Chapo Trap House - 738 - They Smile In Your Face feat. Corey Robin (6/5/23)

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

Today we’re joined by Professor Corey Robin, author of "The Reactionary Mind" and "The Enigma of Clarence Thomas," for a conversation all about one of the most powerful reactionaries in the world: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. We discuss the origins and contours of his conservative ideology, and how they reflect the development of race, class, law, power, conservatism and liberalism over his lifetime. You can pick up "The Enigma of Clarence Thomas" here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781627793834/theenigmaofclarencethomas

Music Alright, greetings friends, it's Chappau Monday June 5th, and today we are going to be discussing the life and career of the longest serving and probably most influential judge on the Supreme Court. That's right, we're talking Clarence Thomas with the man who literally wrote the book on him. Joining us today is the author of the Enigma of Clarence Thomas and the reactionary mind, Professor Cordy Robin. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.

So, Corey, we wanted to talk to you about clearance Thomas because obviously in light of the DOBS decision and then his long-term relationship with historical artifact, the Fishingado, Harlan Crow, it certainly put the Supreme Court in the forefront of everyone's minds. And I guess I'd like to begin with something we've discussed on the show that was very indebted to your work in your book on clearance

Thomas, so I think it's most likely to up in the conventional wisdom on clearance Thomas, like who he is and his ideology. And that is like the fact that the basically like clearance Thomas' ideology begins with the fact that he is or was, I don't know, I mean, I didn't mention on your take on this, but with black nationalism and radical politics. Like, that defined his early political awakening and his early career, but like, let's begin there. Clarence Thomas's politics as like, in terms of black nationalism and black separatism and how that sort of upends,

the liberal conventional wisdom about who Clarence Thomas is and what his career represents. Sure, so, Thomas, it was born in Georgia in 1948 into great poverty. And when he's 19, he comes to the north. A lot of things had happened to him along the way. But one could say when he comes to the north and enrolls it, holy cross, he's

part of a very small cohort of black male students, fairly illustrious cohort. People who go on to be illustrious. And he is radicalized by the experience of coming north. He had been obviously used to Jim Crow and his intense racism of the South. But in the north, he encounters something new, which is what we would call liberal races, liberal white racists. And these are people who, in his telling, are benevolent, friendly, overtly sympathetic to the progress of African Americans, but are

always there to remind African Americans that they are benevolent, that they have extended to helping hand. And it is that experience that pushes him further to the left. He's already very much sympathetic and part of the black freedom struggle. And he becomes immersed in the teachings and the speeches and the writings of Malcolm X. He memorizes the speeches of Malcolm X. He listens to them on records, which is how back in the day, people used to take that kind of stuff in. And he really takes a turn. He founds the Black Student Union at Holy Cross. He helps draft their manifesto, which has a

very strong statement against interracial relationships, favoring much more race conscious types, favoring kind of much more race conscious, black studies programs. He helps lead walk out. He's the full deal. And, you know, we can talk about what happens afterwards, but the argument in my book is that a lot of the basic tenets that he soaks in during that period of time, even as he will later move to the right, he doesn't lose those tenets. And just very briefly what they are, is first a belief that white racism is permanent, that it is not going away, that it continues to structure the fate of black Americans. Second that black Americans have a fate and a destiny that's different, fundamentally

different, and apart from the rest of America, that black people should look to black institutions for their development and protection, apart from white institutions institutions and that black men in particular are the group of people upon whom the salvation of black people more generally depends. All of those beliefs he develops while he's in college and holds on to the Supreme Court. I mean, you mentioned Malcolm X, but he also is quoted as saying he very much admired the black Muslims that he encountered for their attitude of essentially going it on your own, like don't expect any help or even asking for it. Now, and then when asked, you know, like, what caused you to stop becoming a liberal, he says, I was never a liberal, I've always been a radical. Now, like this follows a certain, a certain well-trot path.

If like, is this an old story of a radical becoming disillusioned and deciding they'd rather win than bang their head against the wall of liberalism for the rest of their life? And just joining the winning team, or is there something more here in Thomas's seemingly political and ideological conversion to like the a Reagan administration, the pointy, and right wing Supreme Court justice. Yeah, I mean, you're right to say that that is an old, Trotten category, and I'm glad you brought that up. The group that I think that it parallels a lot

are the kind of the neo-conservatives, particularly Jewish neo-conservatives, who began on some part of the left. And oftentimes took a turn to the right in part from a sense of Jewish particularism and a sort of a threat to kind of Jewish collective identity. And I think there's a parallel there that's interesting to be drawn with Pirates' Thomas. The part that I would contest, though, is that I don't think it was simply about

joining the winning team. I think there was a much deeper disaffection that really developed there with the idea of politics more generally. And when I say politics, I mean everything from electoral politics to social movements to more radical kinds of protest. Thomas, beginning in the early-demise 70s, really develops a pretty far-going critique that that kind of politics is not a sphere that black people can ever win in. That politics is essentially the sphere of white people and that any path you try to pursue through those means is going to be a disaster for black people and he holds on to this point of view well into you know well into the again into into just how long the supreme court and that it's

time on the Supreme Court, and that ironically, that it's the marketplace and capitalism, the economy, that he thinks really offers, I wouldn't say, you know, great possibilities for progress or anything like that, but niches, let's say, or spaces to use a fancier term, that, you know, for where black people, particularly black people like his grandfather, these kind of strong black men can, a mass property can amass wealth and thereby extend their large-s in protection to the rest of the black community. And that's a deep belief that propels him and brings him toward the Republican party. So everybody has some level of opportunism, obviously, in them. But I think it's a genuine conversion.

How does, in Thomas' mind, how does he regard the Civil Rights Movement and the Voting Rights Act or Civil Rights Act where about what you're about political enfranchisement of black people in this country? Like, was he saying that like, we should have just like skipped that skip and give everyone a business or something? Like, I mean, how does how do economic rights come absent political ones and his conception of things? You know, I think he the place to begin with an answer to that is his his sort of the biography and historically. He looks back on Jim Crow in the South

and he sees his grandfather who is one or two generations removed from slavery. And his grandfather runs a fuel business, a very small fuel business, where he delivers first wood then coal and then oil to black people in Savannah. And he's able to, you know, amass a certain amount of wealth. It becomes a property owner. He eventually becomes a landlord.

