Fourth Reich Archaeology - #080 - Bracing for Revolution w/ Brace Belden

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

This week we are joined by a special guest, TrueAnon’s Brace Belden, to take stock of the current and impending crisis and brainstorm ways that we might think creatively to meet the moment and face off against an admittedly much better organized fascist enemy. For those of us on the left seeking to exploit the next crisis to push back against the consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of our craven overlords, we must come to grips with the fact that there currently is no organized revolutionary movement; there’s not even a revolutionary working class. But that does not mean that we should give into fatalism. There are plenty signs of hope, and the demand for a unified front against fascism is higher than it has been in generations.We discuss all of this and much more with Brace, including the magnetic pull of the spectacle towards compatible leftism, the prospects for armed struggle (including insights from Brace’s time in Syria), and how we can learn from the past without using history as a costume for revolutionary LARPing. We don’t have the answers, but we do have the will, and we hope you’ll tune in and join us.Links: https://podcast.trueanon.com/Brace’s Baffler Article, “The Hatred of Podcasting” https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/the-hatred-of-podcasting-beldenLukacs “History and Class Consciousness” https://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/Herbert Marcuse’s 1969 Berkeley Speech with Angela Davis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuyWj8BtjKcFourth Reich Archaeology Patreon: Patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology

The following passage is excerpted from George Lukash 1920 essay, Class Consciousness. The veil drawn over the nature of bourgeois society is indispensable to the bourgeoisie itself. For the insoluble internal contradictions of the system become revealed with increasing starkness and so confront its supporters with a choice. Either they must consciously ignore insights which become increasingly. increasingly urgent, or else they must suppress their own moral instincts in order to be able to support with a good conscience, an economic system that serves only their own interests. Without overestimating the efficacy of such ideological factors, it must be agreed that the fighting

power of a class grows with its ability to carry out its own mission with a good conscience, and to adapt all phenomena to its own interests with unbroken confidence in itself. From a very early stage, the ideological history of the bourgeoisie was nothing but a desperate resistance to every insight into the true nature of society it had created, and thus to a real understanding of its class situation. When the communist manifesto makes the point that the bourgeoisie produces its own grave-diggers, this is valid ideologically, as well as economically. Only the consciousness of the proletariat can point to the way that leads out of the impasse of capitalism.

As long as this consciousness is lacking, the crisis remains permanent. It goes back to its starting point, repeats the cycle, until, after infinite sufferings and terrible detours, the School of History completes the education of the proletariat, and confers upon it the leadership of mankind. But the proletariat is not given any choice. As Marx says, it must become a class not only as against capital, but also for itself. That is to say, the class struggle must be raised from the level of economic necessity

to the level of conscious aim and effective class consciousness. The pacifists and humanitarians' of the class struggle, whose efforts tend, whether they will or not, to retard this lengthy, painful, and crisis-ridden process, would be horrified if they could but see what sufferings they inflict on the proletariat by extending this course of education. But the proletariat cannot abdicate its mission. The only question at issue is how much it has to suffer before it achieves ideological maturity before it acquires a true understanding of its class situation and a true class consciousness.

Imperialism, as the slave system of the West is called, is not something that's just confined to England or France or the United States. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. One huge complex or combine. Either you are with us or you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. And this international power structure is used to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources.

We found no evidence of conspiracy, foreign or domestic, the Warren Commission of Science. I'll never apologize for the United States of America, ever. I don't care what the facts are. In 1945, we began to acquire information which showed that there were two wars going. His job, he said, was to protect the Western way of life. The primitive simplicity of their minds vendors the more easy victims of a big lie than a small law.

For example, the CIA. He has a model. He knows so long as I, freedom can never be secure. It usually takes a national crisis. Freedom can never be secure. He could never be secure. A lot of killers.

You get a lot of killers. Why, you think our country's so innocent? This is a man. This is a man. This is a mom. Archaeology. I'm Don. Dick is unfortunately trapped in the basement of the massive compound of Iranian crown

prince Reza Pahlavi. We do wish him all the best, but meanwhile the show must go on, and go on it will momentarily. Before we get into it, though, I want to say thank you. Thank you, yes, you, listener, you personally, for tuning in, for lending us your ears, for lending us your time. We really appreciate it. We are so thrilled and excited to start this 2026. off with a real bang, with some real momentum, at least in podcasting, even as the events of the world may give us cause to dismay. But let us not do that, listener. Let us recognize that we are all

in this together. And to that effect, we'd like to give a special shout out to the comrades up there in the frozen climes of Minnesota. We have been hearing from a few of you about your experiences there on the front lines facing off against the ice stapo. And we want to send you all of our love, all of our solidarity, all of our support. And please do keep writing to us. Please keep contacting us because our unity is our strength. We are on Twitter and Instagram. at Fourth Reich Pod and reachable by email at Fourth Reichpod at gmail.com. We love hearing from you, and we also love when you are able to receive your patronage over at patreon.com slash forthright archaeology.

We are cooking up some exciting things over there and look forward to seeing those of you who can join us and we want those of you who are unable at the moment to know that we love you. Nevertheless, please rate, review, subscribe, and spread the word about this little project of ours because we happen to feel very warmly towards this labor of love and very fortunate that it's given us the opportunity to enhance our own understanding, our own analysis of history, of the present moment, and our own point of view on, you know, what is the way out of this. You know, we do not purport to bring you the answers, but rather to stand shoulder to shoulder with you as we collectively seek to dig our way out of this Fourth Reich hellscape that we

we unfortunately live in. To build upon the Lukash passage that I read into the cold open there, later on in that collection of essays, history and class consciousness, in an essay called Legality and Illegality, Lukash quotes Marx's Theses on Feuerbach, in which Marx says, the materialist doctrine that men are the product of circumstances and education, that changed men are therefore the products of other circumstances and of a different education forgets that circumstances are in fact changed by men and that the educator must himself be educated. And I think that really sums up what we are trying to do here through this process, through this dialectic. And now turning to today's episode.

Let's get digging. It is precisely the change in the productive process of advanced capitalism, which makes this process rely on continually and increasingly on highly qualified, intelligent personnel. It is in the universities, in the schools, that the system trains the system trains the new cadres whom they need for its reproduction. And this is you, far from being a bunch of intellectuals, you form one of the most important contingents, important for the reproduction of the system.

You have to show that you can resist, that you can refuse to remain mere servants of the system. So it's over, Mr. Lobowski. Condolages. The bombs lost. And a job. So it is 2026. It is January 18th, 2026, in fact. We are still less than one year into this second Trump administration. And the contradictions, as the old Leninist brigades might say, are heightened. The excesses of the war machine, the encroachment. of the techno-fascist surveillance state, and the permanent imminence of the forthcoming, always forthcoming economic crisis, is right on the horizon.

It's here, but it's also still to come in its worst phase. There's an overwhelming sense of dread in the air. And there is certainly a lot of planning going on on the fascist side of the aisle. They are at the ready. They've got their plans. They've got their little groups and their operations in place. And meanwhile, we hear on the left or whatever you want to call those of us who oppose this shit is unclear whether we really have our shit together to face down these demon forces.

So I'm very lucky, very pleased, and very grateful to have with me here today a great partner to brainstorm, just what we might do about this. You know him, you love him, a man who needs no introduction. It is Tony Doku Pill, the host of CBS Evening News. Mr. Adult Circumcision himself. Wow, hello. No, it's Brace Beltin, folks. Yeah, pleasure to be here, Dawn.

