKinsey report saying, I, I think like 51% of firms are already, cutting their new hires of graduates. so, so what do you say to people who are watching this who are saying, it's all well and good saying the AI scare is overblown, but we're already seeing the job market change, and I'm already seeing, for young graduates, that it's really hard to even get a job now because those lower level entry jobs have been- Yeah

replaced. 

So in the, in the history of automation, this isn't the first time we've had one of these struggles between, labor and capital over automation. And where automation is driven by labor, it is typically adopted in service to making a better quality output. basically, workers pick up a new tool if they think it'll let them do a better job Which you've all done that, right?

And something that we do, I don't know, if you paint Warhammer miniatures, you don't go out-- No one makes you buy a new brush, but you might be like, "Oh, this brush is gonna let me, make the world's tiniest eyeball dots." and when capital drives automation, it is typically in service to increasing throughput, making more, right, per worker.

And where capital has market power, where they can force consumers to accept an inferior output, so think here of like AI chatbots replacing customer service, right? so customer service sucked before, and now it's the, the bad joke, right? And, and, particularly like you can tell that they didn't wanna do good customer service 'cause they went to the Pacific Rim, and they hired like smart people, like people in the Philippines and India who had gone to university and worked really hard, and then they said, "You are not allowed to solve anyone's problems.

You must follow this script, and the script does not have any place that it ends in which someone's problem is solved. Your job is to speak reasonably good English and get shouted at." And of course, a chatbot can speak reasonably good, English and get shouted at more, far more cheaply than anyone in the Philippines or India, so we're moving that to them.

And so if you have market power, you can force people to accept inferior output. I'm, I'm trying to get someone at the Royal Mail to f- actually deliver a parcel for me, and all they do is put red cards through my mailbox, and it's impossible to get anyone on the phone, right? And when I do, that person's job is to just get shouted at me because they manifestly cannot solve my problem.

Thank you for privatizing the Royal Mail. This is great. I'm so glad we're exposed to the efficiencies of the free market. So, that means that we are now living in a moment in which senior workers are w- being asked to do more, right, with fewer colleagues. they're being asked to effectively move from doing the part of the job that requires discernment, judgment, creativity that is satisfying and just becoming someone who like babysits the computer, who marks the computer's homework.

and because they can increase throughput just by having one or two senior workers who would've historically been, at least in line for some market power because they're senior, which means that there's demand for their services. But now if you can say, "Actually, we're just gonna make everything a bit shit, and so we don't need as many workers 'cause we don't need anyone to do the quality assurance anymore.

and we're gonna, therefore have far more labor competition among senior workers." And actually it's quite nice that there's all these junior workers who are unemployed because they become a standing army. You wouldn't wanna be-- You wouldn't wanna have to join those junior workers out on the breadline, so you better accept the lower wages or worse working conditions or longer hours.

Remember, working longer hours for the same pay is taking a pay cut, right? It's your, your hourly rate has gone down. And so this is a moment in which capital has found an opportunity to dis- to discipline labor. And because of the AI bubble, it's also a moment in which firms can announce that they're making swingeing headcount cuts without the market making the inference that they're doing worse.

Normally, if you make thousands of workers redundant, it's because your sales have dropped off. but now you can say, "No, it's because the AI has solved our problems." And the countervailing trend with AI is that lots and lots of workers are being hired back on Because it turns out that they're cutting past the bone.

Hmm. 

And I'm quite worried about this because just rehiring those workers doesn't mean that everything goes back to normal. There's a really important part of industrial process called process knowledge. So we, we're all familiar with IP. IP, you could broadly say, is anything you can write down about how a worker does their job, hang up in a filing cabinet, and sell with the company.

It's an asset. Process knowledge, sometimes called, tacit knowledge, although that's usually like what one worker has. Process knowledge is more all the workers in a, in a firm or across firms in a sector. It's the-- It's the little bits and pieces of lore that you could never write down.

Even if someone offered you $20 million, you couldn't write it all down. You certainly can't train an AI on it 'cause it's not written down. and without it, the company grinds to a halt. there's the machine, and the machine takes an input, and if you put the input in too fast, the machine jams. So first of all, there's some process knowledge about how fast to put it in, but there's also, oh yeah, the, there's the one person who knows how to unjam it, but if they're on vacation, the person that used to have that job retired last year and I have their mobile number, they'll do it for 50 quid, and that's the difference between whether the factory's running today or it's not.

To give you a very concrete example of this, a couple of years ago, there was a chip foundry making microchips. Chips came off the line. They were defective. They could only run at about half their nominal clock speed. So the person in charge of this had process knowledge. They knew that they had a customer, and within that customer, there was a faction, and that faction had been saying, "We should really make a low-end laptop.

There's a-- There's demand for this." And no one believed them, and it was too expensive to try. So they called up this s- this company, this, this customer, and they said, "We got a load of really cheap, slower chips. Do you wanna take them off our hands?" They said, "Yeah, this is what we need to convince the company to go out with a cheaper chip."

that product was called the MacBook Neo. It is the most successful product launch Apple has had in 10 years. They are now manufacturing low-end chips because they s- they sold out of the chips that came off the line that wouldn't run at full speed because it was so successful. That's process knowledge, and when you fire everyone, you vaporize the process knowledge because the way process knowledge carries on is through something like apprenticeship, right?

You go to work and people show you the ropes. They answer the questions. You learn that when this thing is stuck, you hit it like that. Hmm. Right? If you fire everyone, all that lore disappears, and then it has to be rediscovered, and that's the work of a generation. To do. And so that is going to make the firms involved significantly less productive, which means that our economy is gonna be slower and weaker.

It means the workers aren't going to produce the things that we need and love. It means the workers themselves will have worse jobs. It means there, there will be fewer profits for workers to lay claim on if they can find a way, for example, to unionize and make a claim on those profits, right? It's, it is a cataclysmic thing that is happening because of this.

You are right if you're a young worker to be angry about AI, but it's important that we distinguish between AI can do my job, which is a reason for people to invest in AI companies, and my boss can be convinced to fire me and replace me with an AI that can't do my job, which is a very different story.

We don't wanna help them raise money for the bubble because then the bubble goes on and gets worse, and when it detonates, it'll be an even bigger problem.

If I could, I would certainly slow down AI and robotics. 

Really? You want to slow it down because, you've been promising robot butlers since 2021. You said you'd have a functioning prototype by 2022 and a commercial release by 2023. You remember that Kim Kardashian Tesla bot commercial campaign? Yeah, those things were already a year overdue when that happened.

So far, all you've actually delivered is a demonstration of a remote controlled robot butler being operated by an actual human, which is, objectively worse than just a regular human butler. Oh, yeah, trust me, I would really love to deliver on, the promises I've made to my investors, but, I can't because, Actually, it's 'cause the technology is too cool and awesome.

Anybody else notice that whenever these AI companies release information or one of their employees leak information that their super powerful AI has escaped its sandbox and hacked some website, it always happens in a way that didn't actually cause any tangible or monetary damage? See, a conspiratorially-minded person might say it's almost as if they're providing us with the evidence that would call for regulation, but in a way that wouldn't call for any legal or fiscal accountability for the companies themselves.

Now, don't get me wrong, I would be super in favor of humanity deciding that we should definitely be pouring way fewer of our collective resources down the throat of the Slopinator 9000. But that's not what they're calling for, is it? They don't want a reduction of collective investment in the infrastructure of their technology.

They're just calling for a reduction of the expectations for an actual return on that investment. Now, when you look at the statement released by Anthropic's CEO demanding that we pace the frontier, one of the things he's calling for is an exception to antitrust laws. the laws that exist to prevent giant corporations from collaborating in order to monopolize their industries.

It also seems like the regulations he's suggesting would put the major AI corporations in charge of determining what the regulations should be, which would allow them to set regulations preventing competitors from ever catching up, that are too expensive for smaller companies to exist or compete in the field at all, and that would functionally remove open source AI models from the field entirely, completely securing total corporate ownership of the technology in perpetuity forever and ever and ever.

See, that same conspiratorially-minded person might say it looks like these companies are trying to get a get out of jail free card to not deliver on the amazing progress they've been promising without bursting the illusion that that progress is, in fact, just beyond the horizon. Now, selling empty promises is Elon Musk's bread and butter.

He's promised Hyperloop trains and underground systems to solve the LA traffic problem, and tourism in space, and colonies on Mars, and cities on the moon, and rocket planes that take you from London to New York in just a few minutes, and cutting trillions of dollars from the federal budget. The list goes on and on and on.

His entire fortune consists of people actually believing his empty promises. Tesla is profitable, but nowhere near enough to actually justify him being the richest man in the world, or even really in the top 100. And SpaceX, well, SpaceX hemorrhages money. This is not traditional capitalism, right?

Capitalists are supposed to make money by selling products to people for a profit. The product that Elon Musk- sells is not Teslas or Starlink, it's the stock in his companies. And the way he maintains the value of that product is by maintaining the illusion that the value he's promising is in fact just beyond the horizon.

Which interestingly works, and not just for him, right? If you've bought stock in Tesla, then you've made a profit from owning it. But there's no such thing as generating value out of thin air. It's pixie dust. It's fugazi. That value will be paid for by whoever is left holding the bag when the bubble finally pops, which I believe is what he and his fellow corporate AI compatriots are trying their very, very hardest to delay for as long as possible.

But if you are still a faithful believer, I feel like you should be reminded that as it currently stands, it looks like we're actually gonna get GTA VI before we get Elon Musk delivering on a promise

a thing I've thought, not an original thought, is we know that these companies know everything about us.

They can predict our consumer desires. They can look at our scrolling to know if we're expecting a child or if we're depressed or whatever. Surely they don't need the IDs of people to know that they're an adult, and surely they, they like, they know who you are. They know who the kid... they know all of this.

So it's not like they're doing this for safety. It seems pretty clear that it's a surveillance type thing. Which makes it a bit strange that the same skepticism applied to other areas of technological development is read as a primitivist conspiracy among the broader left by Lorenz. And this has been a thing I've seen Taylor talk about more recently, whi- which is the the left.

whenever people use the left, I wonder, is that a real, is that a real thing you're talking about? Is there a real thing called the left? Point to the left. in the room, I saw some of this interview that's being referenced, and a lot of this interview and things I've seen Taylor say recently refer to a backlash against tech by the left, and in particular, the online left.

I'll put my cards on the table. I'm, I'm very anti-big tech, a- and I'm not anti-big tech in a way that's even that unique to tech. I, I'm anti-big tech in the same way that I'm anti-big oil, let's say. Big oil, bad for the planet, like we're all gonna die 'cause of it, things of that nature. Big tech, I think is actively eroding our humanity in a way that few technologies have historically.

I think big oil is eventually going to erode the conditions of the biological possibility of human life, let's say, but the existence of big oil doesn't, in a really direct way, suck away at the fundamental marrow of what it means to be a human in the way that I think AI does and in the way in which I think Silicon Valley makes very clear they want to.

A-and it doesn't take a lot of time spent with the leaders of Silicon Valley, and by time spent with, I don't mean in their sex dungeons in San Francisco. I, watching interviews, reading their books, the, reading the things they write and the things they say, to get that these are people that don't give two fucks whether you live or die.

But, but back to this piece. In a recent interview with Max Tanney and Ben Smith on Semafor, Lorenz says, "So much of the backlash to AI is the backlash to Big Tech. It's people that are angry about the influence that tech has over their lives, and they feel powerless against those big tech conglomerates."

Yeah, most definitely. So much of the backlash to AI is the backlash to Big Tech. It's people that are angry about the influence that tech has over their lives, and they feel powerless against those big tech conglomerates. Lorenz is right in offering a diagnosis based on power. People are concerned about the asymmetry between communities they live in and firms coming into them, keen on advancing an undemocratically planned and privately managed build-out that's at times hysterically marketed as the prelude to the destruction of life as we know it.

This is important 'cause I think, and we talked about this last week, there is a hyperbolic reaction to things like the data center and the build-out of tech that's this person's gonna build the data center, and then the data center's gonna start the singularity or whatever, and then, and then the singularity is gonna, gonna kill us all with computer.

sure, I don't buy it, and if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But I don't think I'm wrong. But I think what it is for a lot more people, and this is what Edward's getting at in this piece, it's the feeling of disempowerment by people. When the, when the big data center gets built in your town, it's not the mo- for most people, it's not the feeling of, "Oh, no, they're gonna make the singularity that's gonna, that's gonna fuck my brain till I die."

It's that, "Oh, giant corporations run by people who live on the other side of the country get to determine what happens in my backyard, and I have no recourse or say in that. They're colluding with the local government who I voted on to represent me, and holy crap, it seems like political and economic interests are colluding together in a way that shows no care at all for my existence or life."

And yet, a few seconds after making that observation, Lorenz adds, "This is my big disagreement with the left. I think a lot of people on the left do not believe in a tech-forward future. They just wanna go back." Before we keep going, let's, let's all put our cards on the table, cards on the table day. 

As a person on the left, as a member of the online left, I am not someone who's anti-tech.

I'm anti-big tech or Silicon Valley. I'm anti-technological innovation being inherently tied to market forces and the military industrial complex in the same way I'm against, medical research being a part of a for-profit industry, The issue isn't the thing. It's the structural conditions that the thing lives in

And Finally, Section D, Fighting Back - Workers, Communities, and Alternatives

the tech bosses have, have left their carrot era and entered their stick era. And that is an explicit aim at disciplining their workforce that they view as unruly and in the way of their race to win AI. And, something that we, we try to chronicle in the book is pretty much every moment of tech worker resistance or collective action to push back on the boss results in retaliation from the boss.

And what we saw in, 2022, even up to today, is retaliation for a movement that spanned the industry. tech bosses were looking at Google, Amazon, New York Times, a- almost every tech company was doing union avoidance over the past few years. And they saw an opportunity that aligned with their fiscal responsibilities to discipline their workforce with mass- Hmm

layoffs, with return to office, with, p- basically precarity, which is their biggest tool to suppress organizing 

Yeah, and I, I, I think the, the, the way in which they go about this is, is also, is also quite interesting, right? And I think it relates to the, the rightward shift of the tech elites.

we-- if, if we were to go back to the early tech worker movement and take account of the kinds of things that tech workers were protesting against, they were like you were saying earlier, these social issues, social justice Me Too, LGBT rights, but as, as well as, anti-militarism, this kind of, this kind of thing.

And, And I, I, I think the way that the tech bosses basically interpreted this is that it was the kind of progressive values that, that they had cultivated within the tech industry that had caused their own employee base to turn against them. And so part of their retaliation against the tech worker movement is to, is to go against those progressive values, right?

Is to wage war on what they would call the woke, values, right? That, that had caused the mutiny in the first place. Right? And, and we can, we can kind of see that in, in terms of how, how they go about disciplining this workforce, right? when you think of, around 2022, 2023, that's that's a moment in which we start to see tech bosses really go all out on this attack.

And- Mm ... and part of this attack is attacking DEI, attacking sort of the AI ethics crowd, right? Attacking these havens where they believe these kind of progressive values are, are, are, are spreading. and yeah. so I, I, I think it's important to s- to make that connection. 

Yeah. No, I think...

That's why I really love that, chapter, was it, Billionaire, Class Consciousness, right? Where you, you lay this out. Because I think, there's still a lot of, misconceptions or shorthand stories that get in the way with understanding the post-pa- the pandemic and post-pandemic, developments, both in the market and in the market, a- and in the firms themselves, that also get in the way of understanding what came before, 

and like you said, how by virtue of, cultivating these progressive values, they, in anticipation, were like, "Okay, well let's, like, you know, let's crush the head of the snake." And then hardened, the anti-tech sentiment that led to, even more aggressive moves than I think they would've ever anticipated.

I don't think they ever would've anticipated, some Brandeisian, Brandeisian resurgence, for example, right? Or, a sustained effort at organizing firms internally or blo- and continuing to block them from doing certain lines of work. and by reframing so many of the tools that I think are just thought of as "Oh, this is just, the structure of a work.

You have pips, You have certain time, you have certain ways of doing time off, right? have, you have certain ways of, judging performance of a worker, certain ways of organizing the distribution of labor and contextualizing them to be like... No, actually these are all, like- Things that the tech companies explicitly adopted as ways to say "We gotta get this, we gotta get the mi- we pr- the, the woke mind virus out of our companies," essentially, right?

"We have to get this out so that we can get back to doing what we love to do," which is, m- fossil hydrocarbon contracts, fossil fuel contracts, the military contracts. protecting the homeland and its, its energy security, right? Among other things, of course. 

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. I, I, I think it's, it's, this, this shift that we're talking about by the tech elites is something that, that they themselves talk about, you know- Yes ... in, in, in, in their circles, right? there, there are some tweets I, I, I remember that, I don't, I don't know if I'm gonna get this exactly correct, but, I remember in that period tech bosses telling each other just openly on Twitter, "You gotta fire the radicals to, to get things- Mm-hmm

under control," or, they would, they would... There's also a lot of name-calling, right? they would, they would say, "These are like, these t- these, these troublemakers, or these ESG grifters," right? Or, "They're, skittle-haired people with," a dig at at, at, at this group of workers.

Mm-hmm. 

M- Mark- Yeah ... Andreessen obviously is one of the, is one of the, he had, he had this big interview with The New York Times where he, where he openly talks about how his own radicalization was connected to, the tech worker movement, right? he was talking about how y- you could be a CEO of a company and get berated at an all hands meeting, right?

And, and these employees were so angry at you, just because you were, like, a white man. and so, it's, it's, it's so y- it's, it's so explicit sometimes in just how- Yeah ... in how they see things and, and h- how they talk about it. 

Yeah. this is something I j- And how it couldn't possibly be because of working conditions or, or because of how they were wielding their power in the workplace.

It, there's... It couldn't possibly be that. 

Y- yeah, admittedly a few years ago, this is something where I used to just be like, "Oh, these guys were always right-wing freaks. why are they talking as if they had a real road to Damascus moment?" The, but they did. They really did, some of them, where they thought that they were going on the middle path, right?

And, the resistance that they faced, as y- as you guys talking about, turned them even more into a right, rightward embrace, rightward turn. or maybe, and it also freed them to, I think, talk a little bit more about some of their, reactionary projects, but not just limit them to, the abstract.

political left and liberal, liberal elites out there, but, bring them back to the homeland, to their own companies, th- to introduce this sort of okay, we gotta do austerity, for the companies. We gotta really, yeah, s- like you said, fire the w- the radicals and brag about it online even though that's illegal 'cause who's gonna do anything, even if it's illegal.

Is the operating theory. I think o- o- one thing I would also be curious about is, as you, looking back and stepping back, do you guys think that looking at how they responded to the militancy, there was a way through where that was not the backlash? Or that contradiction was always going to just come up in one way or another, whether it was a movement that was less militant somehow, or a movement that was even more so and, and forced through, this sort of confrontation with, what they were doing and the values they'd cultivated and what they just wanted or needed as profit seekers, but also as, reactionaries in one way or another.

I, I guess I think that the, the, the rightward turn of the tech elites in particular, I, I don't wanna, I don't wanna sort of over-index on sort of the role of just the tech worker movement, right? I do think it is a, it is a very important part of the story. Yeah. But, this was also a period in which, in which, obviously there are broader political things happening in the world that had produced this kind of rightward shift as well.

Do you hate AI? The data's pretty clear right now, and it's intense. A March 2026 NBC News poll found only twenty-six percent of registered voters view AI positively, which means it's less popular than ice. Quinnipiac found fifty-five percent of Americans think AI will do more harm than good, up eleven points in a single year.

And Gallup found that only eighteen percent of Gen Z feels hopeful about it. Thirty-one percent of Gen Z say they're angry about AI. Apparently, we got a lot of AI haters out there. You might be one of them, or maybe you're just curious about what all the hate's about. Either way, we're gonna get to the bottom of it 'cause the anger isn't just showing up in the polls, it's now showing up in my mailbox.

I got this pamphlet sent to my house in Denver, paid for by a clean energy advocacy group. The front says, "A lot goes into data centers. What do we get out of it?" The inside lays it out with two big points. Data centers guzzle power, which means utilities keep aging coal plants running past their sunset dates and then pass those costs onto us.

And data centers also guzzle water for cooling. In a state like mine, where we're already facing water restrictions, this is a legitimate concern. Let's quickly address these two issues. I hear a lot about this water thing, but I think most people don't know the technology to fix the data center water problem already exists.

Microsoft is building closed loop systems that recycle water continuously without drawing from local supplies. And states like South Carolina and Kansas are both working on legislation to require this kind of closed loop system for any new data centers. This is a governance issue. Businesses won't just opt in to these extra costs.

We need to make it mandatory. We could, and we should. The coal problem has a similar fix. We just don't let data centers plug into our grid and leave customers holding the fossil fuel bill. We make them build new clean energy to cover the new capacity they need. And it turns out, Colorado already has a proposed bill for this.

It just needs to pass. So this fear-mongering rhetoric It's out there a lot. Some of it has a real basis in truth. But we can't let ourselves get sucked into the fear vortex. We gotta keep doing our research. That said, I do understand the fear and the anger. I've talked at length on this show about a bunch of really big challenges with AI.

But here's the other thing I am reasonably certain about: no matter how you or I feel about it, this train ain't stopping. This has been my position on this show since the beginning, and it's why I talk about AI as much as I do. If we're on this train, we need to understand how it works and where the frick it's taking us.

And if you're upset, that's reasonable. But if you vote a data center out of your town, tech companies will just build it in the next county or state or Canada or fricking space, apparently. The capital on this is too committed, and the momentum is too established. Getting angry at AI isn't gonna be a winning strategy.

Our anger needs a better target and, frankly, a better plan. I'm guessing you've heard the word Luddite. Basically a scared, backwards-looking, anti-technology peasant who can't handle progress. Well, that's what it means now. That's how I've always used it. But it wasn't always this way. Here's who the Luddites actually were.

It's 1811, England. The Industrial Revolution is underway. A group of textile workers in Nottingham begin a campaign of organized machine breaking, targeting the automated looms and knitting frames displacing their labor. They call themselves Luddites, followers of the mythical General Lud, a kind of Robin Hood figure for the industrial age.

Now, to this day, nobody knows if General Lud was a real person, but didn't really matter. He was a symbol of the idea that workers deserve a say in how transformative technology reshapes their lives. These were not ignorant peasants. They were skilled, trained, middle-class artisans, weavers who had spent years mastering their craft.

And what many people don't know is, before they broke a single machine, they tried every polite option available to them. In 1807, 130,000 workers signed a petition and sent it to Parliament demanding a minimum wage. 130,000 signatures. Parliament rejected it, mostly because the MPs voting it down were the same factory owners who would have had to pay the wage.

They asked for pensions for displaced workers. They asked for minimum labor standards. They requested that if machines were gonna take their jobs, the gains should at least be shared. They were ignored. So in March of 1811, they changed their methods and picked up some sledgehammers. They raided factories at night, targeting only the owners who were cutting wages and ignoring their demands.

In the early period alone, Luddite bands conducted at least 100 separate attacks, destroying roughly 1,000 machines. They were organized, strategic, surgical. The government's response was savage. Machine breaking was made a capital offense. At least 12,000 militiamen flooded the textile counties, and in a painful twist of irony, many of the troops were probably unemployed weavers.

In 1813- 17 Luddites were executed. Others were transported to Australia. The movement was crushed, not by argument, but by state force. And over time, Luddite got redefined from worker demanding fair terms in the face of displacement to idiot afraid of progress. Nobody even had to organize a smear campaign.

The word just got quietly repurposed during the computer revolution, and by the time it landed in our dictionary, the labor movement it came from had basically been written out of the definition. Since learning this, I've come to a rather strange realization: I think I'm a Luddite. Not in the redefined way, of course, but in the original sense.

I believe AI is transformative, it's happening, and in many ways, it's extraordinary. I just wanna know who gets the gains. I want the terms renegotiated. I want workers to have a seat at the table when decisions get made. That's the original Luddite position. Workers deserve a say in how transformative technology reshapes our lives.

one of the interesting things about how class consciousness started to crop up in the tech industry in the late 2010s was this moment where tech workers saw an opportunity to stand for the company's mission, right?

And they, stood up, said, "We should take this stance," and company leadership disagreed. That was a moment where workers realized that their interests were more aligned with the working class outside of their own companies than with their company's leadership, to begin with. And that kind of kicked off the tech worker movement, where people started to think more of themselves as workers.

They started to understand power structures in the workplace and build toward lasting change. 

That's fascinating. 'cause I was thinking, as JS was talking, what was the motivation here, right? if there's so much happening around 2018, we can think of a, a number of different things happening in that moment, right?

we're... You're not too long into the Trump presidency and, everything that that kind of brought with it. there's the controversy around, say, the Cambridge Analytic- Ana- Analytica revelations and how that is changing how people are seeing the tech industry and how these companies are operating.

we... As, as you're saying, Clarissa, challenging that narrative, but also this notion, of do no evil or, or whatnot that, was once associated with Google. Those things were being unraveled in that moment as well, right? y- you mentioned one reason for this organizing to be happening.

was there something broader that was going on as well, or, other things that were motivating this in that, in that time period? 

For a long time, tech workers, have been known for having some of the best jobs, right? Some of the cushiest jobs. Paid huge salaries, showered with perks. many of them even had the kind of, autonomy in their work that most other workers could only dream of.

And so, it, it is a bit of a, a, a puzzle as to why these, this group of workers ended up engaging in labor organizing. Like you were saying, Clarissa, I think it, it is super important to place this movement and the rise of this movement in the broader context in which it took place, right?

2018, the, the year the movement began, it was also the year, journalists and analysts were, were coining the term the techlash, right? It was this nationwide public backlash against the tech industry that, that was previously so celebrated, as not only the engine for innovation, but also for democracy and for, for being this bastion of progressive values.

But by 2018, right, a lot of these companies, a lot of these same tech companies started to get blamed for, for all kinds of societal issues, right? The spread of misinformation, the emergence of racially biased algorithms, the widening of political polarization, and I think, like you were mentioning, most of all, the election of Trump.

I think that was also the year in which the public broadly turned against the industry, and tech workers were very much in the middle of that, right? And they sided, in fact, with the public. People like Clarissa and I, when we were joining the tech industry in the 2010s, we very much believed that technology had this democratizing power and that Silicon Valley was gonna be the, the sort of perfect steward or vehicle for this v- for this vision.

And, y- I'll, I'll also say that, Silicon Valley was very much intentional in sort of marketing itself that way, right? They put on this progressive facade. They touted these grand missions about making the world more open, more connected, more democratic. Like Clarissa was saying, when, when these companies started to really get put under the pressure of capitalism and forced to profit maximize and build surveillance tools, weapons systems, exploitative, gig platforms and whatnot, it really became impossible to, to ignore how much the industry had gone back on these early promises.

And, and of course the workforce saw these abuses of corporate power as, as a major, major betrayal. By the time the, the techlash was in full blow, tech workers also were ready to mobilize. 

Yeah. And we, we see this over and over again in every stage of the tech worker movement, where these wider upswells of, resistance and transformative moments in society, like the Me Too movement, like Black Lives Matter, these are moments where tech workers feel strength in numbers from outside of their workplaces as well, which motivates them to stand up with, righteous, anger, and organize for a better society where they have the most leverage, which is at work.

Can you talk to me about that organizing as well, right? Because as you both mentioned, one thing that seemed really distinct when we think about the organizing in the tech industry was the issues that it was often associated with, right? when we think about unionization, we often think about pay, right?

what is the pay package that people are going to be getting to a lesser degree, do working conditions need to change? Does that need to be bargained? And certainly, that was, as I understand, part of the discussion, again, depending on the company that you're talking about. But there was also, this other kind of broader piece looking at societal issues that seem to be driving a lot of that organizing and, and getting a lot of those tech workers involved.

So can you talk a bit about the degree to which it was about those kind of, workplace issues versus those broader societal issues that the tech companies were very much implicated in when we think about climate change and militarization and, and those sorts of things? 

In the early tech worker movement, some of the most visible demands from tech workers were less related with what the labor movement terms bread and butter issues, like pay, hours, things like that, basic benefits.

and it was, it was more tied up with, how the technology was being wielded in society, or how the company was reproducing systems of oppression, like sexism. th- these were like larger issues in a way that went beyond the shop floor. but that being said, after those huge walkouts and amazing moments that catalyzed the tech worker movement, many tech workers that saw retaliation from taking part in these actions were more marginalized, were the more precarious workers at these companies, and that led tech workers to this idea that we need lasting structural power that will allow us to defend these massive wins that are on the horizon or that we've won already.

And that meant that a lot of the early union movement in the tech industry was led by the most precarious, most low-paid, most exploited workers at these companies, and Kickstarter is a great example of that. the, the trust and safety team, one of the lowest paid, hardest worked teams, underappreciated teams at Kickstarter- Of the people who worked that team and did that work, they were the ones leading the union drive, setting examples in how to organize and building power because they understood how important it was to balance the power in the workplace.

The characteristics of the tech worker movement where we say pushing back against the military, these really exciting radical things were also inextricably linked to bread and butter issues that would help empower workers to have the stability that they needed in order to engage in these struggles.

I think it's really important, like we were talking about, that there's so much resistance to AI in data centers that we also need to be thinking about what the alternative to this is instead of just saying, we need to stop the bad thing, which again, is important. What the AI build out shows, what the AI first agenda shows is that we can use, contrary to just like decades of propaganda basically saying the government is bad, we have to shrink the government.

That's a really concerted effort to, to benefit corporations and the wealthy, right? Which we are seeing with AI, but they're very clearly using the government so that-- So the whole thing is just a con at every level because they want to use the government to their ends. Some of what they're doing, at least the tools they're using for AI, this AI build out, are not necessarily bad.

Taking government stakes in companies, that could be a very useful tool for pro-social, pro-ecological ends. Like if we wanted to nationalize energy infrastructure and nationalize the energy grid, take stakes in companies to direct investment towards where we want to, to renewable energy, to public transit, et cetera.

We think it's really important to highlight that the project of world making should not be in the hands of the wealthy few, and that it should be in the hands of the working class, of the public, and the government is, is the main vehicle to do that. So, we have some recommendations like, uh, like public, public investment, democratically planning the grid.

Like instead of just letting big tech and AI companies just, just using the grid to facilitate their ends, like think-- using tools to, like the government to think about what is-- what should our energy grid look like? What should our energy system look like to benefit the planet and benefit people rather than AI companies?

Building a grid that is designed around social priorities, centering well-paying jobs, something like a green jobs guarantee. People talked a lot about a few years ago. I think we should-- need to be talking about that again because even if we set aside The sort of science fiction promises that AI is going to take everyone's job.

It is taking people's jobs right now, at least some people. I think it's a really important example to show that there's a lot of, there's a lot of precarity in our society that we need to use the government to, to prevent and ameliorate. And there's a lot of work that needs to be done if we're thinking about an energy transition, if we're thinking about repairing the biosphere and building a, something like a green and just society.

There's a lot of work that corporations are not going to want to pay for or pay well or provide jobs with dignity, and that's something we can use the government to do. And then AI, I think there's very clearly some uses or examples of AI That should be banned, right? When it comes to technologies and tech-technological advancement like this, we need public options and public control, public regulation, so it's not just Anthropic and xAI and OpenAI just doing kind of whatever they want.

and I, and I don't think that necessarily taking public ownership in those companies is, is even the best idea because I think we need from the ground up public alternatives that are fundamentally directed towards, social and ecological well-being. And who knows what that could look like.

We, we need public technology and computing infrastructure like that. And, I think that could really prevent and, mitigate a lot of the harms we're seeing. You can imagine what instead of an AI first agenda, we had a people and planet first agenda. And so think about that from like the t-the highest level where okay, how are we approaching the planning of our economy, the planning of our electricity grid, the planning of our-- the design of our cities and our land use that's actually benefiting well-being of ecosystems, the well-being of people first and foremost, and not, not Sam Altman or Elon Musk or whoever else, right?

So that's, that's the way we're, we're trying to, to think about it. 

Yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense, right? And, and just to pick up on a few pieces, like when you're talking about the, the jobs aspect of it, right? So many of these data centers promise a lot of jobs, but it's actually just construction jobs, and then there's not very much involved in actually running it, right?

the community is not actually getting, a lot of long-term employment out of these infrastructures that are very not just capital intensive, but resource intensive as you've been describing as well, right? And you mentioned the, the kind of democratic planning piece of this as well, and I feel when you talk about public technologies, obviously that's a way for us to get a lot more into or, or a lot more input on kind of the development of technologies, what technologies are being, put to use for the public rather than just whatever the tech industry is offering to us.

But it's also why I'm quite supportive of these efforts for moratoriums on data centers, right? It feels like that is an effort, however small or, maybe it's not as comprehensive as we would like, but at least to start to force some regulations, some expectations to start putting some rules in place around these data centers.

So it's not just the tech companies deciding for themselves what they wanna do and pushing the governments to do it, because the public is pushing on, whether it's their local governments or their state governments to get involved here, them having to put rules in place that, at least reflect some of these public demands to a certain degree in, what a data center, if it does get built locally, could actually look like, how it could operate, what resources it could use, and, and those sorts of things, right?

So much of this AI build out is very-- has been very undemocratic and even anti-democratic. I think we can think about moratoria as an exertion of democracy against that. This is happening so-- Like we've been talking about, this is happening so fast and to such a scale we have to slow it down, and we have to figure out alternatives to figure out what's going on and how we can, take that sort of power for alternatives and for democratic control 

No, I, I completely agree.

And, as we start to wrap up our conversation, I, I'm wondering about the path forward, right? obviously there are a lot of forces arrayed against us from the tech industry and their lobby and, everything that you've been talking about on that front. But even, as you've been saying, governments that are not always acting in our interest as well, right?

And are supporting what these tech, companies want. And so I wonder for you, what you see as, the path toward moving toward a framework like the one that you're laying out and, what kind of hints or, or, kind of movements in that direction you're seeing right now that can help us along, in that fight or, or in the achievement of that.

The future is up for grabs right now, and visions of the future, there's not really a-- it doesn't feel like there's a lot on offer. Like I was saying earlier, it feels like the AI future is very vague, and it's also doesn't sound good really. even, even like in their most like, their most lofty promises, like that doesn't really sound good to me.

and I think, it doesn't sound good to a lot of people. So I think there's a lot of space, and that has to be contested for like what could an alternative future look like. That's where people's needs are met, where people are not, co- people's cost of living is not going through the roof, where corporations aren't allowed to pollute with impunity, where we have renewable energy and public transit and libraries and schools and, and all these sorts of things that I think people want and people need.

What we're seeing with this data center resistance is a very interesting and potent sort of political moment of, of potential, of where people are fighting against these sort of undemocratic oligarchic forces. And maybe they're not always, they're not always like someone who's coming at that from like a, a traditional left politics perspective, but that's a, that's a place where you can say, "Hey This data center that, that is being imposed on you, well, here's who's doing that and here's why, and here's, the negative effects, and, here's what maybe what some alternatives to be-- could be.

And maybe that's, maybe the groups organizing a data center resistance could organize to-- for something more beneficial in their community, right? So to me, that's like a place of political potential is this data center resistance, and we're seeing a lot of candidates running on that. I think-- I don't wanna, sugarcoat it.

I think it's gonna be a big challenge because as you talk about, as we've been talking about this conversation, the inequality in our, in our society is just so enormous right now from Elon Musk briefly being the world's first trillionaire to, increasing cost of living and, to the working class and the way that the Trump administration has just been so blazen- brazenly corrupt and authoritarian.

So it's a big challenge, but I do think that with the way that they've been pushing this so hard, I think it's, it's a potential-- there's a lot of potential for political openings here. And I think it also shows that contrary to maybe some-- what some people are saying right now or what we're seeing from the Trump administration's actions, that people do care a lot about the environment and, and climate change and that, I, I think That's one of the things people are citing the most from what I've seen with why they're resisting data centers, is concerns about the environment.

By doing this, they're drawing attention to it, and, I think that that's a lot of space for, for us to, to collectively imagine alternatives. 

"What does a complex global civilization require to function?"

Because it's that complex adaptive system that allows the ultra wealthy to live their ultra lavish lifestyles. And when we answer the question of what a complex global civilization needs to function, the logic of this solution breaks down pretty quickly because the ultra wealthy depend on systems that require a lot of other people.

Think about what it takes to maintain a billionaire lifestyle: private jets that require global supply chains for fuel and parts and pilots and air traffic control, luxury goods that require designers and craftspeople and logistic networks, medical care that requires doctors and researchers and pharmaceutical supply chains, technology that requires engineers and chip fabs and rare earth mining and electricity grids.

You couldn't run modern civilization with 100 people and robots. Feudal lords had all the land and weapons, but they couldn't maintain Roman-level complexity with tiny elite populations. Why? 'Cause complex systems require large populations for specialization and redundancy and innovation. Without those things, the system simplifies.

Less trade, less coordination, less resilience. Modern billionaires would face the same constraint. They might survive, but they wouldn't be able to maintain current levels of complexity. Complex systems need the conditions that sustain complexity. Remove billions of people, you don't get the same civilization.

You get a simpler one. So I don't believe there's any depopulation plan, but I do think there's a trajectory where capital optimizes for fewer workers, more wealth concentration, and further isolation of elites. Not because anyone's planning it specifically, but because that's where the current incentives lead.

It's not inevitable, it's just the currently incentivized trajectory. We talked about this last week, and here's the good news. Trajectories, wealth only means something in the container of a functioning society. Money is a social technology It requires collective belief. If society collapses, their billions are just numbers in a database that nobody gives a crap about.

They need us more than they think, and we have more power than they seem to remember. So those are the main varieties of crises that people seem to be imagining. None of those possibilities quite hold up under scrutiny, but all of our collective intuition, I think, still seems to be screaming, "There is a crisis coming, and AI will have something to do with it."

I will admit, my spidey sense says the same thing. At a macro level, humanity has seen this pattern before, multiple times across thousands of years in every major civilization, I think. Our societies organize and then reorganize over and over. The word collapse often gets invoked in these situations, but to me, that word implies something that isn't exactly happening, which is why I like this notion of reorganization better.

We've talked about this transition before in relation to the fourth turning. There's a crisis and then a reorganization, a winter and then a spring. So when people ask, "Can we prevent an AI crisis?" I can tell you what history suggests. Probably not. The reforms we desperately need, in this case, income replacement, automation dividends, public AI stakes, new social contracts, these kinds of things don't tend to happen before the disruption.

They happen after. After the Triangle Fire, after the suffragists actually suffer, after the Great Depression, after the organizing conflict forces enough of us to choose. So if we can't preempt the crisis, what is the point of me telling you all of this? Why do I make these episodes week after week? It's because of something that I call the chaos window.

The chaos window is the period between when the old system breaks down and the new system takes hold. It's the messy, melty transition from winter to spring. It's when society experiences maximum uncertainty and often maximum pain. But it's also the season that contains maximum possibility. And here's what history shows.

Some chaos windows are short and some are devastatingly long. But what makes them different isn't luck, it's preparation. And we're gonna go into this in more depth in next week's episode, but for now, I'm gonna summarize with a contrasting example from Chinese dynasties. After the Han dynasty collapsed in the year two twenty, China fragmented for three hundred and seventy years before the Tang dynasty reunified it.

After the Tang collapsed in the year nine oh seven, it only took fifty years before the Song dynasty pulled it back together. Same pattern, same civilization, but one chaos window was seven times longer. What was the difference? After Tang, they had recent memory of unified governance. They had models, infrastructure, shared frameworks.

They were prepared to rebuild. So they didn't spend centuries wandering. They spent fifty years. That's three hundred and twenty years of suffering avoided. Actions of the leaders in the Song dynasty didn't prevent the collapse, and in many ways, I don't think that's the goal anyway. The crisis is what allows for the change, just like the decay of winter is what allows for the bloom of spring.

We can't avoid winter, but we can help determine how long it lasts. The leaders of the Song dynasty did shorten the chaos window, and that's why this work matters. Not because we're gonna prevent the AI crisis, whatever it might look like, but because we're preloading the solutions. We're building vocabulary.

We're circulating frameworks and planting ideas. So when our chaos window opens, when the old system visibly breaks and everyone's asking, "What now?" Some ideas are already there. Will they be perfect? No, but they will be ready to start testing. Is it noble to prevent suffering? Yes. Is it more noble to shorten the duration of suffering, even if you can't prevent it?

Maybe. Because every year we shorten the chaos window is a year of fewer families destroyed and fewer lives derailed and less generational trauma created and a faster recovery for our overall society. This isn't small work. It is not for the faint of heart. It is civilization-level work, and it really fricking matters.

We can do this, my friends. If you're still here in this community saying hello tomorrow with me, I'm guessing this might get you a little fired up too. So this week's optimistic rebellion is to look back in order to look forward. Think about the New Deal. It didn't appear from nowhere in nineteen thirty-three.

Those ideas, progressive taxation, social insurance, labor protections, they've been circulating for decades. They've been simmering quietly, gradually, until ready for the suddenly. When the Great Depression hit, the frameworks were ready to deploy. That shortened the chaos window. Same principle here. Who buys your stuff, robots?

It plants a question. The Fourth Turning framework gives us context. Economic systems thinking provides us with vocabulary. Every week, we are understanding the problems more and more clearly, and this allows us all to start brainstorming solutions now. And all of this will help us shorten our chaos window when it opens.

So when someone asks, "Can we prevent an AI crisis?" We know the answer's probably no, but we also know the exact future isn't inevitable. There are still so many choices to be made between here and there, choices that will change the direction of the future we will actually get to experience. 

going to be it for today.

As always, keep the comments coming in.

You can record - and re-record - a voice message by tapping the link in the show notes,

You can reach us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01,

or simply email me to [email protected]

The additional sections of the show included clips from;

Pivot to AI

Blood in the Machine

Michael Burns

Democracy Now!

struthless

Harland Spinks

Marcus Hutchins

Owen Jones

The Lever

The Tea with Myriam François

PissedMagistus

Side Burns

This Machine Kills

Hello Tomorrow

and Tech Won't Save Us

Further details are in the show notes.

Thanks to everyone for listening, thanks to Deon and Erin for their production work for the show, thanks to Amanda for all of her work behind the scenes, thanks to our editors and thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member, purchasing gift memberships, or making one-time donations.

You'll find the link to support us in the show notes along with links to join our Patreon and Discord communities for free where you can also continue the discussion. And don't forget to follow us on all the social media platforms as I prepare to relaunch our social media strategy!

So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, DC, my name is Jay! And this has been the Best of the Left podcast, coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from bestoftheleft.com.

Air Date: 9-18-2026

Today we're doing something new and different but also very old. Occupy Wall Street just hit its 15th anniversary this month and we thought we'd do something that only we can, which is dip into our archives and pull out the best of the Occupy coverage we played in real time as it was happening as well as some other retrospective coverage that aired 10 years later.

Full Show Notes

 

Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Today we're doing something new and different but also very old. Occupy Wall Street just hit its 15th anniversary this month and we thought we'd do something that only we can, which is dip into our archives and pull out the best of the Occupy coverage we played in real time as it was happening as well as some other retrospective coverage that aired 10 years later.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 60 minutes today include

Countdown with Keith Olberman

The Library Of Electronic Press

On the Media

Planet Money

The Rachel Maddow Show

The David Pakman Show

and The Dig

Then, in the additional, Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in 4 sections;

Section A, THE STATE STRIKES BACK

Section B, RIGGED SYSTEM, RIGGED COVERAGE

Section C, WHAT THE MOVEMENT WAS DOING

And Section D, THE LEGACY, 10 YEARS ON

And now, on to the show.

And Jolly Mullaney, a reporter of the New York Daily News, has tweeted at this hour that police are indeed pepper spraying and arresting Occupy Wall Street protesters on Wall Street. additionally, I can see protesters in kettled area on Wall and Broadway doing jazz hands in air. additionally, we had told you earlier from Ryan Devereaux of Democracy Now!,

who was on the program earlier in the week, that he reports from Broadway and Wall Street, protesters attempted to enter the Wall Street area after the, basically 12-block march, from Foley Square back to Zuccotti Park via City Hall, that police pushed back, fights ensued, random pepper spraying into that crowd that tried to occupy Wall Street, literally to get onto Wall Street.

police on horseback came out. More police showed up. Arrests were made, and Ryan Devereaux said he personally saw at least 20 people arrested. Obviously, nothing close to the 700 at Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday, but, barricades were knocked down. And so after an extraordinarily peaceful and accomplish-filled day for the Occupy Wall Street protesters, as night falls in New York, it's an entirely different scene, and we're gonna continue to provide you with details as they come into us here at the, control desk.

For the whole of the time that the Occupy Wall Street protesters have been making their case for a sea change in the way we Americans permit big business to draw and quarter and circumscribe our lives, media, too corrupt or too dense to understand anything more complicated than whether the blonde is missing or the verdict is guilty, have parroted, "What do they want?

What is their catchphrase?" In our third story, it is not a catchphrase, but it is a declaration of what they want, that the document which I will read in full in a moment is not a list of laws to be repealed, nor politicians to be elected, may only confuse the precocious ninth graders now passing for TV anchor newsmen these days, but the absence of the kind of painted footsteps with which they used to mark the floors of dance instruction studios is, in a way, breathtaking.

The two-by-four that Errol Louis described. It implies that there is so much to change, that such a tipping point has been reached, that some easy-to-apply Band-Aids just are not going to be enough. And it implies that the commentators and politicians and moneyed interests that do not come to understand the scope of what must change will be without influence and without power before they realize that the change has happened.

So with that as preamble, here is, formally and finally, what Occupy Wall Street says and wants. It is, in essence, their special comment. As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members, that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights and those of their neighbors, that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth, and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power.

We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity and continue to give executives exorbitant bonuses. They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in workplaces based on age, the color of one's skin, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation. They have poisoned the food supply through negligence and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals and actively hide these practices. They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions. They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and use that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers' healthcare and pay. They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people with none of the culpability or responsibility. They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity. They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products, endangering lives in pursuit of profit. They determine economic policy despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians who are responsible for regulating them. They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil. They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people's lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit. They purposefully kept people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media. They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners, even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas. They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. To the people of the world, we, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power, exercise your right to peaceably assemble, occupy public space, create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal. Join us and make your voices heard. The statement issued from Zuccotti Park by the General Assembly at Occupy Wall Street. We'll continue, and we'll continue to update you on the events and the violence that ensued this evening.

We are the 99%. It's the rallying cry of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. They say that a tiny minority controls America's wealth. So how rich have the richest got? And how poor are the rest of us? Is it really 99% versus 1%? The richest 1% of the US population, they own a third of US net worth. So how did we get here?

When times were good, everyone gained. In Bill Clinton's boom of 1993 to 2000, average incomes went up just as they did during George W. Bush's boom at the beginning of his presidency. But if you were rich, you gained even more. That's nearly half of all the growth in the Clinton boom years. Under George W.

Bush, it was even more. And there are some really rich people in the US today. In fact, there are now over 3.1 million millionaires. But these are not the richest of all. The US has over 400 billionaires, more than any other country in the world. Who's at the top of that pile? These three have a combined net worth of $131 billion.

That's just over the combined budget shortfall of every state in the US for 2011, more than the cost of the global war on terror in 2010. But haven't the rich lost out as well as the poor in the economic crash? When the economy tanked, everyone suffered. In 2010, the average American earned $26,487, down over $2,000 in real terms on 2006.

If you were poor, it's been an even bigger drop. The 24 million least wealthy households in America saw their average income go down by 10%. If you were super rich, it went down, too. The 400 wealthiest American households lost around 4%, including inflation. That's down to an average of $270.5 million per household.

So the richest lost 4%. The poorest lost 10%. Part of the reason average Americans have been hit so hard is where their wealth comes from. Before the crash, middle-class Americans had 65% of their wealth tied up in their house. But the richest 1% of the population kept most of their wealth in stocks and shares and business.

So when house prices went south, many Americans found their wealth disappearing, too. Now, one in every seven Americans lives below the poverty line. That's a record 46.2 million people. One in six Americans have no health insurance. That's 50 million people.

14.5% of American households are defined as food insecure. That means for every seven households, one will have trouble putting enough food on the table. But some things are doing very well. Sales of luxury cars are up. Big luxury brands have reported their best sales figures in years. Tiffany jewelers up.

Brands like Louis Vuitton and Givenchy, brands like Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, and Porsche. And America's top executives are paying themselves very well, too. It is down, but still pretty good. 4.9 million dollars each in the latest figures, and a Washington Post investigation found the following: Since the 1970s, median pay for executives at the nation's largest companies has more than quadrupled, even after adjusting for inflation, according to researchers.

Over the same period, pay for a typical non-supervisory worker has dropped more than 10%. But don't the super-rich pay taxes? They do, just not quite so much as the rest of us. If you earn between $100,000 and $200,000, you will be paying up to 25% effective tax rate, and that's before payroll taxes kick in. The 400 richest tax returns surveyed by the IRS paid just 18.1% in 2008, and it's got better for them.

In 2001, as George W. Bush became president, that rate was 23%. So is it 99% versus 1%? The richest 1% of the US population own a third of US net worth. But an even smaller group, the 0.01% of the population, are at a record high. In fact, is it really 99.99% versus 0.01%? So where do you fit? Are you one of the 99.99% or one of the 0.01%?

Interestingly, the world watches the protest called Occupy Wall Street, now finishing its third week camping out in Lower Manhattan. Recent clashes in which police pepper sprayed and beat protestors with batons drew even the most resistant media outlets. 

Each new depiction of the abuses of the police on the First Amendment, the more waves of occupation will spread across this country.

Yeah. And you should be proud of that, police- ... because you are participating in our media 

publicity campaign. Some Occupy Wall Street advocates complained about what they called a news blackout in its early weeks, but in fact, this progressive populist protest did better than its anti-government analog, the Tea Party.

According to the Pew Research Center, the Wall Street protests made up 1.6% of the overall news hole in the week of September 26th to October 2nd. The first Tea Party protests in February 2009 received no measurable coverage. True, much of the Occupy Wall Street coverage has been dismissive or worse, but the Tea Party condemned its coverage too.

Soon, of course, the Tea Party scored pots of conservative money and a house organ in Fox News. For now, Occupy Wall Street, which calls for economic justice for the vulnerable but offers no specifics, no demands and no candidates, is on its own. Why did 

he do that? 

Thursday was sunny and fine, and Foley Square was full of people, many looking like they'd slept there, which they had.

There was food, lots of cameras, the curious and the committed, the latter with signs condemning the 1% of Americans whose grip on wealth and power makes life so hard for the other 99%. The mood was good. Bill Dobbs was sitting at a tiny table with a handwritten sign saying, "Press," so people like me would have someone to talk to.

He had worked with the AIDS activist group ACT UP years ago. 

We're down here giving off a loud outcry in the shadow of Wall Street. It has now sparked other similar protests in other cities around the country. That's very important. 

How does it translate into action, something more than just a kind of pretty decor without any focus?

It's a 

very clear focus when you say Occupy Wall Street 

You think? 

Let me put it in this way. Easily 150, 200 or more outlets have sent staff down here to do stories, sometimes freelancers. When I look online at the leads, they've framed the issue, often revolving around economics, and I think there's a problem in people hammering and demanding that there be a slogan or a list of things that people want because it's a huge project just to get attention, and that's happened.

Wall Street's not going to get reformed overnight, nor is Congress, but there's anger and despair that's brought people down here. There's also camaraderie, community, and fun, and those are the two ingredients that have enabled this protest to sustain itself against the NYPD and the weather for almost three weeks now.

You wouldn't be down here if there wasn't some buzz around this. 

There are a number of people who say the attention really riveted on this place when the cops pepper sprayed people, corralled people, and so on, and then suddenly people were noticing what was going on in Wall Street in a way that they had not before.

Part of this protest is media production. Dozens of people out with video cameras coordinating that, uploading it, live streaming. That's how the police misconduct came to light. So we have one working group that's dealing extensively with creating media to project what people are doing here, and some of us are working with media outlets to get the message through.

There have been columns and there have been editorials which have said you might not agree with the way that people on this plaza are crying out, but the issues that are being raised could not be more important. It's, it's been a slow build. 

What's next? Do you have a plan? 

right now the, the plan is to be here indefinitely and to do everything possible to bring more people into it.

People come in all the time. They want to know what's going on. There was a sign one day on the plaza that said, "If you make less than $250,000, you should join us." Why? Because everybody's hanging by a thread, and that's also true of members of the media. You know, recall a broadcast producer coming through here who's very grumpy, and he said, "I'm really mad because I wanted to cover something else and my boss assigned me to cover self-indulgent college students."

I said, "If I may, how's your pension?" He said, "I don't have one." I said, "You know, that's part of the reason people are here." 

Some protests fizzle, some become movements, the result of an unpredictable alchemy of character, issue, tactics, and timing. Michael Kazin teaches history at Georgetown University and is the author of American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation.

Does he see movement potential in Occupy Wall Street? 

For it to become a movement, it has to become organized. It has to have recognizable spokespeople. It has to have a strategy and not just a set of protest tactics. So this may or may not become one, but right now it is, a protest campaign. 

It's often been likened to the Tea Party, which was often mischaracterized as being purely AstroTurf, the, child of a lot of well-heeled conservative activists.

I mean, it was that, but it wasn't only that. 

No, I think the Tea Party was and is, quite sincere, grassroots insurgency. It's really the creature of, 30, 40 years of conservative organizing on these issues. The rage of the Tea Party bubbled up partly because of the, financial crisis, the idea that big banks were being, bailed out by the government, and also a frustration with their own conservative president, George W.

Bush. 

So what do you think Occupy Wall Street needs in order to become a movement? 

It needs to last longer , of course. Get alliances, not just with some labor unions, but with perhaps immigrant groups, perhaps with some people in left-wing Democratic Party. It needs to do what the civil rights movement did, what the, anti-war movement did in the 1960s, what the labor movement did in the 1930s, which is to appear to be the voice of people who have not really had a voice about their discontent, their anger with what's happened to, the American economy.

What we're seeing, I think, between Tea Party people and the Wall Street protesters, is a battle to define who's to blame for our economic calamity. Who's to blame for the lack of jobs? Who's to blame for the political system not really responding? 

I think that the Occupy Wall Street protest has undergone a transition of some kind in the last week, that somehow it's crossed over into being taken seriously.

Oh, I think you're right. I think you're right. 

Why is that? It's almost conventional wisdom they can't go anywhere without goals. They can't go anywhere without organization. They can't go anywhere without clear demands and party affiliations. They actively resist these things. They want to move ahead in a inchoate fashion as a, an expression of discontent.

Well, I think at this stage, being a little inchoate, being a little incoherent even, but being very clear what you're against more than what you're for, enables lots of people to take part with their own reasons. But after a while, when we're getting into November and December in the, in the Northeast, clearly people aren't gonna continue to camp out in large numbers.

So at this stage, what they're doing is very effective. If it continues to go on, people in the media will say, "Well, you did this for, two months. What are you gonna do next?" 

But I'm still puzzled. Why are they even effective now? 

Well, partly, talk about the media, I think there's been a sense that with this economic, discontent, not just here, but elsewhere in the world, it's that why aren't Americans angry about this?

Why are the only Americans angry, angry about the government? So I think for very good reasons, a lot of people in the media have been looking for this to happen for some time, and once it starts to happen, they cover it, and the coverage itself helps to generate more interest. 

The, Vancouver-based anti-consumerist magazine AdBusters kicked this whole thing off with a call to occupy Wall Street last summer.

Its co-founder told Salon that AdBusters was a student of the Situationist movement. This is the idea that if you have a very powerful meme, an idea, and the moment is ripe, then that is, in itself, enough to ignite a revolution. 

Well, the Situationists did not ignite a revolution. They did ignite a very powerful movement that was pretty short-lived in France and, a few other countries, and they were influential to a certain degree among some new left intellectuals in this country as well.

The fact that most people in your listening audience have never heard of them itself, I think, is a, ... is indication that their influence was, interesting, but not highly significant, I don't think. One thing they did make clear, and this was certainly happening in the '60s with people like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, the Yippies, is that they realized that if you can be humorous and, provocative and make the powers that be look small, look ridiculous, you can really get people on your side.

I guess I subscribe, to my own surprise, to a kind of ether theory of movements in that, you know, in the Tea Party, you had all of this anger going into the ether. It didn't really matter whether the facts were right or wrong. There was a kind of change in the temperature, and suddenly these ideas were everywhere just filling the air.

It strikes me that this is an attempt to change the temperature again, to change how people see the world. 

A- as a historian, I think that nothing comes from nothing, and it's still in numbers fairly small, that has to be said. But then, of course, the four people who sat in at lunch counters in, Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960 was also a small group, but they were representing a larger group.

So size itself isn't enough. But I think, people in the media are groping to sort of understand who these people are, whether they are really on the left or whether they are just a group of fairly non-ideological people. All these questions seem to be open. 

Do you have any notion of which way you think this could go?

This is the fun about being a historian. You know, these, these things are not predictable. They really have to keep adapting to changes in the structures that they are protesting. People make their own history, but not as they please, as this, famous leftist Karl Marx wrote in the 19th century. 

Michael, thank you very much.

Oh, you're very welcome. 

Michael Kazin's new book is American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation.

Surely you've heard by now about the hundreds of people living and protesting in Zuccotti Park. It's a plaza near Wall Street in downtown Manhattan, and they've been there for the last couple weeks. 

Here in New York, it's just all-consuming. It's all over the media. You know, we see these protesters walking around, and the protests seem to be getting bigger and bigger.

This week, a lot of labor unions joined in. Congress people have been coming out in support of the protesters. My dad called me today to ask if he should go, and- 

My brother's flying in from Seattle to go to Wall Street and join the protesters. So but, but you and I, Adam, we're Planet Money, and we cover a lot of what takes place on Wall Street.

So we wanted to find out what exactly are these Wall Street protesters against, so we went to the park. The park is crowded. It's a little dirty. It's, it's not that big a square. It's just one block long, and the crowd skews mostly young and bearded, army jacketed and sweat shirted. And there are a myriad of signs against lobbyists, against banks, against the war.

And it was like a detective job at first. Like, so, so what are these people for? And at first we realized everyone was giving us slightly different answers. 

Well, I'm here on my own agenda. Other people have their own agenda and here are what they're here for. We don't have one specific agenda in here. We don't have demands.

Read 

your sign. 

College degree equals unemployment and lobbyist equals bribery. 

And then thank you Wall 

Street. Thank you Wall 

Street. The first guy there refused to give us his name. The second person is Jillian Cipriano. She's a recent college grad from Staten Island, and she said the main reason she's here is she can't find a job, and it makes her mad, and she's frustrated with the political process.

We ran into a punk from the Lower East Side who was against police brutality. We found grandmothers against the war. This girl from Brooklyn with a list of suggestions supporting everything from the carbon tax to libraries. 

And then we caught up with this guy who said he couldn't stand and talk to us 'cause he was in a rush to get zombified.

Can we walk with you while you... What does getting zombified mean, by the way? 

zombie makeup to make myself represent a dead person. 

Got you. Now, you have a Ron Paul sticker. Sure do. Are, are you a libertarian, would you call yourself? I am, 

definitely. 

And is this... I know e- there's not one view, et cetera, but have you felt welcome here?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is all about community. We're not, we're not trying to marginalize anyone's voices. We're just trying to unite each other, you know? 

During the day, Zuccotti Park has the feel of, like, a festival. Y- you know, there's free food out. People are playing music, wandering around, napping under trees.

I saw a few people smoking joints. And we thought, all right. It's this big park full of independent thinkers, all of different views. Is there, like, a unified thing here? Is there, is, is there some way that this is different from any other park in Manhattan where there's lots of people wandering around doing whatever they feel like?

How does this thing come together and be one thing? 

So everyone told us this park does come together at one point, at night, at seven o'clock. Everyone told us, "You guys have to go to the general assembly. That's where decisions get made that affect this group." So we went. Mic check. 

My name is Jeff. My name is Jeff.

So you probably heard of this. This is the form of communication called the people's mic. The police won't allow bullhorns, so the crowd repeats every phrase said by the person addressing the crowd. 

The night we went, the meeting was being led by two people, facilitators. Facilitators. But before the facilitators can begin facilitating the meeting, this dude in a puffy overcoat leaps out of the crowd to make this point about the facilitators.

These are positions of power. These 

are positions of power. 

They have the power to tell us we can't talk. 

They have the power to tell us we can't talk. 

They lead this discussion in a direction. 

They lead this discussion in a direction. 

If they never ask for our consent- 

If they never ask 

for our consent- Their power is illegitimate 

Their power is illegitimate.

Okay, so there is one rule here, and the rule is that decisions are made by consensus. The group consents to proposals by waving their fingers in the air, kind of like jazz hands, and then if they don't agree, they also do jazz hands, but upside down. And as you can imagine, it's hard to get four hundred people to consent to anything.

But soon enough, the night we went, all four hundred people or so consented to the facilitators facilitating the meeting. 

And so we learned the general assembly, this is where everyone gets together, but there's also these working groups, these subcommittees that meet throughout the day, the sanitation committee, the finance committee, the legal committee, and they all report back to the general assembly.

And so the night we were there, the comfort committee had a proposal about how to allocate some of the tens of thousands of dollars that have been donated to the group. 

We need sleeping bags. We need sleeping bags. Sleeping bags cost money. 

Sleeping 

bags cost money. We would like to request- We would like to request- About $2,000 About $2,000 

So people had a lot of questions for Sleeping Bag Man about his proposal.

Does the proposal include a sales tax, which goes to the government? How will the sleeping bags be kept clean? 

My question is more pragmatic. My question is more pragmatic. Should we not just buy fabric- 

Should we not just buy fabric- ... 

and construct- Should we not just buy fabric- ... and construct sleeping bags?

and construct sleeping bags? 

And Zoe, what we s- realized was this general assembly, this isn't just some logistical asterisk to the protest. This is what this whole thing is about. This is what they're for. This process itself, participatory democracy, that is what this group is demanding. 

I found an ex-Marine on the sidelines, Brian Phillips.

He said exactly that. 

We have people speak, everyone votes on it, and we come to an agreement, and that's how we want society to be. 

That is how you want society to 

be? Yes. I don't think that this is by any means an efficient, particularly effective or, or the only direct democracy process. It's not. 

This is Andrew Smith.

He's facilitated a couple times at the general assembly. 

There are many other models. This is the one we got, and we're going with it, you know? And it, and it works to empower some people. I mean, 

it would be more effective, I would think, like if you had this many people say, and they were all for or against some specific thing.

But- Like, "We're all for the Volcker Rule. Let's just go nuts and in, in favor of the Volcker Rule," you know? Of 

course, it would be more effective. It would be more effective. 

But you say, "Of course it would be more effective," like that's a horrible thing to be. Is effective bad? 

effective will disenfranchise people around here.

People will feel like they're not getting their voices heard. They'll feel like the, the, the move, the f- the effect is moving in a direction that they do not agree with, and they will quit the movement. 

It seems like that whole, this whole organization of Occupy Wall Street is like a structure for people to bring their issues to and put them on, not like you have your own issue that you're fomenting.

Yes. Yes. I like it. 

Is 

that- I agree. Agreed. 

I just made that up. 

Perfect. You're a venue, not a movement. That's what it's all about. 

Yeah, 

exactly. Sure. Awesome. You guys can run with that. There's the narrative right there. We ca- we got it. I think we got it. 

It's a venue, not a movement. Standing around and discussing what they want, that's what they want.

That's their hope.

Today, the entire city of Oakland, California, was subject to what they call a general strike. According to the suggested chant list from the Occupy Oakland folks, the idea is, "Strike, occupy, shut it down. Oakland is the people's town." Also, "Every hour, every day, the occupation is here to stay." You get the basic idea.

What you're looking at right now is live footage, live footage, of the general strike in Oakland tonight. Now, the idea of a strike is, is usually pretty narrow, right? It's a pretty narrowly targeted idea. It's the people who work at a specific place stopping working there in order to get that place to treat them better as employees.

That's the idea of a strike. The idea of a general strike is not a targeted action against any one place of business, against any one employer. It's general. It is less about raising a beef with one particular target of the strike than it is about establishing that the people striking are all on the same side together.

Oakland has had a general strike before. It was 1946, right after the end of World War II. There was a, a sort of not huge-scale labor dispute in Oakland. Retail store clerks went on strike against some downtown department stores because they wanted better pay and better conditions. There were picket lines.

there were some heated confrontations. There were people arrested. But it was proceeding pretty much as you would expect out of your average labor strike. Until it became not just a dispute between those stores and the people who worked for those stores, but rather a dispute in which the police intervened forcibly on the side of the stores against the people who were striking, against the employees 

They beat us all out of the alleys pushed us with those damn billy clubs.

I was black and blue here for months. The trucks followed right behind them, went on in, and unloaded. Then they went back to get more. It wasn't bringing in strikebreakers necessarily that started the general strike. You know, I thought about that a lot since that. We'd seen strikebreakers, but the thing was using the police force that we were paying taxes for to beat us off our own streets.

The police don't work for the stores any more than they work for the striking workers, right? Police aren't supposed to take a side in a labor dispute. They're just supposed to enforce the law. But that morning in December 1946, when people saw police breaking the strike up, siding against the workers and bringing in the strikebreakers, the general strike just spontaneously happened.

Bus drivers saw what was happening. They parked their buses, got out of them and left them sitting there. People working at other businesses just walked away from their jobs. It was a spontaneous general strike, a spontaneous taking sides with those store employees who sort of otherwise had been doing their own thing.

The general strike in Oakland in the 40s was not a big organized union-led thing, actually. It happened spontaneously. It went on for two and a half days. Maybe this is apocryphal, but the way they tell the story of it now in Oakland is that in the 1946 strike, every business in the city was shut down for two days and a bit.

The only businesses that were allowed to stay open during the strike were food stores and pharmacies so people could get their medicine and also bars, but bars with an asterisk. Bars would be allowed to stay open during the strike, the general strike in 1946. This may be apocryphal, but this is what they say.

Only if they agreed to two conditions. One, they could only serve beer and not hard liquor. And two, they had to agree to put their jukeboxes out on the sidewalk so all the general strikers could enjoy the music. This year, Occupy Oakland started as one of the dozens, if not hundreds, of Occupy encampments that have sprung up all over the country to stand up for the 99%, right?

Stand up for the 99% of Americans who are underserved by our economy and by our political system, which has been captured by the 1%. But on October 25th of this year, the actions of the Oakland police again helped turn what had been a sort of small, sort of isolated movement, at least comparatively speaking, into a much, much larger movement.

Before the Oakland police made the bad decision to wage essentially a shock and awe campaign of militarized force against that little protest in downtown Oakland, before that, this was about the size of that protest, a few dozen tents and a few hundred people in Oakland. Since the actions of the Oakland police on October 25th, the protests have not only come back, look, they are now much larger, much, much larger than they were before.

Even San Francisco across the Bay, a very progressive city in its own right and a much bigger one, does not have as much support, as many people, as many energy now as Occupy Oakland does. And with this renewed energy, which again comes in part thanks to police making a very bad decision about how to treat this on October 25th, Occupy Oakland today decided to do what Oakland does.

They called for a general strike across the entire city. Today, thousands of Oakland residents took to the streets for what were reportedly, reportedly by local press calling these things the largest demonstration in the East Bay since the days of the Vietnam War. And in the East Bay, that's where Berkeley is.

They know something about demonstrations against the Vietnam War. The Occupy Oakland demonstrators, along with hundreds of teachers and students and nurses, marched through downtown Oakland today, gathering at the city's biggest banks in a show of force that is set to culminate tonight at the Port of Oakland.

The Port of Oakland, of course, the fifth-biggest port in the country, one of the major conduits of imports from China into our country. The Oakland police remained mostly on the sidelines today. A number of local businesses, including some of those banks, just closed their doors today. Some city and port workers were sent home early today.

Oakland School District reported that 18% of the city's teach for- teacher force joined the strike today. But again, this is not a labor strike. This is not a specific strike against a specific organization or a specific business. This is a general strike, which is a rare thing, and it means that it is not about taking on any one business to try to get them to change.

In fact, a lot of businesses in Oakland, not just the Grand Lake Theater, support the idea of standing up for the 99%. for example, the Men's Warehouse clothing stores put up these signs today, "We stand with the 99%. Closed Wednesday, November 2nd." While some businesses in Oakland closed altogether today, some stayed open but decided to go cash only so that the big banks and credit card companies would not be taking their pound of flesh from those local businesses today.

But again, this is general, right? This, th- there is not a specific target. There's not a specific agenda. This is about saying the system shouldn't only work for the rich, period.

For the entirety of the life of our nation, democracy has been protected, not merely by the strenuous efforts of those of us who cherish it, but mostly and most profoundly by the limitless stupidity of those who would ration it, keep it for themselves and themselves alone, or destroy it.

The protests that ended the war in Vietnam reached critical mass only in 1970, when Governor James Rhodes of Ohio pounded on a desk at a news conference and called the student protesters at Kent State University un-American. They were not un-American. They were unarmed, and the next day, four of them were shot and killed by the National Guard, and 10 days later, two more were killed at Jackson State.

Those protests had themselves only gone mainstream 20 months earlier, when Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago overreacted with mindlessness and sadism to the massing of demonstrators outside the 1968 Democratic Convention, and the whole world watched. A century of the institutionalized, codified, legalized pseudo-slavery that had followed the real thing was fatally stricken only when Governor George Wallace of Alabama used his inaugural address to promise segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.

Within two years came the marches on Selma and the atrocities at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and 10 weeks after the first violence, the president had proposed the Voting Rights Act to Congress. The mounting paranoia of three decades of the scapegoating of and fear-mongering about liberals only ended when its last white knight self-destructed on the national stage of televised hearings, when Joe McCarthy questioned the loyalty of the US military and, towards one junior attorney, he revealed the depths of his cruelty and megalomania, and he revealed that at long last he indeed had no shame.

Pick any moment in our history, our history as a country founded by and invigorated by and reinvigorated by protest, and you will find men like George Wallace and Joe McCarthy and Jim Rhodes and Richard Daley. Go back further to men like the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, or the officials who sent the police to the Haymarket Square and the troops to the Pullman Town, or John Brown, or George Grenville, the British politician who had a bright idea about the American colonies, an idea called the Stamp Act.

American freedom has not flourished in spite of these morons of history. It has flourished because of them, because they overreacted, because they under-thought, overreached, under-understood. We owe them our traditions of protest. We owe them our freedoms. We owe them our very independence. None of them ever understood that, around these parts anyway, suppression always creates the opposite of the effect desired.

Such a man is Michael Rubens Bloomberg, mayor of New York City, and as of today, the most valuable, the most essential, the most irreplaceable man inside the Occupy movement. Who else but a cliche like Bloomberg could take a protest beginning to grow a little stale around its edges and vault it back into the headlines, complete with mortifying scenes of police dressed up as stormtroopers, carrying military weapons, using figurative bazookas to kill figurative mosquitoes?

Who else but an archetype like Bloomberg could claim a group of protesters was making too much noise in a residential area, and then choose to try to disperse them by bringing out LRAD audio cannons, machines that send painful waves of sound indiscriminately over the very same residential area? Who else but a cartoon like Bloomberg could have become rich creating a multi-billion dollar media and news company, and then authorize illegally preventing reporters from witnessing police actions he claimed were utterly legal, and then authorize the arrest of four reporters at a church?

Who else but a human platitude like Bloomberg could have just gotten back from Jerusalem and the dedication of a $10 million medical facility for which he generously paid, and then enabled the image of policemen seizing 5,500 books from the Occupy Wall Street library and throwing them in a dumpster as if the cops were book burners?

Who else but a hypocrite like Bloomberg could have overridden by backroom deal with the New York City Council, the results of two separate referendums limiting those in his office to just two terms as mayor so he could serve a third term, and then have had his police arrest, beat up, and in- incarcerate a member of the New York City Council?

Who else but a putz like Bloomberg could have insisted that protesters were not above the rule of law, and yet when the courts ruled he could not seize the protesters' tents and sleeping bags, nor kick them out of Zuccotti Park, nor keep them from returning with their tents and sleeping bags? Who else could have stalled for hours until he could find another judge to give him the ruling he insisted upon?

Who else but the epitome of tone deafness that is Bloomberg could have better illustrated the fundamental issue of Occupy when he puts the entire weight of the most people-driven city in the history of the Earth behind already crushingly rich and their efforts to grab themselves still more advantages from those people, and he himself is the 12th richest man in America.

Who else but a publicity addict like Bloomberg could have enabled the arrest of 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge, and yet two months later, frozen 20 square miles of New York City in gridlock traffic over two days so somebody could film another goddamn Batman movie on the 59th Street Bridge, leading to the inescapable conclusion that if you wanna tie up a little traffic during a protest for equality and freedom from corporate domination on a bridge in New York City, you will be arrested.

But if you wanna tie up all the traffic during a goddamned movie shoot for the financial benefit of corporate domination, the city of New York will embrace you and give you tax breaks. Michael Bloomberg, no such a figure, no such a living, breathing embodiment of all that is wrong and all that is stupid in the establishment in this country could be ordered up from the works of fiction or the casting calls of that goddamn Batman movie they filmed the weekend before he ordered the raid on Occupy Wall Street Obviously, Mayor Bloomberg, you should resign, and your little bully of a police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, should go with you.

You have overstepped all reasonable interpretations of your rights and responsibilities, and you have made Americans and people around the world realize that you are simply smaller, more embarrassing versions of the tin pot tyrants who have fallen around the globe in the past year. But as some of us first thought you might be back on that fateful September afternoon that sadistic cops pepper sprayed four women who had already been trapped inside a police overreaction, and as we thought again the following weekend during the arrests on Brooklyn Bridge, Michael Bloomberg, you have now indeed become the symbol of the Occupy movement.

You are ready to take your historic place with Mayor Daley and Governor Wallace and Senator McCarthy and Prime Minister Grenville, and every other idiot who has made the fateful and fatal mistake of thinking that just because he had power and money, that this was a nation in which everything has a price tag on it.

We need you, Michael Bloomberg. We need you to keep making these mistakes. Tone-deaf, sensibility-offending, world-changing mistakes, like the pepper spray and the Brooklyn Bridge, and the paramilitary assault on Occupy Wall Street last night. Hell, Mike, the freedoms of this wonderful and transcendent nation corrupted by the endless greed of you and the other dozen richest people in it, and the corporations who nevertheless have still managed to own you somehow, these freedoms will not be restored to us in just the next two years.

I'm endorsing you for a fourth term. Your nation needs you, Mr. Mayor. Occupy needs you. Bloomberg now, Bloomberg tomorrow, Bloomberg forever

Occupy Wall Street continues, and what I think is the single most absurd and compelling and horrifying piece of video so far, and I know we've seen videos of downtown Oakland looking like a war zone, literally like a war zone. We've seen people getting punched, people getting beaten with, police nightsticks after the policeman reaches above their head and smacks down.

But something about the video of police at UC Davis pepper spraying a crowd of people that is sitting there... That's it. They're just sitting there. We've looked at the videos a bunch of times now, Louis, and I'm gonna play this for you. There's a couple of angles on this, and if you're just listening, what's going on here is that a police officer is, walking over, and he, he just opens up with this pepper spray.

I mean, how would you describe it? He, 

he basically just walks down the line. There's, there's a line of people sitting. He just casually, slowly walks down the line while holding the spray and just hits them all in the face. 

From, how would you say six to, six to eight inches away, right? 

He's not very far away.

Okay, here's the video and the audio for you to take a look and listen.

I mean, it's like a thick stream, and the people are just sitting there. Nobody's, nobody's doing anything. And this guy's just spraying people over and over again. Who could have thought that this was a good idea? Like, how did the police officer get into his mind, "They're all sitting there. I'm gonna walk down the line and pepper spray everybody," with what almost looks like a novelty...

I mean, who even thinks that that's what it looks like? In the past when I've seen pepper spray, it's like individual, very thin, like, a very thin stream. But this is- Mm-hmm ... like a sustained... Like, it's, it's under pressure. It's 

pretty, pretty thick. 

Exactly. Yeah. 

yeah, I mean, like we pointed out to each other before- 

Yeah

while looking at a picture they're surrounded by people with cameras. 

Right. 

And they know that. So I guess clearly they thought they were within their rights, right? 

they must have thought this was an appropriate use of force. Yeah. And if your goal is to get people to stop resisting, nobody's resisting.

Everybody's already just sitting there 

quietly. Right, right. I mean, clearly they're accomplishing nothing except wasting, expensive spray- I think- ... and fueling people's desire to, to be out there. 

Here's another angle of it that I'll show you, and, and you can see... I don't know if, what, what this reveals.

So there they go. And just ca- very casually, the guy's doing it almost like you would walk down your garden and just casually trim off... You know, you might just, like, pull a weed out of your driveway. You're just kind of- Mm-hmm ... very casually walking around, looking around. But the guy's pepper spraying people- Yeah

indiscriminately. 

And it's not like they're blocking a major street. I mean, clearly this is just a sidewalk. 

They're re- they are... They're refusing to leave, and that's the reason that's being given, but you're right. They're not... I, I mean, this is- I mean, the cop, the cop- ... this is a nonviolent protest ... 

the cop walked over them.

Yeah. He, yeah. He stepped over them carefully- He literally stepped over them ... to then pepper spray them in the face. Yeah. Yeah. Now listen, at least the guy had the c- common decency of a, of a police officer to not stand right on top of them or behind them. He had the courtesy to walk around the protesters to then be in front to indiscriminately spray, spray pepper spray all over them.

Right. 

Is that... Can we say that at least, if nothing else, about the police? 

I think, I guess that's fair, yeah

Sociologist Ruth Milkman and co-authors wrote, quote, "OWS was not a spontaneous movement that appeared out of nowhere. It was carefully planned by a group of experienced political activists, newly inspired by the Arab Spring and the surge of mass protest around the world in the first half of 2011." That may be true, but what Occupy became went well beyond anything that planners had imagined, and many people who became active participants didn't have much political experience at all, particularly as occupations spread beyond New York to cities all over the place.

Meanwhile, most everyone on the left at the time, as far as I can recall, was absolutely shocked that Occupy took off and exploded the way that it did. What did Occupy seem like at the beginning? What did you make of it? And then what did it become? I 

mean, the, the one thing is that it was planned. It had been planned for months by a group calling themselves the New York General Assembly, and this was a small rotating group of a few dozen folks, if that.

One of them was my good friend David Graeber, the late and great anthropologist and writer who would really, come into national prominence during Occupy Wall Street, which coincided with the publication of his book, Debt: The First 5,000 Years. That was an international bestseller And so it was, it was planned.

They had different working groups within this assembly. They focused on media, communications. They came up with the slogan, "We are the 99%", the frame of the 99%. They actually decided in those meetings, which happened weekly in Tompkins Square Park, they decided not to have demands for strategic reasons, and we can get into that 'cause I think they were right.

And they had a tactical group. It was this group that had, had scouted Zuccotti Park and knew that it was there and had actually knew about its legal status. There, there was even a group of them that did a trial run where they tried to s- to spend the night at the New York Stock Exchange sleeping on the sidewalk, and the results were pretty bad.

I think nine people got arrested, so it wasn't very promising. So David Graeber, you know, was very direct. He's said in interviews, I think he even said in the Milkman piece that you just referenced, "I didn't think we'd make it through the night. I thought we'd get arrested." And that was what I thought as well, because I had spent the aughts in New York City protesting under the shadow of the war on terror, when you would...

It just felt like you would, come into public space and be kettled. there was impossible to get a critical mass. Maybe you'd be shunted into a free speech pen. Gatherings of over 20 people were illegal, and this was not a group that was asking for a permit, right? So I, on the one hand, yes, this group was planning an occupation, but I don't think they thought they were gonna make it through the night.

It's also important to give the context, and you mentioned the Arab Spring. If we think of that as the beginning of Occupy, then things actually kick up- kick off in Tunisia in December of 2010 when a vegetable seller named Mohamed Bouazizi, he was being harassed by the police, and in protest he immolated himself.

And that energy was circulating around the globe. And so Occupy felt, it felt really late to the game. Of course, there was also the financial crisis that it was responding to. And so there had been a call from Adbusters, the Canadian magazine, and it was about as minimal as you could get. The call was, "Occupy Wall Street, September 17th."

Bring a tent, stay for months 

And there was a little dancer on top of the Wall Street bull 

Yeah, and it, it said 20,000 people. The people who were planning Occupy Wall Street were like, "Stay for months with 20,000 people?" it was totally disconnected from reality on the ground. And so they set their own ambitions.

They, set their own terms. September 17th was completely arbitrary. It was picked because it was the birthday of one of the editors of AdBuster's mother, right? It was completely random, and the fact that it took off was a testament to the folks who were planning it, some of whom included people who were online rabble-rousers and connected to Anonymous, was, which was another big social trend at the time.

It was, in a way, the most vibrant political force in the United States, which I think is a real contrast to where we are now. So there were people who were trying to organize and translate online discontent and rebelliousness into, to offline action, which is always difficult. And it just felt very improbable that it would take off.

And the other thing I'll say as context is that there, there were attempts in that period to mobilize movements against Wall Street. There had been a multi-week occupation called Bloombergville that was targeting the city budget and the mayor. That lasted a couple weeks, but definitely didn't grab national headlines.

There had been a massive march in May of 2011. I went to it. I can't even remember it, but I know I went to it from emails, but it was so boring that I don't even have a memory of it, but it had lots of great demands. A huge number of people in comparison to those early days of Occupy showed up, and yet it didn't do anything in terms of lighting a fire.

So it, it was interesting. I, I don't know what it was about Occupy, but it was... I'm sure that it had to do with the audacity of it and the fact people just stayed put. There was also, a radicalization against the police. There was a lot- Yeah ... of kind of naive, the police are part of the 99%- Right

messaging. I don't know if you remember, there was this hipster cop who became iconic at Occupy. 

He was like a plainclothes, nattily dressed, young hipster-looking cop. 

Right, but he was still a fucking cop, Yep And these things became more apparent the week of the mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge when over 700 people were arrested.

There was a donation of $4.6 million from Jamie Diamond. Dimon, sorry. He needs to have that D on the end of his name. 

I know. I think that's what I thought his name was for a long time. 

to the NYPD, And basically the sense of yeah, Wall Street and the NYPD are working together and one and the same.

And that, I think, in no way can that, can you take credit for the amazing work against the criminal pushent- punishment system and police that's happening today, but I think it was really radicalizing for a lot of people- Who were part of Occupy, who had never had hostile encounters with the police before, to see just the wanton violence and the contempt that they were treated with.

Yeah. And it, it did start, I think Occupy in a lot of complex ways did start to intersect with what were really BLM precursors. Around Troy Davis, who was executed in Georgia during Occupy's early days on September 21st, and then around Trayvon Martin's murder, which took place just a few months after Occupy started.

And then as you're saying, the NYPD had a major impact on the course of Occupy, and I feel like the repression mostly pretty much backfired, which is not to trivialize or romanticize what in some cases were pretty horrible costs of this repression, including really, a really serious injury suffered by the Iraq War vet Scott Olsen in Oakland.

But there was all of this repression, and though activists obviously and rightly decried police abuses at the time, it seems to me like it did more good for the movement by helping draw more attention to it than it did in terms harm, than it did harm in terms of by taking people off the streets and putting them in jail.

Because both the September 24th mass arrests and pepper spraying of activ- activists and then the October 1st march across the Brooklyn b- Bridge, which as you mentioned led to the NYPD making more than 700 arrests, these were both things that generated just like massive amounts of attention 

Yeah, it is true.

Occupy was catapulted into the mainstream media by these incidents and by these viral videos of police violence. there were some too that, we forget, but that were really major. So I remember this young activist Ma- Megan Linick, and I actually had her write an account of it, filmed on her BlackBerry, so that dates this movement.

as these NYU students were going to a Chase branch to close their accounts in protest, and the cops started basically dragging people from the sidewalk into the bank and beating them up and arresting them all when they were just going in there in a very... They weren't doing a sit-in. They were just saying, "I'm against your role in the financial crisis.

I'm closing my account," for which they were arrested and held for over 30 hours. S- And that video got over a million views, and that was novel at the time, right? To have these moments be transmitted and circulated. A lot of that was Anonymous was amplifying these things, and they had such an enormous reach on- online.

And I think Occupy, what people had to get their minds around was that cops protect capital. That's who they are serving. They're protecting property, not people, and ultimately they're protecting profits, and that's actually something that is a really core insight. And they were there to smash heads when the time came, and I saw a lot of people get thrashed my time at Occupy, and certainly it was happening.

I think there were over 8,000 Occupy affiliated arrests around- Wow ... the country, and millions of dollars. I think Oakland paid out over $10 or $11 million of damages. So the public's paying for that, too. We're paying for the violence that these, that these forces are perpetrating.

We've just heard clips starting with

Countdown presenting the Occupy Wall Street movement's formal statement of grievances against corporations.

owned a third of all U.S. net worth at the time.

On the Media explored whether Occupy Wall Street could become a lasting movement, with historian Michael Kazin arguing it needs organization.

Planet Money visited Zuccotti Park to figure out what Occupy Wall Street protesters wanted, and discovered the participatory democracy of the nightly General Assembly was itself partly the demand.

The Rachel Maddow Show traced Oakland's general strike back to 1946, when police siding with department stores against striking clerks sparked a spontaneous two-and-a-half-day citywide walkout.

Countdown also compared Bloomberg's police raids, book seizures, and reporter arrests at Occupy to historical overreactions by George Wallace, Joe McCarthy, and Mayor Richard Daley.

David Pakman gave his initial reaction to the viral UC Davis video of a police officer, memed as “Casually Pepper Spray Everyt

that unexpectedly catapulted the movement into the mainstream.