And, you know, there are no political rights for African Americans during this time period. And I, you know, if I were to fill in some of the gaps of Thomas' argument, he would say that the black community was able to amass small pockets of wealth and that the, without political rights, and that certainly that he thinks the Voting Rights Act has been mostly quite detrimental to African Americans. One of his earliest opinions on the court, Holder V. Hall is a whole extended critique of the whole idea that black people could find their collective interests satisfied

through anything like the act of voting. So he's been pretty clear about that from the start, that that's not a path. Whereas, well, again, I don't think you think that economic progress is sort of a guaranteed by any measure. He does think that you could sort of eke out these small places where you could survive

for black people. And interestingly, it really is like the black entrepreneur. It's not supporting the black working class. It's not black workers working for big companies owned by white people. It's these sort of small businesses that he believes is kind of the path for black people to take. It's amazing. His opinion on the indelible nature of racism in America and the untranscendable barrier between white and black is one that a lot of commenters

on the putative left love to point out they they they make that a Zach point, but then they all end up saying and you should still vote for Democrats. Right. So I give you, if that, with that, if that is your over-griving critique of American political reality, then the Thomas response is more, certainly more coherent than to say, no, you should be voting for Democrats anyway. Maybe something will get better. And in the meantime, people like me will make money

and be able to advance as like interlocutors between the communities. Right. In fact, Thomas during the 80s, that exact issue comes up and he says, look, you know, all you people quoting Malcolm X, Malcolm X never thought you should support the Voting Rights Act. Malcolm X never thought that you should, you know, favor the Department of Labor investigating, you know, discrimination against the workplace.

Malcolm X thought that was a completely a misbegotten adventure. And so he claims very forthrightly that the logical implication of that kind of intense racial pessimism or Afro-Pesimism as it's sometimes called, the logical implication is that black people have to completely vacate the political stage. Not only is there nothing to be gained, there's actually some real harm that could come from that kind of level of engagement. But yeah, your point is

very much to the point, and Thomas would agree. I mean, like, but at the end of the day, though, he is still a political actor, who is, you know, he is engaging in American politics in the way that like, you know, is supreme. The few individuals get the ability to do so and decide these matters. So I've been like, in engaging with politics,

he's like, he's like, look, I've seen it. I do the political stuff, but I'm here to tell you it's all bullshit. And so that's why it's okay if I remove certain rights from that we thought were sacrosanct or all agreed upon. That, you know, there's a couple of, like, you reach a couple of impasses with Thomas where, you know, things don't add up. I mean, not more than a couple, I should say. But that's one of the key ones that I don't think you can resolve within the framework of his own thought.

I just think it's an impasse. The only thing I will say about that impasse is that it's very similar to the kinds of things you see in a lot of libertarian intellectuals who really have this critique of the state and the state's involvement in politics more generally and yet they are supreme political actors. Often times those authoritarian parts of the state. I've encountered this because I've written a lot about Hayek.

It's something that's just ultimately not resolvable and that they don't provide any kind of theoretical account of. And so all I would say about with Thomas is that it's a familiar problem for I think a certain kind of right wing intellectual. Well, speaking of right wing intellectuals, the person that credited most with Thomas' seeming ideological conversion is the thinker Thomas So soul who is like one of these guys that I see routinely cited as among like the greatest right wing intellectuals of the 20th century. He should be taught in schools, whatever. Who is Thomas soul and what about his thinking influenced climate Thomas so heavily?

Yeah, so Thomas souls an economist actually was trained in the kind of the Marxist tradition, a little sketchy on how long he was immersed in that, but he comes out of that tradition, and he gets then influenced by the University of Chicago and that style of economic thought, and he makes a turn in the late 1960s, early 1970s. And in 1974, I think it is, he writes a book called Race in Economics. And Thomas gets, Clarence Thomas gets a phone call. He's, by that point, he's living in Jefferson City, Missouri.

And an old friend of him says, you know, I just read this review in the Wall Street Journal of this new book by this guy. And he sounds as crazy as you do. And you've got to read the book. And so Thomas gets the book, Race in Economics. And he's, you know, he sort of narrates it as a conversion experience.

Obviously, the conversion has sort of slowly been happening for some time anyway. I'll tell you more about the book in a second, but just you know, he finds out the soul is coming to St. Louis and he goes, you know, he makes the drive up to St. Louis, you know, and he's got a whole bunch of copies to the book. And is coming to debate turns out to be Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is at that time a kind of up-and-coming lawyer. And what I think Thomas, you know, Thomas takes a lot of things from that book, but what's overwhelming in that book is this whole idea about the impact of capitalism on the black experience. And it is a very interesting reading.

I mean, it's totally fanciful and absurd, but nevertheless, at the time, was kind of influential, which is that the slaveholder, you know, the white slaveholder is the master of his domain, the master of that space, but the one force that the white slaveholder could never master, the force that mastered the slaveholder was that of the market and capitalism.

And you get this sense in reading that book that even white supremacy and the white slaveholder cannot overcome the powers of capitalism. And that's really what Thomas takes. It's almost a kind of like a revenge fantasy, you might say. And it provides, Thomas, a kind of blueprint or a roadmap for his sort of broader move to the right and provides a kind of deep ideological infrastructure for him. Well, I mean, it goes back to this idea about like the political sphere versus the economic

sphere and his, his, his, his, like, you know, his great privileging of economic freedom as being a path to like actual freedom. And, you know, like, it's, it's, it's not a, you know, totally ridiculous idea, right? The right, the idea that like, oh, you have all these political freedoms, but they don't really mean anything without economic power and capital and wealth and a social that worked to build off of. Wouldn't that for some imply the logical necessity of distributing economic rights the way we do political ones and not the opposite, as opposed to like, you know, because it's not like Thomas is trying to like help out people economically all that much either or at least the right in ideology he represents, at least by my estimation. Right. So let me say a

couple of things about that. I mean, the first thing to just say about that that view is that, you know, Thomas and Soa weren't all that peculiar in articulating that. And people forget this. And a lot of sort of the popular discussion of black nationalism and black power. First of all, people like Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X before he kind of takes his leftward turn, were oftentimes making very similar claims

about the position of black men in the marketplace that this is a sphere, that build up capital, build up wealth, don't get involved in these white spaces, these white spheres. So there's a long history there. And even more interesting is that in the early 1970s, a lot of black power activists who are on the left basically make very similar claims, like forget it. We can't go this path of political power.