You know, it's, God, you know, you're right, man. They really are. They really got it going on on the right. You and I have both been reading, I think we both, we know we both have been reading all the different works, Lukash lately. And I was reading an essay of his that I had not read before called towards a methodology of the,

I think it's towards a methodology of organization, or the problems of organization. Yes. And one thing, you know, it's always when you read a bunch of kind of older stuff like this, some of it seems so obvious that you feel like you're missing something. But one of the things that, he mentions kind of over and over and over is that like you kind of can't tell if theories of

revolution or really any theory is worth a shit until it's put into practice. And I think what a lot of us are seeing right now is various theories on the right that they've had and sort of like debated in public being put into action. And that I think is also what adds to the shock because it's almost not in some ways it's not business as usual. I mean, obviously, in a lot of ways it is, but it is, it's also the culmination of what has been like a very clear and oftentimes public, oftentimes private debate on the right of ways forward, and they're really doing it. Yeah, they're really doing it. And yeah, I did, I actually read that essay too just yesterday. It's pretty incredible. It really hit me in the,

in the heart as, you know, a guy who leads kind of a regular old decadent bourgeois existence here, with a day job and everything, you know, you rely so much on becoming one with the totality and the perspective of class consciousness kind of overtaking is such that the contradiction between action and theory is resolved through praxis. Like it really is quite a tall order that he is placing on the readers there. and one that, you know, I think we could all do better to think seriously about and to speak about. I think one of the things that I've been troubled by and troubled by, of course, with no solution to, but troubled by nonetheless sort of in my time, I guess on the left, but really like, especially,

I think in the past like eight or so years. No, more than that, because I've been, I've been in. various organizations and groups. Yeah, I've been in, I guess, three or four at this point. Although that makes me sound way crazy than I am, but it was a fairly linear process. But that, like, I haven't encountered even really much of a theory of revolution for the left that at least is beyond just like really generic, vague, sort of pronouncements that echo ones that have been successful, maybe 100, 200 years ago.

And that is troubling, I think. And it's interesting. You know, there's this whole, I don't know what controversy around that Gabriel Rock Hill book that came out. Yeah. I don't know if you followed that. There was like a big beef with him and like, who paid the pipers of Western Marxism? Yeah. I just picked up my copy earlier this week. Haven't really read the whole thing yet. I read his articles. I haven't read the book, but I'll probably get it on to it at some point. It's funny because actually I feel like I haven't read that much like critical theory or I guess what would be like termed like Western Marxism in there. I read some, but like it's never really been my wheelhouse.

And so it feels like people got really defensive about it. And then there was just this there was this controversy, right? Like the historical materialism, people got all pissed off at him, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's not really super germane to what I'm saying, which is that, like, it's interesting. There was a, you know, there was this big thing in the 60s because there was like, the left sort of replaced the proletariat as the revolutionary class with the class of student, which is a sort of, it's interesting. It's one of the few classes that you're just usually in for about four years. Right. You know.

Yeah, except for those lucky few, the like eighth year undergrad students. We know them. We love them. what's the what's the uh van wilder except for van walder based of course on burke Kreiser who would actually be like i guess the stachanovite or whatever like the ultimate proletarian hero uh if the 60s uh the 60s uh theoretical stuff really came to pass but you know it's it's interesting because i always kind of thought that was a goofy way to view things and i guess i understand why people maybe really got excited in the 1960s and 1970s but thinking now like

it's funny because we sort of, that just did become almost a given where we think of students as sort of revolutionary. I don't actually think if we think of anyone as revolutionary, but like students are seen as like always this progressive force. And it's kind of combined with, you know, more traditional orthodox Marxism of, or real Marxism, with like the proletarian as the, as a revolutionary class. I think what's interesting is that unlike the 60s and unlike like the 20s or before 30s, 40s, neither of those classes seem particularly interested in revolution. In fact, nobody seems particularly interested in revolution.

We still have many of the same problems, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, but it's just, there's this great feeling of defeat. And I think that it's what I haven't really encountered is anybody kind of coming up with a way around that. Yeah, yeah. I think this is the problematic, right? And just for the listener's context, you know, the controversy mentioned here, Gabriel Rock Hill wrote this book, Who Paid the Pipers of Wex Stern Marxism. Some of our listeners may be familiar with sort of a predecessor of that book. I think we've mentioned on the pod, the Francis Stoner Saunders book, the Cultural Cold War. essentially it, you know, uncovers all these CIA involvements and kind of infiltration into

left-wing intellectual milieus around the post-war period, especially to direct the acceptable left flank of discourse and thereby prevent it from reaching any sort of a revolutionary consciousness or from acting on maybe the plane of proletarian class consciousness that would be necessary under the theories of the, you know, the Soviets, certainly the Bolsheviks and like-minded people like Lukash for a precondition for revolution. A quick note from post-production, listening back on this, you know, I think that the idea of the student as the center of radical political aspirations and the shift from the proletariat to the student actually is germane to the Rock Hill discussion. I still haven't read the book yet,

but it occurs to me that the book focuses on Marcusa. And Marcusa was hugely influential in creating the radical student milieu and serving as kind of an ideological and intellectual godfather. For example, he, I believe, supervised the graduate studies of Angela Davis, and in that way was hugely influential and was also being funded by the CIA. I was hooked. It was because of his influence that I decided to go to Germany and study with former colleagues of his Theodore Adorno and Max Hochheimer. and I kept in touch with him during the period I was studying in Germany. And so there is that to keep in mind besides the points that we're talking about with respect to the consequences of moving the locus of action from really the workplace, right, the site of production,

which is where the proletariat hashes out its. class conflicts, the process of instilling class consciousness in the institution of a university, which is like this cyclical process that the people, the personnel, the student body is shifting every year and is never stable enough to form a revolutionary mass, you know, because it is diffuse in that way, and because the universities feed directly into the bourgeois professions, where the process that Lukash calls reification, right, the inscription of bourgeois ideology through repetitive labor and through the process of surviving under capitalism, kind of dilutes whatever revolutionary tendencies may have developed during the university experience.

and this spectacle of the student radical coincides with a lot of other forms of spectacular development and the mass media that was coming into existence at that time as well. Like all these factors contribute, but at the same time, like the CIA was in on that shit, let's just say. Like they didn't necessarily make it happen, but they were in on that shit. So just wanted to add that little note. All right, back to you, Brace. Yeah, yeah, I think I saw basically two reactions, and I haven't followed this controversy that closely.

I've sort of just seen random stuff. One is that like, okay, it's true, but like it doesn't really matter. Which is funny because like that is probably true to an extent. I'm not sure that it replaced a like this 1960s, 1970s, like the postmodern stuff, but also like the Western Marxist stuff. I'm not really sure it replaced like a huge bench of Orthodox Marxists that we're ready to to take control. But I do think it dovetails pretty nicely with the greater sort of CIA project, especially in Europe, of funding a compatible left. And I think it like a lot of the the criticism that I've seen Rock Hill get has sort of ignored that. Yeah.

And the other one is that like it's just like Grover fur shit. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like he's just making this stuff up, which, you know, I haven't read the book, but I've read some of his articles and didn't really, he doesn't seem. Groverfer makes some massive to me leaps in logic that I have not been very impressed by. But Rock Hill seems a little more grounded. Yeah.

Or at least like a little more. Well, his field is also more germane to the subject matter, right? I mean, Groverfer, I think he's an English professor. Yes. Yeah. And it's interesting. The girl first is interesting. I just like,

I just don't think that the Japanese spy networks were that advanced in the Soviet Union. But, uh, but yeah, it's, it's interesting because like, I don't even know what the state of modern Marxism, Marxist theory really is. You know,

like I don't know how, I feel like the right has incorporated a lot of advances in technology and the way that society has subsequently, become organized around new use of technology and has been able to sort of cohere that into like this right wing vision. You see sort of, I think Yarvin,

ever since I realized that he has A.I. Psychosis, actually, I'm like, I've sort of relegated him to like be here a C tier. I'm like, that guy is not really that scary anymore. Not that he was ever that scary, but like I don't think that he's, I doubt doubt that he's as important as maybe he makes himself seem to be

or tries to puff himself up to be. but like on the left I feel like there's a ton of theorizing around like advances and communication and technology and things like that and how those are are integrated the economy etc etc etc but I keep saying etc I'm going to stop saying that but it's all like in these like discrete fields and it just becomes like something that we sort of talk about people talk about academically if at all yeah and hasn't really cohered into like a vision of the future or at least a path a vision of a pathway is the future. And I mean, maybe part of that is just at the end of the day, what the Rock Hill critique and kind of what we're dancing around now is ultimately a super structural critique. We're talking about discourse. We're talking about like how people are theorizing and diagnosing these issues. But at the end of the day, they're just reflective of the underlying base structural shifts that concentrate wealth and power and technological capacity into the hands of these extremely reactionary, like, repressive forces that have to justify like an ever more

unjust social and economic order. Yeah. And I think like, you know, someone like Jody Dean actually did like a pretty good job of trying to kind of square that circle or like to actually talk about the. The economic base that sort of all of this is festooned around and in like, what's it called? I think it's hers is. Yannes Ferrafranakis wrote like an identically sounding book that I obviously have not, I don't want to say obviously, but I definitely have not read.