And those were just the top takes, there's lots more in the deeper dives sections,

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As for today's topic,

As is almost always the case, the progressive left tends to be right too soon. Someone has to be the first to say it, after all, before everyone else gets comfortable with the idea. This is how the Overton window, the range of acceptable political opinions, shifts over time, and with occasional backsliding, it's generally the progressive left that gets to a position first, which nearly everyone else will have adopted 20 years later.

I think it's inarguable that, 15 years after Occupy Wall Street, the language and sentiment about our rigged economy and rigged politics that they helped push into the mainstream have been effectively adopted across the political spectrum.

Biden left office warning of an oligarchy and Trump has always run as a fake economic populist. That message was strong enough, combined with his nativism and racism, to trick a substantial slice of the country into voting for a billionaire with the explicit hope that he would be their weapon against a rigged economy built to serve the billionaire class. That's how effective that messaging was.

There was a poll from The Economist and YouGov in January of this year that found 67% of Republicans say the rich have too much political power, and 39% of them say billionaires are taxed too little, versus only 11% who said they were taxed too much.

I say frequently that it's easier to diagnose a problem than to identify the most effective solution. The problem of the impact of the wealthy on U.S. politics has spread widely across both parties, but both have come up short when trying to find the solution.

Trump managed a hostile takeover of the Republican Party based on lies about what he would do to benefit everyday people. His current, near-record-low approval numbers speak volumes on how that's playing out.

As for Democrats, The New Republic reported in March of this year that 70% of moderate Democratic voters say the party is too timid on taxing the rich and corporations, while under 5% say they're too aggressive.

The gravitational pull in both parties, away from the previous status quo, toward economic populism is clear as day, and its origins can be traced back through the 2008 collapse and Occupy Wall Street, which propelled the language of the 99% into the general consciousness.

Today, there's still a battle going on between moderates and progressives in the Democratic Party, but the fact that moderates are adopting progressive economics as part of their platforms shows the impact of the shift that's happened in the past 15 years. The problem comes when they say the right things but don't follow through because they're not receiving enough pressure to overcome the knee jerk reaction to serve their corporate donors.

Progressives will never unseat every moderate but they don't have to. The winds of change are at our backs so having enough progressives to form a reliable voting bloc that can exert pressure on the rest of the party, combined with the general sentiment moving in the direction of economic populism will give those moderates the permission they feel they need to go along with progressive positions. We've been saying it for twenty years, since back in the Bush-tax-cut days and people have finally caught up with us.

As for the electoral battle between progressives and moderates playing out in Democratic primaries this year, I think there's a misunderstood dynamic that's worth correcting.

If a progressive wins a primary, then it's perfectly legitimate to conclude that those voters have a genuine preference for that candidate's platform or that it was inspiring enough to drive greater turnout among their supporters. Pretty straightforward.

Moderates will say that the opposite is also true. If a moderate wins a primary election, it's evidence that Democratic voters simply prefer their moderate positions, but this is not nearly as straightforward. Democratic primary voters very often cast their vote out of fear rather than conviction. They practice a sort of defensive pessimism combined with an attempted divination about how general election voters will act and, I argue, it's mostly based on a misreading of the political spectrum.

The assumption for my whole life has been that any general election candidate needs to be able to pull over some moderates to win and any candidate running on the far left or right won't be able to do that, thereby making moderate candidates more electable by definition. This used to be far more true than it is today.

Politics has shifted wildly in the past few decades. People from the left, right, and center all want to see more drastic action taken in the direction of economic populism. This means that a progressive economic populist may very well have more of a chance to pull in voters from outside the core of Democratic Party supporters than a moderate who offers essentially nothing to anyone who isn't within that moderate Democratic base.

It's been hard to run that experiment because Democratic primary voters are the ones who get to decide whether that experiment gets run in the general. Those Democrats are the ones most likely to be risk-averse, even when they prefer the policies of the progressive in the race.

Francesca Hong, the democratic socialist running for governor in Wisconsin, lost her primary in August by less than a point and the electability fear was measurable before a vote was cast. In Marquette's July poll, 80 percent of Democratic primary voters said it was extremely or very important to pick someone who could beat the Republican in November, and in that same poll Hong trailed the Republican, Congressman Tom Tiffany, by three. A late endorsement from Governor Tony Evers for the moderate in the race, David Crowley, and nearly all the late-deciders following that lead gave the vote to Crowley even though Hong had been leading the polls.

One voter told PBS, "I think she's going to have trouble winning."

That's a group of people trying to prognosticate what other people will do in November, and voting in the primary based on that guess. No one should read that as a verdict on her platform.

This creates a scenario where the argument being made by moderate Democrats becomes nearly unfalsifiable because they argue that progressives can't win general elections and, therefore, that they shouldn't be allowed to try.

On the flip side, there actually are examples that progressives can point to. Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist who won the mayor's race in New York, is the biggest one in recent years and, despite what has happened to Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman since his election, it's important to remember that he won that election running as an economic populist.

Meanwhile, it's good to keep in mind that the labor movement, decimated as it has been by neoliberalism, is still fighting back with concrete plans.

The United Auto Workers led the way by scheduling their contracts to expire on April 30, 2028 and called on other unions to join in, setting the stage for a potential mass strike event on May Day in a presidential election year.

Occupy made the strategic decision to focus on the messaging and, for the most part, refused to have demands. They spent a lot of time and energy literally occupying space and taking up time in the news and the general zeitgeist, but refused to answer what it was they actually wanted.

The result, as I've said, is that Occupy ultimately won on messaging but the country lost on what our politics managed to deliver. The rhetoric of Occupy and the anger at Wall Street got misdirected by many into Donald Trump, while the Democratic Party structure and the core Democratic primary voters failed to heed the call for economic populism, both acting in their own ways to keep Bernie Sanders away from the general election, mostly out of fear that he wouldn't be electable.

This isn't an argument that Occupy necessarily should have done a better job making demands, counterfactuals are difficult. If they had, maybe they wouldn't have ended up winning on the rhetoric or the demands, we'll never know.

But, fifteen years later, with the rhetoric and sentiment of Occupy firmly established across our political spectrum, the demands and strategies are continuing to take shape.

Progressives are running against establishment Democrats, pulling the Overton window and the center of political gravity toward economic populism. The labor movement is making plans that stretch beyond the next contract negotiation and the next election.

All while Donald Trump continues to demonstrate on a daily basis how empty his promises were, cratering support for his brand of populism, and leaving people ready to look elsewhere.

And now, we'll continue to dive deeper on 4 topics today. First up;

Section A, THE STATE STRIKES BACK

Followed by Section B, RIGGED SYSTEM, RIGGED COVERAGE

Section C, WHAT THE MOVEMENT WAS DOING

And Section D, THE LEGACY, 10 YEARS ON

A few years after the end of World War I, Congress passed a law saying that veterans of that war were entitled to a bonus for their service. In 1924, Congress said American veterans of the First World War had earned a bonus of $1,000. But here's the catch: it could not be paid for about 20 more years.

They couldn't collect it until 1945, or, or their families could collect it upon their death if that came before 1945. Well, along the way, the country fell into the Great Depression. Americans were starving to death. They were on bread lines, and the veterans, who knew that thousand dollars was owed to them by the government, decide that they would much rather collect that now, please.

That money was owed to them, they had earned it, and they needed it to feed their families now. So in the spring of 1932, in the middle of the Great Depression, the veterans marched into Washington because they wanted payment of that bonus they had earned in World War I. They were called the Bonus Army.

The Bonus Army set up as an encampment in Washington, D.C., tens of thousands of people in a living political protest. History tells us that they kept their instant city clean. They integrated their camp racially, which was really quite radical at the time. We know that they grew gardens for food. They settled in for as long as it might take to make their point to Congress and to then President Herbert Hoover.

At least that's what the Bonus Army hoped. The head of the U.S. Army, General Douglas MacArthur, looked out at the peaceful protest of those veterans camping out and saw an embarrassment for his commander in chief. MacArthur mustered troops on horseback against the veterans camp and followed those horses with tanks.

The destruction began. 

Then troops began to set fire to their wooden shacks. One reporter wrote, "The blaze was so big it lit the whole sky. A nightmare come to life." The president looked out a window of the White House in the direction of the fire, then retired for the night 

And the roaring flames sound the death knell to the fantastic bonus army that ends so disastrously in the shadow of the Capitol of the United States of America.

Two US veterans were killed that day, but the movement grew. What does not kill you makes you stronger, they say. News of the raid, the first footage of what had happened, reached Americans in movie houses on newsreels that they used to show in theaters before the main feature. As Frank Rich describes in New York Magazine this week, when Americans saw those newsreels of MacArthur's army destroying the veterans' protest camp, Americans applauded the bonus army.

They cheered for the bonus army. They booed General MacArthur. Yesterday, these images began to reach Americans. It's the police in Oakland, California, breaking up the Occupy Wall Street protest there, Occupy Oakland. Part of the Occupy Wall Street movement is, for economic justice. This one in California, the police moved in with batons swinging.

They tore down tents and smashed signs. They sent tear gas grenades into the crowd. The cops are also alleged to have fired rubber bullets, something they are denying, despite injuries to protesters that look like they were caused by rubber bullets. The police admit to firing beanbag rounds, though.

Frankly, when you look at the footage of this, it rather looked and sounded like a small war. Washington, D.C., 1932, the raid on the bonus army. Oakland, California, 2011, the raid on Occupy Oakland, Occupy Wall Street. Two American scenes separated by almost a century. But put the old one in color, throw on some plaid shirts, and you almost could not tell them apart.

In his story this week in New York Magazine, Frank Rich tells the story of the bonus army and of Occupy Wall Street. He titles it, quote, "The Class War Has Begun."

By most accounts, the police crackdown on the Occupy Oakland encampment on October 25th was severe. Tear gas, flashbang grenades, and beanbags were fired at protesters, and some protesters exhibited bruising from what they claimed were rubber bullets fired by police when they attempted to reclaim their encampment.

In the most serious injury of an Occupy protester so far, Scott Thomas Olsen, a twenty-four-year-old Iraq veteran, had his skull fractured when he was struck by a tear gas canister during the Tuesday night events. The injury left Olsen in critical condition. Reading about these events in the nation's capital, though, you got a different impression.

The Washington Post, which has experience in minimizing the Wall Street protests, ran a short AP dispatch about events in Oakland under the headline, "Protesters Wearing Out Their Welcome Nationwide." And the photo the Post chose to run with the AP story? A police officer bending over to pet a cat with a caption explaining that the animal had been left behind by protesters evicted from the city park.

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen decided to pay a visit to Liberty Plaza for a firsthand view of the festival of antisemitism at Occupy Wall Street. He found none, and he declared that fact on October twenty-fourth, writing, quote, "I circled the place, encountering nothing and no one to suggest bigotry.

Not a sign, not a book, and not even the guy who some weeks ago held up a placard with the instruction to Google the phrase 'Zionists control Wall Street,'" close quote. Cohen says right-wing attempts to smear the Occupy movement for antisemitism are reprehensible. But it turns out that's just a setup to his smearing them with a bunch of other stuff, like slogans he says, quote, "Suggest a tired socialism that is as repugnant to me as the felonious capitalism that produced the mortgage bubble and the impoverishment of millions of Americans."

Close quote. Cohen calls Occupy Wall Street, quote, "A tourist attraction with the usual vendors, the usual zaftig young women doing the usual arrhythmic dance, somehow missing the beat of many drums." Close quote. It's a media event that has captured the flea thoughts of many Americans, and it's, quote, "Above all, a conspiracy to have left-leaning writers make jackasses of themselves by imparting grave and grand meaning to what is little more than a vast sleepover."

Close quote. Finally, for good measure, Cohen tosses in the idea that the right-wing smears of the Occupy movement are themselves the fault of the left, because such smears originate in the, quote, "Devious tactics of the old left adopted by the new right." Close quote. And that's no accident, because the, quote, "Practitioners are the descendants of lefties."

Close quote. So antisemitic? No. Clueless, repugnant, silly, chubby, something about fleas and themselves to blame for being called antisemitic? Yes.

At the University of California's campus at Berkeley, which everybody calls Cal, outside the administration building there, there's a big empty plaza space. and at the top of a sort of a short run of stairs from the administration area down to that plaza, there is a plaque that's embedded in the steps, and it names those steps the Mario Savio Steps.

this is Mario Savio. you're about to hear Mario Savio in a moment, and I'll just tell you for context, the President Kerr that you hear him mention, President Kerr was president of the University of California at the time that Mario Savio was speaking here. The context here is that the students were trying to overturn a ban on political activity on campus.

They wanted, free speech rights to advocate for political causes on campus, and they're protesting here against the university president and the university's board of regents. Check this out. 

We were told the following. If President Kerr actually tried to get something more liberal out of the regents in his telephone conversations, why didn't he make some public statement to that effect?

And the answer we received from a well-meaning liberal was the following. He said, "Would you ever imagine the manager of a firm making a statement publicly in opposition to his board of directors?" That's the answer. I ask you to consider, if this is a firm, and if the board of regents are the board of directors, and if President Kerr in fact is the manager, then I tell you something, the faculty are a bunch of employees, and we're the raw material.

But we're a bunch of raw material that don't mean to be, have any process upon us, don't mean to be made into any product, don't mean, don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the university, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone. 

We're human beings.

We're human beings. It was Mario Savio. His big speech that day at Cal in 1964 culminated, with this famous rallying cry to the students who had assembled there. 

There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even possibly take part.

And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all 

That was December 1964.

and from that very famous speech, there's a little bit of video from that speech, which you've just seen there. There are some still images and there is some audio of Mario Savio's entire speech. The record of this event in terms of the media available to us now, it's sort of patchwork-y. 

That doesn't mean that you have to break anything.

1,000 people sitting down someplace, not letting anybody by, not letting anything happen can stop any machine, including this machine, and it will stop. 

Mario Savio. Part of him there talking about putting your body on the gears of the machine, you have heard that before, right? That, that became one of the iconic rhetorical moments of the whole decade of the 1960s, and there weren't very many of those moments from 1964 on the West Coast.

But it was, it, it was like he was talking about how to stop the Vietnam War. It was like he was talking about how to stop segregation. It was like he was talking about big national issues, and allegorically, maybe he was talking about those bigger issues. But in the moment, what he was talking about, as you heard there, was free speech, was students' rights, students' rights to be protesting at the University of California.

This was a huge confrontation between the students and the university, between the students and the police, and it was over a very local campus free speech issue. And even though the free speech movement faced huge hostility at the time, there were more than 800 arrests, the largest number of arrests of students in US history up until that point.

30 years later, the school put up a plaque for Mario Savio. They named the steps where he spoke there to honor the most articulate and powerful of the free speech movement student organizers at that spot. And at that spot this month, at that plaza where Cal put up the plaque to mark the success of the free speech movement, here's what happened on Wednesday.

Here they come. Here they come.

Riot police breaking up an Occupy Wall Street demonstration at Cal's supposed Free Speech Plaza last week on Wednesday. Here's the thing, though. Since that massive police show of force on November 9th, the protesters there, are back. Today they organized a day of action at Cal that included classes being taught outside and a march from Cal's Sproul Plaza, the home of Mario Savio Steps, to a local public high school, Berkeley High, and to Berkeley City College.

Cal's annual Mario Savio Memorial Lecture was already scheduled to be taking place tonight. It was scheduled to be held this year in some ballroom on campus. But thanks to a request from the Occupy Cal protesters, the Mario Savio lecture tonight will be held outdoors. It will be held outdoors where that plaque is at Sproul Plaza, where those cops beat up those protesting students just last week.

At this hour, the student protesters are reportedly planning to erect tents on the grass near where the lecture is to be given. Because of that, they say they expect a confrontation with police. They expect to be removed from the Free Speech Memorial Plaza again, maybe in the middle of the Mario Savio Free Speech Memorial Lecture.

Mario Savio's widow put out a statement to- yesterday saying that the, the lecture was gonna be moved outside, quote, "In protest against the use of excessive police force against non-violent demonstrators." She said, "We apologize for your inconvenience, but as Mario said, there comes a time- Today in New York City, very, very early this morning, really in the middle of the night, New York City police raided and tore down and cleared out the Occupy Wall Street encampment, that has been at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan for nearly two months.

The raid happened at 1:00 AM roughly, as most of the protesters there were asleep. New York City police officers dressed in riot gear handed out a written notice to the protesters telling them where their personal articles from the encampment could be retrieved, which sounds lovely until you saw what they were doing to the protesters' personal belongings.

There were reports that police used knives to cut up the sturdy military grade tents that were the best hope of surviving winter down there. You can see police here cutting down the protesters' tent poles, with handheld saws, with Sawzalls. This was a massive police action. There were 200 arrests early this morning.

Zuccotti Park was totally cleared. But here's the thing, like at Cal, like everywhere so far for the past couple of months, the protesters are already back. After taking temporary refuge last night in nearby Foley Square, in the immediate aftermath of the police raid, at daybreak, people came back to Zuccotti Park and said that no matter what happened, whatever specific spot they were gonna be boxed out of for the time being, they were not going away.

They were not leaving. I 

mean, on a practical level, what happens now? What's day one? What's day two? 

I'm going to stay here, and I'm gonna put my tent right back up. We show them that we are not just words on an internet screen. We are people, and we are, we are willing to put ourselves in pain and misery to put our point across.

How important is the occupation to Occupy Wall Street? 

I think it's very, important. This is, this is the location, this is the scene of the crime, and we need a, a critical mass of people. When, when people get together and they talk face to face, and they have a library, and people are coming down to talk and organize, and it's, it's, it's, it's what's needed.

you can't do everything on the internet. 

Those interviews are both shot by our producer, Laura Conway, who was down there this morning talking with protesters, and also just talking with the passersby. 

If they can't be here, what do you think happens 

to their movement? Oh, I don't know. I, I

think it ... My gu- Wouldn't you guess it's strong enough that they'll ... that it's gained so much momentum that they'll keep it going somehow? 

It does seem like they are strong enough, at least so far, to keep it going somehow. that same point about the fact that this is not going away was made eloquently, and pretty effectively I think, by Dan Siegel on this program last night.

Dan Siegel, is the advisor to Oakland mayor Jean Quan, who resigned in protest over that city once again clearing out their Occupy encampment. Dan Siegel was our guest on the interview last night. 

To me, it seems like a totally useless and futile activity to spend millions of dollars to take people out of tents, to create situations where there was bloodshed in our streets, and lots of chaos for days, because they're gonna come back.

this is a movement that can't be stopped. 

They're gonna come back. Although he did not put it, in these specific terms, Dan Siegel was essentially recommending last night, that cities consider taking the approach that Washington, D.C. has taken as a city thus far, which is to not try to clear the encampments out of there.

To do what you need to do to protect public safety, but to also recognize that this movement is important. To try to figure out a way to let them stay. Practically speaking, though, and this is just practical advice to every mayor in the country, to every police force in the country, the whole point of this protest is that it doesn't go away.

That's the tactical point. It's not called March on Wall Street. It's not called Rally at Wall Street. It's called Occupy Wall Street. It's not a stand up for the 99% on Saturday at noon movement. It's a we are the 99% movement, and its tactics are about physical presence, about continued physical presence.

And so beating the heck out of people, and knocking down their signs, and arresting them, and tearing down their stuff, and cutting it up with Sawzalls, and running them out of a public space for a day, that makes this movement stronger. And it's always been this way. You kinda should've figured it out by now.

I mean, the reason Mario Savio gave his Bodies on the Gears speech that became so iconic, the reason he gave that speech in December 1964, is because in October 1964, police moved in to try to arrest people for handing out civil rights pamphlets on the Berkeley campus. And those arrests led to this. Look.

Do you see what's in the center of that? It's not a stage. A kid who the police were trying to arrest for handing out civil rights pam- pamphlets is in that police car, which is what's in the middle there. The police car is what Mario Savio is standing on. That's hundreds, no, thousands of other people surrounding the police car, not letting the police take that kid away to be arrested.

That kid was in that car for nearly two days. Had he not been arrested, he would've just been a kid on Sproul Plaza giving out civil rights pamphlets. But because you arrested him, those became, 30 years later, the Mario Savio steps. That plaza became home to Berkeley's Free Speech Monument. It became not just some one kid's free speech effort, it became the Free Speech Movement, which by the way, became a major part of why we got a massive nationwide anti-war movement in this country.

And so in Oakland, on October 25th, 2011, they beat the heck out of people. They fractured the skull of an Iraq War veteran. They doused all of downtown Oakland in tear gas. They set off concussion grenades. And they cleared that plaza that day, and that encampment came back at that plaza bigger than ever.

Now they've cleared it again, as of two nights ago. How did Occupy Oakland respond? They came back. They came back to the original square. They occupied there and also to a nearby one, where they plan to stick it out for even longer. In New York City, they cleared out Zuccotti Park in the early hours of this morning with no warning, while people slept.

Tonight, Occupy Wall Street is back, back to Zuccotti Park. In Boston, remember the footage we showed you a few weeks ago, the Occupy Boston encampment being cleared out? They're back. They are back too, and they're filing legal action today. The ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild trying to secure them a place to stay for the long run.

In Portland, Oregon this weekend, there was a huge show of force against the Occupy Portland encampment. Occupy Portland has responded by calling for a citywide day of action on Sunday. They're claiming more support than they have ever had in the past. At Cal Berkeley, after being beaten by police and cleared out of their protest site, Occupy Cal was back with a full day of protest activities today.

And they are back tonight at the birthplace of Berkeley's Free Speech Movement to hear, outdoors tonight, the Mario Savio Memorial Lecture

First, let's talk about the court ruling itself. there's one line in Judge McIntyre's ruling that is, frankly, it's insane. it i- it is, it is, it is insane. It's crazy. I, I can't believe that it's in it, but here we go. I'm gonna read it to you right now. Here's quote, quoting from the ruling, against Occupy Boston.

Judge McIntyre wrote, "Little in the way of expression is outlawed under the United States Constitution." All right, that starts out good, right? You know, y- you don't want things outlawed. you don't want speech outlawed, right? That starts out good, but it, it gets bad. So, "Little in the way of expression is outlawed under the United States Constitution," but, here's where it gets bad, "but an act which incites a lawful, forceful response is unlikely to pass as expressive speech."

You heard me right. Did, did, did you hear it? I'll read it again in case you missed it. "An act which incites a lawful, forceful response is unlikely to pass as expressive speech." Are you friggin' kidding me? Are you fr- seriously, Judge? Seriously? Do you all understand what she just said? Do you understand what this judge just said?

This judge apparently is happy to leave the right of free speech and assembly up to individual police discretion. That is what, that is what she's essentially saying here. That is what she's saying. According to this judge, according to this judge, if the police forcefully respond to your speech, it is not protected by the First Amendment.

It is up to police discretion. It's up... That, that is what she's saying. That is what this judge is saying. The judge says if... The, the, the judge is saying that the police can decide what and when and if you're allowed to speak at all, essentially. So, so, so, so take... So if the pepper spray, if the... Sorry. If the police, if the police pepper spray you, if the police beat you with batons, if, if they do that, clearly, clearly that speech you were trying to do, that's not protected.

If they pepper spray you, if they arrest you, if they beat you with batons, that speech is not protected because the police stopped you from doing it. Because if it was, if it was protected speech, if it was protected speech, well, then the police wouldn't be beating you. The police wouldn't be arresting you if your speech were protected.

It's up to the police to decide what and when you can speak. You know, a writer, a writer for the Boston Phoenix, in response to, to that exact, to that exact thing, actually, posted a picture of a, of, a statue that I've actually never seen in, in Birmingham, Alabama. It, it's, it's a statue commemorating, a famous civil rights mo- moment and photo.

I'd seen the photo before. the, the statue is actually inspired, by this, this, the famous photo, I'm sure you've probably seen it, it's iconic, where this, this white police officer is literally, sicking a, a dog on a, on a Black protester, in the '60s. you know, it's, it's an amazing statue and an amazing, iconic photo.

so I guess, I guess Judge McIntyre, I guess, Judge McIntyre, what you're saying is that white police officer who, who, you know, there's a, he's, he's sicking a dog on him, so that white police officer who forcibly responded to that civil rights protester by sicking a dog on him, by having a dog attack him, technically, technically that civil rights protester didn't have the First Amendment right to, to march, didn't have the First Amendment right to protest because, because if he did, if he did have that right, then that police officer wouldn't have sicked the dog on him.

It is, it... What? Seriously, what crazy authoritarian mindset does this judge have? It is sickening and frankly shocking that this person is on a friggin' bench. She concluded, she concluded in the ruling that, quote, that, quote The act of occupation, this court has determined as a matter of law, is not speech.

That's what she concluded. Occupations are not speech It's like Bill Hicks said, it's like Bill Hicks said, "You have the freedom to do what we tell you." That's what we have the freedom to do, people. The... Look, there is no way, there is no way that you can look at the Occupy movement and say that it is not political speech.

There's no... Well, I mean, I guess you can. I mean, you can. This crazy-ass judge did it. She just did it. She just did it. She just said it's not speech. She just said occupations aren't speech. But if you do, you are frigging kidding yourself. You are frigging kidding yourself. Occupation, occupations aren't political speech?

They're not political speech? Are you kidding me? I don't know if you saw this, Justice McIntyre. I don't know if you actually saw this, but President Barack Obama just gave an economic speech that frankly was f- full, full of the rhetoric of Occupy Wall Street. It was full of the rhetoric of the 99%. It was a fiery economic populist speech.

All right, I'm gonna tell you. Hold on, th- calm down, everybody. I didn't really buy the speech. I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be frank with you. I didn't buy Obama's speech. I really didn't believe the speech. I'm just gonna be honest with you. but, but the fact that Obama actually gave that speech, the fact that Obama was forced to give that speech is a victory for the political movement that is Occupy Wall Street, the political movement that is the Occupy movement.

The fact, the fact is, because of Occupy, the President now has to talk about economic inequality. The fact that he, that he, that he's not pitching, still pitching to cut more programs, the fact that he's not talking about austerity, which he was doing, you know, a frigging month ago. That is a victory for the Occupy movement.

But are you seriously telling me, are you seriously telling me that that's not political speech? We influenced the frigging President of the United States of America, and this isn't political speech. Are you out of your frigging mind? And look, you know, look, you know, the, the Obama speech, it was a good speech.

It was a good speech, but Ob- you know, I've never said Obama... I've never been one to say, "God, Obama, the problem with Obama, he just doesn't know how to give a good speech." That's not Obama's problem. The problem is, I just don't believe President Obama anymore. You know? I mean, for right now, right now what it is, it's a shift in rhetoric.

It's a shift in rhetoric. A- a- and, and, and, you know, at the moment, there is no shift in policy. you know, he hasn't, he hasn't outlined, or proposed any, any new policies or any real shift in policies or legislation that would actually benefit the 99%. Yeah, you know, that's, that, that, you know, it's a simple truth.

I mean, if he really, if the President really wanted to get people back on his side and really, you know, wanted to say that he's serious of working for the 99%, I guess he would have ended the speech by, you know, I, I, he, for me, he could have ended the speech by saying, "My fellow Americans, I'm ending the speech today by publicly firing Tim Geithner and Bill Daley, and the prosecutions of Wall Street criminals begins now.

Thank you, good night." I mean, that, that would be, that would be change that I could believe in, frankly, personally. But, but look, you know, it was a good speech. It was a, you know, it was perfectly, perfectly good fiery populist speech. But yeah, a- and but yeah, again, I don't buy it. But look, look, the ... I will say this though.

Is it a good thing that the president is talking about economic inequality instead of talking about austerity? Is that a good thing? You are goddamn right it's a good thing. You are goddamn right. That's not a good thing, that is a great thing. The Occupy movement has shifted, has shifted the political talk that's going on in DC right now.

And even if it's just talk, the fact that the talk has been shifted is a insane victory for the Occupy movement. The fact that the president had to give that speech, and that's what the president's gonna have to campaign on, even if, you know, most likely he doesn't actually live up to the speech, the fact that the speech is being made is actually a really good thing and is a major victory.

You know, he's only talking about it because Occupy made him talk about it. But, but according to the judge, according to the judge, Judge McIntyre, occupations aren't protected speech. This thing that they, these, these protesters just did that made the president give that speech, that's not protected speech.

Again, again, according to the courts, money is speech. Money is speech. Corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money buying and corrupting our political system, but you, you little person, you little person down there, you, you can't put a tent in a park to protest that corruption, to protest that buying of our system.

You can't do that, but they can because, because occupations aren't speech

Occupy Rochester, that's in New York State, has been holding protests outside each, one such home, and also the local Wells Fargo branch, demanding the bank negotiate with its owners. Earlier this week, following public outcry, that family there was given an additional 30 days to work out an agreement.

Occupy Oakland now trying to do the same for 75-year-old Josephine Tolbert, who fell behind on her mortgage payments after she was diagnosed with cancer. Police there blocking the entrance to her home. Speaking of Occupy Oakland, joining me now, as promised, Scott Olsen, the Iraq War vet whose skull was fractured at an Occupy Oakland rally in late October.

Scott, it's a pleasure to talk to you. I'm glad we can do this. Thanks for your time tonight. 

Howdy, Th- Keith. Glad to be here. 

How are you feeling and, how f- people who saw that interview that you did over the weekend at, Occupy Oakland, how, how am, how fast are you getting better? Let me put it that way.

it, it's difficult to, to say. Every time I run into somebody new who I haven't seen for quite a while, they're sur- sur-tw- sur-twived- Mm-hmm ... how much I'm doing better. every time I check in with my doctors, every time I check in with, anybody, any friends, they see the change faster than I, I do. 

Hmm.

I would imagine that's true. Must be. Is it, do you find it frustrating, or ha- has the, th- the support that you've gotten nationwide actually contributed to this process? Not to have everybody pat themselves on the back, but I mean, has it been of any practical value to you? 

Well, i- it's frustrating at times.

but the support has been such, such a great help to me. just going home and reading a new card. I've s- still got a whole stack to get through. 

Mm. 

And pr- pr- support from vet groups and, like, VFTP or IVAW- Mm-hmm ... has been outstanding, and it's been helping me get way b- way better. 

How, how clear a picture do you have of how much support there is and how much you've come to represent, not just Occupy Oakland, but Occupy in general?

Well, I mean, I, I've got this idea, but it's, it's a bit hard to get my head around Yeah I w- I was out on the streets f- of San Francisco today, and th- three or four people who y- you wouldn't expect to be involved with, politics, you know, they recognized me- Mm ... and they sought me, and it's, it's always a f- surprise to me.

Yeah, I would think so. w- w- what does that mean to you when, when people think of you as part of maybe the essence of Occupy? 

I mean, it, it, it's, it's important to me because, you know, I, I am a part of it. W- we all are, and it's important for us all to be a part of it and, embody those values that, we hold, hold true.

Tell me what the... what, what was it particularly that, that drew you to Occupy Oakland in the first place? 

just the, just really the, the community, involved and the diversity of opinions. You know, everybody you talk to there is going to have a different opinion and, and you can always learn something new from talking- Mm

to g- s- somebody else. 

I don't know if you know this name, Sergeant Shamar Thomas. 

Uh-huh. 

Oh, good. Well, then you know what he did here in New York- Yeah ... and he became famous for it because he stood up to the cops and he said, with, with real vigor, but real politeness towards them, you know, "T- there, there's no excuse for you to behave like this.

This is not a battlefield." He knew battlefields. You know battlefields. Does the degree of militarization of the police at Occupy protests, obviously that had an impact on you personally, but in a broader sense, does it shock you that you're seeing this on the streets of this country? 

I don't know. It's, on, on one hand, it shocks, me a lot.

On the other hand, it, it doesn't because our nation's, peace officers have been militarized- Mm-hmm ... over the past 10 years, to combat terrorism, but they're combating anybody with an opinion. 

b- relative to your opinion and these protests, do you have plans, do you have hopes about resuming participating in some, some regular way?

Or what do you wanna do with this as it goes forward? 

I'm, I'm excited to get b- back involved, and I'm trying to, plan on how, how I can get back involved and be an asset f- to be- the Occupy movement. But, you know, I have to make sure I ta- Yeah ... stay safe. 

Well, you're already an asset. You don't have to worry about, about achieving that.

You were sort of like a practical, in-the-field kind of thing. l- let me sum it up this way. W- what do you want, having been through all that you've been through involved in this, what do you wanna see Occupy achieve long-term, short-term, however, however you wanna put it? 

I mean, really, I just want to see more people, getting involved with real democracy- Mm

to build a, a democratic nation. with that, I think we need to end our wars, all of them, and that'll do our country a great service. 

Next, Section B, RIGGED SYSTEM, RIGGED COVERAGE

Let me show you the income inequality so you get a sense of what we're talking about here when it comes to Occupy Wall Street and so many people in this country, the 99% of us, that are frustrated. So last quarter, we're told that, things went really well. The GDP grew by 2.5%. Everybody was happy. The stock market has started to go up.

what they didn't tell you is that real disposable personal income fell by 1.7%. So the economy is, quote-unquote, getting better, right? But the reality is we're not getting any better. So the money's going somewhere. I'm gonna show you where it's going in a second, but it ain't going to us. Our income is going down.

Stock market must be thrilled, but it's not going to us. Well, in fact, you know, from Think Progress, there's this excellent chart that we got. It says if the US land were divided like US wealth, here's who- how much of it would be owned in terms of, of the land mass, right? 1% would own that much, which is gigantic amount.

9% would own the rest, and then you say, "Hey, at least we get Florida and Texas." For the, for the 90%, the rest of us, right? But as you look at that, it gives you at least some visual sense of how much of the wealth the top 1% or the top 10% have. It is gigantic. So when you look at, how things have gone over the last 30 years, this is what we've been talking about all the time on this show, 'cause this goes to show you how they whittled away at us, right?

And how they redistributed the money to the top. Well, a new study out that shows from the House Budget Committee, and, I'm sorry, it's from the Happentent campaign's new report, Restoring Shared Prosperity, from 1973 to 2009, a typical worker, had his wages go up by $1.23 per hour, okay? Over 36 years.

That is an average of 8.4%. So over 36 years, your hourly wage goes up a little over a buck, 8%. Now, yesterday we showed you a separate report that's a slightly different time range but about the same ballpark. '79 to 2007. For the top 1%, how much did their income go up? 200 and 75%. So your income went up by about a buck an hour, their income went up 275%.

You think that was just a coincidence? You think that that's normal? That doesn't happen in every 30-year time period? If you see from, you know, 1950 to 1980, it's not the case at all. In fact, the bottom 20% had their share of income actually go up in that time period. To us now, it seems like that's, how could that have possibly happened?

Well, because we had a fair tax code. And we, and it was better distributed. Right now, the tax code has the richest people, the millionaires, paying less than we do. How does that make any sense? The richest hedge fund and private equity guys in the country, the guys on Wall Street, are paying 15% on capital gains, dividends, and earned interest, while you're paying a much higher rate.

So they're taking from the middle class and giving to the rich, and then it's not surprising that you wind up getting an 8% increase over 36 years, and they wind up getting a 275% increase in less than 30 years. Now when you ask the rich, by the way, the, and here's something that's interesting. Do you agree with Warren Buffett that your taxes should be raised if you're above, a million dollars?

And these are all people who have income above a million dollars. You'd think, well, they're probably gonna say no, right? I mean, it's their income. W- wrong again, Bob. They say yes, 68% of millionaires saying, "Yeah, you should raise our taxes." When they ask them why, they have a number of reasons. These are just quotes from some of the people that they polled, and this is the Spectrum Group that did this poll.

And they're like, "Honestly, we have the money." One guy says, "I don't really know what else to spend it on. I think that if you took more from me on taxes, I wouldn't decrease my spending at all. It just, you'd be taking a little bit more from my savings." But he's like... Another guy says, "Hey, you know what? look, obviously for my own self-interest, I don't wanna be taxed more, but on the other hand, I really think the country needs it.

So I think the best thing to do is f- for, to increase my taxes so that the go- federal government and the country could be in better shape so that it works for all of us." So who's stopping it, right? Who's, or the guys who are saying, "Hey, you know what? I don't care what a majority of the millionaires think.

I don't care what a majority of the country thinks." And by the way, over 80% of the country says we should tax millionaires more, right? But now they're getting taxed less than us. It's insanity. Anyway, so I think the, so who's stopping all this? Over 80% of the country, over 68% of millionaires. Well, it's the few, that 32% of millionaires and billionaires who say, "Oh, no.

No, I love my money, and I, I'm so greedy that I'm gonna take some of my money and I'm gonna spend it on politicians." Because that 68% who are willing to get taxed more, they don't go and contribute to a senator saying, "Hey, please, can you tax me more?" They just say, "Hey, if you do it, I get it, and in fact, I'm in favor of it," right?

But they don't actively go and do legalized bribery of our politicians. But the super greedy at the top, they go, well, like the Koch brothers, they've got $44 billion, but it's not enough for them. So they go buy every politician they can see. On the Energy Committee, 'cause it affects them the most, 'cause they in the oil business, they bought 27 of the 31 people on that committee in the House.

You mean the guys who want higher taxes go on and paying the guys on the committee, "Hey, please raise my taxes"? No. The, the problem isn't even the greed of those few, millionaires and billionaires we're talking about. The problem is that the system allows them to do legalized bribery. I mean, look, it, I'm not just saying this 'cause we started this, movement and, and this PAC, but it's true.

The reason we started the PAC was because we, we see news like this every single day. Look, Wolf-PAC is, is saying we've got to stop this at the source. If you allow politicians to take money, and unlimited money, from corporations and from, rich donors, you're never gonna be able to stop this. A couple of guys like the Koch brothers are gonna come, and they, for the next election, they're raising over $200 million.

Karl Rove's group is raising $240 million. All they gotta do is grab 10, 20, 100 of the richest and greediest guys in the country, and then the rest of us don't matter at all. We don't have a democracy. Those guys then go and, and, and they give a tremendous amount of money to Mitt Romney, to Rick Perry, and to Barack Obama, and then they say, "You will do our bidding."

They don't give a damn about us and our priorities.

It is the panic of the plutocrats. The oligarchy is terrified about what they are seeing now in the streets of Manhattan and in the streets of cities all over this country. 

Yeah, the Occupy Wall Street movement has blossomed in cities and small towns from coast to coast, from Occupy Boston to Occupy San Diego, with more and more diverse groups joining to protest corporate greed.

You heard Glenn Beck there warning fellow plutocrats they're going to come and drag them out of their homes and kill them. 

Oh, good Lord. 

And now Occupy Wall Street is occupying the State Department. Climate action youth group 350.org organized Occupy the State Department over the weekend, calling on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to deny approval of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline across the Midwest.

The 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline would carry dirty oil from the tar sands of Canada 1,700 miles across the farmland and aquifers of the Midwest, all the way to ports at the Gulf of Mexico. NASA climate scientist James Hansen has warned that if the pipeline is built, allowing full exploitation of the Alberta tar sands, it will be, quote, "Game over for the climate."

And because the protesters are not allowed to use electronic amplification, 350.org founder and climate activist Bill McKibben spoke via the human microphone in front of the State Department to amplify his words for all to hear. 

That's why we can never do anything about global warming. 

That's why we can never do anything about global warming.

Exxon gets in the way. Exxon gets in the way. Goldman Sachs gets in the 

way. 

Goldman Sachs gets in the way. 

The 

whole fossil fuel industry. The whole fossil fuel industry gets 

in 

the 

way. The protesters did not spare criticism of President Barack Obama either. 

We have to free Obama. Because there's some kind of stunt double there now Because there's some kind of stunt double there now.

You know, it's very funny. Fox News just can't wrap their brain around these protests. They think that this is, Barack Obama leading these protests, and I've seen as many people critical of Obama and the Democrats as I have anything else during this very real grassroots uprising. 

And if it seems like corporate media coverage of Occupy Wall Street is lopsided, how about this?

The corporate media and House Republicans have generated copious coverage on the bankruptcy of solar panel maker Solyndra but aren't interested in newly released State Department emails showing a very cozy relationship between State Department officials and TransCanada's chief lobbyist, who also happens to be a former Hillary Clinton campaign official.

In fact, a new analysis by Media Matters shows that the flood of corporate media coverage of the Solyndra bankruptcy dwarfs coverage of the Iraq war contracting abuses and corruption by a ratio of five to one. But the biggest bombshell, thinkprogress.org reports that the State Department has now admitted that a Houston-based private contractor it hired to conduct the environmental review of the pipeline, saying it was no big deal, was actually recommended by TransCanada, even though that contractor had previously worked on projects for TransCanada.

The contractor calls TransCanada a major client in its marketing materials, and that contractor will likely work on the pipeline if approved, which is a potentially illegal conflict of interest. 

So the Obama-Clinton State Department is teaming up with, corporate cronies here, but the Republicans have no problem in this case because the corporate cronies happen to be working on something the Republicans care about?

Apparently

The American people, are onto the games that Wall Street and Washington are playing. So when they asked, in a recent Pew Research Center study, what percentage of people believe that too much power rests in the hands of large corporations and a few wealthy people in this country, 77% of Americans said absolutely too much power in corporations and the wealthy.

So, the idea that the Republicans are going around saying, "Oh, no, no, no. The American people realize these are job creators." No, the American people realize they've got all the power and they're abusing it. More s- statistics here. 61% of respondents said the US economic system unfairly favors the rich.

Not just they have too much money, but the system unfairly favors the rich. 61%, that is a solid majority. And even 51%, a majority of the country, said that Wall Street hurts the economy more than they help the economy. These are not good numbers for Wall Street. The American people are onto you. And, it's gets worse.

This is actually a, a depressing part of the study. Do you still believe the American dream is possible? Now, whenever the people are asked that, and they've been asked by Pew since 1994 that question, they usually have an answer of like, "Yeah, you know, we got troubles. The economy's in bad shape. The rich have too much power.

But we still believe in the American dream." Well, that's still true. 58% of Americans think that if you work hard, you could make it in America. But we have a new record high for the number of people who say it is just simply not true. 40% of Americans saying the American dream is not possible. No matter how hard you work, the rules are set against you, rigged against you, and you can't make it.

To... I, I actually don't believe that that is true, but it gives you a, an indication of how upset people are, how despondent people are. And, and don't get me wrong, I definitely agree with them. The rules are rigged against them. It's just a matter of can you overcome that, and how can we fix those rules so that the, we get our democracy back?

And then, finally, though, this was an interesting stat. When asked, do you agree with Occupy Wall Street? Now look, 77% of them agree with the central idea of Occupy Wall Street. But when you ask them specifically, do you agree with Occupy Wall Street? It's still a yes, but it's not 77%. 44% say yes, they support Occupy Wall Street.

35% say that they oppose it. Now those are actually pretty good numbers, 44 to 35, much better than the Tea Party numbers, across the country. But given that they agree totally with the central premise of Occupy Wall Street, they should be even higher i- if they do, you know, what that movement represented.

But the part that disturbs me is 29% said that they approve of the way the protests were conducted, but a huge 49% said that they oppose the movement's strategies. Now that bothers me because basically they've bought into the hype of like, "Hey, you know what? I, I get what they're saying, so that's good. But, they shouldn't be doing it this way.

The protesters are so wrong." they, there's hippies and then there's a confrontation with the cops, and Fox News is blaring them and then CNN picks it up and then all other news stations pick it up. Confrontation with the cops as if they're the ones who caused it. They're sitting there doing their First Amendment right.

The cops come in, do the raids, pepper spray, et cetera, and then they get blamed for it. 49% saying they're using the wrong tactics. But what tactics do you want them to use? If they politely said, "Hey, you know what? The rich are screwing you," and they said it in their basement, you wouldn't have heard it. You wouldn't know about the Occupy movement.

There is no polite way of saying this. In fact, they're doing it as polite as possible. It's civil disobedience. It's not even disobedience. They're the ones following the law. They're the ones that are e- exercising their First Amendment rights, just like in the civil rights era. Martin Luther King said, "Hey, look, the courts, the Supreme Court has ruled in our favor.

We do have these rights, whether it's the march, whether it's to insist on our civil rights in the South. It's the local police that are, breaking the law." He was absolutely right about that as well. But of course, you know, in the end, you know, with all this propaganda, I guess some people go, "Well, I don't like the way they're doing it."

Now, don't believe the hype, man. They're doing it in a perfectly acceptable, in a tradition that is deeply American. They're protesting it and bringing attention to it. That's why you found out about it. And, and remember, you totally agree with them, meaning in general, the American people. So I, I, I don't have...

I hardly have any problem with how they're doing it. Of course, this is a giant organization. Some people do the wrong things, but it's not even an organization. But overall, I think the movement has been fantastic, and I think that, you should not only support the movement and the ideas behind it, but also the manner in which they are risking their safety at times and their careers by getting arrested, et cetera, by pushing this fight when you, like...

And so you can sit at home and say, nod your head, and I agree, while they're out doing the fight. If anything, you should be honestly thanking them for that. And then when I was at Zuccotti Park, I was amazed at how tough those guys were. You go sleep on a concrete, in, in New York in the fall when it gets cold, and you do it night after night.

I challenge you to do it one night, let alone for months. So I appreciate their fight, and I appreciate the way that they're doing it. And, and their message is at least absolutely winning across the country.

another one of these stories that was in my little to-do topic file that I found this morning had to do with something-- and it's so recent, by the way, it's still unfolding. So pardon me if this story isn't quite correct by the time you get this show. Here's where it stands now, though.

There was a stock trader, or a guy who purported to be a stock trader, who did an interview, with the BBC the other day, and, apparently some of the BBC people in the studio were shocked by it. But the purported stock trader basically said, and I'm gonna quote him kinda out of context probably, but he basically said that the world economy's gonna go to hell, and no one's gonna fix it, and no one's gonna fix it because none of these countries are really in charge or calling the shots.

Goldman Sachs is in charge and calling the shots, and they don't want this, so it's not gonna happen. Goldman Sachs runs the world. Now, since that time, some have made charges that this guy might be one of, a group of hoaxers and pranksters called the Yes Men. When last I checked on the story, that's being doubted a little bit, but it's still possible.

But if the guy is real, there's some interesting thoughts about that. The first one is trying to figure out if he meant Goldman Sachs, that one specific banking financial entity, or if he means Goldman Sachs and the other entities like them. That wasn't clear. But let's just pretend for the sake of argument that the truth of the matter here is that it's Goldman Sachs alone, and that it doesn't matter what nations do because Goldman Sachs will enforce what they want on these nations, right?

So it doesn't matter what voters in the United States want because the country's government is powerless to enact any change in the rules if Goldman Sachs doesn't want them, right? Goldman Sachs runs the world. That's the truth. Okay. If we all woke up the next morning and believed this, you know, if you walk out the morning that this news breaks and it's, you know, nobody's even denying it, and everybody, left, right, center, intellectuals, people on the street, everybody's talking about it.

I mean, do you walk out your door that morning in your bathrobe and just sort of go out in the middle of the street and gather with your neighbors and say, "What are we gonna do now?" I mean, the thought that popped into my head, I guess since we were thinking 9/11 anyway, was of the people, and I don't want 1,000 emails saying this didn't really happen.

There was no plane. There was a missile. I don't wanna go there, but let's, you know, the story that's so accepted about the one plane that never hit anything but the ground in Pennsylvania that was supposedly rushed by the passengers who, you know, kind of in a suicidal attempt to either take it over or, you know, keep it from hitting its terror target.

You sit there and you wonder at what point those people went from understanding the truth of the situation to acting on it. You know, who stood up first? Who looked at who with some sort of knowing glance? I mean, how did that situation go from concept to action? From realization of what was going on to an attempt to influence what was going on?

To me, that's the interesting crux of the issue. That's the important fault line. How do you cross that threshold? Concept to action. I used to think that all you needed to do was break on through this truth barrier, and the situation would solve itself. But if we woke up tomorrow morning to the news Goldman Sachs runs the world, what are you gonna do about that?

You're gonna have a little lunch and then call your congressman and say, "I don't like the fact that Goldman Sachs runs the world. Do something about that." This is the key. When you start to realize if reality was like A, and A was terrible and worrisome and shocking, what would you do about it? Even if you agreed with all your neighbors, what would you do about it?

One week after we all agree Goldman Sachs runs the world, what's happened? Does the government go and take on Goldman Sachs 'cause enough of us called our congressmen? I mean, this is where I'm starting to get stuck on this idea of, you know, the fault line between truth, acknowledgement of the truth, and then acting on that information.

I don't see the acting coming, and I'm not sure it would come even in the most extreme situations. Namely, you know, the news breaking that we weren't really in charge tomorrow morning Now, this brings me to the protests going on right now over on Wall Street, and several of you emailed me and said, "Dan, you're gonna talk about the Wall Street protests?"

I watched a little of the, of the coverage of these, the small group of people, protesting outside Wall Street, and I tried to read, you know, what they want and their sort of a manifesto kind of idea about how the greed of Wall Street and all that is, is, is steamrolling regular people and all this kind of stuff.

It's, it's an old and, understood sort of critique. There are people in the 1920s who would have understood it, too. And I watched this little protest, and then this morning there was news that some of the other cities of around the country ha- were having, like, sympathy protests and whatnot. But again, tiny little groups of people.

I mean, you go back to the late '60s, and you could get 300,000, 400,000 people at these massive protests that just shook the country, and, you know, you'll get 80 or 100 or 200. I don't know what it is in, in Washington, but part of the problem is when you look at it, you just go, "It's a few people. What's going on there?"

And if you're the guys in Wall Street, for example, if you're Goldman Sachs and you run the world, that doesn't scare you. As a matter of fact, you look at it and you think, maybe that even, maybe that even just makes the whole thing look even that much sillier, right? yeah, show more coverage of those people.

Show how pathetic and small it is and how little they can do and how a bunch of ragtag people chanting slogans, just show that. Great. That'll dissuade any more people coming out. There was one of these, kinds of protests in my own neck of the woods the other day, and I'm passing by the local courthouse, and there's like three people holding signs saying, "We want peace."

And I honked my horn, thinking, "These people have given up their day to go out there and make a statement, and look at just those poor three people." It looks pathetic. It looks like that's all you can muster. Nothing more depressing than that But I thought to myself, what if those Wall Street protesters had company?

What if they made a phone call, and I think they'd probably have to be the ones who made the phone call, to the Tea Party people? And by the way, I do not mean the people that the Koch brothers are backing. I don't mean these people that have been co-opted as an arm of the Republican Party. You may remember when this whole Tea Party thing started, there was a large contingent of people who did not fit our current concept of the Tea Party group, and who quickly sort of dropped away once it was co-opted.

A lot of libertarians in that group, by the way. call those people up and say, "Look, I know we don't agree on much, and I know our concept for what kind of a country we want is different, but the only way we're going to be scary to the people, you know, that we need to scare, and the only way we're going to be a force that politicians and pundits and, you know, the political class needs to pay attention to, is if we, you know, drop the division and start working together."

We can fight about the specifics later. Can we all agree that we're not running the country? I mean, if Goldman Sachs were running the country like that, you know, Wall Street purported, Wall Street guy said, wouldn't you have to make common cause with the rest of the citizens in the country and just say, "Look, we'll fight later.

We can't let Goldman Sachs run the country"? Don't we all think that the country needs to be run by the voters of the country? Is there anybody who doesn't think... Let's just take anyone who thinks that the voters of the country shouldn't be running the show outside the debate. Those people are not on our side.

But anybody who thinks that the voters of the USA should be running the show, that's something that can unite us right there. There's change that could be made on that basis alone if we could just agree on that There are people who keep us divided, folks, on purpose. They do it professionally. Turn on your television.

They have a guy from the right and a guy from the left, or a gal from the right and a g- gal from the left, and they sit there and eviscerate each other. And while they do that, they essentially cast some sort of aspersions upon the whole groups of Americans that think that that person they're talking to is correct.

And we rip another hole in the fabric of the country. We divide the population further at a time when we're all suffering together The doomsday device, you know, for Goldman Sachs if they were running the world would be us all dropping our little differences for now and deciding that we can talk after we get rid of Goldman Sachs.

Unity is the scariest thing to some segments of our society out there, political unity. And I would say it's an actual way to identify the agencies that we the people should be afraid of. They're the ones who would think that unity amongst Tea Party members and Wall Street protesters is the scariest thing that they can think of.

Those people are the ones we need to get a handle on, whoever they are. The big banking company, Citigroup, several years ago, and many of you are already aware of this, put out an interesting internal memo, since pulled from the internet, but there are copies floating around, talking to insiders about how the United States has become what they called a plutonomy.

I thought plutocracy was supposed to be the word, but they called it a plutonomy. And the internal memo was geared towards, you know, how you deal with this new reality if you're Citigroup. You know, how do you invest around it? How do you maximize your returns and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But folks, a plutonomy or a plutocracy obviously means a country ruled by a wealthy class of super, you know, wealthy people.

If that's true, if we live in a plutonomy or a plutocracy, isn't that something that would be just as upsetting to Tea Party protesters as Wall Street protesters? If you woke up this morning and Goldman Sachs were running the place, wouldn't you, you know, need to make common cause with your citizens to fight that reality?

Well, what if it's not Goldman Sachs? What if it's Citigroup's idea of a plutocracy or plutonomy? Don't we have a vested interest in not destroying that? This is where I think a lot of the problem lies, people think we have to smash it if you're one of these Wall Street protesters. You don't have to smash it.

The rich provide the engine that keeps a lot of the, you know, modern rich world going. But they need to be, you know, subject to the control of the citizenry, not the other way around. We don't want to be a country ruled by the rich and powerful. We want to be a country ruled by the people who has a large, functioning, healthy, you know, rich and powerful, you know, segment to it.

Frank Luntz is the top Republican pollster and strategist. and he was at a, a Republican Governor's Association in Florida, and he was telling them what are the different words and phrases that they have to use, and different things that they have to look out for. We now have that information. We have his presentation, and it is awesome.

Now why? First thing he says, quote, "I am so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death." Oh, that's music to my ears. The top Republican strategist is saying he's scared to death of Occupy Wall Street. Why? 'Cause he's polling on it, and the polling is saying, "Oh, the American people like that."

Get a load of this. He says, "They're having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism. Not only are they succeeding, they get into the core of capitalism." But I'm not even sure I believe that, but they're in a panic here. F- l- listen to the next part of what he says. He says, "Whatever you do, a- avoid these phrases, income inequality and paying your fair share," 'cause it doesn't really resonate with the American people for the other side.

We wanna avoid that 'cause we're the guys who created income inequality, right? So they're like, "Run for the hills when you hear those things. Don't talk about that 'cause it's gonna kill us." then he says about capitalism, quote, "I'm trying to get that word removed, and we're rep- replacing it with either economic freedom or free market."

By the way, when Luntz says it, it's as good as gold. You will now see on your television sets Republicans ad nauseam talking about, quote, economic freedom and free market. Watch for it. It's gonna happen. It's like clockwork. He continues, "The public still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral, and if we're seen as defenders of, quote, Wall Street, end quote, we've got a problem."

And he implies that they've got a problem 'cause that's exactly what they're doing. The whole point of the Republican Party is to protect the top, the rich, the 1%, as he's gonna explain further, a little down here in his presentation. But look at what he's saying. It's b- it's actually bigger than I suspected.

Occupy Wall Street is working so well, and the issue of income inequality is so large in the country that Americans, according to this top Republican strategist, are now beginning to turn against capitalism itself. That's an amazing fact. By the way, something that I'm not even in favor of. I, I like capitalism.

I think we just have to fix the system. There's huge problems with it, but it can be fixed. Now, when he gets to taxing the rich, he's like, "Why in the hell? And run from it. We don't talk about taxing the rich." You know why? 'Cause the American people totally wanna tax the rich. Listen to this quote. "If you talk about raising taxes on the rich, if you talk about, then what happens is the public responds favorably, so don't do that," he says, "But if you talk about government taking the money from hard-working Americans, the public says no.

Taxing, the public will say yes." That is a Republican saying, basically we have lost. The American people want to tax the rich. They want to raise taxes, so stop talking about it. That has been our talking point for the last 30 years. We're gonna cut taxes. Now when we say that, we lose. So now we're gonna change the dialogue and we're gonna talk about economic freedom and how we

And t- that taxes are no longer taxes, but they're taking money not from the rich, but from hardworking Americans. You gotta change the whole language because we've got an annihilation going on here for Republican messaging. This is a huge memo. He says about, the middle class They cannot win if the fight is on hardworking taxpayers, referring to Democrats.

He says, "We can say we defend the middle class, and the public will say, 'I'm not sure about that.' But defending hardworking taxpayers and Republicans have the advantage." Do you understand the relevance of that? He's saying, "Don't even call them the middle class anymore," 'cause the minute you say middle class, American people think Republicans are against the middle class, Democrats are for the middle class.

I, I, I tell you, man, I have never seen a more relevant secret political memo in my life, thank God it got leaked. This is saying, "We can't even talk about the middle class anymore 'cause it triggers in people's minds that we're against them. We have to switch the word to hardworking Americans," which a- by the way, is also their code word for the rich, which is funny.

He said, "How about government spending?" This is another huge loss for Republicans. He says, quote, "It's not about government spending. It's about waste. That's what makes people angry." In other words, if you say, "Hey, we gotta cut government spending," now the polls are in, and they said, "No, we don't. We don't think that's the problem."

So they have to reframe it in, in terms of waste. By the way, if you really wanna cut waste, you gotta go to the Defense Department. That's where all the waste is, right? Now, of course he wants to avoid that as well. He says, when you're talking to somebody who is an occupier, somebody from Occupy Wall Street.

Now, you would think Republicans, they punch them in the mouth. That's what they normally do, right? He's like, "No. Basically, we've lost, so here's what you have to say instead. First off, here are the three words for you all." He's telling this to Republican governors. "I get it. I get that you're angry. I get that you've seen inequality.

I get that you wanna fix the system." So he's saying, "I acknowledge what you're saying is true, because I've seen the polls, and I can't fight against it. So instead, what I'm gonna have to do is pretend that I'm on your side." So now he gives the governors all the terminology that while they're protecting the rich, they can pretend to be on their side.

So instead of fighting Occupy Wall Street, he says, "Oh, tell them, oh, I get bad e- bad economic intelligence. That's terrible." Now, so what do you, wanna call the rich instead? Because you- there's just no way of defending them if you look at the polls. He says, "Here are the words that you need to change and put in place of rich, basically.

Small business owners, job creators." Now, we've seen that before. They're already using those. Luntz came up with those earlier. But you never call them the rich. You never call them the top bracket. Small business owners, job creators, and then two others have been added to the list. Entrepreneurs and innovators.

Okay, so those are the new code words for the rich, so that of course they c- the Republicans can do their main job, which is to protect the rich. And then when you talk about Wall Street, he's like, "Oh, we're losing on that," right? So- Instead, redirect them to hating, Washington instead. Quote, "You shouldn't be occupying Wall Street, you should be occupying Washington."

T- this is what we're gonna suppose tell our advisors. "You should occupy the White House, 'cause it's the policies over the past few years that's been causing this problem." In other words, take your legitimate anger which we can no longer fight, and make sure you misdirect it towards, Democrats and the White House, when in fact, Wall Street's causing the problem.

And i- it's so detailed that he's set, he's got even guidelines for how to help, protect the bonuses of the Wall Street fat cats. You shouldn't call them bonuses anymore. You should call them pay for performance, 'cause that polls better. This memo is gold. It is basically an admission that Republicans are completely for the rich.

It's an outline of how they can protect the rich by using chicanery and a cr- a interesting and different terminology. And number three, most importantly, for the first time you've got the biggest Republican pollster and strategist saying, "No mas, we've lost on policy. We have to do a complete redirection on language, otherwise we're gonna get hammered, including saying that we're totally with Occupy Wall Street, and we get the economic inequality."

I did not expect this victory to be this complete. I'm startled by that. Now understand, the politicians have not reacted to it yet. So you're not seeing that victory yet on your television screens. You're not seeing it, in the media. You're not even seeing it from the Republican, talking heads yet, right?

But Luntz is the first person to do it. He's the one that sets the, gets the snowball rolling. They have, they're just getting these memos. They're just getting these polls. So now you'll probably begin to see that new direction for the Republicans, which of course, as the memo outlines, is a, another misdirection to get to their ultimate objective, which is to protect the rich.

that's amazing, man. You know what it shows you? There is a brewing non-anger rage in the country about this inequality, about how the system's been fixed by the Wall Street guys and the top 1%, the American people get it no matter how much Washington and the media try to cover it up.

Aside from being bad, she also seems to be, well, I don't know. I guess the jury's out. She's either an idiot or just a huge liar And I'm gonna go with, well, this also could be just, you know, a, a enormously lazy and, too self-satisfied. It's probably a combination of all three. I'm not sure if we see all three in this clip, but, let's play this clip.

This is Erin Burnett. This is just a day, day and a half ago, I guess. I've completely lost sense of time. Erin Burnett heading down to occupy Wall Street. she's shocked. Like, "Look, we were down there. The, we saw this guy," who's in this clip, actually. He was hanging out when we were i-interviewing Naomi Klein.

He was probably standing a foot from Naomi Klein, listening in to our show- 

Yeah ... 

live. 

Yes. And, are there people there who look a little freaky or wearing funny glasses or ha... Yes. And I would say the percentage of those people relative to the insi- tire size of the crowd is somewhere between one and 3%.

there's a lot of people there who look frankly like, like you, Matt 

Are you saying I'm one of those freaky looking people? 

No, I'm saying that, you look like somebody who maybe doesn't, who hasn't been out and hasn't taken a shower in a couple days. 

Thank you. 

You can say that. It's a fact. No, it's just like, you know, there might be- I took pride in that

kids who, you know, wear an, you know, a hoodie because that's what they, you know. And, so here is Erin Burnett doing this serious report. She goes down there and she, she really fakes out this, ad sales guy or this, for-marketing guy or software, computer software developer. But, let's listen to this clip

seriously? The Occupy Wall Street protest entered its third week today. What started as less than a dozen college students camping out in a park near the New York Stock Exchange is now hundreds of protesters, and it's spread to other cities. But what are they protesting? Nobody seems to know. So this afternoon, we went to Wall Street- Stop

to find out. And this- 

Nobody s- three weeks into this, she's saying, "And nobody seems to know"? When was this? This is two days ago, right? 

Yes. 

And she's claiming that nobo- nobody seems to know.

She has a very, she apparently, has either a very limited social and news circle. You know, Mitch McConnell said, like, "Some people think they have an idea, or there's some places where he said, "But nobody seems to know." Nobody, three weeks into it. That's stunning. In fact, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find somebody who could actually say, "Nobody seems to know anymore."

You know, Mitch McConnell three weeks ago. 

I mean, even that bank CEO who told Andrew Ross Sorkin to get down there seemed to have a better grasp of what was going on than- 

Yeah ... 

the 

president. Good point. That's a very good point. Maybe she should, get Andrew's, Ross Sorkin's, you know, Rolodex and call that bank CEO to ask him.

All right, let's keep playing. 

But what you heard is what I saw. It's not just a bunch of dancing hippies protesting. There are all kinds of people there. Babies, teachers, cheerleaders, Uncle Sampta and... that. 

Well- Obviously, 

it's an- 

That. She was talking about him being intimately, if you're not seeing the picture, but aside from that, she, yeah, see, those are the rhetorical games she plays here.

It's not just a bunch of hippies. There's also a bunch of other freaks and teachers Right? There's cheerleaders in there that and the, and teachers. So it's not just hippies, folks. I don't I don't want you to think I'm judging. It's not just hippies. There's also a bunch of freaks and teachers 

expect. But they were happy to take some time from their books, banjos, bongos, sports drinks, catered lunch.

Yeah, there was catered lunch, designer yoga clothing- 

Closet ... 

at- 

Oh my God, not catered lunch. You mean people have to eat? Oh, there's a catered lunch as opposed to what? It's not a home-cooked meal that they're doing in the park. Yeah, I mean, there's no Bunsen burners there. No, they bought pizza from across the street, or people sent them pizza.

It's not catered lunch. It's, this is stunning. Keep going. 

Also, I like how she says banjos like this, banjos, like she has no idea how to say the word. 

Right. Weird instrument. 

Absolutely lemon love-up. Computers, lots of MacBooks and phones to help us get to the bottom of it. This is Unplugged software developer Dan.

What do you do for a living? 

I'm a software developer. Software 

developer. Yes. So currently employed or unemployed? Unemployed. 

Unemployed. Unemployed we like to call it. 

Unemployed. 

It's called Occupy Wall Street. 

So do you know that, taxpayers actually made money on the Wall Street bailout? 

I was not aware of that.

They did. They made... Not on GM. Okay. But they did on the, on the Wall Street part of the bailout. Okay. Does that make you feel any differently? 

Well, I would have to do more research about it, but, 

If I were right, it might. 

Oh, sure. 

Pause it All right. Th- this person is, and, and this is where obviously she's just lying or she's just stupid.

and, and I would imagine, a- and these things aren't mutually exclusive, to be fair. She could be lying and she could be stupid. she could be willfully ignorant. but she really wanted to go down there and, and prove how, how clueless these people were. There's no reason to be mad at Wall Street.

Now, GM on the other hand, you can be mad at GM But not Wall Street. which I gotta say is fairly con- coincidental because, here's a statement, by way of, Will Bunch and Bryan Hickey of the local Independence Tea Party And what they have to say about Occupy Wall Street. Because the implication here that she's saying is that bailing out the wa- all of the, the banks was a great idea, but GM, eh, they didn't make any money on that, but Wonder where she got that concept from?

Wonder where she got that sort of like, That, I don't know if I will call it a talking point, the idea that Wall Street is the root of all evil is also an anathema to us. Like any other institution, Wall Street has its corrupt figures and such individuals should be dealt with accordingly. But to condemn Wall Street en masse is akin to condemning our entire free enterprise system.

Our association deplores corporate bailouts. GM. They're talking about GM. Hmm. Corporate subsidies, Solyndra, and corporate welfare. Now, of course, we know that Solyndra and any solar subsidies are literally 2% of all the subsidies we give to, energy, whether it's, 50 billion for nuclear, power, for, another, 10, 20 billion for, coal, and another 10, 20 billion for oil subsidies, but it's the $500,000 loan or the, $1.5 million loan to Solyndra that was the big problem.

At the same time, however, we recognize the contributions and achievements of America's Chamber of Commerce. the... She's parroting, the, talking points of these, Tea Party people. I guess that's not to be surprised, but, to... But, let- let's keep playing this, this video

Seriously? That's all it would take to put an end to the unrest. Well, as promised, we did go double check the numbers on the bank bailout, and this is what we found. Yes, the bank bailouts made money for American taxpayers. Right now to the tune of $10 billion, anticipated that it will be $20 billion. Those are seriously the numbers.

And this was a big issue, so we solved it. In fact, the only reason we haven't made all of our money back is actually GM. But I don't see protests in Detroit. It- 

So there it is. and GM probably where I think we're going to see, the money. In fact, I think if you look at market capitalization, we probably have made money.

We just haven't sold all the stock in there, but that's aside from the point, because she conflates bank bailouts with TARP Yes, TARP was one element of the bank bailouts,

we also know the billions of dollars that was spent, to AIG was basically a slush fund for other, banks, particularly Goldman Sachs. We also know that we allowed the Bank of America to sell a bunch of their crappy, mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

So there's anywhere, I mean, the figures range from anywhere from like 1.5 to 3 trillion dollars that have been spent on these bank bailouts

So the notion that it didn't cost any taxpayers any money is ridiculous, but that's not even relevant anyways. Because even if the bailouts cost no money, even if we made $10 billion on the bailouts, we still have a completely broken financial system because of the excessive leveraging and speculation these banks did, and it has destroyed the economy

There are, depending on how you calculate it, over 20 million people unemployed

There are millions of people whose mortgages are, underwater. There are millions of people who have been subjected to mortgage fraud. There is ongoing mortgage fraud So forget about the bailouts

Wall Street ruined our economy ruined our economy. The financialization of our economy is ruining our economy The income disparity is ruining our economy But Erin Burnett found it more convenient to just reduce it down to, "Do we make money on TARP?"

I think there are two things. Two things as, two reasons why, the, the Occupy Wall Street protests continue to draw attention and, excitement and enthusiasm. As opposed to, you know, couple months ago, you had the 100,000, union people in, in DC protesting, bigger numbers. But the two main reasons are, one, you have a, a, a group of people who are, like I've said before, showing such intense commitment And doing it for a sustained period of time And then number two is because of Tony Bologna, that cop who sprayed those women with pepper spray, sort of demanded the attention of the mainstream media.

Now, I do think that, it would have happened eventually if these people stuck it out in group. But, those two factors are, well, really pushed it over the edge. So, here is lonely Tony Bologna And, let me just read, David Benjo is, "As flaming liberals who wanna put every hood on the couch, we decided to investigate the psychosexual angst of Deputy Inspector Bologna.

And the results aren't pretty, featuring the vocal debut of Mike DiSesa, who despite his Frenchy n- name, is as Italian as Sophia Loren and Mussolini driving a Ferrari full of meatballs into the Sistine Chapel." Written mostly by Paula Carino and Mike. So you see what, Benjo is doing here. He's trying to show the Italian bona fides of the creators of this song.

So get ready for this. I figure there must be a couple Italians in Worcester. but in case Matt... Massachusetts, you know, the number one, ethnic background is in Massachusetts. 

What's that? 

I know you think Irish, right? 

That's what I would think, 

yeah. It's Italians. 

Wow. 

I figure there must be a couple Italians in Worcester, but in case Matt comes from real America, brocioli is a kind of sausage.

Mortadella, another kind of sausage. Sausage of death. Pancetta is ham. Stinadi means stupid. Fungola is a bad word. And here it is, ladies and gentlemen, Lonely Tony Bologna.

The crazy moon over Wall Street brings a tear to my eye

Mama, why these American girls, they gotta fuss and cry when they march and get out of line, raising their hands

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do and bust out his mortadella. Shut up with your First Amendment or it's no more Mr. Nicey. I sprinkle on the peppercorns, I like my dishes spicy. We're the NY Bungalo PD if you wanna know who we are. This baloney has a last name, it's M-A-C-E-R. We'd hate to see you hurt yourself, so before you lose control, we'll roll you up in a plastic mat and we make a nice braciole.

Ah. Now, everyone's mad and they got a big vendetta

They call me a pig, an officer pancetta. I gave these ladies the business back in 2004

Mama, don't nobody respect the law no more. I took a vow to protect and serve you spinotti sons and daughters. Don't they understand I'm just maintaining law and order? You're stealing my heart, I spray the mace. A handy device to shut up your face. Tell you little heartbreakers, learn in your place. What are you gonna do, make a federal case?

We're the NY Funkadelic PD if you wanna know who we are. This baloney has a last name, it's P-N-C-E-R. We'd hate to see you hurt yourself, so before you lose control. We roll you up in a plastic net and we make a nice patrol. Hey! 

Unbelievable They just outdo themselves every week I was just gonna say Every week Every week 

they 

kick it up a notch.

And not only

Crap is going crazy. For the record, by the way, I do come from, real America and real America is Queens, New York. 

Yeah. i- it is, it is, is stunning. I mean, the, the, the, i- on, on so many levels, these guys are, it's just unbelievable. It's just unbelievable

Now, Section C, WHAT THE MOVEMENT WAS DOING

So we at Planet Money, we're economics reporters, so we immediately started to wonder, they want all of society run on this basis where lots of groups, where everyone's equal, gets together and just as a group decides what they want? Could that work? And, and how would that work? Like, just in the pragmatic stuff of, like, getting people the things they want and figuring out what to do with food and clothes and, you know, just the, the basic structure of an economy.

So it turns out we found this economist who has been working on this problem for 40 years. We caught him when he was on his way to Occupy Portland, where he- On 

his bicycle ... 

on his bicycle. And he said that, yes, for 40 years he's been crafting this proposal for exactly this vision of society. His name's Robin Hahnel.

I call myself a libertarian socialist. Wait, wait, wait. To say those words- I gotta interrupt 

you. Yeah, that's... I literally think of those as, as, as opposites. You know, the, the- 

That's right. if you call yourself a libertarian socialist in the United States, they think, "Oh, you're like Ron Paul," or, you know, Hayek, or they think, "Oh, you're a socialist," and that means Soviet socialist.

So it's... I, I always hesitate to say that's what I am, but I believe that is an accurate way I can describe myself. 

Robin Hahnel teaches economics at Portland State University, but earlier in his academic life, he was a math major, and that helped me understand where his whole theory came from. He basically started pondering a puzzle.

In the waning days of the Soviet Union when, when people like him, left-wing progressives, you know, really soured on the Soviet model, they were stuck with this problem. Wait, we don't like American-style capitalism, and we don't like Soviet or Chinese-style communism. So what could we do? Could we create an economic system that was more democratic than capitalism and more democratic than, than communism as it's practiced now?

And what he came up with is called participatory economics, and it works a lot like the way the general assemblies at Occupy Wall Street are structured. So first of all, there's no owners, there's no managers. Everyone is equal, and people gather in working groups to do business. 

The easiest way to picture it for me is, is a factory.

So you're a shoe factory. All the workers in the shoe factory gather and decide how we're gonna run our shoe factory. One committee might come up with a proposal of what kinds of shoes we're gonna make and, and which styles and how many. Another committee would create a proposal for how we're all gonna be compensated.

So he said some might decide everyone makes exactly the same amount, but he imagines a lot of worker groups will decide, "No, if you work harder, you deserve more stuff." 

The harder you work, the, the more you make, and it's not your boss deciding, it's your colleagues 

And basically, they simply have to do what is a very difficult job and sometimes contentious.

They have to essentially review one another's performance and decide, has somebody worked harder? You know, has somebody put in more effort? Has somebody made greater sacrifices than somebody else? And if so, then they are awarded, you know, by their coworkers. 

Robin recommended we, we skim pretty quickly over, over the next step.

He spelled it out in several books, but basically, there's this other process for how all the different working groups all over the region or all over the country that want a little more leather or want a little more rubber. There's sort of a central processing system that uses, as he says, a very simple computer algorithm he's come up with, which he says can determine supply and demand issues very efficiently without using what we in capitalism use, a, a price signal, where you just...

If you want more leather, you just find out what the price is, and if lots of people want leather, the price goes up and you maybe substitute something else. The other thing the price signal does is it turns on a dime. You know, if, if there's a disastrous frost destroying lots of orange crops in Florida, suddenly oranges are more expensive immediately all over the country.

And we asked him how his system would respond to sudden shocks since his system requires people to mail these proposals in from all over the country. 

It may be the case that one of the things that this system has a great-- has more difficulty in doing is making on-the-fly adjustments because it's more participatory.

We may discover that in the real world when this system is implemented, that that is a place where it perhaps is a little weaker than some other systems that have gone before it. I'm, I'm perfectly willing to accept the fact that perhaps there's gonna be some disadvantages to doing things this way as well as some tremendous advantages.

Another issue that we wanted to ask Hahnel about was, what about us, the, the consumers? You know, how do we buy stuff? There's basically not really money in his world, at least the way we use money. So the way you purchase, you have to decide a year in advance what you're gonna consume. So your neighborhood gets together, you have another meeting.

You submit a plan to a consumption council of what you guys all wanna consume over the next year. So you decide how much toilet paper you're gonna need, how many pillows or T-shirts and iPods and iPads, and your neighborhood consumption council sends its request to this centralized computer algorithm.

Which is a very big difference from how we live today. I mean, I, I have no idea how many potatoes or eggs I'm gonna want next August, say. This year would've been really hard for me because, you know, in January I had no idea I was gonna be having a kid at the end of the year, but I am. 

Oh, Adam, you're kidding.

Congra- That's the first I've heard of this. Congratulations. 

She's kidding because Zoe, like the Amazon corporation, know that my consumption patterns have changed rather dramatically in the last few weeks as I'm buying all this baby stuff. And I asked Hahnel about that. How does his system account for changes in what we want?

How is that gonna play out? Well, when you go through the checkout line of your neighborhood distribution center or stores or whatever, they're basically gonna... They're gonna keep tra-- They know what your approved consumption request for the year was. They know what you asked for. It's in their computer, and they're gonna basically start giving you little tips.

You know, at this rate, you know, you're not gonna be consuming as much of this as you asked for. At this rate, you're taking a lot of stuff you never asked for. 

another thing I gotta say that I thought a lot about listening to Hahnel is, my God, this sounds like a lot of meetings. I feel like I have structured my life around avoiding meetings as much as possible.

And he said, "Are you kidding? I'm an academic. I have been invited to lots of really awful, boring meetings." 

I can't stand meetings 

Then why'd 

you create an economics 

built on meetings? 

I 

can't stand the- Yeah. If the decisions I care about are gonna be made at the meetings that I'm, that I'm going to, then I think there's a lot more incentive for people to go to meetings.

He's saying if people feel like their voice will be actually heard, then they'll be more into meetings. But if you really just can't get down with meetings, then you don't have to show up to make your voice heard. It's participatory, not mandatory. 

Although he says if you don't participate, there's a good chance you're not gonna like the outcome.

Now, obviously there are a lot of things that people would object to here, but Robin Hahnel has sort of a sales pitch to the Occupy Wall Streeters. He says to them, "You know what? You're brand new at this, and that's fabulous, and you're bringing energy that my generation has long since lost. But keep in mind, people like me, h- we've been thinking about this for a very long time, and we've thought through some of the issues that you're gonna come up with as you're pursuing this participatory democracy model of society."

But Hahnel says in no way does he hope that his generation, the older guys, take over this movement. He says he is so excited about what's going on right now. 'Cause f- for him, like a real radical leftist, it's been a pretty lousy 20 years. You know, except for those anti-globalization skirmishes in Seattle in the late '90s, there just has not been a lot in our culture to, to really appeal to someone like him.

So this is a very exciting moment for a guy like that. 

Ever since this crisis hit, I've been wondering, "Is there gonna be a progressive, a looking forward wake-up call here in America?" And I'm a lifelong leftist, and- I remember tears came to my eyes when I was at the Battle of Seattle because I didn't know whether I would ever see that kind of demonstration again in my country.

I feel that way about this. 

Now, we should tell the folks at the general assembly who, who don't already know, Robin Hahnel's model, he calls it participatory economics or parecon, is just one of the models of an economics built on this small group democracy idea. We found out there are a ton of them.

There's something called mutualism, analytical Marxism. There are dozens of different named forms of 

anarchism. Horizontalism, syndicalism, post-autistic economics. That's a thing. Transformative economics. 

We could go on, and each of these has its own approaches, its own policies and structures, although they all broadly follow this model of participatory decision-making.

If they could actually create a society based on participatory democracy on that level, it would be among the most radical changes ever contemplated for America. And it's tough because before you change America, you need to get four hundred people in a park to agree on precisely how you wanna change America.

So they're meeting every night for several hours. One guy, who said he didn't speak for everybody- Of course ... proposed a timeline that they will have a consensus view with a complete platform by November twentieth. 

let me, let me read this, the, one of the, the, the final paragraphs to your piece 'cause I think it's, i- it's, it's prescriptive and, in some ways it's, it was, prophetic. "What is needed is a new paradigm of disrespect for the banker, the financier, the one percenter. A new civic space in which he's openly reviled, in which spoiled eggs and rotten vegetables are tossed at every turning.

What is needed is a revival of the language of vigorous old progressivism, where in the parasite class was denounced as such. What is needed is a new resistance. We face, as Hessel describes, a system of social control that offers nothing but mass consumption as a prospect for our youth, that trumpets contempt for the least powerful in society, that offers only outrageous competition of aga- all against all.

To create is to resist," writes Hessel. "To resist is to create." And then your final paragraph, "Such creativity, alas, is unlikely in New York." and you go on to say, "The city is regressing. This sparks no protest from its people." And, literally, I think as you, probably sent this in to, Orion Magazine or maybe a couple weeks before, after you sent it in, we get, Occupy Wall Street, 

Yeah.

I even wrote a, 

Well listen, you know, you say it's a huge piece. and, the only thing, that I think is inaccurate, and may have been, u- unpredictable was that last paragraph where, you thought it would be unlikely to see this rise up. What, what do you think? what accounts for that? I mean, both, your, lack of optimism to see any type of revolt and the fact that w- we are seeing now, at least to, to some degree, a, a, a growing and, aggressive and strong, rebel, rebellion against this.

Yeah. Well, like I said, you know, I wrote the first... I completed the first draft of that article with, with more left, that kind of dark and rather despairing ending. I completed it, you know, more, almost a year ago. So, you know, it's, it, man, I mean, you see New York, you see what New York is all about.

You know, we've got a lot of, a lot of young people here who are just obsessed with, with playing the game, with serving the corporate master, with making money, with being, you know, being, being the, the, you know, getting the big bucks and, and, and being part of, of the system, if you will. And so, you know, New York is not, today New York is not, in, or at least as I, you know, as a New Yorker, until, until the, the eruption of Zuccotti Park, New York was not a place that w- was inspiring in terms of, alternative cultures or, or of, of, inspiring for, for people to, to rise up and establish themselves against, against the corporatocracy.

You know, this kind of, I mean, this town is run by corporatocracy. It's owned by corporatocracy. It's, its very nature is corporatocracy. So there you go. 

In your piece, you get into the, the history of, essentially the, the last great, I guess, populist movement, that took place, that, that essentially grew, I guess, in the, in the late '80s.

just, walk us through some of that history, because I think, you use it as an example, you know, a, a call to arms at that time and as sort of a paradigm from which, people could follow. 

Right. No, we're talking about the 1880s here. 

Exactly. 

yeah. The, in, there's a section in the article in which I, I discuss the, the candidacy for mayor of a guy named Henry George.

And Henry George was a, you know, he was a visionary. He, he felt that, capitalism, that the real problem with capitalism was that, you know, we had, we had given to those who did not do their fair share of, work, we'd given to them all sorts of outrageous remuneration and, in particular, he looked at, those people who owned a lot of land and speculated on the land and could, and could make, what he called economic rent.

and, you know, he basically said, "All right, we've got a lot of rentier, rentiers in our society, people making money without doing productive labor. So how do you fix this?" Well, you, you, you change the laws so that you get rid of the rentiers, and so that people have to actually work for a living. Now, today in New York, and one of the great crises that we face in our society is that we in the United States are top-heavy with rentiers, and rentiers being the finance class.

The finance class who apparently do nothing. They are socially useless, as, as a great piece in the, the New Yorker concluded, a piece by John Cassidy. They, they don't do anything, and yet they get paid enormous sums of money, and they suck away enormous, sums from society, and they draw off incredible amounts of economic rent.

So, in the Orion piece, I drew this parallel back to, back to Henry George in the 1880s, in which, you know, he, he basically is running for mayor. He drew, a, a enormous, wide-ranging ecumenical following of, you know, of lower class, middle class people, of, of all races, and professions, who basically said, "No, we no longer want to be ruled by the rentiers, by what, what, you know, what pro- progressives back then called the parasites.

The parasites are running things today. The parasitic class, the hedge funder, the financier, the Wall Streeter, the one percenter, they are running things. And, I mean, you know, I think it's, it's high time too that, that, you know, the progressive movement today embrace that old muscular language of progressivism that a guy like Henry George back in the 1880s used, you know, talking about the, the hedge funder and the Wall Streeter as a parasite, because these are parasites.

They're, they're blood-sucking vampires. They're ticks fattening themselves on the, on society. And, something has to be done, man. 

And, in, in the follow-up piece that you had, to the reign of the one percenters in a, in a, in a brief, post on, on Orion, you, you talk, more about the, the pop- populist movement, of the 1890s.

tell us about the, the populists, and, what they, what they, they basically carried that, that message, but they, they, they, they transfer that message into pol- to not just, a protest, but into political power. 

Right. Now, you know, Henry George could be considered one of the first populists, but it wasn't until the rise of the People's Party of 1892, which became known as the Populist Party, that you really had a nationwide movement that demanded- a, it, it demanded a transformation of law in favor of the working men, what were then called the productive classes, against the parasite classes.

now the, the populace, you know, arose out of the, it was an agrarian movement. It was a movement of farmers from the Midwest who basically said that they no longer wanted to be exploited by, monopoly bankers and, railroad owners who were controlling, railroad transport rates and controlling the systems of credit.

and impoverishing these productive classes, these farmers, who could not survive in the marketplace. So, you know, they, they envisioned all sorts of things that, that, that required decades, gen- a whole generation, two generations to be realized. Now, they, they, a minimum wage, an eight-hour day.

they wanted to nationalize the railroads, nationalize the telegraph services. They wanted to create a, they wanted to create a, a bank, a people's bank that would regulate money on behalf of the public interest. They wanted to, they wanted to create all sorts of social security protections. Now, a good number of these populist ideas first floated in the 1890s were later put into effect by FDR in, nine, in 1934 and thereafter.

So the populist sub... The, the, the comparison that can be drawn today to the, the Occupy Wall Street movement is it, it may take 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 years for a movement to actually affect real change in this country. It may be a multi-generational affair, just as it was a multi-generational affair with the populists arising in the 1890s, but not seeing their platform fully, you know, partially implemented, until the 1930s.

When police dragged a family's belongings into the street, quote, "Some of us would kick ash cans and create a general ruckus. This would divert the marshal, and others of us would help the families put the furniture back up. It was a war of attrition." Another account from the same timeframe, same town, quote, "We formed a squad.

Someone would come in and say somebody was put out on the street, and so we would call this one, call that one, and say, 'How would you like to go help these people?' We did that, boys, girls, elderly men, young men, whoever. You just called somebody and said, 'Hey, let's put the furniture back in.'" We talk about the Great Depression, not our own Great Recession, but the Great Depression of our grandparents and our great-grandparents' day.

We tend to talk about hobos and Hoover- Hoovervilles, people kicked out of their ordinary lives and roaming the countryside looking for work, lining up at soup kitchens or setting up camp in shacks made out of whatever spare wood or cast-off tin they could find. In towns, they called Hooverville after President Herbert Hoover, and it was not meant to be a compliment.