It's hopeless, it's useless. We have to start experimenting with the market economy. And of course, the Nixon administration makes a big deal out of this. They take out ads in places like Essence Magazine and Ebony Magazine that Black Power is Black Capitalism. And so forth. So Thomas isn't like neither Thomas Soul nor Clarence Thomas

are if you sort of situate them, they're not that peculiar. But to come to your question, which is that, it seems like for the left, the obvious implication is distribute economic power than to people. And I think for Thomas, the problem with that formula, well, there's a problem and there's a different response, but the problem, the fundamental problem is that it can't overcome the fact of the white state.

That would be a project in the same way that sort of trying to come up with fair voting districts where black people have more representation. That is a project that is ultimately dependent upon white power. And so that you will always come back to the kind of magnificence and the paternalism of the white liberal state. And you know, this is a pretty, you know, a deep seat. And just to give you a sort of a sense of this in a framework. You know, Malcolm X used to have this distinction he used to draw between the wolf and the fox.

And you know, the wolf is, you know, bearish his teeth, you know, the second you confront him, he's your enemy, he's going to tear you to shreds. He's a lethal, obvious, over enemy. The fox can seem friendlier, not as dangerous, but he's ultimately just as much likely to seek your demise. And for Malcolm X, that was a distinction between white liberal racism and the kind of more obvious over white racism that you would see in the South. Prince Thomas takes this distinction on only, he makes it between copperheads and water moccasins, but it's the same point of view. And that ultimately what you would say is that to just to think that kind of white liberals would reap that you could trust them to redistribute

economic power through the state in the way that you're proposing is to expose you to a far more lethal kind of paternalism that would sort of stab you in the back just when you least expect it. And for Thomas, you know, he's asked about this, you know, how could you possibly be in the Reagan administration? And he says, you know what you're getting when you make your alliances with these people.

Nobody's gonna smile at you. Nobody's gonna be friendly to you. And then it's obvious who they are. And for him, I think there's just a kind of a fundamental disconnect between thinking, you know, that these sort of white liberals are your friends and you could rely upon them versus the reality of who they are. And you might be able to advance a broader percentage and segment of the African American population with some sort of redistribution, but there would be a ceiling on exactly how much you were ever able to escape the domination

of white people in that way. You might have this general rising of votes, but it's still this universal condition of domination. Whereas, if you have the market as a potential zone to compete in and succeed in, you can, there is the dream of like actual escape from domination and actual control of your own life. And like a few people having that is a more worthy thing to pursue than a universal sort of a welfare paternalism that denies the possibility of escape. Yeah, and I think the really important thing,

like Thomas really is a racial separatist. I mean, I know he knew his own life and that creates all kinds of issues around his own life and Ginny Thomas and all the rest of it. I don't have a good answer to that. Two or a second. Yeah, but he really believes, like, you know,

the bulk of black people should stay pretty far away from white people. And, you know, to emesh themselves to immerse or to involve themselves with, you know, white liberal Democrats is, you know, a kind of a bad move. And yeah, the benefits that are going to flow to black people are going to be few. It's going to be concentrated in a couple of, you know, a small cohort of black men.

But that's the other side of this romance of his is, you know, it's not a kind of a vision of a democratic black community. You know, again, you say black nationalism and people automatically think left, egalitarian and all that kind of stuff. Thomas believes that there's a social community, but it is very hierarchical. It is very patriarchal. And that's, he has said very clearly the salvation of the black community depends upon the fate of black men. And so, you know, you take the kind of separatism and then you take the sort of emphasis on black men.

And I think the view starts at least co-hearing whether or not it's, you it's even remotely politically plausible as a program. I mean, you mentioned that one of Thomas's long-sleeved favorite songs is They Smile in Your Face, Backstabbers. I think that's a very good distillation of his point of view on a lot of this. But when it comes to the redistribution of economic rights, do you find that this is similar to trying to play gotcha with him on benefiting from affirmative action because at the end of the day it's, you know, fruit of the price and tree. It's something given to you that ruins any advancement that you may have in society. Like for instance, like Matt, I think you said on the show like

he hasn't even enjoyed being a Supreme Court justice because in the back of his mind, you know, someone just gave it to him, because he's black. Yeah, I think that was well put. This is the tricky thing with Thomas is that people always try to come up with these gotchas. And usually, he's told a story that's more gotcha than gotcha. So it's very hard to pin that kind of thing on him. But yeah, I mean, it's interesting

you bring up about being on Supreme Court. There's this famous interview with him from an Esquire magazine, sometime in the late 90s, I can't remember when. And what Thomas would oftentimes do was he would serve as kind of a mentor figure to black students and high school students in the Washington DC area who were poor and working class. And you know, he would meet with them and so forth.

And so the reporter is the witness to this meeting and Thomas is talking in his chambers with this black high school student and they're chatting blah, blah, blah, blah. And then finally he says, so what are your plans for college? And you know, it's a very warm and friendly discussion and The the student says oh, I got into brown and you know, you could sort of the the the the temperature

Just like it drops in the whole conversation and Thomas says, you know, Thomas says to him. Oh, that's you know That's not a good idea. You don't want to go to brown and he says, you know, Thomas says to him, oh, that's, you know, that's not a good idea. You don't want to go to Brown and he says, you know, you got to understand, you're going to, you know, basically you're going to go there, you're going to be surrounded by a lot of white kids. And you're going to see how lonely that experience is. And he says, and then he says this thing that's just kind of incredible. He says, you know, I oftentimes feel the same way myself today. And he's been on the Supreme Court for six, seven years at that point. But he's narrating the sense of sort of

isolation he feels as the one black, at the time, the one black person in a sea of white people. And this is something that he brings up in the kind of conferences they have on the court constantly, like he's, you know, again, it's changed now, but at the time, you know, I'm the only black person on the court. I'm the only person who went to segregated schools. I'm the only person who went through integration. So it's not, it doesn't seem to be like an experience you take much pleasure in. I'll always give him credit for the thing that liberals like to make phone of him for,

which is not asking questions during oral arguments. Yeah, yeah. Part of that generalized like seeing through so much of the ritual bullshit of this whole thing, of like, we all know how we're gonna vote. What do you got to ask these people questions for? We all know. We could just do a show of hands at the beginning of this.