But it's her techno feudalism. I interviewed her about it many years ago. But it's, and I don't know if I agree with a feudalistic, but I think it's at least an interesting lens to look at it. But I think it's like, I feel like the left is like pretty good at figuring out like, oh, that's bad, that's bad, that's bad. These things are all happening maybe because of this even. And I'm sure that like there's brilliant people who I'm too stupid or too ignorant to have read

who have probably correctly diagnosed the, even the economic base of it. But that hasn't, this sort of goes back to Lukash stuff we're talking about. That hasn't like, that hasn't manifested itself in any sort of leadership. Right. Like it hasn't like there's no, like in the, in the 1920s, there was a real question of like the theoretical leadership of the proletariat. Like there was like social democracy and there was communism and there was like in various countries like, you know, conservative or Catholic trade unions.

But the trade union movement was a real thing and it was like there was these real forces that were vined for influence over it. And now I think the big thing that I'm sure will surprise nobody is like there's basically no real trade union movement as such in the U.S. There's trade unions that are either, you know, kind of appendages of the Democratic Party to a greater or lesser extent or sort of mercenary on their own. Well, but often also with the Democratic Party.

I'm thinking of like the teamsters here. Yeah, exactly. And there's no like, the question of like left leadership of these things, it's not a question. Nobody's like, oh, will AFL, CIO, will the Social Democrats steer the course or will the communists steer the course?

Neither want to steer the course. You know what I mean? It's some guy who's like, embezzling money and playing golf steering of course. Yeah. He doesn't know what social democracy is. In the best case scenario, it's a guy like the UAW guy that can actually speak articulately and does have at least some class thread running through, I think, his politics.

But again, is not able or willing or I don't know. You know, I don't know what is the ceiling there that's keeping somebody like that guy what's his name? Sean Fane. Yeah, Sean Fane from trying to use that platform to unite a workers movement. Or whether or not the guy would even conceive of doing that outside of the Democratic Party, which is such a, I have called it like the greatest anti-communist institution ever organized. It's amazing.

It really is. I mean, they've got their thumb on the scale and it's like the best that, most of the commentariat can do is to say, oh, well, you know, what we need to do is put more AOCs. And it's like, it's already been like almost a decade since the squad has emerged. And clearly, like, objectively, all of the data are in. Yeah. And the findings are not in support of that path forward. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, God, it has been like a decade since AOC. got in. Jesus Christ. She actually really was like the first post-Bernie style Bernie person or whatever to get in there.

I remember she did like a tour. She was in San Francisco and me and actually the producer of her tour and on and like a bunch of other people. crashed it and protested her over something to do with Palestine that it's been so long. I cannot even remember what it was because you must have just got into office. but like she must have said something or something but it's been so and it's like look you know we're in the same sort of place uh as as 10 years ago and it's it's it's it's tough and it's you know it's it's it's hard not to become i actually struggled with this uh a lot last year um it's hard not to become fatalistic at times yes and to have like a god that failed moment and be like man maybe

this is just a bunch of fucking bullshit. But, you know, I think an important thing to do is to, without being dogmatic, I guess, is to constantly reassess your own beliefs and try to justify them to yourself. And I think that strengthens them. And but it also, it allows you to like think of, like to make clear to yourself what you believe. And to me that it's remained the same. but it was, and it's not like I had this huge crisis of faith. I was just like, damn, shit is fucked up right now and nobody seems to be doing anything

about it. Shit is still fucked up and still nobody seems to be doing anything about it. Although now there is, I think, you know, you mentioned earlier about an crisis coming. I don't know if you're a crisis guy or not, but I've known a lot of crisis guys in my life. And a crisis guy is always like, there's about to be a crisis. Trust me. You look at those numbers and there it's about to be a crisis. I think there's about to be a crisis.

Yeah. I think that you're right. I think there's about to be a crisis. And in that moment, I don't know. It's, and this is maybe almost like a, not millinarian, but this is maybe magical thinking on my part. But it's like if things are sort of stuck in the same and the same and the same and the same and the same, if there's a crisis that at least there's enough energy created in those

moments to create something new, I would hope, or to be redirected into ways. that create something new. And so that is sort of my hope. I just don't know what that looks like. Yeah. And I think this gets us back to where we kind of started that assuming that there is a crisis on the horizon and assuming that there is a critical mass of people that can kind of clock on to what's going down. And I think it's easier to see certainly than it was maybe in 2020, where you did have also leading up to the election, of course, and fueled by the media that they just love to throw gasoline on the flames and get everybody all riled up so that they're glued to their fucking TVs,

24 hours a day. But now the ways in which the issues are crystallizing and sort of the lines that are being drawn, I think especially you could take the Renee Good killing as an example, right? Like Christy Gnome, I was looking at some clips of her appearances on the Sunday shows this morning. It's like, how fucking stupid do you think people are to just lie in their faces and say, you can see from the video that she was trying to kill him with her car. And it's like, motherfucker, even if she was, no reasonable person would perceive that as a legitimate threat to their life.

or serious bodily harm. And like the internal bleeding thing, right? Like, it's a fucking bruise. It's a fucking bruise. They would have said something more specific. It's a fucking bruise. It, like, it's so insane and it's so transparent that I think maybe it's the moment to enter the void into this, you know, absence of any leadership on the left.

Certainly, like, AOC and the squad. or whatever, they're not filling the void. She's definitely eyes on the prize. I want to run against J.D. Vance for president. And it's like, motherfucker, chill out. Like, this is not a competition to grab the brass ring. You've got to think in terms of decades. You've got to think in terms of reconfiguring the entirety of this society at the scale that

the right wing is thinking about reconfiguring this society. and the norms and, you know, sort of top to bottom. And, you know, you have a pretty popular podcast and platform. And I wonder, you know, what's it like to kind of sit in that space, in that seat, in the media landscape and look upon everybody kind of checking their sides and seeing who's going to make the move? Well, it's interesting. You know, it's throughout my sort of time on the left, I have recognized that my skills

don't necessarily lie in leadership, but in sort of being a, I don't know what, like a, somebody who can follow orders fairly well, right? And so like, you know, or who can like get something done reliably, but not necessarily. say like, I don't know if I have leadership potential. I'm not, which is that's neither here nor there. What I'm, what I'm getting out with that is, it's interesting that, sorry, my God, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, pipe, wrong hole. Wrong hole. No, it went down the right hole, wrong pipe. Wrong sphincter. Wrong sphincter, yes.

You know, what's interesting, and the reason I said all that, impossibly I should have said that after this, but whatever, is that I think sort of maybe not uniquely, but more acutely than at other points in recent history, people sort of mistake maybe media popularity for political acumen and leadership. And you see this on the right as well. This is something that is, I think, just like society.

mighty wide. And on the left, you know, I'm speaking like of the like even left of center or like liberal, right? Like, I think that that when you see like the pods of America people are almost seen as like these like real leaders on the left, uh, even though I've, I've only listened to a few episodes. I'm not really sure where people are getting at that, but they can talk well. Insufferable fucks, man. I know. They've donned that that mantle for themselves, I think. I know. large, but they make millions of dollars with that empire. Dude, they have like 20 shows on that network.

It's great. And people listen to some of them, too. But it's interesting because the skills that necessarily are present in broadcasting or that to make a good broadcaster are not necessarily the same ones that you would look for in a political leader. But I think we're so bereft of political leadership that anybody who has any kind of public skill at anything is sort of seen as a savior. And so you see this with like Tucker and people really wanting Tucker to run. I mean, this goes back to Reagan, right? You know, I mean, not that Reagan did have

some actual organizing chops as seen his deployment in the Hollywood unions. But like for myself, it's been interesting because I've, I sort of, I get these DMs from people all the time. They're like, what should I do? And I'm like, I don't know, man. If I knew I would be doing it. like and and it sucks because I feel like I understand that urge for someone to just be like do this and like we will have a revolution or do this and at least like you'll help your neighbors out or something or do this and we'll get here and here and here and here. But like I, you know, I simply, I don't, I mean, nobody knows and that's that's one of the big issues. And so it's weird because the show has this sort of this platform, although we don't, I don't

know why. I guess I kind of know why. We don't talk to politicians in the show, which is, thank God. Because we're not, we almost talk to Rokana. And, and Foméca, I was like, I think we should talk to Rokana. Liz said no. But then I was, she was completely right because Rokana goes on every fucking podcast. I was just like, it would have been kind of interesting and talked to Epstein stuff, but it doesn't fucking matter. I don't think it would have been, I mean, you can just watch them on 10 billion other podcasts. You know, I'm sure he covers it all there. But it's interesting because now there is this sort of like real push from Democrats to sort of enter the,

they're trying to do the Joe Rogan thing. Yeah. I think they've given up on finding a Joe Rogan of the left. But they're definitely trying to go on like podcasts and even podcasts that are sort of like not necessarily totally friendly to them or whatever. I will say we've gotten zero requests except for Rogana. But it is like, you know, you see, you saw. people like blaming Chapo Trap House for Trump winning the second time. And I mean, I think that's a

fairly ridiculous thing to think. But it's like it's, it's, it's, um, make Kamala Harris be the candidate. Like, I'm exactly. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, the engines of politics now. And the problem is, and obviously I'm not like talking about sort of our sphere of broadcasting. These things are much bigger. But they're right in a way because if you look at Trump's cabinet, a lot of podcasters in there. You know, a lot of podcasts.