But Americans who lived through the Great Depression did not necessarily move out of their houses or apartments quietly just because the landlord showed up and said they had to go. Some of them, a lot of them, it turns out, stood their ground with help from their neighbors. The Americans of the Great Depression organized what became known as eviction defense, like the people putting the furniture back in I just quoted a moment ago from Brooklyn.

Sometimes eviction resistance turned into eviction riots. They rioted in Chicago in August 1931. At least three protesters were killed there after 60,000 people marched against evictions. They rioted in the Bronx in 1932 after families went on rent strike over prices they could no longer afford. They rioted in Cleveland after a bank foreclosed on John and Sophie Sperenga, and the county sheriff kicked them out with their four children.

In Cleveland, the local Small Home and Landowners Federation spread the alarm up and down the neighborhood streets. Thousands of people showed up, thousands of people to defend the Sperenga family. Quote, "As police arrived, they were greeted by taunts, jeers, and volleys of rocks, bricks, sticks, and even kitchen utensils.

The officers responded with nightsticks, tear gas, and fire hoses." Reporter James Steele filed this account in The Nation in 1933. Quote, "This is a crowd that won't scatter, a crowd that is strangely grim and determined." They were determined to defend that family in 1933, the depth of the Great Depression.

Now Cleveland is defending families again in Cleveland in 2011, not by throwing bricks and sticks and soup ladles, but by doing this. In Cleveland, they are pitching tents in the yards of a single mother with two kids and the sheriff on the way. If you're coming for her, you're coming for us. That's been the message from Occupy Cleveland.

They have been wonderful actually, keeping me company last, since last night when they started piling in and, helping me get the place cleaned up a little more and organized so I can pack. 

You know, a lot of the people you've probably heard on the news have sort of been asking what the Occupy, whatever city you want to put in, they, they don't really know what they stand for.

Has this told you? How has this told you more about what 

they stand for? They stand up for the little guy

Definitely. This is Main Street.

Wall Street can take care of itself. Main Street needs everybody

They came and offered their help. What did you think? 

I thought, "Hey, it sounds like a crazy harebrained scheme. Let's try it. What the heck?" I don't have anything more to lose. 

Occupy Elizabeth Summerer's backyard in Cleveland seems to have had an effect. She got a 30-day stay on her eviction, enough time to work out a deal with the bank or maybe a plan B, enough time that she and her kids didn't have to see their stuff hauled out into the street.

Main Street turned out for her. Just months into the Great Recession, this nation bailed out the banks, an olly, olly, all come free, no rules financial sector had turned people's houses or mortgages into casino chips, which Wall Street made a ton of money trading amongst themselves before the whole thing blew up.

Wall Street blew up, which blew up the whole economy. Millions of Americans were left without jobs and with these con artist mortgages that they couldn't pay. The banks, they got bailed out, but the people did not. If you're broke, just ask Elizabeth Summerer, if you're broke, there is very little help. In October alone, there were hundreds of thousands of foreclosures in this country, the banks seizing people's homes and throwing them out into the street.

This conflagration in the economy started in 2008, but the foreclosure rate in this country is still rising. Technically, the Great Recession may not even be a recession anymore, but families are still having their possessions dragged to the curb. Good luck, and right this way to the homeless shelter. Is that kind of treatment worth defending against?

Is it worth coming to the defense of your neighbors now in 2011, just as people thought it was in 1931 and 1932 and 1933 and on and on? That's becoming the question now among the evolving 99% movement around the country. Ask the family in Atlanta where the Occupy Atlanta protesters intervened in an eviction last month.

Occupy Atlanta got kicked out of its downtown encampment, so they decided that instead they'd move to try to save a police officer's home. Ask the family in Rochester, New York, which almost lost their home to a foreclosure mill, to the foreclosure mill, incidentally, where the employees dressed up as families being kicked out of their homes as their costumes for the company Halloween party last year.

That firm was trying to move in on a Rochester family to kick them out of their home before a group of experienced eviction defenders and new occupiers showed up to help them hold their ground. Ask the families in Minneapolis, where occupiers have shown up with a bullhorn and tents and taken direct action.

Occupy has really made that leap and said, it's time for us to mobilize actions off of the plaza- Mm-hmm ... and really enter Main Street in really a dramatic way. Mm-hmm. And so this is the first time that they've, they've said, "You know, let's address real problems that real people are dealing with and see if we can help be a, a part of the solution."

As fall set in, protesters from Occupy Wall Street around the country, particularly around the colder parts of the country, the 99 Percenters wondered if they could make it through the winter with maybe Quonset huts or cold weather survival gear. Then they wondered where they would go, how they would continue to occupy if police departments kept driving them away from public squares.

Did occupying, showing up, and staying put in a public space, was that fundamental to the ongoing effectiveness of the movement? And if it is fundamental, then how would they be able to keep occupying and where? It turns out maybe that the next incarnation of Occupy was already taking hold with the foreclosure defenses in Atlanta and Cleveland and Minneapolis and Rochester.

Justin Elliott reporting at salon.com this week that a new campaign, Occupy Our Homes, kicks off on Tuesday with protesters in 20 cities. The 99 Percenters say they will show up at foreclosure auctions and at homes that are at risk of foreclosure. Folks who have not yet been part of resisting an eviction peacefully will get a chance to see how it's done.

They will learn from people who've already done it and then teach other people to do it, too. They're asking people to sign a pledge that says, quote, "I will resist any attempt by the bank to take my home. If they come to foreclose, I will not go." This Occupy Wall Street movement is now truly a movement to occupy everywhere.

It is not going away. Necessity is the mother of invention, and the coming of winter and the crackdowns from the police around the country have forced this movement into a new evolution. as, as, as Scott Olsen, the Marine who had his skull fractured at Occupy Oakland, said on this show last night, the movement is evolving.

The movement is adapting, and that's a good thing. If the reports we track every day from the movement itself and local press reports are any indication, this movement is spreading, too, geographically spreading in occupations small and fluid and seemingly too adaptable and too numerous for anybody to shut down altogether.

As of this upcoming week, there appears to be a concerted effort to move it into the neighborhoods where you can see it, where the crisis really lives still. We spend a lot of time on this show covering politics of the electoral variety. This is politics, too. This is the real deal.

And Finally, Section D, THE LEGACY, 10 YEARS ON

Glenn Greenwald is with us. He's author of the new book With Liberty and Justice for Some. He's also a contributing writer over at Salon.com. And I wanna talk to you, Glenn, about immunity and impunity in elite America, how the legal system was deep-sixed and o- Occupy Wall Street swept the land. The most interesting point that I, I took from it is that income and wealth inequality have been present for a really long time in the United States, so that, that alone, even though it's kind of become the de facto number one cited reason for Occupy Wall Street, in your opinion, can't really be enough to have spurred this incredible coming together of events that are these protests.

So number one, what else has been a factor? But more interestingly, number two, why has that become such a convenient and popular number one reason that we're hearing? 

Right. Well, it's not just that income inequality and wealth inequality have been in the United States for a long time, although that is true.

What also is true is that it, it has been significantly increasing for several decades, so the trend line has been towards greater and greater levels of inequality. And yet you didn't really see a sustained protest movement over inequality, and I think the reason for that is because Americans are basically inculcated, for better or for worse, to accept not just the inevitability but the virtues of inequality, of wealth inequality and outcome inequality.

So for example, when someone like Steve Jobs dies with $7 billion or $8 billion in net worth, even though huge amounts of joblessness and homelessness and foreclosures and the like are sweeping the land, most people don't begrudge that because there's this sort of embedded political value in the United States that inequality is legitimate as long as it's fair and just.

And I think that's really the key behind this protest movement and what has so radically changed is the perception, obviously correct in my view, that these inequalities are no longer the byproduct of merit or hard work or deserved, achievement, but instead are really, is really the byproduct of cheating, of, of people shielding their ill-gotten gains and, and most of all, using their superior political and financial power to exempt themselves from the rule of law, from the, the rules of, of society to which the rest of us are bound so that these inequalities are no longer legitimate but are illegitimate.

And I think that's really what's sustaining the protest. And one of the reasons why you don't hear much about that and why the media has an interest in portraying this as nothing more than just sort of anger over inequality unto itself is because one of the ways of demonizing the protest or dismissing it is to say that it's nothing more than this sort of socialist or communist anger from the 1960s over the fact that some people have a lot and lazy and, and, and worthless people have very little.

and I think that's clearly not what the protest movement is about by and large. It's about the fact that, for example, the people who collapsed the world economy through their illegality and criminality have not paid any price but instead have prospered. 

You know what I think is interesting is that there's, there's, there's a several layers actually to the defenses and criticisms of Occupy Wall Street, and we've actually now seen on Twitter over the weekend, I got a ton of messages after a piece we did talking about media coverage of the Tea Party versus media coverage of Occupy Wall Street, and I got a serious email, it wasn't a parody, it wasn't sarcastic, saying, "Look at how many people have been arrested at Occupy Wall Street, and look at how many people were arrested at the Tea Party protest.

You guys gotta be nuts for thinking there's anything about the people happening at Occ- Occupy Wall Street. They're all getting arrested." And it's impossible for that... I, there's nothing I can say to that person to explain to them how actually the, the disparity in the arrests is indicative of the problem, not of how great the Tea Party is.

I've lost that person, right? I can't bring them back. 

Well, you know, s- of course that's true, and there's, you know, one of... I mean, but I will say this. I mean, one of the driving attributes of the Occupy movement that, in my view, makes it so worthwhile and compelling is that it really is a protest from the political and legal culture as a whole, from political and legal institutions.

So it's really intended to exist outside of the legal framework. whereas the Tea Party movement, certainly there was lots of civil disobedience going on there. People were bringing guns. It was much more threatening and disruptive in its own way. but I think that the Occupy movement really was intended and is intended, to purposely create a space that doesn't exist within our prevailing legal institutions.

And so the fact that people are getting arrested is certainly part, in part due to the fact that the status quo authorities see people who are protesting inequality as being, just kind of troublemakers and antagonizers and people who really deserve to be in, in jail. There's definitely that bias, but a part of it is, is that the, the occupations are by design, be, be growing without legal sanction.

and so the, the more threatening they become to those in power, I think it's just inevitable that those in power are gonna start to treat it as being threatening and, and to use their force and coercion against it, which includes arrest. But the one thing I will say is that, you know, by and large, although the media reaction has been quite negative and scornful and patronizing, polls continuously show that large pluralities, if not majorities, are sympathetic to the message of the Occupy movement because most people do indeed know that our legal and, and, and political institutions are radically broken, and that meaningful changes is possible only by working outside of them.

Sure, and it's, I mean, it's no surprise when we look over the years at polls fairly... asked polls asking people, "Do you think the government has a fundamental responsibility to provide you healthcare?" And the overwhelming majority of people, usually two-thirds or even more, do think so, but you don't see that reflected in the politicians that are elected.

You don't see that reflected in the policy that is proposed in any kind of serious way other than, you know, every once in a while Dennis Kucinich mentioning it. So it should be no surprise to us that policy does not at all reflect the will of the people, does it? 

Well, but this is, you know, that's an important point about why the occupation movement has emerged and why it continues to flourish and, and the driving force behind it.

Of course, politicians do go before the public and claim that they share the sentiments that polls reveal are, are, are embraced by majorities and promise to carry out that agenda. And huge numbers of people in 2008 were persuaded by the Obama campaign that electing Barack Obama would result in those policies being implemented.

And, and in fact, you know, I think the most significant thing about the 2008 campaign with respect to wa- the Occupy Wall Street movement is that the Obama candidacy really specifically targeted those people who had decided that working within the political system was no longer, worthwhile, or that it, they, who, who had always concluded that it wasn't worthwhile.

People who, you know, as Obama described them, were sort of wallowing in this corrosive cynicism. And that's what all of this, you know, stuff about, "Yes, we can," and, and, "Audacity of hope" was designed to do, was to persuade specifically those people that there was a, a reason, there was a value to them devoting their time, energy, and resources to electing a Democratic candidate, that things would actually change.

And when they did that and they saw that nothing changed, that everything continued as is, that the same factions continued to be served, that was really what re- in- increased the cynicism more than it had ever existed before, and it's what led so many people to the conclusion, "Well, if it didn't happen here, it's never gonna happen, and now I realize that the only viable course of action is to work outside of this system, is to dissent from it and to change the political culture rather than working for one party or the other."

And I think that, that, that is a huge energy behind this movement, is the anger and disappointment and sense of betrayal that people feel from 2008. 

My last question for you, Glenn, is, do you think that Occupy Wall Street will play a real role in the 2012 election? And let me, let me, qualify that by saying I don't mean offhanded references from either or both candidates when it's politically convenient to mention Occupy Wall Street.

But do you think in a, in any real way this will affect the upcoming presidential election? 

I do. I think, I think it'll affect it in the sense that there'll be more rhetorical attention paid to the issue of wealth and income inequality, not just offhand remarks as you suggested, but more time being spent on it, which is a positive thing.

But I think the real impact that it possibly might, i- have is that if the Obama campaign perceives, and I think this is the real risk that they're worried about already, that so much of the energy of the youth vote and the first time vote that drove him into office in 2008 is instead being directed to the Occupy movement rather than the Obama re-election 2012 campaign, then I think there's gonna be a serious effort on the part of Obama to, at least create the appearance that he's more concerned with the issues that are, occupying the occupation movement than he actually is.

And so I think you're gonna start to see some greater tactical shifts, to target those people. But, you know, ultimately at the end of the day, both of those major party candidates are gonna need to get funding from corporate and Wall Street interest, and that's who's real, that's the real constituency that they're gonna end up serving.

So the, the biggest impact may be on the fact that it just give people another outlet besides electoral politics, to express their discontent and, and that could certainly have an out- a, an impact on the outcome of the election. 

We mentioned, the Arab Spring earlier. One of the interesting aspects that came out of Occupy that I think other movements have also since then, reflected was the kind of global orientation and the interest in transnational organizing, or at least building some sort of a global solidarity with movements, and I think we've seen that resonate with, Black Lives Matter and, and the Me Too movement as well.

And also labor, I think, has, has evolved in that direction too. So I, I was wondering, if you can get outside of New York City a little bit, how you two feel that Occupy, as a kind of globally facing movement, may have informed the way people organize or the way activists see themselves. 

I think for people around the world to see for the victims of so much of the pain and death and destruction that US imperialism wreaks on them, it was, I'm sure, a, a really inspiring and heartening development to see that people are finally taking to the streets.

And because there was such a long stretch of time, Of course, there were protests throughout the 2000s. The, the most sizable protest before Occupy that I can remember was, the anti-war protests in the early 2000s before, where hundreds of thousands of people came out in the streets, not only in New York City, but ar- around the world, and we invaded anyway, of course.

So I think that once, once Occupy took off and that message spread around the world, in the same way that we were watching the Arab Spring with such hope, even though it was, it took off in New York City and then subsequently took off in other cities across the country, it was a message that was heard around the world, particularly because that message of the 99% is one that's felt in so many places around the world and, and New York City is the heart of capital So I think that message, it's hard to really put your finger on or quantify like what exactly or pinpoint, and I'm sure, Ruth, you've found this in your research when someone asks, "Do you think that this was the result of Occupy?"

It's, it's really hard to put your finger on it because it's something that is, as I said earlier, amorphous. But I think that it's, that message has definitely infused movements across the world. 

Yeah. Let's remember first that Occupy cloned itself all over the world. So it began in Zuccotti Park in, here in New York, but then w- very quickly replicated, first across the United States in hundreds of places, and then also elsewhere.

And at the same time, it was inspired, as we already talked about, by somewhat similar movements elsewhere in the world. I remember there was this wonderful, publication that appeared in Zuccotti Park, The Occupied Wall Street Journal, put together by some very talented journalists, and I remember the first issue had this timeline starting with Tahrir Square in Egypt and going, through a series of other movements and then ending with Zuccotti Park.

But of course, that wasn't the end. It continued. So there is that global story, just in the very short run, both before Zuccotti and s- and after. And then maybe this isn't so much global, but I do think the success of Occupy inspired even people who hadn't directly participated as well as many who had to become involved in other kinds of movements, including Black Lives Matter, including MeToo, all the things that we've seen develop over the last year.

And so it was the starting point of a massive wave of protests that really did not exist before 2011. Sure, there were protests here and there, but they never had the scale or captured the public imagination in the way Occupy did in the years immediately preceding. So you know, not since the 1960s have we really seen this kind of explosion of social activism, and I think Occupy was the starting point.

So even though it didn't last very long as Occupy, it became the catalyst for a whole range of, activities in the decades since. 

Yeah. And I think also in terms of the way movements like brand themselves and like sort of the circulation of symbols and imagery and slogans that, facilitated by social media, I think that Occupy was definitely the-- sort of laid out a template, right, for other movements to build upon, and hopefully we'll see other iterations of that in the coming years.

And we called our report, the report I co-authored with Stephanie Luce and Penny Lewis, we called it Changing the Subject, and that was meant to have a double meaning. On the one side, as many people have pointed out, the whole issue of inequality and its explosive implications was put into the center of political conversation after twenty eleven by Occupy.

You- we've documented that just in searching Google News for mentions of the word inequality. It goes up in twenty eleven and stays up thereafter. So there's that, but it also created a new political subject. That's the other changing the subject, a new generational political subject, I would argue, that went on to do all these other things.

So some people poo-poo the whole thing as this, "Oh, it was just a couple months, these kids in the park, what's the big deal?" But in fact, my own claim would be that this really was the start of something very important that has continued since.

That's going to be it for today.

As always, keep the comments coming in.

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The additional sections of the show included clips from;

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Matthew Filipowicz

Countdown

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The Green News Report

Dan Calin

The Majority Report

Planet Money

The David Pakman Show

and Belabored

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So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, DC, my name is Jay! And this has been the Best of the Left podcast, coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from bestoftheleft.com.

Air Date: 9-13-2026

Today we trace the two-front war on the American press. On one side, government regulators and members of Congress are going after news outlets for the stories they choose to run. On the other, politically friendly buyers are taking ownership of major networks to turn them into free-market versions of state media.

Full Show Notes

 

Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Today we trace the two-front war on the American press. On one side, government regulators and members of Congress are going after news outlets for the stories they choose to run. On the other, politically friendly buyers are taking ownership of major networks to turn them into free-market versions of state media.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 55 minutes today include

Blonde Politics

The Beat

This Is Hell!

BreakThrough News

Last Week Tonight

Democracy Now!

and Adam Conover

Then, in the additional, Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in 4 sections;

Section A, The FCC Weaponized

Section B, Journalists in the Crosshairs

Section C, Who's Buying, Who's Cashing In

And Section D, Building Something Better

And now, on to the show.

Why does it matter if a big media corporation buys another media corporation? When Eisenhower left office in 1961, he gave a speech warning about the now infamous military industrial complex. 

The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist 

He affirmed the importance of an alert and knowledgeable citizenry.

The thing is, you can't have an alert and knowledgeable citizenry without a free and strong media. When the media becomes too consolidated, it's easy to control because this concentration leaves the media too centralized to resist pressure, too dependent on government approval to advocate for their journalists, their content, their entertainers, and their audiences.

When people think about state media, they tend to think of countries like North Korea, but there are countries around the world, countries that Donald Trump is fond of, that he could be looking to as a blueprint, where the corporate-owned media tend to work for the state. The infrastructure of state media is bought by private capital, which avoids problems like legal obstacles, while achieving basically the exact same outcome: the machinery for propaganda.

The US is in the first stages of doing this. You have a president using the bully pulpit to discredit the media. You have a president encouraging his friends in the oligarchy to buy out media outlets. You have a president willing to use regulatory approvals as bargaining chips, and you have the promotion of media companies which work to sanitize the administration.

This doesn't look like an overnight coup of the media. Instead, it's a creeping phenomenon. Let's look at the media in Viktor Orbán's Hungary as an example. When Orbán took power in 2010, Hungary was considered free But by 2017, 90% of the media was owned by people allied to Orbán's political party, Fidesz.

Money from the state went to pro-government media, while opposition media faced extreme regulatory pressures, and by 2019, 80% of public affairs programming was financed by people connected to Orbán's party. Same is the case in Turkey, where Erdoğan's friends own 90% of the nation's media, and they use it blatantly to favor Erdoğan and to disadvantage his opponents.

And of course, the same is happening in Putin's Russia. When Putin took power in 2000, the media was more diverse. There were three national networks that were giving differing coverage to politics, and that was completely done by 2004. Putin and his administration have complete control over the daily news coverage, and they have the ability to dictate content and censor certain topics for conversation.

Don't for a minute think that I'm trying to suggest that the situation in America is a perfect comparison for these countries. There are a lot of things that are not happening in America. Journalists aren't being thrown in prison. The First Amendment seems to be holding up in court. There is still plenty of negative coverage of the administration on television, and there is no state censor dictating content.

That said, these things happen quickly, and indirect forms of suppression, like economic pressure, legal harassment, regulatory punishment, that's how this private consolidation starts. 

How did we get to the point where four or five corporations aligned with the current administration own the media? This may come as a shock. But things started to fall apart under the Reagan administration.

The Fairness Doctrine was eliminated, so were financial syndication rules. The limits on concentration of TV station ownership were eliminated. That facilitated Rupert Murdoch's purchase of the TV stations that became the foundation of the Fox Network. But it was actually under Bill Clinton that things truly picked up pace.

Bill Clinton and the Telecommunications Act of 1996 did the most damage. Republicans at the time saw the Telecommunications Act as a chance to overturn some of the restrictions on media consolidation and caps on ownership that still existed from the New Deal. Al Gore intervened to stop the complete elimination of limits, but the caps were loosened significantly.

There used to be a strict bright-line rule about media ownership, and that moved to a more discretionary system where regulators could approve such acquisitions. Basically, the situation that we're looking at right now. These mergers have resulted in big media. As things get further consolidated and as technology expands, the strict lines that divide up the media ecosystem get blurry.

But for the sake of this very quick overview, I want you to think of the media like this. There are production companies. They are responsible for making content. Then there are networks that distribute content. Obviously, many of these also produce their own content, but this is where content libraries are really built in the media world.

This level of the media ecosystem is similar to book publishers. A lot of you will be able to recognize network names from commercial and cable television, which now compete with other platforms, namely streaming platforms. So this is where we consume actual products, and I know it's confusing because these guys produce now, too.

I told you it was messy now. But throughout the entire ecosystem, most of the things you see are owned by the five major players I mentioned. The concerning thing is that some of these companies have very close ties to the current administration. Skydance Paramount, for instance, is owned by Larry Ellison's fail son, David, and the Fox Corporation is obviously owned by the Murdochs.

Even Comcast has put money in to fund the building of Trump's new ballroom at the White House. So that's three out of the Big Five with an explicit connection to the Trump administration. On top of that, both Sinclair and Nexstar, which are the dominant forces in local television, are big supporters of Trump.

In 2016, Sinclair's chairman, David Smith, told Trump, "We are here to deliver your message." Added to all of this is the fact that the Federal Communications Commission has been using things like merger approvals and interpretations of certain regulations to overtly apply pressure to the networks. Nexstar, Warner Brothers, Disney, all of them have merger deals waiting for FCC approval, and the commission has made no secret about their willingness to use those approvals politically.

Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, has already stated in the Project 2025 chapter that he authored that the FCC should be interpreting Section 230 in a more overtly political way. Section 230 is there to protect service providers so that they're not treated as the publisher or the speaker of information that another person puts on their platform.

More strictly interpreting Section 230 would mean that streaming platforms and networks would be able to be held liable for any and all of the content on them. The same is true for Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. This would mean that these platforms would crack down far harder on the content that they air because they'll be legally and financially responsible for it.

It doesn't take a genius to understand why administration-friendly corporations owning all commercial news stations is a problem. In fact, we've seen what happens when that occurs in front of our very eyes. 

They said you can't come home again, but here I am. And if you thought the president hated Jimmy Kimmel Live when it was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, buckle up, people. Buckle up

Rosie O'Donnell making a rare return to television where she exercised her First Amendment rights that we have in this country. She is a longtime Trump foe. The president has threatened and attacked her in all sorts of ways, and yet here she is. It is obviously quite symbolic, but also literally powerful when it comes to the role of the free press and free speech in this country, which spans from the serious to the comedic to the cultural, as we've covered, that she is there for Jimmy Kimmel, who successfully fought back Trump's efforts to censor him through the abuse of government power.

Now, Rosie made her own choice to actually move to Ireland days before Trump's second inauguration 

I've been living in Ireland for the past two years because of Mango Mussolini. I read that Project 2025 and said, "Gotta get myself out of here," And I decided to go to Ireland, a place where people are driven to drink regardless of who's running their country

O'Donnell discussing her own recent history, her political sort of situation, while also doing what she and Kimmel do so well that makes them such potent foes to this president who can't take a joke, mixing in a little humor. But this is also in the news tonight because of a wider development. ABC fighting back against those efforts to censor and bully and abuse power against Kimmel and other ABC programming.

So ABC's filed this new lawsuit against the Trump FCC over their threats and retaliation campaign to potentially try to force some stations off the air. ABC coming out swinging says the Trump FCC is waging this retaliatory campaign for one reason, the Trump administration, quote, "disapproves of ABC's editorial choices."

The suit also says these ABC stations have no choice but to seek judicial protection against this Trump FCC's assault on their, quote, "right to speak." And that's what this comes down to. We have never seen the Federal Communications Commission blatantly abused in this way with its leadership, and of course the president above it, admitting the plot.

Here is the Trump FCC chair. 

I'd be surprised if we ultimately don't go down the path of license revocation for some. 

President Trump is fundamentally reshaping 

the entire media ecosystem. Look at the changes over the last couple of years that I think are attributable to Trump running at the fake news media.

You've got NPR defunded. You've got PBS defunded. You've got CBS having new ownership. CNN is getting new ownership

They admit it. The government is not supposed to, quote, "reshape the independent press" at all. And you don't need to be a constitutional scholar to remember why this is the very first amendment, the one that so many people are familiar with. There's a bunch of other sort of less important amendments and certainly didn't put-- the, the founders didn't put first.

Because a democracy governed with the consent of the public needs free speech for the public, the candidates, and the people they rely on, or you don't really have a democracy at all. That's how serious this is. That's what ABC's up against. And so they are taking a rare step here to suing the government, the Trump administration.

And remember, if you're thinking, well, that's unusual, right? It, it is because news networks usually go out of their way to try to remain both neutral in fact and certainly in how they'll be perceived. And so if you are suing and thus criticizing the government, not as part of your news coverage, but as part of the arm of your station, well, you risk people saying, "Oh, I guess they really are against the government."

That's what's happening. And it wouldn't have happened without Jimmy Kimmel's brave stand, where he risked his whole career saying he wouldn't just give in and say whatever they wanted him to say, and then eventually ABC found its strength. Now, that is my observation. If you follow this show closely, you might recall I practiced First Amendment law before I came in full time to this network.

But here's how The New York Times put it today. The ABC lawsuit is, quote, "unusual for this reason, a rare example of a major media organization suing the administration over its unrelenting campaign to punish the press through re-regulation and lawsuits." And of course, it is usually Trump and his many lawyers who are suing everybody else.

In fact, you can see there's many different cases we've tracked against media companies, the tech companies which increasingly matter in media, right? YouTube is a platform, and on the left, so many outlets, including the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News sister paper, The Wall Street Journal. Trump's suing them all, and usually on nights like this, I'm here reporting to you about what those companies have to say in response in court.

But tonight I'm telling you about how they are picking the fight, so to speak. Why they are bringing the FCC to court. And again, that's only because Kimmel fought and he won, and ABC found that something a lot of liberals were saying, frankly, from day one of this experiment, giving in only makes it worse.

If you are right, if the law is on your side, and I don't mean in a liberal or conservative way, the liberals just happen to be the ones to point this out, but if you are right about the First Amendment and free speech, then yeah, you better fight, not give in. what do you see as important in ABC taking a, a relatively rare step of suing the Trump administration over free speech?

Well, it's a pretty straightforward and bold declaration, right? If you look at the first two words of their legal brief, and you're the lawyer here, Ari, but it said, "Government censorship." And it defined the stakes very clearly as the idea that a media company was essentially having retribution or, retaliation taken against it for news coverage, for, commentary, and for, satire, that the president didn't like.

And it said that this, rush to accelerate the review of these local lic- TV licenses that, that ABC and its parent company, the Walt Disney Company, hold, i- it, it is this effort. It's the means through which the leverage that the government has to do this. and so, they're saying, very stark terms, this is about free speech and, freedom of the press in the era of Donald Trump, and I think a lot of other media companies are paying close attention.

times have changed nearly 15 years later. People behind many of the institutions that were once threatened by Greenwald now fund the companies that pay him.

They do so as part of a push by the tech industry to build a new media ecosystem, one that seldom critiques those in power and eagerly punishes those agitating for change. So Upton Sinclair obviously famously said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Do you think that is happening with journalists like Greenwald, like Taibbi, when the tech industry buys up and creates a new media e- ecosystem, that they cannot see or report on any criticism because it is criticism of the bosses that pay them? Is that the... Are, are they going through this Upton Sinclair journalism model, if you will? Yeah, that's, that's certainly my thesis. that's, that's what I see them doing. I think that They, just to, just to, I guess, go back a little bit to their shift right. this was a, an- and I'll give a, a really condensed version of this, but, Glenn, I think after eight years of frustration with Democrats and their, their liberal allies in the media during the Obama m- years, where they were supporting all this war on terror stuff, when Trump came along, the way that the Democrats were going after him were these, conspiracy theories about Russia and, these, these, embracing the national security state in opposition to Trump and pushing the party to a right wing that I think that he did not care for, and frankly, I did not either.

I, I am with him on that. but he allowed that to take over his politics to the point where he started to, treat Republicans, far-right Republicans, like they were allies in, in this fight, as opposed to, maybe people who you had a brief alliance of... you might believe in the same thing or be saying the same thing, but you're saying it for completely different reasons, if that makes sense.

And, that kind of became his politics through, through the, the Biden, through the, through the Trump years, then when Biden was elected, he, he pretty much flipped to the right at that point. He went to Substack, and then, he took a deal with Peter Thiel's Rumble in 2021, and since then he has been working for them. he has not really been criticizing Peter Thiel, not that he did a whole bunch before, but he did a little bit. but same thing with... I, I, I did this report, this analysis in, early 2021 where I looked at Glenn's tweets about Fox News before and after Tucker Carlson and Fox started having him on a lot, and I graphed them out to show, negative versus positive, and it's just, I mean it's, ridiculous. the amount of positive just, explodes once they start having him on. and it was pretty negative beforehand. And, and you can do the same thing in, in the reverse with MSNBC. so I think that his... It, it just like his, his material interests here are pretty clear. and, him, him not cr- criticizing, Peter Thiel.

He is very careful in how he goes after Palantir now. he is just, he... One, one example that's not in the book, but, but one thing that I think is, is pretty funny is that, Jack Dorsey, the former, Twitter CEO, was, we later found out, was planning to or did give a bunch of money to Glenn's dog, nonprofit in Brazil.

And at the same time, Jack was very interested in crypto, and around the time that they were starting to negotiate this, Glenn started tweeting approvingly of crypto all the time. so it's like you can kinda do this one-to-one of, of a lot of the things that he's interested in or promoting or deciding not to criticize anymore can often be, directly related to his, pecuniary interests.

As far as Taibbi, I think his shift came around the same time he was frustrated with Russiagate. Liberals decided that they didn't like him anymore, and he tried to do this kind of hard reset with them with this Eric Garner book Called I Can't Breathe. And during the promotion of that in, fall of 2017, the Me Too movement hit, and, his past writings of The Exile were, were, were brought up again, and torpedoed that book tour.

And I think a lot of liberals who were angry with him about Russiagate and, his reporting on that went after him and, and, and were, were eager to use that as, as a way to, to attack him. So I think that for him it was maybe a little more personal, but he certainly has embraced his role as a right-wing culture warrior at this point. everything he says at this is just... you- if you go onto his Twitter page, it's just like anti-vax, anti-trans. he's talking about Russiagate from, 2017 and, and about the Twitter Files. And the Twitter Files is an important point here because while Matt makes his money on Substack and doesn't have, a paid deal with them, he just, uses the service. Elon Musk chose him to, ex- quote-unquote, "expose" the Twitter Files, which were these kind of carefully curated documents from within Twitter that Musk wanted released in a certain way that would, help his, help his kind of ideological aims. And, Taibbi was suggested by David Sacks, a fellow billionaire, and he, he was only too happy to, promote Musk's, preferred narrative there.

So, I, I think that these guys, their, their decisions in what to cover, the way that they have turned to the right, I, I find this stuff... it, it... Everyone's complicated, right? this is a nuanced story. It's not a, it's, it's not a easy, like one plus one equals two. but you can look at all of their behavior and their actions and trace it back to where they're making money from and, and, and what that money looks like, and it, it, it usually tells a pretty clear story.

We are speaking with journalist and historian Owen Higgins, who is author of Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left. He can be found on X at E-O-I-N Higgins, Owen Higgins underscore, where, he regularly engages with a large audience on tech and US and world politics.

Is, is a fantastic follow. So, you point out that decades since the wars for controlling the new media began, we ne- may never kn- prove who bought whom, but we certainly know who is owned, as in the title of your book. If a journalist is owned, as you say, by tech billionaires, do they immediately lose all credibility, not only fr- from the left, but from everyone?

Does everyone become skeptical and quit following journalists who have been bought and owned, abandoned, a- a- after they abandon their journalistic ethics, in- including those that may be reflected in the mainstream edia- media? To what degree are they held accountable for their choices? Yeah, that's a really good question. I guess in the court of public opinion, one of the things that's happening here is these tech guys are intentionally decentralizing and disrupting institutional media. Now, this isn't, necessarily a bad thing, right? I'm not saying that mainstream and/or institutional, independent critical media are, above reproach or that they, should should be treated with, a, a- an amount of respect and deference.

But I do think that They are being attacked and shaken by this decentralization for a very specific and explicit reason, which is that these tech guys, these Silicon Valley billionaires do not like critical media, and they do not like media that's l- that, that is looking at them in a critical way.

They don't like feeling that their behavior, their business interests are under the microscope. And so for, for their purposes, it's much better to have this overall decentralized media where they can control some of it and... But there's no like- There's no universally agreed on ethics or truth 

Breakthrough News, as many of you may have seen, has been subpoenaed by the Republican-run House Ways and Means Committee. They didn't send us a letter. They didn't send us, a polite request. They sent us a subpoena demanding our internal communications, our financial records, and, and a lot more, which is just wild 

Yeah, and I think it's important for us to be clear of what we're actually accused of, which is nothing.

there's no crime, and we have not been charged with anything. 

Yeah, that's, that's, that's certainly true. We haven't been charged with anything because there is no crime, right? We are a non-profit newsroom, and as a non-profit newsroom, we already comply with every tax rule, with every audit, every public reporting requirement there is, we have already complied with.

We haven't also taken a dime from any foreign government as these people are trying to insinuate. 

So yeah, I guess the question is, what is the actual offense? what did we even do? 

That's a, that's a really good question, Zoe. What did we do? Because from my vantage point, what we did wrong in the eyes of these people who have subpoenaed us, is we've covered the Palestine Solidarity Movement, with staunch opposition to the genocide in Gaza.

We have showed people what ICE is actually doing in the streets of America, which is something that these people are very upset about. we've reported on Washington's crimes around the world, from Cuba to the Congo to Iran to here in Lebanon, where I'm speaking to you from. That's it. That's what we've done.

That's the whole indictment. That's our big crime, which actually is not a crime, Zoe. 

Right. it is literally journalism. That is literally just us doing our jobs and, a- and, and doing, doing journalism. I don't really know what else to call it. 

Yeah, I think that that's the journalism, the kind of journalism that these people would like to shut down.

and that's the strategy here. they know that our budget at Breakthrough News is, literally microscopic compared to the billionaire-funded networks that literally run the airwaves. they don't even need to win here or prove we did anything wrong. 

I think this is really just about trying to bury us in legal proceedings, until we basically, run out of money or just stop reporting out of intimidation, which is also a part of the tactic here.

Yeah, and that's what people need to understand, is that this is a playbook that they deploy. and again, they, they target us, because of what we've been covering, but also because we're small, and it really sends a message to every independent media outlet- Mm-hmm ... that this could be you next if you don't fall in line.

Yeah. Which is basically shut up and don't do your job. 

No, no, no, that's exactly right. It sends a message. this is... I think people really need to recognize this is not just an attack on little old Breakthrough News. this is an attack on all independent media, and literally freedom of the press itself.

And it's, it's ironic, Zoe, because it's coming from the same politicians who ran on, defending free speech, mostly from, the woke left. but right now actually what they're doing is they're attacking free speech that they don't like. 

Yeah. And I think probably our viewers are wondering what can people do to help, to join us in this in, as we, as we are facing really an unprecedented attack?

Well, first of all, I wanna say there's been an outpouring of support from people who are outraged, as they should be, by this very unconstitutional attack on journalism. But there are two very concrete things that you can do right now, if you are outraged about this and if you do support Breakthrough News and support independent media.

First, go sign the petition. you can find it at our website, breakthroughnews.org. this petition is telling the Ways and Means Committee to stop muzzling the press and to drop this investigation, this witch hunt against Breakthrough News. And the second very concrete thing that you can do is you can donate.

we've retained legal counsel, and we are absolutely going to fight this, but fighting costs money, and our funding comes from viewers, not from billionaires, and certainly not from foreign states. It comes from you. So go to breakthroughnews.org, sign the petition, and go find the donation link there and donate so you can help us push back, again, against this attack on independent media and on press freedom.

And people should know, all of those friends and foes who are watching, we are not going to be quiet. we're not gonna stop doing the journalism that we've been doing, that has defined us, that has grown us this audience that we have today, because we know that's the journalism that's needed.

We know that's the journalism that's actually needed in a moment where freedom of the press is under attack. 

in America, almost all public media falls under the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which until recently distributed funding to over 500 radio and TV grantees, representing more than 1,500 locally managed and operated stations nationwide.

Together, the system reaches nearly 99% of the US population with free programming and services. And public media's been truly innovative in reaching underserved audiences. It was public TV station that, first invented closed captioning in the 1970s, and stations around the country offer programming in Haitian Creole, Navajo, Vietnamese, and many other languages.

But as you undoubtedly know, it is now facing a serious threat as over the summer, Congress decided to eliminate $1.1 billion that had been allocated to fund public broadcasting for the next two years. It was something that Trump celebrated like this. 

Public broadcasting, they've been looking to get it out of there for billions and billions of dollars, and very, very unfair.

Very, very unfair reporting. They would, I would say they make CNN look honest. And, we got rid of it finally. We got rid of it. We got rid of billions of dollars that was wasted on that. 

In July, Congress approved Trump's plan to eliminate the CPB's funding entirely. It is one of many egregious actions this administration has taken, which is why the number one search on Google this year is probably gonna end up being, "Wait, can the government do that?"

And all of this has understandably upset a lot of people, even some that you may not have thought would be fans of public media, like this guy. 

Public radio, it's a national treasure. where else would you go? As a young man, I watched Ginger Baker have a drum-off against the drummer from Ratt. And, on Rock School, on PBS.

You're not gonna find that on network television. And not, not to mention Sesame Street. look, this is, this is a, Mr. Rogers. It's quality programming and it always has been, and it's a, a damn shame to just throw it in the toilet like that. 

But I know what you're thinking. You are thinking, "I had no idea that the berserker Blothar, lead vocalist of heavy metal band Gwar, was such a fan of public media," but apparently he is, and it is both beautiful and confusing- ... to watch him utter the words Mr. Rogers. As it's hard to imagine them in the same universe, although I'll say, I would love to have seen Gwar on Mr.

Rogers. Blothar, you are special just the way you are. Your diseased undercarriage composed of abscess-riddled penises makes you, you. But he is right. This budget cut is devastating. Actually, may- maybe take that down. This cut, this cut will be felt all over, but especially in rural, remote, and tribal communities.

One analysis estimates that as many as 115 stations collectively serving 43 million Americans are likely to close by mid next year. And as a DJ at this Colorado station explains, these stations can fill a vital community role. 

One of the things that we do is provide public service announcements that, inform people of meetings that are important to the community that they don't always get in a timely fashion otherwise.

Some examples that I just read on this morning's show include, an announcement about a distribution of school supplies that is occurring today. Here's an announcement about a free sloppy joe luncheon- ... for veterans and homeless. 

Exactly. That man who looks like Santa Claus if he got just the right amount into the Grateful Dead is completely right.

He should also, by the way, probably be public radio's new mascot, given he has the quintessential public radio voice, beard, and general vibe. Honestly, if the next NPR tote for sale does not have that man's face on it- ... they're leaving money on the table The point is public media provides incredible benefits to the communities that it serves, and it has just suffered a gigantic blow.

So given that, tonight, let's talk about public media, how it works, what it does, and how we go forward. And let's start with the fact that the system as we currently know it started when LBJ signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 into law, announcing it like this. 

This corporation will assist stations and producers who aim for the best in broadcasting good music, in broadcasting exciting plays, in broadcasting reports on the whole fascinating range of human activity.

It will try to prove that what educates can also be exciting. It will get part of its support from our government, but it will be carefully guarded from government or from party control. It will be free and it will be independent, and it will belong to all of our people. 

Yeah, that was a bold move. The kind of thing that takes some truly enormous balls, which as you should know from recordings that we've played of LBJ complaining to the head of the company that made his trousers, that the crotch down where your nuts hang is always a little too tight, he definitely had.

And quick side note, you may remember a few weeks ago, we had this potentially life-sized replica of LBJ's balls made and offered them to his presidential library. Well, I've got good news and bad news. The good news is we heard from them. The bad news is they politely declined our offer, but in doing so said, "Please accept this basket of fruit and nuts as a token of our appreciation for all you do."

This is the basket they sent, which contains, and this is true, a variety of nuts and fruits all in sets of two, which is- ... excellent. Anyway, as Lyndon Balls Johnson just said- ... that one act authorized the creation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which then in turn created PBS and NPR. But the CPB's role wasn't to directly produce content or oversee public media as a state arm.

It was primarily to distribute funding for it while crucially remaining independent of the government. That is why the CPB's a private nonprofit corporation. The only issue is that despite not being a government agency, it is still funded like one, as its funding is embedded in the annual congressional appropriations process.

And because Congress controls its funding, that's always left the CPB vulnerable to political attacks. Almost from the start, it has been a punching bag for Republicans. Just two years after it was created, Nixon proposed slashing its funding in half, reportedly to help meet the financial demands of the Vietnam War, because apparently the CPB was a bad use of public money, unlike, Vietnam.

That is what led to this famous moment in a hearing about the CPB's funding when Fred Rogers arrest- addressed a skeptical senator and described what his show was all about. 

This is what I give. I give an expression of care every day to each child to help him realize that he is unique. I end the program by saying, "You've made this day a special day by just your being you.

There's no person in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are." And I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service 

I think it's wonderful. I think it's wonderful. Looks like you just earned the $20 million.

Wow. That is a truly heartwarming thing that would never, ever happen today. If Mr. Rogers had given that exact same testimony this year, Ted Cruz would have called him a radical left lunatic, Fox News would have run with the headline "Mr. Rogers' Socialist Neighborhood," and the White House would have posted an AI video of President Trump kicking him in the balls.

But while public media's funding was saved on that day, it has been threatened consistently ever since, usually with complaints about its so-called liberal bias. 

Why is it a small elite group at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that gets to spend money they didn't earn? What right do they have to dole out your money?

I think the people at PBS, see themselves as social agents. They see themselves as having this great forum, this great platform to push what they think will be the good society. 

It is brainwashing the American people, and more significantly, American children with un-American, anti-family, pro-crime fake news.

Okay, so a few things in order. First, what right do they have to spend money they didn't earn applies to literally any use of taxpayer money, and also congratulations to Newt and Callista Gingrich on their documentary Journey to America, released this year on guess what, PBS. Second, if you're curious why this guy was speaking on behalf of a group called Concerned Women for America, so am I.

And finally, as for Marjorie Taylor Greene's comment, I think we all know what she means by anti-family, but I'd love to know what PBS programming is being interpreted as pro-crime. Is it the episode of Arthur where the brain gets himself into a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation? 

I'm sitting here and I'm wearing, red, in honor of The Washington Post guild. I'm a proud union member, and my ability to even challenge my firing, to file a grievance, and then to go to arbitration was all thanks to the fact that, The Washington Post guild and the Washington-Baltimore News Guild had in their contract, for binding arbitration.

So as much as this is a victory for me, this is a victory for guilds, for unions. and as well as, I'm feeling very much like this is beyond just a job, beyond just me, beyond just The Washington Post. This is a victory for journalism, for anyone who wants to stand up, for just speaking the truth, for...

I was just doing my job. so I really do see this as, a, as a symbol that it's worth it to stand up and fight for freedom of expression, for journalistic freedom. And when you fight, sometimes you win, and sometimes you win big, like in my case. 

So Karen, could you tell us, have people from the Post been in touch with you since this was announced, and in particular, the Post's former opinions editor, Adam O'Neill?

I have heard nothing from Adam O'Neill. the only time I've heard from him was once last year in a meeting, and then secondly during the arbitration where he testified against me. my lawyers and reps, at the moment are going back and forth, with the Post, as I understand. But for me, I have still not heard anything yet from The Washington Post.

And, and explain, Karen, why exactly, what the justification was that was given, for The Washington Post decision to, to sack you from, from your post. They cited, among other things, security threats, but not security threats against you. 

Right. So two things. the Washington Post argued that my posts, disparaged white men and were in violation of their social media policy.

Of course, anyone reading with any reasonable amount of, reading and grammar comprehension could see that I was talking about white men who choose to engage in hatred and violence. So there was that. And then the Post tried to make the argument that because the Charlie Kirk killing was such an overly emotional time that they had no choice but to distance themselves from me, and I think this is actually a really, really important point of the arbitrator's decision.

she reminded the Post of their own policies to protect their journalists, especially in times of heightened social media abuse a- a- and attacks. I can say from my experience, frankly, the posts that I made did not engender that much backlash. I was not aware of any threats. And instead of the Washington Post calling me, telling me about the posts, they didn't even tell me to take them down.

Instead, they threw me to the wolves and basically blamed me for any, supposed threat. The Washington Post basically manufactured a crisis of their own making in terms of the, in terms of posts and used that as a reason to get rid of me. 

And could you place this, Karen, in the context of broader attacks on the media, under the Trump administration and also about what's going on internally and has been going on at the Washington Post?

So my firing, at the time, of course, people familiar with, the Washington Post trajectory, particularly over the last couple of years, this came after, Jeff Bezos said that the opinion section was only going to cover personal liberties and free markets and nothing else. So there was already a chilling effect and a, a sense of censorship.

there were buyouts that were offered to the entire opinion section, of which I refused. I decided I wanted to stay, and part of the reason why I wanted to stay was because I was the last full-time staff Black opinion columnist in the section. And, for a city that has historically been majority, Black, I, I guess I just felt a sense that I needed to stay and do as much of the work, as I could.

and in terms of the broader, broader picture, there's been an attack on the media. We've seen how, specifically in the Charlie Kirk case, how, JD Vance, members of the right wing were explicitly telling people to go after any critics of Charlie Kirk, and explicitly telling them to go after their jobs.

of course, we saw what happened to Jimmy Kimmel. All of this is coming, in an environment where more and more media are f- are facing pressure to kowtow to Trump, to kowtow to MAGA. and so for me, again, I think this is why my reinstatement and this win means so much for so many people because they see this as a proxy for standing up to, this, wave of censorship and oppression and targeting, particularly of Black voices and removing, Black voices deemed as DEI from the public sphere.

And could you talk about in your, recent Substack piece, you mentioned Marc Thiessen, the col- Post columnist who encouraged Charlie Kirk critics to be doxxed and said on social media, using an expletive, "F the media and liberal Democrats," but he still has his job at The Post 

Right. Well, it all goes back to how ironically the Post's treatment of me versus my white male colleagues just goes to the point of how men who encourage harm or at least support it or appear to platform it are coddled, are, are, are given a, a pat on the back and, and, allowed to keep going.

Whereas myself, a woman journalist, a Black woman journalist, I get the harshest of punishments. And not just the harshest of punishments, but I myself am labeled a threat. So for the Post saying that my post went against journalistic integrity, perhaps they were more afraid that I actually, clocked the behavior of America and The Washington Post when it comes to, white men who choose to engage in violence.

I, I, I was just calling a thing a thing. and they, The Washington Post, once again in their treatment of me versus my white male colleagues, proved me right. 

a lot of people who make commercial art, a lot of people in Hollywood, don't actually get paid that well to do it for every particular gig, right? Often they'll take a pay cut, or they'll work for below their rate because they're told, "Hey, the movie's gonna come out, it's gonna do super well, and that'll improve your career.

That'll make, it easier for you to get the next job. Hey, you might even feel good about yourself because you got to make a piece of good art, and isn't that why you got into the business to begin with?" But you can't get that boost on your resume, you can't get that swell of pride in your chest if the movie you made never comes out to begin with.

And to be clear, the movie didn't get shelved because it was bad. It tested well with audiences, and we know now that it was, in fact, a very good movie. No, it was shelved because the judgment of the executives in charge of Warner Brothers, the judgment of David Zaslav and his cronies, was that this movie was unlikely to make money.

Even though it's good, "Ah, it doesn't have a big enough of a star, animated, is it for kids or adults? Who knows? Ah, you know what? Better to just bank the guaranteed $30 million tax break than roll the dice with this piece of art or whatever the creatives are calling it." And they did this even though doing so caused a public outcry.

Fans were mad because the movie sounded cool and they wanted to see it, and people in the film industry w- were mad because Warner Brothers was basically saying it was getting out of the business of making movies. what kind of movie studio are you if you try to make money by not releasing movies?

It's like a bookstore trying to make money by burning books, or a restaurant trying to make money by throwing their food in the trash. This made so little sense that even the famously nice Will Forte publicly called it fucking bullshit. Now, Warner Brothers said that the creatives could salvage the movie by shopping it around, but then they turned down several offers to buy the rights.

And the movie basically languished for years on end until Ketchup Entertainment was finally able to buy the rights for $50 million. And finally, we, the public, got to see whether or not this movie was bad enough to be thrown in the garbage. And guess what? It was not. Spoiler alert, the movie was good. It was very good, in fact.

it wouldn't have been surprising if this had just been another IP piece of schlock, right, like so many films that come out. But no, it was a movie that was funny, it was written with heart, the story beats are hit perfectly. The audience of adults that I watched this movie with at 9:10 PM in Glendale on a Sunday evening burst into applause at multiple story beats.

And in the climactic scene of the movie, you could hear people crying. And I know that seems hard to believe that you could cry at a Wile E. Coyote movie, but if you have seen the movie, you know the scene that I'm talking about, and you can't tell me your heartstrings were not tugged at. It was genuinely moving.

And part of that is because the story actually means something. first of all, it's a story about, the little guy fighting and prevailing against some evil corporate suits who are trying to destroy cartoons in order to make a buck. Oh, I wonder where they got that idea. Hey, maybe that's why David Zaslav didn't want to release the movie in the first place.

Who's to say? But more importantly, the themes that the writers found underneath this endless battle between Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, it was genuinely, a powerful set of ideas. The theme of this movie is about the nobility of trying and failing over and over again. The movie explicitly connects Wile E.

Coyote to the myth of Sisyphus, not just the, Greek legend about the man who's forced to roll a boulder up a hill over and over again only to have it fall down the other side for eternity, but it also explicitly connects to the famous book by Albert Camus. I don't know how to pronounce it. I, I don't speak French.

But, Camus, the Camus book that I read when I was, getting my bachelor's degree in philosophy. This is one of the most influential works of philosophy ever published. And to really bluntly summarize it, too reductively, but, the point is that even though life is an absurd struggle that one can never win, that has no purpose and has no ending, all one can do is love the struggle.

Right? That's all that we can do at the end of the day, and that's a beautiful message. And the fact that I was reflecting on that message, on the very absurdity of human existence in the course of watching a fucking Looney Tunes IP movie, that's a feat of writing and directing and acting. It w- it was really impressively done.

So why did Warner Brothers say it wasn't worth releasing? Why did David Zaslav himself say it wasn't worth releasing? Well, the answer, as we all can see very vividly, is that they didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. In fact, everything the suits have been telling us about the movie industry has been proven wrong by the success of Coyote vs.

Acme. We've been told that comedies can't do well at the box office, that movies need to be either really clearly for kids or really clearly for adults. We're told that nobody likes animation anymore, that the movies are dead, people don't wanna go to the theater at all, and that lead actors are essential to getting a movie over the finish line, that you gotta have Tom Hanks or Jacob Elordi in order to sell a film these days.

The success of Coyote vs. Acme shattered all of the bullshit that the people in charge of the industry have been saying for years. And you know what? The artists and audience knew that it would. That's why we were all clamoring to see this film. 

The only people, the only people who thought this movie would not succeed were the failure-addicted morons in the C-suite.

And I think they really are addicted to failing. I mean that quite literally. I think the new class of capitalists that run some of our favorite media companies, that run the economy at large, they are no longer in the business of succeeding. They are no longer in the business of trying to make successful products.

When you go to them and say, "Hey, I have a good idea for a movie or a product or something that people would like," they say, "Are you stupid? We don't do that. We don't make things that people like. We just do math on a spreadsheet to make the business fail because somehow that lets us sell it for more than we bought it for."

And I guess that works to some degree because David Zaslav is gonna walk away from Paramount buying Warner Brothers with hundreds of millions of dollars more than he walked in with somehow, even though all he did was drive the company into the ground. But Americans don't want that. We don't want to watch companies fail.

We want good movies. We want good TV shows. We want products that work and lettuce that doesn't poison us. And you know what this movie proves? Is that we can trust the people who make the thing to know how the thing should be made. 'Cause you know what? The movie business turns out to be pretty simple.

You just gotta make a good movie that makes people feel things, you gotta tell 'em about it, and you gotta make it easy for them to give you $20 and sit in an air-conditioned room and watch it. Like newsflash, it's possible to make money by making movies. And seeing that proven so vividly by Coyote vs. Acme also proves the falsity of the biggest lie that we are being told by Hollywood right now, which is that Hollywood, meh, it's a, it's a lost cause.

It's dying. Warner Brothers is dying. In fact, the only way to save it is for Paramount to merge with Warner Brothers, lay off tens of thousands of people, make less movies. That's what we have to do because, oh, Hollywood can't survive anymore. The only way to win is by failing. So why should we believe them?

Well, we don't have to. We can fight back and as stupid as it sounds, like, that's what Coyote vs. Acme told me. It told me that there is value and power in fighting back because it is the people who fought back against this movie being shelved that saved it. The only reason we have this movie is because people, from Will Forte to Dave Green, to people on Reddit, to the guy who paced around in front of Warner Brothers in a Wile E.

Coyote suit, made it happen. And, you might ask, well, isn't that kind of a dumb cause, right? Like, why go through all this effort for a movie? It's just another piece of IP. It's just another piece of corporate media. It's not gonna take down capitalism. It's not gonna be revolutionary. It's just a fucking movie.

And yeah, I don't expect Coyote vs. Acme to change the world, and I don't even expect it to take down the people who shelved it. Like I said, they're gonna walk away with more money than they came in with. But, maybe it doesn't have to change the world, and maybe Wile E. Coyote never has to catch the Road Runner, right?

Maybe the point of the story of this film is to remind us that sometimes the struggle is worth it all by itself. Sometimes the doomed struggle of the artist to push back against the boulder of cynicism and capitalism and doom and despair that presses down on all of us, maybe that struggle is enough.

Maybe at the end of the day, we can imagine Wile E. Coyote happy

We've just heard clips starting with

Blonde Politics tracing how Trump discrediting the media, encouraging allies to buy outlets, and weaponizing merger approvals mirrors the creeping state-media playbook of Orban, Erdogan, and Putin.

The Beat detailed how ABC sued the FCC for its retaliatory campaign to force stations off the air after Jimmy Kimmel refused to give in and won.

This Is Hell! laid out how Glenn Greenwald stopped criticizing Peter Thiel after taking a Rumble deal, while Matt Taibbi promoted Elon Musk's preferred narrative in the curated Twitter Files.

BreakThrough News revealed how its internal communications and financial records are being subpoenaed by the House Ways and Means Committee over its coverage of ICE and Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Last Week Tonight recounted the decades of Republican attacks on public broadcasting, from Nixon trying to halve its funding to Congress eliminating it entirely this summer, likely closing 115 stations.

Democracy Now! described how an arbitrator ordered the Washington Post to rehire columnist Karen Attiah, who was fired over posts about white male violence after Charlie Kirk's killing, citing the paper's own policy protecting journalists.

And Adam Conover celebrated how 'Coyote vs. Acme,' shelved by the Warner Brothers CEO for a $30 million tax break, finally reached theaters after years of outcry and proved the executives wrong.

And those were just the top takes, there's lots more in the deeper dives sections,

If you get value out of the show - and want to make sure we can keep going while getting it delivered ad-free to the new, members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support - there's a link in the show notes - through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcasts app.*

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You can message us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01,

or you can simply email me to [email protected]

As for today's topic,

To find the right solution, it's always important to understand the problem first. Or maybe admit you have a problem first and understand it second. When it comes to our media ecosystem, how it's being cowed by the Trump administration and sometimes taken over by his allies, it's important to remember the underlying structure of the mega corporations that own so many of the newsrooms in America.

When it looks like there's a fight between a news outlet and Trump's government, remember that most of the big broadcast and cable news operations, and some major newspapers are very small line items inside the larger corporations that own them. In many cases they aren't allowed to stand up to the government on their own terms, because they're closer to bargaining chips amid much larger corporate goals.

When a mega corporation wants to do a multibillion dollar merger or acquisition that needs approval from federal regulators, that is the biggest thing on the minds of its executives. It also becomes the point of leverage, where an authoritarian government can refuse approval unless changes are made to the news division to suit the propaganda needs of the regime. In the big scheme of things, those executives will see that as a small price to pay, a sacrificial lamb and not much more. When you're running a corporation, you don't feel like you can afford to worry about the future of journalism and the threat to democracy when there's stock value that must be generated.

We've seen this play out a couple of times already. Paramount gave 16 million dollars to Trump's future presidential library to settle the 60 Minutes lawsuit, a case that was probably unwinnable for Trump, and Skydance promised the FCC the merged company would have no DEI programs, all to pave the way for the FCC to approve the 8 billion dollar merger on a 2 to 1 party line vote.

There was also a complicated and underreported multibillion dollar acquisition between lesser known companies that own local affiliate stations right when the whole Jimmy Kimmel suspension controversy was happening. Nexstar needed a waiver from the FCC at the same moment its affiliate stations were taking the Kimmel show off the air.

Back in the mid-1900s, before Reagan and then Clinton took a hatchet to the regulations meant to ensure the public airwaves were managed in the public interest, the understanding was that the news was expected to lose money, and nobody minded. Media companies were allowed to use the public airwaves and make boatloads of money on their entertainment, while running the news was understood as the cost of doing the public interest work required to keep their license.

Reagan removing the Fairness Doctrine reshaped what the news could look like, mostly on talk radio, where the repeal gave rise to single-opinion programming, to Rush Limbaugh, and accelerated the hard rightward shift among conservatives that followed. Then Congress and Clinton deregulated the industry with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which set off a wave of consolidation. Radio stations by the hundreds ended up under one owner. Local TV stations got rolled up into national chains. And the network newsrooms ended up as small divisions inside enormous entertainment companies, where news was expected to pay for itself or justify its existence some other way.

So here's the basic shape of it. News went from being pretty boring and nonpartisan, an obligation the companies had to fulfill, to something the owners of those companies can use however suits them, not the public.

It's too simple to say corporate news media is bad because corporations are bad, or because the people running them are bad. Corporate news media is bad because it is structurally vulnerable to being turned into something that isn't designed to serve the public interest.

It can be designed that way by the corporate owners, as with Fox News. Or the structure can be targeted by an authoritarian government that uses its leverage on corporations that see their news divisions as a footnote on the balance sheet. A regime with self-interested motives can get corporations to trade the integrity of their news divisions away for regulatory approvals they value more than their journalists having a healthy, adversarial relationship with the state, a relationship the founders considered so important they wrote it into the Constitution.

So, if the fundamental problem is news agencies living inside giant for profit corporations, then at least part of the fix is ensuring that a substantial amount of news lives outside those corporations and has only one obligation, which is to serve the public.

Last year, Trump signed the bill to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting on the very same day the FCC approved Paramount's merger. It's been known for a long time that conservatives wanted to kill public broadcasting, even though far more Americans support public media than oppose it.

What's important to understand is how the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was allowed to be that vulnerable, instead of being given a self-funding endowment. It lived hand to mouth on an appropriation Congress could always cancel with one vote.

The endowment idea isn't theoretical. A nonprofit in Virginia held the licenses to two TV stations in the D.C. suburbs. When that independent public broadcaster sold those stations, which weren't serving its core audience, in 2017 for 182 million dollars, the money went to the nonprofit, and about 160 million of it was used to build the Virginia Foundation for Public Media, which can't be tampered with by politicians.

For national context, the FCC has been selling wireless spectrum to carriers at auction for the past 30 years and has generated more than 200 billion dollars. If Congress had taken just 10 percent of that and set up an endowment for public broadcasting, that endowment would pay out more each year than Congress ever had to appropriate, and it would keep paying out like that indefinitely.

The spectrum the FCC auctioned was publicly owned. The money that came in belonged to all of us. But it was sent to the general fund to barely offset the deficit, a rounding error, while we spent a trillion dollars on disastrous wars during the same period. When the licenses were held by a purpose driven nonprofit in Virginia, the money from the sale of public assets stayed in public media.

And over the years, they reorganized and strengthened public media in Virginia, all while knowing their funding was assured, not dependent on whoever was running the state house. So when Trump killed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the CEO of the Virginia Foundation for Public Media said they were lucky to be on such solid financial footing while stations around them scrambled to make up the difference. Being protected from politicians by an established endowment wasn't theoretical anymore.

Funding public news that is beholden only to the public interest is not a money problem. And despite the right wing propaganda, it's not a trust problem either. Across the country, trust in PBS runs nearly three to one over distrust, and support for funding it runs nearly two to one. Just think what it could do if it had the funding it needed to compete with the for-profit corporations that are currently experiencing a trust implosion. 

And now, we'll continue to dive deeper on 4 topics today. First up;

Section A, The FCC Weaponized

Followed by Section B, Journalists in the Crosshairs

Section C, Who's Buying, Who's Cashing In

And Section D, Building Something Better

the suit in particular points to a decision the FCC made in April requiring eight Disney-owned local news stations to renew their broadcast licenses, in some cases, years before they are set to expire.

Just for context, how common is it for the FCC to take that kind of step? 

It's extremely unprecedented. never has the FCC gone after network content by targeting all of its local broadcast stations, and it's been over a half a century since the FCC actually called in any license for early renewal. 

So in a statement, we know the FCC says it's been examining claims Disney engaged in what it calls illegal DEI discrimination for over a year.

Chairman Carr told Reuters today he thinks Disney went to court to try to stop this proceeding because he says Disney is nervous. In his words, he said, "Disney seems to be a little concerned about what the record's showing." ABC says they've handed over thousands of documents already in compliance with this investigation.

Have you, in your role, seen those? Do you believe there's any evidence that Disney is nervous about what those documents show? 

No one believes that this is about Disney's diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. clearly this is just a pretext to go after Disney because this administration does not like the content it's seeing on Disney, and Disney has refused to bow to the intimidation and to the pressure.

I'm very heartened to see Disney stand up for its First Amendment rights and its editorial decisions, and filing to challenge the actions that this, FCC has taken. It's very important to note that the FCC is not the EEOC. in fact, the FCC has lost previously in court, where it was told the FCC is not the EEOC, and license renewals are not proceedings, that can challenge Title VII rights.

So the FCC is outside of its remit, with this pretext, but it's clearly it's about the content of, of Disney's and ABC's, programs, not about this investigation. 

Well, there's a separate probe we should mention into the ABC daytime talk show, The View, and Chairman Carr was asked about these probes recently in an interview on Fox Business late last month.

Take a listen to what he had to say. 

You broadcasters get subsidized access, free access to a valuable public resource, the airways, worth billions of dollars. And in exchange, you have to operate in the public interest. That means you can't run news distortions, broadcast hoax. You can't be engaging in this invidious form of DEI discrimination.

And so the FCC is really enforcing rules that have been on the books for a very long time. 

Commissioner Gomez, what do you make of that argument that broadcasters, the chairman alleges, are not operating in the public interest in terms of what they broadcast? 

The FCC cannot target content based on this nebulous public interest standard.

The public interest, for the FCC traditionally has been whether, these broadcasters are serving their local communities. You serve your local communities when you have weather, sports, when you are talking about breaking news. That is serving your local communities. The problem with the way this administration is banding about the f- term public interest is they basically use it to mean anything this, this administration doesn't like.

we are bound by the First Amendment and by the Constitution. There is no generalized exemption to the First Amendment just because you're a broadcast licensee. 

I wanna point out the FCC in different forms is looking into a number of networks, CBS, ABC, NBC, notably not into Fox. Chairman Carr has also sent a letter to the BBC about its editing of a Trump speech.

In full disclosure, we should note that last year the FCC opened a probe into NPR, PBS, and some of their member stations alleging they might be airing prohibited commercial ads. PBS and NPR insist they are in compliance with federal laws and regulations. But Chairman, Commissioner Gomez, the fact that ABC is now suing the FCC after earlier settling with the administration for some $15 million, does this signal to you a, a change in tactics or a change in the landscape?

Why now? 

I think what we've learned watching this administration over the last year and a half is that you cannot, buy peace from this administration. You only buy time. This administration demands that it be covered in the way that it wants to be covered. It demands that there are to be no critics.

and it will simply keep coming back, and that is what we have seen. So I am very glad that Disney has found its courage, and it is, it should be encouraging to all other broadcasters not to cave to this administration's pressure, but rather to support the First Amendment, the freedom of the press, and viewers' rights to see and to hear, editorial content of their choosing.

You'd think with 500 different channels to watch, there'd be something interesting on. An even bigger problem, our media is controlled by just a handful of billionaires and their corporations. And Trump is making things worse. Trump's FCC just approved a massive merger that would let one huge media company control what over 80% of American households see.

One of these merging companies, called Nexstar, tried to silence late night host Jimmy Kimmel. 

Trump and his, Brendan cartel is coming for us again. 

Trump's FCC also cleared the way for billionaire Larry Ellison and his son David to buy Paramount, which includes CBS News. The Ellisons are huge Trump boosters.

Under their ownership, CBS News has already seen a massive shift toward a Trump friendly agenda. 

CBS News abruptly pulled an investigative report on 60 Minutes just a day before it was set to air. 

That report examined allegations of abuse and torture suffered by men deported by the Trump administration and sent to a prison in El Salvador.

Which is probably why Trump gave his blessing for the Ellison's company, Skydance Media, to also acquire Warner Brothers Discovery. If that deal goes through, Trump allies would also control CNN. Larry Ellison has reportedly had discussions with Trump about firing CNN hosts Trump doesn't like. And thanks to Trump, the Ellisons can also count TikTok as part of their growing media empire.

Did you know that one out of five Americans gets their news from TikTok? And you thought Fox News was bad. Don't forget the other media billionaires Trump has in his corner. Trump's billionaire suck-ups already control a huge portion of the information Americans get. The more his cronies control, the less Americans will know.

A free press is vital to democracy, but for Trump and his billionaire buddies, it's all about accumulating more power and more wealth. They know that a well-informed public could stop them from acquiring both. So what can we do about this? Pressure our state attorneys general to sue and block these mergers.

And when Democrats take back power at the federal level, bust up these massive media conglomerates. And we should support our local independent media, as well as outlets like NPR and PBS. News funded by the public, not owned by billionaires. As a once respected newspaper says, "Democracy dies in darkness."

We can't let Trump's billionaire helpers turn out the lights.

for years, many of us have been pointing out that platforms like Facebook are making design choices that are harmful. The business model of Facebook and other social media platforms is selling us, our attention, our eyeballs, and our kids' attention to advertisers. The business model is predicated on getting us addicted, on essentially having us spend as much time as possible on these platforms.

it's really interesting to see a case finally make it to trial and, and, and to actually have this, these issues litigated. but, but the truth is that Facebook knew a lot about the impacts of its platform on children and on others, and the business model really is about collecting a lot of data about us and using that data to micro-target us with the type of content that makes us keep coming back.

You're a member of the Big Tech Oversight Board. What is that?

This is a collection of people who came together after Facebook appointed its own oversight board, which was, a list of folks who were on the Facebook payroll who were meant to provide some oversight over what the company was doing. In reality, they didn't have any authority to hold the platform accountable.

And so a collection of folks from ac- around the world, led by Car- Carol Codweller, who broke the Cambridge Analytica story, Maria Ressa, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and others came together to really try to provide some critique about what Facebook was doing, the design choices it was making, and the hate and disinformation that they were spreading all throughout the world.

Now, c- your organization, Free Press, and hundreds of journalists are demanding USA Today end, their Palantir partnership. Nearly 800 journalists at USA Today newspapers signed a statements urging the company to, end this newly announced partnership with the software, company Palantir, whose products have been used by the US government to assist with immigration raids.

Talk about what they and you are calling for.

Listen, journalistic entities have no business making special deals and having special relationships like with companies like Palantir, which the US government is using to assist in crimes against humanity. We need to have editorial independence from big companies that deserve oversight from journalistic institutions.

And so, I support the call. We support the call from, the USA Today journalists because th- this is going to impinge upon independent reporting that holds this company and this administration accountable. 

Let's turn to ABC's lawsuit against the FCC. I want to read more from the lawsuit. Quote, "This case boils down to a simple question: Can the administration use its control over the federal regulatory apparatus to punish a media organization for editorial decisions and news coverage it dislikes?

Because the First Amendment provides a clear answer, of course not. This court's intervention is necessary to stop the Federal Communication Commission's extraordinary assault on free speech," the lawsuit states. Explain what is at stake. This lawsuit came down right about the time we were broadcasting yesterday it was announced.

Well, I'm so thrilled that finally a major media company is sticking up for itself to the administration. We have seen Brendan Carr, the FCC chairman, relentlessly jawbone at broadcasters over which he has regulatory authority. He has, he has threatened them with investigations. We don't even know the full extent of the investigations that the FCC has ongoing against ABC and other licensees.

He has called ABC's licenses in for early renewal. That comment process just closed, and so at any time now, the FCC can do what's called designate those licenses, the only eight broadcast licenses that ABC still holds, for a hearing, and that is the next step in revoking broadcast licenses. And there has been every indication that the reason that Brendan Carr is going after ABC is because Donald Trump wants him to, because Donald Trump doesn't like what ABC is airing.

He doesn't like it when they bring on his political opponents for conversations. He doesn't like it when Jimmy Kimmel makes jokes at his expense. But see, this is what the First Amendment protects. The First Amendment protects us from government intrusion into the editorial decisions of our media, and we've seen them time and again go after broadcasters.

ABC isn't the only one. They're just the first one to say, "Enough already," because the Trump administration has elevated this risk to the point that it's going to do serious damage to their business. In fact, if you look into the filing that went into the court yesterday, they cite numerous examples of how they've already altered their news coverage to keep the president happy.

For instance, they, they aired, a speech that they didn't wanna air on their live stream. They said they felt pressured to do so. They haven't brought anyone, any political guests onto The View, out of fear that the president would retaliate against them. the list goes on and on, and this is just what's happening inside of ABC.

We know this is happening at other broadcasters, other regulated entities as well, but they're all just kind- trying to duck and cover and not catch the president's attention. So it's really, a good move on ABC's part that they're finally sticking up for themselves. I think they've finally learned that when bullies go after you, you can't just cower in a corner, because they keep coming.

it was amazing. ABC, settled, for what was it, $15 million gave the president when- 15 million ... men- when many felt they coulda gone to court and won. then the whole, kerfuffle over Jimmy Kimmel, and the outcry across the country that led these organizatio- these, licensees to restore Jimmy Kimmel's late night show, because President Trump doesn't like him.

s- so this is a new approach here. don't bend the knee. 

This i- this, this is a new approach, and listen, when, when ABC yanked Jimmy Kimmel off the air, Free Press immediately launched into action. We set up a tool, and thousands of people called their local ABC stations and demanded that he be reinstated.

Of course, there was a tremendous uproar from the public above and beyond. People canceled their Disney+ subscriptions. And so, the actions we take as regular people make a difference. If we, mass protest, we can make a difference. And I think in a lotta ways that, that was encouraging to ABC, 'cause they saw there was going to be business impacts if they didn't stand up for free speech.

Next, Section B, Journalists in the Crosshairs

the FBI raided the Alexandria, Virginia home of a 29-year-old Washington Post reporter, Hannah Natanson, who covers the Trump administration's reshaping of the government and its effects.

The president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press called the raid a, quote, "Tremendous escalation in the administration's intrusion into the independence of the press." FBI agents searched Natanson's home and seized a phone, a Garmin watch, her personal computer, and one owned by The Post.

Agents, agents reportedly told Natanson the raid was related to their investigation of a government contractor and Navy veteran named Aurelio Perez Lugones, who's accused of illegally retaining classified government materials. He was reportedly messaging the reporter at the time of his arrest last Thursday 

Just last month, Hannah Nuttinson wrote a piece headlined, I Am The Post's Federal Government Whisperer.

"It's been brutal." unquote. She said her reporting had led to more than 1,000 new sources who were current or former federal workers, quote, "Who wanted to tell me how President Donald Trump was rewriting their workplace policies, firing their colleagues, or transforming their agency's missions." unquote.

Nuttinson was also part of a Washington Post team that won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for public service for their coverage of the January 6th Capitol insurrection. Readers of the Washington Post coverage of Wednesday's raid on the reporter's home left thousands of comments noting the paper's owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, had so far not commented on the raid.

For more, we're joined in our New York studio by Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, previously deputy legal director at the ACLU. Welcome back to Democracy Now, Jameel. Thanks, Amy. Why don't you explain to us what you understand happened on Wednesday morning when the FBI raided the home of a reporter?

Yeah, th- this is, a reporter who's been covering the, the federal government, talking to government employees, publishing stories about her conversations with government employees, and, her home was raided by the FBI. It's a very unusual thing. extremely rare in this country that the FBI raids the home of a reporter or, or raids a newsroom.

thankfully, very rare, in our recent history at least. but that's what they did in this case, and they seized her, electronic devices, including two laptops, one of which was issued by the, the, The Post, and a cellphone as well. And not at all obvious to me why this search was necessary at all.

They had already searched the home of this contractor a week before and obtained, apparently, evidence that, he was sharing classified information. So they, already had that evidence against him. They filed a criminal complaint against him, and a week later, they, execute this search of a journalist's home.

And we don't yet have the, affidavit in support of the search. So we don't know what they told the court to justify, this search, but it's hard not to see it as an effort to imi- intimidate not just the- journalists, but the sources that would, would communicate with them. 

So Jameel, could you explain what kind of legal authorization is typically required for this kind of search, in particular- Yeah

of a journalist's home? 

Yeah. So it's a, it's a very complicated legal l- landscape, mainly because the Supreme Court issued this decision in 1972, which, is, is, to, to put it generously, very cryptic. nobody understands what that decision really means, but, essentially the court said, "We're not gonna extend constitutional, special constitutional protection to, journalists, with respect to their sources.

You, you, we're not gonna let journalists refuse to testify, for example, before a grand jur- jury, when they're subpoenaed for their sources." But in the same decision, the court, said, "Obviously there are constitutional, implications to some of these requests, and we're gonna be very careful that, the government doesn't cross constitutional lines."

So it's a cryptic opinion. There's a, a concurrence by Justice Powell that, uh, d- people have, taken to be the controlling opinion of the, the, the court. But the result is that there's this very messy judicial landscape Congress has been asked over and over again, urged over and over again by press freedom organizations, including the Knight Institute, to pass legislation that would give reporters clearer protection against, compelled process, so not just subpoenas, but also, court orders and, search warrants of the kind that was, at issue in this particular search.

but Congress has failed to do that. and in the meantime, the only protections that journalists have are the ones that the Justice Department wants to... Or the main protections that journalists have are the ones that the Justice Depar- Department wants to provide. And the Biden administration had provided, had, had strengthened the rules protecting journalists in very important ways.

but, the attorney general, the current attorney general, Pam Bondi, weakened those rules, last year. y- press freedom advocates, knew that the weakening of those rules would result in, a kind of stepping up of investigations of, of the press and their sources. And, and this search, I think, is a sign that we were right to worry.

it, it's really serious when you look at... She's not even the actual target- That's right ... they're saying. Yeah. they get the information. You can't help forget here that she is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. She was part of the team that investigated, what President Trump doesn't want to talk about- Mm-hmm

which is the January 6th insurrection. 

Yeah, 

yeah. Well, so I, I think that one of the really worrying things here is that, presumably they justified this search to the judge by saying, "This relates to this contractor who was sharing classified information, was taking classified information home unlawfully and then sharing it," and that's how they justified the, the search to the judge.

But this reporter has all kinds of information, all kinds of communications with sources that have nothing to do with classified information, right? All these communications with current government employees, for example, including conversations that are, are not national security-protected. They don't touch on national security issues at all.

And now the government has, possession of all of those communications, and we don't know whether, uh, any protections have been put in place to, to, segregate those communications or whether the Justice Department is just sifting through them right now. 

And what kind of recourse, if any, legal recourse does the reporter, Hannah Nattansen, or indeed The Washington Post have- And let's not forget-

in light of what's 

happened? It's o- his, the owner, Jeff Bezos, quite close to President Trump. 

Yeah, it's, it's quite striking that, at least to my knowledge, and I think you said this in the, i- in- in the intro as well, that Jeff hasn't said anything about- Mm-hmm ... this search. this is, this is, a huge attack on not just press freedom, but his, his outlet, The Washington- The Washington Post, and, that he hasn't come to the defense of the, the, the newspaper or the journalist is, is, is, y- is pretty striking.

we at Novara Media, of course, are part of the media. We reported on Jason Arday over the past fortnight. It's time for us, or at least me, to reflect on that. I, I want to park that just for a moment because we're going to come to that in a second. and first of all, I want to get your more general comments on, on this tragic story, the tragic sequence of events that, that led to what happened last Friday.

Yeah, I think it's a, I think it's a terrible tragedy, and I think that it's very clear that it has really deeply affected a lot of people in the country. People are heartbroken. But people are also enraged because I agree with Professor, Kehinde Andr- Andrews, who was, you showed the clip of on Channel 4, that this, that Jason, Arday was hounded to his death, that there is a strong case to be made that he was, in effect Killed.

I, I, I hesitate to say that, but, the, it's, he would still be alive today, I agree, if he was white. He would still be alive today if the media hadn't engaged in this absurd feeding frenzy on something that never met the bar for the national interest at all. I think we have to go right back to the beginning, and we have to understand where this story came from.

I think that's so important, and you had spoken about it there. it came from a guy called Nathan, Clonas, who was, formerly at Cambridge. This is a man who is fiercely racist. This is a man who's an effective geneticist. This is a man who's a racial determinist. He's a crank. He's a hate monger.

He's made it clear that it's his mission to effectively take down Black people and non-white people in an effort to prove his crank science that intelligence is, partly dictated by race. when you look into some of the things that this man has said, that if, there were no DEI pol- policies, that, quote, "Blacks would disappear from prestigious positions."

He said that if there was no DEI policies, Black people would only be known for entertainment and sport This man goes and writes a Substack post. He's clearly been trying for a long time to find that case, that case that will help him to prove his hateful theories, and he focuses in on Jason Arday, puts it on his Substack.

I think that was July 21st, if you wanna see how this then made it into the mainstream media. The first story that hit the mainstream media was The Telegraph on July 24th. So that was three days later, it was picked up by The Telegraph. Let me just tell you what The Telegraph headline was. The Telegraph headline, and this is the first mainstream story to come off the back of the Substack, was Cambridge's Diversity Poster Boy in Plagiarism Row.

Cambridge's Diversity Poster Boy. To me, that indicates that that was what the coverage was going to be like. This wasn't The Telegraph looking at a Substack post and picking it up as a news piece and saying, "Data in a, in a Substack has suggested that," No. This was them saying, "The diversity poster boy is in trouble."

And I think that the, that the coverage maintained that sort of tenor all the way through. Six hours later, it hit The Times. The Times obviously saw it in The Telegraph. They decided they would jump on it, and then quickly, quickly the feeding frenzy begins. And the thing that I wanna say is that this wasn't ordinary news coverage.

you have some journalists out there who are saying, "No, no, this was, uh, this was just, news coverage of, of a story that was in the public interest." No, it wasn't. Even when you look at some of the stories that were purported to be news stories, they were, they were, they were, they were gleeful.

They were sneering. They were shot through it like very thinly veiled racism. And again, as, Professor Kehinde And- Andrews said there, some of it was, also inaccurate. I think if you talk to nine out of 10 people and ask them about this story, they would probably say that, Jason Arday, plagiarized his PhD thesis, when we know that actually he was cleared of it.

But that didn't seem very important for the headline writers. didn't seem very important for the columnists. And like I say, it was just a, it was just a feeding frenzy. It was just a, a witch hunt. look Am I saying that there should have been no stories at all, that it should have been completely ignored?

No. Could have been covered in the Times Higher Education Supplement. Seems like a good place for it. Could be covered in Varsity, the Cambridge newspaper. That seems like a good place for it. A couple of pieces in the Telegraph that are straight and newsy, not the diversity poster boy is in trouble. Fine.

A day inside the newspaper, not on the headlines, not on the front pages, not on breaking news, not on alerts, not in live discussions on, on, on, on cable news. And the thing that was ignored was that the story was about race. This is my contention. It started about race, and racism was shot all the way through that coverage.

And I think that for journalists to be out there arguing that it was a story about academia, if it was a story about academia, it would have been a tiny little story. The fact that it was a story about race and the fact that it became a pylon is what made it such a big story. And I think ethical news journalists shouldn't have covered it in any way without centering race after that feeding frenzy, begun.

And just to show how manipulated the media was, because that's the other thing. The media just rides the wave. Here's the shiny thing. Here's somebody we can kick when he's down. Here's something that we can pull in the clicks with. Here's something that all our, our, our Instagram videos will go viral with.

Like the Times advertising its hit pieces on Jason Arday on Twitter so that more people would see them. And where I want to talk about the little, the touch paper being lit, this horrible video came out, a discussion between Kofnas, who started this whole thing, and David Starkey. And it was appalling to watch.

Now, this is before Jason Arday's death, but I actually took the quote from it. They're grinning at each other in this video. And David Starkey says, "The reason we are both grinning is that we are enjoying vengeance, good, honest, straightforward, un-Christian vengeance. We can rejoice together." Now, that's the man who started this.

He is in that conversation with David Starkey, and then they're sitting there rejoicing. Why? Because Kofnas lit the touch paper and the media just followed, and now a man is dead. 

Earlier this month, the State Department hosted an international summit where White House advisor Stephen Miller described the left as enemies of civilization.

This is part of Stephen Miller's speech. 

Here in the United States, we have taken the necessary and essential action of formally recognizing left-wing violence as a form of political terrorism that is a direct threat to our national security and the survival of our Republican form of government.

President Trump issued a directive, in our parlance it's called a National Security Presidential Memorandum, or NSPM, NSPM7 to be exact, that directs for the first time in American history all of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to work together to disrupt, identify, defund, de-bank, arrest, and prosecute these political terrorists that are operating in our country.

It's very important to understand that left-wing political terrorism seeks as its ultimate end the overthrow of our system and form of government. 

Finally, Medea Benjamin, that's Stephen Miller. if you can respond to what he's saying. 

Well, what I think is that we are seeing the results of his twisted, mind in the attacks on so many of our organizations in the US, and it's a time for us to come together.

We encourage people to go to the Code Pink website. there is a, a note now that you can sign to send a message to Marco Rubio about what do you think of his garbage Cuba report and attacks on US groups. we can't be intimidated. This is really a moment in history that is so dangerous for us in the United States and for the world.

Let's come together and fight harder. 

So last week, the Republican-led House Ways and Means Committee subpoenaed three left-leaning non-profit organizations, including Breakthrough News, demanding the independent online news l- outlet hand over internal communications. We're joined now by Rania Khalek, a Beirut-based journalist at Breakthrough News, where she hosts programs Dispatches and BT Live.

your Substack post is headlined Congress Just Subpoenaed Our Newsroom For Doing Journalism. And this came out soon after, that speech of Stephen Miller and their so-called terrorism summit. If you can respond about what's happening to Breakthrough News and how you're responding to your, to the subpoena.

Yeah. Thanks so much, Amy, and you're absolutely right. this, this subpoena came on the heels of that anti-communist summit where Stephen Miller, spoke from that clip you just showed, and on the heels of that Cuba report that basically identified opposition to the blockade in Cuba, as well as all kinds of other criticisms of US foreign policy, as being part of some foreign plot.

And this subpoena we received is part of a long-standing attack against us. we've been under attack from Trump's right-wing allies in Congress for years now. however, we started receiving letters from the Ways and Means committee earlier this year, basically pointing to our viewpoints as a problem and justification for why they wanted us to turn over First Amendment protected materials.

In fact, in these letters they've been sending us, they specifically mention our coverage of Israel's genocide in Gaza and of the ICE kidnappings and killings across the country that have sparked massive uprisings, and they also accuse us of anti-American rhetoric, which is just, summoning the ghosts of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthyism era.