This is a fucking joke. I have to say, when I was writing my book, and I would say even up until the first couple of years after it went out, came out, the single most consistent question I got from liberal audiences was why doesn't you ask any questions? And they just honed because I can't imagine that. Like if they, if I was there, oh my god, I would want to joust the legal, the legal battlefield. Yes, it's a, it's a real, you know, seminar of great minds kind of the thing.

And what's interesting though is you don't get that question anymore, partially because he started asking questions, but partially also because people have now begun to one wrap their heads around the fact that this guy is incredibly powerful. And so I've noticed a real switch, not only do you not see, oh, he's, you know, and with that question about, you know, why does any of this question always have this assumption that he's done, that he's Scalia's puppet, and he was actually called Scalia's bitch.

He's played O'Oesters. People don't do that anymore. And now I do think part of why people are more interested in the corruption charge is that, I mean, in addition to being true, you know, they're trying to reckon with his power, which for, you know, 20-some odd years that he was on the court, nobody ever, ever thought twice about. And now it's become clear that he's very powerful. And so then the question is, well, how can we make sense of that?

And I think part of the corruption story is trying to come to terms with the fact of his power. You also write about his becoming a Supreme Court justice. And how, with the benefit of time, he has only grown more angry about what he describes as a high-tech lynching during the whole Anita Hill controversy. And I think with this, I don't know, you mentioned again, his ideas about black manhood.

And look, the project of marrying Milton Friedman to black separatism is like, that's for you all laid out, but his views, probably his longest-lasting legacy at this point will be the Dobbs decision and the curtailment of women's rights in this country. Where does his views on women in gender and sexuality, how are those related? Yeah, it's interesting because you brought up Anita Hill. I say in the book, it's obvious to everybody who's really investigated it, that Thomas

committed perjury and was guilty of everything that Anita Hill said. And at the same time, what's also true, I think, to anybody who knows anything about Thomas, is that in a weird way, when he said that comment about the high-tech lynching, that was a very truthful moment for him. It was a kind of moment that he had been preparing for for most of his adult life,

not because he knew that he was going to be caught out by a need of hill, because in his story of the black community and black nationalism, there's the power of black men, and then there has always been the sort of the treachery and the at best the weakness of black women and at worst the treachery of black women. One of the things that Thomas becomes famous, what puts Thomas on the map in the first place is this interview he did in 1980 with Juan Williams, a part of a profile, and where he says he had gone to the Fairmont Conference, which was this big sort of launching point for black conservative, I wasn't just black conservative, it's in fact at the Fairmont Conference, which was this big sort of launching point for Black Conservatives.

I mean, it wasn't just Black Conservatives. In fact, at the Fairmont Conference, it was this conference in San Francisco at the Fairmont Hotel, Charles Hamilton, who was the co-author, the Stokely Carmichael of Black Power, was there. So it was a slightly more heter you know, gathering. But, but Juan Williams, you know, interviews Thomas, and Thomas makes this incredibly ugly comment about his sister, and he says, you know, she's so dependent on welfare that she gets mad when the, when the mailman is late with the check. And this, you know, kind of set off wildfire, and he ultimately had to apologize for it.

But he tells you something. To his sister? Or just the public at large? The public at large. Yeah, no, I don't think he ever apologized to his sister about that. I mean, you know, so, you know, he shows, you know, he's a total snake in a lot of ways. But he has always had this view. And it really is a romance because the actual story of men and women in his life is like

a lot more complicated and his sister ends up being the kind of, you know, holds up the whole family back in pinpoint and is working three jobs, you know, to kind of keep things together, taking care of elders in the family and young people and so forth, but setting that the reality aside. He's always viewed black women as kind of really at the bottom of the totem pole. And women in general, he does not have a particularly positive view of them.

And so what's interesting about the Dobs decision, and I would actually go back a couple of years before that, I can't, oh, I think it's, I can't remember the name of the case, but it was in like 2020, 2021, or no, 2019, excuse me. He sets out his longest opinion on abortion. And what he says very clearly in that opinion, I think it's box versus plan parenthood of something or other, is that he reaches back into the archive of Margaret Sanger and sort of the kind of fraternization between birth control advocates and eugenics and really develops this whole account that abortion and birth control

have essentially been a kind of plot of the white community to destroy black people and he quotes from N. double ACP statements in the 1960s about the dangers of birth control and Harlem and so forth and how it's being used to restrict the back population. So for him abortion has very little to do with women's rights about which he doesn't really think very highly in the first place. But secondarily, abortion is really once more what it represents is the agency of white liberals who are you know extending their tentacles into the black community. And you know we can go off further with this, but I mean I would say that basically that's his point of view on the on question of women's rights and abortion. Well, bring up the Margaret Sanger thing so quickly, I mean, it brings someone,

your other book, The Reaction Already Mind, where something that's always stuck with me from that, is that the conservative ideology or reactionary ideology, it's not really an ideology as such, it's a series of improvisations, it's like a yes and routine to just keep dealing with an increasingly democratic society. Are these like, is the eugenics thing? Is that another improvisation by Thomas to like to say something about it? Or is this, or is this coming from someplace real? I think that is more of an improvisation. I think it's a fair point because most of his previous abortion opinions were pretty just boilerplate Republican party you know stuff.