Or TV guys. Like Heg Seth is a TV guy. Or TV guys. Exactly. And precisely. And so it's like I kind of almost undercutting my own argument. here, which I don't even sure what my argument is. I just, you know, we have this platform.

I try to tell people without beating them over the head with it because I think that has the opposite effect, what I believe. And without telling them what to believe. But, you know, that's sort of how I've learned how to convince people of things and or at least how to get my opinion across in a way that's more convincing than it might otherwise be. And I think it's been pretty okay. But it's, again, it's like, it's not a substitute for political organization. And I think the problem is a lot of people treat it like one.

And there's a big temptation that I understand why. But it's just, frankly, not. A podcast can't be a political movement. A podcast is necessarily, like, in our case, three people who are desperately trying to get episodes together twice a week. And there's not like, it's certainly not a mass movement. It's a fucking fandom. And, you know, and it's a fandom maybe with political trappings.

But I think it's, I think it's damaging to people's own psyche when they, when they try to present it as something else. And I think that there's a temptation on some broadcasters parts. I'm not talking about ourselves here, but like in, I think on the right, you see this a lot. Like Nick Fuentes, for example, his actual political organization has been, like he does these America First, like gatherings and shit like that. They've kind of been disasters. but he has been successful in organizing his fan base to do essentially things that like K-pop fans will do, which is like harass people or whatever, you know. Yeah.

I hope that answered the question in some way. No, I mean, I think it's getting to a point here because I think also, you know, you had that article in the baffler. I'll link it in the show notes. I think it's worth a read because it really does, I think from a quasi-self-crit perspective. Yeah. Like I thought it was a pretty square look, a look at what exactly are the pitfalls of kind of

over-emphasizing your circle of podcast parasocial friends or, and I kind of, you know, I do eschew that term of the parasycial relationships, but it does lead to a place where like you said, you get asked what to do and you're in you're in no position to provide like a solid answer on that. Yeah. But I think that the phenomenon you're talking about with respect to an absence of any political leadership like the professionalization of everything, which is kind of part and parcel of this post-war anti-communist move within the institutions, within the universities, especially to kind of silo off him doing a series with my buddy Marcus

from Return of the Repressed podcast about kind of theory and thinking about how even philosophy and what used to be political economy in the day of Marx when you look holistically at systems that are entwined with one another and operating in society

that now, you know, with the rise of the academic disciplines, which I think is echoed in politics too. Like you're only looking at one aspect of something. And the same for activism, right? Like any cause has its cluster of NGOs, which are competing for the same grant money

that's ultimately controlled by the ruling class far enough up the chain anyways and are unable, therefore, to unite in the way that's necessary to bring about an actual radical solution to any of the problems that any of these discrete groups are focused on. Yeah, you know, I'm glad you mentioned the NGO thing because was it always this bad?

This is definitely a big post-war thing, but it's so crazy how many NGOs there are, especially here in New York. I'm like, there was no way there was this many in San Francisco because there's so many here. And I think that like, and that's the true of Europe and basically like the entire Western world, It is interesting that it seems like a lot of, I guess the sort of middle class people who would be like good party members at some other point in history had those whatever urges or moralistic impulses or ethical thoughts channeled into like either donating to or working for or working with or whatever NGOs that you're right like are basically all funded by like four or five different families. and, you know, Rockefellers or Soros or something like that, because they funded so much shit. I mean, the Baffler, for instance, got money from, I think it was Soros. It was like one of those things.

Probably. There's, they have like a small press guy. There was some article about it who funded like just a million different magazines and gave them all like, I don't know, some tens of thousands of dollars. And it was interesting because it was like included compact magazine as well. that's sort of the right wing magazine. And I was like, wow, this really is just like everywhere. Because that's never been like a part of my life. I've never gotten a grant or like been part of an organization that was really trying to get grants or anything like that.

But it is so, I guess, prevalent in so many parts of the left that or like things that are nominally on the left. You know, various like housing NGOs or renters, rights NGOs. you know, they depend basically on donations and the one, the people who can really give the big bucks are rich people. And so I think in like sort of the absolute absence of real class-based organizing and organizations in general, you have these sort of groups that pop up that people who might otherwise be amenable to like either throwing their support behind a class-based organization or whatever, sort of going along with this stuff. because at least, you know, some of these organizations, you can help somebody at some point. Right.

You know what I mean? Like, if you join some, like, homeless NGO, I'm sure there's a ton of graft and fraud and waste or whatever. But at some point, you can maybe give a guy a sandwich. You know what I mean? Right. And I think that it's just, I don't know, it's dismal, right? Like, there's a, there was a portion or there was a period of time in the National Democratic

Movement, the Philippines, where they started a bunch of NGOs. They were sort of professionalizing. There was just like a tactic that they had. And then they had to like actually stop at some point and be like, dude, we have way too many NGOs. People are becoming NGO people. Like we're supposed to be a revolutionary movement. We're not an NGO movement.

Like these are all supposed to serve the revolutionary cause. And I think the reality is in the U.S., like there isn't a revolutionary cause right now. I mean, as much as everyone might want there to be, I want there to be. There isn't one. And I think the question is always just like, how do we get to the point where there at least is something? You know what I mean? I feel like the only.

idea that anybody has is raise awareness because that's kind of the only thing you can mostly do at least in your day-to-day life and that clearly has not been working everyone's so aware of everything right now yeah like awareness has been so raised uh that i don't really know there has to be something else yeah and even awareness can kind of pass the point of decreasing marginal returns on awareness yeah like events on the ground have already advanced past the point where that is any longer like the actionable information. Yeah. And maybe the actual information is actually the understanding of these base forces.

And I think that that's, you know, as much as you bring like an entertainment vibe to the show and the work that you do, I think also, you know, you are a pretty well-read guy and like you do think about these issues pretty seriously. and I almost wonder, like, when you talk about calling balls and strikes and, like, you're the most liberal and the most conservative and all this stuff, you know, at the bottom, the real true Marxist that is the relentless critique of everything existing is actually being objective and is analyzing things objectively, really like the balls and strikes, the strike zone is defined by historical materialism, by the immortal science, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's, well, it's, it's, it's interesting. Like, I, I, I wish I was a lot better at calling balls and strikes because I'm so, for a Marxist, I'm lousy at understanding the economy. And I really have to have it like broken down. That's why you got Liz. Like, that's like, yeah, it's straight out. Or like, yes. And like, if, if she's like not available, I will just, I will go insane trying to figure things out. Um, but I, you know, I figured out SPACs all by myself. And so I felt pretty proud of myself there, even though it's a, fairly straightforward. Special purpose acquisition companies for the uninitiated out there. Yes. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's, I think the real crazy thing right now is the economy is changing so much. It's, the American economy is like so decoupled from productive labor in so many ways that, or like the average, especially like the average, um, economy of like a city or a town

that like it's, it's hard for me to wrap my head around sometimes. I mean, that's, That's, it's interesting. I really do understand why people become third world this, because things are often much clearer in those lights. But like, you know, I think you and I were texting about this. Oh, yeah. But about the issue of like credit and credit cards. Yeah.

And how like. The real opium of the masses. It really, like, it really, really, really is. And it's, it's interesting because like it also calls into question. This in like 401ks and things like this. like what is a proletarian now? Like what is, you know, if you work as an auto worker, for instance, but your 401k is all in like Black Rock, which it probably mostly is.