So this is a flagrant attack on our First Amendment rights as an independent media outlet, and everybody should be alarmed. Everybody who cares about a free press and cares about free speech should be alarmed about an attack like this. the Ways and Means committee is supposed to be reviewing tax policy, and they're coming after a tiny nonprofit.

If they really wanted to review tax policy, they could go after the massive nonprofits across the country, and they're explicitly saying it's because of our viewpoints. 

So you mentioned Joe McCarthy, and especially for the youngest generation who's listening right now, they might not know who you're talking about.

I wanna turn to Senator Joe McCarthy speaking in 1952 during the Red Scare 

One communist on the faculty of one university is one communist too many. Even if there were only one communist in the State Department, that would still be one communist too many 

So that was Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy. if you, Rania, can talk about w- how this is affecting Breakthrough News, having to deal with news and US foreign policy, of course, around the world, and at the same time, how you answer this subpoena.

Well, we have legal counsel. Our lawyers have been responding to the letters, and they are aggressively challenging, these violations of our constitutional rights, and under no circumstances will Breakthrough News be compromising or surrendering our First Amendment rights or the freedom of the press, so we will absolutely be fighting this, through our lawyers.

Mm. as for the McCarthyism here, Amy, I think it's interesting 'cause there's a important lesson I think we should take from the McCarthyist era, and that is, during that time, they got the public on board. That's the reason it worked. It wasn't the committees. It was because they got the public on board.

What's interesting a- about what's happening right now is they're attempting to criminalize dissent and an independent press. because they're losing the argument. we at Breakthrough News, our, our viewpoints are not fringe, right? It's opposition to the genocide in Gaza. It's, desiring, free healthcare across the US.

It's opposition to these ICE kidnappings and killings. These are actually in keeping with the majority of Americans across the country. And so this administration is deeply unpopular. Its agenda is unpopular. Meanwhile, we see progressive politics are ascendant. Socialist candidates are winning primaries.

The movement, against the genocide in Gaza is growing. So this foreign plot smear is all they have left because they can't win on their merit, and that's what people need to understand this as. So we at Breakthrough News, we're con- gonna continue to do our reporting. People can go to our website, breakthroughnews.org, sign the petition to drop this, this attack on the First Amendment.

And if you can, donate to our legal expenses because at the end of the day, we're a tiny outlet. We have a microscopic budget compared to the, massive corporate media outlets that run the airwaves. Every dollar that we spend on, these legal fees is a dollar we can't spend on reporting, and I think they're just trying to drain us of our resources to silence us, but we're not going to be silenced.

Let's talk about this America deserved 9/11. I don't think anybody or anything deserves anything, but the idea of blowback, We had Chalmers Johnson on the program, 20 some odd years ago to talk about this. The idea of blowback is a rather uncontroversial one

And, the idea that what you do in a region

Every reaction has an equal, counter-reaction or whatever it is. What, I, I've lost it. What is it? The opposite. Equal and opposite. Equal and opposite. It's blowback. 

Very dangerous conversation for a morning show to even get this close to, frankly. 

What's that? A morning sh- That 

blowback could exist, like- 

Oh, yeah.

The idea that our implications if we, I don't know, kill people in Afghanistan or in Iraq or if we, I don't know- 

Topple governments ... 

topple governments in Iran, that somehow we could suffer some consequences from it is a, is a pretty straightforward concept So I don't think anybody deserves anything, positive or negative, frankly.

Yeah. But physics exists 

The other little move he does here is he says, "Okay, Hasan's walked back and clarified what he meant by those 9/11 comments, but there's so many other comments which I, I guess I don't need to even cite now, that are also bad that everyone should run away from." That's what he does in this next moment here.

Deserve 9/11. Now, he backed off from that. 

Yes, yes. He's apologized. 

but he said a lot of, he said a lot of controversial things. Is he, is he somebody that should have a, a role in the progressive movement going forward? 

I think when we look at our elections that have happened, we have lost young people.

Much hay was made about the fact that we lost young men in the last election. Mm. And many of the same consultants that are wringing their hands today were the same ones s- Mm ... talking about how we need to go on Joe Rogan- Right ... and we need to be not, not so, willing to engage in cancel culture.

And, I think that the flip-flopping on this is a tactical debate that they may be hap- having. I think the fact of the matter is, is that Democrats can go on Joe Rogan, Democrats can go on Fox News, Democrats have a responsibility to build a winning coalition. And young people are engaging in mediums and conversations that we have a responsibility to attend to and be responsive to.

And even right now, when we look at this insurgent wave of what is happening, oftentimes when people are doing that Monday morning quarterbacking and what demographics voted where, the big one that's being ignored is the generational tidal wave. 

It, it- 

Phenomenal ... 

and you see it in, in the polling.

It is- And- ... it is significant ... 

millennials are not, punk kids anymore. 

Yeah. 

We're grown adults with mortgages and kids. And- 

We, that generation is starting to be decisive at the polls, and there is anger at being ignored, sidelined, having our economic futures mortgaged by the generations that came before us on everything from the economy to climate, and we're taking the reins.

So

the, it just, it's a good answer. I think, they're gonna continue to ask this question, and I think, Democrats have to just plow through it. My- I think Hasan Piker's gonna end up being a household name by, the end of, November. And if Democrats manage to still gain control of the House and, are competitive, if not, victorious in gaining the Senate I don't know that he would take it, but, they should offer Hassan Piker the chairman of the DNC 

Mm-hmm.

clearly it will have worked. Absolutely. the question is, is he a liability or is he an asset? And we're gonna find out. 

Politicians keep treating him like he's an asset. 

It's weird. 

Despite all this talk that he's a big liability. 

It's weird It is very weird. But, listen, the, there's a twofer here for the media because the media always bites at, when, Republicans dangle shit like this, and it's so much easier for them to make these races about these questions Medicare for All's all fallen by the wayside.

all, all these things. There's two things that are important in these elections, in every single one of them. That is, do you actually agree with 80% of the American population on Israel? And have you not in any way distanced yourself from Hasan Piker? Those are the two most important questions facing this country right now.

And I get that in the media it's a lot easier to pick up one person and be like, "This is what this is about." But this is why a lot of people get so frustrated about politics and political media, because it doesn't actually speak to the challenges they face. Look, I did a whole interview- 

It's not, it's not just the media, a- and I, I reject that framing.

I- it's six in 10 Americans don't know who he is. Exactly. I'm not saying he's the most important person in the world, but when you have a state like Michigan, where again, Alyssa Slotkin only won by 22,000 votes- 

But Katie- 

Is it worth- 

10 in 10 Americans- ... 

potentially losing the, the few votes you need to win?

10 in 10 Americans agree that they can't afford the things that they need in their life. So if folks want to make this about a streamer in California, they're welcome to do that, but I'm focused on Donald Trump. I'm focused on addressing the affordability crisis. I'm focused on getting you healthcare, and that's what I'm gonna stay focused on.

Let's 

talk about J- 

El Sayed is a great orator. We'll get to him in a second. Katie Tur is an absolute clown This is how fascists governments take over. When the media starts to bend a knee to the wannabe dictator, this is what you get. Hasan Piker is some streamer. He's talked about universal healthcare and gun reform, and he's talking out about how Israel shouldn't spend money here.

One comment about nine eleven, four trillion years ago is what she's focused on. are you kidding me right now? He clearly wants to focus on what's important to Michigan. But Hasan Piker, but Hasan Piker. And his opponent today, as an example, in Michigan, you know what he talked about? Saying that El-Sayed was from Egypt and that he should go back home.

He was born in Michigan, and I don't see Katie Tur grilling that racist piece of shit. No, no, no. But the nice guy, she's gonna go all over him, and he has to go on here and defend himself. This is a shame, and this is part of the reason that this country is failing because the reporting have done an absolute shit job.

When they're on the airplane, and that president, that white supremacist is telling a woman to shut up, why isn't every reporter speaking up saying, "You know what? There's more important things than my job, having some damn integrity." How about when you're in a room and asking people a question with, with that president, and he ignores it and calls it fake news, why doesn't somebody else ask the very same question and the next one and the next one and the next one until he gets so mad that he walks out like a little-- sniveling little bitch that he is?

But they won't, because you're all bending a knee to this guy that's, eight hundred pounds, that's about three cheeseburgers away from meeting Jeffrey Epstein. They're failing us, and this is the prime example of that. And she wants Katie Tur. She should have her license revoked. This is malpractice.

This is not journalism. This is clearly biased. And Bari Weiss, she basically destroyed sixty minutes. She has her hand in a lot of these cookie jars too. Just today as an example, I think it was CBS, right, made an article about nine eleven. El-Sayed, they need to revisit what he stands on with 9/11 coming up.

Why? Because he's Muslim? What, what the hell does that have to do with anything? Well, he had nothing to do with it. Why does he have to refigure anything? It's bullshit. This is what's happening to our media. Donald Trump isn't doing what he's doing in a vacuum. He's getting help from all the cable places because they're all scared of the orange man because FCC will come after them.

What do you think's gonna happen when a bully beats you up, hmm, and you give him your lunch money? You think he's gonna leave you alone, or is he gonna come after you the next day, and the next day, and the next day? That's, it's just, it's so stupid. I cannot believe that so many of these companies, like CNN, who's just bootlickers for Donald Trump, keeps bending a damn knee Now let's get to El-Sayed.

That is what I want from the Democratic Party. Stay on topic. Don't buy for the crap. Don't be like Hakeem Jeffries that has no balls and no backbone. He's fighting for the people. He's pushing back on the orange fascist in the White House, the rapist, making fun of him, pushing back. "Hey, how's Natalie Harp doing?

Do you need her to change your diapers?" Yeah, it's a little off-color, but you know what? At least he's pushing back against the bully because bullies only feel emboldened when you let them do whatever the hell they want, and he's not letting them do that. He's pushing it back. JD Vance, he made a joke about him today.

"Hey, JD Vance, there's no couches here. You won't like it in Michigan." Where is that from Jeffries and Schumer and the Democratic Party? They're too busy getting paid from fucking Israel. Billions and millions and millions of dollars. "Give us more money, we'll shut our mouths." And he even separated the issue with Vice President Harris.

He's like, "Look, I did not agree with her stance on Gaza," and I don't either. I didn't agree with it. But he said, "You know what? She was the better option of two by a lot, so I voted for her." You can support her and still take a stand on what you believe in. That's what has to happen, and it's not happening enough in the Democratic Party.

They're just touting the line, and they're not fighting back. He's an incredible debater, and they put millions of dollars, and he still won against the candidate that Israel wanted to, to win. But it's just-- it's mind-boggling how many news organizations have absolutely bent the knee and kissed the ass of Donald Trump.

It is disgraceful. And this is why there is a mass exodus in views from the CNNs and MSNBCs, and they're going to local people because they're reporting the news. They're not beholden to the orange man and all this FCC crap and ads and people telling them what they wanna hear. Bari Weiss has had multiple people come out and tell her they wanted them to-- Example, ice.

Okay? Ice. She was asking them to basically lie and fudge the truth. Well, was Rene Good really trying to get away, or did she really turn the car towards him and then turn at the last minute? She was literally encouraging them because it was good for clicks and views. That is not journalism. And shame on Katy Tur.

Maybe one day, Katy Tur, you can have as much integrity as El-Sayed, the man you just interviewed. 

I would love your sense of what do you think is the most grievous thing that mainstream, so-called corporate money media are doing or failing to do.

You've alluded to some of it, and then I want to talk about some of the freedom perhaps that, that you and we have being outside of those structures. Joy, what do you think's the fundamental biggest thing you'd like to fix right now? Well, I think that going back to when Trump first came in, the media would not use the word lie, and there was a big struggle.

I was working in corporate media at the time. There was a big internal struggle about whether you could call an untruth a misstatement, whether you could just say it was a lie. That was a stupid fight, right? And there have been a lot of those kinds of stupid fights where the media has been so reluctant to be in conflict with the, with any administration, not just Trump, with Bush, with e- well, Obama they didn't care, 'cause that was the, that was the Dem- if it's a Democrat, they don't mind being in conflict.

But when it's a Republican, because the media is so, afraid of what Roger Ailes did, which is to present this notion that the media is biased against white conservatives. And now they've committed an even further crime, which is to become co-opted by the same oligarchs who directly benefit from the regime.

They've now bought up most of the administration, including CBS. I just want to read this very quick thing to you. The Times is reporting that Bari Weiss, who is the podcaster or Substacker, who for whatever reason is now in charge of the Tiffany Network, CBS News, she, sent a note to her staff

She said, "Let's make sure every single night has something with viral potential. The goal for this road show of Tony Dokoupil's is not to deliver the news so much as it is to drive the news.

We need to be the news for these 10 days." It is a crime against journalism for the editorial director of a news network to say, "Our job is not to deliver the news, but to go viral." That's crazy. That's the commercial interest, the commercial motive playing itself out and saying the quiet stuff out loud.

Again, Dean, if you had to change one thing, what would it be? I will say this. I think we are all more journalists in the realm and in the form of Edward R. Murrow than they are, 'cause Edward R. Murrow famously said there are not two sides to every issue. you, there are not. There are not two sides to the Klan.

I remember a cable news network, and I won't say which one it is, said to me, during Trump's first term, they wanted me on to talk about Trump's anti-Muslim bigotry, and I said, "Okay." And they said, "We just need someone from the other side." I go, "Someone who's pro-anti-Muslim bigotry?" And the producer was just like, "Stop talking."

He's like, "Oh, we'll get back to you." And then they just killed the segment because they couldn't, in their mind, do a segment where it wasn't two sides. There are not two sides at w- as, and we know this. There are not two sides to a lie. There's not two sides to Trump's fascism. I would go on Joy's show, and me and Joy would say fascism, and Mehdi Hasan say fa- and all the other people there, "What are you doing?

How outlandish." And so, we're at the point where I'm literally quoting Hannah Arendt and The Banality of Evil to explain to people what ICE is doing, and that's not over the top. I am not even close to over the top. And so what I would like corporate media to understand, their job is not to make money for shareholders and executives to get bonuses, but serve the people, make them smarter, even if it means losing access.

I know that's a lot to ask, but that's what I would like because an educated, informed electorate is the key to saving this republic. The problems that you've both just described go back so far, really to Spiro Agnew managing to create this bugaboo of the quote unquote liberal media that put all the media organizations on the back foot, bending over as far backwards as any yogi could possibly manage. and then everything that we've seen since in terms of commercialization o- of even the news. The crisis, so-called, in legacy media is real. but it has opened up some incredible opportunities, and you both have seized them, as have I. talk about the sort of pros and cons of this moment. Dean? L- look, if there was ever a time for corporate media to implode, thankfully it's now in the ascendancy of independent media.

Because years ago, if they still controlled all the ways to get information out, we'd be dead. they would be just all gatekeeping and just doing pro-Trump, pro-regime propaganda, and we would not be able to get our message out there. So look, technically I work at Sirius XM, which is a big corporation.

For sure. But I don't think they even know I'm there. it's really like there's no executives that even talk. No, I do meet with an executive, but it's never about the content and stuff. It's "Do your thing unless I get a complaint about something," and it's rare. we're just doing our thing. So we have the freedom of independent journalism.

Also, I write for Substack, where it truly is independent. I don't have to pitch anymore to editors who I liked and they were great, and wait for a day and then change it and then dilute what I wanted to say. I think we have more freedom. We're also building allies in the independent media world that weren't there.

Laura, you were the first independent media person I met. I'm not kidding. You and probably Amy Goodman, right? So now there's so many. There's too many. There's all these young guys have a million followers on TikTok. How did they get that? They're like 26. But the point is like there's so many more of us.

I'm more confident the future is brighter, that we can get our message out. Well, but what about that, Joy-Ann? there is a huge morass out there. how do you keep your head above water, get your head above the, the parapet, as it were? I go back to two things. I'll give two examples. I wrote this book about Medgar Evers and Myrlie Evers-Williams. Medgar Evers, one of the jobs he had was he was a journalist. He actually started a newspaper because they couldn't get real news out of Mississippi into rural communities where they were just being lied to about civil rights, lied to about the NAACP. So he and a white woman, her name was Hazel Brannon Smith, she was pretty amazing.

She actually was an award-winning journalist and she had a press of her own, but she decided to lend the press to Medgar Evers. She was shunned by white society. She was disinvited from the white community, and what she did in response, she had all the Blacks over for tea. She said, "All right, y'all. Come on, let's

I got nobody to have tea and hang with me. Y'all come on to my house and let's do this." That is the kind of underground radical advocacy journalism that was needed to fight Mississippi, fascism. And if you go to Russia, I think of Alexei Navalny, who was also using outside of the very closed system of Russian media to get information to younger people through the internet and through all these alternative means unfortunately he died for.

But that is true activism and true heroism. So I think that the great thing about this moment and not being having to answer to a corporate, overseer- Is that we can get on the ground. We can get on the ground like Medgar. We can get on the ground and try to fight this fascism that's overrunning our country at a rapid rate.

They had a plan, Project 2025. We didn't have a plan, but we have huge community. We have the Midases of the, Midas touches of the world. We work together. We work as a system. We're like an amoeba, So we're, it's harder to stop us because there's so many of us, and we're working in tandem.

Now, Section C, Who's Buying, Who's Cashing In

I've talked about this so many times, going after ABC and CBS with those ridiculous lawsuits, kicking the Associated Press out of the Oval Office, arresting journalists like our friend Don Lemon. Everything that we've been seeing, it might pale in comparison to what we're now seeing come down the pipe, which is the rapid consolidation of MAGA media, MAGA-controlled media in this country.

The Ellisons, who recently bought CBS, are now making a bid to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, which is the parent company of CNN. And so, a- and that's why you see this Trump, social media post behind me, because Trump stupidly put it out there the other day.

this is their vision of what they wanna do to the media in this country. And one of the, great folks out there who helped me, through this hearing process is a democracy warrior, Norm Eisen. Of course, Norm fights these, incredible legal battles on, on our, behalf on so many different fronts, and you're also doing it when it comes to the media too, Norm.

And this, I, I don't wanna oversell this. I don't think you can oversell this. This is the whole ballgame. If MAGA and Trump are allowed to create a propaganda empire in this country- 

That's right, Jim, and you testified so eloquently in Senator Schiff's hearing. Members of Congress were there, Congressman Correy, Noah Wiley, Jacks- Well, that was great, 

great Noah Wiley was here.

That was amazing. 

Jack's DeLuca that leads the organization of documentarians who are fighting this takeover. Look, we've seen this movie before. The MAGA media monolith, where the Ellisons seize, seized CNN, they broke it. They've got control of TikTok, and now they wanna take, after doing CBS and TikTok, they wanna take CNN also.

Yeah. No. It's too much. They're gonna get movies and TV shows, Paramount and Warner's merged. They're gonna have that as a propaganda microphone. It's straight out of the Putin playbook. Yeah. And man, I watched that hearing, Jim. I got to watch my back as a congressional talker- Yeah ... because, you blew the hinges off.

Y- you called it out the way it is, a danger to free media and to American democracy. 

It, it 

is a danger. 

And that is- That, and this is the hearing room right here. You're looking at images of the hearing room, the, the city council room of Burbank, California, where we're just a, a stone's throw away from the WBD studios and the Paramount Studios and- You're camped 

out in that room.

You're camped 

out there, Jim. We are. We've taken it over. Hopefully they don't mind too much. we'll give it back, we promise. We won't break anything. 

Jim is the new mayor of Burbank. 

Well, and, and it's, they, they'd try to run me out of town I would think, the industry did, if I took over as the mayor of Burbank.

But, but I, I, to me, Norm, I, I think this is extremely important. we saw, Amazon, make this Melania documentary the other day. Can you imagine if a combined Warner Brothers, Paramount- Film studio starts putting out propaganda movies about Donald Trump and God, and Pete Hegseth, and God knows who el- where does it end?

And I think there's, it's really possible you could see, you could see CBS and CNN brought under one roof, then they try to get NBC, then they try to get A- I mean, th- we have 

to 

stop this in its tracks. And it's not just the 

news. Right. It's not just the news, Jim. 

Yeah. 

It's the entertainment there.

Trump has already renamed the Kennedy Center after himself. That's right. What's next? The Trump Avengers? That's right. will he, will he- He's getting 

all the stones, as they say in the 

movie, yeah ... will, will he be a part of the successful television shows also? Trump's Dangerous Housewives.

Where will it end, Jim? Yeah. We can't, we can't have this media consolidation. Look at the other oligarchs. Putin did it. He rolled up the media. That's right. Down the block, Orbán in Hungary. Across, the canton- continent, Erdoğan in Turkey. Yes. It's standard operating procedure. Donald Trump understands. He wants to bring the government under his heel, and he wants to bring independent media to boot.

He's going after business enterprises. He's praised the Ellisons. Pete Hegseth, you testified about this, Jim. I did. He said, "I can't wait until the Ellisons are in control of CNN." Why? Yeah. Because he doesn't want independent reporting. 

You know something? It used to be so simple back in the Donald Trump Twitter days. Twitter, before it was Elon Musk's X. Trump's viral midnight covfefe tweet. Remember that one? His emotional investment in Twilight stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart's relationship. He told Robert to be smart.

Be smart and dump her. His hot takes on the health benefits of Diet Coke. Quote, "I have never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke." Those were the days. Those were the days. We are still getting some classics now in the form of Truth Social AI slop. This was just this week, Trump as Elvis complete with a bedazzled white jumpsuit.

How about Trump escorting a very ripped, handcuffed extraterrestrial across what appears to be a military base? Trump signing a historic document with a feathered quill alongside his pals George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Stay with me, guys, because I'm, I'm, I'm going somewhere with this. The AI slop and the late night spam posts and the unhinged rants do not appear to be going anywhere, but all the actually important stuff the president posts amidst all that, you know, the, the stuff any other president would reserve for a press conference or a cabinet meeting or his own private freaking thoughts, or the stuff that moves markets, well, that's now for sale.

Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, just launched a brand-new subscription service. They are calling it Truth API. According to the CEO, the subscription, gives users some very special access. It says, "A direct licensed real-time feed of the platform's most m- market-moving truths from the highest ranking Truth Social accounts."

FYI, Donald Trump is the highest ranking Truth Social account on the platform. He's got around 13 million followers. The company says these high-value truths will be fed to users through a machine-readable data feed within what they say are milliseconds of posting at a significantly faster pace than a regular push notification on Truth Social.

And it can be yours for a boatload of money, of course. According to multiple outlets, Wall Street firms are paying roughly $100,000 per month for the subscription. Not kidding. So why exactly is Wall Street just so pumped about what essentially amounts to a Donald Trump Truth Social paywall? Because if they receive valuable information first, say, a last-minute decision to tariff Canada, the market can buy or sell based off of it.

That's the market movement that I was talking about. Let me give you a few examples. Just hours after Truth API launched, the president announced on Truth Social that he was canceling major planned strikes against Iran. Oil prices tumbled almost 5% when the markets opened. There was a similar situation that happened back in March when Trump paused Iranian strikes through an all caps Truth Social post, and then crude oil fell by more than 10%.

It's not just Iran announcements that send the markets into a frenzy. It's whatever he says about tariffs or crypto. The list goes on and on and on. I know what you're thinking or, or yelling at me through your TV screen right now. Is this not insider trading? Democrats sure think so. This week, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff wrote a letter demanding that the SEC investigate whether Trump Media is breaking the law, saying it, quote, "appears to be outrage- an outrageous abuse of the president's office for his personal benefit that undermines everyday investors and the integrity of our markets while enriching Wall Street and other wealthy insiders."

Hmm. Trump Media and Technology Group says that the posts are already public when they reach Truth API. They say what the company is actually selling is the time gap, those teeny-tiny brief moments between publication and widespread public awareness. you can't make this crap up. For years, Truth Social just burned through money, recording a $712 million net loss just last year.

Now, millisecond latency gaps are for sale.

Studies have found that many teens are using social media not for mindless doom scrolling, but instead for their direct messaging and group messaging features with their friends.

Especially for kids that came of age during a global pandemic where their worlds were severely limited outside of the Internet, it makes sense that the Internet would be the place where they developed habits around communicating with their friends. Social media can also be an incredibly important lifeline for LGBTQ+ folks, especially those who are looking for resources for help or how to cope or for connecting with other similar kids.

That's not to say, of course, that there aren't horrific things happening to kids being facilitated by the Internet. Bullying, harassment, trafficking, those are all things that the Internet helps to facilitate. Anyone who uses social media can also attest that spending too much time on it often makes you feel bad.

It facilitates self-comparison. It can reinforce negative stereotypes. It can lead down a horrible rabbit hole of misinformation, fake news, and radicalization that we have seen and we know can be very, very dangerous. However, as much as I am loathe to agree with big tech, it is really, really hard to directly link mental health outcomes as being caused by social media usage.

For example, I had raging, horrific body dysmorphia long before the advent of social media. I didn't need Instagram to help me with that Instagram certainly helps to make it worse some days, but it didn't cause the underlying phenomenon. I have depression and anxiety because of childhood trauma. Is social media a tool I use to help me dissociate from it sometimes?

You bet your sweet ass it is, but it didn't cause the underlying phenomenon. That being said, even if you can't point to social media and say it's an exact comparison to tobacco, for example, in terms of addictiveness, you might be able to say it's a pretty close comparison to gambling. Same manipulation of dopamine-seeking behavior, same random rewards that make you keep coming back for more, and we don't let kids gamble.

But I think that comparison, too, underestimates the importance of social media as a tool for communication and connection for all of us, including teens. And regulating gambling doesn't have as profound an impact on free speech as regulating social media does. And that's where you also start to get into the weeds.

How much do we want the government to be stepping in and regulating the platforms where we exercise our free speech? How much power are we willing to hand to the federal government? What should the government's role be in relation to our access to social media, whether we're teens or not? We have now seen from the Trump regime what it looks like when authoritarians take control in the United States and attempt to wield social media as a weapon against dissenters.

They have been sending out endless streams of subpoenas against social media users who speak out against ICE, for example, a very basic exercise of free speech. In fact, one of the central and most important aspects of free speech, criticizing the government. What happens if we empower the government to order sweeping changes from these social media companies?

What kind of power are we really handing over? The reality is that even if these changes to the Meta platform do seem designed to help teens, first and foremost, teens will just jump to TikTok or YouTube instead, so these platform-specific reforms don't do much. But also, that these are problematic band-aids to larger issues that don't actually solve the underlying problems, especially those plaguing the youth of today.

During the trial that was just settled between the states and Meta, protesters stood outside the courthouse with a giant, many feet-long banner listing the names of young people who died due to social media harm. It had hundreds of names on it, representing individual tragedies of a truly unthinkable magnitude.

But the reality is that the leading cause of death for young people in the United States isn't social media usage. It's gun violence and accidents. That giant banner listing all the young people that died from social media harm represents about the number of kids who die from gun-related incidents every single month in the United States.

According to Johns Hopkins University, over twenty-five hundred children died from gun-related incidents in twenty twenty-two alone in the United States, amounting to about 

seven dead children per day. Per 

day. 

Attempting to fix dangers to youth by barring teen access to social media might do literally nothing according to the data, while comprehensive gun reform could literally save hundreds of kids every single year.

As I already said, there is no really good science decisively linking teen social media use as a cause of teen depression and anxiety, and the stats show that a lot of the harm perpetuated against teens online is being perpetuated by a person that that teen knows in person offline, from school, from church, a family member.

There's also reason to believe that it is the mental health of parents that has a much more profound impact on the mental health of the kids than any access to social media ever would. For example, during the 2008 financial crisis, teen mental health suffered because of the instability caused by the financial collapse and the emotional turmoil of their parents.

There are systematic fixes to these issues that are actually backed up by science and that would actually have a profound impact on teen thriving more than any social media regulation or ban ever could. Mental health issues have for years been conclusively causally linked to things like childhood poverty, childhood access to basic resources like a safe home, food, and early education.

Funding initiatives aimed at improving these resources for children and supporting their parents along the way would do so much more good than any social media ban ever would, and we have the data to prove that And hey, what do you know? If you removed all the tax loopholes given to giant companies and to their ultra-rich owners, those initiatives would be affordable too.

And I think these individual and state lawsuits against Meta for harming children and the resulting settlements and court wins offers the public a misplaced sense of redemption or of vengeance. Yes, we are finally holding these big companies accountable. The problem is that we're actually not, not only because the settlement is pennies for these guys, absolutely calculated into the cost of doing business, but also because it doesn't actually really benefit the public in the way that it could.

This is barely a slap on the wrist, and it absolves everyone of responsibility for doing the things that would actually benefit teens or actually hold these big tech companies responsible. 

Truth Social is the president, president's means of speaking to the world.

If you wanna know what the federal government is doing, you have to follow Truth Social. Truth Social is where the president hires and fires people, it's where he announces wars, it's where he announces ceasefires. It's where he exclusively announces many, if not most, of the core initiatives of his administration.

What's being proposed is that Truth Social is offering what's called an API, a data, a data feed that will give early access to his posts to those who, as you said, are willing to subscribe for $100,000 a month. this means that folks who are willing to pay that money are going to get early access to what Truth Social's parent company itself describes as, quote-unquote, "Market-moving information."

They're gonna have access to that early, which they can then use for trading, they can use it for gambling. They could use it for national security purposes, if they are, for instance, working for a foreign power. So there are all sorts of ways that the president is literally selling government information for private profit.

as you say in the lawsuit, "The scheme is profoundly corrupt. The president stands to gain financially by giving market-moving government information to those who are willing and able to pay his personal company," unquote. I want to go, to a clip right now of Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, assuring reporters that anything on Trump's social media site is straight from the horse's mouth.

this is, Leavitt speaking about Truth Social during a news conference in February 

The post should be taken as the policy of the Trump administration. It's coming straight from the horse's mouth. When you see it on Truth Social, you know it's directly from President Trump. That's the beauty of this president and his transparency in, in relaying, uh, this administration's policies to all of you and to the rest of the world.

So Brendan Belew, talk about the significance of what she's saying, that this is the mouthpiece of the administration, that President Trump personally will be profiting from. 

Yeah, well, the White House did itself no favors by having Karoline Leavitt say that, at least from a legal perspective. So, part of the case is alleges that Truth Social is what you would call a public forum.

A public forum is one where you have First Amendment rights, First Amendment rights to speak, First Amendment rights to access information. When the White House, when the press secretary says that this is the official place for finding information from the president, that makes it a public forum. And so the basic legal problem that you have here isn't just that it's profoundly corrupt, the scheme, but that it's also unconstitutional.

that by posting on the Truth Social platform in ways that people who pay more get earlier access, that actually interferes with people's First Amendment rights to public information. One of the things that the First Amendment protects, not only is the right to speak, but the right to equal access to government information.

The government can't discriminate, who it gives information to based on, who they are, what they believe, what they're willing to pay the president. and so really, that statement was really counterproductive for the White House and helps our case a great deal. 

The named defendants, in your lawsuit include President Trump and two of his closest aides, Natalie Harp, who we talked about on Democracy Now yesterday, and Daniel Scavino, as well as the executive office of the president and the White House office.

Why did you choose these people and entities to sue? 

Well, it's clear that this isn't just the president typing on his phone and posting this on Truth Social. There is a whole operation that makes Truth Social the official mouthpiece of this administration involving Dan Scavino, involving Natalie Harp, involving Harp and Scavino's employers, the executive office of the president and the White House office.

So this is really helpful in building the case that this i- that Truth Social is intimately entwined, with the White House operations, and again, helps build the argument that this is in fact a public forum where constitutional rights apply. 

When you a- approach a, a grocery store and the doors open magically, there is a radio transmitter above the door that detects the presence of a person and opens the door.

All these radio devices, they start with a transmitter. They encode sound or data or images into a beam of this invisible light on Natalia's invisible rainbow. 

The light gets sent out on a specific frequency to your home radio set or your cell phone or that little sensor above the grocery store door.

Your receiver decodes it and voila, the door opens, you check Instagram, you hear the radio. It all happens like that. So radio waves can do a lot, and it turns out the shortwaves, which are basically a stretch of frequencies above AM, like if you imagine your AM dial going off really far to the right, the shortwaves, while they aren't good for too much, they can do more than just carry scratchy voices.

They can carry data, codes, instructions for a computer to follow. And that brings us back to Bennett's sleuthing. He knew that these applicants wanted to use the shortwaves for trading, but the trail had gone cold because the FCC, at the request of the guys with the experimental licenses, was withholding information.

The details were off limits to the public. That is, until 2023, when the parent companies behind many of these experimental licenses got together and made a formal on-the-record request. 

They have come out publicly with a petition to the FCC stating, "Yes, we have been operating these experimental stations for trading purposes."

These parent companies have names like Virtu Financial Incorporated, Tower Research Capital LLC, DRW Holdings LLC, Jump Trading Group, and what they said to the FCC was, "Hey, those secret applications? We're the ones behind them. We've been using them to show that high-speed trading is possible on shortwave, and we think it's time that you, the FCC, let us use some of those shortwaves to do this for real.

No more experiments. It's time for us to make some money." 

And as a group, they call themselves the Shortwave Modernization Coalition. 

The Shortwave Modernization Coalition. Not radio lovers who love broadcasting, but a bunch of Wall Street guys, tech bros, and venture capitalists who want the FCC to let them use the airwaves to make more money.

In their vision for the future of the shortwaves, there's no human touch. 

The trading is arranged by computers. There's not, a human voice speaking. And then, of course, you wouldn't know what they were transmitting. Nobody could decode it. 

To everyone and everything other than the computers receiving the instructions, data sounds like nothing.

Maybe some static. Just blips between computers.

I wanna clarify something. The Shortwave Modernization Coalition isn't proposing to do away with shortwave broadcasting. Within the shortwaves, you have some frequencies allocated for broadcasts, some for emergencies, some for the ham radio guys, et cetera. And at this point, the Shortwave Modernization Coalition has only asked the FCC to give them a small portion of mostly unused shortwave frequencies, ones that are currently set aside for things like backup emergency communications.

And the FCC hasn't made a final decision yet. But what this group is asking for essentially is that the FCC fundamentally change the purpose of this portion of the shortwave band away from public interest and toward private gain. Because remember from season one, the electromagnetic spectrum are radio waves.

They're supposed to belong to the public. Natalia Fotic again. 

These frequencies, although they're invisible, this invisible rainbow, is a public resource. 

A public resource owned by all of us and regulated by our elected governments. 

national parks or waterways, which means that it should be managed always thinking about the public interest.

But like water or the land beneath national parks, the airwaves are really valuable, and over the years, more and more of the public land of the spectrum has been privatized, often leased out to for-profit corporations like Verizon and AT&T. For many decades, that's been the model of how the US government makes money off this public resource.

They lease out these frequencies, often with long lease terms, by auctioning them to the highest bidder. And those companies then use part of the electromagnetic spectrum they're leasing from us to sell us things like WiFi access. Legally, those corporations are still required to serve the public interest.

But with things like broadband internet still unaffordable to many Americans, it's easy to argue that they don't always do that. Historically, this land grab has happened on the more capable parts of the spectrum, the frequencies that are good at, say, carrying Wi-Fi from a 5G tower to your phone. Telecom companies haven't seen the shortwaves as worth trying to get.

They're not used to transmit the internet. A solar flare can knock them out. Even the FCC has tended to ignore them. In fact, right now, the FCC doesn't even auction off the shortwaves. You can just apply, pay some fees, and if you qualify, you can get on there rent-free. 

But you see, this is what's so interesting about it.

First of all, as the other radio frequencies get more and more jammed up with things like Wi-Fi and microwave and satellites, where is the available real estate? Well, it's in the shortwave. But technology is improving its ability to use frequencies in general, and the trading is a perfect example of that.

Who would have thought that shortwave is now fabulously valuable to Wall Street? 

I asked Bennett if he thinks there's any possibility this thing might not go through, that the FCC might say no to the Shortwave Modernization Coalition's request to use some shortwave frequencies for trading. He thinks not a chance.

I don't think that's likely at all. I, I think in general, this whole area is such a backwoods that the people wanting to take advantage of it are counting on the widespread lack of knowledge. I think given the predilections of this administration, I think they'll say, "Go knock yourself out. make a ton of money and go have fun with it, and we don't care," A- And the FCC will make major PR gains from that. They're gonna announce how they're unleashing American innovation. 

The Shortwave Modernization Coalition's formal petition to use the airwaves for trading is going to force the FCC to look at their shortwave rules for the first time in decades. And so, this April, after the FCC opened what they called the delete, delete, delete proceedings, in which they asked for public comment on any regulations that people thought could be rolled back, very Trump 2.0, Bennett and some buddies, including an old Voice of America guy, they made a parallel proposal.

I have recommended that the FCC do what is being done in Europe, which is to reduce the minimum power to a lower power level and a smaller investment, and allow- 

The FCC has this old World War II era rule that says that if you want to get a legal shortwave broadcast license, you have to build a station that puts out at least 50,000 watts of power.

That's a ton of power. 

Which means it's very expensive. The old rules make it impractical to do this except illegally, which is what the, pirates are doing. But I predict that if the power level were lowered, more people would do it, and I say, let them do it. let flowers bloom. See what people would do with it.

So the big question is, is the FCC going to allow that, or will the FCC simply take the Shortwave Modernization Coalition, give them what they want, and forget the rest of it? 

And Finally, Section D, Building Something Better

what is your basic assessment of why so many major media outlets shuttered or underwent huge job cuts in the last, I don't know, year, 16 months, 18 months? it's been ongoing for a while, but it, it does feel like something accelerated in that time period.

Well, first of all, per our previous discussion, I would like to take this, this slot to plug my new podcast. Please. Please. But, but no, but seriously, y- pr- I, I'm not paying you for it- ... but I would. wh- which, which is, is about a lot of these questions called Mixed Signals from Semafor. Yeah. but I do think th- and the, the reason we launched it is because you see these things in media, and you can't figure out why they are happening from what's promoted where.

But also too, right, like what is going on in news, and why are there all these closures? And there's an impulse, I think, and journalists like loved a mono- a good like mono-causal explanation. And so there was, there was a great line in The New Yorker that this was an extinction-level event for media. But I actually think what's happening, there are a couple different things happening in media, and three-quarters of it, in a certain way of speaking, is very positive.

There are a lot of new things. There are a lot of small and medium-sized outlets like yours and mine on totally different lanes trying to figure things out, trying to figure out new models. There are trade publications of all sorts just absolutely thriving. We're in a golden age of, of niche publications.

If you wanna news about Capitol Hill or about the waste management industry or about a million other things, it's never been better. Um, and there's a lot of national political coverage, national investigative reporting, and all of that is just subsumed in this massive wave that is the collapse of local news in America, and which, which erases all those gains and way more.

And so in a way, there are two different stories, and one is lots of interesting green shoots and leaves, but the bigger one is just that local is still collapsing. What happened this year, part of it was that a, some billionaires who had bailed out local publications a few years ago got bored and were like, "This is annoying.

I'm still losing money." And that was what happened in Los Angeles. That's to some degree what happened in Washington. And, and, and, and the struggles of local news, and I would say in the United States, it's actually not a global phenomenon, it's an American phenomenon, are, just they're so dire.

The threat of billionaires getting bored is as much a threat as billionaires, steering the news, right? I think like there's, there's, there's the billionaire Citizen Kane- They might, they might be the same phenomenon actually. Y- yeah, yeah. I mean, there's the Citizen Kane who is the billionaire- Right

using the news to, to, for their political agenda, and then there's the billionaire who, dabbles, like a little bit, and then pu- and then pulls out and creates... there's no, there's no m- media stability when, when that happens. But, but I would also ask about the other, the other factor, which is, private equity, hedge funds, the, the financialization of at least part of the news.

Tell us a l- your, your, your thoughts of that. y- when you hear about that, I'm, I'm talking to you from Denver, right? Denver people think about hedge fund news, they think about The Denver Post and the h- and the, the thinning out of The Denver Post at the hands of a hedge fund owner. W- what is all of that about?

Is, are... Do you think we're coming to the end of that, of that era? how much money is there left for them to squeeze out of me? Yeah. l- let me give my priors here, which is I'm a person who often when I reads the l- read the lever, I think, "You know what? This is capitalism at work. God bless creative destruction."

If the car wash industry or the veterinary industry is getting consolidated, maybe it's for the better, who knows? I think that this is a case where the consolidation and the, and the sort of, the, these chains, basically these chains in the early 2000s, Gannett, McClatchy, and then Alden being the worst and bottom-feeder of them, took on all this debt to buy up what I guess they thought at the time, although somebody should have told them otherwise, were gonna be great businesses, and they were gonna create these big consolidated businesses where they could share back ends and printing plants, and they could produce great newspapers.

They weren't, they weren't thinking, "We're, our business is collapsing and we're going out of business." They were thinking, "Let's borrow some money so we can build big businesses." And it was just an absolute catastrophe, and these companies took on debt that they couldn't handle in a declining industry, particularly after 2008, and, and are in just various stages on the, circling the drain.

And it is a, it's a specifically American story. It is not what happened in Asia. It's not what happened in Europe, where you have chains, but they're family-owned, and, and are very focused on stability and continuity. it just, like some comp- Th- th- there was just, th- we got into this death spiral of debt and mismanagement and, pension, unfunded pension liabilities that, and, and v- v- very little help from the government, specifically with the pension liabilities, that produced these zombie newspapers all over the country, and it's just a total disaster.

Well, so, so if it, if a, if there is an American exceptionalism story here, that, that we stand out, our media, dystopia stands out from other, other countries- It does ... other societies, why do you think that is? I, this, I'm with you on this one. I think it was this rush to financialize and to the, this opportunity to borrow money at a huge scale and a- and culture of, and, and then particularly in the later stages, figuring out that the real estate assets were more valuable than anything else and, and milking them. but, and I think it's, but I think, I think the newspapers industry is it's like the poster child for the lever. I disagree with you on a lot of the other ones, but I'm just totally with you on this one. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, I, I then would ask, where do you think, where do you think we're headed? G- or give us the two branches.

There's, the, Back to the Future II, they fly ahead to the future, and it's like a complete dystopia. And then by the end of Back to the Future II, where they've fixed everything, there's the fly ahead to the future- ... and, and everything's, everything's better. Yeah. So, so give us the two branches in your mind. I, let's see. I think that the ch- there are these huge challenges that don't really have to do with news that overlay this, you know, the, a lot of collapse in trust in institutions of all sorts. And so, and I, and I don't think that the news business caused that or it's gonna fix it. It's obviously this huge macro social trend. I think when it comes to local news- The best case is sustainable local companies that are some mix of for-profit and nonprofit, and a lot of them are, for-profit corporations that, that don't make any money or nonprofit corporations that are actually very well run and, and, and turn a profit, just don't return to shareholders. I think that, I think those models aren't as different as people say. but companies that are run, for ultimately for the benefit of the city, not 'cause it's the best business in the world, and that rebuild, never the scale of the old Indianapolis Star where I started, started out that had hundreds and hundreds of reporters. there's just not a business model for that. And the amount of money you'd have to extract from the local wealthy donors to build a paper on that scale, you would like regret ex- you, you'd be working for them to too much, to too great a degree. But I think there is an opportunity to rebuild just, but ultimately still on a smaller scale in the best case, this kind of ground level local information ecosystem which can feed up to the national publications.

And I think part of what you see now is we just live in this kind of fantasy land where there's so little reporting happening on the ground in localities that if people get their information of what's happening in the country from four-second clips on social media of somebody punching somebody. And, and no local reporter ever went out and figured out what happened.

And I think even like you saw around some of the campus protests, there was like a weird lack, outside college newspapers, which are a funny little niche, of just "Okay, what is happening? Who are these people?" When like, when that guy was hitting that other guy with a stick, like who were they? And there was just this sort of strange absence of that.

So here's what I, I worry about, whether, whether... I, I would, I would actually put into this discussion, there's local news that's not happening or is being hollowed out. There's also a longer form, deep dive, longer lead time investigative reporting that takes, a lot of time and resources. these are both, I think, business challenges.

A-and what I worry about is a media-- there's a lot of, there's the corporatization of media. There's... But, but there's also this, we live in an information ecosystem where essentially what we're, I think what we're saying is is that local media and/or deep dive, long form, expensive, investigative journalism is hard to get a return on investment.

It's hard to make financially, sustainable. So there's this kind of baked in, incentive to do shorter form, more shallow, kind of clicky news. I'm using clicky as kind of not, not to say it's all, all vapid, but it's just a, as a placeholder. And, and I worry that we get to a point where everything is surface level and none of the either hyperlocal or deep dive stuff actually gets done because it's simply not a good business decision necessarily to, to fund it. 

We had Omar Bartov wrote a, write a piece saying that it is a genocide after two years, and then immediately had Bret Stephens write the piece countering it.

I think that that's exactly right. It's, it's hard to imagine a piece written by somebody sympathetic with the Palestinian cause magically changing what Times readers think ab- about the situation. It's also worth noting that, we have cases of people trying to write pieces that are sympathetic with, with the Palestinian cause that are having their political statements edited out of existence, right?

and then, turning around and The Times, will publish 25, 30 pieces about, trans children that have clearly no fact-checking at all. It's, it's very clear where their allegiances lie. 

The asymmetry of, of extreme fact-checking is a reoccurring theme we, we, that I see in my book.

It's like, 'cause you can't just come out and say, "I support Israel and I hate, and I hate Palestinians and Arabs." That's gauche, so you have to reverse engineer these ostensibly universalist or, or categorical principles that you simply enforce in one direction and don't enforce in the other direction.

Yeah. 

I will say, if you're a high-level person, quote unquote, who potentially could write for The New York Times, and you are listening to this, I cannot overstate how valuable it would be to join the boycott. Because it, it matters when leaders and people seen as influential join it. It legitimizes it, it normalizes it, and that's really what we need to be doing right now.

We need to take these things That are maybe perceived by some as fringe and be like, these are not fringe positions. You cannot claim it's a genocide, which I think is now more or less liberal consensus. I know there's, it's still contested, but just percentage-wise, 70% of Democrats, every major human rights organization.

I think that liberals are good at, or increasingly better at acknowledging the fact of genocide, but not taking the implications of that to its next step. And, we're at the point now where you can't simply signal your outrage. You have to, you have to take it to its logical endpoint, which is to de-legitimize the newspaper that was so central to creating the thing that you yourself acknowledge is a genocide.

And I think that's the next step that people need to get behind. And e- and even if they're maybe squeamish about boycotts as such, or they, or it's viewed as, too, I don't do blacklist or whatever, I, I would say that, these things become normal very quickly. Yeah. And everything is nothing until it's something.

Yeah, because it's the Times, even though it is pro-genocide in its structure, in its ideology, in its, editorial standards, right? Still saying, "This should be boycotted. I will refuse to write for this paper. I refuse to be published in this paper." It has this kind of veneer, right? And this, and this clear reputation where that seems ooh, maybe that's too far.

Well, right. I'm imploring to people. I'm saying, it's expres- it's, it's, it's expression, it's expression in writing, kill your darlings. you, you have this thing that exists in your head, which is The New York Times, this is gold standard, and everybody in the media, everybody in the media, let's say 99%, want to work at The New York Times, and everyone who's not at The New York Times is auditioning to write for The New York Times.

And you can tell in their prose, their style, the topics they choose to cover. It is, it is, it is, again, it is the black hole at the center of the media galaxy, and its pernicious influence on the bounds of acceptable discourse and its role in the genocide, I think have thoroughly discredited it as such on a fundamental level.

And so what I'd say is, no gods, no masters, man. Kill that little thing in your head that says this thing has to exist as some kind of liberal bulwark against Trumpism or liberal bulwark against, I don't know, authoritarianism or whatever some, whatever some such generic, liberal banality. that, there, there is better institutions that have to be built to replace that.

Like, we ha- I think you have to get out of that mindset of this, this idea that, that The New York Times is like gravity or, or, or, or the tides. It's just ever present and always will be, and I, and I think that that's hard for a lot of people. Because again, it is viewed as having good journalism on this or sometimes good labor reporting, but, there, there has to be a line you cross of genocide incitement where you're, where you're, as an institution, fundamentally discredited 

Well, I think what's really powerful, and Chris, I'd love for you to speak to this, is that this is a call not just for, writers or journalists or commentators, or analysts, not providing their, voice or their writing, on this issue, right?

on Palestine, on Israel, on, say, Iran or other foreign policy. This is a wider call, right? this is a writer's and a media and a cultural and an academic boycott because of the power of that. 

It's a call to unsubscribe, but also let them know why you unsubscribe. 

Right. So Chris, if you could just talk about kind of the implications of the wider cultural boycott, why it's just as important for someone who is a national security writer, to boycott as it is for someone who is, say, in the writer's room of, a popular Netflix series.

Yeah, definitely. I think, so for us, obviously, Palestine is the compass. We, our criticism is centered around it, but- The New York Times is the enemy of so many progressive movements i-i-in this country. we mentioned earlier their really awful trans coverage. ending up being cited by Clarence Thomas in Skrmetti is not exactly a good sign for, for a news outlet.

And we also saw, last summer with, Zohran Mamdani's mayoral campaign, this very, tepid vote for anyone but him thing, right? 

Well, let's not forget the blockbuster Watergate-like coverage about his Columbia application. That was- Oh my God ... that was, that... They met, they met us, they met their source in the parking garage in Foggy Bottom.

No, no, no. It's, it is true. but I think, yeah, we, we want to build, a broader critique of The New York Times. We held an event, I think two months ago now in New York City with, um, trans activists, as i-in conversation with Mohammed El-Kurd, who has obviously been very critical of The Times for its Palestine coverage.

And, finding points of commonality in how The New York Times, plays on the side of the powerful, in these cases. And we've also, expanded our coalition in the last few months. We've gotten endorsements from, Planet Over Profit, Climate Focus Group, Black Alliance for Peace.

It's, very focused on American imperialism. And I think what this shows is that, yeah, there is, there, there, there can be a broad movement to de- to delegitimize The New York Times for all of the ills that it, that it causes, Palestine being the central focus there. I also just briefly, you asked about, what else to read apart from The New York Times, and I think it's been quite heartening to see, I think, over the last couple years, this wave of new media ventures that are taking Palestine very, very seriously.

Drop Site, The Key from PalFest, and Equator, just to name a few. and I think, we don't take a super strong position on, on this as an organization, but we always encourage people to read, local news outlets, especially ones with strong unions or even worker-led organizations like Hell Gate here in New York City, where I'm based.

It, we wanna just really make clear that Writers Against the War on Gaza, we think that journalism is incredibly important. We are, strong supporters of journalists on the ground in Gaza, in the West Bank, and in Lebanon, and we want there to be better media in this country. And I think that The New York Times campaign is a really strong start.

As you're saying, it's, it's at the center of the media universe. 

Yeah, I love that you actually pointed that out, Chris, because I think all too often, calls for boycott, of certain institutions can be generalized, obviously disingenuously weaponized, I'd say, but also generalized to be, "Oh, so you're against journalism," right?

oh, if you're gonna take down this, the kind of biggest, biggest paper in the world, or at least the country, are you pro-censorship, pro-silencing? It's like, no, it's actually in service of the importance of journalism, of how much you respect, the media as an entity for accountability and for meaning, and for, and for the, sharing of voices that don't have the other kinds of political or powerful platforms.

This work against The New York Times specifically is strategic in its pro-journalism stance. And so, just before we let you go, Chris, this has been so great, but before we let you go, I just wanna note, for anyone who has not checked out Writers Against the War on Gaza, please do that. the website is writersagainstthewarongaza.com.

and also check out The New York War Crimes paper, which you can find at that website. But also, especially this, prisoner's edition, which, was published on April 17th, 2026. I have it in my hands right now. It is remarkable. I urge everyone to check it out. But Chris, how can more people get The New York War Crimes in their local bookstores, at their local bodegas?

tell, tell the people what to do. 

Thank you so much for the kind words. Yeah, we distribute the paper, at a lot of protests in places that we have strong presences, so New York, Toronto, Philadelphia. We also have, membership in Los Angeles and the Bay and in Montreal. And if you are interested in getting The New York War Crimes to distribute in your area, reach out.

We have a form or an email on our website, and we can talk to you about finding printers and getting, the War Crimes out there. We, yeah, it's a really important political education project and, thank you so much for, the shout-out. 

How do you think about your legal vulnerability, and how do you protect yourself when you're not a company with enormous high-paid, lawyers?

Yeah. So we actually did think about that quite a bit when we were starting up. So, like most news organizations, we have insurance that kind of takes care of... We have libel insurance. and we were very fortunate to partner with a legal firm that has agreed to provide us that sort of legal review and legal counsel pro bono.

I think, not every news outlet has access to that, unfortunately. But, we knew, we would be reporting on the Eric Adams administration, we'd be reporting on the NYPD. we needed to have that sort of legal backing, legal counsel to be able to do our work. And so we, we were able to find it.

I think, when I think about that question in the context of, what do news outlets, maybe like news startups need, right? something that I think is really powerful about the kind of like worker-owned co-op movement is that, we share these kinds of resources with each other, right? we're not just like our own little ship going it alone, but, we, we have a lot of support and provide that kind of support to each other. And I think as we look at the news landscape and think about, okay, like, how can we support these organizations to thrive, it, it's that kind of like really practical support that I think is, is needed, right?

That kind of thing, what Tammy was talking about in terms of like pots of money so that reporters can do more in-depth pieces. All of that I think is really needed. It's one of the principles of cooperative ownership that one helps other co-ops. It's, it's written in right there. It's written into the name.

The other thing, Alex, we've been focusing on some of the challenges, but there's incredible freedom that comes from the independence that you've gained, and that freedom includes editorial freedom. You've at Defector written a lot about Palestine and what's happening in Gaza and the West Bank and Israel.

Can you talk a little bit about that? What's gone into the decision-making there, and what you're seeking to accomplish? Our, our colleague Samer Kalaf, who's the managing editor at Defector, has been writing really brilliant pieces about what's happening and, and also doing, media criticism about, just the way that people are talking about what's happening. and it's been so refreshing to see, just the way even in our Slack, the way that people respond when something like that publishes. The, the biggest response that we get just from the fellow coworkers is like, "Wow, I'm so glad we work somewhere where we can be honest. I'm so glad we work somewhere where we're allowed to say this."

I was on the hiring committee for our interns, this spring. we hired two interns for the summer, and one of the biggest things, one of the biggest reasons people mentioned wanting to work for Defector was actually citing the Palestine coverage, because it was so refreshing for them to see, journalists speaking frankly about their opinions about what's happening, um And, and not, being beholden to really archaic rules of, journalistic objectivity.

All right. Well, you're definitely none of you are going to get any break, 'cause this is election year, and, I don't know about you, but it's distracting. Esther, I should say, to be serious, you're going to be covering very important elections. How do you imagine prioritizing over the next few months, and what do you see as your role in a media ecosystem, as big and as often as celebrity focused as ours is, which is to say, as focused at the top of the ticket?

Yeah, so at Hellgate, I think because we're a very New York City focused outlet, our coverage of the election year I think is going to be a little bit less intense than, say, like an outlet like the New Yorker or even Defector or a place like The Times. we're actually very much looking to 2025 when there are big city elections coming up that'll have a really, really big impact on our city.

But I will say when I was a senior political reporter at Jezebel, I was working there during 2020, right? Huge election year for us. and we, we, we really tried to cut through the noise, I think, in our coverage of the president- of the presidential election. I think rightfully point out- How much of it was, was so absurd, right?

But I think also remind people of, of the real stakes and, and talk really sensitively and, and critically about what those real stakes were, right? not just looking at it as a horse race, who's gonna win what state and why, like which demographics are being moved and why, but you know, really talking about like what it meant for people, what it meant for people's real lives, and really trying to, to keep the focus on that. and because we were Jezebel, we also had a lot of fun too, right? like poking fun where, that was due, and it was like certainly due quite a lot. Tammy, you've been looking at, you've been talking to young voters, as I understand, have a piece coming out about young voters in this election?

Yeah. We, we've obviously over the course of the year tried to figure out who should cover what and, exactly how, and so I have my sort of list of things that I'm, I've been on. And one of them over the past year has been to follow kind of teenagers and 20-somethings about how they've been feel, how they're feeling about the election and party allegiance and, it's, it's, it's been a really interesting time to do that because obviously the war on Gaza started in the fall, and that has really scrambled allegiances and people's feelings about, the Democrats in particular, I would say.

Some of the people I've been interviewing, are young teenagers, and so obviously they don't really have a memory of that time, which is also very interesting, like how could these people who will soon be voting, like not remember anything that Trump did? I want to ask each of you something about the future and, and what you think the future looks like, not for the country, but for this field, for this field of journalism.

It seems to me the old model of a journalist having a lifelong career at a single outlet, that model is probably not the model for the future. it seems to me we all jump from outlet to outlet and recreate ourselves constantly, and I'm just wondering if that's what the future looks like to you. Yeah, I, I think that I never went into my career expecting to stay in one place. so you know- It hasn't been a surprise necessarily the way things have turned out. Although, I think I've worked five places, and three of them don't exist anymore, which is really sobering. I think that for a long time the way that we've thought of journalists has been so-and-so from s- whatever media outlet. and I think that because people are not staying at outlets because outlets are not staying in existence long enough to really build a legacy, I think more and more it's gonna be people standing on their own names, and I mean that for better and worse. I don't necessarily think that's a good thing, but I think that seeing the ways that so many journalists have eked out a living on Substack, by writing a newsletter for subscribers and maybe also doing a podcast, and then writing a book, and occasionally writing freelance pieces, Like keeling over.

It's, that's the hustle, and I feel you see so many people doing it in part because that's what works right now. I don't know how long that will last. I don't know how many of these independent journalists our market can support. but it does feel like- This, building your reputation and doing your work based on who you are rather than where you work or who you work for, does feel like a lasting, trend that's gonna keep going in the future There needs to be, I think, a lot more experimentation with different kinds of structures.

There needs to be stronger unions at places, like at more corporate news outlets. And I think ultimately at the n- at the end of the day, what we really need is actually more government support, right? that's something that I think people are starting to talk about a lot more. and we're starting to see movement on legislation to really strengthen and support local news. in New York, for example, Hellgate and a bunch of other local news outlets were part of an initiative to, to get, a new bill to support local news included as part of this year's budget. And incredibly enough, much to our surprise, it actually was included. what it is is a tax credit for really for smaller outlets, and a way to support local news in an environment where Google and Facebook have really killed off all of the revenue streams for local outlets.

So I think that those, those kinds of initiatives are the things that really give me hope

going to be it for today.

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Air Date: 9-9-2026

Today we look at the strategies being deployed by the Trump administration and their enablers to undermine the midterm elections and what it actually takes to fight back. The lawyers fighting in court against the efforts to destroy our democracy are clear-eyed that you cannot litigate your way to a free election. The most durable defense is a turnout margin too large to plausibly contest, and organizers are building toward it now.

Full Show Notes

Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Today we look at the strategies being deployed by the Trump administration and their enablers to undermine the midterm elections and what it actually takes to fight back. The lawyers fighting in court against the efforts to destroy our democracy are clear-eyed that you cannot litigate your way to a free election. The most durable defense is a turnout margin too large to plausibly contest, and organizers are building toward it now.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today include

Consider This

Straight White American Jesus

Start Making Sense

Strict Scrutiny

The BradCast

and Runaway Country

Then, in the additional, Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in 3 sections;

Section A, Threat And Backfire

Section B, Cracks And Constraints

And Section C, Resistance And Response

And now, on to the show.

Miles, I wanna start with you. Could you just help us understand how the Trump administration has tried to change the way Americans vote? 

Sure. Though I will also note at this point that for most voters, this election is on pace to look basically identical to 2024, 2022, basically previous election cycles, even though Trump's actions have inserted a lot of uncertainty.

The president notably has signed two executive orders, one aimed at new registration requirements, the other at voting by mail, and both at this point have been blocked by the courts. The Justice Department and the Departmen- Department of Homeland Security are both also investigating the 2020 election, as well as voter fraud more broadly in novel new ways, and that has many experts and officials worried about what that effort could potentially look like as this election gets underway, specifically on this issue of potential law enforcement- interference in either voting or vote counting. 

It's not just the election administrators, it's Democrats as a whole. I've been reporting on a task force in the Senate where at least 11 Democratic offices, their staff, outside litigators, and cross-ideological good governance groups are all working to respond to what they describe as active threats to the election process, as well as prepare for future threats.

That's everything from issues at a single voting location to Trump dispatching federal troops or ICE agents to the polls. 

Troops at polling sites? 

Trump was asked by PBS News back in May, Liz Landers asked about whether he would dispatch the National Guard or ICE agents to voting sites, and he refused to rule it out.

He said he'd do anything necessary to protect elections. We should say troops at polls is illegal, and when I asked the Department of Homeland Security about this specifically, an official told me that ICE agents would not be sent to the polls, and the administration refused to engage with me on what they describe as hypotheticals.

Okay. I wanna note here that elections themselves, and here we're talking about the actual process of casting a vote to choose your representation, that is supposed to be a nonpartisan function of our government. So I wonder- Is that changing? Is this becoming a partisan issue? 

Not at the administrative level, really.

there are very few election officials, including Republicans, who have bought into Trump's level of election denial. It's just a lot easier for Democrats to talk about the worst case scenarios that they're watching for, considering that elected Republicans have to obviously worry about the political ramifications of opposing Trump, especially at this early stage where we haven't seen a lot of these interference efforts actually take place yet.

Eric, is there a partisan divide in who is actually pushing back publicly? 

As far as elected officials on this task force, it's explicitly a Democratic effort. When Republicans talk about election integrity, which they do, they're not addressing Trump's interventions or proposed interventions in the voting process.

They're talking about this more or less imaginary problem of ineligible folks casting ballots in American elections, which investigations and research shown, and has shown over and over again, is not widespread enough in the United States to shape election outcomes. White House spokeswoman Lauren Byrd told me, quote, "President Trump has been clear, and he is absolutely right.

We fix this now, or we lose our country." That's a call to pass his election overhaul legislation, the Save America Act. Separately, Juana, it's worth remembering before he was Speaker of the House, then Congressman Mike Johnson played a central role in Trump's legal efforts to remain in power in 2020 and 2021, despite losing the presidential re-election effort.

I'll be watching to see if Republican lawmakers do take action if some of the big fears of federal involvement in elections, like troops at polls, come to pass. 

Okay, but elections, they're run by states. How is all of this playing out for the people who are actually in charge of administering elections?

It's complicated. they're threading this needle of not wanting to scare people, but also wanting to talk about some of these issues, so that way they can re- reassure voters that the election system is secure and that it is safe to vote. I was talking about this dynamic this summer with a few election officials at an event hosted by the Center for Election Innovation and Research, and Connecticut Secretary of State, Democrat Stephanie Thomas, told me that people approach her all the time who are worried and can't even really describe why.

Grandmothers approach me concerned, and I say, "What are you concerned about?" And they say, "I don't know. I just feel afraid." So regardless of whether or not any of these things materialize, it is taking a toll on voters. 

it's worth noting, Juana, that midterm elections are already much lower turnout elections than presidentials.

2022, for instance, lagged way behind 2020 and 2024 in terms of turnout, so there's a risk that these sort of ambiguous worries amplify that effect. 

And Eric, Republicans are in control of both chambers of Congress, and they control what comes up for a vote. So- What does that leave Democrats actually able to do other than sounding the alarm speaking out?

they're planning, right? They've held tabletop games so they're not caught off guard by the same failure of imagination, what they describe to me as a failure of imagination, that caught them off guard five or six years ago around January 6th. Allied groups are also directly involved in litigation to stop the Department of Justice from obtaining state voter rolls, which they describe both as federal overreach and a pretext to encumb- to encumber eligible voters.

Democrats also have this massive bully pulpit. Lawmakers are some of the most visible folks in their communities, and they're trying to be the connective tissue between local officials and these national resources. Vitally, task force members want to emphasize that they feel prepared and that voters should feel confident casting their ballot.

Here's Vanita Gupta, a task force advisor who was the number three in Biden's Department of Justice. She's now at New York University Law School. 

Maybe the process of getting from here to a new Congress may be messier than any of us would like, but we are going to have free and fair elections so long as people don't take for granted their right to vote.

Miles, there are still voting issues before the court, so what else could still affect this fall's elections? 

the thing is we don't really know, right? Trump is incredibly unpredictable, and voting officials say preparing for all the different scenarios is almost like preparing for a hurricane, where you don't know exactly what's going to happen.

That said, election officials are feeling pretty confident right now. The law is very clear on who runs elections and protecting voters' rights, so now it's just a question of reaching these voters and reassuring them. 

So we have this, we have what happened on the shadow docket yesterday, and then we have a kinda larger context, for our elections that you've outlined a little bit here. Here's George Chidi writing at, The Guardian. "A series of moves by Donald Trump's administration to sow doubt in the integrity of US elections has intensified concern among voting experts and sparked hope among election deniers that it could declare a national emergency.

The White House and US federal agencies have released a string of documents this summer, including disputed analyses of alleged voting by non-citizens and historical intelligence memos stoking expectations that the US president could move to exert greater control over Nove- November's US midterm elections.

Trump used a primetime television address in July to claim again that US elections were vulnerable to foreign manipulation and repeat the lie that the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden, was stolen." I think one of the things here that we have, and we lost Matt's, we lost Matt's camera there.

one of the things that I think is at play here is, for me, a couple of things. I was with, sen- Representative C- Jared Huffman last week, and, one of the things he said in the event we did together is he's worried about everything that I-- we're worried about. He is concerned that Mike Johnson will not seat people, Democrats in Congress who are elected this cycle in 2026.

He's worried about, shenanigans on Election Day. he's worried about, everything that, that we're mentioning here in terms of ICE being at the polls, people being confused as to whether or not they're allowed to vote, there being hijinks with the Postal Service and what they might get up to.

His answer to that was this election needs to be too big to rig. There needs to be a landslide in the way that is undeniable and, wherein, there's mass demonstrations and protests if, the Speaker of the House or anyone else is unwilling to complete the democratic process as it is spelled out in our Constitution and so on.

But that leads me to w- th- this idea of a national emergency, and I think we lost Matt. So Matt, did we lose you? 

I'm here. I- 

Yeah. 

You can hear me? 

I can hear you, but I can't see you, so that's, we will... Yeah, we'll see what's going on here. all right. what that leads me to, Matt, n- now that I know you're here and I'm glad I'm not talking to myself, is, the, the growing call on the American right for Tr- oh, there we go.

Hello, Matt. i- is the growing call on the American right for Trump to declare a national emergency, in order to, again, muck up the elections and make it such that the elections don't proceed how they should, don't, go according to plan so that there's confusion, doubt, all kinds of stuff. So here's, the leader of this call is Steve Bannon.

Steve Bannon has been talking about this a lot. Here's him with a on a recent interview with a recent guest talking about it. I- we could have picked one of 10 times he's been talking about it, but here's just one instance from, the last week. 

Do you agree we're past the time, we're past the point of no return that the Save America Act, which has some great elements in it, it's t- they're gonna come back if they were to debate it in late September, 'cause they're only coming back for a couple of weeks, then they're leaving to go campaign.

We're past the time that act- the great elements of the Save America Act could actually be implemented? 

So Bannon is like, "Look, y- w-we can't do the Save America Act." And the Save America Act, I think most of you listening and watching know, is a proposed bill that would totally change how, voting happens in this country.

If you have a different name than is on your birth certificate, other things, it would make it extremely difficult for you to prove who you are and to get on a voter roll in your district, your precinct. So this is not only people who've changed their name, for a number of reasons, this is anyone who's gotten married and hyphenated their name, taken their partner's name, and so on, right?

So I'm not gonna go over the entirety of the, the Save America Act. They tried to push it through. It didn't happen. So now Bannon is pivoting and saying, we don't have time for that now. What should we do instead?" 

Y-Yes, yes, but if we have an emergency order, we can get it implemented. See, the reason it needs to be a declaration of the emergency that exists is b- it, there's a lot of thresholds here.

So it-- in, in order for the president to have a say on how elections are conducted by the states, he needs to declare the emergency. China is in our election system, when you think about all that China's doing to us, giving us... sending the COVID over here, the, the killing 100,000 of us a year, over the last ten years, a million people, more, more than have been killed in all the wars since the Civil War all put together.

and they're in our election system trying to take over our country that way, where they did it for four years with their boy Biden. 

Here's the summary. China has so compromised our elections that we can't have them, and therefore we need a national emergency, otherwise we will get results that are skewed.

Now, let me just make one point and I'll throw it to you, is there's a strategy here that we're talking about for the last 10 minutes. USPS, Department of Homeland Security, and voter rolls. that's been going on since Trump took office the second time. If you've been paying attention, he's lost 23 to zero trying to get voter rolls from states and four states to give him those.

But there's another larger strategy that, Matt, I know you're very aware of, which is to say foreign influence on our country from Iran or other, quote-unquote, "Islamist regimes," communist influence on our country coming from Cuba and other places, and communist influence coming from China are linked to the DSA, the Democrats, and leftists in the country.

Therefore, follow me y'all, if you see in November large-scale wins by the Democrats, including these insurgent l- progressive candidates who are either associated with or adjacent to the DSA, they are claiming theoretically that those people must be somehow associated with or adjacent to the communist, Islamist or both influences coming from beyond our country's borders, whether that's China, Cuba, or, or Iran.

And you're like, where do you get that information, Brad?" And it's like, it's all publicly available in the Cuba report, 100 pages that came out in July, the remarks by Stephen Miller and Marco Rubio that came at the ministerial summit a couple of weeks ago, and NSPM seven, which Matt and I have talked about a ton on this show and that Matt and I respectively have talked about in other places.

So when he says, when Ticktin, Bannon's guest there says, "China's so in our elections we need an emergency," he's basically saying, "We are so compromised by a foreign entity we can't have elections, and so the president will probably have to take emergency control of everything." Does that make sense, Matt?

Thoughts, thoughts on this, and then I think we can get into the religious dimensions of that in a minute. 

I think when many people hear, claims about election rigging or challenges to the integrity of our election, they imagine that it is this, kinda binary or direct intervention kinda thing.

Like there, there'll be this bolt out of the blue, and suddenly Trump is gonna declare a state of emergency on election day and National Guard will be deployed, and they're gonna seize voting machines, and we'll-- everyone will know what's going on. The, the reality is it's a lot more like cancer, and it's eating away at, all, all these efforts, all, the, the rhetoric of Steve Bannon, the conspiracy theories, guys like Peter Ticktin, who is a very prominent lawyer for the January 6th defendants, and all...

right? Part of what has occurred in the last six years in our country is one of our political parties has given up on the process of liberal democracy, and that, that begins with the 2020 election. there, there were elements of it long before 2020, but really it kinda crystallizes around the 2020 election and all of Trump's denial before the election and after the election, and then January 6th.

and we are still living in that mode now where right-wing media, right-wing politicians openly question the value of our elections and are urging all kinds of measures to, quote-unquote, "safeguard the election," by which they mean assure the outcome that they want. 

While Trump is trying lots of tactics to prevent Democrats from voting, he's been losing a lot. He's been losing in the courts.

He's been losing in Congress. He's been trying to get Congress, the Senate in particular, to pass the SAVE Act, which require, would require proofs of, proof of citizenship and photo ID for voting. But the Senate has never voted for it, 'cause the Republican leadership knows they'd lose. And the legal side of election protection seems to be in pretty good shape right now.

The lawyers have been preparing for this for years, ever since Trump, won election. And that includes, of course, the lawyers who w- work for the blue state attorneys general, the ACLU, the Brennan Center, the Legal Defense Fund of the NAACP, all those organizations we read about Democracy Defenders, Democracy Docket, and of course the parties, the Senate Democrats and so on.

I was amazed to, to find what the big foundations are doing to support, all this election protection work. Ford Foundation, 60 million, MacArthur, 100 million, Open Society, 300 million, Democracy Fund, 500 million, that's Pierre Omidyar, and hundreds of millions more from Freedom Together, Rockefeller and others.

So lots of lawyers at work, lots of money being spent on this. what's not as well understood is the grats- grassroots part of election protection, and that's where Indivisible comes in with its millions of veterans of No Kings protests in thousands of places where people vote. Indivisible, of course, is best known for those huge one-day mobilizations.

Are you planning to do more of that around the election? 

here's what I can say on that front. We think that there is going to be a number of moments when it's gonna be really important to collectively show up en masse in the h- the period pre-election. We think that the most and important and most significant thing that we collectively need to do is establish, in a really movement-oriented way that we will not be scared out of exercising our right to vote.

and to really encourage people collectively to understand that this is an election in which we all get a say in our democracy, and we collectively have the power to drive the results that we want. And so we are looking at an additional collective day of action. It is not yet official. We're working through our, our grassroots networks.

We're working through with partners around the country because this is the kind of thing that you really wanna have everyone have a chance to weigh in on. Obviously, election season is quite sensitive that way. But we are collectively working towards, something that we hope to announce pretty soon.

Of course, what we really need is not just a big demonstration of millions of people. We need a big turnout for voting. 

That's right. That's right. Absolutely. and what we think is gonna be really crucial during this window is understanding the connection between exercising our freedom of speech and exercising our right to vote, right?

fundamentally, the movement that we have been part of is a movement that is for small D democracy. It is a movement that is saying we, the people, are where the power ultimately resides, and one of the core ways in which that right is expressed and that power is expressed is via the voting booth.

And winning by undeniable overwhelming margins is by far the best form of election protection you've been ar- arguing 

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that we talk about a lot in our own, anti-election sabotage campaigning is, the Hungary move, right? We were very much in touch with a lot of our friends in the Hungarian pro-democracy movement in advance of their election last year.

This is after n- almost two decades of rule by their authoritarian dictator, their mini Trump. And, there was an enormous amount of preparation and concern that went into the possibility of a stolen election. And also at the end of the day, they turned out and they won in such margins that it was, simply didn't pass the smell test to try to sabotage the results. And we are under no illusions that you can simply vote your way out of it with nothing else, no preparation, no organizing, et cetera. But we're also clear that massive overwhelming turnout is itself an election protection strategy.

And what a lot of our friends are worried about is election day. Trump declares, in this scenario, Trump declares a national security emergency and claims the power to send troops or ICE or the National Guard to blue polling places in swing states to try to intimidate, voters. The lawyers, of course, will be rushing to court to get injunctions to stop them because voter intimidation is against the law in every state.

What are individual groups, planning, thinking about for election day? 

first of all, let me say that part of this, this is partly why we, when we do our Hands Off Our Vote campaign, we talk about early voting as such a centrally important part of the strategy. Because early voting creates a visible demonstration that communities are turning out to vote.

They create-- It creates an orientation around voting as a season rather than just a single day that you take that action on. It spreads out the time window so that if there are risks, if there is a sabotage attempt, if there is a crisis, there is time to address it and make sure that you are getting your vote successfully in.

And so we're really gonna be encouraging people first and foremost to avoid the situation in which last-minute shenanigans, I say lightly, w- last-minute sabotage attempts on Election Day can meaningfully impact the outcome. So that's the first piece. The second piece is we really think that it's important for people to be connected at a hyperlocal level so that if and when there are sabotage attempts in your county, in your state, you know who's got the ball and how to show up and what to do.

A lot of our work in the key states where we are worried about sabotage is really about making sure that people are connected and trained in advance so that if there is a crisis, people are prepared. And I'll just add one additional thing on the ICE at the polls consideration, because this is something that I hear quite a lot from people and, we think it's both a, a valid concern, and we also want people to understand what could happen and what could not happen, because it's the kind of place where there's also a real risk of fear running rampant and people attributing to the administration powers that they don't have.

It is very possible that we would see the administration deploy ICE, CBP, some part of their DHS secret police force- into communities that are, have larger minority populations as a voter suppression tactic. We are concerned about that. The most important thing that I would urge people who are worried about on that front to do right now is to collectively get trained on knowing your rights, on Ice Watch, on the ways you can coordinate with your local immigrant rights infrastructure on an ongoing basis.

Because in a window where that kind of threat is being made, it's, racial profiling, attempting to suppress a community, the people who are gonna be organized to respond are the people who've been doing this work on a daily basis. So we really encourage people to not think of that as some kind of totally separate election threat, but another impetus to get trained and prepared and connected locally.

Groups that have been doing this not just for days and weeks, but for years. 

100%. 100%. 

As part of the multifaceted, multifront attack on elections and democracy designed to lock Republicans into power, oh, forever, back in April, the president issued a wildly illegal executive order on elections that purported to do a few things. First, on absentee ballots specifically, it directed the Postal Service to initiate a rulemaking to limit what kinds of absentee ballots will be delivered, requiring certain barcodes, and maybe providing that the Postal Service would only deliver ballots in states that had agreed to certain terms for how elections would be conducted.

The order also directed the Department of Homeland Security to establish a list of citizens to send to states to determine eligibility for voting, and the order included a threat that maybe the Postal Service wouldn't deliver ballots at all in states that didn't use DHS's list as opposed to the state's own lists.

And just to be clear, the state's own lists are sure to be far more accurate, so this was punishing election officials abiding by more accurate election administration procedures. Okay, we're not done, though, because the order also directed the attorney general to prioritize investigation and prosecution of state and local officials who allow people to vote who aren't authorized to do so, and allowing people to vote who aren't authorized to do so seems like something election officials wouldn't do, but the threat embedded in this part of the executive order is basically holding the possibility of criminal penalties over state and local election administrators to try to incentivize them to err on the side of not allowing people to vote, even where those people are eligible to do so 

Especially if the federal government might use DHS's less accurate lists to make allegations about who is and isn't allowed to vote.

100%. 

So multiple lower courts blocked the executive order, mostly on the ground that the president has zero authority to regulate absentee ballots and how state officials conduct elections. Under the Constitution, states have authority to regulate federal elections. Congress can impose rules if it so chooses.

The president cannot, but attempted to do so anyway. As ever, the federal government ran off to Daddy SCOTUS after these lower court decisions, and Daddy SCOTUS delivered for Trump and the Republican Party with an evil, cowardly per curiam opinion. That adjective, string of adjectives probably suggests it was the work of one John G.

Roberts, is my guess. Yeah. But their per curiam opinion blocked one of the lower court injunctions against the executive order. After the Supreme Court's decision in that case, another lower court that had blocked the executive order in a different case vacated its ruling, blocking the executive order in light of the Supreme Court's own order The reasoning in the Supreme Court opinion, such as it is basically, what's the big deal?

This executive order doesn't hurt anybody. 

this Supreme Court can somehow, with a straight face, in one breath say the president has all of the authority, and in the second breath say he just issued an executive order, but that doesn't mean anything. That's not- ... a law, so no one can go to court to challenge it.

truly, that is what the court- and I totally agree, this is obviously a Roberts production, even though it says per curiam. But the claim that this order doesn't really do anything or hurt anybody is clearly contradicted by evidence in the record, which of course the Supreme Court doesn't care about these days, but really should.

And it also is contradicted by factual findings specifically that the district court made, including that states were already diverting time and resources to prepare for the executive order to be implemented, and that some states had already spent millions of dollars printing absentee ballot envelopes that didn't comply with the executive order's and thus might have to reprint all of those envelopes.

Okay, so the district court found all of these things, but district court findings, the Supreme Court doesn't care, so it didn't even engage. I 

don't care, do you? 

No. I really don't care. Clearly don't. That, was a TLDR of the per curiam opinion. but in terms of what else it contained, in addition to just declaring that the plaintiffs were not likely to be injured and therefore didn't have standing, so the case couldn't be in federal court at all, it also said, just, in a belt and suspenders kind of way, that the case was brought too soon, because who is to say what might happen because of the executive order?

Maybe nothing, or maybe only super legal things. That seems totally plausible. 

This aspect of it was also completely unhinged. So a mere two months ago, the Supreme Court, in an opinion by John G. Roberts, handed the president greater control over federal agencies, which the court insisted were merely just arms of the president.

So the idea that these agencies would just shrug their shoulders at the executive order seems a little inconsistent with the whole unitary executive infection slash- ... infestation slash idea or theory, whatever it is. It's like we knew the chief didn't actually read his opinion in Slaughter because of what he wrote in Cook, and now we-

really know he didn't read- Yeah ... his own opinion in Slaughter. A- and then add to that, as Justice Sotomayor's dissent noted, the federal government itself conceded that it might use a state's failure to rely on DHS Homeland Security's approved voting list as evidence to support criminally investigating or prosecuting state election officials.

So It may have once been the case that the legal status of this executive order and its directives were unclear, but in a world with a unitary executive, especially when we're dealing with commands to law enforcement and DOJ, which the court said are purely executive and subject to plenary presidential control, the EO directive in that world just looks different.

And can I say that just, I think that's a really important linking of not just Slaughter, the president controls everything in the executive branch case, but also as Leah was just alluding to, Trump versus United States- Yes ... the president is immune, like forever and for everything case, because there is a lot of really problematic, wildly problematic language in that case about the president's complete control over law enforcement, and I think this executive order has to be read in light of that decision as well.

Completely. And somehow it gets even dumber- Yes ... because two days before the Supreme Court issued this order suggesting we couldn't possibly know what might happen because of the executive order, the Postal Service had already announced a rule that did the very things the executive order called for, which are illegal.

And- Wait, can 

we just say- The 

court didn't even acknowledge this ... 

the Supreme Court, Leah, cannot be expected to read both its own earlier opinions- Of course ... and rules issued by federal agencies- Yes ... in the very matter under review. That is way too much to ask of them. It's the summer. They're not 

even sitting.

they're also busy boys, and I'm not sure Brett Kavanaugh can read. So a lot- ... of complicating factors going on here. 

All 

true. speaking of things to read and people who read them, since they can read, I somehow decided to make myself dumber by reading the brief that was filed by the federal government to defend the Postal Service's rule.

The brief is insane. Like both, the rule is insane, as is the defense of the rule. So the brief likens the rule on delivering absentee ballots to Postal Service regulation of transporting cremated human remains and animal remains, as well as explosives. These are the analogies. I, 

I am less of a masochist, so I have to confess, I did not read that brief.

But I feel like just from your description, that tells you a lot about what they think of voting. 

Exactly 

Literally 

Right? It's either dead- 

Animal remains. Yeah ... 

Or it's dangerous. Yeah. 

Those- that's, in a word, how they feel about participation in our democracy. okay. So I think, as is hopefully becoming clear, the Supreme Court's reasoning in this per curiam opinion is also deranged because it is willfully blind, not only to the existence of a rule it doesn't mention, not only to its own prior cases, but also to everything we know about this administration, and specifically that this administration does more wildly illegal stuff in a day than we can possibly talk about on weekly, hour-and-a-half-long podcast episodes.

this administration is not operating in a normal, regular, orderly process, and so the idea that here of all places, that this rulemaking would follow some totally legitimate and normal procedure that would result in a carefully vetted and very legal rule is obviously delusional. And I think delulu is actually how you would put it, Leah.

Exactly. 

and just, to add a cherry on top, it cannot be the case that it is both so unclear how this executive order will be implemented, and who knows, nothing might happen because of it, and that it is an emergency warranting extraordinary relief that the president can't implement the executive order.

Because, as a reminder, this is an emergency application. This is the shadow docket. That is supposed to be the standard the administration is required to satisfy. 

Mike Lindell, Pillow Dude and 2020 election conspiracy loon who ran for the GOP nomination for governor in Minnesota a week or so ago with Donald Trump's endorsement before apparently losing bigly to Republican Lisa DeMuth by some 11 points.

That equates to about 45,000 votes. he had said last week that he would demand a statewide hand count of the election after what he described as evidence of possible r- im- impossible results reporting on election night, counts going backwards, all sorts of things, and his suspicion was that this was all done somehow with the use of secret computer algorithms That's all we know.

Now, I know a lot of, folks enjoy making fun of Lindell, and of course, we are no exception here at The Bradcast. 

True. 

However, when I said, b- last week and, several times last week that I supported Lindell's call for a hand count, I actually meant it. If he wants to pay for such count under Minnesota state law, which allows him to do so, I am actually all for it.

I am all for public hand counts of hopefully hand-marked paper ballots, which is what they use across the entire state of Minnesota, presuming at least that he, the candidate in this case, is willing to pay for it as required by state law. So this past Monday, Lindell was supposed to submit $825,000 to the Secretary of State of Minnesota by midnight in order for the counting to then begin the next day.

But he failed to do so. Instead, he claimed that, as the Minnesota Star Tribune reported, the Secretary of State had proposed an unle- a unlawful process to recount those votes. On Monday, Lindell's campaign said that he and Secretary of the Secretary of State's office could not agree on how the audit would be handled.

Only votes assigned to Lindell and DeMuth would be counted, not those earned by other candidates under what the Secretary described as the state's lawful method for this type of count. Essentially, the hand count would require counters to separate ballots into three different piles: one with votes for Lindell, another with votes for DeMuth, and a third pile for everyone else, and then they count the votes, for Lindell and DeMuth.

But the Lindell camp, they're arguing that violates state law and that, for some reason, he needs to know how many votes went to each of the other candidates- 

In the GOP primary ... 

in the GOP primary, as well, presumably in the GOP primary- Yeah ... as well, under his theory of how the, counting was wrong on election night due to some super-secret algorithm used by the deep state or China or something to keep him from becoming the Republican nominee for governor in Minnesota, a state where the Republican candidate will almost certainly go on to lose the popular vote this year to the Democratic nominee, Senator Amy Klobuchar.

And I'm not making fun of Lindell regarding that, that, that seemingly snarky comment about the deep state in China, et cetera. As the Star Tribune reports, when asked who Lindell believed was rigging the election against him, Lindell said, quote, "This is the uni party A term that, some on the right use to describe, this theory that most Republicans and Democrats are actually in secret coordination working to box out the far right MAGA folks on many issues.