There was nothing interesting there that I could find that in any way distinguished anything. So I do think that was definitely a kind of improvisation that you know unfortunately has had quite a bit of influence. I mean the second he put that into the opinion, you then see lower courts, conservatives on lower courts, start referencing that opinion. And there is this kind of feedback loop between federalist society people, lower court judges, Thomas's own clerks,

who many of whom go on to become judges. And so it is a bit of a network. And I think with that one in particular, I think it's definitely pretty tactical. And I don't put much stock into it. It's also great trolling. Oh, you liberals, you say you love black people, but you also are in favor of making sure

there are way fewer of them than there would otherwise be. What's up with that? Yes, yeah. And this has always been the line between trolling and sort of jurisprudence with Thomas is a fine one. And you see a lot of this. I mean, we haven't even gotten into the issue of gun rights. His whole story on gun rights is lifted straight from Eric Froner and Herbert Aptheker, and people who

don't know that. He was, the communist party was the pioneer in historian of slave revolts. Thomas's footnotes are just laden with these references going back to the 19th century and slavery and abolition and reconstruction on the centrality of arms for black men. So again, you know, a troll or jurisprudence, I leave that to the lawyers to sort of call that one. Well, whether it's the Margaret Sanger thing or bringing up the importance of firearms and black liberation struggles. And what's fascinating, the overall as we described it,

is I suppose the term now would be afro-passimism or racial pessimism, that white people are fundamentally racist and that America's a fundamentally racist country, and that nothing is ever gonna change that. The interesting thing is that point of view is very much invoked these days. And you can see for obvious reasons, you look around and you're like, well, shit, why is everything still so bad? But that idea, there are uses for that, like a left wing sensibility, but it's also very

useful to the overall right wing project as well, depending on which way you shade it. If your project is greater racial hierarchy and separatism. Right. And the way I think about this, there was a great book that came out 30 years ago now called The Rhetoric of Reaction by Albert Hirschman, who was a economist and political scientist. And he said there's basically three tropes or three ways of thinking about reactionary argument. One is perversity, and that is whatever you're trying to do, you're going to produce, in

fact, the opposite result. You're going to make the very problem you're trying to solve worse. So you try to solve poverty, you make poverty worse. That's perversity. The second trope is jeopardy. Whatever you try to do, you may succeed in it, but you're going to jeopardize some other value that you hold. So let's say you start off in favor of freedom and equality, you end up pushing for equality, but you restrict freedom. So that's the jeopardy trope in right-wing reactionary thought. The third trope was what he called futility.

And this is the argument that, you know, whereas the first two tropes acknowledge that you're doing something, you're achieving something, it may be perverse or it may be jeopardizing, but you're doing something, the futility argument on the right says, no matter what you do, you're never going to, it's absolutely futile. You're never going to achieve anything along the lines of what you think, or along any lines. And what in Persian says two things about that,

what the futilitarian argument. One is that it is the most dangerous and insidious of right-wing arguments. It's not because it's the most deflating deflationary argument. And second, he says, part of what makes it so insidious and dangerous is that it has a weird way of mimicking left-wing structural arguments. Anybody who's been on the left in any kind of activist movement or whatever knows that there's always that person who stands up and says, oh, all

of you guys are ridiculous, you know, if you're in the labor movement or whatever, because capitalism is this kind of deep structural force that cannot be overcome through these kind of, you know, mechanisms that you're trying to engage in. And I see, um, Thomas's, I see Thomas's Afro-Pesimism very much in that light of the futilitarianism. And there's a reason why I brought it up in the book. It's not to say that, you know, Thomas is like Afro-Pesimism on the left and all the rest of it, but to say that that kind of argument has a history on the right, and it's not just about race, it's about a whole bunch of things, having to do with political efforts, redistribution and all the rest of it.

And that the most poisonous thinkers on the right have been able to inject their poison, because there's a kind of superficial similarity and sometimes not so superficial similarity with certain left wing tropes. And it particularly, I think, at moments of sort of defeat and extended defeat, which is I think where we've been for quite some time in this country. It's all the interactive argument because it seems correct. Yeah, it makes sense of your defeat. And it almost gives it a kind of theological gloss. So Matt Cart broke this very great article in Harper's,

you know, about a year ago, about the 1619 project. And he said, you know, the thing that recurs the metaphors are, this is part of the nation's DNA or it's part of its original sin, racism. And you know, that's partially, you know, you could say that's just rhetorical and all the rest of it, but it does, like I said, it does apply a kind of, you know, deep sense of fatalism that makes the idea, you know, the idea of political politics seem kind of silly. And I think there's a certain kind of activist who will say,

well, we're gonna lose, but we should still go down fighting kind of a thing. And that's fine for the activists, but you're not gonna get, you don't get people to kind of make great sacrifices of the sort that the left is always dependent upon for the sake of sort of suicide and defeat and failure. Like failure is not an attractive political slobia. And so I do think there's stuff in Thomas,

and I should say, Thomas came to that fatalism in sense of pessimism to defeat before he shifted to the right. And so what role that played in his shift to the right is an open question. Well, because it's just, it's very, it's very seductive because it offers you really a out on any moral responsibility for anything. You could definitely see in Thomas's trajectory, like coming to a moment of like,

oh, this is never gonna change. So, here's a path for success, renown all the stuff that I can take. And yes, it's, you know, it means being a right-winger, but it's also, it means abandoning like the hope for the stuff, but that stuff was never gonna happen. And what I can claim instead to like feel that there's some nobility here is like the sense

that I am honest in a way that others aren't. Like yes, and like me taking a bunch of money from this psycho hillbilly and smoking cigarettes on a cigar, so that is more virtuous because it is more honest than somebody going in front of the NAACP and say vote for Democrats a few more times and we're going to get some justice in this country. Yeah, I mean, one of the early things that sort of made me interested in Thomas was exactly what you're picking up on. And I called it kind of racial candor that there's a kind of appeal to him and being honest and clear-eyed, which again,

I think anybody who's been on the left knows very well the type of person who really prides themselves on being candid and clear-eyed and without any illusion whatsoever about the nature of things. And there is a kind of path to, I don't want to use the word cynicism because I'm a pretty cynical person myself and there's nothing really wrong with it, but there's a kind of corrosive cynicism, I guess I would say, at the heart of that. That I think that's far more widespread cultural appeal than people realize.

I mean, one of the things that was really interesting in talking about the book with different audiences, I would have a lot of people come up to me afterwards who were black and they would say, you're talking about my father, you're talking about my grandfather. It's always men they're talking about, but you know, this is a very widespread view. It definitely necessarily result in people voting Republican by any stretch. But that sense that, you know, like don't talk to me about, you know, mass protest and don't talk to me about that kind of, I don't want to hear it, like that's just a path to defeat.