And Black Rock has a piece of basically like every company. It's like, well, okay, you're almost, it's, it's what are you? You know what I mean? Like, you know, you still have this relationship to the means of production on one hand. But then also you have this other sort of one, on the other hand, through this, you know, obviously dispersed and or, you know, method of ownership. I just genuinely don't know what, what that makes people. I guess labor aristocracy, but it's fairly common to have, I mean, I never had one, I guess, but it's fairly common for like decent working class jobs, good working class jobs to have 401ks or investments or things like that. And so I don't know.

I mean, it just makes things so confusing, but like, whereas somewhere maybe in like the third world, somebody works for $4 a day, that's it. Right. You know, you go home when you're thinking the Huffle. It's very black and white. But the reality is, is I think there's this temptation to be like, it better happen on the third world. It better happen to the third world. So you actually don't have to do anything in the first world because you just wait for, you know, the Jay DePond to happen and everybody would come invade and, you know, you'll turn into a, you know, you'll be a commissar or something. Right.

Yeah. Chairman she please nuke Washington, D.C. And exactly. But my view is that like, you know, if you just have political thoughts, that doesn't mean anything. If I'm standing on the subway and I am the most radical communist who's ever lived and I know all of the right things and I have all the right opinions on everything. But I don't do anything with that. I just like post on the internet or something, you know, go to work and like maybe I'm annoying to my coworkers. Maybe have a t-shirt that has like a pun on it or something.

And then next to me is like, you know, Joe conservative who, you know, loves MAGA shorts and reels and things like that and, you know, posts on the internet all the time about how the storm is coming, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, like what is the actual difference between us? There is none. Well, the one difference, maybe the one difference is that for Joe conservative, someday Ginny Thomas and Donald Trump are going to say, all right, patriots or General Flynn, get in the streets and we're all going to go to the capital now or whatever the fuck. You're actually completely right. I'm fucking wrong there. The difference is that he is going to have at least something that he believes will come true and he might be able to help make it true, whereas you don't. You know what I mean? And so, and you can have this fatalistic thing about always being right, but he gets to go storm

the Capitol. Right. Right. Exactly. And so then it's like, well, storming the Capitol, that it was arguably. useful in the sense of all those guys got pardoned. It gives a certain legitimacy to illegal activity if you're operating for these right wingers that is like where we go one, we go all, and we'll have your back if you get

locked up in DC jail for, you know, taking a podium or whatever. Which doesn't mean, and I think you also get on the left some people that are like, okay, well, what we need to do is mirror that. and, you know, rebrand the SLA and do illegal activity. Again, listener, like all of what we're talking about is already there in Lukash, legality and illegality. Yes. He talks about this very problem of you can't just do illegal shit for this because it's

illegal and therefore somehow challenges the legitimacy of the state. Like, there may be room for illegal activity under-server. certain circumstances, but you've got to think it through first. And certainly, like, there's no precedent on the left that gives, like, the poster, right, to use your example, that's sitting at home, any belief that, oh, if I go and show up, like, I'll get pardoned by President AOC. Yeah, certainly not. Especially because that left flank, they are, as Lukash would call them, opportunists that hide behind the institution of the state and the facade of legality for all their shit. And they'll just throw you right overboard as, you know, extremists or terrorists or

whatever. But history, on the other hand, history does have the capacity to absolve action when it's taken in the interest of liberation, right? Yes. I think though, one thing I grapple with, because I always see people say this, I hate when people talk big online. You know, everyone's probably guilty of them. I'm probably guilty of at some points myself. But I hate when people are like, I'll fucking shoot you one day or whatever. Like, are you going to be up against the wall someday? Well, probably not. You know what I mean? And then you just told somebody you're going to shoot them and you didn't shoot them. So you kind of look like a pussy. I think the thing is, is like, is there something that, and I've said this a million times, but I really do believe this.

It's like, is there anything out there right now worth dying or sacrificing yourself in some way for any concrete thing? And the answer is basically not. You know what I mean? And to explain that a little bit, obviously there are like worthy causes out there or worthy ideas or ideals worth dying for in some sort of role. romantic kind of way. But is there something where like your death, and again, I'm being hyperbolic here because we're sort of speaking in the most extreme example. But like your death or like a major

sacrifice will actually advance the cause that you believe in. And the answer, I think that most people have kind of come to whether they will admit it or not is that there's not, right? Whereas in like the 30s, if you went out to, you know, you had your little, you know, you went out and like organized a farm workers in the Central Valley or whatever. There's that Steinbeck book about it, which actually quite like the enduvious battle. I think it's about the, I don't know. Maybe it's about the Communist Party. It's kind of ambivalent or unclear, rather, what it's about IW or CPSA.

But like, you know, you go out and you sort of face down the gun thugs and maybe you get shot and something, you know, but you're fighting for something that has this movement behind a mass movement, whether illegal or legal. That does not exist right now. You know, it's something that I think it's just everybody knows. I think most people even admit. But what happened, what the problem is is like, how do we make something worth sacrificing something for? You know? Last night, actually, I went and saw Wallace Sean perform the fever, which I don't know if you've read that, but it's, I've seen it actually before. Although it was a one-man show.

It was played by the short lady from Mystic Pizza. But it's really good. It's about this sort of like bourgeois guy who's got food poisoning, who's kind of grappling with his place in society and these political beliefs, Marxism, that he's been exposed to. And it's sort of somewhat based on Walshant's own experience, I think, believe in Central America. And, you know, it's interesting because he talks about it. He's like, well, if you see a beggar on the street and you, you know, part of you was like,

well, I should give her some money. And then there's this voice in you that's like, well, I should give her all my money. And he says, and it's sort of in this way that's kind of playing to the, I don't know what, sensibilities of the bourgeois audience that he originally performed this for. He's like, that voice is poison. Like, you should never do that. Because then at that, at certain point, you actually have to grapple with, like, well, well, what else am I, like, how much can I sacrifice?

Should I sacrifice everything? Should I sacrifice just a little bit? Should I sacrifice nothing? And I think that like that's actually just a form of the the problem that we're all faced with. And I think the reality is is that we don't have, you can find a beggar and give the beggar all your money. Will that change society? And the answer is obviously no. It's always been no.

You might change that person's life. You'd probably change their life for the better. But we need we need to sort of figure out something that is worth sacrificing something for. And again, I'm not like a person who's like you should die for communism or whatever. If there was a communism that you could die for, I would say, by all means, if that's what you have to do, do it. Although don't set out with that goal ever. But we have to build a communism worth dying for. And the thing is, it takes a step after step after step.

And I just don't know what the fucking road we're supposed to be stepping down is. And I'm truly trying to figure that out. Yeah. Well, you know, as you were saying that, I was thinking, you know, famously you did go take up arms, right? So how does that experience inform where you're at now and what you're thinking about with respect to, you know, sacrificing your life? Because I presume that you could have been killed, right? Yeah. Well, it's, it's, it's funny. It's a funny day to be talking about this because today, I don't know what this is coming out, but today, I don't know what this is coming out, but today. day the SDF signed an agreement with Shara after a series of skirmishes in Aleppo, which is, it's been so crazy reading the news of the Syrian Arab army once again attacking a part of Aleppo, except now, obviously, quite a different composition of the army, the central government's army there. But as of now, I mean, as of like a couple of hours ago, I believe there was a ceasefire

and the dissolving of the SDF, which has been kind of a long time coming. You know, I sort of, it's interesting, I have a lot of, which I've talked about in the show before too, but like I have a lot of mixed feelings about what happened there. And not necessarily what happened there, but like what sort of the politics around it. You know, it's, it's during the period that I was there, US came in more. And I saw the SDF, well, I read the SDF. I didn't see this actually go down. sort of make these deals with them.