Lindell continued, quote, "I believe our elections with these computers are being selected, not elected. Your guess is as good as mine. The deep state globalists, the CCP-" "... China. But in our own elections like this, I believe it's the uni party," said Mike Lindell. Okay, so China or the deep state, including Republicans, are so frightened to have Donald Trump's choice for governor in Minnesota that they rigged the election to keep him from winning the, winning the primary Even though the Secretary of State says that, Lindell's camp was told about these rules that were worked out a week ago, Lindell says he hadn't heard about this particular method for counting until Monday, the day that the payment was due to begin the counting on Tuesday.

So instead of paying that money, he filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court alleging that the state was not counting as per state law as he saw it. Okay, so sure. Yes, it's easy to make fun of Lindell on all of this, but if he wants to know who truly won or lost because he believes there was an algorithm or China or the deep state is out to get him, and he needs a public hand count to do it, and he's willing to pay for it, I'm fine with that because state law allows it if he's willing to pay, and I actually think it would do more good for everyone to see whether he won or lost if, in fact, he did lose.

Because the truth is, results are, in, even in Minnesota, where they use hand-marked paper ballots, they are computer-tabulated, either correctly or incorrectly, and the only way to know for sure is to have humans count those votes publicly, or at least a part, a small fraction of them in a post-election audit or a full hand count.

And yet, I've heard a lot of Democrats making fun of Mike Lindell for all of this, pretending to be just outraged by the fact that he wants a hand count or that he refuses to concede the election. He should have conceded on election night, they said. Now, he has... There is no legal obligation to concede anything.

That's a political nicety. Candidates are not required to offer some sort of official concession before the election is over. They can concede or they cannot concede. It's up to them. If he wants to challenge the results and spend his own money doing it, that is up to him. He's a candidate. He has that right.

I have no problem with that. I really don't. I do have a problem with Democrats like Democratic election law attorney Marc Elias, who really should know better himself I have problems with him, making fun of people like Lindell for this or claiming that it's outrageous that he hasn't conceded already.

Elias should certainly know better because in 2008, Elias was actually the Democratic Party lawyer who led the successful legal challenge on behalf of Al Franken up in Minnesota when Al Franken was, apparently the loser on election night to then Republican Senator Norm Coleman. Franken lost by about 250 votes, at least of the unofficial results on election night.

That's obviously much closer than Lindell's race, who's said to have lost by about a thous- 11,000 votes. But after a long hand count and a legal process that went on for about six months before any US senator was officially seated in the race, Franken eventually was certified as the winner by about the same 250 votes or so that he was said to have, been behind on election night.

But ever since, Donald Trump falsely claimed that he won the 2020 election, offering zero evidence to support his claim of having won the Democrats or the deep state or China or Joe Biden or whoever it was steal it from him, ever since then, Democrats have become very touchy about any sort of questions concerning any election results whatsoever, no matter what happens, no matter how troubling, no matter how, vulnerable these voting systems may be, and they are vulnerable, very.

And making fun of those who, who, who do question the results like Lindell and putting them, putting Democrats into a situation where if there's a close election or a, a questionable result where results m- are potentially gamed, or they're just miscalculated, or voters didn't get to vote, or have their ballots rejected for whatever reason.

Democrats are really painting themselves into a corner, it seems to me, where if they want to challenge an election- 

If they need to challenge an election ... 

they'll be painted as hypocrites for doing so. Oh, denier now? that's gonna mean that they're probably not going to press for oversight of elections where they should because they spent the alas- the last six years suggesting that it's outrageous to have any question about results, about voting systems, et cetera they're gonna be less likely to ask for a recount or hand count even when they should ask for one.

They really don't seem to be thinking this one through. And I gotta say, I am really concerned that they're gonna find themselves in a situation this fall, or even in 2028, when for whatever reason, they won't demand oversight of an election result when they actually should demand that oversight because they're afraid to sound like the people that they have been making fun of for so many years, like Mike Lindell So yeah, make fun of Mike Lindell all you want, Lord knows we do, but not for asking for public oversight of his own election as an official candidate in that election.

At least if he is following the law to do so, as opposed to, calling for an insurrection or something State courts is gonna, sort out whether Lindell is right or wrong about his claims about how state law should work for a post-election candidate-funded hand recount. But be careful what you wish for, Democrats.

When you criticize him for daring to ask for such a count or for failing to concede, on, on election night or something when there is no legal requirement for him to do so, you're putting yourself into a corner, it seems to me. 

Up until pretty recently, Donald Trump had shown an uncanny understanding of how his supporters saw the world. Whether it was mass deportations or isolationist foreign policy, Donald Trump had an innate connection to the MAGA brain. He knew what it wanted, what it would abide, and what it would not Well, not anymore.

In the last few months, Trump has made some fairly shocking miscalculations: the war with Iran, idiotic trade battles with important US allies, a focus on ballrooms and helipads. Those priorities have shown just how entirely out of step this president is, especially with the people who matter most to Trump.

But this week, Trump staked out one of his most unpopular positions yet. And 

I can say, if I were the mayor of a town or the governor of a state, and I had a chance to get a big, plant in, an AI plant or a data center, I would absolutely want it because the jobs are enormous and the money paid, the taxes paid are just enormous.

Donald Trump, champion of the AI data center. AI data centers are those very large, mostly windowless buildings that house computer servers, storage drives, and hardware, and basically make the internet run. In his support of these centers, Donald Trump is very much alone. Last month, an Annenberg survey found that 61% of Americans say they'd oppose a new data center being built in their area.

That is up from 49% in just March. Gallup, meanwhile, estimates the number of Americans who oppose these centers to be even higher at seven in 10. Now, okay, you might say, but exactly who is so opposed to these data centers? Is this just an issue on the far left, a concern for Bernie Sanders and AOC? 

Ask Peter Thiel, ask Elon Musk, ask Mark Zuckerberg if they want one of these data centers in their own backyard.

Ask any one of us here on this committee. 

But you would be wrong to think that the issue of data centers is a fringe concern. In fact, if there is one thing we are learning in this season of national discontent, it is that some of the central issues being litigated on the 2026 campaign trail, and very likely into the 2028 presidential cycle, include the power of corporations, big tech's impact on communities, and the threat of artificial intelligence.

And all of that anxiety is converging in the debate over data centers. You can see just how important the issue is becoming in real time. Last year, Pennsylvania's Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, celebrated a $20 billion Amazon data center investment in his state. But this month, Governor Shapiro has taken a very different position.

I've read your comments. I've seen your texts. I've listened to your phone calls, and I've talked with so many of you in person all across Pennsylvania. You don't want these irresponsible, burdensome, reckless AI data centers in your community, and I want you to know, I hear you 

Over in Ohio, Sherrod Brown, the former Democratic senator now running to reclaim his seat, has spent millions of dollars in ads painting his rival, Republican Senator John Husted, as the face of data centers.

In Michigan, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed got the winning edge in his Democratic Senate primary after calling for state and federal moratoriums. Tom Tiffany, the Republican nominee for Wisconsin governor, and by the way, a close Trump ally, has been running attack ads against his Democratic opponent, Dave Crowley, over, you guessed it, Crowley's position on data centers.

Data center David Crowley. Big tech wins, Wisconsin pays. 

In Wyoming, Republican Chuck Gray won the primary for his state's open House seat with a campaign against data centers and a call for a federal ban. But nowhere is this issue more alive than in the state of Texas. Last year, Republican Governor Greg Abbott said he wanted to make Texas the epicenter of AI development.

He wasn't far off from that goal because there are an estimated 248 data centers planned for the state, in addition to the existing 335, according to the Texas Tribune. So yeah, up until very recently, Texas was very much in the business of big tech until Governor Abbott realized, amid widespread public outcry, that it very well might doom his re-election.

Here he is on Sunday on ABC's This Week. 

I have pressed pause on any new data center. If you're a data center and you wanna operate in Texas, you have to first get the approval of those in local communities. 

Greg Abbott and his fellow Republicans up and down the ticket are rapidly coming to the realization that even in the reddest parts of a pretty red state, data centers could be the thing that makes or breaks a campaign.

And so now, as Democrats give these centers the cold shoulder, the Republican Party is racing to catch up. Yes, Donald Trump may still be basking in the warm glow of big tech, but the rest of the GOP is quickly understanding that when it comes to the infrastructure of artificial intelligence, you're either with the people or very much against them

In some ways, the biggest problems may be in the blue cities in states with Republican governors, Republican attorneys general, Republicans secretaries of state, Texas. Texas has a lot of Democratic votes in Houston, Dallas, and so on.

And in Texas, the attorney general is Ken Paxton, who happens to be the candidate for Senate, who happens to be running behind right now in the polls. James Talarico's three points ahead in the latest Fox News poll. I'm pretty sure there are Indivisible groups in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso What can you tell us about them?

There are a bunch of places where we're concerned. One is, as you mentioned, red-governed blue cities. and also, there are a bunch of other ... if I start listing the number of different concerns that we have- Yeah ... and the number of different geographies and exactly what we're at risk for, people tend to get a little overwhelmed.

Yeah. And so I really wanna encourage people to not think about this in terms of hyper-specific local guidance, but in terms of knowing your rights, getting trained, getting connected, dispelling administration propaganda and disinformation, turning people out to early vote, being prepared to do rapid response in response to threats in your area.

that might look like you are showing up to your local board of elections meetings in order to monitor a MAGA-adjacent supervisor, right? That might look like you are showing up to the state legislature in order to push back on a threat that impacts your city. The most important thing is to be connected to flexible local activist organizing communities that can help to direct you when the time comes, because this is not like an independent situation where you just can make your calls and be done with it.

We actually all have to be in relationship with each other and prepared to move quickly. 

I'm glad you mentioned the problems aren't going to end on Election Day. Election Day is, the first big challenge, but then there's the counting the ballots- Yeah ... and the certifying the ballots. Remind us what that requires and what it might require of us.

Yeah. so there are a number of different potential interference points that we are concerned about and monitoring, and that ranges from, as you said, Election Day, to the process of counting, to certifying the count, to the actual swearing in. And what I- January 

3rd, 

2027. 

January... 

Exactly. Exactly. And what I would say is that we will not be dropping our guard until the new Congress is sworn in, because at each point, there is some vulnerability to either legal or extra-legal attempts to subvert the process.

Some of that is gonna look like making sure that people are really organized so that there's very local backlash in the event that you see a state effort to do that. Some of that is gonna be around preparing the collective mobilization capacity, right? We have shown over the last year and a half that we can mobilize in literally historically unprecedented numbers.

If we need to do that again on much shorter notice, we will be able to do that. And some of it is just gonna be about collectively, pre-organizing and making sure people understand this is a real threat so that we can move swiftly if we need to. One of the biggest fears that we have is around people being too slow to understand what is happening in order to successfully react, and so we wanna do the pre-work to make sure people understand this is a real risk.

And, it isn't just Indivisible that is doing this work. Who else is, is part of this coalition? 

I would say, there's a really heroic cross-ecosystem effort to coordinate here because fundamentally what we're talking about is risks and threats that play out in 20-something different states, more really if you think about all the, additional ones that have congressional districts that might be at risk.

Each of those states there is coordinated effort by folks who are thinking about election protection, about voter rights, voting rights, about the legal strategies, about the mobilizing strategies. We are then in touch collectively to make sure that state actors are getting the support that they need from national actors, and we're making sure that the folks who are, you know, gonna be leading the legal strategies and the communications and narrative and the mobilization are all talking to each other.

Because fundamentally, this is not something where you can just have a legal response or a mobilization response. You actually need to wed those folks together in order to have a really effective strategy where you win the story of what is happening in the country, and you win the legal fights. 

I wanna just recall, what happened in Minnesota in 2025, 'cause I think there's some important lessons there.

That was a kind of a nightmare scenario for, for Indivisible Twin Cities. The night before the No Kings Rally was scheduled June 2025, the Democratic Party speaker of the state legislature, Melissa Hortman, was assassinated along with her husband by, what turned out to be an anti-abortion activist.

But he had some No Kings leaflets in his car, which the police recovered shortly thereafter. But the killer was still on the loose at the time the main No Kings Rally was scheduled to take place at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul. You and I have talked about this before on this program. The Minnesota State Police urged people not to attend, and the governor, of course, had to follow the advice of the state police and cancel the speech.

But Indivisible decided to go ahead with that rally. That was a very courageous and important decision. And how many people showed up at the State Capitol? 

I believe it was something like 70,000 people. 

It was a great event, actually. Keith Ellison, the state attorney general, kinda gave the keynote speech.

And, it's not impossible that something scary and horrible will happen right before, election day this November, but we will remember what you guys did in St. Paul that day, and it's one reason why you say, "We will not be scared." 

and so much credit to Indivisible Twin Cities, who really did take that moment and turn it into something very powerful and a collective show of people power.

So Indivisible has a program called Hands Off Our Vote, a national program to ensure that all eligible voters get to cast their ballot and that those ballots get counted. How can our listeners find out more about all this? 

Yeah. you can go to indivisible.org and you can sign up. You'll get updates.

you can sign up for the Hands Off Our Vote campaign there, and you will be invited to trainings. You'll be invited to rapid response updates. If you are in a state that we have identified as a high-risk state, we will make sure that you can get connected to resources on what to do and how to take action wherever you are.

Last question: Do you think we will have free and fair elections in these midterms? 

I think we've gotta start from being real that, free and fair elections has been a moving target throughout American history, right? I, I know many people from across particularly the American South who would be very clear that they haven't been operating under anything that looks like free and fair elections for a long time, right?

And particularly when it comes to, attacks on voting rights, the ongoing efforts to really, to destroy the Voting Rights Act, all of the ways in which there's been... This is both the, the culmination of Trump's specific obsession with election sabotage and also a multi-decade campaign by a broad swath of the Republican Party to sabotage the right to vote, to make it harder for regular people to vote, and particularly to limit the rights of Black and brown folks to vote.

So I think they will attempt to throw every trick in the book at this election. I think that they will take advantage of, wherever they have the power to try to restrict conditions, and I think they will fail because there are more of us than there are of them, and there are more people who fundamentally want a free and fair election in which all of our voices are heard.

We've just heard clips starting with

Consider This tracing how federal investigations into 2020 and voter fraud, plus Trump's refusal to rule out National Guard at polling sites, has Democrats bracing for election interference this fall.

Straight White American Jesus detailed how the Trump administration is stoking doubt about November's midterms, with Steve Bannon urging a national emergency declaration to seize federal control over state elections.

Start Making Sense laid out the grassroots side of election protection, from local know-your-rights and ICE Watch training to early voting that guards against last-minute sabotage attempts.

Strict Scrutiny described how Trump ordered the Postal Service to restrict absentee ballots and threatened election officials with prosecution, then watched the Supreme Court wave the whole scheme through.

The BradCast cautioned that Democrats' post-2020 valid criticism of unfounded election challenges could leave them unwilling to demand legitimate recounts when close results actually warrant scrutiny.

Runaway Country examined how data centers became a defining 2026 campaign issue, pushing even Republicans like Texas Governor Greg Abbott to pause new construction pending local approval.

And Start Making Sense in part two of their discussion outlined how grassroots groups plan to protect the midterms in red-governed blue cities like Houston and Dallas, monitoring vote counting through the swearing-in of Congress on January 3rd, 2027.

And those were just the top takes, there's lots more in the deeper dives sections,

If you get value out of the show - and want to make sure we can keep going while getting it delivered ad-free to the new, members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support - there's a link in the show notes - through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcasts app.*

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As for today,

Rather than doing a commentary that I didn't have the mental energy to research and write this week, I thought I would give another update on the burnout I'm experiencing, but this time with the ADHD element included, which I don't think I mentioned during my last behind-the-scenes update. I was diagnosed with ADHD more than 25 years ago and I started hearing millennials referred to as the burnout generation at least 10 years ago, but it wasn't until within the past few years that I learned that people with ADHD are much more susceptible to burnout for a variety of reasons that I won't bore you with.

The tricky thing about describing ADHD symptoms in the post-social media era is that if you just list the symptoms, then almost everyone can say that they feel like that sometimes or have that same experience. They then either wonder if they have ADHD, which they might, or begin to think that ADHD must not be that big of a difference because it seems like a bunch of experiences that are now fairly common.

I'll be the first to say that the reality of our understanding of ADHD has far outstripped the usefulness of the simple label, because now we know about several subtypes of ADHD. People can exist on a spectrum of severity within whichever subtype they most closely align with. The fact that we still only have one basic label to cover everything really doesn't make sense.

That's only complicated by the fact that algorithmic feeds have hijacked everyone's brains and made them feel distracted and as though their executive function is no match for the supercomputers, enticing them to do what's profitable for companies rather than what the individual wants for themselves.

All that said, the the simplest way to distinguish between genuine ADHD and people who spend more time than they would like on Instagram is a matter of degrees. Because my burnout is exacerbating my ADHD symptoms, I am feeling the degrees of severity with an absolute vengeance right now.

I know perfectly well what it feels like to procrastinate and have an urge to do something more entertaining than the work you've been putting off. Everyone's been through that. For people with ADHD, it can often be just a bit more severe. Sitting down at a desk to get to work can be a bit like leading a horse to water, but not being able to make it drink... for the entire day... even though their livelihood depends on them drinking...

When you add burnout to the mix, as I'm experiencing right now, the image that came to mind, even before I decided to use the horse and water analogy, is like trying to tame a bucking bronco, which I have never done, but I can imagine is difficult.

My resistance to doing the tasks I absolutely must do is not a passive, procrastinating, I-don't-feel-like-it kind of resistance. Right now, my attention is an angry, bucking, thrashing, wild horse of resistance that is pulling with all its strength on the rope like it recognizes the branding iron coming for it.

I mentioned previously, the advice for burnout differs pretty wildly between the U.S. and Europe, where structural supports to serve the needs of people are wildly divergent. On that note, I have a quick update. I was reading some ADHD-specific advice about avoiding burnout, and I kid you not, the advice was to build anti-burnout strategies into your day, such as taking a 20-minute break once a day during your work hours to do something genuinely restful and re-energizing, not just scrolling on a screen.

As always with this sort of stuff, it's not that that's bad advice, but boy does it feel insufficient to the task at hand, given all of the forces applying pressure to each of us, driving nearly everyone in our society in the direction of burnout.  And this advice was for people with ADHD. That feels underpowered for anyone, and we are apparently even more susceptible.

And now, we'll continue to dive deeper on 3 topics today. First up;

Section A, Threat And Backfire

Followed by Section B, Cracks And Constraints

And Section C, Resistance And Response

But the long and short of it is that President Trump's executive order, or most of President Trump's executive order on mail voting was blocked briefly this week. It was unblocked, and now it is blocked again. And so legal experts, ge- the general consensus across the election law community is that is where we're going to end up, that this executive order will not end up impacting people's ability to vote by mail.

Yes, there could be more to this saga. It could get appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court. But the bottom line is this, that the most likely scenario is that people will be able to vote by mail in 2026 the same way they were in 2024 and 2022. 

All the way up to the Supreme Court again, because it has already once been appealed up to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court's gonna have a lot of voting questions on their hands this year potentially. 

I want to set up this broader conversation that we're going to have by going a little deeper on the various ways that the Trump administration has tried to change voting in the US. Miles, what do you got?

Oh, man, it feels like a laundry list at this point. It's been a little bit of a spaghetti at the wall approach from the federal government and from President Trump when it comes to trying to impact the elections infrastructure. President Trump has made it clear he thinks that the presidency and that he as president should have a bigger hand in how elections are run.

That has meant two different executive orders on elections, the one we mentioned a second ago, and then another one last year. Both of those have been blocked so far at the courts. And then it's really funneled out to a lot of different aspects of the federal government. Notably, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security have both made efforts to try to investigate the 2020 election and investigate voter fraud more broadly in all of these different ways, which has raised a lot of concerns, a- about what potentially could still be coming for this election cycle.

Though I will just say, I think going back to the bottom line as people are getting ready to vote this cycle, it looks right now like the elections infrastructure is gonna be the same as it was in 2024 and 2022. I'm not positive that any voters are gonna really notice a difference when they go to vote this cycle at this point.

You mentioned the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. I think that we would be remiss if we didn't point out that those agencies are led by people who see their job as doing what President Trump wants them to do. There is no independence there. The Homeland Security Secretary has amplified the president's concerns about election security.

The attorney general has made it clear that he sees his role as doing what the president wants him to do. and so that's the context in which we are now going to have a conversation about your reporting, Eric McDaniel. you did this very deeply reported project about how Democrats in Congress are preparing for the what ifs.

What if President Trump and his administration try to go further to subvert the midterm elections? So what are Democrats focusing on? 

There's a long list of things, right? So I focused on the Senate, where Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has put together a task force of at least 11 senators and a constellation of outside experts.

Many of the listeners to this podcast will recognize some of these names. Eric Holder, the former attorney general during the Obama administration, Mark Elias of the Elias Law Group, a prominent- A Democratic aligned election litigator. And, just a constellation of outside good governance groups, often cross-partisan or cross-ideological, who are all focused on election integrity.

I will say there are no Republicans in Congress as part of this effort, but they've been having, in the Senate, weekly meetings with staff. They've got a list of 100 threats they're looking at. Everything from issues at a single balloting location, all the way to the idea that the president might dispatch ICE agents or National Guard troops to polling locations.

And, it's not just what they're preparing for. All those lawsuits you and Miles were talking about with the DOJ trying to obtain voter rolls, for instance, they have been involved in that litigation. In fact, I talked to Marc Elias about it. 

One of the misunderstandings is that somehow this litigation springs out of thin air around election day.

Right now, my law firm of 60 people is litigating 87 cases in 43 states. This is not something that we wait until, election subversion has taken place or voter suppression is in full swing. 

A lot of preparations and a lot of action so far. 

How are they thinking about President Trump's playbook?

are they looking back at 2020? How are they thinking this through? 

For their view, I think it's pretty well summed up by a man named Justin Vail. He's a leader at the group Protect Democracy. 

Trump is seeking to deceive American voters About the security of our elections and spread false claims about voter fraud.

He seeks to disrupt the normal state and local management of our elections by exerting unprecedented and illegal federal control. If that's not all enough, Trump is prepared to outright deny election results that he doesn't like. 

And I wanna make clear here, a big part of this project is Democrats trying to correct for what they describe to me as something like a failure of imagination ahead of 2020, right?

The conversations around Trump's election denial then, they... Basically it was like, "What's the worst that can happen?" And then January 6th happened, and, the scales fell from their eyes. 

I think when it comes to thinking about the possibility of another January 6th, it's also important to remember that we're just in a very different political moment.

At least from the people I talk to, there's a lot of optimism that is not what we're looking at here. Obviously, the scenarios, the sort of doomscaping scenarios that have been brought up because of all the different ways President Trump has pushed these boundaries are real. But at the same time, couple things I would note.

One is that it's a lot harder to get people keyed up in the same way they were in 2020 for a midterm election. We see this for no other reason than just turnout. Getting people to vote in midterm elections is so much harder. We've never been able to see somebody on the ballot get this sort of election denial fervor in the way Trump was able to.

we saw this in 2022 when Kari Lake ran for governor in Arizona, tried to stir the same sort of doubts about when she lost that election. We saw it more recently just a little while ago when Mike Lindell lost the Republican primary for governor, in Minnesota. He's long pushed election conspiracy theories, connected to President Trump, tried to do it again in that election, and we haven't really seen evidence that people latch onto those theories in the same way with other candidates when they aren't President Trump.

To Eric's point about the fact that there was this failure of imagination from Democrats, I think generally in the election of- official community, it's the same thing, that there is, there was, they learned a lot from that experience and have been game planning a lot. The biggest thing to me is that their relationships for local voting officials, their relationships with law enforcement now are in a whole different place.

10 years ago, they didn't necessarily have their local sheriff on speed dial, and they are working in conjunction, in, across the country now. 

Yeah, and I think there is this other element, that it is 435 different Congressional elections, a bunch of Senate elections. This is not the election.

It is the midterms, plural. 

So the idea of trying t- the, to get them to activate in the way that we saw that activation in 2020 for a close House race, for instance, I'm not ruling it out completely, but you can see it, it would be a little bit more of a difficult sell potentially.

Voting, is a partisan choice, but- Is election administration partisan or has it become more partisan than it used to be? 

I think if you only listen to the clips, in terms of how people are talking about it, you might come away feeling that way. But I would say no at this point, that generally speaking, the election denial that we see from President Trump has not really seeped down to the local and state level overall.

there are pockets here and there, I want to be very clear. But overall, there are, especially even among Republicans, I would say Republicans are not as loud pol- because politically speaking, it's a lot more dangerous if you're an elected Republican to come out against President Trump loudly before the election, at this point.

But, we've seen states as red as West Virginia and Idaho, for instance, push back and say they're not gonna give their state voter roll data, that it would be illegal to do that, to give that to the Department of Justice. And I think that can k- serve as a little bit of a proxy, that state officials, even in deep red places, are not just going along with Trump willy-nilly at this point.

I wanna reiterate something you said that I think is really important for people to hear.

There's not gonna be Trump walking out on the, what's left of the, the, the White House lawn or in the Oval Office or anywhere else saying, "That's it. I canceled the elections. they're over, and I'm staying in power, everyone. I'll decide who's in Congress, and I'll decide..." it's not gonna be a grand proclamation.

It's going to be, as you say, a kind of cancerous process, by which you mean the spreading of cells that get broken down across the body of the American body politic. One of the ways that happens so effectively is that you link Democrats and specifically progressive candidates to foreign interference, foreign nemeses, foreign forces that you consider your, your, antithetical forces in the world: China, Iran, Cuba.

And you say, not only has China got, us, not only has Iran sent over, subversives, not only is Cuba bankrolling and... Cuba, who we've economically, just weakened in inhumane ways over the last six months in terms of our Trump administration. Not only are they, bad in terms of what they're doing outside the country, but they're actually working in tandem with the Democrats and with the DSA.

So when you see Mamdani, El-Sayed, if you see, Katie Wilson in Seattle, it doesn't matter, Karen Bass, it... whoever it is, they're probably in bed with the Islamists and the communists because that's the only way they can win, and they hate you, and they hate America. And then that leads us to something else.

and here's a point I wanna make, and I really am curious about your thoughts on this, Matt, is I don't think enough Americans consider that most folks would rather have... not most. Let me back up. A lot of Americans would like to have the desired outcome regardless of the process. And that means if they don't really get a vote, or they have to give up their vote for a certain amount of time under the guise that they'll get it back once things are back in order, that would be fine.

I wanna play a clip of Tim- Timothy Snyder, the historian and the scholar of fascism, who was on Katie Couric. And, he talks about how we don't really consider that, a lot of Americans are willing to live under fascism, under authoritarianism, because it would feel better to them. It would feel more ordered, more calm.

It would feel like the bad guys were put in place, and the bad guys would have no voice. So here he is talking about it, and then we'll get your thoughts. That 

people recognize the, what is happening and how high the stakes are 

Oh, I would start with that a different way because the question assumes that people care and that they're against it.

So one has to start by recognizing that there are a fair number of Americans who would be very happy to live under an authoritarian regime. A- and I think one has to start from that because if we start from... first of all, it's true, but secondly, if we go along with the kind of normal cliché that Americans love freedom and so on, then we end up convincing ourselves that whatever happens, it's, it must be freedom.

it's the same problem with democracy. if we convince ourselves that the US is a democracy, then whatever happens, we convince ourselves that somehow this is within the overall framework of a democracy somehow 

Here's the point I'm taking away from this, Matt, is To a lot of Americans, f- living under an authoritarian regime where the people they consider bad, they're enemies or threats to them, meaning Muslims, queer people, immigrants, non-Christians, they would feel more free under that authoritarian regime than they would living in a democracy where they have to share power with the entirety of the American populace.

What do you think? 

I think that's a very insightful statement, right ? W- as human beings, and this is mostly observation, but maybe there's a little theology in there as well, we are self-rationalization machines, right? We th- this is how we operate as human beings is we take a side, and then when w- we make up the arguments about why that side makes sense in, in real time.

And hopefully, and this is part of what a liberal arts education and kind of critical self-reflection, all these sorts of things are supposed to do is help you observe that process in yourself and start gaining some kind of benchmarks in reality and start checking that impulse within yourself.

But there's a huge portion of any population, any national population, United States, China, France, what-where- wherever it is, that is very comfortable with authoritarianism. And part of that is personality, part of that I'm sure is theology and religious culture, part of it is family of origin, right?

But there's some portion of the country that feels very comfortable with authoritarianism and would choose it. There, there's another portion that can rationalize their way into it, and I think that's what Snyder's talking about, right? My worries around the 2026 election are less about some of the hijinks right now and more about what comes after the election.

Because it's after the election, right? What they're doing now is sowing all these seeds of doubt, all the, these ki- in- inserting these kind of SERDs into the system that, that, that make people question, that make people ask, "Hey, is this real?" And then after the election, one, one of the, the realities is the, the process of seating a congressional majority is not as simple- Yeah

as you would think. 

Exactly. 

And so the- Exactly ... Democrats could win, and then- Yeah ... and then the, the Republicans could challenge all of those resort- results in the courts, and Mike Johnson could say, "Hey, these are all unresolved. We cannot seat these- 100% ... people who won the election." Yeah. "And so the Republicans just have to maintain our majority in Congress because we're just preserving the system so that we can figure all this out," right?

That, that is the kind of like real threat to stealing an election and rigging an election is the, the, the propaganda buildup on the front end that pays off as this kind of rhetorical denial of the election, and maybe practical denial of the election on the other- and I think there are a lot of Americans who could get around that.

And this is what that polarizing rhetoric, that conflation that wants to say the Democrats and the communists and the Marxists and Cuba and China and DSA and ev- they're all part of this. They're all part of the conspiracy theory. What that says to Trump supporters is, "Our tribe is always right."

"The other tribe is-- all the other tribes are unified against us, and w- we will win this election if the process is fair. And if the process is not fair and we lose, then we have to resist that," right? and it keeps th-this kind of tribalized, kind of self-rationalizing impulse in check and aligned, because Do- honestly, Donald Trump does not have to maintain 51% approval rating to maintain his hold on power.

He just needs to keep his side really unified, because they already hold all the levers of power, and they're more or less keeping all, trying to keep all their people on sides and say, "The other side wants to destroy you and wants to destroy America, and if they win, you're over." 

I'm gonna make one more point, and then we can go to, to take a break and do that. Here's Kevin Roberts talking in ways that I think really piggyback on everything you just said, Matt. He says, on, on Twitter, August 6th, so just about two and a half weeks ago, "Islam, like communism, may arrive peacefully, but it never leaves that way.

You can vote your way in, but you'll never vote your way out." That's exactly what Steven Crowder said on his We Need Fascism video. and it's a growing sentiment on the American right. Once communism and Islam and all these things arrive You might have Democrats who vote those people in, but you'll never vote them out.

And to me, that's a justification for saying once they're in or if they're in, we won't vote them out. We will... it's violent, it's violence time. Dem- democracy be damned. It's we need the outcome we want. The outcome we want is for there to be no Muslims in this country, is for there to be no leftists who have any power over cities like New York City or s- or to be Senate candidates in Michigan.

We don't want that. And therefore, if those people take office, you have to be ready for the fact that democracy's not gonna help you anymore. We're at the end of that. It's our tribe, it's our outcome, that's all that matters. There's a setting of the stage here for saying, "We are not the majority. We may never be again.

Who cares? All that matters is that we win, and we get the outcome we want. So if the voting process is mucked up, if we have to call into question every congressional Democratic win in November, if we have to tell the postal service not to deliver the mail so you can't do your ballot, if we have to do whatever, that's fine because, we only care about the outcome and not the process."

And I just wanna drive this home, folks. Please take this away from today My wife used to live in Amman, Jordan, and I used to visit her there, right? And she lived in Amman, Jordan after living in Egypt. She lived in Egypt during the, the Arab Spring. It was an incredibly tumultuous time in Egypt and other places.

And there was-- I remember on voting day, there was like 39 parties, Matt? And it was a democracy trying to find its legs, and I'm not gonna go into the whole history of what's happened since then. Living in Amman, Jordan after living near Ta- Tahrir Square during that, that period was so boring. It was boring.

Nothing-- Like, when we were in Egypt, we would go down to the square, we would talk to protesters, we talked to students over here, we talked to journalists over there. In Jordan, you just go get frozen yogurt, go home. It's a kingdom. It's a monarchy. It's an authoritarian state. Not a lot happening. Most people were just willing, are like, yeah, it's kinda nice.

There-- Nothing happens." There's a lot of Americans who would rather have a Trump regime that gets rid of the bad guys, imposes order, gives them no voice, no say, no ability to regulate their food i-in-in terms of, the FDA, their health, big tech. Who cares? As long as Trump's in charge and they handle it, and they get rid of the bad people, and they beat them up and terrorize them, I'm good.

I think that's a big takeaway from all this for me.

and I want to talk about the House races as well because, the, the control of the House is gonna be decided in a number of very, very swingy districts. We're talking about places, some of these House districts went for Trump. Districts in South Texas.

We're talking about districts in Iowa that are real swing districts that are incredibly close. A district in Wisconsin's 3rd. Three or four districts in Pennsylvania that are all made up of a fair amount of Trump country. And what Trump does with all these sorts of outbursts is directly undercut Mike Johnson's message.

Steve Benen at MS Now caught something interesting here. He pointed to a good example. Listen to Mike Johnson here. 

History will record this will be one of the most successful and productive Congresses in the history of the institution since 1789. Why? Because we did what we said we were gonna do.

We passed about 800 pieces of legislation. We codified over 125 executive orders, and we brought the biggest tax cuts and the biggest, wage increases in generations. 

So Mike Johnson has repeatedly said variations of this, that the Re- the Republican Congress has been extraordinarily productive. Now, the head of the Republican Party is saying, "No, it hasn't.

It's failed." And I think that's a good message, I really do. 

It is. But, this is the old joke. You're right, and you're right. They have been very productive in doing things the American people didn't want. Every time the b- big ugly bill is brought up, first of all, people aren't even sure what was in it, and secondly, to the extent they know, they don't like it.

So what the things were that were done, the people don't like, and on a whole range of other things that people want something done, they haven't. But I will tell you, Donald Trump used to have kind of a feral instinct for where the voters were, at least where his voters were. He has completely lost that, and I'll give you a very specific example.

Data centers. Data centers have become a flashpoint. They have become the focus of the public's ire about a lot of things, about AI, about corporate greed, about Silicon Valley, about flock cameras. Now, many of these things are not exactly tied together, but in data centers, people have found a symbolic enemy, a bogeyman.

What does Donald Trump do? He comes out and says, "I love data centers." Excuse me. That's gonna show up in a whole bunch of ads. You have people like Greg Abbott who have suddenly discovered data centers are not a popular thing. But no, Donald Trump is gonna come there and talk about data centers So he is so far off message now that he really does pose a, I think, a fundamental problem for re- many Republican candidates 

It's absolutely true.

I wanna return to something you said to close out, where you kinda talked about how we're looking at a bunch of layers that add up to almost, a perfect storm of effects, and I wanna go through them a little bit here. So you pointed out that Trump is bleeding Hispanics, and that's really important.

so the, the constituencies that Donald Trump gained with in 2024, non-white working class, Latino, young people, th- they're all gone now. So Th- Trump and the Republican Party has lo- have effectively lost those people. That's point one. Point number two is this hyper-energized Democratic base, which you mentioned, the enthusiasm numbers in all the polling, very clear.

We're seeing things like an 18-point shift in a state legislative contest in Western Pennsylvania that really attests to that type of energy that we're seeing. Point number three, though, that we haven't talked much about, is that Trump is absolutely cratering with independents and moderates, the center of the electorate, really bottom dropping out stuff, that kinda thing.

And so if you take those three things together, the thing that Republicans absolutely need to be able to fall back on is MAGA, is on Trump voters, because they're losing those other crutches, or whatever you wanna call them. And so for Trump to be going out of his way to tell those people not to vote, that's the perfect storm, I think.

And that, I don't, we don't know if it will be enough to win. I think obviously Democrats are right now on track to win at least the House and maybe the Senate as well, but we don't know that they will. This is the sorta thing, though, I think this kinda combination of factors that really could push it there.

Absolutely. And if he has to spend time and money recovering the MAGA base, in other words, winning those people back, he's gonna do the very things that alienate those other groups that you just said. The way elections are supposed to work is you take your base, you put 'em in your back pocket, you say, "Thanks very much.

Now let me go out and grab a bunch of other people who aren't so enthusiastic about us." And the base kinda says, "Fine, we get it. Go out, make your pitch to the middle of the country." Trump hasn't done that, so when he goes out now and he has to say, "Okay, MAGA people, I really love you. Look at all these wonderful things I've done for you.

I've destroyed, Iran 17 times. I've done all these things. I've cut healthcare," he's making his other problems that you just listed a lot worse. So you get into this no-win situation that is totally of his own making. 

he should have the base in his pocket already, and now going out there to have to energize them j- drives everybody else away.

I just wanna end on a bit of a sober note and see what you think of this. The flip side of everything we're saying here is that you can see things going wrong. All these Senate races are on a knife's edge. We're talking about having to win a lot of Senate races in very tough territory, places that voted for Donald Trump by double digits.

They have to win, Democrats have to win a few races in places like that. I think, Abdul El-Sayed is a question mark. I'd like to feel a little better about that race. I don't know about Troy Jackson in Maine. You can easily see Democrats falling short in the Senate. It could easily happen. And then in the House, the gerrymandering successes, unfortunately, that Republicans have had, kinda takes off the table something like a 40-seat win like the one we saw in 2018.

It makes it much more like trench warfare. There just aren't as many pickup opportunities. It looks very good, but you can see things going wrong, and I wonder how you think about that stuff. h- how troubled are you by those possibilities? 

I think it's very important not to be overconfident. That's an unusual problem for Democrats, but it's very real.

You gotta run through the tape, and these are close races. The other thing that I am worried about is that Donald Trump is busy screwing around with things like mail-in voting. And although he is unlikely to stop these things, he could very well sow mass confusion. And where there's confusion, people don't show up to vote So I think Democrats have to, number one, keep their enthusiasm high, number two, not get overconfident, and number three, put a lot of time and money into voter education so people know where they're supposed to vote, when they can vote.

They know the early voting rules inside and out. They know the mail-in ballot rules inside and out, and they really have to devote enough resources for those kinds of activities so that Donald Trump, in his effort to depress voting on our side, if you will, or the general electric- electorate, does not succeed where we have, failed to kinda keep educating, keep up with the voters, keep explaining what the rules are.

So that, I think, is a real concern, and I certainly hope Democrats are aware of this. I think they are. and I think on the flip side of this, you cannot underestimate quality candidates, and maybe I'll end on this. Good candidates beat bad candidates all the time. And if you wanna s- find out why certain candidates won in primaries, look at the kinds of candidates they are.

Look at how well they communicate. Look at how hard they have worked. Look at people like Angie Nixon in Florida. Look at, Abdul El-Sayed. Whatever you think of these people's ideological views, they are very strong candidates, and that's how most people vote. They don't put people on an ideological spectrum and say, "This guy is two notches to the left of where I am, therefore, I'm not gonna vote for him."

They say, "Wow, this guy really has Trump's number," or, "Wow, this gal really gets it when she talks about the super-rich." These are very strong candidates, and I think you really have to lean into them, feature them. And I think the job for people who are in our space is to make sure voters get to see who the real candidates are.

These aren't choices. You can have Mike Rogers, who is nothing more than a ventriloquist dummy for Donald Trump, or you can have El-Sayed. You can have someone who is just a mouthpiece, like a Michael Waller, who is busy defending a ac- credibly accused child abuser, or you can have a 16-year military veteran in Kate Conley.

These are very stark choices. And I think the more the voters see the actual candidates, the real choices, I think the better Democrats are gonna do 

Next, Section B, Cracks And Constraints

It's time to stand up and celebrate as Judge Talwani, a federal judge in Massachusetts, has saved mail-in ballots from the evil clutches of Donald Trump and the Postal Service. No, states will not have to use specialized mail-in ballot envelopes that they don't know how to use and haven't been provided, that have to be approved by the post office, and then upload all of your voter data into a portal that has to be approved by the post office.

You know why? Because the United States Constitution says there's only two entities that are in charge of federal elections. One of them is the states, the second one is Congress. You know what's not in the Constitution? The Postal Service controlling your mail-in ballot, as noted by Judge Talwani. And Judge Talwani has, how do I put this nicely, thumbed her nose at the United States Supreme Court.

Or, to put it more diplomatically, she knows that they're wrong. And now we have a round-trip case, right? In, in less than four days we went from Supreme Court ruling on Monday that the states do not have, standing because they came to court too early, to four days later, Judge Talwani having everybody, the states and the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, the ACLU, everybody file new pleadings.

Let's get to the heart of the matter about the post office's new ruling. I'll make a ruling on it, which she did late last night, 14-day block of the rule, while she considers to consider... w- while she continues to consider the preliminary injunction as well. We're going right back to the United States Supreme Court on this issue, and every day the candle burns down i- between now and the midterms.

And now we're down to, less than, what is it, less than 80 days left. I'm Michael Popok, you're on the Midas Touch Network and Legal AF, and I've got this emergency order in my hands up on Legal AF Substack as well for our audience to read. How did we get here? Trump in March issues an executive order directing the post office to start monkeying around with the mail and the mail-in ballots, demanding that there be a different type of envelope and a barcode and a, and that they're gonna ultimately approve who's gets the ballots and who has their ballots delivered to an election office, who lives or who dies when it comes to mail-in ballots.

Who died and made them boss? No one, frankly. No one. And so the states ran into court. But because the post office had not yet issued the formal regulation, had not published it, as we say, in the federal registry, in the Federal Register, the United States Supreme Court said to the states, "You're too early.

You may be harmed one day. It may be unconstitutional what Trump's trying to do, but you gotta let him make the rule. Once they make the rule- Come back to us, except with one caveat. Come back to us, but if it's too late in the game, we're not gonna interfere with what the executive branch wants to do, even if it's unconstitutional, because it deals with elections, and we're gonna let the elections happen.

So every hour, every minute, every day matters here. That's why this is such a fast-moving case. That's why Judge Talwani moved so quickly. There's actually two other, cases down in, in the District of Columbia that haven't left the starting blocks yet, if you will, led by Mark Elias, but this is the Talwani set of cases.

Let me read to you from what she said, and then I brought the receipts because I've interviewed the California attorney general about mail-in ballots in the last 24 hours. It's his case that's at stake here, along with, Nick Brown of the Washington Attorney General's office, the Washington Attorney General, who's the head of the Democratic Attorneys General, Voter Protection Task Force, also about this case.

And then, of course, I had the great Mark Elias, who's handling one of these cases with us, and we'll go to those interview clips in a moment. But let me read from Judge Talwani. what she said is, the states now have standing. Their issue is now ripe. The f- the post office last Friday, a week ago, issued their final ruling, and now it can be on the merits decided by a judge whether it is right or wrong.

This is on page eight. Through the final rule, the Postal Service is refusing to send mail ballots to eligible voters unless states or local election officials submit their mail ballot envelopes and return envelopes and receive advanced approval from the United States Postal Service without regard to impending deadlines for the November 3rd, 2026 election.

The judge said even in the rule for the post office, they don't set an internal deadline for when they have to respond to the states. So how are the states supposed to do all of this in time? the court finds likely to succeed on the merits of their claim-- finds that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims, that the post office lacks authority to issue the final rule is unconstitutional in imposing these requirements, and the final rule is unconstitutional in prohibiting non-compliant state and local officials from using the US Postal Service to mail ballots.

They're trying to say, "Oh, no, you didn't... Oh, oops, you didn't check every box. You didn't do everything because you didn't have time, or was, or it's totally impossible. Sorry, you can't use mail-in ballots." That's what they're saying. This is like one of those, remember those coupons on the back of some thing you bought, and they, they could just give you the money or give you the rebate.

Oh, no, you had to cut out the box top. You had to cut out the QR code or the, pricing code, and you had to make sure it was mailed to this add... It was all these things 'cause they wanted you to fail. Same thing here. they... On irreparable harm, she says that the plaintiff states, on page eight, face irreparable harm where they're required to comply with a likely unconstitutional regulation for which compliance is impossible as to the 2026 midterm elections she says on page nine that the plaintiff states have neither the time nor funds to design new mail ballots, seek approval of new designs, order production of mail ballots, update their own election management systems, train election officials to use the portal, and upload citizen data t- to the portal all before the midterms.

And this will make them have to violate their own constitutional and state laws about administrating elections. In other words, complying with what Trump wants them to do will put them in the jackpot in violating the Constitution. And so she's entered this 14-day stay while she con- continues to consider the preliminary injunction.

we have levels of blocking, levels of injunction that are available to federal judges. Administrative stays last a few hours, temporary restraining orders a couple of weeks, preliminary injunctions, and then permanent injunctions. And the difference is both temporal, time, the length of time they last, but the elements are about the same.

Are you going to win? What is the likelihood you're gonna prevail on the merits of your case at the end of the case? You have to look now and project ahead. Irreparable harm, inadequate remedy at law, the balance of equities tips in your favor. These are the elements that are analyzed by the court. She also ordered under penalty of perjury on page 11, because you can't trust the federal government, she says, "Defendants must, within 24 hours after receiving service of this order, provide written notice of this order to the Postal Service and their employees and notify them they are required to comply with this order under penalty of contempt, and file on the docket a copy of that notice so I know that it was done."

No trust. There's no trust of the Department of Justice or the Postal Service or any branch of the Trump administration at all.

what the court did gave the administration a win that is hopefully temporary and hopefully superficial, but it's a win nonetheless, and the court's intervention reinforced the president's deeply dangerous and destabilizing campaign against absentee ballots as well as the integrity of elections.

And it allowed the administration to claim a, quote, "win" for this wildly illegal executive order which purports to give the president authority over elections that he does not have at a time when the president is laying the groundwork for undermining confidence in elections and questioning the results of an election.

And a win, even a temporary one, on this executive order has the potential to move the Overton window- Yeah ... on the president's authority over elections, the integrity of our elections, et cetera. And as we talked about when we talked with Rick, in this respect, the Supreme Court's actions in this case are, I think, deeply analogous to what they did in birthright citizenship- Right

where there, too, in the court's first encounter with a wildly illegal executive order, a different one, the court handed the administration a procedural win, saying the lower courts were wrong to block the illegal birthright citizenship executive order via nationwide injunctions. And the idea that the executive branch is somehow injured and irreparably so if it is told that it cannot do something that is wildly illegal is on its own a ridiculous- Yeah

concept. And then you add to that the Supreme Court buying the administration's victim narrative, which emboldens the executive further because it's reinforcing this idea that it's the lower courts, not the president, that are overreaching and out of control. This also buys the administration time to potentially accomplish some of its goals, which in the birthright citizenship case meant buying them time to further destabilize the guarantee of birthright citizenship and manufacture- Yeah

arguments against it. 

Absolutely, and I think we will be, feeling the consequences of that for many years. Yep. Here, the effects may be felt much sooner than that Yes ... because the delay in light of the fast-approaching midterm elections means there is a very real potential to create chaos and uncertainty about how those very elections, and obviously critical elections, will be conducted, which could actually create problems in election administration and certainly could depress turnout.

Although, as Rick has mentioned, and it's important to add, mobilization can respond to these kinds of suppressionary tactics, and so it could be that people respond in ways that overcome whatever suppressive effect these interventions have, but that is not a reason not to be deeply concerned.

Okay, sorry, that was a long kind of ground-laying wind-up. Here is what has happened most recently. So on Thursday night, a Massachusetts district court judge, Judge Talwani, issued a new temporary restraining order. Okay, so this is in the new case filed after the Supreme Court's Monday night ruling, and the new case challenges the Postal Service order itself.

The one that Leah mentioned actually had already been issued by the time the Supreme Court's order came down, but went unmentioned in that order. Okay, so the earlier challenge was to the EO itself. This new challenge is to the order implementing some of the provisions of the executive order, and this new temporary restraining order restrains, blocks the implementation of this rule.

And I think actually there are two cases consolidated before- Yeah ... Judge Talwani, if I'm not mistaken, one brought by a group of states and one by a group of organizations led by the League of Women Voters. So I think that is where we are right now, a temporary restraining order in effect as of Friday afternoon.

As you mentioned, there's a great write-up at the Election Law Blog that Rick runs. this district court opinion I thoroughly enjoyed. It was extremely shady. it was like, "Oh, the US Supreme Court in its order suggested that my too early injunction might block the Postal Service from issuing a regulation.

Nope, didn't do that. also, by the way, guys, you didn't even mention the regulation that you..." anyways, loved that. So that is the current state of affairs, and I think it's safe to say there's a lot of uncertainty because we're not sure what the Supreme Court will do here, creating this weird Schrödinger's executive order situation where the ostensible rules governing the upcoming midterm elections are changing and still might be changing by the hour.

there was a period when the executive order was reportedly in effect, and the Postal Service announced it was. Yeah. And then it wasn't, and who knows, maybe it will be again. And before the district court issued this subsequent order blocking the Postal Service regulation, North Carolina said it had submitted its mail ballots to the Postal Service to comply with the new Trump rules for the November elections.

Again, teeing up the conversation you'll hear later between me and Governor Cooper about how the Supreme Court's anti-democratic hijinks are really influencing, how democracy and elections work on the ground in the upcoming midterms. And I think Justice Jackson also wrote a dissent.

Justice Sotomayor wrote one, too. And I think Justice Jackson really summed it up perfectly when she wrote in her dissent, quote, "In the end, what makes today's," that is the Supreme Court's ruling, "so off-base is the Court's lack of situational awareness regarding this equitable judgment. It treats the government's stay application as if the whole point is merely to demonstrate that the plaintiff state's claims are not justiciable.

Taking its eye off the ball, the majority misses the government's actual objective: to secure our imprimatur for its effort to foment chaos ahead of the November elections." End quote. 

Yeah. it just brushes away some of the kind of procedural and legalistic overlay that a case- Yeah ... like this often comes wrapped in, and you're just like, "This is what is happening.

This is what the government is trying to do, and this is what is at stake," and I really appreciated that. Yeah. Completely. 

so we have no idea what the next couple of days or weeks will hold. there, I think, is a very real and wildly concerning possibility that the Court may have put elections between a rock and a hard place.

So initially, the Supreme Court said the challenges to the executive order were brought too early, but now we have a new challenge, and they can't possibly take the off-ramp of, there's no rule to challenge, and there's no actual injury." And that, I think, means there's a very real possibility the Court will say this subsequent challenge is too late, meaning too close to the election under the Supreme Court's lawless Purcell case and principle, which forbids federal courts, at least in theory, at least when the Supreme Court feels like enforcing it, from changing election rules too close to an election.

forbids federal courts from changing rules in a way that makes the election actually democratic and expands- Correct ... ballot access and voting rights. That's right. They are

meaning to prevent it- Changing in constricting ways Exactly, from constricting it Absolutely fine. Forgive me. That is actually- Yeah ... the correct definition of the Purcell principle, and- P 

law. P 

law ... obviously, right? Then, and what is so chilling about it is that you- If they are faithful to their own lawless principle, there is a real chance that they allow this wildly illegal executive order to go into effect, not because they can bring themselves with a straight face to say- Yeah

the president has this power. I actually don't think a majority of them even could do that, although two or three of them I'm sure could. but they might just say, it's just there's this principle out there, and, the, the order is there. Federal courts can't do anything to change it now," even though the order is the thing that would be changing the status quo, obviously.

but, I don't know. This is a very scary state of affairs. And even separate and apart from what might happen, when this case goes back up to SCOTUS, as it surely will, the original per curiam order that we were just talking about also contains some passages that might signal that some parts of the executive order might actually be substantively okay, including the threat of criminal investigation and prosecution of state and local officials.

So here is a concerning quote: "The injunction purports to forbid the attorney general to implement the president's enforcement priorities as to those same states." Again, echoes of the court's basically boundless conception of presidential power over law enforcement from Trump versus United States. And yeah, that part, which is on its own super concerning, I think we're only not talking about it much because so much else in the order- is insane. Yes. but even if none of the rest of it goes into effect, that alone would be an enormous problem. 

Yeah, and assuming the order blocking just the Postal Service rule stands or the Supreme Court lets it stand, what happens to other parts of the executive order, like these directives to investigate and prosecute state and local officials?

That is, even if the court says, "Yes, you can challenge this rule," the injunction against it isn't too late, then are they ever gonna allow anyone to challenge the other parts of the executive order? I don't know. 

As you may know by now, Donald Trump has gutted virtually every federal entity that oversees the integrity and the security of both campaigns and elections themselves, including those which are supposed to be overseeing the nation's sensitive computer-based voting systems, at a time when nearly a dozen states have reported evidence of hacking into their public utility systems in recent days, including their public water system infrastructure.

Some of those attacks are suspected of being carried out by Iran or its associates, and yet the Trump administration does not seem to be interested in hardening national cybersecurity around this November's elections. And frankly, neither do the Democrats, who seem to believe that, discussing known vulnerabilities in voting systems somehow feeds Trump's big stop the steal lie And it's a very precarious moment, it seems to me.

After spending roughly six weeks analyzing Dominion Voting Systems used in Puerto Rico's 2024 elections, Mojave Research, a firm, Mojave Research, came back to the Trump administration with findings that the company says startled its researchers, according to a NextGov report over the weekend.

Don't know how it startled them, since so much of what they found had long been known, but the systems they examined contained at least a dozen high or critical severity software vulnerabilities. Passwords were reused, firewalls were disabled, and basic cryptographic protections were poorly implemented, the company said.

And in Puerto Rico, where the company had been contracted by the Trump administration to review voting systems used in that recent elections, the researchers found active cellular hardware modems opened additional pathways into underlying software that was thought to be isolated. You've heard the story, "Oh, these voting machines, these tabulators are never connected to the internet."

the evidence found in Puerto Rico, in any event, suggests otherwise. But despite confirming those vulnerabilities that had been long ago, most of them discovered by other voting system and cy-cybersecurity experts, many of them that we have reported on this show in recent years. Despite all of that, the small cybersecurity firm found no actual evidence in those Puerto Rican systems that any of those weaknesses had actually been exploited, at least in the recent Puerto Rico elections, or that votes had been changed in any way.

The company still, however, wanted more time to be certain. But as its chief technology officer explained over this past weekend at DEF CON's Voting Village in Vegas, that's an annual hackers convention, the White House, after they heard that information about those vulnerabilities, they soon ended Mojave's probe thereafter.

Vulnerabilities, we don't care. Evidence that someone actually changed the results, apparently they care about that, or at least they claim to. As Mojave had prepared to move ahead with their probe, the work was abruptly shut down once it became clear to officials working with the White House out of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, that they were unable to find any evidence of actual manipulation of the system, at least in those Puerto Rican elections, where they used Dominion Voting Systems similar to those used in parts of more than 20 states across the entire battlegrounds a-and across the entire battleground state of Georgia As we've long been reporting, where Republican Secretary Brad Raffensperger has refused for four years now to patch, to apply security patches to those systems, to use the security upgrades that were created by Dominion to patch some of these holes And it was urged by the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that all states, including Georgia, immediately use those patches to secure their systems.

That was four years ago when CISA made that recommendation. Georgia and many other locations have still not done so. And last month, you may recall, though it seems like a year ago, Donald Trump delivered a primetime address to purportedly announce the findings of his years-long probe of the 2020 election, which he continues to claim, without any evidence whatsoever, was stolen from him by Democrats or Joe Biden or the voting machine companies or China or Venezuela or who knows.

Rather than del- detailing any such evidence in his remarks last month, six years after the fact, he simply announced the release of certain previously classified documents and analyses that also, turns out, did not offer e- evidence of a stolen 2020 election, including a report from the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA.

As Susan Greenhalgh, a longtime election integrity, security, and transparency advocate, explained in a press release at the time at the nonpartisan government watchdog FreeSpeechForPeople.org, quote, "A preliminary review of the documents reveals what we expected. There is no evidence of vote manipulation in the 2020 election.

But these documents," she writes, "also expose what we have been warning about for years, that our election systems are poorly secured and much can and should be done to mitigate these vulnerabilities." Specifically, she notes, the CISA report, quote, "debunks the widely held and often repeated notion that voting systems are not at risk to remote attacks because they are supposedly connected, supposedly not connected to the internet."

But she notes the report reveals, quote, "In multiple cases, CISA assessors, gained full network control within hours or days, demonstrating that many state, local, and tribal territor- terri- territory partners remain soft targets incapable of stopping even moderately skilled adversaries." These documents, she notes, illustrate a significantly damaging and corrosive aspect of Donald Trump's big lie that is often overlooked The assertion of false claims that the 2020 election was stolen bred the false counter-narrative that our elections are adequately secured.

Now I had the, honor of interviewing, the, Nick Brown, who's the attorney general of Washington, one of the leaders here of this case, and here's what he had to say, in advance of Judge Talwani.

Although he did tell me that he believed that Judge Talwani would do exactly what she did, which was to enter that emergency injunction on, Thursday night. Here's my interview with AG Brown. 

Now in your case, on the merits 

about the rulemaking, you'll get an order out of Judge Talwani, so will the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts and the ACLU.

That'll come up to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, I guess on an expedited track- ... and back to the Supreme Court and sometime in September. What do you think they're gonna do? 

first I would start by, as you were going through that, it's just a good reminder that we would benefit from having more judges on our Supreme Court with trial judge experience, who actually know what happens at a district court level and have been there and done that.

'cause it was a good reminder of just the absurdity of it. the court did have to rule based on when the challenge was filed and the status of the process then. I cannot imagine that we lose on the substance of this case. it would be directly contrary to the explicit words of the, Constitution and all sorts of precedent, because we control our elections.

Congress obviously can implement laws to amend various portions of the elections, the timing and such, but the president certainly cannot via executive order, and that is what he is attempting to do. And so it would be quite absurd, for the Supreme Court to rule against the states. 

And similarly, I just had in the last 24 hour- 24 hours Attorney General Rob Bonta of California, who's the lead, his state is the lead plaintiff in the case, on with me, and here's what he had to say about this issue making a round trip back to the United States Supreme Court in the next week.

Play it. How quickly do you get back to the United States Supreme Court, and what do you think they're gonna do? They've, this is the second time now they've taken on Donald Trump's attempts to screw with mail-in 

ballots. Yeah, the federal government probably is eager to get back to the United States Supreme Court, but I just...

I think this is an open, shut ca- an open and shut case, Michael. It's, there's a, a, a clause of the US Constitution that's right on point that, that governs the issue, just like in birthright citizenship. In birthright citiz- citizenship it was the citizenship clause, which, showed that the executive order of the president trying to undermine, the components of that clause, were unlawful.

And here it's the elections clause which says that the states, and to a degree Congress, determine the manner of our elections. This determine how they are administered and how they occur. Not the president and not the United States Postal Service. So the president and the United States Postal Service are trying to take over a, a key component of our elections across this country, vote by mail, and the elections clause of the US Constitution doesn't allow them to do that.

I think it's very clear. you're right that the US Supreme Court's decision earlier th- this week was procedural and procedural only. It just dealt with the timing, but the substance, and in that order, that emergency docket order by the US Supreme Court, they went out of their way to say, "We are not addressing the merits.

We're not addressing the legality of the underlying substance of the conduct of, the president and the US Postal Service." Time, they said time will tell. 

I was just gonna say they were so cavalier and smug, though. Time will tell. Time is the thing we don't have. Now, it's a very odd Supreme Court that we're dealing with here.

Because when they issued their order on Monday, they said that the states were too early and therefore they were gonna be dismissed on technical grounds, with the ability to come right back once the Federal Post Office issued its final ruling. But by Monday, the Federal Post Office, the, the Postal Service had issued its final ruling the Friday before.

And so there was a lot made of that. In fact, the judge said, I don't think we can assume that the United States Supreme Court knew about the final order." And they kept talking about it in their... They kept talking in their order about there is, no, final order of the post office. It's, they ha- they, they wrote their entire majority decision six to three to kick out the states under the assumption there was no order.

So I asked Mark Elias, they, how did they not know the order came out on Friday when they wrote the opinion on Monday? He said, "Oh, no, they probably knew about it," but he has his own opinion, of which I agree with. Play the clip. 

I suspect that they had gotten it written and agreed to by the end of last week, and then were probably taken by surprise that late last Friday night, the US Postal Service then finalized their rule.

And so by the time they got to Monday morning, were ready to issue the opinion, they were not going to go back and renegotiate with each other changes to that document, and they were just like, "Ah, screw it. We're just issuing it," even though you are exactly right that it reads as a bit of a non-sequitur because it keeps talking about how the Postal Service has not, yet issued a rule, and the Postal Service could issue a rule that's different than what Donald Trump wanted, and we're all scratching our head and being like, "The Postal Service just issued their rule two days ago, on Friday night."

So I think that's what probably happened there. 

Now, all Trump wants to do is sow chaos. He doesn't really believe that the post office can, and the states can actually implement this, this executive order in time for the midterms. Putting aside whether it's constitutional or unconstitutional, he just wants to create chaos, and sow seeds of discontent, and be able to challenge, the midterms and the r- election results, 'cause he says he's on the ballot.

"I'm on the ballot," he said. Okay, you're on the ballot. We agree with that. and then he was asked by a reporter, how are you ever going to implement this? And watch his gibberish, in which he quickly talks about, no, they can do it, 'cause I once played golf in North Carolina. Wait for that non-sequitur.

Play the clip. 

Mr. President, the Supreme Court earlier this week ruled on mail-in ballots, and there are states like North Carolina that have ballots that go out next week. How are states supposed to implement this in time? 

they're in- they're 

irrelevant. North Carolina's great. it's a great place.

I won it golf three times, and they do some mail-in ballots. But basically, they ruled on the legitimacy and the way we wanna make them legitimate, and, it was a great ruling for the Republican- 

so just to give a little more context, that vulnerability in Dominion's system that Marilyn, found a very easy way to exploit, is a consequence of Dominion shoddy engineering and putting in place, a, an ineffective randomi- m- random number- Generator. Yeah ... 

generator in the system. It's supposed to create a random number that's printed on the ballot, and it's not supposed to be traceable back to any specific time that the ballot is cast. 

researchers at, University of Michigan and Auburn University, Alex Halderman, Drew Springall, a- and as well as Braden Kleman uncovered this problem in 2022.

They wrote a very, well-respected research paper about it- ... and they tried to alert, relevant agencies and election officials about it. Dominion, did respond by making a software update, w- or softwar- another, another version of their software- ... a, a newer version that included a competent random number generator.

But, the Secretary of State of Georgia, as Marilyn told you, did not want to apply the patch as, and a lot of other election officials have basically just hand-waved it away and said, "This is too complicated. You have to be a Princeton-trained researcher to be able to make any sense of it. Not ordinary people are not gonna be able to understand this.

It's not really a problem." And Marilyn said that's not a good enough answer- ... especially in the, the ages of AI, as you mentioned. She was able to apply ChatGPT and uncover how a lot of people were able to vote. and this is- And she, we should 

underscore, 

she had- and this was also done- 

Yeah.

l- let me just underscore. She has, m- no experience in, computer coding, reading source code. She didn't have access to that. She didn't need access. All she needed was the public records and a chatbot, essentially, to be able to figure out how pretty much everyone in the state of Georgia voted.

So much for the secret ballot 

And so much for the idea that this is a very comp- complex problem and only, very dedicated and, resource intense- 

... 

geniuses would be able to figure out. And Marilyn said, "I'm just gonna ask AI." And AI did it for her. this is a problem for, specifically mostly for Georgia.

There are other states that could, have this problem, but it... Georgia's specifically, susceptible because it does make its ballot images and a lot of information public, which is a good thing. We're not trying to say they shouldn't be doing that. We're saying that the vendor shouldn't be making their, crappy systems- with shoddy engineering and using bad rand- random number generators, and they should, And when they are identified, then the s- the, the, the election officials in the secretary of state's office should pursue the updated, corrected product. Instead, they have not. and so there's...

This is a, a big problem that, exists currently in Georgia, but the problem, as you mentioned, is that we're seeing is that, election officials and elected officials on both sides of the aisle are trying to ignore these problems as well as the revelations in the documents that were released, after Donald Trump's- 

bizarre wh- Oval Office speech about election security. 

We will get to those 'cause there's still a few more items that have come up that I'm trying to make sense of here, in, maybe related in this question, to voting system security, but maybe not. and the fact that we don't really know for sure, that feels to me like one of the problems here.

There was a very interesting result last week out of the primary elections in Michigan where a candidate, a Republican candidate by the name of Amir Hasan, was endorsed by Donald Trump for a US House seat in a pretty competitive district, with a sitting, Democrat currently in that seat. This Trump-endorsed, candidate, Amir Hasan, lost that Republican party by, or that Republican primary by about 20 points, which was unusual in and of itself, but he lost it to a guy named Thomas Smith, who had endorsed a third person in that race when Thomas Smith dropped out of the election weeks earlier.

He hadn't campaigned. He had no campaign website. He had no, money. But he ended up winning over Trump's endorsee in a landslide. Now, many have chalked this up to pure Republican racism in this case. Amir Hasan was Black, formerly a Muslim, though he converted to Christianity, and that is probably what happened here.

why they would vote for someone who was off the ballot rather than the third candidate who that person who had dropped out had actually endorsed, I don't know. But these numbers are strange enough that it sounds akin to some elections we have seen over the years where, an issue or the names of the candidates actually get mixed up in the database, when they're tallied or when they're programmed.

The problem is we would never know about that if that is actually what happened. If the, the candidates were just on the wrong lines, we would never know unless there was some sort of examination of the programming or the ballots, which almost never occurs. How would or how could the public get an answer to a question like that if anybody actually wanted to know that the voting systems tabulated a race like that accurately?

the obvious, the easy and obvious way is to go back and look at the paper ballots, and do a recount of the paper ballots to make sure that they count, that they, align with the computer-generated results to ensure that there wasn't some sort of programming error or bug or something that caused, a miscount.

Because it does happen. we've seen it, we see it with regularity. and the best way, and the most definitive way, is to go back and look at the paper ballots. And everyone says, "Don't worry, we have paper ballots." the paper ballots are only good if you actually go back and look at them.

If you're just going to take the number that is spit out by the computer, then the paper ballots are not serving any purpose. The problem in Michigan is that they, do their audits well, well after the election. I don't think they audit primary ballots, I'd have to go and check- 

as a regular course.

I think, if my memory serves correctly, it's only for, general elections- ... every two years. But they typically do the audit months after certification. So any information that you might find about a misprogrammed ballot scanner is useless later, after the fact- It would be too late

because it's well after certification- Yeah ... and well after somebody might be seated. 

And, Yeah ... and in this case, the guy who had dropped out of the race but ended up winning the race, he won it by, 20 points. So it was not like it was, close enough that there would be, any sort of recount.

In many states you can't even request one, even if you- fear something like that if the, if the final results aren't within a certain, bound. so there is unlikely to be a recount in that race. and I'm not sure how many ballots were cast by BMD, touchscreen ballot marking device, versus hand-marked paper ballot.

But it all just puts, so much smoke into these, systems that it makes it easy, as I see it, for a bad guy like a Donald Trump to come out and make claims that are largely impossible for the public to check, or at least for them to know one way or another. Does that make sense?

Yeah, i- it, the election security community, the computer scientists have long said we need to have affirmative evidence of the election result that's spit out by the computers Before certification in the form of a meaningful audit of the paper ballots, we're not just supposed to be trusting the computers because we know that they have flaws.

And we know that they're vulnerable to manipulation. And in, and even, strong s- computer security systems can be vulnerable to ma- manipulation, but unfortunately every time anyone looks under the hood of these machines- ... they're just aghast at how bad they are, like in the case of Dominion that you mentioned earlier, and we've also, had other experiences with other vendors.

I don't wanna pick on Dominion because I, I think they're all, they all have their problems. Yeah. the problem is that we have a national mindset. We have been caused, to think that we can just trust the m- the computer-generated results through a very effective PR campaign that has been going on, for a long time, well before 2020.

But it really ramped up into a special high gear after 2020 because of Trump's big lie, as I, as I tried to, emphasize in the statement that you read. Yep. That we have fostered this very, very dangerous, mindset that we can't ever question election results, and we can't confront the known vulnerabilities because you'll be labeled a conspiracy theorist.

Yep. Or you're giving credit- credibility to the big lie. And two things ha- are true at the same time. The big lie is not true. Trump's own big reveal of documents show that, and at the same time, our election systems are vulnerable and really need... I- it shouldn't, they should not be trusted without verification.

S- And we need that verification, and we are not demanding it. 

And Finally, Section C, Resistance And Response

When you don't vote, you don't get to the jury and the fate of those in trial. When you don't vote, you don't get to help determine the judge that sits on the bench. So don't tell me you out here hollering Black Lives Matter if you don't vote. Black lives don't matter to you if you don't vote Don't tell me you're mad that Daniel Cameron has not indicted the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor if you don't vote, 'cause you ain't got nothing to do with it.

How dare you not vote? When we don't vote, we dismiss ourselves from being part of leveling the playing field of justice in the United States of America

And thank you very much for that, Reverend Howard John Wesley of the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia. Thank you so much for that. I play clips like that on this podcast, and you've heard them in the past from, Reverend Howard John Wesley because he talks so much sense, and we have to pay heed to what the brother is saying to us.

We cannot afford, dear listener, and welcome to this brand-new edition of The Politicrat. It's the first one of September, on this second day of September. Thank you for being here. We cannot afford to sit here and not participate in voting. It's the most important thing that we have in this country is our vote, and our vote is our voice.

And on this episode, dear listener, I am going to be spending the entire episode, save for maybe a few minutes, talking about what we need to be doing now ahead of the midterms. It is September. We're just two months away exactly tomorrow, exactly two months away from the midterms. November the 3rd is the date for those.

But on this episode, I'm going to be talking to you about the importance of voting early and the importance of voting early in person because that is the reality that we are going to have to face in the midterms. We are gonna have to, in the United States of America, vote early in person. That is what we're going to have to do.

You hear a lot of people who are sitting around and panicking and saying, "Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God," and that does not help us right now. It does not help the panickers. It doesn't help anybody. We have to have solutions, and on this podcast, you will get solutions from me. Of course, you'll get the analysis, but most importantly, you will get solutions because I think it's very clear by now.

We all know what the issue is. We all know who the issue is, and we all know what the issue is and what they are doing to our voting in this country. We know who it is, but we are more in number than they are in number, and we cannot afford to be distracted. And I think the biggest enemy that we have now, you and I, dear listener, is distraction.

It's not even Donald Trump, quite frankly. It's distract- And obviously, he is a huge, enemy in terms of what he's doing to this country, obviously. That is obvious. But I would argue to you, dear listener, that even more than him and even more than these Republicans, the, and the corporate news media, the biggest enemy we have right now is distraction.

We are constantly being distracted, constantly Shiny objects are dangled in front of us every five minutes. We are overloaded with stupid and useless information and trivia, and we are oversaturated with every breaking news alert. And so that's why we're so mentally tired and mentally fatigued most of the time, overwhelmed, filled up with bull and BS and bullshit, and we are so oversaturated and over-sim- stimulated that by the time we try to focus, we can't And that's all by design.

And we need to wake up, stop paying attention to nonsense, stop focusing on Laura Loomer, stop focusing on Taylor Swift or Travis Kelce or any other picayune thing that has nothing to do with whether or not you're gonna be able to put food on your table next year or next month or this month or today or tomorrow Voting is going to go a long way toward determining what kind of gas prices you have.

Voting is going to go a long way toward determining what kind of leaders you have, both locally, on the state level, and actually on the federal level. Voting is key. And I hear it, I get it. There'll be people who, and I've said it myself here, voting is not the only thing. Voting is not the only thing. But you know what?

I'm going to amend my statement for the next two months. Right now, dear listener, voting is the only thing

Voting is the only thing that we must be focusing on right now. Nothing else. Not the Epstein files, not Laura Loomer, not the Democrats with their squabbles, not the Republicans. Our focus must be voting That means being registered to vote. That means checking your voter registration frequently. That means going to the website iwillvote.com and checking your voter registration frequently, at least two or three times a month.

I would say even more than that per month. That means checking out what kind of voter ID, if any, that you need if you live in a state that requires it. That means making sure you register people to vote. That means also educating people about voting and speaking to people that you know or maybe don't know and asking them what they care about in terms of issues and tying the issues they care about to the people that they need to vote for who have an impact on those issues for better or for worse, and have the power to impact those issues and change the situation with those issues and policies that the person you talk to cares about.

That means mobilizing people to vote. That means having a plan in advance of November's midterms. That means bringing people to the polls. That means driving people to the polls. That means having a plan in place now to do that. And that also means, really important here, voting early in person That is what we are all going to have to do

Because what we obviously see now in the news with the United States Postal Service is obviously very concerning. And so we're going to now have to vote early in person. Now, there are maybe a few states that don't have early voting, but most every single state in this country does So I really implore you, dear listener, to take advantage of early voting.

Maybe you are somebody, or maybe you know somebody who usually votes on election day itself. There is a tradition of voting on election day among a great many millions of people in this country. But what I would say, particularly in the case of this particular election coming up on November 3rd, 2026, is to vote in advance.

Vote early.

So if we think about, the abortion access fight, right? There was a particular conversation I had with one of the, a Georgia-based, organizer who was talking about the abortion fight and talking about it in relation to, civic engagement, and was saying that there are ways in which the abortion fight- if we center abortion, we can actually talk to other people in very specific ways.

If we talk about abortion, we can talk about the court system with men. We can talk about, there are all these other things that actually rise to the surface if we talk about things that matter to women that we might not have actually paid attention to. And so I think that feels really important.

But there's also ways in which women organize that feels important as well. There are ways in which women do the work of bringing people together that feels important as well. When I organize in spaces with other women and that are women-centered and women-led, I find that I know there's gonna be food at the meeting.

I know we gonna make sure people are fed. That's important, right? That's important- ... to meet people's basic needs. I know that there's gonna be childcare at that meeting because if I want, a woman who works 9:00 to 5:00 and who is directly impacted by what's happening to show up at my meeting, I need to make sure that she might- she has a space for her kids to show up as well.

So the particular ways that we organize that make space for more people and that make space for us to actually build a mass movement. 

you listed some barriers, implicitly, to women participating at the center. What else is out there that's standing in the way that we need to take care of?

Misogyny inside of our movement. It feels like really number one is that, we live in the world. The misogyny is in the air. It's in the air we breathe. It's in the atmosphere that we were all raised in, and so none of us are immune from it. And so we have to be constantly fighting against it, even inside of the movement.

We have seen, we have been in places, I am at a women-centered organization with women leadership and women of color leadership in particular, and there have definitely been, times where we have been in spaces and we're like, "Oh, no one's hearing us," but when we send our male colleague into that space, then the message lands.

And so that, the misogyny that exists inside of our movement, we have to be doing battle against. We just have to do it. whether or not you decide that, you're gonna be a women-led or women-centered organization, we still have to be fighting the misogyny if we plan to build a free country, right?

If we plan to fight authoritarianism, we have, we just have to be doing it. And so I think that is one of the, the key barriers that I find is being able to actually be in space and be heard But also the misogyny that lends itself to the issues that are important to women, to gender justice issues being seen as side issues, being seen as not fundamental.

There was, so much back and forth right around this last, presidential election around, what was going to be the core issue that we're gonna take up? Was it gonna be democracy or was it gonna be abortion access? And we're like, these are not separate issues. These are not distinct and one-- and abortion access is not a side issue.

Reproductive rights and reproductive justice is not a side issue to democracy. And so we have to not face these things as, as if the things that matter to women, the things that are gendered are something over here, because gender justice matters for men, too. Patriarchy impacts us all. And so we have to be fighting against that kind of misogyny that is inherent inside of our movements.

I think of course, yeah, like I said, of course there is, access to childcare. I was talking to one of our organizers, who's been leading and doing a ton of work around data centers and data center resistance work in Texas in particular, and she noted, she said, "What I realized is that so many of the people who are in this fight with me are moms."

And I don't think that's a thing that people are noticing or are paying attention to because, they are paying attention to the ways in which these data centers will impact their children and impact, impact their children's future. And so-- but what she also noticed was that they feel apprehensive about stepping in because they don't feel prepared.

They don't feel like they have the training. They don't feel like they have the skill set. And so what are we offering in terms of leadership development for people on the ground that is accessible, that does not require you to have gone to grad school and got a master's degree in this thing, but that makes space for everyday people, everyday women to come into the movement.

thanks for that. I honestly do really appreciate it. I appreciate the work of the Women's March greatly. It's a source of constant, inspiration for me. you-- that was very useful analysis. I wanna, though, tap your, expertise and talk a little bit about strategic nonviolent action in decentralized movements.

over the last several months, the Women's March has organized and participated in several strategic nonviolent actions. Can you talk about which movements have inspired the creativity we've seen across your base? 

Yeah. oh my gosh. I would say w- we had been, one of the things that, that we really have been talking about as a team a lot is, Serbia and other European movements and in particular the use of humor and ridicule as a key part of how we can do strategic non, non-violence.

How do we bring that sort of humor and ridicule into, to counter this strong man, authoritarian, narrative and propaganda? And so we definitely have been looking, to those movements. We've been talking a lo- for me, I'm always looking at movements on the Afri- on the African continent, looking at Kenya, looking at, a- and of course, you know For myself and for some of my, a number of my colleagues, we are like students of the Civil Rights Movement.

So of course, we're looking at, at what we saw in the Civil Rights Movement. We're students of the Combahee River Collective in particular, and other sort of, feminist traditions here. We've been looking at, of course, Latin America and what we've seen the f- Latin American feminists do.

So we've been really leaning on, th- those traditions and trying to be really intentional about connecting to those sh- those, movements as well, so we can be constantly in conversation and in learning. we have been looking at the My Body My Voice, movement of, campaign that's been happening across the European Union, which is the sort of first multi-country policy around abortion access, that just moved through a European, Parliament this pa- earlier this year in March, I think.

And so we've been... There's so many movements that we've really been paying attention to. We've been paying attention to Brazil, and really learning from, from comrades and colleagues in Brazil. So many places that we've really been paying attention to, in terms of strategic nonviolence.

And I think, we've spent a lot of time in Mexico, talking to and learning from Mexican feminists, and looking at the ways in which sort of the, the fight around matricide has, shaped the feminist movement and how they've connected that and grown that to talk about abortion access.

There's so many places for us to lean into and learn from, both historically and contemporarily, and we've been trying to like, be in all the rooms and all the spaces with all the people so- to soak up all the things because, I was in a conversation with some folks talking about, doing work in Brazil, and there was-- they were talking about how, authoritarian governments, authoritarians move globally.

they have the intention to connect to each other and to build together globally. and in order to fight authoritarianism, we have to be doing the same thing. And so that's a lot of what we've been trying to do is say, "What are y'all seeing in Brazil? What are you seeing you know, in, in Canada?"

We've been talking to folks in Canada. We've just been really doing the work of trying to connect to feminists in as many places as possible. So we've been inside of, the sort of, feminist peace frameworks that people have been building here and abroad, and just really soaking up everything.

the US Postal Service, let me just remind you of what the news was, 'cause you may not be aware. The US Postal Service, dear listener, is acting on behalf of Donald Trump, according to a USPS whistleblower, who in, in a communique or in confidence to the senator out of Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, said that the US Postal Service is designing mechanisms now in a very hurried way, a very rushed way, to implement the things that Donald Trump wants the Postal Service to do in terms of denying millions of people their mail-in ballots.

And these are millions of registered voters. These aren't millions of people who aren't voting or aren't registered. These are registered voters And there's some mechanism they're doing that's gonna expel a whole lot of ballots if one little thing is wrong. And this mechanism is not fully tested. It's being rushed in.

And so this whistleblower detailed all this, and then Richard Blumenthal, the senator out of Connecticut, US senator out of Connecticut yesterday, revealed this to everybody, and then the newspapers and all the press put it out there too. New York Times did, and Washington Post did, the Associated Press did.

And there's a 26-page letter, which I'm not gonna read to you now, that Richard Blumenthal wrote to the postmaster general, who is no longer Louis DeJoy. He left. it's, I think, Charles Steiner or something Steiner, or whoever the hell it is. he's the one who is now the US, postmaster general for the US Postal Service.

And so the senator out of Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal, wrote to him of a list of concerns and all of this because, again, as you know by now, last week a federal court judge said that this executive order that Donald Trump put out there regarding mail-in voting was something that was not constitutional, and he ordered that all of these plans with the Postal Service needed to be stopped immediately.

And it was a temporary block for two weeks. Now, there apparently is going to be a complete and full injunction, meaning that there is absolutely no time limit to the injunction. But this whistleblower for the US Postal Service, and thank you to that whistleblower, whoever you are. I know it's...

Obviously you're anonymous. Said that despite this court order being put in place by the judge, you still have the US Postal Service still rushing ahead to do what they have been told they cannot do So you have the criminality afoot here. And so What I am saying to you here, dear listener, if you live, dear listener, in one of these states that is a mail-in voting state, and I'll go and read those out to you, there are at least Certainly I'd say at least seven states that do mail-in voting almost exclusively.

now there are some states in that bunch that I'm gonna read, as I've already told you, California, that also allow in-person voting. You can pick one or the other. You may still get a, a ballot sent to you by mail if you're a registered voter in California, but of course you have the option of either utilizing that ballot that you get in the mail or going to your voting precinct locally.

You can do one of the o- one or the other, but you cannot do vote ob- you cannot do v- both, obviously. You cannot vote twice, obviously. That's a crime. So please be careful and make sure that you only vote once, okay? so even in Ca- California, you can choose one or the other, right? So it's not an exclusively all mail-in voting state technically because you can still go to the polls instead of going to vote by mail.

So that's what I wanna say. But the seven states are Washington State, Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Vermont. Those are the seven states in the country where their elections are conducted by mail. Now, again, as I said, here in California, you have a choice between either voting by mail or going to the polls.

Now, there may be other states out of those seven where you can also do the same. I do know, however, for a fact, and I forget, I forgot the eighth state, Hawaii, is also the, a state that conducts its elections by mail, and I think those are all voting by mail exclusively. Now, but of those eight states, I'll read them out again to you.

Washington State, Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Vermont, and Hawaii. I know for a fact that Hawaii and Oregon are all mail-in voting, which means that there is no in-person voting as far as I know. Now, there could be exceptions for that. I know that in Washington State there are, there may be some exceptions.

Certainly in Oregon actually there could be some exceptions as well. but those eight states, those are the states for people who get mail-in v- ballots. I want you to call the county Board of Elections, whatever your county is in your state. Now, Oregon I think has 36 counties. California here has 58 counties, right?

but what I want you to do, whichever county you live in and whichever state of those states that you may live in, I want you to contact your county clerk for the Board of Elections in your county, whomever that person might be, whether it's your clerk, whether it's your director of elections in your county, and I want you to look them up online, make a phone call to them, and ask them what they are doing regarding voting for the midterms in light of the Postal Service actions that have been happening Ask them if there will be an opportunity to vote in person in their county.

that's what I want you to do. Ask them if there is going to be an opportunity for you to vote in person in your county. That is what I would like you to do, okay? Ask them, I'm gonna say it a third time, ask them if there will be an opportunity for you to vote in person In your county and to vote early in your county.

That is what I want you to do. Because right now you wanna call your local county clerk, your county clerk of the Board of Elections so that you can understand where it is because, listen, I'll tell you this right now. I actually contacted, someone in Oregon. I'm not gonna give their name out because I- they didn't know I was gonna do this, so I'm not gonna give their name.

But I called an office in Oregon, I'm not gonna say which one of the counties, but I called one of the county clerk's offices in the state of Oregon, and they were enormously helpful. And I'm going to be having a second conversation with one of the c- with a clerk actually, of one of these counties, and it will be a conversation I intend to have soon.

I will report back to you as to the outcome of it about whether what this particular county in Oregon, is going to do. We don't know yet. In fact, I can share at least this, of the conversation I had today with one of the personnel at the county clerk in, office in question, which I won't reveal.

that person was very helpful and did tell me, that as of right now, there is no order to do anything different with voting in the state of Oregon. As per the secretary of state's office that has told the clerk's office I spoke to, that right now there is no, different plan of action regarding voting by mail.

That's what I've been told exclusively today by one of the county clerk's offices there in Oregon. So for those of you listening to this who are in Oregon or if you know someone in Oregon, right now there is no, as of now on September the 2nd, 2026, there is no, directive to do anything different regarding mail-in voting in light of the situation with the United States Postal Service and what the whistleblower at the USPS revealed yesterday.

and, certainly or rather on August the 31st, and then yesterday was disclosed to everybody by Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

when you talk about learning, I know you've been doing a lot of experimentation. what have you been learning from that process? 

We've been learning that people are ready for more, ... is one of the things that feels really, There's an appetite for people to do more, and that more looks a lot of different ways.

So people really bit on walkouts, when we were doing walkouts in January. N- now, of course, there's a lot of fear and a lot of learning that we have to be in, and that was one of the things that we noticed. But for the folks who were already taking action in marches, it didn't, it wasn't a stretch for them to then say, "Okay, now we gotta step it up," and walkouts feel important, right?

And so I think that's one of the things that we're learning. But we also are learning that we have to be in the work of developing people's leadership. So we can't just say, "Hey, we call for walkouts. Go walk out." We have to actually prepare folks. we have to actually be training folks and giving them information and materials.

and it, that, that part is really important because again, people are like, "Okay, I am a NICU nurse. What should I do? How can I be in solidarity? I'm a teacher. What should I do? How can I be in solidarity? How can I, work this with my union?" there's so many questions, and we've been able to cultivate all these questions and share them with, with our peers, share them with the folks doing May Day, share them with, w- with all, with all of our folks.

And so w- we've seen, Another thing that we've seen is this trajectory, in the research. We partnered with Dana Fisher to do some research of our folks who participated in the walkouts in January, and she's also been doing that, so some research with the folks which is, who have participated in the No Kings actions.