Is, I think much more widespread than people want to acknowledge. And I just want to add one other thing to that, because Matt, you brought up about, it sort of lets him morally off the hook, which I think is true. I think the flip side though, is that it also creates a kind of very weirdly moralistic politics on the left that says, do this, not because you're going to win,

because we know we're not going to win, but do it because it's right. And again, I think that's oftentimes a very weak position. I just finished teaching this turn, and though the last book we read was W.V. DeBoys' Black Reconstruction, and he makes a big deal of pointing out that the real leaders of Black emancipation, Republican Party, Charles Sumner, and Fadius Stevens, they had such contempt

for that kind of anti-moralism. And Sumner says, never depend. If you're depending upon the sense of justice in people, for your program, you've already lost. I much more have faith in people's sense of necessity and interest and the sort of reality principle in a broader sense than I would in that pure moralism. So, if there's a weird convergence between, as you say, sort of him getting out of the mortal's responsibility

on his side, but then the left sort of converging on this very moralistic, acts in any sense of rail politic also. I guess that's the case. It's the current moment with Thomas in which his relationship with Harlan Crow, the billionaire and the many vacations they've taken together, has put him really back in the spotlight. And I was wondering, when this story broke, people were sharing a video that Thomas, or it was a sort of hazeographic video promoting Thomas, Lawrence Thomas, in which he was talking about how he only likes to travel in America,

and he only likes to travel by RV, obviously in contrast with, you know, like a John's to a, you know, Icelandic volcano or whatever. I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. But there's something normal to me about it. I've come from regular stock. But in it, he says, I'm from normal stock. And I'm just one of you saw that, and just that phrase, I come from regular stock. But he says, I'm from normal stock. And I'm just

one of you saw that and just that phrase, I'm from normal stock. That just stuck with me. So so much about Thomas saying, I'm normal. Yeah. Um, what can what can one say? I mean, you know, that story about traveling in the RVs. And I can't remember in that video if he says this or not, but I think it's in his book or in his memoir. He talks about RV and they would park in and parking lots for Walmart. And that was where he and Ginny would stay

as they traveled across America from island to island of Walmarts. And that's how they saw the real America. And the one, you know, almost it sort of feels a little silly. It's like it's such an old trope in American politics of, you know, the common man who, you know, Reagan totally did this all the time. And, you know, George W. Bush also did this, you know, like, you know, where, you know, it was the sort of whole affectation of wearing jeans.

You know, Reagan was sort of, you know, clearing brush, you know, was a rancher. And of course, you know, everything with Reagan was paid by his corporate benefactors. And I mean, his whole lifestyle, we now, no, down to his, you know, ranch was bought by his corporate benefactors. And I mean his whole lifestyle we now know down to his you know ranch was bought by his corporate benefactor. So it's a kind of old story on the right and I don't there's a way in which we can sort of make too much of a fetish of Clarence Thomas.

And you know I mean I have no problem with people pointing out the hypocrisy of it all because it's totally true. I guess I would just say it's a pretty standard right wing story. But as it relates to Harlan Crowe, and I think like I read you one that's trying to call this out as like hypocrisy or corruption, at least there's a regards to Thomas only goes so far because, as I think I hope we've explicated so far, this kind of corruption is not corruption as such to him. This is the benefits of being a democratically engaged citizen in America. And you said like, you know, through economic freedom, black people can have these little niches of freedom and autonomy.

Well, he has quite a significant niche of freedom and autonomy for himself, but like his friendship with Harlan Crow and like all the benefits that he's accrued as a result of that in terms of vacations or hitman memorabilia or whatever he's betting. Like no, this is a totally ethical invocation of your rights as a democratic citizen. Yeah, and this, you know, this goes way back. And, you know, just, in 1987, Thomas gives this speech at the Pacific Research Institute, which is a liberitarian think tank outfit out in San Francisco. And he sort of lays out this vision, you know, of the problem with the New Deal liberal. And I, you know, when I say that, I just, you know, want

people, because people hear liberal and they think they'll Clinton and Hillary Clinton and so forth. But a clarinet's Thomas is really talking about people like John Kenneth Galbray, the economist, the great liberal left economist, FDR and so forth. And he says, the problem with those guys, the New Deal liberal, is they really have contempt, like deep-seated contempt, for men who make money. They think it's class, they think it's vulgar, they think it's materialistic, and so on and so forth. And he says, the people who they really value

those liberals are what he called the idealistic professions. And by that, he meant journalists, lawyers, and professors. And these are all people who engage in speech is their fundamental activity. And that's how they make their living is by speech. And he lays out there, and he does two things. So what's interesting is that first, it's really a sense of culture war, which we've really forgotten when we use that term culture war,

but the original culture war for the right was about this whole question of money. And like, do you value men who make money, the businessman, or you value professors and journalists? And the egghead. The pencil. Exactly. The eggheads. Right. Go ahead. The people who got in make and create, you know,

change the world. Exactly. And that was really, you know, it was obviously a whole economic battle and a political battle, but it was also a cultural battle, you know, like, and that was the project of the right was to rehabilitate those men of money to show that these were virtuous men who, you know, made America and made it great and so on.

You do mention that Clarence Thomas opens every term of the Supreme Court with the screening of the fountain head that all is clerk so required to attend. Exactly. Exactly. You've got that moral rehabilitation of the man of money. But taking that from the sphere of political ideology to constitutionalism, what he sets out in this speech is something that has since become really important for the right-wing court. And that is we have to figure out a way to make money making have a sacred estatus in the constitutional pantheon as does speech, free speech in the

first amendment. And so what he's, what he sets out there and what other conservatives have done with them is to say that money making and the world of money is an expressive world of speech. And now we get into the sphere of campaign finance so that when you make a contribution, or, first of all, when a campaign spends money, so when Bernie Sanders spends money to have a rally or to get its message out, that's a form of speech. And if you were to prohibit Sanders, the campaign from spending money, you would be prohibiting his speech from getting out. And then Thomas takes it a second step and says, the contributors to those campaigns. So I'm sure you guys may have contributed money to the

Sanders campaign when you were doing that, you were exercising your speech rights. And so that he extends that argument to say that, OK, so when a citizen, a private citizen, donate money to a campaign, he is, or she is expressing their belief and their desire to get this message out. And so you say, well, hold on a second. We have an extremely unequal country. There are a lot of wealthy people. If they're contributing to a campaign, more money than, you know, you or I are contributing, they're going to have more access. They're going to have more

influence. And the thing about Thomas is he says, yeah, that's right. They will. And that is what you call influence peddling, what you call corruption is basically, is democracy in action. This is people, citizens exercising their influence. And so now we, you know, leap forward 30 years to this whole Harlan Crow thing. And, you know, again, what's so kind of fascinating is that all you had to, I mean, I don't want to say I knew about the Harlan Crow, other issues of gifts and so forth have been reported in the past.