Deals which could be justified in some ways as like a measure of survival or whatever, trying to protect the people, but you would otherwise be annihilated by ISIS. How are you can, there's various ways to justify it, I suppose. But signed what was clearly not going to be, uh,

what was clearly going to be rather a devil's bargain. And, uh, and it didn't work out for them. And that was pretty apparent from the get go, uh, or not from the get go, but from,

well, It was clear from the get-go that that would happen and then became apparent through events that occurred shortly after. And once they went to Derazore in like 2018, I think, I was like, it's over. You guys are fucked because Derazore is not. That's like, it's just going to be bad. And I've, you know, I've long said that that was the case that Derazore would be there on doing. And I still believe that Derizor was there on doing. And it was there on doing because I believe they entered into agreement with the U.S. to go take Derisor and hold Derrador.

or and that really just, I think, undid their whole project. You know, but it's, I, you know, I was possibly somewhat more naive than I am now. I don't know if naive is the right word. But, but, but I don't know. I was, I was maybe a little less cynical in some ways. And that area of the world has a way of making people cynical. I've tried to, tried to stay away from some of the citizens. I see people have, everybody's making deals on every side there about everything, which I think

if you're really partisan, maybe you ignore, but is just a genuine fact. And every single which direction a deal has been made, a deal has been made. Believe me, and it's all been, it's all out there. And, but I, but I, I, I, I, I, I, I was spent time around people who had been guerrillas for a long time, who had been fighting mostly the Turkish government for a long time. And I, you know, I am really grateful for that experience, for being able to meet people who were real revolutionaries and had sacrificed their entire life. And I'm talking about people who have been in the Turkish Maoist movement for quite a long time. People have been in the Kurdish movement for quite a long time. And, you know, I'm talking about like 60-year-old guys here. And I learned a lot from them. And one of the things that I learned is that, like, at a certain point, you just have to be completely, holistically, totally dedicated in a way that,

I'm incapable of being, I think, at least right now. And then I think that as a way of circumstances, most people in the West or most people who are not in an environment like that, where there is an insurgency or a guerrilla movement, can even really conceive of being. So like, maybe I'm not incapable of it, but like there's no way for me to do it. You know what I mean? Unless I become a bandit. And that was, you know, it was really interesting to learn that.

You know, it's, it's, uh, you know, in this. In the years since, I've met a lot of revolutionaries from various parts of the world who've done various things, some great things, some small things. And that is like a through line from that. It's a totality of belief. And it's a real clear-headedness. And there is a path you can go down that is like a sort of nihilistic path where you just sort of become wrapped up in this war that becomes sort of divorce from what you're

fighting about. I think that as things became more complicated in Syria, I don't know what the fuck that the leadership of the PKK were thinking out there, because they certainly got themselves way off track in many ways. But, you know, I've met people from a lot of different parts of the world who have been active in various movements. And that's one thing that's held true, is that you just have to really believe and really act on that belief in a way without hesitation. and, you know, for myself, I don't know if I was ready to die when I went out there, but it was, it felt fairly clean to me, right? Like, we were fighting ISIS.

Actually, we originally were going to go fight Alshara's bunch. We were going to go fight HTS, and we, in fact, mobilized to go do that. We're going to go past Mambige and fight them. And then we got redirected down south, or the operation became a southerly one. And, and I felt, and this is, of no importance to the world, but for me, like it was, I guess, important. I realized that like, okay, I can do things that I did not think that I was previously

capable of doing. And that's a lesson that stayed with me. Not that that lesson necessarily has helped the world or anything like that. But it's one of those things where like I couldn't have possibly, I guess, explained it to myself before I did it. And now it's, it makes sense. And, you know, there is a, there's a language that I can, I guess, understand when people talk about this kind of stuff.

But war and people who sort of lionized war to me, I really, I think it's, you know, I see a lot of people, I guess of all political stripes, there's a blood 30-thorityness that I don't like because blood sucks. Yeah. Fucking sucks. And I can deal with it, I guess, by being kind of jokey or funny about it, but it really does suck. It's not good. It makes a lot of bad things can happen. But I don't know. if this answer is too all over the place because I sort of combined talking about what's

happened in Syria right now, which is a, I got to tell you, a outcome that nobody I think could have ever guessed, which is there is a strong central government that is now led by the technocratic jihadist leader of HTS, formerly of ISIS, that is trying to do this sort of like liberal one-party state kind of strongman, warlord, fief, dumb shit throughout the country. And I guess we'll see. You know, it's the Syrian Civil War drives a lot of people crazy. And which I understand why.

Certainly a complex event. But I think it just shows. I mean, I've learned lessons. And one of the lessons, which, I mean, you don't really need to learn it there. And I guess I didn't learn it there. I knew this beforehand. But like the PKK having this alliance or the, Alliance of Convenience or whatever, however people want to gussied up with the U.S.

It, you know, it spelled their downfall because it diverted them for the course. You know what I mean? It's and and it, a lot of things diverted to them for their course, including just the Syrian Civil War in general. It took this Turkish revolutionary organization or this revolutionary organization, rather in Turkey and could have had them made this fight, them fight this sort of traditional land war in Syria against ISIS in order to protect people. you know, which they really did do, uh, there. It just, you know, it's, it's a complicated world. And I think it, it also was a question of leadership. And I think that leadership for them is really unclear because, uh, uh, there's, there's just the communication and being all over this giant geographic area. It was really difficult, uh, I think for them. And, and I, I don't know,

I have no insight into how their leadership structures operate at the eye levels. Uh, but it, it is very confusing from afar. Yeah. I mean, I think that does at least point to the toxicity of the imperialist brand on the global stage as well. Yeah. Albeit, you know, the rise of Alshara is thanks in large part to alignment with the imperialists in the U.S. and Israel to get him to where he's at and to keep him there for as long as that lasts, you know, as long as he's useful, I guess. And I'm sure he knows that the minute that he's not, there's plenty of people lined up to take his place. I don't think he'll die in bed at 85, no. Yeah.

Well, he might die in bed, but I don't think he'll die in bed peacefully at 85. Yeah. Yeah. But this, I mean, it gets to the global nature of the struggle, too, which I think now that we see the U.S. making moves on, you know, obviously Venezuela, who knows, what's going on there, whether or not there's deals with the devil being cut, or whether the U.S. is just a paper tiger and trying to save face somehow. Yeah. Unclear.

And then the Greenland move, which is really interesting. What the fuck? The absolutely neutered Nazi EU leadership is going to do about it, if anything. But if they are, like this is where, you know, you travel in other countries and the political, like the level of political analysis of just your average person on the street is leaps and bounds more sophisticated in a lot of ways than the average Americans, partly because we're kind of conditioned to think of politics as being cringe or, you know, irrelevant or useless, which it is to the extent that both of the

parties are bourgeois parties with no actual stake, like, for the vast majority of the people. Like, the amount to which it matters in the life of your average person, which party is in power, is, you know, anywhere from negligible to somewhat considerable. But yeah. Do you guys have a lot of international listeners? And how can that inform sort of as we. think through what to create because it is a time for creation and creative thinking, I think, for this next phase in history.

You know, I think we do have a lot of international listeners. Obviously, we're an English language show, although I want to do it in Chinese, but I don't know how to do that without doing it in AI, although I'm going to be honest, if I just did AI, which I'm not going to do, just to be clear on that. I just thought this out. I'm like, if I just did run our show through AI into making it, both of us Chinese, and then put it out in China, I'm like, I wonder how well it would do. Or just put it out in China and English, so people of practice English.

I think about this sometimes. But, you know, we have a good amount of internationalists. And I'm not really interested in international stuff. That's like one thing that I guess I've been very interested in since I was a kid. and I actually really wish I could kind of go more places and report for more places. I finally I actually talked to a guy in green. I interviewed a guy in Greenland, not for the show. Well, kind of for the show, but not on air the other day for a while.

And I might try to go out there later this year and try to see what's going on because there's been a lot of weird shit with like Trump's or like non-governmental Trump-al people going out there and making mischief. And he sort of hinted at that. told me about that actually pretty directly. And so I really want to see what that's like firsthand. But we try to cover like a range of international stuff. Obviously like I think a lot of people really kind of were awoke. There was a new generation, I guess, of people who were awakened to international issues with the war on Gaza and the genocide there. And that, I think was eye opening for a lot of

people. The problem is, I think, some of the analysis, and I'm not talking about, like, the analysis, like, your average personal left. I'm talking about, like, kind of mainstream analysis you saw. Really, it's interesting, like, was crazy, I guess you could say. It became, like, super Zionist for the mainstream media, and then right-wing mainstream media, either super Zionist or, like, really kind of, like, old school 1800s anti-Semitic. Yeah. And, and, you know, I think it was good that, I think, the left actually really stepped up and there was a lot of fairly decent stuff I saw from what are various outlets, but also just people in general. I think that was, it was,

it was something that the left was both morally correct and I think almost tactically correct too in opposing it from day one. And there was surprisingly little for how much I would have actually expected sort of hand wringing. There was quite a lot of hand wringing, but there was less than I thought there would have been. Which was interesting. I think it was a break. I think a lot of people just thought about Israel for the first time. And if you think about Israel for more than two seconds, we realize what a horrible

fucking place it is. And well, it's awesome, probably if you're a lot of awesome. I think actually that kind of broke as fuck, like the regular person there. But it's, you know, it's good if you're Israeli. It's bad if you're Palestinian. And there's quite a few Palestinians within the borders of Israel. Israel and that are controlled, actually pretty much all of Palestine is controlled in some way militarily by Israel, whether it's directly through occupation or the fact that Israel can

just roll up and shoot you, even if they're not directly occupying the area you're in. Or they can get their cronies and the PA police to do it for them. But we try to cover a range of international stuff. You know, I went to the Philippines a few years ago and did some reporting from there. still pretty involved in that stuff. And, you know, I was actually, I was going to go to Cuba next week, actually, but I'm no longer going to because I have to do something else. But hoping to get interviews with some people from there because I think things are looking not so great there. The U.S. is really squeezing them.