And we've seen this trajectory that, actually, you know, that first Women's March Kickstarted the thing. and those folks continue to engage and continue to take action in lots of different ways. And so some of that is electoral, but a lot of that is that they keep coming out to marches, they keep...

they participate in walkouts, they wanna learn, they wanna train, they wanna build. Another thing that we're learning in terms of people wanting to do more is that people actually want to build the skill to do things locally. we've been offering tons of trainings, and one of the things that, one of the ones that, that people really glommed onto and really wanted to be inside of is mutual aid.

there's so much mutual aid and so many mutual aid efforts growing. And so giving people the tools, and letting them go has been such a, a beautiful process to witness. And actually also offering people a space to then, even though they're building on their own, in their own communities, in their own networks, offering them a space for them to come together with other folks who are doing similar work and to share peer to peer, and to learn peer to peer about, what are we missing?

What did y'all do that worked that we can try? Here's what we did that didn't work. and so offering them those spaces, be it, in the comments on social media, or in the comments on the trainings, or in the app that we cr- that we s- that we set up, has been really fu- fruitful because people not only want to take action, people are in it because they wanna take action, but they also really want connection.

People don't wanna feel isolated. and people felt very isolated. So many of our folks told us after the election, after the presidential, that they felt isolated, and that they were coming out to actions because they wanted to feel like they weren't alone. And so that's another piece of this, is that we still do need those mass actions, those mass mobilizations.

and I know they get a ton of critique, but they are a way for people who have never been politicized before to find community, to find other folks who are questioning what they're seeing. And so some people might be at a place where the mass mobilization is not the thing for them, and they wanna escalate, and that's great, and that's important.

But we actually, what we're learning more than anything is that we need all the tools in our toolbox, and we need to be preparing people and engaging people to use all the tools in our toolbox, all the tactics towards what our collective vision 

that's really helpful. I, throughout my many years of organizing, usually lean into rage.

But I've learned that there's a kind of loneliness epidemic in the US. 

Yes. 

And, tapping into that, creating a sense of belonging for people, a community they can turn to that makes meaning of their lives might be the better way to go, right? yeah. And 

we find that even with our folks in like rural communities and the small towns especially, will say, I didn't even know there were other feminists until somebody organized a march and I showed up, and now we have a book club and we meet, regularly and we, we have a f- we're learning together about what feminism is.

and I didn't know because I live in this, in, in rural Michigan, that there were other people who thought like me, who felt like me." And so that is really important. If we're going to build at the scale that we wanna build, to build the kind of mass movement that is required to defeat authoritarianism, we have to lean into connection and into hope just as much as we lean into rage.

That's going to be it for today.

As always, keep the comments coming in.

You can record - and re-record - a voice message by tapping the link in the show notes,

You can reach us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01,

or simply email me to [email protected]

The additional sections of the show included clips from;

The NPR Politics Podcast

Straight White American Jesus

THE DAILY BLAST

Legal AF

Strict Scrutiny

The BradCast

The Politicrat

and The Anti-Authoritarian Podcast

Further details are in the show notes.

Thanks to everyone for listening, thanks to Deon and Erin for their production work for the show, thanks to Amanda for all of her work behind the scenes, thanks to our editors and thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member, purchasing gift memberships, or making one-time donations.

You'll find the link to support us in the show notes along with links to join our Patreon and Discord communities for free where you can also continue the discussion. And don't forget to follow us on all the social media platforms as I prepare to relaunch our social media strategy!

So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, DC, my name is Jay! And this has been the Best of the Left podcast, coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from bestoftheleft.com.

Air Date: 9-2-2026

Today we look at how public health is being gutted by a system that took ordinary parental worry and organized, radicalized and monetized it into an anti-science "wellness" movement large enough to seize real political power.

Full Show Notes

Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Today we look at how public health is being gutted by a system that took ordinary parental worry and organized, radicalized and monetized it into an anti-science "wellness" movement large enough to seize real political power.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 55 minutes today include

Takesâ„¢ by Jamelle Bouie

Zeteo

Radio Atlantic

The Daily Show

TED Talks Daily

Throughline

and Fondation Brocher

Then, in the additional, Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in 4 sections;

Section A, THE CURRENT DAMAGE

Section B, HOW WE GOT HERE

Section C, WHY IT WORKS

And Section D, RESPONDING TO THE MOMENT

And now, on to the show.

This week, Donald Trump signed an executive order purporting to change the childhood vaccination schedule, a big sop to RFK Jr., notorious anti-vaxxer who sincerely believes that we'd be better off if disease just ripped through the human population, killing those who could not survive and leaving the healthy to be stronger and fitter.

If that sounds like eugenics, that's because it is. That's what MAHA is, a eugenics program The idea is that vaccines and public health and medical interventions prevent us from experiencing disease and thus getting stronger. And if you happen to be killed by the disease, in RFK's view, you just weren't gonna live anyway.

You were sick and destined to die. 

The average American who died from COVID had 3.8 chronic diseases. So what was really killing them? It was almost impossible for COVID to kill a healthy person. It was killing people who were already sick. there's, there's only three deaths from measles in 20 years, and they're all people with, with extreme complications.

And in fact- That's how you die from measles, because of the complications of it. 

Yeah. It, yeah, it's people who are already sick. 

But this isn't a video about RFK Jr.'s medical views or the way that Trump himself has indulged this kind of thinking his entire life with his obsession with genes and good breeding.

Don. He's a great guy, and his fiancee, Betina. Good, Betina, good. No, my son's got the greatest genes in history. I'm a big believer in genes, by the way, I will tell you. 

No, this video is about the fact that Trump was basically completely incoherent during this entire event. y- check it out for yourself.

I've seen proof of it, where they have a vaccination that looks like the size of a, a bottle of soda poured into a little child's, body, and bad things happen in many ca- in too many cases 'cause, this is an explosion. This is an epidemic. 

If he wasn't incoherent and babbling absolute nonsense, he was sleeping.

There's an interesting dichotomy in coverage of the Trump White House. On the one hand, if you read insider takes on the administration, deep reporting of the going-ons in the White House, you get the impression that Trump is some kind of savvy operator. He's constantly playing people against each other, who has plots among plots, who is clearly looking far ahead of everyone around him.

But then you just observe Trump in real life. You observe Trump in the White House. You observe Trump at events. You watch him stumble and fumble and slur. You watch him talk nonsense, barely able to communicate. You watch his inability to articulate really anything intelligent or even really describe what's happening in his own government.

You watch him blunder into disastrous wars and struggle to remove himself from them. You watch him make obvious mistakes, disastrous mistakes that threaten to undermine both the nation's interests and the wellbeing of ordinary people. I think the conventions of political journalism demand that the President of the United States, the person who holds the highest office in the land, it demands that person is savvy in some sense, is intelligent in some sense, does have some command of the world around him I think the conventions of political journalism make it difficult to see the truth of Donald Trump, which is that we elected an insane person to be president.

We elected someone who is barely capable of complex thought as we understand it. We elected someone who has no business running a lemonade stand, much less a large, complex bureaucracy on top of a powerful federal government. We elected someone who I wouldn't trust to check my mail, much less have his finger on the button that could destroy the world.

To think that the American people did that, to think that is the reality of the situation, raises difficult questions about the country, difficult questions about our capacity for self-government, difficult questions about the people who surround this guy, who feed his desires, who cater to his whims, who use his power for their own ends.

Better to not deal with any of that and just pretend that he is in some sort... Better to just not deal with any of that and pretend instead that he is in some sense a normal president. But he isn't, and we can all see it. I don't deny that Trump has some kind of animal instinct for people's weaknesses. I don't deny that he's in some sense a gifted politician.

He was able to leverage his celebrity to become President of the United States. But it's important not to read too much into the guy. He is the ultimate narcissist, a man of bottomless ego who only cares about receiving as much praise as possible and lining his pockets with as much money as he can steal from others.

There's no grand plan here or ideological vision. He has an insatiable will to power which drives his authoritarian impulses, but that's all about, again, his desire to satisfy his most base impulses. And there are surely ideologues around him who turn his resentments and bigotries into policies to harm people.

But as for the guy himself, he's not a savvy operator. He's not a political savant. He's an old man in decline, a mad king who might honestly take the rest of us with him. And while there are straightforward reasons to explain how and why he won, it is a stain on this country that he is where he is.

Mehdi, we wrote a lot of the book before- ... 2025, and we knew we were gonna be in for a rollercoaster ride. uh, I think Michael and I have been talking. I think in some aspects it's even, worse than they imagined in terms of the dismantling of our pandemic preparedness and vaccine eco-struc...

e- infrastructure. And of course, Michael can talk about, what's happening on the climate change front. 

Just generally, Mi- Mike, how long, how bad has it been? 

Yeah, thanks, Mehdi, it's good to be with you. And just to carry Peter's analogy forward, it's like the, the car at the end of the rollercoaster has broken free from the rest of the rollercoaster, and it's gone down a cliff.

That's how it feels right now. we had no idea that things could get as bad as quickly as they have gotten, whether it is the anti-science policies on COVID-19, on vaccination, which Peter can speak to, with RFK Jr. now the head of- Yeah ... the, Secretary of Health and Human Services, or the deconstruction essentially of all of the environmental progress, including climate progress, of the past several decades over the course of just a few months.

We are seeing the disintegration of all of the environmental progress that has been made through Republican and Democratic administrations in the past. W- 

why did you choose, Peter, to write this book now? you said you wrote it before 2025, before Donald Trump is in office. Even before he comes to office, you both clearly wanted to sound the alarm on the dangers of anti-science.

what made you wanna do that? 

we realized, that this was truly an existential threat. when Michael and I were comparing notes and it's pretty clear that the two major, threats to humanity right now are pandemic threats and climate change, and actually the two are related.

One of the reasons we're seeing the rise in, viruses transmitted from bats, like Ebola and coronavirus, is because of, shifting bat patterns and climate change, one of the reasons- 

Yeah ... 

we're seeing the rise in mosquito-borne illnesses, especially in Southern Europe, and Texas and the Gulf Coast, like dengue and others.

But it's clear now that there's a third leg to that tripod, and that third leg is, this whole anti-science disinformation ecosystem that's now blocking our ability to respond to it, and that becomes every bit as important as the two other ones. 

And Mike, in the book, you break down the five principle forces of anti-science.

You refer to them as the five, Ps, the plutocrats, the petrostates, the professionals, the propagandists, and the press. just briefly explain for those who haven't yet read the book what role those Ps play in promoting anti-science. 

Yeah, thanks. I'm on a, a sucker for alliteration. and, that's what we try to do here.

In enumerating, what we do see is the five, great threats, to, a sustainable existence on this planet. the plutocrats, of course, who are funding a lot of the disinformation infrastructure, right-wing, front groups, organizations that attack science, attack scientists. the petrostates, bad state actors like Russia and Saudi Arabia, we would've said in the past, that, have funded sort of climate change denialism.

But now, we have to include the United States as a petrostate because its policies are currently dictated by the fossil fuel industry, for whom Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are essentially now a rubber stamp. And then there are the propagandists and the pros. those are the folks out there who are spreading the misinformation, the disinformation, often on social media that has been weaponized by plutocrats like Elon Musk to promote that misinformation and disinformation.

And then the press, and of course we're talking about the right-wing press, the conservative press, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the sort of Murdoch media empire and other conservative media outlets. But- These days, every bit as problematic are many of the legacy media outlets- Yep

which we take to task, like the Washington Post and The New York Times, for what we call performative neutrality. This idea- Yes ... that the position- anti-science should be on the same footing as science as it's presented to the public. 

No, said. performative neutrality is a good phrase. Very accurate, sadly.

Peter, we've got to talk about the anti-vax elephant in the room.

RFK Jr. is the Health and Human Services Secretary of the United States government. Did you ever imagine that someone would say that statement out loud to you? 

not only, that he became Health and Human Services Secretary, which is an absolute tragedy for the country, but the fact that there's been none of the usual checks and balances- Yeah

to rein him in, either coming from the White House or from the Republican senators and House members. They, 

they voted to confirm him ... 

even after- Bill 

Cassidy ... 

but even after- Medical doctor ... but even after confirming him, there should be some- Yes ... reins put on him. look what he's done.

he's reopened this phony baloney vaccine and autism agenda, which is how I got involved in it, because I'd spoken to RFK Jr. for a full year, many years ago. Asked by the NIH, 'cause I have a, not only a vaccine scientist, but I have a daughter with autism and intellectual disabilities, and I actually wound up writing a book on that year of discussions- what we call Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism. So he's reopened that. He's talked about creating autism registries, which have this very dark- 

you said you spoke to him for a year on and off. 

What's driving him? He, he, you could look at someone like Donald Trump and say, "Ignoramus," "Not the smart- not the sharpest tool in the box."

RFK Jr. is a smart man w- who had a good education, did some good things at one point in his career in different fields. What is driving him on this front to behave in this way? 

I can give you a, a sort of an, an example in my discussions with him. I went through all the genetics of autism and that accounts for most of, the, what, what causes autism.

These are genes operating in early fetal brain development. But I actually pointed out, I'd say, "Bobby, there are actually environmental exposures that interact with autism genes that we know about." an example is Depakote or valproic acid. So if you're pregnant and not aware of it, and on, on Depakote, that interacts with autism genes and increases the likelihood of your child to be born with an autism phenotype.

And I named four or five other ones just like that. Yeah. And he had no interest. Zero interest. and I was shocked. and I would say, "Bobby, you're an environmental attorney. This is your- Yeah ... this is your moment. This- 

So then what is driving him? You should be on- It's just being a conspiracy theorist

so, or suing vaccine companies. He seems very focused on, what he can win in terms of, legal cases. He, very prone to conspiracy- Yes ... thinking, and- Fair play ... and quickly goes down- Yeah ... that rabbit hole. So it was a, it was an exercise in frustration, probably for both of us. 

We actually have seen a measles outbreak, and there was interesting reporting in KFF Health News that showed confusion at the CDC did actually prevent the agency from correctly responding in Texas. What did you see playing out in the measles outbreak that already happened?

and I think this is a really good example to look at because those children were already unvaccinated before RFK took over. But I think what’s key to focus on is the response, or lack thereof, from HHS. I think under a different administration—and we have had other measles outbreaks in recent decades under different administrations. There should have been a really strong, concerted response led by CDC, led by the secretary of HHS, championing vaccination, sending resources, ensuring that people were well informed about what causes these sorts of outbreaks—again, lower vaccination rates—and having clear corrective action.

The response this time around was muted. It was not terribly focused on vaccines. It pushed unproven treatments that may have endangered some people’s lives. And in Kennedy’s recent op-ed that we were talking about, he honestly had the most bizarre description of the response to this outbreak. He praised it and said things that I fundamentally disagree with, like the outbreak âminated in this country about 25 years ago, and suddenly, we have this massive outbreak in which multiple people have died, and ne.

I have to say, I was surprised by how that played out, because I think, when he first took office, I had in my head, Okay, one child will die, or two children will die, and then it will end all this anti-vaccine sentiment. people will just wake up from this and realize, Oh no, vaccines keep children from dying, and that is not what happened.

I think, immediately, when you saw those children die, you saw people pointing to, Oh, they must have had underlying conditions. They must have been malnourished. Look, that’s support for this broader narrative about chronic diseases being the primary issue, nutrition being the primary issue. People see what they want to see, and I think that is a really powerful way for politicians to push their particular narrative.

I do think it was encouraging that a lot of people’s response to this outbreak was to ensure that their kids were vaccinated or even get their kids early vaccines if they were close to the outbreak region. That was a very smart move if that’s what they did. But that definitely was not universal, and measles outbreaks are a kind of a canary in the coal mine. We start here, but it is just a prelude for many more similar outbreaks to come.

Okay, so we’ve described a situation where the infrastructure is falling apart. It’s a little bit of a free fall. There are not people at the CDC who can stop it. In other actions that Trump and his administration have taken, we generally have relied on the courts, say, as a backstop against some of the more extreme policies. Is there a backstop when it comes to public health? Is there someone who can say no to the secretary of HHS or the CDC?

So there certainly have been legal challenges to some of what Kennedy has done at HHS. For example, the American Academy of Pediatrics and some other professional societies sued HHS. Individual researchers have sued HHS and Kennedy. It definitely has happened. But for the most part, I have actually not really seen as many successful legal challenges as I might have hoped to see, which, to me, tells me that the system of checks and balances is not really holding Kennedy to account.

And in particular, in the realm of public health, the secretary is extremely powerful. We have seen some moves at HHS overridden by the White House but not very many. It seems, for the most part, Trump has been pretty happy to let Kennedy do what he wants. He does not seem to be standing in the way of his anti-vaccine moves—including moves that have fundamentally undermined Operation Warp Speed, which was, if you remember, the Trump initiative in 2020 that got us COVID vaccines so quickly.

Okay, [Laughs.] that’s a no for the short term. Maybe my last question, then, is about the long term: Can you build back up a vaccine infrastructure? What does that take? And then the more difficult question: Can you build back up trust? a place where public health is actually meaningful, people trust that the government is looking out for the public health, and it’s not state by state, parent by parent.

Yes, but it will take a very, very long time, possibly longer than it took to build these systems up in the first place. I think in most cases, it’s fundamentally more difficult to rebuild something that has been destroyed than it is to build something from the ground up, because when you’re building something from the ground up, there isn’t necessarily as much resistance and broken trust to contend with. To build things back up, we will have to tell people to trust in entities that they have learned to distrust. We will have to tell experts to come back together. We basically have to ask people to get along in the wake of war, and I don’t see an easy path forward in that.

Wow, okay, so what do you do? Honestly, do you just do your own research and find a doctor you trust? How does an average person navigate in a place where the easily trusted institution—the vaccine list, the CDC—is no longer trustworthy? Is it just Live in a state that has good health policies [Laughs.] and find yourself a good doctor?

Yeah, I think, for the most part, doctors across the country are still pretty unified in following the evidence, following the recommendations of their professional society—which, as far as I can tell, are still [Laughs.] hewing very closely to the evidence and trying to step in where the CDC has not been able to. And so people should feel comfortable in trusting their doctors, for the most part. That is not something that I feel have any qualms about. I think the trick with that is not everyone has access to a doctor. Not everyone is going to be able to get those vaccines covered.

And I think now doctors and patients are being put in a bind where their government is telling them to do one thing and the science is telling them to do another. And when you factor in money and logistics and just all the challenges to getting adequate health care in this country, I think it’s going to get messy very quickly. I don’t know that advice will be the problem; it may truly be access and equity.

these diary entries didn't reveal any shocking revelations about Fauci's criminal negligence or intent. But that didn't stop Republicans from dragging Fauci into Congress yesterday and grandstanding on it. 

Somewhere along the line, it became all about you. You became a narcissist and a megalomaniac and a liar, and you've lied to the American people, and you've lied to this body.

Wow. Strong start, Senator Josh Hawley, and by the way, I love the hair.

Something about that hair, it just makes you look super cool, man. And smart. No notes. All you need to do now is bring it home. hit him with a, a closing line that makes everyone stand up and cheer. 

You've done more to harm science than anybody in my lifetime, and I hope you'll go home and write that in your diary Thank you, Mr.

Chairman. 

Is this thing on? Is this thing not on? Let's see. Let's see. anyone here been to Wuhan? Anybody? Anybody? Of course, Republicans weren't just there for political theater. They were hoping to get Fauci to say something on the record that they could use to incriminate him. Unfortunately for them, Fauci had an answer for everything.

Excuse me, one answer for everything. 

Are you disappointed in how you handled COVID? Do you have any regrets? 

On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. on the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline, decline to answer under the Fifth Amendment.

I respectfully decline to answer. 

What color tie are you wearing? 

On the advice of counsel- ... I respectfully decline to answer. Oh, wow.

Oh, you won't talk, huh? Don't worry, boys. I got a question for him. Dr. Fauci, what's your favorite Barbra Streisand song? 

I respectfully decline to answer. 

Damn it. He's good. He's very good. So Fauci answered every question by invoking his right to remain silent. nice try, doc, but your silence speaks volumes.

I'm no body language expert, but we're gonna have one in a few minutes. Let me show you this. I, I- you ever see Mr. Burns on The Simpsons? I still love The Simpsons, and he did this thing with the hands a lot. Yes. fingertips on fingertips. What do you make of that? It says something. 

It has to say something, right?

Otherwise, this whole segment would be stupid. I'd look like the, the biggest dipshit on TV. and while I have a body language expert here, the president going like this, that's normal, right? Right? Gotta be. It is. It has to be. This is weird. Normal. 

Weird, normal. 

I, I'm getting confused here. I'm getting confused.

what is it that Dr. Fauci did that is so heinous that you are still trying to get him six years afterwards? 

he did fund gain of function research at a sloppy lab, where a virus escaped and left a million Americans dead. 

Complicit in the deaths of millions of people. The guy killed or had something to do with killing nine million people.

Okay. that's right. Okay. he engineered the virus that killed milli- that killed millions and millions of people because it was so deadly, a threat to everyone. 

The COVID virus was simply not a threat to most people. My Spidey senses about him, about the entire scamdemic were accurate. 

The lot of us that 

COVID was a flu.

To tell kids they couldn't go to school- Ugh ... for years for no reason. Dr. Fauci lied about his own personal views. 

Shutting down the country for a virus he knew wasn't that deadly. 

Oh, yeah, yeah. See? It's deadly, and it didn't matter. And millions died, but it was fine. And God, my head, oh, hurts, okay? My ears are bleeding, and are those symptoms of the deadly virus that doesn't matter?

I just don't understand. Can someone try again to tell us what was in these diary entries? 

If you read the stories in the mainstream press about the Fauci Diaries- ... you will see an exact parallel to the Biden- 

I, I'm sor- I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I can't hear you over the pipe.

What's going on here? are you guys, are you guys trying to solve COVID or a murder on the Orient Express? But enough about Dr. Fauci. Shall we retire to the hot tub, my dear boys? Chomp, chomp. Listen, guys. Can we dial this back a bit? I'm not saying Anthony Fauci made no mistakes, but it's not like the man is Hitler.

Fauci's guilty of mass murder and crimes against humanity on a scale of a Hitler and a Josef Mengele. 

Okay. I stand corrected. Fun fact, Hitler also committed all his crimes to meet Barbra Streisand. Fun fact. By the way, if you think America's response to COVID was really that horrible, is there someone other than Fauci you might put some blame on?

maybe somebody Fauci worked for. Could even be somebody you may have met one, or two, or three, four, five times. Oh. Maybe a little turnaround the room might jog your memory, no? Donald Trump. He. He.

He was the guy who was president during the pandemic, and he also thought Fauci was sexier than Tyra Banks. 

He's a good man. I like, Dr. Fauci a lot. He's been doing a very good job. I'm very happy with Dr. Fauci. And I have a lot of respect for Dr. Fauci. 

And I have to pay tribute. We have, whether it's Dr.

Fauci, we have the best people on Earth. 

Normally when Trump praises something like that, that highly, he just had his broker buy a ton of stock in it. And look, this is not to say Donald Trump is the one big villain of COVID. There, there is no one big villain of COVID. except maybe COVID. He was a bad dude.

It was an unprecedented pandemic that we spent years stumbling through, trying to find some patchwork of solutions that would protect our health while keeping our society from total collapse. Did our leaders make mistakes? Of course, they did. Should we try to find out what we did wrong? Of course. But that was not what was happening with Republicans this week.

They were doing the only thing we do anymore, shove a, a complex issue through a performative partisan filter. But it's not gonna do anything for us to throw Anthony Fauci in prison. It's not even gonna do that much to Anthony Fauci. threatening an 85-year-old with life in prison, that's-

Kinda like putting a kid in time out 10 minutes before school is over. In fact, coding public health as a partisan issue is incredibly dangerous, because we've already seen what happens when a party comes in thinking that public health is the other party's issue. 

The Trump administration has started carrying out mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The cuts will impact roughly 3,500 workers at the FDA, 2,400 at the CDC, and 1,200 at the NIH. Canceling almost $500 million in funding for 22 projects focused on developing mRNA vaccines. 

An office established to prepare the nation for future pandemics is reportedly down to 

just one staffer. 

The 

source says it's not clear who that person reports to.

There's one guy left. This is why we are losing the diarrhea war to lettuce.

it seems like trust, and definitely in your space, but I think in so many areas we're seeing that with the rise of misinformation- Yeah

that there is this, this sort of fracture in the way people trust public figures, they trust voices that previously would've been trusted. How do you tackle rebuilding that and- and repairing what might have been damaged? 

Yeah. It's the, it's a long game, I think it takes a lot less time to break trust than it does to build it and to repair it.

I know the work of repair. As a mom, I'm constantly doing that and modeling it with my children. And I keep thinking about the bigger picture of, when there's something broken, ha- the time it takes to mend that. There's a lot that needs to be done to recognize the deep hurt and trauma of the last five years, and I think that's where we look at science as needing to be a lot more multidisciplinary.

It's not just the infectious disease people at the helm, right? It needs to be the social scientists and the psychologists and the therapists even, the politicians and the strategists all together thinking about what does this road to regaining trust look like. And what's- What keeps me up a little bit at night is knowing that myself and the scientific community is not the only one aware of that.

we're seeing like a tug of war over trust, and words are losing their meaning, including the word trust. Like what is trusted? What is evidence-based? What is gold standard? And so part of the work that I feel really compelled to do is on exposing, with deep transparency, all of the processes that go behind science.

exposing is maybe an intense word, but I say that because people have felt left out of the process and just expected to follow suit, to just obey. And I don't think that's the right way. I do think that there is a place for expertise, and experts should definitely be influencing a lot of these decisions and recommendations.

But when it comes to repair, a lot of it is gonna go back to the basics of saying, "I don't know. I don't know yet." And that makes a lot of scientists squirm. the lack of certainty is not a comfortable place. But if you think about it, the lack of certainty is why we all are scientists, right? It's me wanting to find an answer to an unknown or to something that I don't fully know is connected to something else So how do we go back to the basics of the scientific method of a hypothesis or of a process of getting to that conclusion and not coming in with so much certainty and binary thinking?

and I, I think when you think about young scientists who are coming up... and I think I- I'll even take a step back because so much of what you're saying is so relevant to others as well. But when you think about young people who are coming up and looking to communicate ideas, what is...

what makes you feel good about where things might be headed and the direction that they might be taking and how they approach these things? 

Yeah. the role of science communicator was not something that people were familiar with many years ago, and even the word infodemic or infodemiology was a word that was not in a lot of people's lexicon, and it now is, and that excites me.

Because I do think that what we need to do is train a generation of scientists who can communicate that science because their work is incomplete if it's just sitting behind closed doors at fancy institutions. It's not actually a tool in somebody's toolkit unless somebody can repeat that message to somebody sitting next to them at the dinner table.

And that's why I feel so passionate about the work that I do, that I somehow became a personal scientist to so many people who then could refer to me by first name and say, I heard this from Jessica, and she explained it this way." These repeatable messages, this generation, hopefully, of creating science communicators in the whole community.

And not everybody has to have the same training, but that they can repeat these messages so that everybody can understand. That to me makes me feel hopeful about the future despite the fraught information ecosystem that we're living in. 

The-- I think that's beautiful. And when you have these conversations, with people who maybe feel concerned about how they can break through and make a difference, what are some of the ways in which you encourage them and to keep going and to, to do this work?

Yeah. The good outweighs the bad. I have to keep reminding myself that. Yes, there's violence and death threats and antagonism and a lot of scary things. Oftentimes we're dealing with keyboard warriors and people who maybe are not as brave as they may sound on the internet. I'm not at all downplaying real threats, but I have to keep reminding myself that at the end of the day, we have evidence and data to back up the things that we say with that caveat.

That's different than what you're dealing with on the other side, and I think speaking that truth courageously, repeatedly, has shown to be beneficial because of what we see, right? What's interesting about public health is a lot of times what we see is what we don't see. The interventions are invisible in that sense, and they're a victim of their own success because when people are doing well, public health is working, and that's what we want.

We don't want people dying en masse and getting sick en masse. And so how do we make that invisible work visible? It's by this type of echoing and communicating and, and inviting more people into that process because if we just assume that it exists and we're not talking about it, that's when the defunding happens.

That's when the devaluation happens. That's when the deprioritization of it happens, and that's what got us into the terrible position we were in 2020. 

I'd love to know as we're s- winding down our conversation just how this... what this looks like for you. How does this show up in practice for you?

How do you find the courage to keep going and keep doing this work? 

Yeah. I think about all the hats that I wear. I think about the fact that I'm not just an epidemiologist and a science communicator. I am a mom. I am a first-generation American. I carry all these identities with me, and I think that's why I am trusted by some folks.

And I think a lot about The times that I've had to speak up when it has felt scary to speak up, whether it's in opposition to an administration or to a specific politician or to a specific person who is making very dangerous, harmful claims. My work requires me to see a lot of dark things, the dismantling of public health systems, really dangerous health misinformation, even what we're witnessing over the world.

I very much have spoken out a lot about what's been happening in Gaza as it is connected to public health, that is connected to children. I am a mom with kids, very young. All these things are connected, and I speak about these things in a connected way because I remember a few words that really ground me.

and this was really reinforced most recently. I was in Rwanda with UNICEF visiting a field site. Rwanda is just 30 years past the genocide. Something that I witnessed 20 years ago when I was there, 10 years after the genocide, and I remember thinking, "How can there be hope here? How can there be repair?"

And I saw it, and I remembered the question that I asked myself, "Why do I do what I do? What is the thing that I'm good at?" And I really genuinely think I'm good at sense-making. I'm good at making hard, complicated, uncomfortable things make sense to different types of people. And so because of that, it gives me my why.

And my why is that speaking up about science, about injustice, about the connection of those two things is always right. It's always worth it. And so that is how I keep reminding myself of the work that I do, the why that I do it, because it's really important to me, and I've seen the fruitfulness of it 

We were a country founded on libertarian values. Those values shaped the medical landscape of the 19th century, and really, the medical landscape up to today.

There's a tension between the authority of the parent and the authority of the state. And, this has implications for all different kinds of sectors and questions in society- Sure ... from, mandatory schooling down to, bike helmet laws and, other public health measures, and yes, vaccination.

And in 1982, that tension would come to a head around a vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis, known as the DPT vaccine. 

The diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis vaccine, had a difficult safety profile when it was first invented. 

The vaccine could cause rare but severe side effects, like prolonged crying and seizures in infants.

These symptoms were temporary, but claims began to circulate that the vaccine was doing permanent damage to children. 

So in the early 1980s, there is a reporter, Lea Thompson. 

A reporter at NBC affiliate WRC-TV in Washington, DC, who catches wind of these claims. 

And she embarks on this reporting project, and it ends up becoming the basis for a 1982 hour-long news broadcast titled Vaccine Roulette.

DPT Vaccine Roulette. 

Just a note here, the people call this vaccine both DTP and DPT. So you'll hear both in the episode, but they're referring to the same thing. 

And what Thompson reports is that scientists have known for some time that there are adverse events associated with this vaccine, but that they aren't disclosing them to parents and that parents are therefore, as she put it, playing a game of roulette with their children.

If we keep the Cutter incident in mind, we just marvel at the fact that parents at that moment in time knew that there was this horrible chance that something could go wrong, and yet people still got their kids vaccinated against polio anyway. But couple decades later, the early 1980s, that's not what the parent population of the US is ready to sign on for at that point.

Between the Cutter incident and DPT vaccine roulette, a lot had changed in the US. There was a string of government cover-ups, Watergate, the Pentagon Papers. These things had put the American people on edge. And there was a series of protest movements from civil rights to the anti-Vietnam War movement that changed the attitudes of the country towards their government.

Their attitude in the wake of the anti-authoritarian movements is, "Hold on. There were risks, and we weren't informed? Why weren't we informed?" 

After seeing the documentary, some parents began to allege publicly that their children had suffered permanent harm after getting the vaccine. 

They organized themselves into a group that they called Dissatisfied Parents Together.

DPT. They picked that acronym on purpose. 

And they were a pretty formidable group. 

Parents also began to sue pharmaceutical companies. 

The whole issue was, like, it was very complicated to determine with certainty whether it was the reaction that a kid had was coincidental with the vaccine, or was it some underlying condition that was triggered by the fever that they got as a result of this vaccine?

This is Arthur Allen. He's a senior correspondent for nonprofit KFF Health News and author of the book Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver. 

You wouldn't really blame the vaccine for that because maybe if they'd had a fever the next week from a regular viral illness, they would've, the same thing would've happened to them.

So there's the scientific, answer to that, and then there's the legal answer to that. 

The scientific answer became clear pretty quickly. 

Studies actually fairly quickly showed that wasn't, the vaccine that was doing it. If you looked at children who got the vaccine or didn't, there was no increased incidence of any permanent, defects associated with that vaccine.

The legal answer was a little murkier. 

vaccines are supposed to be really safe, and they should be, much safer than almost any medication you can think of. But that doesn't mean that they're completely safe. It doesn't mean that there's no harms. 

Parents were winning personal injury lawsuits against the vaccine makers, with the average claim rising to tens of millions of dollars by 1984.

It really drove vaccine makers from the market. 

But the activists powering dissatisfied parents together also wanted alternatives to lawsuits. They wanted a law on the books that would protect children from harm. 

They, over the course of the next four years, worked tirelessly in the capital To introduce new laws that said that the federal government would do even more to ensure that the vaccine supply was safe.

In 1986, they had a breakthrough, a new law called the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which creates the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, commonly known as the Vaccine Court. 

It was designed to compensate individuals or their families who were injured by certain vaccines. It was a no-fault court, and the compensation money came from a government trust fund, funded by a tax on vaccine manufacturers.

But the Vaccine Court also protected those vaccine manufacturers from lawsuits that threatened to hold up their production or even drive them out of business. 

So it's really important to pause here and look at this moment. The parents who came together were from across the political spectrum, and they did something that we've seen happen before.

They turned to Washington. They turned to the federal government and said, "Do more to ensure that vaccines are safe." This is really distinct in the history of anti-vaccination, and I hesitate to call it that because it does not seem accurate at all. This is a movement that's saying, some of our members actually have real reservations about vaccines, but we are the parents who got our kids vaccinated, and we want future parents to get vaccines for their children and feel absolutely confident in those vaccines.

Huh. Oh, see, that's a really important nuance. 

That it wasn't a, I don't want to vaccinate my child, then you shouldn't vaccinate your child. It's, we need to demand that we are continuing to improve these vaccines and make sure that they are as foolproof as possible. 

Exactly. Exactly. It's a lot easier to tell a story of simple anti-vaccinationism.

it, boils everything down to black and white.

This parent group 

Dissatisfied Parents Together 

fractured after a while. There were those who found themselves just absolutely devoted to the cause and stuck with it and kept pushing and pushing. And then there were parents who said, "Okay, we got what we wanted, and now I'm moving on."

Dissatisfied Parents Together would later morph into the National Vaccine Information Center, a group that today has been criticized for spreading misleading information about vaccine safety. The movement spawned by the documentary DPT: Vaccine Roulette lived on. 

Really, in many ways, that vaccine caused the birth of the modern American anti-vaccine movement.

Some parents began to draw connections between vaccines and any unexpected diagnoses. 

When Vaccine Roulette aired in 1982, it resonated with parents who feared that we were seeing, as a nation, more and more learning differences and developmental delays and disabilities in children, and they were really struggling to understand, like, why their kids had disabilities like this when they didn't and nobody in their family did, and vaccines started to suddenly seem like a possible explanation.

Concerns about the connection between vaccines and autism were circulating for close to two decades before they were published in The Lancet.

Anthony Fauci. He released a book, with his, reminiscences, of his whole career, but obviously a particular focus on COVID, and saying that he sees a crisis of trust, as being the greatest threat to public health. Not the public health emergencies, but the lack of trust in scientists to respond.

Now, maybe he's overreacting given his position and his sensitivity to, his partisan attacks, but he'd be in a position to really, experience the virulence o- of a lot of the pushback against science. Where does this come from? And I have a few of these graphs on the partisan divide. And we all are aware of this.

again, these are US-centric figures, but here is confidence in science, which I showed you in previous graphs is going down, and you can see how much more it's going down among Republicans than independents, and Democrats it's been going up.

how did we get here? So the, lawn sign on the left is one I see a lot in my neighborhood. The wrong side, the, the one side on the right is a response to it. I don't see that in my neighborhood, but I imagine there are neighborhoods where you see a lot of that. the one on the left kind of is what started out a whole set of beliefs and values.

bragging about values, turning trust in science into a belief, into a moral point. And then the other side, saying, "We believe all m- lives matter. Science is not, political," being a reaction to those who believe that the government should be driven by science to mandate vaccines and masks and so forth.

you see the importance of belief and, publicizing your beliefs as sort of a badge of honor so I showed the decline in trust for science, and we can see it here again starkly, in partisan, partisan, going down much more steeply among Republicans than among Democrats. Only slightly among Democrats and more or less plummeting from 70% to 47% among Republicans again, trust in scientists, taking the general skepticism of science and personalizing it, turning it into skepticism of individuals, an ad hominem approach.

Again, much more, among one political party than the other. generalizing it to the scientific community, to the individuals who are part of science. in essence, the other team , the, the them. And you can see it, the partisan difference, being accentuated around the time of COVID

One interesting study was looking at trust in science during COVID and before, and concluding that the Trump effect, which is widely credited with, promoting skepticism in science, according to this analysis, did not affect overall perceptions of science, but did increase polarization. So that is, again, my theme, that the polarization, for reasons I will describe, is really the driver here and not, so much the societal changes This is in the context of overall declining trust in authorities, including governments.

You can see a secular trend over a 60-year period, coming down steadily, not just, since COVID. being at the same low, level for, more than a decade now. And in line with the partisan aspect of this, trust in government, the blue line is Democrats, the red line is Republicans. And then you can see in small letters at top whether it's a Democratic or a Republican president.

And guess what? When a member of your party is the president, you tend to trust government or the electorate tends to trust government than, rather, more than, when it's a member of the other party And we see the partisan divide reflecting in demographics and in particular education. again, not too surprisingly, those with, the most education, post-graduate, baccalaureate, have the most positive view of science.

Of course, those are the people who probably studied science more and so are more likely to have faith in evidence and scholarly analysis and the elements of science. so my, point here is that trust in science, trust in authority, has a lot to do with belief rather than thinking, that rather than analysis, rather than conclusion.

Belief, as in those lawn signs, is a badge. It's telling the world, that you are on a specific team. And actually, the more you believe in the face of irrationality and contrary, contrary evidence, the more, the stronger that badge is. the more that you are saying, I'm not gonna let things like facts get in the way.

I'm sticking with my team." like a sports team in some ways. I, I don't care how bad the players are, they're gonna win the championship. there's a shared sense of grievance, of powerlessness, of unfairness, that you, share with other people and so you wanna show your solidarity. you then show that you're part of a community, that you share this faith, and that you believe rather than think, and I think that's an important distinction.

the New Yorker magazine had a story a few weeks ago, looking at the nature of belief and arguing that when you believe something, it's different than when you think something. Thinking is generally based on evidence. Believing is closer to faith, which by definition is not based on evidence what's the motivator for this?

Again, it's the team mentality. It's us versus them. don't like the, elites. Corporations are in it to make money. Them. they're patronizing us. It's paternalism. Them. I'm in solidarity with the community of skeptics. The scientists are on the other team. And then often it's attempting to find easy answers.

How am I gonna eliminate the risk of COVID? I'm gonna drink bleach, or I'm gonna, take ivermectin. it's much easier than they want me to believe again, tied to feelings of powerlessness, of unfairness, of grievance. So back to my lawn signs, advertising your belief. I'm on one team, I'm on the other team

Cognitive science has a lot to say about how this works. We have heuristics and biases that guide the way we understand evidence. For instance, the availability heuristic. If an image or concept is available to us easily, imagining a car crash, we will consider that a greater risk than if it's theoretical.

the abstract for a disease versus the actual, perception of the consequences of the disease, or, versus, the inconvenience of wearing a mask or getting a vaccine or the other mitigation factors. Recency of what we saw most recently, i.e., COVID and the COVID measures, is going to s- determine our context.

Confirmation bias, where we're likely to believe what confirms what we wanna believe, and then the powerful notion of cognitive dissonance, that we want to keep our thoughts consistent. And when one piece of the picture is inconsistent, we discount that one. So if our leader, who we want to respect says, "Don't use, a vaccine," or, "Don't wear a mask," evidence says, "Use a mask," we can't have all three points of the triangle, together in our minds.

We have to discount one of them. And so for many people, it's discounting the one that says evidence says, to wear a mask. How do we, rebuild trust? don't deny false claims. We know that. We know that the more scientists discount the link between autism and the MMR vaccine, the more entrenched people come in their beliefs because they're beliefs, they're not thoughts.

And the more resistant they can be to empirical data, the stronger the sense of community, the stronger the badge of honor. try to, address the cognitive biases directly, what's motivating people, the images that they see, how recently they've seen them, how clear, the risk is, and then speaking to underlying concerns.

is that easy? Absolutely not, which is I think why it hasn't happened. It's a lot easier to throw out more facts, but I don't think we're really gonna address, skepticism of science until we get to some of those underlying concerns, feelings of powerlessness, feelings of being taken advantage of. So my overall principle is, faith and belief are much more powerful than simply empirically based, uh, thinking.

the way to address skepticism of science, is not to directly contradict the disinformation, but the need to accept disinformation. And to come back to my original quote- Understand the rationalization, not the rational, because at our core, we're all humans. 

We've just heard clips starting with

Takesâ„¢ by Jamelle Bouie arguing that the RFK Jr.-driven MAHA agenda is a eugenics program, and that political journalism's conventions hide the plain reality that Trump is an incoherent old man in decline.

Zeteo broke down the five forces driving anti-science denial, the plutocrats, petrostates, professionals, propagandists, and press, warning that legacy outlets practice "performative neutrality."

Radio Atlantic examined how HHS under RFK Jr. failed to mount a strong pro-vaccine response to the largest measles outbreak in decades, which killed multiple people despite Kennedy praising the response.

The Daily Show skewered Senator Josh Hawley and other Republicans for their theatrical Fauci hearing, where lawmakers cracked open his diary and likened him to the Nazi Mengele.

TED Talks Daily explored how epidemiologist Jessica Rivera approaches rebuilding trust in science.

Throughline detailed how a 1982 news broadcast about rare DPT vaccine side effects launched lawsuits, the no-fault Vaccine Court, and the roots of modern vaccine skepticism.

And Fondation Brocher traced the collapse of Republican trust in science during COVID, arguing polarization, not societal change, drives the divide, since people display beliefs like team badges rather than reasoning from evidence.

And those were just the top takes, there's lots more in the deeper dives sections,

If you get value out of the show - and want to make sure we can keep going while getting it delivered ad-free to the new, members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support - there's a link in the show notes - through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcasts app.*

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As for today's topic,

As a society, we do an okay job of dedicating time and space to memorials so that we won't forget about great tragedies or injustices. We say, "Never forget" about the Holocaust and 9/11. Written right into the education system for aspiring medical professionals, we teach medical ethics in part by remembering failures of the past, such as the Tuskegee syphilis study, in which hundreds of Black men were deceived and denied treatment for decades. What we don't do a good job of is memorializing our successes so that we never forget how necessary and important those advances were, so that we don't fall into the trap of taking them for granted.

It was less than a hundred years ago when cases of polio were peaking, with thousands of children dying and tens of thousands paralyzed by the disease.

In 1955, when the first vaccine for polio was announced, it was headlined in newspapers using the same font size they'd use to announce a victory in a war. That's because it didn't just affect the tens of thousands of people who were directly harmed by the disease. It was also something to be very concretely feared by essentially everyone, and the vaccine represented not just a way to save lives but also to alleviate the fear of polio in the wider population.

It turns out that those newspaper headlines with the enormous font announcing the vaccine were quite justified. The last wild polio case in the U.S. was in 1979, and we now live in a world free from fear of polio thanks to that vaccine and those that followed. Just as it was the fear of polio that prompted the screaming headlines, the lack of fear of infectious disease just a few generations later is exactly the cultural environment that can breed complacency and allow skepticism to regain a foothold.

Vaccine skepticism has always been with us. In the 19th century, Americans were fighting compulsory vaccination while disease was rampant, and so they were able to hold both a fear of the disease and a fear of the vaccine at the same time. It's when vaccines are shown to be effective that the cultural consensus shifts in the direction of widespread vaccination policy. But that cultural shift appears to only last for about the length of a lifetime of a person who experienced the shift firsthand. Once they're gone, everyone left are those who grew up without the living memory of the diseases that the vaccines are helping to keep at bay.

Researchers looking at vaccine hesitancy at the World Health Organization call complacency one of the three Cs, along with eroded confidence in the systems developing the vaccines and the convenience factor of how easily accessible they are.

There is no equivalent to "Never Forget" for the victims of polio, measles or smallpox to keep their memories alive along with the triumph of the vaccines that helped push the fear of those diseases out of our lives.

Stories of failures are rightly kept alive. Events like the Tuskegee syphilis study are carried on into living memory by the victims' families, journalists, and ethicists who continually refer back to it as an important teachable lesson that we must never forget. But success, as with vaccines, doesn't generate an energized constituency to continually tell the story. Contracting polio before the vaccine was available was a tragedy, but it wasn't an injustice because there wasn't a way to fight it and injustices are what build enduring legacies and promises to never forget.

One of the other Cs in vaccine hesitancy is confidence in the science and distribution systems for vaccines. It's been said that the distrust of these systems has been earned, but what's also true is that the trust in those systems was initially earned as well. But that trust wasn't made to be enduring and begins to wane as generational memory of past diseases dies off on a biological schedule.

I think there's a decent argument to be made that the same basic process is playing out with fascism and authoritarianism more generally. The fact that it has sprung back to life all around the world at about the same time as those who lived through the 1930s and 40s were passing away may very well be evidence of the same pattern of complacency. When no one in living memory actually remembers what it looks like when fascism is on the rise, it makes it culturally difficult to recognize it for what it is, and so people dismiss the idea as hyperbole.

There's actually a whole book written on this theory of what happens when generational memory is lost. It was originally published in 1997 and is called "The Fourth Turning." I haven't read it and am not recommending it because there is some controversy among historians about the authors' methods and conclusions. What seems not to be in question is that the book turned out to be one of Steve Bannon's favorites. He made a documentary in 2010 called "Generation Zero" based on the theory and with help from the authors. The surviving author has said they never told Bannon what to say or think, but that they did perhaps provide him with an insight while working with him in 2010, that populism, nationalism, and state-run authoritarianism would soon be on the rise, not just in America but around the world.

Naturally, Bannon didn't take that as a warning, but as the opening of an opportunity for him to help bring that exact scenario to fruition in the U.S. Bannon seems to think that the current political crisis we're living through is a sort of necessary cleansing fire that will burn away much of the recent past and once again allow for what he would describe as traditional American values to re-emerge.

I also happen to see that we appear to be living through a crisis that is burning away much of the recent past but I tend to think that what's on the other side is a re-energized movement for democratic renewal. All you have to do is look at polling numbers to see how much people absolutely hate what we're being put through and the types of policies the people on the far right, like Steve Bannon, advocate for.

It may very well be that we are going through a similar fire with vaccines and public health in general. It will be painful. Lives will be lost, and there will be injustices because much of the harm being done is preventable.

We are going to give people within living memory the chance to see for themselves what happens when vaccination rates fall below the herd immunity threshold. It will be the harm caused that people can see with their own eyes that will turn the tide again, re-establishing in the cultural zeitgeist that vaccinations are necessary and far outweigh the small risks that the anti-vaxxers like to highlight and blow out of proportion.

So maybe we should take a lesson from memorials, holidays, museums, and the general sentiment of never forgetting. Use those tools directed at the positive progress that has been made in public health in general and vaccinations in particular.

We could have memorials and remembrance days for those who died before the advancements we now enjoy and should appreciate but, all too often, take for granted.

A lot of people had to die of cholera before people figured out that we need public sewage systems. A lot of people died from what are now preventable diseases to create the motivation necessary to design and develop treatments, vaccines, and other preventative measures.

Collective memory is like infrastructure that decays if you don't maintain it. We know this instinctually about wars and disasters, but it's just as true for the positive things like public health advancements. In both cases, we can only continue to reap the benefits if we remember the lessons learned, so let's never forget.

And now, we'll continue to dive deeper on 4 topics today. First up;

Section A, THE CURRENT DAMAGE

Followed by Section B, HOW WE GOT HERE

Section C, WHY IT WORKS

And Section D, RESPONDING TO THE MOMENT

the reason I asked you to come on, before Dr.

Fauci gave his testimony and before RFK Jr. was on CNN, really, I just, I wanted to talk to you about diarrhea lettuce. But, I think all of these things are connected. 

They are. 

So I use that to transition into Cyclospora. So w- what is it and where does it come from? 

Cyclospora is a parasite that can, it's very common, and it can cause a gastrointestinal illness or diarrhea, for simple terms, when ingested directly from a contaminated food source.

It's not spread from person to person. it is spread by eating contaminated food, and symptoms can last, unfortunately, for quite a long time, sometimes for several weeks. it is typically not a fatal infection, but it is a very disruptive and unpleasant one. And so- a lot of times it will require an antibiotic treatment, which sometimes folks get a little bit confused about how can a parasite be treated by antibiotics.

That's the amazing fact about science is that sometimes we look at drugs and see does it also work on other things. And so a very strong, antibiotic, Bactrim, can be used to treat cyclospora pretty effectively and safely. the concern, though, is if you have persistent diarrhea, you're at risk of dehydration.

So again, the experience is not equal for all people, especially if people are at risk of that type of complication. 

So why is this in the news now? Because I'd never heard about this before, and suddenly it pops up on our doorstep. and obviously, it's been around for a while. So w- what are the circumstances that have brought this to the forefront now?

Yeah. So cyclospora cases happen every year in the United States. They typically don't make huge headlines just because the outbreaks aren't typically that big. the parasite, again, it usually is spread in the summer because it grows more efficiently in warmer temperatures. but again, the numbers are usually low to not make headlines.

But from May to July of this year, we had an explosion of cases, for lack of better terms, and it was noteworthy. it made national news because there were over 15, 1,600 people that had confirmed case of cyclospora, s- with thousands more suspected, compared to less than 250 in the same time last year, according to data that we have from the CDC.

So it is a big jump from last year, which is why it's in the headlines. 

Yeah, I guess what I'm asking is why is this outbreak so big? if it's been around for a long time and we haven't seen an outbreak like this, before, has something broke down in our food system to make this outbreak bigger than what normally happens?

Yeah. A lot of things have happened that have been drivers of this outbreak. I'm being particular about my words here because it wasn't one thing that just caused it. cuts to food safety, make our food system more vulnerable to outbreaks like this, and you have seen what has happened in the last year and a half, which is taking a bulldozer to so many of our systems of data collection and data reporting and surveillance that have existed in places like FDA and CDC that help keep our systems safer and healthier for folks.

so what we did was essentially make cyclosporiasis, less visible in the data. and because of that, it makes it more difficult to respond to an outbreak. And you and I met in the context of there's not enough data, and that was during the COVID-19 pandemic- ... where we were saying it is impossible to have evidence-based recommendations that can help reduce harm in our population without knowing the big picture, and the big picture requires timely and transparent and reliable data systems to be r- available.

and instead, it was patchwork. Instead, it was an absolute communications failure when it came from the agencies and what they were saying. and then you're also dealing, honestly, Al, with some, companies doing shady things, and then their history of how they treat their employees gets revealed in the process.

I, I think this has been a big eye-opening expose on a large corporation that has been responsible for other outbreaks in the past, and people have been able to say, "This company is doing a lot of things that would make this m- more likely to happen again." 

So my understanding, though, is that the Outbreak was initially linked to Taylor Farms- but then the FDA came back and said that their tests of lettuce supplied to Taco Bell was a false positive. E- do we know exactly w- who the culprit is, where this came from? We- because it seems like it's just gone completely out of the news. we talked- Yeah ... about that for a while, and then it disappeared.

d- who is responsible for this? 

it's, it's so interesting that you mention that because I think that headline was very strategic, and I think that headline was in an effort to exonerate Taylor Farms, and they were not exonerated. A false positive does not say that they are not culpable or responsible for this outbreak by any means.

We know that cyclospora is a very difficult parasite to grow in the lab, and we also know that what they tested was not from the same batch that had been recalled. So a false positive in a lab is not a, "Oh, we made a mistake, mea culpa, it's not them, it's somebody else." it was just saying the sample that they had was not connected to the sample that may have been responsible for this, but it was Taco Bell as one of the companies that said, "Hey, we want to flag this to our shareholders that we have had- a source of lettuce that is causing potentially a, a problem, and this was our source," and as well as a bunch of other things that connected Taylor Farms, because Taylor Farms is not just one product. It's a ton of products under a bunch of different brands. it's not just them, but they are definitely not exonerated from this whole investigation.

How are you navigating what you eat and what you buy at the grocery store? Because- Yeah ... every time I'm at the grocery store, I used to buy those, salads that were packaged, ready to go. Yeah. I'd buy them all the time. Now I'm not buying them because I don't wanna get sick. and it's changed a lot of how I normally shop. So how do you shop? 

I'm no longer buying salad kits either. part of that is, I always felt guilty because of all the plastic that was involved in salad kits. That always made me feel uncomfortable. It was, but it's a really easy hack when you've got three kids and you're trying to make s- dinner really quickly.

I'm not buying salad kits. I'm also not buying lettuce from the grocery store. If I am gonna buy lettuce, I'm gonna get it from the farmers market. I'm trying to stick to fruits that are easier to clean, that would be less likely to be spreading, this parasite. small little berries like raspberries and blackberries are pretty difficult to clean.

We're eating a lot of stone fruit at our house and a lot of melons, which are much easier, smooth surfaces to clean. but again, it's, there's no way, and I s- I think I've said this to you, too, there's no way to eliminate risk. There's only ways to reduce risk, so these are just small measures that I'm taking to reduce our risk, knowing that I could never 100% eliminate it for me and my family.

You've written about how the politics around COVID's origin led to defunding of scientific research in the US. What does that mean in practice for things like disease surveillance and developing treatments? 

The people in the Department of Health and Human Services from RFK Jr. on down are clearly thinking that they're not going to have to deal with a disease emergency in the time of office, and if they are, that it's really not their responsibility.

I don't know if it is directly because they blame the NIH for giving a small grant to a laboratory in Wuhan for the pandemic. I don't know if they truly believe that, but that is an often used excuse for why NIH needs to be defunded, why CDC needs to be gutted, and, and also USAID. I don't know what's in their heads, but that is an excuse that they've given.

There is overwhelming, at this point, scientific evidence that COVID did not come from a laboratory, that it was a naturally occurring virus that spilled over from animals to people in a, in an animal market, live animal market in Wuhan, and the fact that they are choosing to c- reinforce this lab theory is disingenuous.

I can't tell if it's sincere, but it's, but it's still devastating. 

Wh- which areas of research are being hit hardest by the cuts? 

virology is being hit very hard, but so is everything else. grants to research, researchers in the US have fallen tremendously, and even though Congress has, intervened and said, "You can't, we're not allowing cuts to NIH and NSF," or National Science Foundation funding, it's not getting to the researchers.

so the money is being blocked by the Office of Management and Budget. It's probably illegal, but that doesn't mean that it isn't being done, and so by the time the legality all gets ironed out with different lawsuits, a lot of these scientists will have left or have to shut down their labs. 

There are a lot of people who are actively searching for scientific positions outside of the US, and a number of people have already left. So the brain drain is actively happening. 

when the US Health Secretary is promoting ideas like concerns about paracetamol in pregnancy or advocating drinking raw milk, how does that change what counts as credible public health advice?

So raw milk, a lot, just to make sure everybody knows what this is, so pasteurization is just a small heating step of milks. It kills the bacteria mostly th- that live in the milk. when you milk a cow, it's not just the milk that gets into the bucket, There's a lot of other stuff that the cow is in and does that ends up there, too.

And so when you have a small heating step of the milk, you kill a lot of the bacteria and viruses that might be in there. It is a risky idea to drink raw milk. Eventually, you will get a disease that will cause you to not be able to leave your bathroom for s- some days at a time, and possibly land you in the hospital.

I don't know why somebody would risk that by choice, but that is what will happen to you if you drink raw milk. The problem is that, for small children and babies, this could be a life-ending decision if they get s- very sick. yeah, it's not a good idea to drink raw milk.

It has never been a good idea to drink raw milk. Even before Pasteur came up with this, a lot of people would heat up their milk anyway. It was just a, a kind of thing that people did because it helped the milk stay stable for longer. So it's not... It's something even before people knew what germs were, it was something that, that people did.

So it's not a new thing, and it's, it's not even a big thing, and it doesn't change the nutritional content of milk. What does it mean when you have people from the highest, levels of government endorsing it? It just means that we have a lot of nonsense that we're having to deal with, that actually harms people's health.

I once, went on holiday to France when I was a, a teenager, and we were sta- staying on a dairy farm. And, a French farmer was milking his cow, and he offered me some milk straight from the cow. And I thought, "Oh, how charming. How charming." And I had a glass of it, and what followed was probably the nearest I've ever got to feeling biblical in my lifetime.

So I would just say never, ever drink milk straight from the cow. Never.

Now, the US officially left the World Health Organization earlier this year What does that mean for global disease surveillance and coordination? it just s- felt crazy to me. 

Yeah, it's bad for the US because we are not getting the kind of information that we need to be able to prepare for disease threats that might be arriving with, in, in sick people in the US and travelers to the US.

But it's really bad for the WHO because the US was funding a lot of it. it's a big financial hit, and that will mean that WHO is, was less able to, deal with the disease threats around the world than, and than it was. And it's not like they were rolling in cash before. so I think, it's not a good thing for the world i- in any way.

and what does this moment mean for epidemiology? how data is collected, how evidence is used, and whether it's actually acted on. And I'm wondering whether there are already examples where data is being ignored or sidelined in decision-making. 

Yeah, there are a few places. I guess the one that everyone will be dealing with is in the flu vaccine.

So when you don't collect data for which flu viruses people are experiencing, and then you don't know what to pick for the next flu vaccine. So every year the flu vaccine is different. It's, it, there are a few different strains that it protects against, and, the strains are picked based on what is circulating in the world at that time.

And so when you don't have good data of what's circulating in the world, you're not gonna pick it, the right flu vaccine, the right strains to put into the flu vaccine, to protect people against the flu. Now, people should always get the flu vaccine. Even when the picking is not as good as in some years as in others, it has demonstrated that it keeps people out of the hospital, and that's a good thing.

but, we want the flu vaccines to be as protective as possible, and that means have, having the right data that feeds into that decision. And another thing that, that the US did recently is they, there's been this anti-mRNA vaccine effort. So the US canceled a $500 million contract with Moderna to produce an mRNA vaccine against H5N1 avian influenza.

And also their, they interfered, it looks like it's in limbo right now, but interfered with a, an mRNA regular flu vac- vaccine and its application to the FDA. So these are all things that are really decreasing the availability of the best technology to pr- to give people flu vaccines. And flu is not a benign disease.

that, tens of thousands of people die of flu every year in the US and other countries, and it's not a fun experience, rec- Regardless. So we want the vaccine to be as protective as possible so people get it. we want people to get the vaccine, and people don't have a good perception of the vaccine as being useful, so the better it is, the more we hope that it will increase uptake.

And we want people to get their kids vaccinated against flu, not only to protect the kids, but to protect their grandparents. And it's a good thing overall that is being actively worked against by this administration. 

If this trajectory continues, what are you most worried about over the next few years?

So I am very confident that people are touching the stove right now. The, they are experiencing the risks. We're seeing measles cases. a fifth of those children that are getting measles end up in the hospital. They have their, they have immune amnesias, they have to get revaccinated against other diseases if they did have, get vaccinated prior.

And some small percentage of those kids are going to, years later, develop a fatal neurological disease that we can't do anything about. So touching the stove right now, maybe measles won't be the only thing that we're ha- we have to deal with. I know that people are going to see the value in public health and proven measures to prevent disease, but at what cost, and how long is it gonna take?

And what is going to be the precipitating event that will get people back on board?

The Secretary of Health and Human Services, RFK Jr.,

was recently on a program on CNN with Dana Bash. I wanna play you some of the audio and let's talk that through. 

Measles cases in the US just reached a 35-year high The second, record-breaking year in a row, 93% of these cases are among the unvaccinated. The outbreak is happening on your watch, and even be- before becoming HHS secretary, for years, you have been one of the leading voices questioning the ef- efficacy of vaccines.

Do you accept some responsibility for this measles outbreak? 

Absolutely not. First of all, this is an international outbreak. So w- and we're doing better at handling it than any country in the world. Mexico has 15 times the amount of measles per capita than we have. Canada has four times the amount of measles.

England has two times the amount of measles. Did I cause those measles outbreaks? 

You're the most 

famous- Did I cause- Maybe ... did I cause 137,000 cases of measles 

in Europe? You're the most famous vaccine skeptic on the planet. Do you want people to get the m- the MMR vaccine? 

Yeah, I said that already. 

Okay.

So Jessica, my friend, tell me what you thought of that clip. was the secretary... it seemed to me like he's making a lot of excuses for the measles outbreaks. Are his excuses factual? 

You're right that it seems like he's making excuses because that's what he, that's what he is doing, and that's what he has been doing.

He has an exceptional ability to play the whataboutism game and to play the blame game when asked very pointed questions about the consequences of his words and the consequences of a- of his actions. We have seen a massive increase in vaccine, refusal in the last two years, especially here in the United States. And to say that he is not directly responsible for that is categorically false.

He is a loud and very outspoken critic of vaccines, of particularly the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, which is the only vaccine we have that can actually reduce the incidence of measles, and it can actually prevent it in most cases, and he can't abide with that type of responsibility. he's forced and has been forced in the past to say what he said at the end of the interview, which is that the measles vaccine is recommended, that parents should get it.

But that's only because of his role as HHS secretary. If he didn't have that title, he would never say that sentence on live television. 

So there's another clip, with RFK Jr. and Dana Bash. Let's play that now 

So you are using, you are actually looking at, you're starting new studies to try to link autism, but you're also telling me- I'm not 

trying to link autism to anything.

I'm trying to find out why has autism gone from less than- Are 

you also trying- ... 

why has 

autism gone- Are you also trying to find out how it interacts with people's DNA, what's predisposed to, to have an autistic child? Are you doing both? 

Yeah, but, Dana, you probably don't understand this because you're not a scientist, but genes don't cause- you're 

not either

genes don't cause epidemics. 

I understand. Genes, epidemics. They can provide a vulnerability, but they, but 

you need- A g- 

a gene provides- ... 

environmental exposure ... 

environmental. That's what I'm asking. Are you studying the environmental trigger? You need, 

we're looking at all the different environmental exposures, but your statement, you have been fooled.

Your statement that this has been studied is not true. 

There's a lot to unpack in that statement. 

It's a lot. 

When you hear that, what do you think? 

It's deeply upsetting to me, Al, because That's not how you do science. You don't do science with a preconceived notion, a answer that you already believe in, and then create science to prove what you already believe.

And what he is attempting to claim is something that cannot be done in science, right? He is attempting to prove a negative, and that is not how the scientific method works. And he is saying that the ... And it's on the CDC website, which is absolutely horrifying, it's so embarrassing, that the claim that vaccines don't cause autism is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.

But we know that infant vaccines have been documented with decades and decades of safety h- data to show that if we have not seen it, it probably isn't the cause of it. it's also upsetting to me as a communicator when he uses the word epidemic. Epidemics refer to diseases, and autism is not a disease.

And he is trying to say that something that we have done or environmentally have given or exposed children to is causing this, and it is causing an outbreak or an epidemic of this type of condition. And it's so upsetting to the families who do have children with autism who are ex- who have thrived with autism or even who have severe autism to make it sound like it's something that the parents did or something that the parents exposed the kids to.

there's a lie on the CDC website. They say that studies have, have, studies supporting the link have been ignored by health authorities. The opposite is true. And later in that clip, he says something about there's never been any study to examine, what happens in the first six months of a child's life re- regarding this vaccine.

We don't give the MMR vaccine in the first six months of life, Al. We give it, the first dose is given between 12 to 15 months, and then the second dose is given right before kids go to kindergarten, and that's because it's not safe to do it before 12 to 15 months. Safety is the north star of vaccine trials, and it is the absolute standard when it comes to how we design the schedule for kids in this country, and in many other countries, too 

Why has measles surged again throughout the world?

Measles is on the rise around the world because of a decrease in vaccination. Now, historically, so we had eliminated measles in the United States up until 20- 2000. it had been a status that we'd had for a long time. And for the most part, when vaccination rates are at the herd immunity threshold, which means at least 95% of children are vaccinated for measles, you could mostly say we were measles free.

When measles outbreaks did happen in the past, it would usually be because a population, a school, a classroom would dip below that 95% threshold, and somebody would usually be importing the case, and a lot of times that was from international importation. So somebody who was visiting from a low vax country, who was unvaccinated, who has measles, came and then caused a little outbreak in a community.

That is increasing because we're both experiencing the importation of measles cases and low thresholds of vaccination in communities, where kindergarten classrooms across the United States are d- dipping well below 95%. And it's interesting too, because I was at a conference recently and somebody was saying something to the effect of, "95% is good, but, we should also accept things like 93%."

And you're like, no, no, we're not talking about what qualifies as an A grade here." The difference between 93% and 95% vaccination rates when it comes to measles is measles outbreaks. That's how precious we have to be about these rates, because as soon as we start dipping, we create vulnerabilities for even just one person with measles, which I've...

I think I've told you this in the past, one person with measles can infect 18 people. And think about that in exponential growth. If one person infects 18, those 18 can infect 18 each, and it's just absolutely like fire after that, the way it spreads. 

Next, Section B, HOW WE GOT HERE

For years, RFK Jr. had been concerned about mercury in the environment.

He'd pushed back on the coal industry to clean up rivers where the mercury in fish had been found to have a harmful impact on humans who ate them. So when he learned there was mercury in vaccines, he decided to investigate, and he called up Paul. 

It was a good conversation. We talked for about an hour.

At least, that's what he thought before he read the article. 

Although the vaccination industry insists that ethylmercury poses little danger because it breaks down rapidly and is removed by the body, several studies suggest that ethylmercury is actually more toxic than methylmercury. 

He just said that, mercury is in vaccines at a level that's toxic.

He had misstatement after misstatement in that article. 

Paul had developed a vaccine for an illness called rotavirus, and as he says he told RFK on that call, study after study had shown that a child would ingest more mercury from breast milk than from any vaccine. There was no evidence that such small quantities caused damage.

So back to the article. In it, RFK Jr. also repeated a claim from a scientific paper published in the late '90s by a doctor in England named Andrew Wakefield, the claim that vaccines are linked to autism.

He was arguing another thing, namely that the pharmaceutical industry was aware of something and was concealing it. 

This is Elena Conis. 

And that corporations like that actually needed more regulation and oversight than they were getting. 

The scientists and researchers, many of them sincere, even idealistic, who are participating in efforts to hide the science on thimerosal, claim that they are trying to advance the lofty goal of protecting children in developing nations from disease pandemics.

They're badly misguided. Their failure to come clean on thimerosal will come back horribly to haunt our country and the world's poorest populations. Deadly Immunity, Rolling Stone, June 2005. 

And coming from an environmental lawyer, that argument had a lot of traction. 

We reached out to both Andrew Wakefield and RFK Jr.

Wakefield did not respond. A statement from the Department of Health and Human Services in response to our questions read in part, quote, Secretary Kennedy is not anti-vaccine. He is pro-safety, pro-transparency, and pro-accountability. Okay, so back to 2005. RFK 

Jr.'s article reignited debates over vaccines, and Andrew Wakefield started to get noticed in the U.S.

Wakefield becomes this high-profile individual. He had been one in England. 

And he inspires other high-profile supporters. 

We do not need that many vaccines. 

A number of celebrities start talking about their own concerns about vaccines, going on nationally televised talk shows. 

Among the most vocal were- 

Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey.

Without a doubt in my mind, I believe vacci- vaccinations triggered Evan's autism. 

Actress Jenny McCarthy and comedian Jim Carrey were dating at the time, and Jenny's son had been diagnosed with autism. 

So I think they need to wake up and stop hurting our kids. 

Together, they organized a rally in the nation's capital called Green Our Vaccines.

I just wanna start by asking the CDC one question. How stupid do you think we are? 

RFK Jr. spoke at that rally. 

They've removed the thimerosal from the vaccines, and autism rates have not gone down. How many times have you read that repeated by these people from the press? That is an industry talking point that the industry knows is a lie.

Everybody knows 

it's a lie. National news outlets turned out story after story about vaccines. 

Local newsrooms were closing down, and there was increasing competition for news consumers, and the vaccine story was one of these stories that resonated broadly. 

And meanwhile... 

Social media is taking off. The public can actually weigh in, and so this thing really snowballs, and it's really creating a mass movement

So as this mass movement continued to make headlines in the 2000s, it also began to face more scrutiny. 

A lot of really critical media attention then starts to focus on the kind of characterization of vaccine skeptics as ignorant, selfish, uninformed, and worse. And it's become a moral position that many in media and politics have become comfortable taking.

Vaccines save lives. If you don't get vaccines, you don't care about people, and you don't believe in science, without including any of the vast context around the question. 

Yesterday, a respected British medical journal retracted a study that said the MMR vaccine may trigger autism. CBS News correspondent Richard Roth is in 

London with the latest step- With more eyes on the movement, the Wakefield paper came under more scrutiny.

The Lancet retracted it in 2010, and a British journalist named Brian Deer published an investigation revealing that it wasn't just flawed, but omitted key facts. Deer had already confirmed that Wakefield was paid to conduct his research by people with an interest in its outcome. His new work revealed that some children in the study had already exhibited signs of autism before getting vaccinated.

RFK Jr.'s article in Rolling Stone was also removed. 

you went through the sort of fallacies of the Wakefield paper. Do you remember when it was retracted and what your reaction to the retraction was, and what happens to Wakefield? 

My reaction was, it's too late. It should have never been published. You can't say anything about causality because there's no control group.

But were you surprised that even after the retraction, the, the narrative continued? 

I'm not even sure if they'd retracted it a, a month later, it would've mattered. 

I think the, the cage door got open and the devil came out. 

After the retraction, Wakefield lost his medical license in the UK, but he had already moved to the US and gotten involved in the anti-vaccine movement.

Eventually, he made a documentary, which controversially reiterated the claims in both his paper and RFK Jr.'s article. As for RFK Jr., he launched an organization called the World Mercury Project that was committed to, quote, "Exposing the government and corporate corruption that has led to increasing exposures to neurotoxic mercury in foods and medicines."

And in the meantime, vaccine-preventable diseases are starting to break out in really troubling numbers. 

Health officials fear thousands may have been exposed to the measles at Disneyland and Disney California Adventure last month. 

Then in 2014, there's this measles outbreak that starts at Disneyland. 

I think the original case may have come in from outside of this country because measles is still prevalent in the world.

Measles had been eliminated in the US by the year 2000, which meant enough people were vaccinated that even if someone came into the country with measles, it wouldn't be able to spread. Think of it as, a bunch of people holding up umbrellas in a group, so even if a few people don't have an umbrella, they're still shielded from the rain.

There was essentially a moat around them. 

But that protection wouldn't last forever. For decades, California had allowed some people to opt out of vaccines for non-medical reasons. The state actually created that exemption when it started mandating that kids get the polio vaccine before enrolling in school back in the 1960s.

California, had a philosophical exemption to vaccination. 

And vaccination rates had begun to fall. 

Once vaccination rates fray, that moat disappears. 

I'd been getting attacked for my views on vaccines for years, and, and that started a long time ago when the NIH asked me to speak to our good friend Robert F.

Kennedy Jr. I was in my office, and my assistant said, hey, Dr. Hotez, I have these two gentlemen on the phone." She's reading it. "One is named Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the other one is named Dr., Francis Collins. Can you speak to them?" And I was thinking, "Yeah, I think so." And, they said, "Peter, you have a, you have a daughter with autism.

You could explain to Bobby why vaccines don't cause autism." And I had a year of discussions with them, and that's what led to my writing an earlier book called Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism, which wound up making me a big public target from anti-vaccine groups. But, it, I had to look up everything, and then, and I wound up becoming an expert not only on the vaccine science and making vaccines, but the vaccine anti-science.

But, there was a pretty sh- steady drumbeat of attacks, and it resurfaced when Mr. Kennedy was running for, president in 2023, and there was this big on social media from, Joe Rogan and Elon Musk and Kennedy for me to debate him in public on The Joe Rogan show, which I said I didn't wanna do because, I think it would send the wrong message of how we do science.

It's not done through public debate, especially with people who have no background in science. And also, I didn't wanna legitimize his presidency. and but, the, there was this massive, assault that came on from all of these tech bros and billionaires and even, New York Time columnist Ross Douthat that's, said, "Why aren't you debating him?"

and this kind of stuff. And it's like, where the heck is this coming from? and then I think that's when either Michael reached out to me or I reached out to Michael and said, "Hey, been there, done that," because he had ha- endured a similar attack as a climate scientist maybe a decade before. And we started comparing notes and realized that there was a, a lot of crossover between the attacks on climate science and biomedicine.

So if you think of them as two circles of the Venn diagram, they don't totally overlap, but there's significant overlap. And before we know it, we had a book, that, that could really show that this is a, an, a whole organized anti-science ecosystem that's not just some random junk out there on the internet.

It was organized, it was deliberate, it was politically motivated and financially motivated, a lot of it coming from the wellness influencer industry. and, and I thought, we had an important message to tell and to explain to people how this is organized. even though it is a dark book, the, our thinking was, if you can't even describe it, how can you hope to chip away at it?

and, and that's what this tries to do. 

If a young scientist came to you and said, how do I engage with bad faith criticized without amplifying it?" How do you manage that? What advice do, would you give to others as they think about "Yeah, I wanna get involved, but then this all it can do is escalate the, the platform."

I think, first of all, we clearly need more physicians and scientists and physician scientists out there in the public domain, because I think too often we're invisible. And I think, part of the problem there is the heads of the academic health centers don't necessarily like their docs and scientists out there because they're obsessed about controlling the brand of the institution.

and so it's become more, more perilous. And one of the things that I say is if you're, if you really want to do public engagement, really think about what your goals are. And, you don't wanna, as, as Churchill warned, if you stop to shy a stone at every dog who barks, you'll never get to the end of your journey.

And so you really want to be fairly strategic on how you do your public engagement. And when people ask me about public engagement, especially young people, they think I'm gonna start talking to them about social media. And one of the things that I explain to them, actually, no. social media is probably the least rewarding, for me, the least rewarding aspect of public engagement, especially on Twitter or X right now, which has become such a cesspool, so that if you're going to, wanna have a, a, a presence out there and aspire to talk to a wider audience, really think carefully about what you wanna do.

for instance, for me, the most mean... I don't do podcasts, but I could see that being a very rewarding and impactful thing to do. But in my case, I, I put my energy into, writ- writing books and, and opinion articles. And for me, that's the most meaningful part. the social media, I take-- think of La- Lady Gaga's immortal words, "Social media is the toilet of the internet," and I think she's probably right.

And I do it, I still do it because for legacy reasons, I have a lot of followers. I have 400,000 followers on Twitter or X and keep that going even though Elon is now, I understand, switching up algorithms to make me less, less visible or make other scientists less visible. but I think that- that's the message.

and think about how broad you wanna make your lane, become. I try to still stay pretty focused on the things that I'm passionate about, which are vaccines, infectious diseases, neglected diseases, climate health, things going on in Texas, and that's about it. What impresses, me about the two of you is how you've been able to, broaden your lane and really, are willing to engage on just about any health topic.

There are very few people who do that well, and unless, you really hone your craft, I recommend not trying to do that. um, you're, you two of you are among the s- exceptions that who do this exceedingly, in fact, I was just talking to John Lapook recently from CBS News, who's another person who does that well, or Sanjay Gupta.

But, and your dean of your School of Public Health is quite good at that, too. She's also, um, can talk about multiple different topics and do it, and yet in a, in an authoritative, yet, show humility as well, that she's not trying to be the expert on every topic. So it's a balancing act, so h- my hat's off to both of you, how you've been able to do that.

I'm gonna put that on a commercial. 

No, I think that, that's a key point, though. It's the humility. I do think that we know the narrow areas where we're actually experts, and we're willing to concede that other things we're always open to learning more. 

Let, let me just do a quick follow-up 'cause that, you mentioned that Churchill quote, so that's an interesting one, which is, what do you get distracted with?

What's worth your time? Where are you gonna engage? So recently, the CDC has changed their guidance because the Secretary of HHS has decided that there would be s- a statement that led to more ambiguity about the relationship between autism and vaccinations. Did you engage with that? 

That one I did because that one was right, right down the center of the lane, right?

that's how I got involved with public engagement is, having a year of discussions with Bobby Kennedy explaining to me vaccines don't cause autism, 'cause I have a daughter with autism. And what did you 

do? What did you do? 

what I did was, went back on, on TV first of all. I keep on hoping my TV career winds down, but, with, as the, as COVID begins to wane a bit.

But Mr. Kennedy seems determined to take me out of retirement. and I did multiple interviews, BBC and, and elsewhere, and then, went int- into the cesspool, X and, spelled out, why this is- 

And what was your central message? What did you say?

There's two parts to the central message. One is, other than this is total bullshit, the two parts of the central message were, one, a massive body of evidence showing that vaccines don't cause autism and reminding people that what the anti-vaccine playbook is to keep moving the goalpost, so you can't keep up with them.

first they said it was the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine, and that came out of the Wakefield paper in 1998. Then Mr. Kennedy came on the scene in 2005 and wrote in Rolling Stone magazine it was thimerosal preservative. That was also debunked through large cohort studies. Then it was spacing vaccines too close together, and it was aluminum vaccines, and this was yet another iteration of that.

And each time, the scientific community makes a good faith effort to show it's, the, the, to look into it, investigate it, and show it's not the case. 

Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee for governor in Florida, was recently asked about Florida's measles outbreak. Shouldn't you be pushing vaccination? Here was his response. 

So is your message to Florida parents, get your kids vaccinated against that one? 

No, actually my message to Floridians and quite frankly to Americans is the reason why we have seen a measles outbreak in certain parts of the country is because of rampant illegal immigration into the United States from the previous administration.

Margaret, before Joe Biden came to office, when our borders were basically secure. What evidence do you have of that? Margaret, we've seen the outbreaks in El Paso, Texas, in Southwest Florida where I live, and many other parts where you know that you have a situation. People have come into the country illegally, have not had that vaccination schedule, and not the ones today on young kids that parents do have concerns about.

Not only is this factually incorrect, but it's nonsense. It's again the kind of proud ignorance, and given the anti-immigrant sentiment, very reminiscent of the OG know-nothings, that characterizes so much of the modern Republican Party. Really, outside of a handful of Republican lawmakers, can you think of anyone of any national stature in this party who has any interest in solving an actual problem facing Americans?

Solving the high cost of living, solving the housing crisis, solving the lack of el- access to healthcare, solving the lack of ac- solving food insecurity. If anything, the policies, such as they have of these Republicans, would exacerbate these problems. The stance is this proud disregard of any kind of knowledge, this proud contempt for knowledge of any sort.

Now, I know I began this video tying this all up with Trump, and I do think that Trump has accelerated, supercharged all of it. But this is also a longstanding aspect of Republican governance at the national level. Arguably the most consequential Republican speaker over the past 40 years, Newt Gingrich, infamously destroyed Congress's capacity to make policy, both because it allowed him to centralize power in the speaker's office and out of a general disdain for institutionalized expertise.

Ronald Reagan also was defined by this disdain for institutionalized expertise. His economic and tax agenda rested on essentially fairy tales about the powerful ability of money for the rich to benefit everyone. As he often is, Trump is something of a break in that he is so distinctive, he takes something to such an extreme that it becomes qualitatively different, and he is in continuity with the past, in continuity with the Republican Party as it's been since the 1980s.

Yes, you can point to Republican officials, Republican lawmakers who were policy wonks during this period. But when it comes to Republican voters and to the energies and emotions that animate Republican politics, from Reagan onwards, from Nixon onwards, those animating energies, those animating emotions have been contempt for expertise, contempt for governance, hostility To the very notion of public goods.

And all of this tied in a host of racial, religious, ethnic, and gender-based resentments. Trump represents the extent to which those animating emotions and attitudes and feelings have superseded any kind of serious political activity within the Republican Party and become the dominant force behind both the politicians and the officials and the voters.

Or as the cliche goes, now the inmates are in charge of the asylum. There's that word again. So to extend that analogy perhaps a little more than it should be, is there a warden? And when will he come back in control? And I think the answer is that there is no warden, and this is just how the Republican Party is, and that's how...

and it's how it will be for the foreseeable future. And that does leave the country in a dilemma. You can't actually have a situation where one party is trying to govern, however unsuccessfully, and the other party is committed to destroying the capacity to govern. Doesn't really work out. And I don't have any answers for this one.

One of mine, potentially, is political reform. Changing the political system such that the incentives within the Republican Party are different. But if you believe, as I do, that some of this is an emergent property of the voters themselves, of the people who are committed to Republican candidates, and that those energies from the voters are what fueled Trump and gave him his prominence and are shaping the Republican Party across the board, then I'm really not sure what you do here.

It really may be that until there is some seismic change in the United States itself, the kind of seismic change that completely reconfigures a party system, it may be that until that point comes, we're all just hanging on for dear life as we attempt to navigate a situation where every once in a while, every so often, eh, fairly regularly, the mechanisms of state are captured by a bunch of people who want nothing more than to corrupt them, destroy them, and render them useless for the next people who happen to take the reins.

Now, Section C, WHY IT WORKS

my background in sociology and social psychology, I think a lot about identities and how identities guide us in our information processing. So to start out, big picture, we all have these identities that, thousands of identities, like parent, brother, friend, worker, sports fan.

All these types of identities, right? And they're gonna influence how we process things. And when it comes to things like, again, if we're a sports fan we might say, "Oh, that ref is biased and our team should win." that's a pretty benign type of, processing information in a biased way. But if we have a political identity- That can process our information in a biased way that might have more serious consequences.

Because ultimately, what our identities do is they provide us with meaning and a sense of structure in our social worlds, and they also can provide a really strong sense of self-esteem. So we have this motivation to maintain consistency between the values of our identities and the environments that we're in.

And so when we think big picture about why people believe misinformation, the perspective I often come from is a perspective of considering what identities are most important to that person And how those identities and set of identities are going to make them more vulnerable to certain types of misinformation.

And we're all vulnerable to different types of misinformation. So that's kinda like the first big picture, is thinking about our identities. But even beyond that, there are more specific components that can predict, a vulnerability to misinformation. the big ones are, education and media information literacy.

So when we think about just, aggregate studies of, okay, how do we... looking at this big population, what are the factors that predict higher susceptibility to misinformation? It's usually lower education, lower media literacy, and also, stronger partisan beliefs. So those are kinda like the, the main drivers of, specific individual factors that can predict misinformation susceptibility.

That's interesting. And also, you bring up this idea that we have, I think you said even thousands of different- ... identities. right? Sure. Yeah. And it's almost like at different points in time- ... different identities take precedence. Yeah. I know when I wear my scientist cap, I know, this is just, one random example, that red dye is, we don't have robust human data showing that red dye is going to cause a, whatever, a variety of health outcomes that some, some people say it does, right?

There's a lot of fear- ... mongering around dyes and additives and such. But then when I put on my mother cap, I think about my two kids, and I'm like, "Okay, I know the science is, there, th- these things are safe from a scientific perspective, and all the data are pointing to safe." But even still, my mama bear instinct, it's like, okay, but maybe I'll try to just minimize, just in case.

the, y- it's almost like I, I change the lens through which I'm seeing the world, right? And I'm placing a different emphasis on different things. So I just, I wonder, I'm sure that's a factor in some of the models that you're assessing and you're considering, is that those different identities can shift and change over time, even in short periods of time, right?

Yeah, absolutely. The technical term is identity salience. So that's why we talk about, what's more- ... salient in your mind on this, this hierarchy. And it's always moving, and there's this interaction between salience and importance. trying to think what's more salient in your mind versus what has overall more importance.

another important, factor as far as identities that I've been thinking about more- is this concept of, identity complexity. So basically what that means is how much do all of your identities overlap with each other? an example of really low social identity complexity is if you imagine all of your identities overlap on this perfect circle.

So your religious identity, your political identity, your friend identity, they all align, they all agree with each other, and you can see the world through a very narrow lens because it all fits in this identity Then you're very vulnerable to misinformation because everything is looking through that one lens.

And all of your self-esteem is derived through this one way of looking through the world. Whereas if you have a higher social identity complexity, and you have identities that don't overlap very much, then you're much more likely to see the world in a broader view and appreciate those shades of gray more, because you're not deriving so much self-esteem from a narrow set of overlapping identities.

So the, the broader we can be... And there's, there are studies that look at this, that when we have this higher, social identity complexity, when we have broader set of identities, we're, tend to be less likely to fall for these types of misinformation. 

and I'm sure, it's also influencing the way that we're seeking out information, and then you add in like social media algorithm and all that.

But, just recently I did a post on the way that we search for information, right? Yeah. Just even the search terms that we use and, confirmation bias, that's a whole other concept. But, if we're searching, does this cause cancer versus d- is this safe, for example- 

Absolutely

that's gonna spit out completely different information to us, and then also shape the, of course, the information that we're exposed to and consuming. So just something else for, for people to be mindful of. So Matthew, switching gears a little bit, so we're talking about susceptibility to misinformation, but what about the people who are putting out misinformation?