It just does go way back. The LA Times was on this story during the Outs. It's been well known, but I certainly didn't know the extent of the gifts or anything like that. But what's interesting is you go back to his opinions and his speeches, and he's kind of laid the whole thing out for you right there and then. This is his conception of what a democracy is all about. Is rich men amassing wealth and influencing the political sphere. And once again, you have that distinction with liberalism, which claims, no, we have a society geared around money

and geared around accumulation and allows for this vast accumulation. But that doesn't mean you have more rights to X, Y, or Z. Now, that that's an incoherence that the right is able to cut through. And like that's another one of those Yeah, those astringent like reality things that they get to stand on is like we are at least acknowledging what the actual Reality of a capitalist society is. Yes, writes a crew at the top like the money does There's for all synonyms for one another and if I could push that one step further, you know, this whole idea

about money is speech, which a lot of people who are liberals and on the left sort of heard for the first time with citizens united. And so for many people, that whole idea is something that John Roberts came up with and concocted. The irony of that position is, if you go back to the original campaign finance decision from 1975, which is Buckley V. Vallejo, that was a majority of, practically unanimous decision. The whole premise that money is speech is accepted as the foundation of that decision, which most people think was, well, there's some argument about who authored it, but it was certainly signed on to by William Brennan

and Thurgood Marshall, who were the sort of liberal titans of the court. And so the principle that money is speech on the one hand was accepted in that decision, but, and this is the kicker, what was very much rejected by the court was that you could therefore limit the role of money and politics for the sake of equalizing speech. In other words, you accept the premise that money is speech, but you

cannot, in the name of the First Amendment, try to equalize the speech by basically saying everybody has to spend the same amount. And that doesn't even touch on the larger point you're getting at, which is about the inequality of the society as a whole. So there's a whole complicated role that liberals had played in this firmament that just simply did not begin with John Roberts and the citizens of United Case. What do you make of the idea that the corruption between Holland, Crow and Clarence Thomas, like a lot of people on the right dismissed it as this kind of like, oh, do you really think he's changing his vote or some kind of like straight up quid pro quo?

But what do you make of the idea that I believe I read from you that Clarence Thomas has said in public statements, you know, I could be making a lot more money in the private sector. So think of me, think of that the next time you're planning a vacation to New Zealand, because I could potentially retire while Biden is president. I mean, I actually didn't know that he had said that, But I mean, I have to say on this one, like I think if you're trying to look for a smoking gun, which people did have tried to look on some of these decisions like that it was a clear,

quick, broke, whoa. I mean, A, I think you're not gonna find it and B, the irony of looking for a quick, broke, whoa, like that is that Thomas and the conservatives will actually be the ones who say that unless you can find a quid pro quo that's essentially the equivalent of a bride, there is no corruption. And so I think it's a kind of wrong headed way to go about it. I mean, I think the bigger corruption, if you will, is just the general shift on the court

to the right, which big money certainly had a huge role to play in. I mean, they've created not just in the obvious ways, but they created this whole intellectual infrastructure. Thomas has been the beneficiary of this. He's been a part of this for a long time. I guess my general point of view is that there's a kind of like a sincerity hunt that's on, which is that if you can prove the providence of an opinion

is pure thought, somehow or another, you've exonerated that opinion from all of its problems. And to me, Thomas is an ideologue. He doesn't need to be paid for his opinions. I mean, I'm sure he just used this as kind of an extra, but that doesn't in any way save those opinions from what's wrong with them. And I, you know, I just, I think, you know, the left just has this problem of looking for smoking guns. It just reminds me now that you brought it up of like during the Trump administration,

like, oh, we're gonna prove that Russia was this and you've got some special prosecutor who's gonna really save us and we're on Russia watch every night. And it's just, it's not the way these people are gonna be defeated. And you know, it's just, it's not the way these people are going to be defeated. And likewise, Thomas, like Thomas has problems and everything that's wrong with him begins so long before you see this big money pouring into him. And I should say the big money

pours into him because he's, you know, he's already paved the way for it. Like the causality runs the other direction. Well, that's because liberals are always going to end up grasping for procedural gotchas and violations of strict laws and norms because they can't have an ideological conflict, because at fundamental levels, they agree with the premises of conservatism when it comes to the academic distribution, and they have no interest in seeing those interrogated, and so they really can't go any deeper than procedural violations to try to neutralize their opponents.

And not to mention, I think this is actually beginning beginning to change and I'm glad to see it, but up until very recently, virtually every liberal was committed to the whole sanctity of the Supreme Court and the halo around the Supreme Court. And so, you know, Thomas, in this sense, has always been this weird thorn in their, you know, in their minds, you know, because of the way he got on the court because of a need of hell because he didn't come up in the path that most justices have in recent years come up. And so it's not just, I think you're right about the proceduralism, but I also think there's been this kind of that court fetishism that has really been a millstone around the way liberals have

thought about this stuff. I think that at least has begun to change a bit. I know we've just been canceled not to look for smoking guns, so I'll really direct your attention to one that is perhaps loaded. Which to be talking about corruption and clearest Thomas, I mean to me like the most obvious one would be his relationship to his wife, Jenny Thomas, who is a bit of a screwball. She's got a little bit different, but her advocacy for political groups that had business in front of the court that he never disclosed.