But it's really important to cover that kind of shit, I think. And to like cover it from an angle that is like that people, the regular person can understand. and doesn't like, you know, because a lot of the times, if you're just coming to like, and I'm speaking very generally here, like left-wing politics from, you know, either an apolitical angle or like vaguely centrist or right-wing or liberal, there's probably a lot of stuff that would confuse people. I mean, people think that like China, for instance, is like a totalitarian country that is going to take over the U.S. via, I don't know what, agents of influence.

There's various things and sort of birchrous stuff on the right. Eric Swalwell's liaison. Fang Fang Fang. Fang. Which apparently, I just read that he didn't even have sex. I don't believe that. I think he did. But I'm like, if you didn't have to hook up with Fang Fang, Eric Swallow, then what was the

fucking point? But he claims he never cheated on his wife. And I believe that was when he was married to his wife. So I don't know. But we try to cover a lot of international stuff. And it's just, I don't know. It is important. And I think that like there is a.

a lot we can learn just in the U.S. from struggles elsewhere. And we also just try to cover Europe, too, because Europe is so fucked up right now. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, in some ways, they're actually ahead of the curve in terms of the swing to the far right

with these Nazi parties popping off every which where. Yeah, and these sort of these like social democratic parties that do this classic Euro thing of when the far right parties get too popular, the Christian Democrats and the struggles of Democrats will just adopt a couple of their policies, usually around immigration to try to stem the tide.

And I think we see that happening everywhere. It's just, it's crazy, though, man, because, like, really, if you're trying to find a place that's, like, inspiring or whatever, or a good example for, like, for the aspiring militant in the U.S., it's difficult to find right now. It's really difficult to find.

And I think that it's actually a unique thing in modern history because throughout the, you know, the 1800s, there was a lot of failed revolutions. But throughout the 20th century, I mean, there was these sort of socialist polls and the lack of one now. China's economy, not with, you know, not not really what I'm talking about here, but a political poll. Yeah. You know, is that that funds revolutions or. or sends advisors that if you take over your country and, you know, install a communist government, we'll send advisors, we'll send money, we'll send whatever material. That just does not exist right now.

Right. Does not exist at all. I mean, it's people sort of, I guess, pretend sometimes that China does that. It's just they just don't. They don't. I mean, regardless of whether you view on them, they just do not do that. As the Palestinians. Yeah, as the Palestinians.

But also, like, they have, like, conferences where they invite, like, right-wing parties. from around the world. I'm not talking about like, they're not inviting necessarily like the National Front or whatever from France, but like they invite like center right and sometimes far right parties around and like have these sort of technocratic meetings and like, you know,

like conferences and governance. You know, it's, it's, they're fairly, you know, maybe that is what modern communism looks like, just depoliticized. I don't know. But it's, it's tough. And I think that that lack of a poll is just something that no, previous analysis has really had to deal with. Because even when Lenin's talking in, you know, like

1910, 1911, later in the teens in the 20s, you know, obviously there wasn't a socialist country out there, but in many countries, there were huge revolutionary movements, right? Like, it seemed that they were on the precipice of something. And so there wasn't necessarily like a country, a poll based in a state, but there was a poll in class that actually existed around the world, but especially in Europe. And we just do not have that. We just, we don't have that. And so we have to just figure out a way around that. We have to figure our way through that, rather, not around that, through that. And I don't know. I hope someone's got some ideas. And I felt, I feel like this, I feel like this, I hope someone has ideas. I hope someone

can figure it out. But that is really what everyone hopes, whether people admit it or not. I just, I'm willing to admit that I don't have it figured out. I'm trying to figure it out. I think that this is a good place to start to wind down the discussion with this, because, you know, at the same time, to go back to Lukash and kind of where we started things out, you know, he talks about a transition from being against capitalism to being for the proletariat. And I think, you know, as you were saying, we were texting about credit and about all these different structural impediments to actually identifying a proletariat. Like, and, you know, as you're saying, we were texting about credit and about all these different structural impediments to actually identifying a proletariat. Like, and, you know, you know, Even, you know, think about the most proletarianized forms of labor, like, let's say, household domestic work and stuff like that, that are like people that are doing landscaping on golf courses and shit, like, they're actually not producing value in the same way that the industrial proletariat in Marxist thought was producing surplus value for exploitation. Like, they're actually contributing in some ways to what, you know,

know, when I came on Trouinan, we talked about DeBoard a lot. Yeah. And the spectacle, I mean, that is all kind of part of inflating this integrated spectacle that functions precisely to hoover up any incipient oppositional forces to its own predominance and deploy them like against any authentic actual oppositional revolutionary force. and I've got to ask you this, you know, having been the subject of accusations of compatible leftism that your project is artificially inflated as a wing of this spectacular order. I imagine that must be alienating.

What's that like? Or do you feel like you have something to prove or how does that impact how you go about what you're doing? Well, it's funny because that's probably right in some way, right? I mean, I don't know, artificially inflated. But I don't think that we are, I think it's difficult to escape the hand of the spectacle. For sure. Especially when you're creating something like a media product, right? But, you know, it's funny because sometimes people have like actual accusations like the fucking, like when we, GQ wrote about us, right?

And then I saw like these people And the New York Times And New York Times yeah well a freelancer But but But it was funny because I saw But we actually got like you know DMs from people or whatever being like what the fuck is this sellout shit I gotta tell you

It's funny like I guarantee that The average episode or whatever of True and on We probably have more listens than like the average article in GQ you know For sure And I doubt that that many people outside of if our actual existing fan base probably even saw that article. The gentleman is a dying breed.

The gentleman is a dying breed. And certainly, it's quarterly, it's a bit, it's a bit generous to him. I feel like the gentleman perhaps even appears maybe once a year at this point. You know, it's funny because it's, that's like, that's like, I think really the first mainstream or whatever attention that we've gotten. But it also also speaks to, I don't think that the ruling class views communists as a threat. I think that they just don't. I think that many people would like to,

and certainly there's individual communists that they might view as a threat, but not because they're communists, necessarily, but because maybe that they have some capacity for destruction or something. And I wish that was not the case. I mean, no, let me rephrase that. I wish that communists were able to pose such a threat

that the mainstream would never dream of putting a communist, a communist anywhere near their, their newspapers or whatever. But the fact is that's not true. They can kind of treat any communist as a sort of media curiosity. In fact, oftentimes when you see anybody with communist beliefs written about it is as a sort of like an anachronistic sort of way or, you know, look at this blue-haired freak or something like that. You know, they don't have to take it very seriously because, you know, communists often

have trouble taking themselves very seriously. And there's not much, at this point, not much materially to take that seriously because there's no organized party. There's no organized class formations. There's no, there's no revolutionary unions or unions led that are sort of outside of the acceptable bounds of workplace struggle. But for us, it's weird because the show got much more popular last year, I think, because Trump got elected. which is funny because I guess we talk about Trump a lot, but like, you know, I guess we talked about Biden a lot too, you know, it's, I don't know. I mean, the Epstein stuff is certainly back in a major way. That's, yes, for sure.

I think that's a big part of it, which is so, it's so crazy how that like kind of came as coming, came coming full circle. Yeah. But it was predictable. I guess if you actually scratched past the surface back in 2019 or whenever you guys. guys got started. Like, you could see, oh, this is a big fucking deal. This is, goes to the heart of the entire political and economic establishment, cultural establishment in the U.S. But it really felt like with the Galane trial, they were like, okay, we put this to bed. You know what I mean? Like, you heard nothing more about it from the government. Like nothing.