Why might someone do that? And then maybe you could just help distinguish between misinformation and disinformation in terms of intentionality, of deception. 

Yeah. So misinformation is the broad umbrella term of any sort of information that's false or misleading, regardless of intent. So if you just share something on social media, you're not trying to mislead anyone, but it just turns out to be not true, that's a, a form of misinformation.

disinformation is intentional. So you're intentionally trying to mislead or deceive someone because of some goal. And, some of the easiest examples of this are with political misinformation and propaganda, where someone has a clear political agenda to, elect a, a certain person or s- uh, a person from a particular political party, and that's why they want to share false information about their opponent, for example, because they want the other person to win.

So that's... Disinformation is intentionally trying to mislead someone. 

'cause I get the question, okay, what, why, what is the motivation? Why would a person lie about this? And to your point, sometimes they don't realize perhaps that what they're sharing is not in fact accurate information. But then of course there are unfortunately bad players who do, as you said, intentionally share disinformation And the motivations, the two that always come to my mind are fame and fortune, right?

So again, going back to how we kicked off the episode, we know that those very absolutist or extreme statements, those are the... That's gonna elicit a strong emotional response. It's likely to get people engaged with content, right? That's the stuff that makes a splash. It's clickbaity. and of course, large followings, although I have not cracked this code, they often translate to monetization, right?

a lot of times you can, if you grow a large following, you develop a platform, and you can make money from that. And then y- there's also just the fame aspect, the attention that, that people get, right? So any other thoughts or comments on why people might share misin- mis or disinformation?

Yeah, money and power are huge drivers. they, they drive so many different things, right? And we can think about the disinformation campaigns, ultimately they're driven by money and power. And when we think about people who have, public platforms, again, like you say, more sensationalist, misleading content is an easy way to get more attention.

So that's definitely some, some clear reasons why some people would share false or misleading content. And, I think about it as a, they might not, start off even, with a goal to mislead people, but maybe they see one post does really that was sensationalized, and they drift more into that direction.

And all of a sudden they're, spreading complete lies and complete nonsense and justifying it. One other thing I'll say about one- why people share misinformation is, it may be that they don't entirely believe it to be true, but they think by sharing it, it's better safe than sorry in some ways.

So if they think, for example, all this misinformation was spreading on WhatsApp in, in, in India a- among these certain villages. You might have heard these stories. That was, from a few years ago. And it was just rumors and lies about these people that were kidnapping children, and they were ultimately killed because of the misinformation, being spread about them in, in these villages.

And a lot of the misinformation spread on WhatsApp, just people just forwarding these, these rumors And some of the research looked at that as why did you re-share this? And some people said, I didn't know if it was true. I wasn't really sure, but I thought it was better to share this just in case there was a kidnapper in my village than to not share it."

So when we think about other types of misinformation, it's similar too. if we think that something's harmful, red dye or whatever, maybe you feel like that fear component of "I think it's better to protect people I care about and share this just in case," and you're not really considering like the whole information environment of what happens when you do that, and you're just having this fear response.

So sometimes it does come from a place of, of, protection and worry.

During the early 1950s, Polish American psychologist Solomon Asch expressed the power of conformity through a simple test. In this experiment, a volunteer is told that they're participating in a study on visual perception and is seated at a table with five other people. The experimenter shows the group a picture of a standard line and three comparison lines of various lengths, and then ask the people to say which of the three lines matches the comparison line.

It's clear to anyone with any kind of good vision that the second line is the right answer. But the thing is, most if not all of the other people in the group start choosing the wrong line. The participant doesn't know that those other people are all actors, a common deception used in social psychological research, and they're intentionally giving the wrong answer.

This causes the real participant to struggle with trusting their own eyes or going with the group. In the end, most subjects still gave what they knew was the correct answer, but more than a third were essentially just willing to give the wrong answer to mesh with the group. Asch and subsequent researchers found that people are more likely to conform to a group if they're made to feel incompetent or insecure and are in a group of three or more people, especially if all those people agree.

It also certainly doesn't hurt if the person admires the group because of maybe their status or their attractiveness and if they feel that others are watching their behavior. We also tend to conform more if we're from a culture that puts particular emphasis on respect for social standards. This might sound a little bit familiar, like It's all of high school, fraternities or sororities, the big company you work for, or any other group that you've ever been a part of.

The classic experiments of Milgram and Asch showed us that people conform for lots of different reasons, but they both underscored the power of situation in conformity, whether that situation elicits respect for authority, fear of being different, fear of rejection, or simply a desire for approval. This is known as normative social influence, the idea that we comply in order to fuel our need to be liked or belong.

But of course, groups influence our behavior in more ways than just conformity and obedience. For example, we may perform better or worse in front of a group. This is called social facilitation, and it's what might, say, help you sprint the last 100 meters of a race if people are cheering you on. But it's also what can make you nervous enough to forget the words to that poetry you were supposed to be slamming in front of a crowd.

But that's what can happen in front of a group. What happens when you're actually part of a group? Do you work harder or start slacking? One study found that if you blindfold students, hand them a rope, and tell them to pull as hard as they can in a game of tug of war, the subjects will put in less work if they think they're part of a team instead of pulling by themselves.

About 20% less, it turns out. This tendency to exert less effort when you're not individually accountable is called social loafing. That's pretty good. You can now add the word loafing to your scientific vocabulary. But a group's ability to either arouse or lessen our feelings of personal responsibility can make us do more dangerous things than just phone in some group homework assignment.

It can also lead to deindividuation, the loss of self-awareness and restraint that can occur in group situations. Being part of a crowd can create a powerful combination of arousal and anonymity. It's part of what fuels riots and lynch mobs and online trolling. The less individual we feel, the more we're at the mercy of the experience of our group, whether it's good or bad.

And it should come as no surprise that the attitudes and beliefs we bring to a group grow stronger when we talk with others who share them. This is a process psychologists know as group polarization, and it often translates into a nasty us versus them dynamic. And you know what is great at polarizing groups?

The internet. The internet has made it easier than ever to connect like-minded people and magnify their inclinations. This can of course breed haters, like racists may become more racist in the absence of conflicting viewpoints, but it can and often does work for good, promoting education, crowdsourcing things like fundraising, and organizing people to fight all kinds of world suck.

And group dynamics can not only affect our personal decisions, they can also influence really big decisions on a larger, even national scale. Groupthink is a term coined by social psychologist Irving Janis to describe what happens when a group makes bad decisions because they're too caught up in the unique internal logic of their group.

When a group gets wrapped up in itself and everyone agrees with each other, no one stops to think about other perspectives. As a result, you get some big and bad ideas, including some enormous historical fiascos, like the Watergate cover-up, and the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident.

So while two heads may often be better than one, it's important to make sure those heads are still open to different opinions, or they can do some really dumb stuff. In the end, it's best to understand ourselves and our decisions as informed simultaneously by both individual and group factors, personality and situation.

it's frustrating to me that politics and health are now just such blatant entertainment that people don't... It doesn't matter if you're wrong because you just say, "I don't like the other guy," and your fans all clamor and applaud. It doesn't matter what you say. You just say, "I don't like that," and then that's what matters.

So that's something that is very frustrating to me. And, going back to health misinformation, it was actually interesting that, there was a recent meta-analysis that looked at, the impact of fact-checking across different domains, and it was found that health misinformation was actually most resistant to fact-checks.

like even more than some- That's terrifying. Yeah. Yeah. So like that's another reason. it's such a difficult problem too, and there's a lot of reasons for that. like a lot of it now is, like the politics, and we talked about how political identities can bias us and how if we want to believe something That, makes us feel like we have, are in control or makes us feel better about ourselves, and someone says, "No, that's wrong," it's really hard for them to change their mind.

So yeah, definitely things with health, but, all types of misinformation that has, really immediate consequences to harming people is very frustrating. 

There was another study, and I did not read it in its entirety to prepare for this at all. It just occurred to me. and tell me if you've heard of it, but it looked at the impact of political ideology on, VAERS, so the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, and how in states that tend, that lean more conservative, the number of reports to VAERS was significantly higher than those in other states.

And I, I've talked about VAERS at, at length, and just in case folks are new to it, it's a, it's a passive public health surveillance system for vaccines where people can report, adverse events that they experienced after getting vaccinated. However, it's really used as a, as an early warning system for public health scientists.

if we see major trends, of a particular outcome, they're taken quite seriously, and they're rigorously investigated to see if they're true safety signals or not. but unfortunately, people, I think COVID shined a light on VAERS, and people don't really- Yeah ... understand that it is not, it cannot be used to signal causality.

Because just because something occurred after vaccination does not mean it was caused by vaccination. And also, some people do, unfortunately, intentionally put, file, false reports of adverse events after vaccination. So there's, it's a whole, it's a whole thing. But I thought that was really interesting, and I think, we're all aware of the role of political ideology in, in, in, in health and science information- consumption. Yeah. But we have not cracked that code and I feel like that's a real area, for future work. it just, it breaks my heart to see certain friends and family members who do lean, a, a certain way politically. They are, they're, they're much, they seem more likely to consume information specifically that paints, the government in a bad light, for example.

those who tend to have strong libertarian leanings automatically- ... distrust, vaccines, for example, because the FDA is all bad, or they're, quote, unquote, "in bed with industry." So those, I find that those people are quite difficult to reach- ... but I have not given up yet.

but I'm sure- I'm curious if you've, I'm sure you've seen that, and that's something that's, on your radar as well. 

Yeah. yeah, the- Interaction between politics and health misinformation is huge and definitely something I've studied. And, it's been unfortunate to see, the rise of anti-vaccine misinformation align itself with right-wing politics, and it wasn't always the case.

COVID really painted vaccination in a, a very partisan lens, unfortunately. 

And I know I find it challenging. obviously I'm unbiased science, right? But to, to- ... put out non-partisan information, again, this was something I talked about last week with, with Moshe, it's very difficult because science has been politicized, you know- Yeah

whether we like it or not. And so I feel like- ... no matter what I say, it's construed as taking a political stance. and that's something that I personally struggle with quite a bit. So Matthew, one more question and then I'm gonna leave you alone, but you posted something about the quantification of misinformation, and I believe it was Dr.

Karam Garimella's work in particular that you mentioned on Threads. a- as a data scientist, this is just something that I'm very curious about, how we quantify misinformation. Is there anything that you can share about that? 

Yeah. So misinformation, as I mentioned, is such a broad term, and how we study it- Can be challenging because to do a good study, you have to define your variables well and, and code them in a way that makes sense with your statistical analysis.

So sometimes you can't appreciate all of the nuance all of the time, and sometimes, things are changing and what used to be misinformation may no longer be misinformation in the future. like misinformation, it's based on the best available evidence we have. So that, that's the bigger picture, but also just like how it's defined.

Sometimes misinformation is defined as sharing links from non-reputable sources, so just any link from a source is kinda lumped in there. And that's done for, to make the experiment, like the statistical analysis possible. Because otherwise, if you try to go through each... if you're looking at millions of tweets, for example, you can't parse through each one individually and fact-check it, so you, you take a more generalized approach.

other research looks at specific statements of, if something has been fact-checked as true or false, so then you're defaulting to what fact-checkers say. and there's other research looking at, broad beliefs that people have. So we talk about anti-vaccine beliefs, like that's a, a big component of misinformation, and that's why we see a lot of these links between conservatism and, believing misinformation is when you just look at vaccine information, you see this very partisan slant.

So it's really challenging to, to quantify because you have to be very specific with how you came to those conclusions. And I think it's important for misinformation researchers to try to have as much humility as we can and not try to, come across as, as arbiters of truth. And I think, it's, it's tough because, there are some things that we can feel very passionate about that are very, there's a ton of science to support them, and we might just feel like this is clearly the way to go.

And then there's some other things that maybe are less certain, and I think it's important to try to be mindful of our own limitations and how we, perceive our worlds and try To navigate different spaces and try to study misinformation because ultimately the goal is to try to, have people, live lives that are based in evidence and make evidence-based decisions and r- have people recognize their own biases.

But as scientists, we have our own biases too. So I think it's really important to try to work together and determine consensus where we can call out each other's biases in order to all collectively become a little bit less biased.

And Finally, Section D, RESPONDING TO THE MOMENT

during that time, constantly visible online, constantly trying to translate scientific information as co- as is was coming out, what kind of personal drawbacks came from constantly being online, constantly being at the forefront, and not sharing, the most heartfelt news?

Yeah. I would be lying if I said it was all great. Yeah. It wasn't. it came at a big cost. being a public figure in general is costly, but being a public figure Related to public health during a time that was incredibly divided, a time that was highly politicized- a time where other racial tension were happening as well- Yeah

and political tension was happening, it, it created the perfect storm for a lot of vitriol. and I'm not unused to that or not used to that. it's... I'm familiar with the anti-science movement. I'm familiar with the anti-vaccine movement. Those were not new concepts. But to be the direct recipient of the attacks- as somebody who probably comes off as very thick-skinned, I'm very much not. I'm very sensitive. And it was very hard to receive death threats and very specific threats of violence towards me and my children. I remember there was a weekend where I got a call from a 703 number, which is Northern Virginia, and it was an FBI agent who had said that my name and my children's names had appeared on dark websites.

Perhaps I should leave town if I had the means. And I just remember thinking, "What if I didn't have the means?" Exactly. 

Yeah. 

and again, he did also say, a lot of times these are keyboard warriors who are a lot braver- Yeah ... on the computer than they are in real life, but I wasn't gonna take that risk- Oh, yeah

and wonder if anything would happen. 

yeah. 

so it was costly. I remember I was one of the co-authors of that letter to Spotify- 

in response to the episode with Robert Malone on Joe Rogan's 

podcast. yeah. 

Not asking for deplatforming or censorship. We were just literally asking for a basic warning that said, "This is not medical advice."

Yeah. 

The most basic warning. And what happened after that was truly horrific. I just was, dragged online, attacked, called every name in the book, to the point where I had to create creative spellings for, the N-word, to make it a hidden word- Oh ... that it wouldn't show up in my DMs- My God ... because I was being called that so often.

it was just using numbers and emojis and all kinds of things. It was just so awful. I say that, and I still wouldn't go back and change a thing because I know that when I look at the totality of that experience, the good far outweighs the bad. The bad was really bad, but the goodness of it and the benefits that I saw happen in people's lives and my, in our community was so much greater.

Wow. 

that's a 

lot. It's a lot. Oh, I'm so sorry 

you 

went 

through that. 

Yeah. 

can I just comment on, first of all, thank you for doing everything that you've done despite all of this crap that people had to put through you, or put at you. But this also is reflecting on the fact that a lot of the target and the harassment is very gendered, right?

Oh, 

absolutely. 

And can you speak a little bit more about... we teach science comms. we tell young people, including young women, "Get out there." Yep. We need more of us to speak up. We need more visibility, more representation in science, in public health- to be public figures so we can see ourselves represented- in the screens, and yet there is that dark side- Absolutely ... of doing public communications, especially in public health- Yep ... especially today, when so many words are just triggered- Totally ... just to say that. so how do you balance that? 

it was both the reason why I was so trusted, because I was a woman- Yeah

because I was a woman of color. I think it really opened, science up to a lot of people who were like, "Wow, she looks like me," or- Yeah ... "She sounds like me," or, "She's in a similar season of life as me." and then it was also the reason to attack me. Yeah. Yeah. "You're a woman. You must be dumb.

You're a woman of color. You must really be dumb." it was just the s- most Unoriginal and like- ... absurd- Yeah ... kind of critique. Yeah. and then predictable, deeply misogynistic kind of tropes that I would hear, telling me to shut up and cook dinner and like stupid stuff. 

Oh, gosh. 

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

"You should be taking care of your kids and- Wow ... not talking about this. You don't know what you're talking about. This is a man's job." I a- any- anything you could imagine a misogynistic person saying to a woman like me, it was said. 

Quite un- Like- ... unoriginal, 

I think ... unoriginal. Yeah. Truly, deeply unoriginal.

Okay. 

but, I felt so strongly that for so many years science, capital S Science- Yeah ... was just so elitist and hidden behind prestigious institutions and often portrayed by and represented by white men. 

And the... I just wanted people to see, it could be so much more. There are...

There's so much diversity in this space, and you can look like me and be a scientist trained in very technical things. I'm not, obviously not the first at all, but I wanted to at least show people that you can also be a mom and do this, and you can also, work in this type of work and do this, and you can be a public figure and do this.

But I tried to also be very transparent that it wasn't just wonderful and- Yeah ... rainbows. 

Yeah. Can I ask you to reflect a little bit on how you coped with all of this? Yeah. Because receiving death threats, receiving, anger towards yourself, but also your kids- Yeah ... and your family, that's a lot.

How did you cope- 

Yeah ... 

with all of that? 

I scaled back a lot. I changed my relationship with... for a while it felt like a ball and chain a bit. You know- Yeah ... I ha- I was on a very short leash. It felt like I would do this weekly Q&A, which I loved doing, but then it became almost like an expectation, and this was all free labor.

Yeah. I was not charging for any of this. I'm like the worst kind of influencer in that sense. None of my work was sponsored or paid. I would just do this as a public service. And I stopped posting about my kids, and that was really sad because I think one of the most, compelling things that I did was I- Yeah

I shared my kids' journey through COVID and their vaccination journey- ... and even interviewed all of them about their post-vaccination experience. I remember some of that. It was so- And my- ... beautiful ... sweet toddler boy talking about, his T cells and his B cells- ... getting activated, it was like- Oh, my god

beautiful and so endearing, and it made so many people, feel that, oh, the vaccine's not scary. And- 

Yeah ... 

I wanted to lead by example, but I just, I thought, that privilege has been revoked, and I stopped posting about my kids. I started going to therapy for the first time in my life, honestly- and that was a really great reason to start. it was a traumatic experience- Yeah ... but it was a really great reason to, put that practice into my self-care. I took more breaks, Yeah. I think that I was... I'm still feeling like I'm chronically online, but I scaled back a bit, and my audience noticed.

they were saying, "You're not posting as much," and I just thought, "I can't." 

Yeah. 

this is a really intense job that I get nothing compensated for. Yeah. and I didn't resent that part, but I just thought, if the cost is so high-" Yeah ... "then I really need to think about the balancing of my, emotional budget here."

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. wanted to take a little bit of a step back, to Joe Rogan and other inf- influencers who are constantly speaking about scientific information that may not be the most reputable or, reaching to sources that maybe aren't sharing the best facts. speaking about that, specifically about the Meta community guidelines removal and how, social media used to be managed in terms of information that was put out, someone behind the scenes was looking at that, seeing if that was truthful.

What are your thoughts on kind of Meta stepping out of this equation? 

it was very disappointing to see a scaling back of any type of content moderation. Yeah. we've always known that the algorithms are optimized with clicks and eyeballs- Yeah ... and that the things that cause people to click and watch and forward and...

are things that elicit strong emo- emotional responses. 

And, my content wasn't salacious. My content wasn't creating people to have, big reactions. sometimes it was if I was having, a big reaction to some bad content perhaps. but, we got into this, very ridiculous debate about truth, and that's not even what we were asking them to do.

We were not asking them to be, like, final arbiters of truth. We were just asking them to recognize that when somebody is saying that it's something that is, demonstrably false, like the most basic science. Yeah. lying. 

Yeah. 

Literally lying in a provable way. 

Yeah. 

That even if they don't take it off, that it should be flagged.

And there was a whole section, there used to be for the f- the first couple years of COVID, where you can flag something as false information, then you could put it under the category of health, and you could even put it under the category of COVID-19 under health. 

And then all of that disappeared.

And I remember there was a time too where they were a little bit overzealous with the content ban- banners, and it would get in the way of our captions. Yeah. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. I remember seeing that. Yeah. It 

was like, And I 

remember They're like... And it would say things like, "For re- you know, for reliable information, go to the CDC or WHO."

The CDC, 

yeah. yeah, yeah. Yeah. 

which is crazy that we can't say go to the CDC anymore, at least not in the US, but- Yeah ... a full walk away from that was just shocking, especially because it wasn't just a walk away from that. Those of us who were content creators felt really supported by these- 

... these organizations, by these teams. And then those teams dissolved, and our emails started just to go unanswered. They stopped caring because they just deprioritized it as an organization so much. And I think that we are now in a very dangerous place when it comes to online content moderation or lack thereof.

Because you have other platforms who are almost boomeranging so much to the other side of like, if you really want free speech, because there's a different kind of suppression that's happening on platforms like Meta about political content, which public health was then downgraded to political- 

Yep

content, 

and therefore our, engagement dropped. but then you've got other platforms being like, you can say anything." 

Yeah. 

And it's completely the wild west. And that is also not what I'm asking for. Yeah. I don't think that is free speech. I don't think that you can- yell fire in a crowded space, right?

I don't think that you can yell that vaccines are killing people either. Both of those things are harmful lies and- ... and should have consequences. And so I worry about the future of digital ecosystems without any sort of checks and balances. 

I never raise my voice with patients, and I feel like these conversations are similar in that way, in that they should be kept very respectful. But at the same time, I thought it was valuable to show the level of passion that not only I feel, but my colleagues have been feeling for a very long time. In watching it back myself, I thought I did a pretty good job balancing being an active, empathetic, attentive listener with going to bat- For my colleagues, science researchers, science in general, and allowing people just to see the flip side of the conversation, but being a good person, meaning that the people who I was disagreeing with, I didn't want them to hate me.

Because I felt like if we created a hateful relationship right at the outset, no one's mind would be changed, no one would get any meaningful value out of these interactions. And it actually worked quite well. even walking in, I think I made a joke sitting down at the chair, which last time I didn't. I was so nervous.

This time I was a little more comfortable. Made a joke about the government shutdown. Everyone laughed. It put everyone in a better place. And then as feedback started coming in, I saw comments from some of my colleagues, and it, it got me a little bit upset. It pulled at the heartstring because right now in the healthcare community, especially those who are trying their best to put out evidence-based content, we're all on the same page.

We're all trying to do the best that we can. We all have different ways of doing this. I have the YouTube channel, the podcast. We do silly videos with meme reviews. More serious, hard-hitting interviews with people who've been impacted by MAHA. Other people make TikTok videos dancing with hula hoops.

Whatever it is, everyone has their own little strategy, and I think that's great. I think that's the power of social media. But then when our own group starts attacking each other, that's where I feel like we're setting ourselves back. Especially because the criticism that was, put forth here I think is similar to the criticism I heard starting my social media platforms.

The doctors that first heard about my wishes to put out evidence-based content on social media were saying, "It's not valuable. It's not professional. It's not gonna help anyone. You're not changing anyone's mind." When I see comments like this about the format being bad, I feel like it's in a similar vein.

It's judgmental in a way- That I don't believe is beneficial to the cause of evidence-based medicine. These Jubilee debates oftentimes devolve into shouting matches, disagreements where no one comes together. I see why people criticize that. But if you took a five-minute watch, a 10-minute watch, a 30-minute watch, if you were gracious enough to watch the entire episode, you'd see that this episode was far from that.

Humans saw other humans across from them. They heard one another out. We agreed, we disagreed, we had some commonalities. Ultimately, I think that's a win. Bringing people together to discuss issues is a huge win, and, what surprised me most is almost the ending of the debate. People came up to me that were debating me, thanking me for my time, for my honesty, saying that I'm different than most doctors.

And while I take this compliment, I have to remind them that the doctors that they have painted in their minds, or perhaps have had negative experiences with, do not represent the entirety of the healthcare profession. We wanna do better as a majority. We wanna be there for our patients. Sometimes the healthcare system gets in the way.

So at the end of the day, it's less about h- holding our noses up in the air and saying, "You shouldn't be on social media. You shouldn't be in these debates. You shouldn't be on Fox & Friends, Dr. Mike, 'cause they spread misinformation." Hold on a second. Bad actors are going on Fox & Friends and spreading misinformation.

Don't you want me on there to replace those people, get better ratings for Fox & Friends so that they can then get accurate information, the audience get accurate information? So that's my thoughts on that. I'm curious about your take. I asked about this in my Instagram stories, and I was actually pleasantly surprised to see the amount of, support that I got.

These days it's hard to find support on social media, given the fact that we don't do the whole parasocial thing on this channel, but cool to see nonetheless. The biggest value that I brought to this episode, I think, was highlighting blind spots that perhaps the panelists didn't even realize they had, whether it was highlighting the fact that RFK Jr.

is still getting legal fees, but they're just being sent to his son. He's getting money. How is that impacting his decisions?

He has 

gotten money in the past. He doesn't take payments anymore. He 

can't. 

And 

so- Do you know who's taking payments on his behalf? 

M- You're probably gonna say his wife. 

His son. And the participants didn't even know the MAHA report existed, and they didn't know that some of the data in it was completely fabricated.

The sources were fully made up, like AI hallucination level. 

Did you see the first MAHA report that he put out? 

I did not, no. 

Seven sources. Okay. Fully made up. About research that was never done. When I reach out to the authors that they listed their reasoning for why they were making certain recommendations.

There's no way to ask. And then finally, the point about they believe that our system sucks with transparency, a point of which I agree with. They then believe RFK Jr. is bringing back that level of transparency, when in reality, he just is ending a period of public comment like I pointed out to this gentleman.

Every time HHS enacts 

a new policy since 1946, they had a period of waiting for public comment. For people who are stakeholders to talk about how this policy will impact them. Guess what Secretary Kennedy ended this year for the first time since 1946? 

do, do you know why he did it? 

Yes. 

Why?

I can quote you word for word why he did it. 

Okay, so my understanding is that- 

no, I'm gonna read it to you It's not needed, and it's not very effective.

That's interesting, 'cause, uh, in some ways I agree with your statement. I 

agree. The prescription given by a doctor, and I think this is a major problem, and you guys have broken trust. 

I agree, and I think I agree with everyone here on that. You know what's wild? I agree with you. 

I think we agree on so much, 

man.

He's not making the reforms. 

Pause. 

Pause. Pause 

time. I think in general, the people who support RFK, perhaps even the MAHA movement, want the same things that doctors want. And once we realize we're on the same team, I prese- I was able to present a little bit of a different take from my perspective, because they're giving it from their patient perspective, and I'm giving it from the doctor perspective.

And I wanted them to reflect upon that, to see that I'm not the enemy. Just rattling off a couple things that we completely agreed upon during this debate. Chronic diseases are on the rise. Lifestyle changes are a big part of it. But as someone who's actually in the trenches and treating patients, it's not so easy to create sustainable behavior change.

So when someone says, "Just work out," on an individual level, that sounds great, but for a doctor who's trying to motivate a patient- That's very hard because patients come with all sorts of situations alongside them. The fact that the system sucks and has hurt some of them, I completely understand. I criticize the system probably more than anyone on YouTube because of how problematic it is in getting people affordable care, quality care, transparency, during their care, the administrative burden that comes with it.

The fact that conflicts of interest exist, that's true, and we need to call it out when it happens, especially when it's hidden, but we need to call out conflicts of interest when they happen on side A and side B. And the final one is the point that's probably most tired, is we messed up during COVID.

I get it. We could have done better. We, as a healthcare system, messed up. As a government, we messed up. This is a worldwide phenomenon where no one knew what the heck was going on, and as a result, we didn't handle it perfectly. We have videos on this channel covering what we did wrong, what we could do better, how do we learn from it, multiple podcast guests, and I think we'll continue to do that.

I think the participants were shocked that I was, someone who was willing to concede those points. But what doesn't make sense to me as a physician is that when we say, 'Make America healthy again,' is insinuating at some point we were healthier than we are now And I don't know what time period we wanna go back to, but I certainly don't wanna go back to the times before pharma, before antibiotics, before we knew how to perform surgeries and have medical devices and stenting and all this stuff.

So when we say healthy again, I don't know what timeframe we're looking at. And when we look at data, a lot of the participants would point out that chronic health diseases are on the rise. I agree. And I think this is a societal problem, not necessarily a medical problem. The disconnect was, in those scenarios, was people didn't see that we've actually made tremendous strides in helping people manage certain conditions, whereas in the past, they may have acutely died of those issues.

So that while chronic health diseases have gone up, we have to remember that when someone used to have a heart attack, and we had no treatments for them, they would die. So now we're allowing people to survive their first heart attack, they become chronic health patients. The, the fact that we've been able to better manage, chronically, these conditions, we're seeing better mortality numbers, but perhaps worse chronic health numbers.

And that's a very unique problem in healthcare, because for every condition you solve or cure you create, you actually end up creating a new problem. If you look at our relatives that only lived to age 20 or 30, perhaps they didn't have issues with skin cancer because they didn't live long enough to experience skin cancer.

If you think about those same individuals and their dental, health, they didn't live long enough to develop all the dental problems that living into your 70s, 80s, 90s can cause. I think we need to really understand, when we make an argument, why we're making the argument, what the flaws of our arguments are, and that's what science does, and I think that's what makes science beautiful.

Uncertainty is very disorienting. And I would argue that pandemics, public health emergencies, are probably the most disorienting thing that can happen. Yeah. And so when there's a lot of uncertainty, human brains like to make sense of things, right? There are dots, we wanna connect them, and that causes a lot of logical fallacies to emerge, and it's sometimes like the appeal to nature fallacy of like whatever is natural and organic and- from the earth might be better, or the correlation and causation fallacy, where people see two things and you assume that A caused B. and it's, it's trying to help people understand that- it's okay to feel disoriented and uns- and the uncertainty is disorienting itself. I want to, bring some human touch to the science communication and sh- and share the empathy that I have with, "This is scary.

This is really disorienting." But there are people who are literally out to cause more harm than the harm that is being caused by the thing that is causing the disruption, right? 

Since the beginning of time, misinformation has existed, and misinformation is this kind of byproduct, too, of a public health emergency, and there will always be snake oil.

There will always be conspiracies. There will always be alternative facts to the actual evidence, and I just want people to take a step back and recognize that. you might think those are lies, but why do you think that? Yeah. Is it because people who have your same religion think so? Is it because people- who have your same worldview and political view think so? Is it because that makes you feel more calm? And asking those questions can help them separate themselves from a little bit of the groupthink that happens. Because I don't think people who refuse vaccines want to harm anybody- No. ... or want to harm their own children.

I think they think those things because they've been led astray. 

Yeah. 

A lot of times, they're hesitant or confused and just have not been given the right information, or they've just been completely saturated with bad information. Yeah. And so it has to come in from, a judgment-free zone first to be like, "Look, information is not neutral, and you- You probably heard something that is causing you to believe these very binary things about what's going on.

How can I help you understand it more so that you're not assuming that something that you don't like is automatically bad or made up or fake, 

How do you filter or infiltrate or penetrate, those ecosystems? Because a lot of the times it's echo chambers, right? Yeah. It's communities that think like this.

how do you have those conversations? How do you have access to those conversations? 

I've done it in a multitude of different ways. I have had-- I've done focus groups with people who were all very politically conservative and done a lot of, listening and understanding, w- their perceptions of vaccines and vaccine policy.

Absolutely enlightening. Helped me as a science communicator to understand- what are the kind of sentiments that are happening in the community. I've asked my audience to tell me things that they've heard, frequently asked questions, circulating narratives, rumors, falsehoods, whatever.

I've done lots of one-on-one conversations. I had people who were like, "Look, my family member is an anti-vaxxer. My family member is, really obsessed with MAHA." I've done it on a one-on-one. I've done, group Zooms. I've done focus groups. I've done media. there's just so many ways.

and I think that not otherizing the groups- Yeah ... who disagree with you is a, a critical part of being an effective communicator, right? I want to be talking to people who are in MAHA so that I can help them understand, look, I want to make America healthy again too. I want to make everybody healthy again.

That's why I'm in, that's why I'm in public health. Yeah. 

Exactly. 

Even this concept of, like- Longevity, which is all over the news right now. Yeah. Yeah. you know that public health is, the whole goal- All about that ... is longevity, right? we're trying to- The 

quality 

of- Reduce... Exactly ... health. Yeah.

Reduce harm- Right ... increase your quality of life- 

Yeah ... 

give you healthier habits- ... promote health, regular screenings. that's all longevity science. Exercise. For sure. Exactly. Exercise, reduce alcohol, don't smoke. it's these things that are so, known, but they're just not sexy- Exactly

and they're not something that you can charge six figures for some, curated concierge experience. 

Vitamins. 

And supplements and other, smoke and mirrors. But I... Even saying that to folks can help them understand that it's not just, the system and big pharma and allopathic care against alternative, functional, natural solutions.

It's a very, like- ... mixed ecosystem in that sense, and I want to demystify what public health, capital P, capital H, actually means to people- ... because I think COVID really turned it into something that- 

Yeah ... 

it's not. 

Yeah. 

it's, it, people assume public health equals government. 

Yeah.

It doesn't all equal government. Or restriction. Or restrictions- Yeah ... or mandates and things that felt very oppressive. 

Yeah. 

I can empathize with that because it was a very difficult time. Yes. Yeah. And I think that goes a long way of telling people, "I get it. It sucked," or, "I get it. You did not enjoy that experience.

Let me tell you what public health is actually trying to do." 

Can I ask you, more on the information sources, back to Viaca's point earlier. A lot of folks are getting information from lots of different spaces. 

so what does that look like m- moving towards the future- Yeah ... for communicators or science communicators, who would like to do this type of work?

It's no longer sufficient just to go on traditional media- No ... and just speak to the same usual suspects. Yeah. What does that look like to communicate science and particularly during emergencies- Yeah ... and at this moment in time where people are getting information from all over? 

I, regardless of what people's opinions are on this, social media is a primary news source- Yeah

for many people, if not most people. It's why every newsroom has a channel- Yeah ... and has catered to the types of content that people like to consume, which is short videos with captions so they can watch it while they're not doing their work or in a meeting- Yeah ... or whatever. 

Yeah. 

Very memorable, eye-catchy content that's something that they can remember and also forward easily to other folks.

It's... And so it is the belly of the beast, but I'm, I have to be in the belly of the beast- Yeah ... because I have found it to be very powerful to be there, so that my content is also primary news to people. and I don't wanna just be there to be in a reactive response- Yep ... to the other sources, whether they be questionable or not.

I want it to just be part of the ecosystem so that people- ... can see it. if I was constantly reacting to bad news, I would never sleep. Yeah. It would just be a constant- Oh, for sure ... game of whack-a-mole, right? 

Very true. 

and so I wanna be front-loading that space with really good science, really evidence-based content.

but I do think that we have to diversify. I think it needs to be everything: video- ... images, infographics, long-form, short-form, traditional media at times, new media at times. it's... That's just the ecosystem that we are in right now, and I think the AI conversation- 

I was just going 

to that

is proving that- Yeah ... it's, we are... It can be a tool for good. It has already been a tool for bad. 

Yeah. 

we're not, it's not going anywhere. 

Yeah. 

And I think that if we are going to help people have discernment skills from the get on how to be good consumers and users of a digital information, now more than ever, we have to tell people, "This is how you should consume this- Yeah

and this is how you should treat it." you have to be extremely skeptical of everything online- ... because you need to ensure that it's real. 

But that's also exhausting. 

It's very exhausting. 

Yeah. 

It's very exhausting, and I th- that's why I really strongly believe, I'm a mom of three young kids.

I think that kind of training starts young. Yeah. I want my kids now- Yeah ... to start being very critical of whatever they hear. 

it seems like there, there really is no truer test of leadership than in moments where you're doing it in times of unfavorability, and we know right now that public health and science is being questioned, especially in the United States, but a- abroad. And so I'm interested to hear how you think about courageous leadership in times where your work, the very foundation of what you're doing, is unsupported and in some cases even under attack.

Yeah. A potentially unpopular opinion is I do think science is political- ... because we need good science to inform our politics. We need data to inform the policies that make decisions and make, systems available to our public. And what the difference is, though, is that it shouldn't be politicized.

And so what courageous leadership, what being bold in that space has looked like for me is saying that, and connecting with lawmakers and connecting with advocacy groups and even doing a lot of that work myself to make that connection more clear. the more siloed we are when it comes to science and policy, the more opportunity there is for really dangerous mistruths and false claims and conspiracies to fill that gap.

And so if we're not using the language of science and translating it so that people who are making these laws and policies understand them and the people who are using their votes and voices to elect them, then we're missing an opportunity to really make sure that everybody is represented in these science policies.

And I think to piggyback on what you're just saying here, you have s- stood at the, the center of sort of this tension of communicating these complex, unpopular truths in what can feel like a very emotionally charged environment. How do you practice care and courage in leading in moments where it feels like the political and personal stakes are really high For people in your audience 

Yeah.

It's not easy. I think that when I look back in the last several years, the good outweighs the bad. But speaking truth, uncomfortable truth for some people, has come at a great cost to myself, my safety, my family. 

I wouldn't go back and not do it, but it's... I'd be remiss if I didn't include the fact that we're living in some pretty dangerous times where we're re-litigating established truth.

And a way that I have Sought groundedness. A way that I have continued is to remind myself of that why, of the, the purpose that it is that my children who inspire me to do that work, and in finding solidarity with other scientists who are passionate about making science make sense, and informing people so that...

To me, it's tools in a toolkit. 

I don't want to dumb anything down for anybody. I want to elevate people's literacy in science and complex things. I'm not expecting people to remember all the things that I have to remember about biology and immunology. That's asking too much. But I do think that these are i- important tools for people to have to navigate really dangerous information ecosystems right now.

and I think there's a lesson there, not just how you can consume this information and think about it, but also as a leader. And I'd love to hear more about how you, you actually do this because, of course, you're doing this from the space of public health, but all of us are navigating what feels like a really divisive moment.

And so how do you decide, what is a, a, a great place for you to speak up? For you, when is it better for you to be quiet? When is it good for you to take a stand? How do you make those decisions? 

Yeah. I got into public health because at the core of public health is altruism. It is a desire to reduce harm, to prevent disease, to increase people's opportunity for long life and thriving in that long life.

And so my, my red line is when information, specifically harmful health information, challenges or jeopardizes those things. And I do think that, when we're experiencing public health emergencies, we're dealing with two outbreaks. We're dealing with an outbreak of a pathogen and an outbreak of information, and information today is not neutral.

And we need to recognize that lack of neutrality means that is probably an accelerating driver of that epidemic, and often is, and how do we address both? We sometimes get a little myopic with public health and just think about the one threat. And so I do think that having this big picture view of tandem outbreaks is the re- is the way we go forward with this.

It's the way for me to say, "I can't just think about all the interventions that we need to have." I think we need to talk about who doesn't understand this, and what are they feeling about these things? Are they scared? Are they feeling forgotten? Have they been hurt by the system in the past, so I'm gonna work a little bit extra hard to regain their trust?

I think a lot about the difference of trust and trustworthiness- Are, am I even worthy of the trust of the people I'm speaking to, to say these things? Instead of asking them, "Just trust me, I'm a scientist. Trust me, I'm an expert." We're now in a different world where trust and expertise is really subjective- And people are now choosing to aba- you know, abandon expertise for the sake of things that are more familiar- ... things that identify, that they identify with. And so I do a lot of that ground-level listening and hearing people to understand this is not a one-size-fits-all type of work. It really is hyper-tailored and hyper-focused on individuals.

And, I think this, this makes me think about the, the importance of s- of storytelling, and I have something that you've said before, that data alone doesn't change minds, stories do. And so how do you use storytelling as a tool for courage and, and leading when you're thinking about people might not having, potentially not having trust in some of the actual data or science behind some of- Yeah

what you're saying? 

I think about this so much because the, there's a phrase with plural of anecdote is not data. It's true, but anecdotes do have a significant influence on people's decision-making. And so we can't ignore the fact that an individual story can go a really long way in helping people connect science to science

decision-making.

That's going to be it for today.

As always, keep the comments coming in.

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The additional sections of the show included clips from;

Reveal

The Bunker

Throughline

Yale Insights

Takesâ„¢ by Jamelle Bouie

Unbiased Science

CrashCourse

Pandemic and Emergency Readiness Lab

Doctor Mike

and TED Talks Daily

Further details are in the show notes.

Thanks to everyone for listening, thanks to Deon and Erin for their production work for the show, thanks to Amanda for all of her work behind the scenes, thanks to our editors and thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member, purchasing gift memberships, or making one-time donations.

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So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, DC, my name is Jay! And this has been the Best of the Left podcast, coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from bestoftheleft.com.

Air Date: 8-29-2026

Today we examine what happens when the state wants to decide whether a person reproduces. A century ago, American courts sanctioned the forced sterilization of women deemed unfit to reproduce. 60 years ago, a communist dictator ran a pronatalist experiment with disastrous results. Now, abortion access is collapsing and a new pronatalist movement is rising to wreak havoc.

Full Show Notes

Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Today we examine what happens when the state wants to decide whether a person reproduces. A century ago, American courts sanctioned the forced sterilization of women deemed unfit to reproduce. 60 years ago, a communist dictator ran a pronatalist experiment with disastrous results. Now, abortion access is collapsing and a new pronatalist movement is rising to wreak havoc.

For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today include

5-4

Who Did What Now

Bitch Talk Podcast

rePROs Fight Back

and Boom! Lawyered

Then, in the additional, Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in 4 sections;

Section A, Eugenic Legal Foundation

Section B, Coerced Sterilization Today

Section C, Post-Dobbs Legal Battlefield

And Section D, Pronatalism, State-Directed Reproduction in Reverse

And now, on to the show.

let's talk about the law a little bit. and this law is challenged under the 14th Amendment's due process and equal protection provisions, which say that the states shall not, quote, "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," end quote.

And so the question is whether forced sterilization imposes on the bodily integrity of these women, in violation of their entitlement to due process of law and/or equal protection under the 14th Amendment. And the court holds that it is not a violation of the 14th Amendment, finding that all three generations of Buck women were, quote, "feeble-minded" and, quote, "promiscuous," and that the state had a legitimate interest in their sterilization.

And the court starts out by stating the reasons for the law Saying that the sterilization of mental defectives is for the benefit of the patient and society generally, and that the sterilization allows mental asylums and similar institutions to discharge those patients without concern that they might reproduce.

yeah. Awful. 

It's so awful. 

Yeah. Cr- and the court notes, quote, "Experience has shown that heredity plays an important part in the transmission of insanity, imbecility, et cetera," unquote. Which is- I love the et cetera there. Yeah. these guys. 

But note that's a direct lifting from the Virginia statute- That's right ... that's at issue, right? they just- They, they- They adopt it. 

It's a very weird thing to say experience has shown when we're talking about, a scientific question, right? 

Yeah. 

There, there's another et cetera that I really liked when he's describing the law, and he says, "Look, the health of the patient and the welfare of society may be promoted in certain cases by the sterilization of mental defectives under careful safeguard, et cetera."

whatever. Whatever that entails. 

So a, a couple things. One is this opinion is, three pages long. Yeah. Yeah. And the dissent is silent. It's just someone saying they dissent. And then also you have- ... this, et cetera thing. Being a Supreme Court justice back then was the shit. You didn't have to do anything.

He's like- Well- ... "Yeah, insanity, imbecility, et- et cetera. Let me throw an et cetera in here." 

I don't know what copies you read, but the PDF I found included both briefs, which brought it to- yeah ... a grand total of eight pages. That's right. 

Oh 

my God. 

That's right. I found that one 

too.

They're, like, the briefs were about two pages each. Worth the read. Very interesting. 

Yeah. Very interesting. So one key theme here is, the sheer confidence the court has in what is now clearly a completely outmoded science, right? 

Yeah. And that combines with this sort of underlying moral assumption that the life of a disabled person is both a burden on society and less important than that of a non-disabled person.

Yes. 

And- Yeah ... the court explains that the superintendents of the institutions, like the State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded Must, before sterilizing anyone, petition their board, there would be evidence presented, and the person could appeal the decision to sterilize them to the, county circuit court.

And so Holmes is trying to say "Look, obviously procedurally this is airtight," right? "We're all good. Don't even worry about 

it." Yeah, 

yeah. And he says that the benefit to society justifies the sterilization here. And it's worth noting that Holmes doesn't really provide any actual reasoning. Part of this is like a relic of court decisions from the time, which were, they're shorter, they're more conclusory. But in any event, he genuinely gives zero thought in the opinion to what the burden imposed on these women actually is. And- ... there's no discussion about the importance of the ability to procreate if you want to or to try.

Nothing is articulated about what they're actually being subjected to. Instead- ... he frames it in terms of sacrifice, saying that the general welfare often calls upon citizens to sacrifice their lives and wellbeing. Which I guess is true in like the general sense. But first of all, it could be used to justify literally anything.

And this is 1927, we're about a decade out from World War I, and it seems clear that he's gesturing towards that sort of sentiment accompanied by war and, the massive human toll that faces. But he's not talking about the domination of Europe by Austrians- ... or whatever.

He's telling some lady, "You can't have your dumb kids. Your kids are gonna be too stupid." "Lady, let me tell you about sacrifice."

And Holmes ends this opinion With what might be the most offensive few sentences in Supreme Court history. 

It's awful. 

This is rough. 

This is a quote, "We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the state for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, to prevent our being swamped with incompetence.

It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes.

Three generations of imbeciles is enough." End 

quote. End of the opinion. 

Ouch. 

Three generations of imbeciles is enough. 

I don't- 

It 

is- I don't feel good. Do you guys feel good? 

No. 

No. obviously, that is transparently horrific. It is ridiculous. 

And I don't think there's much more to say about it.

There is a fact, though, that we should discuss, and that is that underlying all of this reasoning The court is accepting without question that these people are in fact mentally deficient somehow. And on that front, I have bad news. 

Most likely they were not, and in fact, the story as we understand it appears to be fairly horrific.

Yeah, that's right. It's like multiple layers of being horrific. so first let's just start with the law and the court case itself. By all accounts, the case, bringing the legal challenge was actually like a purposeful act of collusion. The State of Virginia wanted a sterilization law, and they wanted it to pass legal challenge.

So as superintendent of one of the state institutions, that guy Priddy was looking for a patient to do forced sterilization on and have it be challenged in court. John Bell was the surgeon who performed the surgery on Carrie Buck, and he wrote in his surgical report in October 1927, quote, "This is the first case operated on under the sterilization law, and the case was carried through the courts of the state and the United States Supreme Court to test the constitutionality of the Virginia Act."

So this was brought on purpose. Wow. And Carrie Buck was the like, random unconsenting party that this, legal challenge- ... was brought on. secondly, there is a lot of doubt that Carrie Buck was at all intellectually disabled to begin with. Not only do reports from researchers and people who knew her indicate that she was by all accounts of average intelligence, one of the main arguments used to establish her disability was her supposed promiscuity and that she got pregnant at the age of 17, right?

it turns out actually that Carrie Buck was raped by a member of the family that adopted her, and that rape resulted in her pregnancy, and it's been reported that the family who adopted her, they actually had her committed to the state institution on purpose to save their reputation.

In 1961, Fannie Lou was dealing with some abdominal pain. Naturally, she went to the doctor. I say naturally. She went to the doctor after Pap told her that she sh- had to stop suffering, and she should go to the doctor And so he told her that she had to be seen. So she was complaining of a knot in her stomach.

And there's a few different theories kicking about this. she had suffered from polio, as a child, and so this would have effects later on in her life. She may have had polycystic ovary syndrome, so PCOS, which would have affected her too. she'd also suffered several miscarriages, so it, it could be connected.

Now, was it fibroids? Was it tumors? so she had suffered, for years, and this knot at the time when she went to see this doctor, it was believed to be a uterine tumor. And the white doctor said that she would have to have surgery to remove the mass. So while she's undergoing surgery to remove cancer, or at least what they believed to be cancer, the doctor, for absolutely no medical reason, also decided to perform a hysterectomy without his patient's knowledge or consent Like, oh, this is gonna get worse, by the way.

This is gonna get just terrible. She wasn't even informed by the doctor that her womb had been removed. She found out Through a game of telephone, right? The reason she found out that she had a hysterectomy was because the doctor's wife told one of her white friends and her cook overheard it. And this cook passed the information on and the information about her own surgery made its way back to her because of a doctor's wife gossiping.

And if you thought that this gets worse, then congratulations, you're correct. Mississippi legislation gave doctors the right to perform hysterectomies or tie the tubes of women without their knowledge or permission.

Nothing quite like a white man in a position of power asserting control over a woman's body when she's unconscious. And this act, this was known as a Mississippi appendectomy in Black communities.

And this was a tactic used to limit Black population in the South, involuntary sterilization. Now, we know that approximately over 60,000 people were sterilized in the US under programs of eugenics up until the 1970s.

Now, this is men, women, and people of various races and disabilities. The Mississippi appendectomy, where thousands of black women went to, into doctor's office for gynecological healthcare and left without their reproductive organs unwillingly and unknowingly.

The choice was taken from them, right? Oh, you're thinking, "Katie, you're really fucking mad about this." Absolutely I am. That is medical abuse. That is violence, okay? I don't care how you wanna dress it up.

We have Erika Cohn on the show. She's the director of the documentary Belly of the Beast. We're so pleased to have her here. And, I'm gonna start off asking if you can, tell our audience a little bit about your film, and then how did you find this story? 

Yeah. In 2010, a decade ago, I was introduced to one of the protagonists in the film, attorney Cynthia Chandler, and she had this organization called Justice Now, which was one of the only organizations in the country at the time, perhaps the only organization, that had board members who were currently incarcerated.

really informing strategy and informing policy from the inside out, as opposed to so many other organizations that work from the outside in. And they had this campaign called the Let Our Families Have a Future campaign, which essentially exposed the multiple ways that prisons destroy the basic fundamental human right to family.

One of the most heinous, of course, being the illegal sterilizations primarily targeting women of color. And to me, immediately that screamed eugenics. as a Jewish woman, the phrase never again was always profoundly in the back of my mind. And when I learned about this different kind of genocide that was happening through imprisonment, that was happening through forced sterilizations behind bars, I knew that I wanted to get involved some way, somehow.

And initially, that was as a volunteer. Cynthia actually invited me into the organization where I became a volunteer legal advocate, providing direct services- Oh ... for over 150 people inside California's women's prisons. And from there, really began collaborating with people inside on a project that would ultimately become Belly of the Beast.

And the initial idea with this film was to chronicle the incredible human rights documentation process that was happening inside prison. how that information that the prison didn't want to get out, didn't want to be exposed, was funneled out through this amazing underground network of activists.

And that all changed when I met our other protagonist, who the film completely centers around, Kelli Dillon. And I met her a couple of years into the process, and at the time she was working as a gang interventionist and, domestic violence counselor doing a lot of community intervention work. And when I first met her, I asked her if she wanted to be involved.

She was a sterilization survivor. She was the initial catalyst to expose this entire issue to begin with. I have to say, if it wasn't for Kelli, there wouldn't be a film. there wouldn't have been this incredible, reporting that came from her work. We wouldn't even know that this existed, or the scale to which it existed And, at that moment she wasn't interested in telling her story, but was very interested in becoming involved behind the scenes as an advisor.

And so as we went on through this journey together, everything changed when the Center for Investigative Reporting in 2013 released their series of articles by Corey G. Johnson, who's also in the film. 

and all of a sudden there was this tremendous momentum, this huge national attention, potential for legislation, potential for real legal action, and that was the moment that Kelli got called back into the movement, sucked back in to tell her story.

And that was the moment that Kelli and I both decided that we would start filming her on her way to testify. And the more we filmed with her in front of the camera, it became more and more clear that the story really needed to center around her experiences, her courage in advocating for others inside prison, and how she continues to do the work, outside of prison as well.

So that's how it all got started and, how this collaboration be- came to be. And so the film really follows Kelli Dillon and Cynthia Chandler as they take on the Department of Corrections, exposing modern-day eugenics and reproductive injustice in our prison system. 

Ooh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, it's- 

Let, let, I, I want everyone to let that digest 

it for a minute.

let it sink in. Yeah. Yeah. 

Yeah. 

And I think, Belly of the Beast is really just another example of this is why documentaries are so important. You put a spotlight on so many things that, we're both ca- born and raised in California, so many things that I did not know. I didn't know that California was the home to the largest women's prison in the world.

Yeah. I obviously didn't know the history of eugenics in California and that sterilization, that it had to even be illegal at one point in prisons. I would never even think that would e- be a necessity, let alone that it was happening and to the rate that it was happening in. And, obviously Kelli's bravery sparked it all, but how did you feel when speaking with other women that this happened to?

were they open to speak about this? there's just such a stigma and fear of retaliation, fear of so many things. What was your experience in, talking to other women that this happened to? 

I just wanna b-, comment on something that you just said. When I first started this, this project, I didn't know that Nazi Germany actually came to California to learn from- California's heinous eugenics policies, and that was something that was really important to me. we think of eugenics as something that's associated with Nazi Germany, and have no idea that this is, homegrown in our country, in our California. And so it was really important to connect that historical precedence as well as the legacy of forced sterilization in the country, and how it's so deeply rooted in white supremacy.

And so when we look at these as isolated incidents, they're incredibly shocking, but when we look at them with historical context, it's more, it's understandable to see where this really comes from, and until there's accountability, these heinous abuses will continue to occur. In terms of, how many people this happened to and what it was like speaking to the survivors, through our own reporting process, we found that 1,400 people were sterilized in California's women's prisons between 1997 and 2013.

And in the beginning of this film, prior to the Center for Investigative Reporting releasing their findings, no one believed me that this was happening. No funder believed- ... that this could actually be happening. And so the, trying to get this project off the ground was incredibly difficult, despite the fact that from my legal advocacy work and through Justice Now, we had hundreds of testimonials talking about what had happened to them And there's a lot of, a lot of barriers that prevent people from coming forward.

And just the, the, the 100, you know, people that we had spoken with or the 100 cases that we knew about, we knew there were so many more because people oftentimes don't come forward out of shame, not wanting to experience, or relive the trauma or feeling like it's their fault what happened to them.

and in addition to that, prisons are retaliatory environments, as you mentioned, and your daily existence is threatened by force. And so in order to be eligible for litigation, one has to file a complaint against the person who committed that harm against them. So people don't do that out of fear of retaliation.

And in addition to it being a retali- retaliatory environment for people who are incarcerated, it's also retaliatory for those who work in the prison. And so we saw this past fall a really unique situation with the whistleblower, Dawn Wooten, from the Georgia Immigration Detention Center when she exposed the mass hysterectomies that were going on- 

in that facility. And it's because of her courageous, in just ... her courageousness and deep commitment to e- exposing these human rights abuses, that she faced retaliation, just by questioning the procedures and then, even more retaliation when she finally came forward.

So it's very unique that, people like Kelli actually pursue litigation inside or whistleblowers like Dawn Wooten

 

c- can come forward. 

so let's turn to pronatalism W- what is it? I think some people probably have a general idea. It's been more and more in the discourse lately, but what are we talking about when we talk about that? 

Yeah. So I w- I wanna start with pronatalism, the sort of movement around pronatalism is grounded in this, as I said, kernel of truth, right?

Which is that at least in sort of high-income, highly developed countries, birth rates and fertility rates are declining, right? So pronatalism is this ideology, this, emerging policy framework, this cultural orientation that promotes higher birth rates, specifically by framing reproduction as a social duty or as a sort of, moral good.

And particularly, I think nefarious in this particular strand of pronatalism is how tied it is to a certain... who should have children, and who should not have children- Yeah ... which is a little bit less explicit. It's very nationalistic, very patriarchal. it emphasizes a really certain traditional gender roles, and it's being driven increasingly by governments with all of the power and all of the resources and all of the funding that they wield.

and that is really concerning because, of course, when you're deciding, for another person whether and how many children they should have, you're, fundamentally attacking this sort of system of individual and human rights. 

And that's, such a personal decision that there are so many factors that underlie it.

It is probably the most personal decision you can make. I'm just thinking about my own sort of personal journey, right? Which is, it's hard to always conflate policy and personal, but, yeah. becoming a mother it affects every aspect. It affected every aspect of my life, every single one, right?

the only other decision that's analogous is who you marry, right? But marriage, and I'm sure we'll talk about this, marriage is a decision that, if things go really wrong or, the love isn't there, so to speak, you can seek a divorce or a separation. Your children are your children for life, and once you become a parent, that's never something you're gonna step away from, and it affects everything in your life.

It is the most personal decision you can possibly make. 

I feel like the next thing we need to talk about is the language being used when talking about this. I just... what is, forefront in my mind, and probab- it was not, originally on our agenda when we first were talking about doing this, but we can't not talk about underbabied.

it was, like, s- Oh my 

gosh ... 

so-- how do they find the most cringe-inducing language to explain things? there are a couple things that this administration has done that I've had, a visceral reaction to. Underbabied was one, and describing, the new terrible version of the, the global gag rule as, human flourishing.

the first time somebody said that in a meeting, I was like, "Ugh, oh my God, what?" Oh, it just, it... I felt it in my body. 

Yeah, you can, and you have done entire podcasts on human flourishing and what that means and what that doesn't mean. Yeah. And suffice to say, I, I also have lots and lots of thoughts on that.

but they are very much intertwined, and I'm glad that you brought them up in the same sentence. Yeah, so for anybody who's not familiar with this, is Dr. Oz, the TV personality, TV doctor who is now a member of the Trump administration, I think in May, I think it was last month, right next to Trump and RFK Jr.,

talked about how, there's a real crisis in America, and I think that's really important to point out, is that the language around pronatalism is very much rooted in this idea that it is a crisis, that we have to act immediately, that, the sky is falling. and in this case, the sort of twin crises that were talked about on that day are women are underbabied, and men have, low testosterone, right?

And so combined, you... that's a, a really potent message to be sending Americans. What I think is so visceral reaction, absolutely. I just cannot with the under-babied. and frankly, I'd be super curious for those, comms folks who are listening to this, one of the things that's really hard to do when you're talking about pro-natalism is talk about it in language that doesn't sound clinical, and that doesn't sou- that actually means what it is.

right? pro-natalism sounds like you're, like, pro-healthy birth or pro-babies or pro any of this. Dr.- Yeah ... Oz may have inadvertently just given this movement the best name possible, right? Because women being under-babied almost immediately l- leads you to question, okay, so it's the women's fault, number one.

Yeah. But also it's, not about what you do for the babies when they arrive, right? It's, the number of babies that matters. It's not, the quality. 

And there's a magic number that the government wants. 

There's a magic number that the government wants, and none of those babies' actual lives are part of that calculation, right?

And part of what we're seeing, at least in the, this sort of Heritage Foundation's version that the Trump administration has adopted to a large and frightening degree, it's not about improving the lives of women or of children, right? In fact, almost everything that they're doing is on the contrary.

Yeah. I just it's just so blatant. I think there's That's the thing about this administration, right? the-there is no quiet part anymore, right? They just say the things, and so keeping a, keeping an eye on, the language that has been used and they continue to use is really important.

Yeah, I think that... So Heritage Foundation in January came out with what I think of as Project 2025, but for the future, right? This is Project 2026, Project 2027, Project 2028, and the title of that piece is called Saving America by Saving the Family, right? And that in and of itself, I think has to raise some eyebrows.

It's 168 pages of policy proposals and policy recommendations, and I think that it would be really lovely to dismiss this as just another report that's gonna sit on a shelf somewhere. But we know, from Heritage itself how successful and how deeply aligned and how open the lines of communication are between the sort of levers of government, particularly with the Trump administration as well, between them and the Heritage Foundation.

Kevin Roberts re-recently went out and talked about how of the 1,900 or so recommendations that they issued in Project 2025, 1,100, more than 1,100 have already been implemented, and that's not a humble brag. That sort of 55% figure is being tracked by multiple sort of watchdog groups. So that's-- That, that is not a bloviation.

It's so much. And- So much ... if you dig into their finances and you don't, there's not a ton of transparency around here. When I mean dig into their finances, I literally just mean googling their 990s. The latest that we have is from 2024, and they control over 400, almost $500 million in financial assets.

That's just what they claim, right? And, if you compare that on the sort of more pro right side, on the more left side, the Center for American Progress is probably the most analogous foundation that you might see, and they control, I think, $84 million. So we're just, seeing these two thought leaders, if you can call both of those thought leaders, batting and playing on very different playing fields.

Let's talk about Clarence Thomas. Box, Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky versus Box. It was 2019. The court declined to review an Indiana law that prohibited sex, race, and disability-selective abortions, reason bans or discriminatory abortions. Thomas agreed the court shouldn't take that issue, and then he decided to have himself a little word anyway. He wrote a concurrence to the denial of cert on that reason ban issue, laying out all the legal reasoning that lower courts could use to uphold reason bans. Now let's talk about reason bans.

These are abortion restrictions that said you couldn't get an abortion based on your reason for wanting one. You can't get an abortion because you don't wanna have a girl. You can't get an abortion because you don't wanna have a Black child, which, and I need to pause here, was always a little bit unhinged as a premise.

Like, how many pregnant Black people are sitting in a doctor's office like, "Give it to me straight, Doc. Is my baby gonna be Black?" It was nonsense. But Thomas was using it to signal ways to get around Roe, to get around Planned Parenthood versus Casey, and to chip away at the pre-viability abortion framework he'd spent his whole career hating.

And the whole opinion in Box ends up being a diatribe against none other than Margaret Sanger. Now, if you know me, Margaret Sanger is my jam, right? I wrote what I will humbly describe as the seminal piece debunking the bullshit the right likes to spew about her. They love to distort her eugenicist beliefs and convince people, Black people primarily, that Margaret Sanger was trying to eliminate the Black population through contraception and abortion.

It was like, the founder of Planned Parenthood hated you people, so why are you getting abortions at Planned Parenthood? The right discovered the word eugenics and kept using it to distort Sanger's beliefs. Now, Sanger was a eugenicist, but not in the way the right was claiming. I actually attended an event at the Brooklyn Historical Society about eight or nine years ago, and I told Margaret Sanger's grandson, Alex Sanger, to his face that I thought his grandma was ableist.

And you know what? He agreed. Because in truth, she did want to eliminate what she called morons, idiots, and imbeciles. But that's not what Thomas was talking about. Margaret Sanger talked a lot about, quote, racial betterment. And reading that cold, you might think she was pushing for something like what the Nazis did, which they learned from us by the way, to better the race by eliminating everyone else.

But that's not what she meant. Sanger wanted poor people and people she deemed, quote, insane or feeble-minded to stop breeding irrespective of race. When she talked about racial betterment, she meant bettering the human race. Her eugenics beliefs were based on disability status, not race or ethnicity.

Clarence Thomas collapsed that distinction on purpose. He treated eugenicists who wanted to curb Black reproduction and eugenicists who wanted to sterilize disabled people like they were the same project. They weren't. Both projects were disgusting, don't get me wrong, but they were not the same. And Thomas wasn't making a legal argument in that concurrence.

He was making an emotionally manipulative, historically dishonest argument that hijacks the history of racism against Black people to argue against abortion access. And it was sitting in a Supreme Court opinion written by a justice on an issue in the case the court declined to hear. It was Thomas telling every lower court judge and anti-abortion advocate, "Here's your roadmap.

Here's the argument. Come back with the right case. I'll be waiting." And that's what I'm talking about, right? The other side wasn't keeping its moral and cultural arguments separate from its legal arguments. It was weaving them together. And what were we doing? We were out here busy citing longitudinal studies.

The public health evidence was there. The question is whether it ever became the center of the story. And look, I want to be clear about something. Organizations like ANSIRH, that's the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health Research Program at the University of California, San Francisco, those organizations were doing their jobs.

The data existed. The public health case was being made. The problem is what the rest of us did with it. And that brings me to Roe. Roe versus Wade was a privacy case. I wanna sit with that for a second because sometimes I think people forget that, or maybe they never knew it, or they knew it and it just didn't quite land what that means.

Roe was not a health case. It was not even a women's rights case, not really, not in the way that we'd use that language now. It was a privacy case. The right to abortion was located in a constitutional right to privacy that the court had been constructing since Griswold versus Connecticut in 1965. That case was about contraception.

It gave married couples the right to use contraception, and it was also a privacy case. The privacy framework said there are certain intimate decisions that are so personal, so fundamental to individual autonomy, that the government cannot intrude on them without a very good reason. Abortion is one of those decisions.

Now, Roe talked about medicine. It talked about physicians. It even talked about maternal health, but it didn't locate the right to abortion in public health outcomes. It located that right in liberty, in privacy, the zone of personal autonomy that the state cannot enter until they can. So from the jump, Roe made the constitutional case for abortion through privacy and liberty.

Medicine mattered, maternal health mattered, but the right itself wasn't grounded in public health outcomes. And then we just defended Roe's constitutional framework for 50 years. We were obsessed with Roe. So much energy and attention went into protecting that one decision. And when you're in fortress mode, the wall becomes the center of gravity.

Other work still existed, obviously, but Roe became the thing most institutions were organized around. It felt like mainstream repro institutions couldn't criticize Roe out loud, even when many people in the movement knew it had limitations. Because the other side was already trying to burn the house down and saying, "Actually, this foundation is shaky," felt like handing them a match.

So these mainstream repro institutions treated it like gospel, and they rarely, if ever, made the affirmative case for abortion rights that didn't depend on Roe surviving Well, Black women did. In 1994, Black women built the reproductive justice framework precisely because they knew Roe wasn't enough.

SisterSong, Loretta Ross, Rickie Solinger, an affirmative vision of reproductive rights that went beyond Roe and didn't depend on it, that centered the actual lives of people most harmed by abortion restrictions, not just the constitutional right. And what did the mainstream movement do with that? a lot of them adopted the language.

They put reproductive justice on their websites. They started saying reproductive health rights and justice in their mission statements. And then they kept doing the same Roe-focused legal work they'd always been doing. They took the framing of reproductive justice without taking the organizing principles, which meant that they got to feel like they were doing the broader work of the reproductive justice wing without actually doing it.

So what the Heritage report lays out in their sort of saving America plan, and I really wanna emphasize, I read all hundred and sixty-eight pages. I used zero AI note-takers. I took notes myself. And then I sent these notes, which were all in a Google Doc, like around to folks in my orbit, and they were like: "You need to create a presentation about this."

And I stayed up really late and just PowerPointed like nobody's business has ever PowerPointed before. And I analyzed it prong by prong. Now I'm taking it on a virtual road show. But what their sort of policy proposals boil down to are essentially in two different buckets. One is around government restrictions.

to heck with limited government, these are the new restrictions that we're going to impose, and some of them are incentives too, and maybe we'll talk about that. And then second prong is around cultural interventions, and that is work for the Heritage Foundation and its aligned actors to do, but they also see a role for government in that.

And this is leading to, and you talked about the importance of language, and if I can leave anybody with a sort of message is like this pronatalist vision, what they call saving America, is built explicitly on the back of we are building a world where women cannot. Women cannot. They cannot leave their husbands if they need to.

They cannot go to school. They cannot get a job. They cannot have financial independence. They cannot access healthcare. They cannot access quality childcare. They cannot, bottom line, choose when, whether, or how many children to have. And so if there's any message that sort of burbles up from the depths of these hundred and sixty-eight pages is that this is not a forward-looking vision.

This is really looking not just to the nineteen fifties, but to a world in which women really had zero autonomy. 

And I feel like this is the important moment to be like This is when you're gonna hear people be like, "You were saying the sky is falling, and this is never gonna happen. Women aren't gonna lose voting rights."

this is n- this is not gonna happen. But, the moves are being made. The arguments are getting louder from more people in power. This is like all of the people who said Roe was never gonna fall, and like they're not coming for birth control, and they are very clearly coming after access to birth control.

It may not look like taking a bite of the entire thing all at once. you're talking about women not being able to vote. That looks like starting at the Save Act, where it changes, like- I'd 

argue even before that. Yeah. 

But yeah. it's like chipping the knit, right? We 

didn't get to Save without covering, a few of, of the other sort of dismantlings of the Civil Rights Acts, right?

this is what they learned from Roe, and the sort of overturn of Roe was also a Heritage project, right? And it started very much, post 1970s, right? And you've had podcasts about the- podcast episodes about this, right? they didn't come after women's access to healthcare until they realized it could be a politically potent tool.

But that project was, a, a 40-year project, right? Yeah. and that's exactly what's happening here. And just to your point about where and how it's already happening, and you're exactly right, I sound like a conspiracy theorist. I, and I often will if I'm at... I was just at my college reunion, my 20-year college reunion, and, when people inevitably ask you what you do, I try to disarm, I don't know if it's successful, by being like, "I know I sound very tinfoil hatty when I say this," and I start to talk about this movement and how concerned I am about it.

But if you look at what's already happening, a lot of what they lay out, what they, being Heritage, lays out in, in this Women Cannot plan is already happening, right? they promote this idea in sort of their cultural sections about how, if women go to school or college, colleges should be basically marriage boot camps and we should be turning pastor- or we should be turning, faculty members into pastors, and we should be giving discounts for, married couples in dorms, and we should be, giving motherhood medals a la Hungary, and we should be promoting, we should be using the media to tell more effective stories about the importance of marriage, right?

in our culture right now, in The New York Times a couple of months ago, we had a whole, and I'm, we're not on being- Excuse me, I'm putting this in air quotes. Like we had a debate, air quoted, in The New York Times around whether women have ruined the workplace, right? Like we had this comment from a man who h- who commands a lot of TV access, Dr.

Oz, about women being under babied. We have the entire existence of the manosphere. We have the entire existence of trad wives, right? Like in this sort of very aesthetically pleasing, imagine how much propaganda it took you to reject fill in the blank, right? We also have the government Incentives and restrictions in motion, right?

So on the incentive side, we already have, the Department of Transportation saying that they're gonna prioritize public transportation projects in areas of the country where marriage rates and fertility rates are higher, right? You have, for the first time, HHS or the Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the Title X program, so this is the nation's family planning program.

It's been in effect for about fifty years. You have, for the very first time in fifty years, contraception is mentioned only once, and it's in the context of over-medicalization, and instead, they are promoting, they are incentivizing states to apply for grants that can study, quote-unquote, "body literacy" and low testosterone, right?

this is the nation's family planning program, right? 

That was bipartisan when it was founded. 

Absolute- that's the thing is so many of these things were bipartisan because they were evidence-based and they were things that Americans wanted and needed and asked for, and Congress could decide, yes, it would be great if we could, have healthier populations.

That was an agreed-upon principle. I would say that the last thing that is really, I think, concerning is how much legislation is moving, and this is much more around the restrictions side but, at the federal lev-level, you have the SAVE Act, which may not, may, I'm gonna hope and keep my fingers crossed that it just died on the Senate floor.

I'm sure it will be revived in some other form. That would, of course, curtail married women's ability to vote. You have seven different states right now pursuing proposals to c-curtail no-fault divorce, basically through the promotion of what is called covenant marriage. You have thirty-two states that have laws on the books that, would ban same-sex marriage if Obergefell were to be overturned.

You have, oh my gosh, in n- in North Carolina, I don't know if you saw this, but this bill that was just introduced that would authorize the use of quote-unquote, "deadly force" against women seeking IUDs. You have parents Being charged in states like Idaho and Tennessee and Texas with trafficking their daughters for seeking or helping them to seek abortions outside of state lines.

You have states that are moving to automatic fifty/fifty custody awarding, which again, sounds great on paper, but what is in practice, it does end up trapping women in abusive marriages, right? In a country where one in four women is still experiencing intimate partner and/or sexual violence, most likely in her marriage.

These are real things, and it's already tightening that noose 

around women's ability to do literally any of the things that are these personal decisions, right? Get married to the people that they want to, have the number of children that they have, go to school. one of the big things that passed last summer through the Medicaid bill, the slashing Medicaid bill, was they capped the amount of loans that individuals-- federal loans that individuals could access for very specific degree categories.

And what were those degree categories? Oh, I'm so glad you asked, Jenny. They are things like counseling and teaching and nursing and speech language pathology, right? Like who owns, who-who-who are in this-- those careers It's women, right? so much of this is already happening. So much of this already happening is in play, and I understand how tin- tin hat-y I sound, tinfoil hat-y I sound, but when you see, when you look up and you look all around, there's no way to unsee it.

We've just heard clips starting with

5-4 examining how the 1927 Supreme Court upheld Virginia's forced sterilization law in Buck v. Bell, with Justice Holmes declaring "three generations of imbeciles is enough."

Who Did What Now told how a white Mississippi doctor removed Fannie Lou Hamer's uterus during a 1961 surgery without her knowledge, a practice she later called "Mississippi appendectomies."

Bitch Talk Podcast traced how the illegal sterilization of 1,400 people in California's women's prisons grew from the state's eugenics programs, policies so extreme Nazi Germany studied them.

rePROs Fight Back defined pronatalism as an ideology pushing higher birth rates as a moral duty, tied to nationalist, patriarchal views on who should and shouldn't have children.

Boom! Lawyered broke down how the reproductive rights movement spent 50 years defending Roe's privacy framework instead of making an affirmative case for abortion access.

And rePROs Fight Back in part two of their discussion described the Heritage Foundation's "Saving America" plan as a project to build a world where women cannot leave abusive husbands, work, access health care, or control their own reproduction.

And those were just the top takes, there's lots more in the deeper dives sections,

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or you can simply email me to [email protected]

Last week, I explained that I was going to cut my commentaries down to one per week to give myself a bit of breathing room to get over some work burnout and get past what I'm calling a work task bottleneck. So, on the days I take off from researching and recording a full commentary, I'll just be giving quick updates on how things are going here at the show.

This week, there's not too much to report because, it turns out, burnout is really hard to overcome and it doesn't happen in a week.

Also, good for everyone to know, the impacts of burnout from work don't stay confined to the realm of work so there've been some life maintenance tasks that have needed to take priority this week in response to the sort of cascading effect that burnout can have.

Finally, this just reminds me of a quick story about an American friend of mine who lives in Europe and went through a period of work-related burnout. While talking to this person about their experience, they explained to me that when looking for resources about dealing with burnout as an expat living in Europe, it's entirely necessary to avoid getting American books about burnout. It would be equally important for someone living in the U.S. to not accidentally get books about burnout that are written for a European audience.

This person explained to me that the reason is that the books are written completely differently, with very different assumptions built into them. Books written for Europeans giving advice about overcoming burnout will talk matter-of-factly about reaching out to your corporate HR and seeing about taking an extended, paid leave of absence or applying for government programs to accomplish the same goal.

Books written for Americans will invariably focus more on breathing exercises and meditation practices or other self-care strategies to help reduce the effects of burnout while doing absolutely nothing to solve the problem at the source.

If Europeans tried to take American advice, they'd be drastically shorting themselves by not seeking the kind of help available to them that would get to the root of the problem. If Americans tried to take European advice, they'd just end up reading about a fantasy land, completely out of reach for them which would actually be a bit cruel to do to yourself while suffering from burnout. That would just be a reminder of the larger injustice on top of the acute stress you're living through.

So, that's my burnout update rather than my Best of the Left work progress update because that's what there is to share.

And now, we'll continue to dive deeper on 4 topics today. First up;

Section A, Eugenic Legal Foundation

Followed by Section B, Coerced Sterilization Today

Section C, Post-Dobbs Legal Battlefield

And Section D, Pronatalism, State-Directed Reproduction in Reverse

Attorney Aubrey Strode's Supreme Court brief in Buck versus Bell argued that Virginia's eugenics sterilization law was constitutional. His arguments were informed by legal challenges that had already been made to other states' sterilization laws, many of which have, as we've said, had been documented by Harry Laughlin.

This included arguing that Virginia's law was not cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution since these sterilizations were not being performed as punishment for committing a crime. He also argued that the patients were given due process before these surgeries were authorized, and he argued that because the law protected public health and safety by keeping dangerous and undesirable people from reproducing, it was a valid use of the state's police power.

Whitehead continued to represent Carrie Buck, and he argued again that the law violated her rights to due process and equal protection under the Fifth and 14th Amendments, generally being less detailed and thorough than Strode was. 

I feel I could have put the word represent in scare quotes in that sentence.

Yes. 

He was physically there. 

He showed up, enough of a job that people didn't immediately go, "You're not doing your job, man." The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case on April 22nd, 1927, and issued its decision less than two weeks later. The Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling eight to one, meaning that Virginia's sterilization law was constitutional.

Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. authored the court's opinion, which incorporated a lot of language that was already widely used within the eugenics movement. This opinion was also exceptionally short at under three pages. If you've ever read a Supreme Court opinion, that's basically- It's so short

scribbles. that's scratch paper. That's 

notes. 

recapped the steps that were required to approve a sterilization surgery under Virginia's law, saying those steps met the constitutional standard for due process. 

From there it said, quote, "The attack is not upon the procedure, but upon the substantive law.

It seems to be contended that in no circumstances could such an order be justified. It certainly is contended that the order cannot be justified upon the existing grounds. The judgment finds the facts that have been recited and that Carrie Buck is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring likewise afflicted, that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her general health, and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her sterilization, and thereupon makes the order.

In view of the general declarations of the legislature and the specific findings of the court, obviously we cannot say as matter of law that the grounds do not exist, and if they exist, they justify the result. We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives.

It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the state for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.

The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough." 

The principle of compulsory vaccination is a reference to Jacobson versus Massachusetts, which the court had decided in January of 1905. In that case, the Supreme Court had upheld a compulsory smallpox vaccination law, ruling that, quote, "It is within the police power of a state to enact a compulsory vaccination law, and it is for the legislature and not for the courts to determine in the first instance whether vaccination is or is not the best mode for the prevention of smallpox and the protection of the public health."

Jacobson versus Massachusetts established a basic standard for when public health measures could overrule a person's individual liberty and still be considered constitutional. The measures in question had to be necessary to protect public health, reasonable, and proportional, and they had to prevent harm.

So in the context of vaccines in Jacobson versus Massachusetts, the general public was being protected through requirements that people be vaccinated for smallpox, and those requirements were reasonable and proportional. In the context of Buck versus Bell, according to this court decision, the general public was being protected from the feeble-minded and their associated s- societal burdens by removing their ability to bring about another generation of feeble-minded people.

And according to the reasoning of this decision, surgically sterilizing them was reasonable and proportional. 

The decision continued, quote, "But it is said, however it might be if this reasoning were applied generally, it fails when it is confined to the small number who are in the institutions named and is not applied to the multitudes outside.

It is the usual last resort of constitutional arguments to point out shortcomings of this sort. But the answer is that the law does all that is needed when it does all that it can, indicates a policy, applies it to all within the lines, and seeks to bring within the lines all similarly situated so far and so fast as its means allow.

Of course, so far as the operations enable those who otherwise must be kept confined to be returned to the world and thus open the asylum to others, the equality aimed at will be more nearly reached." 

In other words, Virginia's law didn't violate the constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the laws by applying only to people who were institutionalized, in part because people could then be freed from asylums once they'd been sterilized, and that would make more room in the asylums for more people to be sterilized.

And regarding this, quote, "three generations of imbeciles" that Justice Holmes referred to, actually not a lot is known about Carrie's mother, Emma Buck, except that she was poor. She was abandoned by her husband early in marriage. After being accused of immorality, prostitution, and having syphilis, she was also committed to the same institution, this Virginia State Colony for the Feeble-Minded.

And then there's Carrie's daughter, who was named Vivian, and her mom, Vivian was also of reportedly average intelligence. She attended school for a few years, where she received average or even above average grades. She died at the age of eight due to complications from measles. But again, the cruelty of this quote, the three generations of imbeciles, there aren't even facts that support that 

realistically.

Yeah. Also, and a society that is condemning people it deems stupid to institutions and sterilization but can't cure the fucking measles, 

Yeah. 

I also doubts about promiscuity being ... one of the criteria here. Whether or not she was raped I think that goes to, just- 

Yeah.

look, if I had to guess, they are just, it's literally a series of check boxes when they're, compelling someone- ... to, live in one of these institutions. and they're just looking things- Yeah ... "Oh, she's promiscuous." 

And then finally, just to highlight, how rampant this eugenics stuff was, as soon as the states got the green light from the Supreme Court on, sterilization statutes this, the State of Virginia was so giddy for this family to not be able to reproduce, that Carrie Buck's sister, Doris Buck, was also forcibly sterilized.

She actually wasn't told that procedure was being done to her. It happened completely without her consent during what she was told was a surgery for appendicitis. She never knew why she couldn't conceive, until she learned the real reason why in 1980. Lived her whole life not knowing that this- Fuck

had happened to her. 

Jesus. 

Ugh. So I wanna talk a bit about, eugenics and elite academic institutions that were pushing it. In the early 1900s, the idea of forced sterilization to eliminate heritable disorders was popular in mainstream academia, right? Oliver Wendell Holmes authored this opinion.

He has close ties to Harvard. He went there. His father was dean of the medical school. And Harvard was pushing these theories very aggressively. A huge percentage of the scholarship about eugenics and promoting eugenics came out of Harvard. And all of this is to say that powerful institutions in this country work in close concert.

Elite universities and instruments of government power, the court, are often composed of the same people from the same- Yes ... socioeconomic classes. And so you often- ... see them serving the same interests. And- The overlap of dubious academic work with the courts isn't some ancient thing. just to give a slightly more recent in the '80s, the field of law and economics gained steam in academia, in legal academia, designed to more aggressively map economic theory onto the practice of law.

Yeah. 

very popular at the time. Still maintains some popularity today. the, the one thing you need to know about law and economics is that if someone is, a, an expert in neither law economics, that does not rule you out from being a professor of law and economics. 

That's all you need to know.

It's a bullshit little field, it, that just combines the most fraudulent aspects of economic theory with 

Most notably at the University of Chicago, right? Law School. Yeah, 

that's their- That's right. That's right ... yeah, that's 

their big- 

The center of the- 

Yeah ... 

intellectual movement 

there. Yeah. And, I...

Just a, a quick note before we move on, Rhiannon referenced this earlier. We often deal with reactionary politics on this podcast and, obviously I think we all believe that e- eugenics is fundamentally reactionary, but it needs to be noted that it was closely tied to the progressive movement at the turn of the 20th century.

Yeah. I bring this up mostly because if you're a progressive or otherwise on the left, I think it's important to acknowledge that the movement got caught up in this dangerous thinking at one point, and being intellectually honest about this shit is part of what separates us from the right.

Because Planned Parenthood has admitted that their founder, Margaret Sanger, believed in eugenics, and they've denounced those beliefs. But the American conservative movement, rather than admitting to their past failures, maintains an entire cottage industry dedicated to rewriting history to make believe that they aren't the villains the entire fucking time.

Yeah. So you have these fucking weirdo freaks Dinesh D'Souza who do nothing but churn out books saying that the KKK were liberals, actually." 

Yeah. 

And Nazis- Yeah ... national socialism's in the name. 

They're 

right there. And shit that.

Then that passes for actual and, intellectual honesty on the right. And it's important to just, back, reflect on your movement's errors, and, and not be one of these fucking morons. they go through all these lengths to say, back in the 1870s, the KKK were all Democrats," but, simple question would be What party do you think the modern KKK identifies with?

Another thing I wanna point out is, 

Buck v. Bell hasn't been overturned. 

Still on the books. Nope. 

Good law. and not to say that it's, consistently relied upon by the court or anything. That's not the point we make entirely. A huge component- ... of our legal system is its reliance on the body of common law, meaning the law that comes from judicial decisions, and that reliance is predicated on the idea that body of law is the manifestation of reasonable and reliable legal principles that have been passed down over time.

But the reality is that the common law is littered with outdated relics of reasoning and science and history, this case, and that is what our law is built on. The law is predicated on the assumption that our predecessors were eminently wise, but of course, they had all the same flaws of judges today.

They were uninformed, biased, hubristic, and it's crucial for the legal profession to operate as if those flaws are present and not as if the passage of time has bestowed a untouchability on the past, right? The way that precedent works is that courts are made to rely on existing rules rather than question their wisdom or utility.

Obviously, the primary purpose of this is to promote consistency in the law. But not only does it lead to the entrenchment of some horrible ideas, it's inherently conservative. 

Exactly. 

This plainly outrageous case law can't be easily disregarded, because- Judges are told to respect precedent.

And instead it needs to be rooted out steadily over the course of many to the point where it's still on the books today. 

All that being said, it is actually true though that as recently as 2001, a federal appeals court in the Eighth Circuit Buck v. Bell approvingly in holding that involuntary sterilization of the mentally handicapped could be constitutional, with the right procedural protections.

Ooh. Which is pretty indistinguishable from what 

from what Buck v. said. Things are not good. Things are not good. Yeah. I 

understand. 

And it's He's putting up the alarm. 

Look, that was- Yeah. Was it pre... You said 2001. Was it pre 

9/11? Ooh. Yeah, exactly. Things really changed. Yeah. We have to reckon with the idea that eugenics have never really left us.

Yeah. era was plainly horrible, and I don't wanna say everything's the same or whatever, but, I think i- in that era sterilized 65,000, quote-unquote, disabled people. And you might think, when I say the eugenics era, this case is a century old, so that means forever ago.

But, Carolina was operating its program until 1974. 

Wow. 

And course, Rhiannon gestured to this earlier, but in the South, everywhere really racial and class components to this. In the South, for example, this tended to fall most heavily on the Black community.

Yes. which interestingly enough, in its short two pages, the plaintiff's brief anticipated that. So it's not people didn't know that might be the case. In Buck v. Bell, they're saying, look, this could be turned to, to sterilize, Black and poor people. 

and there you go.

Yeah. Yeah. And we also still to this day have this idea that somehow, genetically inferior people are the ones who are more likely to commit crime, and there's a way that white supremacy connects genetic inferiority to criminal behavior to justify still to this day this eugenics-adjacent stuff- Right

in the criminal punishment system. So for example, in 2009, a woman in West Virginia was required to get her tubes tied at the age of 21 years old as part of the requirements of her probation deal. The offense for which she was going on probation, marijuana possession. . She's... 

What, do who the judge was in that case and what their address was?

I, I do not. I do not, actually. 

Just asking. Just wondering. Thinking out loud. 

Just- Okay. Sure. Yeah. in 2017, really recently, a Tennessee judge issued a standing order that offered inmates a 30-day reduction in their sentence if they underwent some long-term or permanent, birth control procedure.