But I guess I'm just more interested in Ginny Thomas and Clarence, like their relationship. What do you know of their marriage? What did you come across about their relationship in your writing of this book? I mean, I gotta be honest, I sort of stayed away from it. I tried to kind of do a little bit of research on it, and I didn't find much that was all that interesting beyond pointing out the obvious that this is somebody who up until the day he met Ginny Thomas,

fought at interracial relationships and interracial, dating was wrong, and then he meets her, and he obviously changes point of view on that. And so I didn't really look into it too much. I think there's actually a person who's writing about it for New York magazine, who I hope will come up with something that will be a little bit more illuminating than the facts of what we already know about Jenny Thomas. You know, I'll just leave it at that. I don't think I really have much to add to it.

I kind of think that he just, when she starts talking about, you know, the 2,200 mules and the sorrows, I think he's just like, he's like loving it. It's just like, look at this crazy fucking, this is like, he's got a metal stick. Yeah. And in the thing and he's just like tapping the glass like, look at this, what they're like, look at this second-learned person. Let's get at the RV. Tell me more about the illuminati. And this is my wife's argument as well. And it could very well be true. I mean, I just have no special insight

into the question at all. Well, I guess, okay. So around things out here, 2023, climate's Thomas is the oldest Supreme Court justice. Was that correct? Yeah, no,ce Thomas is the oldest Supreme Court Justice? Was that correct? Yeah, no, he's the oldest. He's the longest serving, he's the oldest. So you know, there's always a possibility he could just die, which is, you know, not

outside the realm of possibilities. But the justices that have came after, and particularly the three that were appointed under Trump. And if you want to talk about corruption, how about just the fact that a guy who didn't win the popular vote got to a point three Supreme Court justices that are going to be alive for a generation at least? Like, so there's a question of like,

what do we do about this? Because like, whether it's on the court or not, like it's pretty much set. And that condition is, in my opinion, intolerable for any human being currently alive in this country. You mentioned that the beginning of a crack-up of the sanctity of the courts as an institution among liberals, but I don't know. I mean, just your thoughts on like, because you know, it's a question that people bang their head up against all the time.

What are we going to do about the Supreme Court? Are we going to impeach justice, stack the court, get rid of judicial review? I mean, where is this all going? Yeah, it's a good question. And, you know, I would add, in addition to the three, you know, George W. Bush, of course, even though he appointed both of his justices when he'd been reelected. The first time around, he, of course, didn't win the popular vote also. Um, and that's how he got into office. And I mean, I think it's a really important point

to stress. I'm not a political operative or strategist, but the Supreme Court has always been, it's always had this very weird status in American politics because it has so much power. And yet it's been this counter-majoritarian institution and you know people spent 50 years trying to make sense of that contradiction. How in the democracy can you have an institution that has so much power?

But now we have this situation as you pointed out where it's you know at least in the past you could say these you know these justices were pointed by presidents who had been elected with a popular vote, and the kind of mallop portionment in the Senate wasn't nearly to the degree that it is today among small states versus big states where it's all going, though. I don't know. I do think, to me, the most promising, frankly, is the idea of the court stripping, I mean, sorry, Congress stripping

the court of certain kinds of jurisdiction. I think it's a totally democratic argument. And I think it's one that the left really should take on. I think liberals should take it on. But I don't think anybody really has the answer to it to how to go about doing this. But I will say a couple of things. The United States has faced a stack Supreme Court before.

And what's interesting is that FDR in 1935, and I don't like to come and get into the romance of the new deal because there is a lot of romance around this, but the Supreme Court struck down item after item after item of the new deal culminating in 1935 in the Shack to decision. And, you know, FDR, you know, God bless, you know, hell's the press conference and he just starts walking people through, you know, in this very kind of engaging popular way, like everything that's wrong without the Supreme Court thinks about this. And there used to be a tradition in this country that like, you know, for all the constitution problems that this is like a document for people. It's not a document for people who went to Harvard Law School or Yale Law School. This is a document that ordinary people get to interpret and all the things that we attribute, 13th Amendment, the 14th, those were things that came out of the political sphere. They didn't come from Supreme Court justices.

And so that doesn't really answer your question, what are we going to do about it? But I think to the extent that we can sort of get back to some of these ideas of popular constitutionalism and rest the document and the you know out of the hands of the Supreme Court is all the better. And you know, I think there are people on the left who are trying to develop arguments in that regard, whether they achieve any traction politically or not, I don't, you know, who the hell knows. But I don't see any other way around it,

except to kind of go through it like that. But at least to begin, to like begin to remove from the popular conscious, this the idea of the law and the constitution is this kind of like sacred document that's like a bover approach or political, just politics in general. Yeah, you know, and to that issue, I was part of this NPR

documentary on Thomas, and when it was very interesting, it opens up, the season opens up with the host going to Constitution Day at a Denver Public School high school. And what's, you know, I don't know what it was, I mean, I'm sure if you had things like that in your high school, you know, everybody there back in, you know, when I was in high school, we'd be talking about the Supreme Court, and I'd say the sanctity of the Constitution. And all these high school students were like, what are you talking about? The Constitution is this completely crap document interpreted by this institution that's totally corrupt. And these are people who are like the debate champions and sort of constitution day champions. They weren't the cigarette smoking kids.

These are the high achievers. Yeah, these are the grinds. And I thought the truth of the matter is, is that that was once, again, the sort of the trick, if you were an up-and-comer in the 1910s, the 1920s and 1930s, even if you went to places like Harvard Law School, that would be the kind of educate you would be taught that the law is a political weapon. And the only question is who wields it and how? And that's where people like Justice you know, Justice Frankfurt or Felix Frankfurt

came out of that tradition. And so, to me, it's not inconceivable. You know, that was the United States. That wasn't, you know, some kind of Utrei, you know, European formation. So, you know, I don't see why it would be impossible, you know, to have something like that again. All right. We'll, we'll leave it there for today. Professor Corey Robbins, the author of I don't see why it would be impossible to have something like that again. All right, we'll leave it there for today. Professor Corey Robbins, the author of the Enigma of Clarence Thomas, and the reactionary mind, both for a good books, available in bookstores everywhere.

Corey, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. What they do is not in your face For the time they want to take your place The back of the stabbers Best stabbers It's not in your face All the time they want to take your place

The back of the stabbers Best stabbers All you fellas Who have some more And you really care Yeah, yeah Then it's all Yeah, I was gonna be when I get ya

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