So that's if men got vasectomies or if women got a four-year birth control implant. And this idea, they make it legal by keeping it voluntary, right? It's not forced on anybody. But of course this is super coercive if you're sitting in jail and you can't get out, right? Yeah. And we don't have to think long about who this disparately impacts.

A policy this is never going to touch a rich person because a rich person is never going to be in the position where, can't get out of jail at the time that they wanna get out, where their lack of resources is the thing that's keeping them locked up and repeating into the system. And obviously this is gonna impact people of color more who are pulled into the criminal punishment system at higher rates than everybody else. 

As we've discussed, feeblemindedness was an umbrella category that just does not hold up under scrutiny. Beyond that, there is general agreement today that Emma's diagnosis is suspect because it was based mainly on unreliable IQ tests, and that neither Carrie nor her daughter Vivian was disabled.

This does not mean that Carrie's sterilization was somehow more tragic than it would have been if she had a disability. Disabled people's bodies and bodily autonomy are not worth less than that of non-disabled people. The point is that the justification for her sterilization and the Supreme Court case that upheld it was not even true.

After Buck versus Bell upheld Virginia's sterilization law as constitutional, other states and Puerto Rico began passing their own laws. By 1937, 32 states had some compulsory sterilization law, and five other states had carried out procedures without some law on the books. It's believed that at least 60,000 people in the United States were sterilized without their consent over the course of more than 50 years.

As had happened with Doris Buck Figgins, sometimes people were not even told this was what was happening, and they thought they were having surgery for some other reason. While the Bucks were white, these surgeries were disproportionately performed on Black women and other women of color. Fannie Lou Hamer popularized the term Mississippi appendectomy to describe the forced sterilization of Black women in the Southern United States.

And there were also sterilization programs in other parts of the world. 

Nazi Germany passed its Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases in 1933. This paved the way for approximately two million sterilizations in Nazi-occupied Europe 

After World War II, Buck versus Bell was cited as a defense during the Nuremberg trials.

There are also other connections between American and Nazi eugenics. For example, in 1936, the University of Heidelberg, which was under Nazi administration, awarded Harry H. Laughlin an honorary doctorate in medicine for his contributions to, quote, "the science of racial cleansing." 

We said at the top of the show that Buck versus Bell has never been directly overturned.

One case that might have done that was Skinner versus Oklahoma, which followed Oklahoma's passage of its Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act of 1935. That law required a person to be sterilized if they had been convicted of three or more felonies of moral turpitude. The Supreme Court ruled that this was unconstitutional because it was a cruel and unusual punishment and was applied arbitrarily.

But it did not apply this ruling to involuntary sterilizations more broadly. 

In 1980, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of thousands of women who had been sterilized under Virginia's eugenics law. This led to Poe versus Lynchburg, which was ultimately settled at the district court level in 1985 without overturning the original law.

Most of the sterilization laws that were passed in the US in the early 20th century have been repealed today. Virginia repealed its law in 1974 and removed other legal references to sterilization of people with, quote, "hereditary forms of mental illness that are recurrent" in 1979. Virginia also apologized to the victims of its sterilization law in 2002.

But there are still laws on the books in various states allowing for involuntary sterilizations in some circumstances, including laws that allow parents, guardians, or other caregivers to approve sterilizations for their disabled children and other dependents. This is an incredibly sensitive and contentious topic because it involves figuring out how to simultaneously respect disabled people's rights to privacy and bodily autonomy while also allowing people to make m- medical decisions for them if they are genuinely unable to communicate their own wishes or make decisions for themselves.

Next, Section B, Coerced Sterilization Today

A whistleblower account of forced sterilizations in a Georgia ICE detention facility recently shocked the nation, but this horrendous crime is nothing new. The US has a lengthy and well-documented history of medical and government authorities forcibly sterilizing Black, Latina, Indigenous, disabled, incarcerated, and poor women.

Here are just a few examples. The most obvious was the movement for eugenics, a blatant effort to arrange reproduction so as to eliminate, quote, unquote, "undesirable traits among the population," which was openly based on racist theories. Eugenicists established research and foundations that popularized eugenics in the scientific community and society as a whole.

The movement gained popularity in the 1920s, which, no coincidence, was a time of severe anti-immigrant restrictions and the Great Migration of Black people into urban areas. The practice of forced sterilizations was institutionalized by the Supreme Court itself. In the 1927 Buck versus Bell case, the Supreme Court allowed the State of Virginia to carry out compulsory sterilizations.

The state sought to sterilize a young woman for having a child out of wedlock, with some records suggesting that she was raped. Justice Wendell Holmes wrote, quote, "It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind."

More than 30 states passed legislation in support of forced sterilizations according to the standards set in Buck v. Bell. Many states created eugenics boards to promote and oversee the forced sterilizations of mostly Black women and immigrants. To this day, the ruling has yet to be overturned. In the early 20th century, forced sterilizations in the US were so widespread and disturbingly effective that Hitler himself reportedly told a Nazi colleague that, quote, "I have studied with interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny, in all probability, would be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."

Even after eugenics fell out of favor in academic circles, sterilization abuse continued. It took place in the form of medical coercion and deception in situations where a woman does not know she is being sterilized or concedes to sterilization under duress. Overall, the practice was so common in the South that Mississippi appendectomies became a nickname for unnecessary hysterectomies on Black women, largely performed at teaching hospitals as training for medical students.

Born and raised in Mississippi, the renowned civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer was one of the most well-known victims of these, quote-unquote, appendectomies in 1961 when she underwent surgery to remove a tumor from her uterus. And in the South, it wasn't just Mississippi. North Carolina sterilized over 7,600 people between the 1930s and 1970s, 65% of whom were Black women.

A third of the sterilizations were done on girls under 18, even as young as nine years old. As early as 1909, forced sterilizations took place in California, and the state was the national leader in the number of sterilization procedures performed without consent. An estimated 20,000 sterilizations took place in state institutions, making up a third of the total number performed in the country.

These sterilizations targeted women with Spanish surnames, many of Mexican descent. A 2015 documentary film, No Más Bebés, follows a class action lawsuit representing hundreds of mostly Mexican women who say they were sterilized without informed consent shortly after giving birth in Los Angeles public hospitals.

This crime against humanity was not confined within the US mainland borders. In the colonized nation of Puerto Rico, population control remained a major effort of the US government since it seized the island nation from Spain in 1898. In 1976, the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare reported that one in three Puerto Rican women of childbearing age had been sterilized by coercion or without their consent.

The US policy of forced sterilizations was so common in Puerto Rico that it was simply referred to as La Operacion. American doctors trained staff at private and public hospitals across the island and instituted the practice of sterilizing mothers of two or more children after birth Indigenous peoples across the US have been subjected to this inhumane practice during much of the 20th century.

A 2010 study found that as many as 25 to 50% of Native women were sterilized by the Indian Health Service between the years of 1970 and 1976 alone. In a harrowing example, two Cheyenne girls were admitted into an IHS hospital in Montana for emergency appendectomies. Doctors sterilized both girls while they were sedated without their consent or that of their parents The fight against sterilization abuse became a major front of struggle for the women's movement and women who were members or influenced by the radical organizations of the 1970s.

As a result of their struggles and exposure, the Department of Health and Human Services published guidelines for sterilization procedures in 1974. It mandated a 72-hour waiting period between the signing of a consent form and the procedure, and created a moratorium on sterilization of women under 21 years old and others lacking the right to give consent.

But unfortunately, that hasn't stopped the abuse of sterilizations altogether. More and more, they are occurring for incarcerated women in particular. A recent study found that almost 150 women were illegally subjected to sterilization in California prisons between 2006 and 2010. A majority were Black and Latina.

The latest whistleblower account brought by Dawn Wooten, a Black woman and nurse in Georgia, revealed that an untold number of immigrant detainees may have received such procedures in the Irwin County Detention Center. Mounting evidence shows there is extreme medical neglect occurring in ICE facilities and private detention centers nationwide.

So in a nation founded on the genocide of native peoples, the enslavement of Black people, and cheap immigrant labor, forced sterilizations are not as uncommon as we'd like to believe. It took a powerful and radical women's movement and a massive social movement of poor and oppressed people to make these abuses a big issue in the 1970s, and it's going to take an equally powerful movement today to root out these abuses for once and for all.

let me ask about this, because last week, Julie, you brought attention to the Greenland case where, 143 Inuit women are suing Denmark for forced birth control in the 1960s and '70s. You don't hear about this happening to Caucasians, 

Trump did it in his first term to migrant women who were forced to undergo involuntary hysterectomies, which w- I, if it had happened to a Caucasian female, we'd still be talking about it in the news. And it's my understanding this still happens in some places in Canada as well. what is this moment of reckoning that we're witnessing with these women suing Denmark?

what could that mean for indigenous women globally? 

before, before I get to that, you mentioned that, Trump was doing this to migrant women. Those are, for the most part, indigenous women. those, those- yeah ... brown women- Exactly ... coming, over the border.

Exactly. but as you were saying, m- most people, maybe a lot of your listeners don't know, but indigenous people know that, this just didn't happen in Greenland. So this was happening to the indigenous women in Greenland, the Inuit women. it happened here in the United States as well.

It happened in Canada as well. 

Yeah. 

And in some places, as you said, it's still happening. So in the United States, from the late '60s through the '70s, the Indian Health Service, they sterilized thousands of Native American women without consent, and a government report from '76 confirmed that over 3,400 Native women were sterilized in just four years.

So in Canada, sterilization of indigenous women was legally sanctioned, and that was i- in the '60s and '70s. And so even after the eugenics laws were repealed, doctors and hospitals continued to practice under the radar, targeting indigenous women. And that's not just in the distant past.

That was happening in the 2000s, 2000 and, Yeah ... 2010s, and it's still happening today. And so under international law, forced sterilization of a specific group with intent to eliminate future generations- ... is one of the clearest legal definitions of genocide, and that's what's happening, and that's, I think it's so important that these women are standing up and suing, the Danish, the, or Denmark, so the Danish government, the, ... in Canada, it's happening as well. 

Yeah. Simon, this is state violence. This is not abuse. This is violence by the state, and it's a part of colonial history that, as Julie said, is still so hidden, and yet it has shaped- Yeah

generations. 

Yeah, it's a modern form of genocide. think about it. Here you have... There was a case in Canada most recently of a, I think it was a young girl, and she had a baby, and then she went to go see her gynecologist sometime later and wanted to know why she couldn't have a baby. she didn't know she had an IUD in her.

She didn't know. And this is what they were doing to Indigenous- Ah. She didn't know she- right? And and then also some of them have their- Oh ... tubes tied. Yeah. And again- No ... so this is while they're, under the knife, if it's, there's, or they're in the middle of giving birth. And so again, for Indigenous people, the shit part is that when you bring this up, people are gonna go, "Oh, they did a lot of stuff in the 1800s, didn't they?

Or in the early 1900s." Always. Yeah. Fuck you. Always about history. This was recently. Always about history. This was most recently to the point where even in Canada, there is a group of Indigenous women pushing a bill that would make it a crime for any of this to ha- They would, if you were found by, as a doctor or anybody, a, a healthcare professional that did this, if you an- gave a young person or e- anybody, any woman an IUD against their consent or tied their tubes, you could face 14 years in jail.

But personally, I think that's not enough. Because again, how do you look at that and say, "This isn't genocide"? You're preventing these- You're taking someone's future away ... 

Indigenous 

babies. 

Yes. It's... Yeah. Yes. Yeah, you're taking someone's entire future away. You're taking someone's entire future genealogy in attempt to...

my God, we're not even talking about generational wealth, we're just talking about taking away generations. 

And I want everybody to wonder why. Why would they do that to Indigenous women and not white women? And I think we all know- I know ... the answer- Yeah ... but I want people to really think about that tonight.

Why would they do this to Indigenous people today? 

And may I just say, I'm gonna go back to Dark Winds because, they really touch on so many important issues that people didn't realize, you know, had been going on. So Dark Winds, as we know, takes place on the Navajo reservation in the '70s, and there is a scene that hits really hard because it is not fiction.

So Emma Leaphorn, who is the, police officer's wife, she's a, a nurse on the Navajo reservation, and there's a scene where she's in the exam room with a young Navajo girl and a white doctor, and the doctor asks the young girl if she's planning to have a home birth, and then encourages her to come to the hospital instead and have her baby there.

And Emma, the nurse, in Navajo, in their language, in the Dine language, says to the, the young girl- 

so that the doctor won't understand what she's saying. She quietly warns the girl, "If you have the baby here at the hospital, they will sterilize you while you're under." And the doctor says, "Oh, what is she gonna, what is she gonna do?

is she gonna have the baby at the hospital?" And the girl goes on this big, rant about, Yeah ... the way that society is right now against Native people, and the, the nurse just says she'll think about it. And that moment reflects the lived truth of so many indigenous women, 'cause for years sterilization wasn't an exception in hospitals.

It really was a routine, and it was normalized. Yeah. And so that quiet act of resistance speaks for, all of the nurses, all of the aunties out there who really did try to protect us when no one else would, and that is... It's just, it's horrific to think that these women still are fighting for justice in Greenland, Canada, and the United States.

And that's why IHS hires more Natives, because Natives have that cultural competence and know the language, and can give them those warnings in our own language. 

It makes me wanna ask, we've never discussed this, but h- how do indigenous concepts of reproductive autonomy differ from Western models, and how can they guide us?

Julie? 

as I said, indigenous people, or at least on my nation, we believe that, women's bodies, we have the right to make decisions about our bodies. most, indigenous, nations had ways of carrying out, an abortion. They did. And so a woman really did have a right to her body.

And so to have, a whole race of people, of women, have those rights taken away, and I know that this is happening right now with, the general population, and it's just so wrong. And so I just really want to encourage people to read up about, what's going on and what has been going on for so long.

Well done. And so indigenous women, have always had that, that, that matriarchy. there's a lot of power and when the settlers came over, they were afraid of that, and they tried to bury it. Oh, absolutely. And one of the reasons, one of the ways was, basically genocide, getting rid of indigenous people, and they did that in many different ways, and the most recent or one of the ways that still is lasting is this forced sterilization.

I wanted to ask you, because you end on this note, about the reparations bill, and that Kelli, was really fighting for that, and Cynthia.

Do you have any more information about what's going on with that? And I love that Kelli is now, she's in it to win it. She's like, "I'm here and we're gonna get reparations." 

There's a lot going on with the reparations movement, and I'm so happy that you highlighted that scene too, because I will tell you, we thought we were finished with the film, and the, many things happened at the, at, towards the end of the process.

We found the deposition footage of Kelli, we found the whistleblower nurses, and the reparations movement gained momentum. And so all of a sudden we had an ending scene. But what's really fascinating about this process is we knew we wanted to have a musical voice in the film. We knew we wanted to get someone involved, to really help tell the story of the survivors through music.

So we asked people, who were advising the film, who were in prison, "Who do you want to be the musical voice of the film? If you could have anyone in the world, who would it be?" And literally everyone said it has to be Mary J. Blige. 

Ooh. Thanks a lot, Erika. Yes. I had that as my, like- ... last question.

Sorry, it's 

a passage of the scene. I love 

it, yeah. 'Cause we love Mary J. Blige. yeah. Keep going. yeah. Love it. 

So we sent the cut to Mary J. It was a rough cut. 

As, as you do. You just sent it over, yeah. you just press send to Mary J. Blige. 

we went through our incredible music supervisor, Tracy McKnight, and we wrote a letter explaining kind of our process of making this film, and how her music helps so many people inside prison get through their time inside- and how we all wanted her to be the musical voice. But the film wasn't finished, and so typically when you approach an, a, an artist to be, to write an original song for a film, it would, the film would be done. She loved the film. She said yes immediately, but we didn't have an ending. So it was this fascinating, unique creative process of trying to come up with how the film would end, and it, s- just through, so much synergy, the reparations movement happened at the same time the hearings were happening, the same time we were talking to Mary and her team, DJ Camper and Nova Wav, and we said, we want people to be inspired when they leave this film.

The reparations movement has not yet gained enough traction. It has not yet passed. We have to inspire people to create change, to take action, but we don't want this to be neatly tied up in a bow, because it's not a happy ending yet. Kelli hasn't gotten her happy ending, and how can you tie a story like this up neatly in a bow when there's so much wor- work to be done and that modern-day eugenics is still at work?

And so we went back and forth. We found this incredible moment, to film with Cynthia and Kelli, and, Mary J and her team really created a song that could not have articulated the film's message in any better way, and that's what we end the film on. That's what we cut the ending scene to.

And so- ... where we are now in the reparations movement is that there is a bill and a budget request to pass reparations for those who were illegally sterilized in California's women's prisons, as well as those who were sterilized historically to the historic eugenics program. And the reparations, movement also calls for everyone who still to this day doesn't know that they were sterilized to be notified- Oh.

... 

which is so important to note that so many people still don't know to this day. 

That's insane. Yeah. 

As well as having a historical monument that acknowledges California's heinous eugenics past so that it may never continue again. And I really believe, and our team really believes, that California's reparations bill will be key to ensuring that incidents like what happened in the Georgia detention center and other illegal sterilizations across this country don't continue to occur So I have to say, go to bellyofthebeastfilm.com and sign our petition for reparations for California's forced sterilization survivors.

Great. Yeah, I just wanted to bring up one other thing, because it just, o- obviously this is, it's heinous what has happened to these women, and I can speak for my co-host and I when we can say we're so sick of women's bodies being up for debate and- Yep ... in the hands of the government or law enforcement or whoever it is.

Yep. and who are we to deem who's worthy to be parents? That's just it's crazy to me. And if we really want to reform our prison systems and, we need to start looking at each other as equals and realizing that we're more than the worst thing that we did one day, and it's just, it's bigger than that.

and thank you for highlighting all of that, and it just adds to our fury, which we can- ... translate into work and spreading the word about your film and the works of the Justice Network on women in organizations like that. 

Now, Section C, Post-Dobbs Legal Battlefield

So after Dobbs was decided, the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe versus Wade, a number of grassroots activists in various states decided that they were going to take to the ballot constitutional amendments to state constitutions to protect reproductive freedom. And so it's important to note that even if the federal Constitution no longer protects abortion, state constitutions always have independently and always can independently of the federal Constitution.

So activists saw this as an opportunity to protect, and in some cases restore, the right to abortion in their states. So through the process of getting measures on the ballot, activists gathered the signatures, raised the funds, and took to the ballot these reproductive freedom amendments to their state constitutions that protect, a whole host of reproductive freedoms, including the right to abortion, contraception, prenatal care, pregnancy care.

And they're all worded a little bit differently, but all have the same goal of enshrining the right to reproductive freedom in state constitutions. 

It was so energizing, just in a time when there was always so much bad news on our issues, to see just these huge wins at the state level. What was it?

Seven of 10 states where it was on the ballot. Honestly, eight, 'cause Florida had that super high threshold. I still see that as a really good news story out of Florida, even though it lost. And so I think a lot of people thought, "Great, we did it. It's done. This, the, it was expanded." But that's actually not the full story, is it?

Correct. So a lot of people think that once these amendments get passed by the voters, that means that all of the bad abortion laws in that state are wiped off the books. And unfortunately for most of the states, that is not true. These amendments are not what we call self-executing. They don't just automatically take care of the bad laws.

the next step in the process is that we, the litigators, have to go to court and challenge the abortion restrictions and abortion bans under these state constitutions, and say, "Under this new state constitutional right, your abortion restriction is unconstitutional, and please strike it down." so that's what we have been busy doing in the context of our role as litigators enforcing the ballot initiatives.

So where are we now? 

Yeah, so as you say, it's all very exciting because, the tremendous advocacy and all of the voters who went to the ballot box, we get to now- Tell the courts that the voters have spoken. They want a state that does not have abortion restrictions, and we have gone into court along with various partners in a bunch of states saying that these restrictions and bans that were on the books are unconstitutional.

So we have cases pending in Missouri and Ohio. I think we have five cases in Ohio, a couple of cases in Arizona, and in Michigan, and we are in the process of blocking and striking down various abortion restrictions, which we can also talk about more in terms of what that looks 

Yeah. I would love to hear, yeah, what do, what does it look right now?

Yeah, so I- it's very exciting, and for, for us to be fighting the threats at the federal level, being able to do this proactive work at the state level is so exciting and so meaningful. so for a state Ohio, which was one of the first states to pass one of these reproductive freedom amendments, we have been able to create a state, where abortion is accessible, and we have been able to increase access to abortion, and Ohio has become a place in the region where people can travel to for abortions because it's surrounded by many states that have, banned abortion.

So for example, we've been able to block the six-week ban under the new constitution. we have been able to block 24-hour waiting period two-trip requirement, in the state. We have blocked a ban on telehealth for abortion, and a whole host of other things. So I said, we have five cases in the s- in the state, and so far we've been successful in blocking various restrictions that has really increased access both for people who, live in Ohio, but also for people who need to travel.

So if you think of someone coming from Kentucky, where previously they had to make two trips to a clinic in Ohio to see, to be seen there, now that two-trip requirement with a 24-hour waiting in between those two trips is blocked. So they can make one trip, to Ohio. Now, obviously we wish that we could restore abortion access in Kentucky too, and nobody would have to travel, but until we can do that, this means that people have increased access in Ohio.

Yeah, that's a huge win for not having to do the two trips. That's, we always talk about what a huge hurdle that is, even though it- I think a lot of people feel it sounds such a low bar, but it is actually a really high bar for people to have to clear. And it was so great. We do an annual 50 state report card on sexual reproductive health and rights in the States, and this year's will be coming, will be out by the time this episode comes out.

And it was so great to see the changes in some of the states that we were able to show improved access. 

Yeah, absolutely. and a state Arizona that had a 15-week abortion ban that we almost immediately got blocked after the constitutional amendment was passed, and we have now also have a permanent injunction against the two-trip requirement, and telehealth ban in that state as well, and recently filed a new case challenging the prohibition on advanced practice clinicians from providing abortions in Arizona.

So we just filed that case too. So we are on a roll, and with our partners in these various states, we'll continue to try to push to wipe all abortion restrictions off the books. 

That is so exciting, and also exciting was seeing that there are some ballot initiatives that are gonna be happening this year as well, and one of the ones that really stood out to me is Missouri.

And you've been fighting in Missouri, and now they are trying to hold the opposite of the ballot initiative to... I- and with the same name to, confuse people. Do you maybe wanna talk a little bit about what's happening in Missouri? 

Yeah, absolutely. And so just to back up a little bit, abortion was heavily restricted in the state even before Roe versus Wade was overturned, with, so many restrictions in the state piled on top of each other, which meant that there was very little abortion provision happening in the state altogether, even before Roe was overturned.

And then the constitutional amendment... Then, sorry, abortion was banned completely after, Roe was overturned, and then, the, the coalition got the ballot measure passed, amending the Constitution, to protect reproductive freedom. And almost immediately with, Planned Parenthood, we went into court and blocked a number of abortion restrictions, including bans at different points in pregnancy, a whole bunch of the targeted regulation of abortion providers, the TRAP laws that dictate things how wide your hallways need to be and things that, that have really prevented access in that state.

And we were able to restore procedural abortion care. We recently had a trial in January where we're hoping to also be able to restore medication abortion provision. But as of now, at least there's med- there's, procedural abortion care in Missouri. But obviously the other side is not content with the decision by the voters, the will of the people, to amend the Constitution.

And so there will be a ballot measure, that will try to repeal the constitutional amendment to, that protects reproductive freedom. And I think it's also just a lesson that we always need to keep fighting, for the rights that we have fought to establish, and, we will never be able to just say, "Oh, we have a constitutional amendment, and so therefore we can rest easy."

There will always be attacks. There will always be ways to try to unravel the progress we've made, and I think we clearly saw that with Roe versus Wade, right? We saw that as soon as Roe was decided, the other side started attacking the right and chipping away at it. And we always said it, the chipping away will result in the overturning of Roe versus Wade, and I think people didn't necessarily believe us, but those, that chipping away led to the downfall of Roe.

So that I think, what we are bracing for in other states, and Missouri is a direct attack to just repe- direct attack to repeal the amendment altogether. And it's gonna be a tremendous fight in terms of people power and also financing to prevent that change from happening. 

Yeah, Roe was already, on life support before it was finally lost.

It was definitely a death of a thousand cuts and then a very fast end, I think. it was hard to brace for that 

moment. 

It was. And also, I should say what all of us know, that Roe was never enough. Roe was the floor, it's not the ceiling, and these reproductive freedom amendments at the state constitution get us closer to the f- to the ceiling.

They are really super protective, both in terms of the broad range of reproductive healthcare they protect, and also creating a very high legal standard, that we get to use in court to say that these abortion restrictions must be struck down under this very high legal standard. And we did not have such a high legal standard, to protect the fundamental right to abortion that was provided to us in Roe.

Let's talk about the MAGA justices, Thomas and Alito. We'll start with Thomas, and his dissent was so insane. So he wrote that abortion providers who mail mifepristone should be thrown in prison rather than granted relief by the Supreme Court.

He claimed, I'll just quote here, "It is a criminal offense to ship mifepristone for use in abortions under the Comstock Act of 1873." And then he added, "Applicants," which are the makers of these drugs- Are not entitled to a stay of an adverse court order based on lost profits from their criminal enterprise.

They cannot, in any legally relevant sense, be irreparably harmed by a court order that makes it more difficult for them to commit crimes. Madhura- That's so 

outrageous. 

Th- it's actually heavily contested whether the Comstock Act does apply to this conduct, right? There are multiple interpretations of it.

The Biden administration made a very strong argument that it did not apply in this context. What do you make of Justice Thomas just throwing down as, making the Comstock Act great again and declaring that all of these providers who are mailing these pills are felons who should be locked up immediately?

He really describes these pharmaceutical companies as if they're some guy on the corner selling heroin. "Oh, their profits from their criminal enterprise." I'm just "Okay, buddy, somebody's been watching too much crime TV." It is really egregious and just really trying to legitimize what was once a fringe theory, that the Comstock Act does apply here, that it is valid, that it's still good law, and should be used to prosecute so many people.

How many individuals would be caught up in this? We're thinking about people at the pharmacies, at the companies themselves, the doctors. This is Threatening to incarcerate so many people for the crime of pursuing basic healthcare and, helping make that possible, it's truly something absurd. I think it just shows how far gone Clarence Thomas is.

The language is on another level. 

And we should note that Thomas' language here comes straight from the crazy far-right anti-abortion advocates' arguments and briefs, right? They have been saying for years that this is a criminal network and a criminal conspiracy, and Thomas is just "Absolutely. I'm just gonna copy/paste that stuff into the US reports," right?

for sure. I think you have seen this trend for Thomas for a while. He always describes abortion as this really nefarious, racist, eugenics operation happening across the country. And yeah, he's really seized the opportunity to put that, into his dissent here, and mix in some criminality for good measure.

And let's just be clear, Madiba is not exaggerating. He literally described abortion as racist eugenics in a previous opinion. So this guy is not pretending to be a neutral judge in these cases. He is "We must outlaw abortion and imprison everyone who participates in it," including, quite possibly, patients.

let's turn to Justice Alito, whose dissent is longer and I would say slightly less crazy, but also way funnier because he's just so big mad. 

Yeah. 

So Justice Alito has this whole dissent where he's complaining that blue states are undermining his decision in Dobbs, which had overruled Roe v. Wade, by allowing their providers to, of course, mail these medication abortion pills into red states where abortion is totally banned.

And Alito actually points out that there are more abortions happening in Louisiana now than before Dobbs because of telehealth abortion, and he faults the FDA because- Good for you, 

Louisiana. 

Yeah, totally. Totally. rock on, Louisiana. We love reproductive freedom. We love owning Sam Alito, too. but he's "This is the FDA's fault.

They are facilitating this felonious conduct because they're allowing for the telehealth prescription and mailing of abortion pills." 

Again, direct quote, he said, "Felonious." 

Yes. Again, and the funny thing is, we should just pause here to note- Louisiana, if it wants, can choose to arrest people who use abortion pills.

It hasn't done so yet, but it may be going down that path. It does have laws that prohibit the dispensation of abortion pills within its state lines. Louisiana has many tools at its disposal to persecute people who participate in reproductive freedom. What Louisiana cannot do is reach across its state lines into New York and somehow prosecute or fine a provider in a completely different state who is engaging in conduct that is completely legal under those state laws.

And that's what Alito just can't wrap his head around, and it seems he really thought Dobbs was gonna end abortion in red states just, forever. And he is sore as hell that he did not successfully strip more people of their fundamental rights. 

Yeah. He is shocked and appalled. It was honestly pretty funny.

what do you mean there are more abortions happening now than there were before? And it gives the game away a bit that this was never actually about restoring freedom to the states he likes to claim. It was about just ending abortion. And so that he didn't do that, he's, now he's upset.

Yeah. And he's all about Louisiana state sovereignty and Louisiana's rights to, enact these laws. What about New York's sovereignty? What about New York's right to enact these laws? New York gets to have a say in this as well, I had thought. But you said, Madiba, it totally gives away the game.

He hates pro-choice laws and wants to find a way to block them, and he loves anti-abortion laws, and he will just bend and twist and contort the law to make them do their work of ending abortion, which he really thought was gonna happen with Dobbs. 

Something I thought was interesting about him getting real mad about shield laws in blue states was that he portrays them as something untoward, something nefarious targeting red states.

He doesn't see it as protecting the doctors in those states to continue prescribing medicine. He's "They are trying to mess with red states. They're trying to undermine red states' abilities to ban abortion," which is not really what's happening. They're just trying to make sure that they can allow the doctors in the states to continue providing services to their patients, wherever those patients may be.

There's no ulterior motives. But he makes it seem there's this, grand evil scheme going on. Again, he uses, very comical language. He says scheme. He says this operation, this enterprise, all of these criminal-esque, language. And again, it's really jarring to me that, we've had this conversation before, 150-odd years ago.

The same things, he's talking about the shield laws. These are so similar to the personal liberty laws back in the 1800s when states said, we're not going to return Black people who escaped from slave states." And here again, we have some of these states, and we have some of these justices and right-wing judges endorsing this idea that unfree states should be able to reach out into free states and impose their laws on everyone else and impose their unfreedom across the whole country.

They're trying to say that free states should not be able to assist other people fleeing injustice. These are the reasons why we have the 14th Amendment. This is exactly the thing that the Constitution should prevent. But because the right-wing movement has been dismantling the Reconstruction amendments, that leaves us where we are today instead.

In Alito's view, red states have absolute freedom to persecute abortion providers and patients, but blue states have absolutely no authority to protect abortion providers and patients. It's just so obvious what he's doing here. And by the way, we should give a shout-out to the law professors who really devised and pressed these shield laws in state legislatures after Dobbs, David Cohen, Rachel Rebouché, and Greer Donley, also writers sometimes for Slate.

For anyone who says that law professors don't matter and law review articles don't matter, I raise you these three, because- ... Sam Alito is actively mad at them for their work, which is having very serious and important real-world implications. So finally, just real quick, Madiba, the dark cloud looming over all this is that Trump's FDA is currently undertaking this review of mifepristone at the behest of anti-abortion advocates.

And reportedly, the agency has delayed that review till after the 2026 midterms because, in fact, reproductive rights are very popular. But the FDA is now facing this intense pressure from anti-abortion politicians Josh Hawley and anti-abortion activists who say they need to restrict mifepristone ASAP.

It seems That's gonna happen. The FDA is going to crack down on telehealth mifepristone, but after the midterms. And the Fifth Circuit just jumped the gun on that plan that the Trump administration had laid out and gotten ahead of 

it. And so is the Supreme Court's order best understood in some way as, the savvier conservative justices just restoring the original plan to let the Trump administration slow walk this crackdown on mifepristone until after the elections?

Yeah. We see this so much, not just in the case of abortion, but across the far right agenda. We see the Supreme Court actively advancing that agenda, but trying to do so in a way that it thinks it might sustain its power, both the power of the court and the power of that right-wing movement. They don't want to set up conditions where there might be too big a backlash.

And so it's funny when you see these ideologues, whether in the lower courts or sometimes, in Congress or just, other activists, being too eager and just going ham, and the court trying to get them to pump the brakes just a little bit. We're seeing that here, and I feel we just saw this with all the fallout from Callais, where the Supreme Court's Republican majority straight up is "It's totally okay to racially gerrymander as long as you don't say it's racially gerrymandering and you call it partisan gerrymandering instead."

And then you get something Republican legislators being "I'm so excited to racially gerrymander. This is awesome." And it's you guys, there was one thing I said not to do. please just keep it ho- keep it together. 

Follow the playbook. John Roberts knows what he's doing, right? Listen to him and you can be as racist and as horrible on reproductive freedom and as anti-LGBTQ as you want.

You just have to do it the right way. 

one of the things we've really seen be the new targets, it seems to be medication abortion and telehealth.

Why have they become the, new focus? 

Yeah. So medication abortion has been a lifeline after Dobbs, and I don't want to suggest that it's a solution for everyone in every situation 'cause it's definitely not, and there are lots of people who can't use medication abortion, and it's not the care provided for every, every stage of pregnancy, so it leaves people out.

But for sure, it has allowed access to continue after Dobbs, and it's the reason that abortion rates have not decreased, including in states with abortion bans or severe restrictions. So you might know about the amazing WeCount data, which the most recent findings, which I think were of, from December of last year, found that about fifteen thousand abortions A month are provided under shield laws into states where abortion is severely restricted or banned, or they don't allow telehealth.

We can talk about shield laws, which are a piece of the medication abortion picture. But because it allows people to access from where they live, from providers who can be located anywhere in the country, including in states with protections, medication abortion has been a lifeline, and that is why there are so many attacks on it right now.

Yeah, we just had Dr. Angel Foster on talking about telehealth provision and the benefits of the shield laws, and it really, it is making a huge difference to ensure that people are still able to access care. And you said, that is clearly not... It is clearly really important, but not enough. We need to make sure that not everybody wants to do medication abortion or can, and we need to make sure people are able to access in any way they can, but the shield laws go a long way to help expanding access via telehealth.

So true. 

there's been, some chaos that has-- there, it has been chaos honestly since the Dobbs decision, but recently there was chaos with the, the Fifth Circuit was gonna stop all telehealth provis- or mifu provision. And so that, introduced chaos and extra chaos into the system.

How are patients and providers dealing with, all of this, uncertainty and this rapidly chang- changing landscape? 

I think uncertainty now is a given. Of course, we can't lose sight of that after Dobbs, providers had to leave a lot of states, including clients that we at the center had worked with for decades and were mainstays and also pillars of their communities in states like Texas and North Dakota and Oklahoma, just to name a few, Mississippi.

This is not exhaustive at all, and they just had to leave. So since then, there, there's still whiplash. I would say that whiplash is not something uniquely post-Dobbs, and just because reproductive rights have been under attack forever, and in some ways, when the federal courts offered more options to block things, then things would get blocked and go into effect.

Things could change a lot more quickly. Now, four years post-Dobbs, there's been a little bit of settling. We'll have to talk about the huge looming, potential threats around medication abortion that could affect everyone in the country. But I think, providers are stoic. they know that this is How it works, and they just continue to try to provide the care that they, the best care that they can, because they care so much for their patients.

I would say that for people seeking ab- abortion, it's clear that telehealth is, it's not just a lifeline post-ops, it's a, it's a genuinely great thing because it gives people a lot more options, and it's aligned with how people wanna access healthcare generally, on their own terms, on their own timeline, often in their home, being able to choose from a lot of providers, not just limited by who is close by or the ability to get to somebody.

So all of these are, genuine innovations. It's a great thing. What we need is to get rid of all of the legal attacks, complexities, restrictions, so it doesn't have to be operating in this gray space with uncertainty. But I think in general, telehealth has been a, a great thing for abortion access, and that should be a step forward if we could, figure out the legal crisis.

Yeah. It's definitely worth circ- circling back to the attacks on mifepristone, which is just, it just has the potential to just cause so much damage, right? even if they do the narrower version with, just getting rid of telehealth, we just talked about, how, game-changing that was for people to be able to access care, and it's so much better for them to be able to access via telehealth.

It's getting into states where it is banned, but, the system, the clinics that exist, if people have to start coming in person, the system can't currently support them. So I think there's a lot of, People don't quite understand the full ramifications of, what could happen if any version of these miffy bans take place.

I think that's right. 

And definitely people in blue states thinking that they are safe. 

No, we could never think that.

And I think it's just worth... I always try to point out as we're having these conversations about how Roe was chipped away at as we are seeing this exact same playbook playing out around gender-affirming care and transgender rights, and we need to make sure that we are in lockstep solidarity and not letting the same playbook be used again and again.

That's absolutely right, and these are all questions of bodily autonomy. They are going after the most marginalized people first. They did it with abortion. They're doing it with gender-affirming care. That means minors, people who have Medicaid for their insurance. We see exactly, the same type of tactics in the gender-affirming care space that we have in the abortion space.

Is there anything else you're keeping an eye on right now? I know there's so many things happening in the legal space around reproductive health. Is there anything else that you feel maybe isn't getting enough attention? 

the other thing I'll just mention is in addition to the reproductive freedom amendments, there have been equal rights amendments passed as well.

So in Nevada, for example, there was an equal rights amendment passed, a couple of years ago, and we were able to take that equal rights amendment and say that the state's prohibition on Medicaid coverage for abortion violated the Equal Rights Amendment because prohibiting abortion is, or prohibiting coverage of abortion rather, is, sex discrimination because it discriminates based on pregnancy-related care.

So that's another avenue that we have been able to use to protect the right to abortion and expand access to abortion is the Equal Rights Amendment. So New York also passed an equal rights amendment recently, too, and I know advocates are looking at ways to try to implement that to expand, abortion access in a state that's already- provides a, a tremendous amount of abortion care, but, we're always looking at ways to remove barriers and make it easier for people to access abortion care.

Yeah, and since you mentioned Nevada, worth mentioning, it is one of those states, again, that is gonna have a ballot initiative this fall because it had to b- has to be passed twice, correct? 

Correct. That is exactly right. Yep. and I think a lot of people say, if you have the Equal Ri- Rights Amendment, do you still need the Reproductive Freedom Amendment?"

And I say, "Yes." we need all the tools in the toolbox. We need belts and suspenders. We need everything, all the different protections we can get. Let's take them, let's enshrine them in the Constitution. And because of this chipping away effect that we've seen, we know that we need to really build our wall high and get all the protections we can.

I'm trying to think if there's anything else we should talk about. It 

feels Yeah, so look, I'll say, one of the things that makes me so hopeful in a time where I feel there's not a lot of hope- Ah, hope. Is I'm from Michigan. I was born and raised in Michigan, and, when I was growing up in the 1970s and '80s and early '90s, I just dated myself, abortion was heavily restricted in Michigan.

We had a very anti-abortion local government. Sorry, not local government, but state government. I grew up in Ann Arbor, which was very progressive. It was a progressive enclave in a very conservative state. And I saw, as a teenager, the difficulties in people accessing abortion, and I saw the very restrictive policies that my state government was placing on abortion.

And so to fast-forward in my lifetime to see my home state pass at the ballot a reproductive freedom amendment in such large numbers with such support, grassroots outpouring, so many people going to the ballot, I have so much hope that there can be change that in my lifetime. To be able to see that is, is just so meaningful.

And then in what happened in Michigan is the legislature, after the constitutional amendment was passed, repealed a whole host of abortion restrictions based on the constitutional amendment's passage. so that was also incredible, but also didn't go far enough. They, there were a number of abortion restrictions they didn't touch, including one that we challenged.

so we have a challenge to the prohibition on coverage for abortion in Medicaid, and the Center for Reproductive Rights challenged the two-trip requirement in Michigan and some other restrictions, and have been successful so far. We've not been successful yet in, in our Medicaid case, but we're still trying.

So I just think that when we h- are having these moments of feeling of dread and hopelessness, to remember a state Michigan and think of how far we've able to, been able to come in just a matter of a couple of decades, my not even my whole lifetime, 'cause even though I dated myself and I was a teenager in the 1980s, I'm, I still have hopefully a lot of life left.

So- So just thinking about that and thinking about progress and how progress really can happen, it gives me a lot of hope. 

Yeah, I, it is really hopeful to see a neighboring state do that. I was born and raised in Wisconsin, so I kinda had a little bit of the flip story of Wisconsin definitely had its, regression on a lot of those things, and still is not great on abortion.

V- had a big win with the, at the Wisconsin Supreme Court that at least got rid of, a complete ban, which was amazing, but still a long ways to go.

For years, I was saying, "Abortion is healthcare, motherfuckers," on main on Twitter, repeatedly, no regrets.

But I was doing something more specific than just stating a fact. I was pushing back on a particular liberal hedging, the, quote, "Nobody is pro-abortion move." the one. People on our side rushing to say, "We don't abortion. We just think it should be legal. We want it to be rare. We're not celebrating it.

We're tolerating it." I reject that hard. I said, "I'm pro-abortion the same way I'm pro-chemotherapy and pro-stitches. It's a medical procedure. When you need it, it should be available, full stop." Now Chemo and stitches is not a perfect analogy, and I knew it when I made it. Nobody has complicated feelings about stitches.

Nobody thinks their neighbor is a bad person for getting a stitch. But some of the people saying, "Nobody is pro-abortion," were genuinely trying to reach people who feel some type of way about abortion, saying, "I'm not asking you to love this. I'm asking you to recognize it's necessary." They were trying to meet people where they were, and I'm not sure I was giving them enough credit for that.

But anyway, abortion is healthcare, motherfuckers. I still believe it. But here's the trap door. When you say abortion is healthcare, a hostile court can pick that up and run somewhere you didn't intend. Oh yeah? You agree this is healthcare? Great. Here are our healthcare regulations: waiting periods, mandatory ultrasounds, admitting privileges requirements.

We're just regulating healthcare after all. You're the one who said it was healthcare. I don't think I talked about that trap enough. So here's a different version, one that I didn't come up with. Jess Pieklo did. Jess, my longtime co-host of Boom! Lawyered, the person who shaped the way I think about abortion rights for over a decade, one of the sharpest legal minds I know.

About five years ago, Jess launched this framing in an editorial report we published called The Future of Abortion Access. We were writing about medication abortion and how medication abortion was going to be the future of abortion access. That was in 2021. It was more than a year before the Supreme Court overturned Roe.

Jess saw where this was going, and she was already thinking about what the argument needed to look on the other side of it. Jess's framing wasn't abortion is healthcare, motherfuckers, it was abortion is good medicine. And that distinction matters because it's not conceding anything to a hostile regulatory apparatus.

It's saying, here is what clinical and social evidence shows. Here is what actually happens to people when they can access abortion care, and what happens when they can't. The most important study you've probably never heard cited in the political or legal argument is the Turnaway Study that the Answer Research Program conducted at the University of California San Francisco.

Ten years, a thousand women. Researchers recruited women from 30 abortion clinics across the country. Some got abortions because they showed up just before a clinic's gestational cutoff. Others were turned away because they showed up just after it. The women on either side of that line were often in very similar circumstances.

The difference was whether they got the abortion, and that's what the study tracked. Women denied abortions were four times more likely to live below the federal poverty line. They were more likely to stay tethered to abusive partners, more likely to experience serious life-threatening complications from the end of pregnancy, including eclampsia, more likely to experience chronic pain and poor physical health for years after.

And the consequences didn't stop with them. The study found serious implications for their existing children too And five years later, ninety-nine percent of the women who received an abortion said it was the right decision. A thousand women, ten years. That's what good medicine looks It shifts the ground from defensive legal definitions to undeniable human outcomes.

And the Turnaway Study made it all the way to Dobbs. It was cited in amicus briefs by social scientists, by public health researchers, by economists. It was right there in the record. And during oral arguments, Chief Justice Roberts looked at that mountain of evidence and said, out loud, "Put the data aside."

Now, Roberts didn't say that because the data was wrong. He said it because to him, the case wasn't a public health question. It was a question of legal doctrine and judicial philosophy. He wanted to use legal logic to find a middle ground. But the rest of the conservative majority didn't care about a middle ground, and they didn't care about the data either.

They had the votes. The decision wasn't going to turn on science, and it wasn't even going to turn on Roberts' institutional philosophy. It was going to turn on raw power. And that is exactly why evidence in a courtroom can never be the whole strategy. You can't win a public health argument in a room where the decision is already made.

You have to win it before you even get there, in the culture, in communities, in the way regular people understand what's actually at stake. That's the argument we should have been making all along. But we didn't make it loudly enough, consistently enough, or as the thing we built everything else around.

Okay, so I want to tell you why I care about this specifically, why this particular question has been keeping me up at night. I'm a Black woman who covers reproductive rights and justice, which means I am never not aware that the stakes of this argument are not evenly distributed. And I want to be specific about what by that.

Black and Brown women never had a constitutional right to abortion that automatically translated to actual access. Abortion deserts existed under Roe. Sky-high maternal mortality rates existed under Roe. The inability to afford to travel, to take time off of work, to find childcare for your kids, to find a provider, all of that existed under Roe.

The legal strategy won the right to abortion on paper for fifty years, but the public health crisis continued underneath it the whole time. So when Roe fell, Black and brown women weren't just losing a constitutional protection, they were losing a protection that was already failing them, and that's a different loss.

Black maternal mortality in this country is a catastrophe. Black women die from pregnancy-related causes at rates that should be treated as a national emergency, and largely are not. That is documented. It is not contested by anyone who has looked at the data honestly. But it is also a legal crisis. The policies that restrict abortion access, that close clinics and force people to travel or carry pregnancies they cannot safely sustain, those land hardest on Black women, on poor women, on people who are navigating a healthcare system that was already failing them before any of this happened.

And here's the danger of running the constitutional argument and the public health reality on separate tracks. When the legal argument is the main event, you can talk about abortion rights as an abstract liberty interest and never have to say who is actually dying. When your argument isn't grounded in good medicine, you can cite the data as a talking point without ever forcing the courts to connect that data to the specific policies producing the harm.

Now, I cover this beat, and I've done so for more than a decade. I've watched legal victories mean absolutely nothing on the ground for certain populations. I've watched health data get weaponized, and I've watched Black women's lives treated as case studies instead of the absolute center of the argument.

I don't get to treat this as academic, and honestly, neither does the movement. So here's the theory one more time. We had two strategies, a legal one and a public health one, and we used both. I want to be clear about that. We talked about abortion outcomes. We cited the studies. We wrote the pieces. We fought the court cases.

The question I'm wrestling with is whether we treated those as separate projects instead of part of the same argument, whether the legal argument became so dominant that the public health case never got built into something that could stand on its own, leaving us with nothing to lean on when Roe fell.

Because here's the thing about the legal strategy. It was built almost entirely on Roe, the liberty interest arguments, the undue burden standard, the privacy arguments, the whole constitutional framework. When the court overturned it, that strategy didn't just weaken. It lost its foundation. Now, the fight didn't end, but it definitely fractured.

Suddenly, it was 50 different state battles instead of one federal right to defend. But the public health argument doesn't work that way. The Turnaway Study findings are still true whether Roe exists or not. Black maternal mortality is still a crisis whether Roe exists or not. That data cannot be overturned.

what with, all you are saying, we've really been focused on abortion, but I think that the attacks we're seeing have implications for broader than just abortion on reproductive rights.

What are you seeing, and what are you, thinking about at the moment for the broader attacks beyond just abortion? 

Yeah. I do wanna talk about state court a little bit- 

Oh, yeah ... while 

we have a chance, but I think a lot of the a- attacks that are going beyond abortion right now are in federal court.

And there's one area that is very devastating and should never have happened in this way, and that is Dobbs has metastasized to trans rights. And just to tell the legal story of how this happened, it really comes down to just one line in the Dobbs opinion, which should never have been there. Dobbs was a case about the liberty right to abortion.

It was not about sex discrimination, but Justice Alito was so worried that sex discrimination might become a new basis for the right to abortion after they overturned liberty, that he included one line that says essentially regulation of medical procedures that when sex can undergo is not a problematic form of sex discrimination, so these kinds of laws should be upheld.

So this is so sweeping. It goes way beyond liberty and the right to abortion, which is what Dobbs was about, and it was about-- tried to make this about sex discrimination in all medical procedures. So of course, people who are hostile to trans rights and also states that are aligned with trying to oppose any bodily autonomy seized on this and started making argu- arguments that bans on gender-affirming care for minors fall outside sex discrimination protections because they essentially regulate a medical procedure, and Dobbs said that was just fine.

So this got all the way to the Supreme Court in Skrmetti last term, and the court used that logic from Dobbs to hold that the Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care for minors didn't discriminate based on sex or trans status. It said it just regulated a medical treatment that happens to be, to quote, "uniquely bound up in sex," and that's fine.

So before Dobbs, the court had never said anything that sex-based medical procedures are somehow outside of anti-discrimination protections, and that is a very radical rejection of a core premise of equal protection law, which is that- Discrimination often comes from differences in bodies and physical capabilities that are associated with sex and infused with stereotypes, and that, that biological piece is really what leads to invidious forms of discrimination.

But because of the overreach in Dobbs and Skrmetti, that's now binding precedent that other federal courts are using to reject discriminatory bans or to uphold discriminatory bans on healthcare for trans people. 

Yeah, this is one of those I think about a lot because you're seeing the same playbook being used, right?

this is how the attacks on abortion rights really started, was with putting bans on young people and saying young people needed parental consent. and so you're just seeing them use the exact same plays they used to get to the Dobbs decision, starting to attack gender-affirming care now, right?

using young people as, the tip of the spear to, start breaking off support, but also, "Oh, we're just, young people. We need to make sure that, they don't have the ability to make those decisions yet." And then now that the, the legal right has been established, then that you...

I fully expect to start seeing that, grow and attacking more abil- more people's ability to access gender-affirming care. 

It's so true, and the precedent that's getting built sweeps way broader, and then that can be used destructively, for, to attack lots of other people, groups, and even to go beyond trans rights, 'cause the, the underlying premise is really super broad.

Another similarity with abortion rights and trans rights is that the other side tries to manufacture medical uncertainty- 

Yeah ... 

and try to say, "Actually, s- science doesn't know anything about this. Let's just use common sense and say this is probably dangerous, probably has long-lasting negative effects.

If there's any uncertainty, then let's just err on the side of letting states ban things." And of course, that was a huge theme with anti-abortion advocacy, again, against so much data. we don't have to try to convince people. We know that abortion is incredibly safe, but that, that denying the evidence got a lot of traction and is one of the reasons that we ended up here.

Okay. So you said you wanted to talk about what you're seeing in state courts. Let's turn to that. What are you seeing? 

Oh, actually, I did wanna talk about other rights also. Oh, yes. Sorry. And another thing that we have to keep an eye on. So the trans rights, it's infuriating because it's about equal protection, and Dobbs wasn't supposed to be about that.

Dobbs was about history and tradition analysis for liberty rights and laid out that whole test that liberty protections have to be deeply rooted in this nation's history and tradition, which was frozen by the court in- 1868 when the 14th Amendment was ratified. So the court said if liberties were not protected then, they can't be fundamental today.

And of course, we know at that time it was men who were white who overwhelmingly possessed rights and other groups were shut out of even the process of defining the scope of rights and participation. So everyone worried after that, that this approach would reject everything from the right to marry who you want to contraception, to intimacy.

None of those were protected in 1868, but we didn't know at that point what kinds of cases would be cropping up to start putting these things on the line. So now four years later, we have federal courts citing Dobbs' history and tradition to undermine healthcare for trans kids, contraception, and recently, student privacy.

So I don't have to go into a lot of detail about the cases, but for trans healthcare, the Eleventh Circuit, which is the appellate court over the state of Alabama, held that parents don't have a liberty right to, quote, "Treat one's children with transitioning medications subject to medically accepted standards."

And the reason they don't have that right, they said, is this court said, is because this is a twentieth-century invention. 

That is wild. 

And the standard is also so subjective that it just allows courts to do whatever they want and act on their personal biases. So of course, we see parental rights being used, the flip side of it, to support parents' rights to do things that go against their children's bodily autonomy.

So in Texas, we had a judge holding that this was a challenge to part of the Title X program, which provides, as free or low-cost contraception. And Title X has always been run to n-not allow providers to notify parents when minors go seeking contraception from Title X providers. So a parent challenged this, saying that it violated his parental rights to make decisions for his kids.

And mind you, his kids had never tried to go to a Title X clinic, did not, a- according to the facts, express any interest in obtaining contraception, let alone without letting him know. But this was just another attempt to everybody based on really retrograde ideas. So this federal district court agreed that parents have a historically deeply rooted right to make important life decisions for their children, and it would violate that right for Title X providers to even have a policy out there that they can serve minors without parental consent.

So that's a big problem with history and tradition, and is... We're gonna just be seeing more of that on more kinds of reproductive rights as things go forward. 

Yeah, I, It's again, the-- You hear all the people being "They're not coming after birth control. why are you starting to panic about birth control?"

And you're No, but It, it is happening and courts are already starting to make decisions

 

that may limit people's access. this again is the, trying to crack open that door so that they can then expand it further. 

Yeah, and the legal test is just so sweeping. Yeah ... that's one of the giant problems with it.

It would cover everything if it were applied to mean what it says, and these judges to say they're being consistent, although obviously just these two cases- yeah ... that go different ways show, show that's not right. 

And Finally, Section D, Pronatalism, State-Directed Reproduction in Reverse

Simone, can you just describe to me where you live with your family a- and what your family looks like? 

Our house is surrounded by a beautiful field that has fireflies in the summer, and, it's adjacent to the Valley Forge National Park, which is a quite large park in our area, hundreds of miles of walking trails and a stream.

Our kids love to play outside when the weather's good. And while our oldest is in kindergarten, our youngest, are either with me or with neighbors who live right next to us during the day while we work. 

and the chickens, Simone. 

Don't forget the chickens. Oh, yeah, yes, we have... We have a little chicken coop.

We have 12 chickens, which help to keep me sane because when the kids throw the vast majority of their food on the ground, I just feed it to the chickens, feed the eggs to the kids- And a dog ... and there's a beautiful circle. 

And Malcolm, how would you actually define pronatalism? 

Pronatalism is about bringing attention to falling fertility rates and the geopolitical and economic and social consequences of this, and looking for realistic and non-coercive solutions.

So if this is a solution, Simone, pronatalism, what is the main problem that you would say you're worried about? 

With demographic collapse, I'm worried not about the elite tech people that are often attributed with championing this cause, but rather the most vulnerable people in society. Like with climate change, demographic collapse disproportionately affects the people who are most dependent on social services, on governments working, on, medical assistance from governments.

And when you run out of taxpayers who can fund those programs, including pensions, infrastructure development, police, fire, security, things like that, you have huge swaths of people who are not only vulnerable, who not only don't have enough money for food or medical care, but who will likely die. so this is a very serious and very scary issue, and if governments can't figure out how to continue to support the vulnerable people in their societies when they run out of a tax-paying base due to so many old people, we are in really big trouble.

Nomia, Malcolm and Simone were explaining to me a couple of the ideas that seem very important in their lives, but can you help us understand how their definitions fit into a wider view? they gave us the definition of pronatalism, but it's actually more of an umbrella term, isn't it, for quite a broad range of beliefs.

It is. So a general definition would be it's any attitude or any policy that's pro-birth, that basically encourages reproduction. So any view that basically considers parenthood as the most amazing thing that you can do, the most powerful, incredible role. And so basically pronatalists think that people should have more babies.

others go further. They think it should be state-sponsored. And then you have this kind of crossover with those who are anti-abortion, and they believe in total abortion bans. 

What seems to unite all pronatalists though, Nomia, is this concern with population decline, and Malcolm and Simone talked about this a lot, this idea of demographic collapse.

What exactly is that? a- and are they right to be concerned? 

it means that there is a decline in birth rates and that is true. So for a country in the developed world like the US to increase or maintain its population, it needs a birth rate of 2.1 children per woman on average, and that's known as the replacement rate.

So here in the US, the fertility rate fell in 2023 to 1.62. That's a record low. And then last year it was 1.78, so it climbed up, but that's still low, especially if you think back to 1960. It was 3.65. And so if you're a pronatalist, generally speaking, your argument, certainly on the extreme end I would say of that movement, your argument would go something like this.

Birthrates are falling. If we don't take dra- take dramatic action, we're going to witness the extinction of entire societies, the economy will collapse, entire races and countries will be wiped out because of lower fertility rates 

Now, Mira, I've been speaking to quite a few people and asking them what their thoughts are around pronatalism, and I'm surprised how many people haven't actually heard of it.

How long has it been around for? I 

mean, it's not a new concept. if you read the Bible, you've got, be fruitful and multiply, and then there are lots of other religious traditions, and they go all the way back to, I think it's Louis, XIV's France. So they had a policy in France of encouraging large families back in 1666.

There was basically this edict offering tax privileges to fathers of 10 or more children, and that was aimed at increasing the population, strengthening the nation. You had Soviet Russia as well. they wanted to respond to population losses during and after World War II. The goal was increase the birth rates, bolster the workforce.

And then even here in the US in 1920s America, women had the right to vote. They could go to work, and so there were lots of concerns about what that meant in regards to having babies. And now we're seeing this resurgence, of pronatalism because you do have this modern tech look to it, don't you?

You have, many in Silicon Valley who have taken a big interest in pronatalism.

Simone, you're outlining a, a really big problem as you see it. But part of your solution is intensely personal in that you're having lots of children. And Malcolm, how many would you like to have? 

Oh, that's not really my choice as the husband. So I'll shoot that to Simone. 

I would love to have as many children as I can physically have.

So basically until my uterus is removed in a C-section that goes a little wrong or I am unable to carry more pregnancies, I will keep having children. 10, 14, however many I can have. 

So literally, Simone, you are putting yourself at risk, your life at risk for this. 

That's correct, yes. 

That... D- does that frighten you?

I'm really not afraid of losing my life in a pregnancy or compromising my health. This is something that throughout history has been something that women have gladly taken on. Basically, in the past, women died in childbirth at around the same rate that men died in battle, and yet you hear plenty of stories throughout history of both men and women being very excited to further their values, to support their families and their countries by doing these things respectively.

You must worry for her as well, though, Malcolm. This is your wife endangering her life- I 

do ... in order to have more children. and people have asked me, they go, "Oh, would you stop her from doing this?" And I'm like, but then that's stopping one of my kids from coming into existence." and I've interacted with my kids.

I love my kids. and I appreciate what she goes through and the risk she puts herself through and her body through. I also understand that if I tell her to stop, I'm functionally erasing all future kids we have from existence. if a, an intruder, had your wife and your kid at gunpoint and they're like, "Choose," like everybody knows the right choice in that situation.

It's just that the way our society views kids right now, we assign no value to the life of a child that isn't born or conceived yet. 

But Malcolm, I know for both of you, it's not just a question of how many children you have. It's kind of the other qualities that child also has too, and you use a lot of data and you make other considerations when it comes to having a child.

Can you talk us through that data? 

So one thing that we do with our embryos is called polygenic risk score selection, PGTP, which is a more advanced version of the typical pre-implantation genetic testing done by many couples who do IVF already. This has been done for over 10 years. This is just a more advanced and detailed version of it.

This allows us to look at which embryos have higher risks of things like cancer, which we're very concerned about, and then have the higher cancer risk children later with hopes that once they're adults, they're more likely to have access to screening and cures that will save their lives. Now, PGTP also enables families to test for things like height and intelligence, which are considered very controversial terms, but when you look at parents' interest in giving their children the best advantages possible, their willingness to pay for things like test prep courses and send them to all these special tutoring sessions, we really have trouble seeing a big difference between looking at an embryo's odds of having high educational attainment or high earnings, versus trying to intervene after they are born.

What about after the children are born, and the names that you choose to give your children? Because y- you obviously, your approach isn't just before they're born, it's after as well. 

We want to give our children very strong signals in many ways throughout their lives that we have high expectations for them, that they belong to a culture that expects them to contribute to a better future and to the betterment of humanity.

We also want a culture that differentiates them from the rest of society, because we've found that what we call the urban monoculture, basically the predominant culture in most developed countries and most urban areas, is very toxic. As we can see through declining birth rates, it is a sterilizing culture.

So we give our children names like Octavian and Torsten, Titan and Industry to show them, among many other things, that they are different and they are not like these other people, because we want to protect them from something we find to be very harmful

Now, Mia, the Collinses talked about the qualities that they want their children to have. So it's not just about having lots of babies, it's the kind of babies that the qualities that these children have. Is that also quite common among pronatalists? 

It's interesting, isn't it? The pronatalists, many of them don't want to just increase the birth rate.

Some want to optimize the children being born. you get those who are pro-family and pronatalist. I think that's probably how I would try and separate the two, and not everyone who is pro having kids probably tests their embryos to the extent that the Collins family do or even can afford to do it.

So you do get families who do the common testing to make sure their unborn child is healthy, not at risk of any hereditary diseases. But whilst the numbers doing what the Collins family is doing is much smaller, I think there is actually a huge push by the Silicon Valley tech world. Prominent figures in the tech industry, they're not just passive observers, but they're almost becoming like active participants in this reproductive revolution.

They're investing so much money, like millions and millions in startups focused on fertility and genetic technologies to try and encourage, super babies. And of course, that is just ethically hugely controversial.

Why do Elon Musk and JD Vance want us to have more babies? I want more babies in the 

United States of America. 

Musk himself is thought to have had 14 children, and there's other rich men in Silicon Valley pouring their money into fertility tech, and extremists who want to breed what they believe is a superior race.

So why do these people think society is about to collapse, and is there any truth to it? This couple are breeding to try and save the world. Simone and Malcolm Collins think they're intelligent, genetically superior to others, and so have a duty to produce as many babies as she can physically carry.

Simone's having her fifth child, and claims to have screened her embryos' IQ to check their intelligence. Pro-natalists like Simone and Malcolm think they've got support right at the top of the US government, but is that true? 

So JD Vance is, a self-professed pro-natalist. He wants Americans to have more babies, and he's been very vocal about that.

But he's also a figure of what's known as the tech right. Peter Thiel, who's a huge, venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, is the figurehead of this group. 

Peter Thiel, if you didn't know, co-founded PayPal, was an early investor in Facebook, and now runs Palantir, a controversial data company which has contracts with the US government and the NHS.

He's also an investor, and one of his interests is fertility tech. 

And JD Vance was sponsored by Peter Thiel. his Senate race was sponsored by Peter Thiel. These are very powerful and influential wealthy figures in American politics, who are very proactively putting out this message. 

What about Elon Musk?

We're talking about the tech right. He's sort of the final boss of the tech right. 

Elon is, yeah, very, openly pro-natalist as well. He believes he can create smarter children, and he should. When one of his kids was crawling around the Oval Office, where Trump said, "He's a high-IQ individual," this is clearly something that's very important to these people.

A lot of these men run companies or countries, so population growth is of particular interest to them. 

Population growth has always often been linked to economic growth, and population decline, they fear, is gonna cause economic decline. who's going to buy all this tech that they're, producing?

Who's gonna use all these- businesses that they're investing in 

So some right-wing tech bosses and politicians seem to be into this idea. But has the current administration actually done anything that could be seen as pronatalist? 

so far not very much. there was one executive order, very early on that said it was going to try and make IVF more affordable.

He's done a lot in the eight months he's been in office, but very little that would be seen as really obviously pronatalist. 

And a lot of these tech bosses will obviously be well across the developments in AI and how quickly that is speeding things up. How does that play into all of this? 

So you have, a lot of these rich tech entrepreneurs who are developing a technology and investing billions and billions of dollars in a technology that we- mostly agree will take away human jobs.

And at the same time, they're arguing that population's gonna decline and there's not gonna be enough workers. And those things seem to contradict each other massively. 

The tech right are not the only people in the US that want people to have more babies. Pro-natalism also has a more traditional religious strand, both Christian and some Jewish.

So in March, there was this conference, it was in Texas, and it brought together quite a few different strands of this pro-natalist movement. So you had people from the tech right, people who, like Simone and Malcolm Collins, and others who really support IVF and support embryo screening. And then there's a kind of Christian right, more traditional family values, who believe that, people should have as many children as they can because of some kind of moral, spiritual obligation.

But they don't all agree on everything. A lot of the traditional Christian right don't believe in IVF. They don't like the idea of creating embryos that might be destroyed. 

So we've spoken about a lot of men so far. Are there any women on board with this idea? 

Simone Collins is w- is a main figurehead of the movement.

and there were, there was a conference in March, there were a few women speakers- Okay ... but it was overwhelmingly men. But there are, there is a kind of growing movement in, on the conservative, right wing in American politics, trad wives, women who are saying that they don't want to work and they want to focus on family.

And I think Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk's movement, there are a lot of people who identify with that movement because they identify with, traditional family values, and a lot of them are women. 

In a pro-natalist perfect vision, are women, if they're not working, are they basically just machines to keep having babies?

you could argue that. It's, maybe pro-natalists would defend themselves and say, "No, we're just arguing that, women focus on having babies while they're younger, and then move on to a career afterwards." I think there is an element that does believe women should just stay at home. 

There are some more extreme strands in this movement.

Some extreme pro-natalists are more worried about the population of white people than anyone else. They believe in the great replacement theory, a far right, white nationalist conspiracy theory, the idea that other cultures will replace white culture 'cause they're having more babies. So what's the truth about population decline then?

It is true that birth rates have been falling massively in lots of places, and that does matter. For a country in the developed world to increase or maintain its population, on average there should be 2.1 children for every woman. That's called the replacement rate. In England and Wales however, between 2022 and 2023, the average was just 1.44 children per woman.

That's a record low. In 2024, Scotland's was even lower at 1.25. And in 2023, the US's hit a record low at 1.62. And South Korea's is the lowest in the whole world at 0.75 children per woman in 2024. But it's not falling everywhere. Lots of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are seeing higher birthrates. And you can see what birthrates do to a population through these pyramids.

Youngest are at the bottom, oldest are at the top. A growing population looks something like this. The pyramid is thicker at the bottom with new babies being born, and tails off towards the top as old people die. For example, Senegal. But in other places like Singapore, the pyramid looks more like this, getting thicker around the middle, around 20 and 30-year-olds.

So when they age up, there's not enough babies to replace them. That means less young people to pay taxes, help with pensions, and help care for older people, which worries some governments. So what can they do? Having more babies is not a quick fix. It'll be around 20 years before they actually start putting money back into the system.

An obvious answer to there being not enough people of working age is to make people work longer by raising the retirement age. China has opted to do that, and France is planning to do the same despite huge protests. And finally, governments could bring in young people from elsewhere. 

So the, the fertility levels have been dropping in the UK, since the, the '50s really, and immigration has been filling that gap more and more.

but people aren't happy about that. Clearly, politically, it's just not a popular solution. So you will have a lot of young people in Africa looking for work, but there's many people that, that don't want that to be the solution. 

And does that come back to the sort of great replacement theory where they don't actually just want young people at any cost, they want young Western people?

Yeah, I think there's real fear that will alter the cultures in our country, in a way that people aren't comfortable with. 

If economies improved around the world and people felt more financially comfortable, do you think that would naturally boost how many children were being had? 

I think it would a little bit, for sure, if people could afford a bigger house and if they weren't worried about childcare.

but I think there's something deeper in our choices to have few- fewer children. More children now survive because, as, as, like early- as healthcare for kids gets better, people choose to have fewer. And then I think there's another big shift, which is that whereas before you'd become an adult and you'd have

And you'd find a partner and get married pretty young, and it was the cornerstone of your adult life, whereas now it's the capstone. There's the stigma around having no kids is not as, as ... I think there is still stigma in most societies, but it's in no way as powerful as it once was. And then there's arguments that, young people aren't meeting each other anymore in the way that they used to, and that, marriages are down, even coupling up is down.

Again, these are all big cultural things that, that aren't gonna change just because people are earning a bit more money or feeling a bit more comfortable financially

it happened as Ceaușescu led a policy of economic growth through trying to increase the population.

Contraception and abortion were severely restricted, so many people had more children than they could cope with, then leaving them in state care. The problem did not end there. At the age of 18, most of them were sent out to fend for themselves with no support. nowadays, many of the children who suffered are adults still haunted by what happened.

Any efforts to have the abuse and deaths recognized have failed due to an alleged lack of evidence. All that as Romania sees a growing nostalgia for communism. Maria Gurt Nicolescu and Bastiaan Renwie revisit Romania's lost children for France 24.

This is the castle and the former children's medical institution of Sighet, where I grew up. We were sent here to die. We were abandoned and sentenced to death. 

This door marks the entrance to Simanca's hell. She was only three when her parents left her at a hospital. She was then sent to this center for children with disabilities deemed irrecoverable by Ceaușescu's regime.

We 

went through terrible times, terrible things here in Sighet.

During the communist era, thousands of children were placed in 27 medical institutions. They were abandoned, often after being wrongly diagnosed with cerebral diseases. This happened because of the regime's pro-natalist policies, which banned abortion, and widespread poverty. 

This was my bed right here

And look at what still hurts me the most

These are awful memories. We couldn't tell if it was day or night, just darkness. It was cold. We were naked and covered in our own waste. They never changed our sheets, nor our clothes

138 children died at Shige's more than eighty percent of those residing there

According to their death certificates, most died from pneumonia in secret, out of sight

The only memorial to these children is a few kilometers away across from the village cemetery. These crosses were put up after the fall of communism

This monument lists the names of the children who

died at Sighet. 

Most of them passed away before 

1989, 

and as you can see, 

they 

died very young. 

For seven years, Florin Soare 

has been investigating these irrecoverable children. He estimates 15,000 minors died in state-run institutions. 

For 

the Communist regime, these children were seen as an unnecessary burden that had to be removed.

How 

did they 

deal with this burden? By eliminating them physically. As a result, they were cut off from society and brought to these centers with no other purpose than to die. 

The

victims' bodies were never exhumed. Witnesses say they were buried here without graves or any religious ceremonies. 

From

what we know, the children died one after another. They were left to pile up, then taken here to be buried in carts or tractors. 

Everyone in the village knew about the horrors of Sighet. But most of the former workers are either dead or won't testify, making the investigation difficult. This woman is one of the few exceptions.

She cooked for the children at the center for 35 years, and now claims that staff lacked resources and downplays 

her role. You knew they were dying, didn't you? 

I know they died,

but they didn't die of hunger, and they didn't die of cold in summer either. 

The 

death certificates say they mainly died of pneumonia. Yes, from

cold. 

It was very cold. There was no way to dry the sheets properly. If 

a 

healthy person sleeps with wet sheets, how will they feel? 

Like he had a dry 

sheet?

No, not good. There was no dryer. 

Those who are willing to testify often share similar views. Despite the challenges, Florin continues his investigation across Romania. 

It's important for 

us and future generations that the truth comes out. I believe 

those

responsible for these abuses should be held accountable. 

And

I think it's essential for the Romanian state to acknowledge these abuses, and for survivors to receive 

reparations. 

The

Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes has filed three complaints, aiming to shed light on the mistreatment and demand compensation for victims.

Here are the death certificates. These documents only cover three centers, 

but

they represent almost 2,500 death certificates. 

each 

one marks a child who lost their life in one of these homes. 

You 

can see how many of them died in the centers.

Two complaints have already been dismissed by prosecutors. They argue it's impossible to link the deaths to the conditions in the institutions, citing a lack of forensic autopsies. 

But Florin 

believes these investigations have been poorly handled. 

Many of the 

victims heard were not relevant, as 

they 

had been admitted after

1990. 

They also heard from parents who claimed the conditions were good in these centers, despite never having visited them. For our team, it

was extremely shocking to see that the thousands of documents and pieces of evidence we submitted to these cases were not considered by the prosecutors.

Near

I was chairing a research network on early experience and brain development, and two members of the group, Charlie Zeanah and Nathan Fox, and I launched what is now known as the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, which continues to this day.

And there were three goals. One was to examine the effects of institutionalization on brain and behavioral development. A second is to determine if these effects can be remediated through an intervention, in our case, very high quality foster care. And the third was to improve the welfare of children in Romania by establishing foster care as an alternative to institutional care.

In Romania at the time, they viewed institutional care as the intervention for child abandonment. So just by way of background, this really w-- was an experiment in social engineering engineered by Nicolae Ceaușescu, who is this individual here. So in nineteen sixty-six, Ceaușescu, who took o-over, the country, he was a shoe cobbler by trade, had an idea that he could increase his power if he increased the population.

And to increase the population, he set into motion a series of decrees which began with the menstrual police. So these were state gynecologists who conducted monthly checks of women, of childbearing age who had fewer than five kids to make sure they weren't using birth control or hadn't, terminated a pregnancy.

He established a celibacy tax whereby families received a stipend if they had more than two kids, but they were taxed heavily if they had fewer than five. And finally, he had outlawed all contraception and abortion. And the result was that in, before, before I go to that, was that by the time he was overthrown in nineteen eighty-nine, there were more than a hundred and seventy thousand children living in state-run institutions.

So I now wanna show you a brief video clip of an individual now in his thirties who was the byproduct of one of these early, orphaned children.

1989, communism fell and the world went to Romania to cover the fall of CeauÈ™escu. There were some medias that actually found institutions that were never meant to be discovered by the public or the outside world. It left the world in shock that such conditions even existed. 

Those of us who visited these institutions built by the communist regime are unlikely ever to forget them.

Hundreds of children not so much cared for as contained

at the age of six months old, I became ill and my parents took me to a hospital, to be treated for my illness. But instead of finding healing at a hospital, I actually ended up being infected with polio. My parents took me to a different hospital in Sighetu MarmaÈ›iei. They never came back, so the state put me in an institution for handicapped children, an orphanage known as Home Hospital for the Irrecoverable Children 

What's in this room, no one could prepare for.

Filthy, dark, and stinking. There's excrement everywhere. These boys are the most difficult cases. They deserve the best of care. Instead, they get the worst 

From the moment that we could remember for ourselves, that's all we knew. We didn't have compassion. We didn't have feelings or emotions. We just existed to just vegetate, We were just wild animals that needed to be caged up is what we were considered pretty much. Like 

Okay, I think we've seen enough of that. as someone who in my other life studies neurodevelopmental disorders, I actually recognize this phenotype. The difference is that the disorders I study usually are single gene mutations, whereas these are a byproduct of the environment for the most part.

we've known for decades that children, reared in institutions are at a very high risk for a variety of cognitive, social, and behavioral problems, including disturbances in social relatedness and attachment, externalizing behavior problems, inattention, hyperactivity, deficits in IQ and executive functions, and a synd-syndrome that mimics autism, and then growth stunting.

So here's an example of growth stunting. So I want you to be thinking if these are boys or girls and how old they are. So this is a seventeen-year-old girl, and this is a fourteen-year-old girl.

So the study we did is actually a randomized control trial of foster care as an alternative to institutional care. And the way we did this is that we screened more than a hundred and eighty y-y-infants and, f-baby-- basically kids under about a year or two to make sure they didn't have a frank neurological or genetic syndrome.

We could only do behavioral exams. We couldn't do blood work and the like. And of more than a hundred and eighty, we wound up with a hundred and thirty-six that we considered to be typically developing. Not easy to do when you're looking at babies who are nine, ten, or eleven months of age, but they looked to be typically developing.

And we also recruited a sample of seventy-two children in the community who had never been in an institution. They lived with their family. After an extensive baseline assessment, these hundred and thirty-six children were randomly assigned to either to remain in institutional care, what we'll call care as usual, or to be randomly assigned to a high-quality foster care program that we built, maintained, and paid for ourselves.

the original goal was to see these children for the first few years of life. So in fact, we saw them at nine, eighteen, thirty, and forty-two months, and at fifty-four months, at which point the intervention formally ended and was turned over to the authorities. And, then we thought we would go a little bit longer, so I found funding at age eight, and we saw them then.

And then I was tired of commuting to Romania, but then I found funding at age twelve. And I said, "That's enough," but then we found more money, and then we saw them at age sixteen. And we were just re-funded to see them again at twenty-one. In fact, I'm there in three weeks to launch the twenty-one-year follow-up of these kids.

So the three of us who do this work come from different backgrounds and we're all thick-headed. So when it came time to discuss what was the most important thing to study, this is the shortlist. Of what we came up with because we really couldn't agree on what were the most important things to study. I thought naturally it was the brain and Charlie Zeanah thought it was mental health.

so I'm su- going to summarize just a small set of the findings because of time limits. And all the findings I'll talk about today and for those of you here tomorrow are based on what's called an intent to treat design. There are a lot of ethics involved in this study that I'm not gonna talk about, but what this comes down to is that we fully expected over time the original-- the children in one group or the other would change group assignments.

A classic example would be a child who was randomly assigned to the institutional group, the authorities decided that child should be reunited with their biological family or that child should go into government foster care or be adopted. We had no say in this. We didn't interfere in this, but over time, children changed their group assignment.

But we analyzed their data based on their original randomization schedule 'cause that avoids the pitfalls of selective, of sample bias so I'll start with IQ and then move from there. At baseline, when the kids on average are about twenty months, using the Bayley exam, you can see that the children in the institutional group are actually below the cut point for intellectual disability compared to the children in the never institutional group.

So then the question is, what happens following random assignment to foster care? We'll start with this. This is going out to fifty-four months. At every age, you'll see that the children in foster care have markedly higher IQs than the children in the institutional group. And here, the more important finding is that this is only foster care.

The children placed under the age of two have markedly higher IQs than the children placed after two. Even as late as twelve years of age, what we see is we still see an intervention effect. Here's full scale IQ, never institutional group, foster care group, institutional group. And one thing to keep in mind is that this intervention was not designed as a cognitive stimulation program.

It was designed to build relationships. So we didn't have any idea that IQ would benefit like this. But nevertheless, we continue to see this, and we see no washout. Even through sixteen, where we're now going through the data, we still see an intervention effect. so young children living in institutions show reductions in IQs, removal from institutional care and placement into high quality foster care before two leads to a recovery, although not full recovery.

and we see stability across the first twelve years of life. The one thing I'm not going to show you is that when we look at placement disruptions, because it turns out because of the authorities, there were kids who made multiple placements. They went from the institution back to their biological family, re-abandoned, then to foster care.

The children who show more placement disruptions have much less favorable outcomes. Stability matters. Turning now to attachment, the issue-- the question now is, if you look back fifty years in this literature, what you often see are disturbances in attachment behavior. So this is the relationship a child has with a caregiver.

And so we assume that these perturbations in attachments early in life could alter the trajectories of other aspects of social emotional development. So let me give you an example, of this. This is, what's called the strange situation. This is the manipulation where a child is in a room with a caregiver and maybe some toys, and then a stranger walks in the room, how the child behaves with the stranger.

Then the caregiver leaves, how the child interacts with the stranger. Then the stranger leaves and is left alone, and then a, an adult comes back in the room and how they respond. So this is an eighteen-month-old, and I want you to watch, what goes on. So right now, this is the phase where the child's been left alone with the toys

Are they not my brother?

Are they not my brother? oh. You're the man you may embrace. oh. Yes, I'm ready. I'm ready. 

This looks like a classic reunion episode. he jumps into her arms, holds on to her, but that's the first time he's ever met this woman. And that's the indiscriminate behavior that w-is very common among kids with histories of neglect.

In fact, Mike Rutter, the distinguished child psychiatrist in the UK, argues that this is part of a syndrome of institutionalization syndrome. So what we see at baseline is among the never institutionalized children, about seventy percent look like they have a secure attachment. The same number of inst-- of, institutionalized children have an insecure attachment.

So it's profoundly disruptive at baseline. Now, if you look at the intervention, the children placed in foster care before twenty-two months, seventy percent have a secure attachment. The children placed in foster care after twenty-two months, twenty-- seventy percent have insecure attachment. So we see that same inflection point.

At fifty-four months, and then again at eight, and the findings are the same, we did a functional measure of attachment behavior. And what we did is we arranged with the caregiver or the mother that we said a stran-- someone was gonna knock on the door, let your child answer the door, and let your child do whatever they wanna do.

So with that arrangement, the stranger knocked on the door, the child answered the door, and the stranger said, "Come with me, I have something to show you." Took a lot to get this through our ethics board, and this is every parent's nightmare, right? and the question is, will they walk out the door and walk off with a complete stranger?

If you look at the institutional group, more than fifty percent of the kids in the institutional group walked off with a complete stranger. That was cut in half of the kids in foster care, and th-there was one in the community who did that, so we've been monitoring that child for twenty years now to see why they did that.

So children experiencing early institutional care are, far more likely to develop disturbances in attachment than those who did not. Children randomly assigned to foster care following institutional care, particularly if they were younger than twenty-two to twenty-four months, are like-- more likely to show an improvement in attachment behavior.

We're speaking to you ahead of the annual Natalism Conference. You've mentioned it already, Malcolm. It's happening in Austin this weekend, and you are going to be sharing the stage, though, with some eugenics advocates and some people who promote extreme views that you yourself have said you don't agree with, including, I know, Kevin Dolan, and he says that eugenics and pronatalism positions are very much aligned.

Malcolm, are you comfortable when you have to share a platform like that with someone like Kevin? 

it's a very different way of seeing the world. I personally, and as I've said, what I like about the pronatalist movement is the diversity of views within it, and that when I go to the Pronatalist Conference, I get to hear ideas and perspectives that I don't get to hear anywhere else 

There's been this investigation, Nomia, into the organizer, Kevin Dolan, and they found his pseudonym Twitter account, and on that he shares homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic views as well.

And you mentioned that great replacement theory. He promotes that conspiracy theory as well, and said that eugenics and pronatalism positions are very much aligned. How do you think, Nomia, the Collinses keep a distance between themselves and these groups when actually they're sharing the same platform with them?

the way they keep the distance is just by saying, don't they, that we don't agree with them. We agree with the actual movement of pronatalism. We agree with the concept of increasing birth rates, but, we don't share that view. That's why you do get critics of the pronatalist movement who say, if you want to advance this movement, if you believe that this is the right way to increase birth rates, then you've got to look at who else is joining you with that message.

And, just also worth saying that critics of pronatalism, they say it doesn't just overlap with racism. They also are concerned about misogyny. They think that the sort of the pronatalist movement certainly, again, the more extreme parts of it view women as breeding machines whose job is to repopulate the Earth.

When Donald Trump entered the White House for a second time this year, Nomia, his two top officials in his new administration, JD Vance, the vice president, and Elon Musk, are both men who have been very supportive of pronatalism in the past. Have they actually used their platforms though to push pronatalist ideas?

Elon Musk is constantly accompanied by his child everywhere he goes, whether it's the Oval Office, whether he's on Air Force One and what have you. And he recently welcomed his 14th child with another woman, but he's someone that's completely on record for saying that human population is on the verge of collapse.

he's really sowed panic over it, and he is saying that low birth rates present this huge risk to civilization, much more than global warming, he claims. You've got JD Vance, the vice president. He has three children. We know he's had a lot to say about women who don't have babies in the past, calling them childless cat ladies.

Before he was elected, he downplayed it, but, when he gave his first speech as vice president, this was at the March for Life in Washington, DC, regularly held every year by those who are anti-abortion and those who call themselves pro-life. He said that he opposes abortion because, to quote him, he wants more babies in the United States of America.

And then also another key member of Donald Trump's administration is Sean Duffy. He was confirmed as the transportation secretary, and shortly after that, he circulated an order telling his department to give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average when awarding grants 

If this continues, Nomia, and this Trump administration chooses to adopt even more pro-natalist approaches or policies, do you think that's gonna cause any tension with his more traditional conservative base?

Oh, very much Americans widely support access to IVF, and just to remind, inv- in vitro fertilization treatments. And, this is... and Donald Trump wants to make IVF free to people who want to grow their families, basically. but I have seen myself how the anti-abortion movement tends to oppose it on the grounds that it creates unused or discarded embryos which they consider to be children.

So the Alabama Supreme Court last year recognized embryos as children, and that caused a massive split in the conservative movement. I was speaking to Christians who were relying on IVF to make families, arguing, you can't get any more pro-life than IVF," and then speaking to others who said that IVF is not a normal way of having children, they would argue, and so you have that split.

The Collinses, though, Nomia, definitely feel like this new Trump administration poses a huge opportunity for them. Given what you've just said, you can see why. 

Definitely. And, Donald Trump is also very closely aligned with the tech world. Fertility generally is becoming this sort of pet project in Silicon Valley.

I think in 2023 there was about $874 million invested in it. You've got Sam Altman, he's the head of Open AI. He wants to have a big family. He's investing in experimental fertility technology. It's a startup working to make egg cells out of other cells in the body, which basically means that a woman without viable eggs or even two men could make a baby.

You've got some that are experimenting with using artificial wombs. And, in some ways, this, this technology-forward vision of pro-natalism has become a religion. And so I can see why families like the Collins would look at the Trump administration as a real great opportunity for them to push forward their philosophy.

Nomia, 

thanks so much. And 

you. Thanks so much, Lucy

Pro-natalism now has two very powerful advocates right at the heart of government in JD Vance, the vice president, and Elon Musk. Simone, what are your expectations of those two men in office? Elon 

Musk is a little bit busy with DOGE, so I don't expect him to be very involved in pro-natalist policy, but he's been always a huge advocate of pro-natalist policies, as well as raising awareness about demographic collapse.

We are profoundly grateful for that. We're thrilled that JD Vance is vice president, and that in his first speech as vice president, he talked about the importance of America having more babies. When you look not just at these two men, but many people within the Trump administration, you can see that pro-natalism is really permeated throughout the entire organization, from Karoline Leavitt, who sometimes brings her infant into work with her, to just the number of children that members of the administration have.

we're talking five, six, seven. You can see that these are people who just fundamentally agree that children are good and that the future is important, and we find that to be incredibly helpful. We have submitted executive order drafts to the administration for low-hanging fruit that we think could make lives a lot easier for parents and increase the total fertility rate of the United States.

We have very high hopes for this administration. 

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