It was sort of treated as just like this really fringe thing. And then it kind of came roaring back. It's, it's, it's, it's, I actually would not have predicted it. It's, it's, it's, it's, Maybe that's my own predictive capabilities that are lacking. But it's really interesting. And also, God, I really sometimes wish we were not, our name was not a pun on Q&ON, but I guess it still makes sense. So, you know, cross our fingers there. But, you know, it's funny. I think about when people, you know, what would be the modern equivalent to the compatible left?

And I'm talking about the extreme, extreme left, like the far left, right? like maybe outside of the regular bounds of like progressive Dems or whatever. And I'm not really sure what would be incompatible now. Like I'm not sure if like a revolutionary communist is incompatible. You know, if I go around telling everybody that we should shoot the bourgeoisie and, you know, and burn their houses down and loot their possessions and reconstitute the society as one that is, you know, run for and buy the working class, the ruling class doesn't give a shit. Right.

You know what I mean? Okay. Say it all you want. You know, you'll probably just freak your family out at Thanksgiving. You know, it's, it's, I don't know if there is such a thing as an incompatible left. I think it's people's duties to make one. And that doesn't mean that like, you know, there's compatible and compatible, right? Like, I try not to make any concessions to the ruling class ideology.

I'm sure that I do in some ways. But, you know, and mercifully, we have zero. advertising or editorial. Like we don't interact with anybody that we don't want to, you know, like there's no management. There's nothing like that. So like nobody, we can say whatever the fuck we want, which is great. Well, I guess Patreon at some point could step in, but I don't think that they listen to the episodes.

So I hope they don't listen to the episodes. But it's something that's worth reckoning with because I have, again, I've met a lot of different people in my time on the left. And I've met people who are real like revolutionary, revolutionary, revolutionary, like, lefter than now, Mr. I take the most extreme things. You know, Stalin, Stalin should have killed 10 million more or whatever. And okay, you know, it's like, but like, but what does that mean going forward? Like, what does that mean for the future? Or like, or is this just like, are we just sort of playing like dress up with the past, you know?

The past is something we're supposed to learn lessons from, not particularly. that we're a part of. And we want to be part of a historical continuity, and we are in some way, whether we want to or not, but we want to be part of a revolutionary continuity or revolutionary history and struggle. The thing is, we are not. And it's, we need to become that. But, but it's, and I see, you know, I see people pretend like the lionization for example of the Black Panthers, right? Black Panthers are awesome. They're great. I mean, there's some criticisms be made of, of certain you know, ideological positions that they took, I think especially with regards to the Lumpin Proletariat.

But the Black Panther's not around right now. And so you'll see like, in instance, there's been like viral videos. Well, there's the like the rebranded ones now that are prowling out in the streets. Exactly. I know. But I've met, there's been new Black Panthers. At least I used to get the newspaper from the West Oakland Bar. Like new, but there's been various groups, but there's been these viral videos of the guys.

who are, say they're the Black Panthers, I don't know, like, around. And people are like, oh, my God, the Black Panthers are back. The Black Panthers aren't back. We're in 2026. Like, the future, whatever version of the Black Panthers that would be in the future, which itself is like a version of like proletarian community self-defense that has existed since proletarians have existed, we'll take on a different form. We'll look different.

It won't just be like draped in the exact same clothes as the past. Where was it Atlanta in 2020 that they hired those actual actors? Yeah, those are actors, right? Cosplay as Black Panthers. And now those photos are making the rounds on social media. I saw it. Under the banner of Make Racists Afraid again. And it's a picture of somebody holding what's probably a fake gun, a prop gun.

No. Like in front of a public building. It's a 22 LR. It's a 22 LR-A-R-15. So it's like a $200 gun. It's basically a prop gun. It's crazy. I will say what is interesting right now,

and we touch on this for a brief, you touching this briefly earlier, what feels different from 2020 right now, I was not an optimistic 2020 guy. There was a lot of people who were making a lot of big claims about what was happening during the summer of 2020. I don't, I, I was a little more skeptical.

But right now, I don't think that there's something crazy that's going to happen, but there is a real defiance towards the federal government that was not present. in 2020. Yeah, especially towards the Democrats. Yes. You know, in equal measure to the defiance towards the Republicans, which, you know,

you always kind of have the MSNBC camp. Yeah. That's riled up by putting on the TV. And then you have what's going on now, which is I don't listen to her podcast or whatever, but that woman Jennifer Welch. Oh, yeah. She's huge now. And she's, like, very, like, ah, right?

Yeah. Like, I feel like if, we. when she breaks ranks with the Democrats, like that it will be a marker of a watershed moment when, you know, finally they disappoint her enough to, to, because she actually does have somewhat confrontational interactions with some politicians. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. She, uh, her also, she, I think she broke with them on gauze or something. I don't know. Was she like a, I was about to send the, I think, kind of sex is there. And I retracted. But was she like a reality of show personality before? I have no idea. Because like, where did she come from?

I don't know anything about her. Me either. Again, the theoretical understanding of the spectacle itself turns us all a little too paranoid to be like, well, where did she come from? I don't know who this lady is. Like, all of a sudden, she's all over my feet. And like, yeah, it probably is manipulated in some way. But then it's like, where do you go from there?

You know, what's the substance? What's the content of what the person is putting? out. Yeah. And is that something you can dig or is that something that sucks? Well, yeah, I think so much of it. I mean, dude, Twitter especially, but I guess all of them like, what perfect vehicles for turning politics into pure spectacle, you know? Oh my God, dude. It's just like it's fucking MK altering yourself with like horrible images over and over and over and over and over on Instagram. I mean, the shit that I see on there, horrific. And then on. On Twitter, you know, you have this like anonymous persona that you kind of create for most,

for the most part. And then you sort of inhabit this character who can take all these positions and sort of give this position, like this, uh, this view of you that like doesn't exist or whatever. You know, it, it is, uh, it's crazy. You know what I mean? Like it is, it is really, it's also like there is a huge paranoia. Like you see people talk like, like there'll be videos of people at protests and everyone like this is a Fed, this is a Fed.

I don't know if those things are true or not. I have no idea. But there is like a paranoia that builds around these things. And like, but there's also a sense of unreality. So I think that's just the stakes are so low that you can kind of say anything to anyone. And it's like, it doesn't really matter. It's just online. But now that really the thin if ever to ever existed barrier between online and real life has

totally broken down, it just is like, I don't know. It's a recipe for madness, I think. You know, it's, I, I, I go through periods of using Twitter more than others. I've been using true social because I'm trying to write something about it. And so I'm trying to understand the ecosystem there. But I really, probably less Nazis than on Twitter. Yes. I actually literally, yes.

I, it, everyone there, I think is just schizophrenic. I don't think that they're really, but with Trump is sort of a thing that they're fascinated by, rather than like a, or like obsessed with rather than a real politics. but Twitter, I realized I was waking up and I was looking at this app in the morning. I'm like, all I do is just look at a website that makes me angry when I wake up. Why am I doing this? Like, this isn't good for me. And so you got, there's a certain amount of cycles that one has to kind of like get themselves

out of in order to even like really be able to think about politics without side of this frame of like Twitter shit that might like kind of infect that, you know? And like these communities that form that aren't real communities because you don't know anybody and it's just like you know you see these like big left wing twitter accounts say all kinds of crazy shit and it's like well why isn't even listening to this person like who is this person we don't know this person you know like and then that which is a fair question but it's like it just becomes this paranoid cycle that you it's it's really hard to get out of um and you know it makes sense to be paranoid sometimes it makes sense to not be paranoid sometimes and so it's

but it's really difficult to delineate between the two things uh or between when and so you know it's just, I think it just drives a lot of people nuts. I do not think that mankind was meant to communicate, like the way that we communicate now. Oh, yeah. No, for sure. I mean, as, as you were talking before about just like the need to break out of this ossified attachment to past political formations, you know, the famous Marx quote that we all know in love, right, the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. Yes. He was saying that as a bad thing. It's not like, it's a problem to be solved, not like, oh, here.

Because it's another kind of this irony poisoning of the mind that social media and this reality of existence forces us into. It's like, oh, here I am. Another day in the hell world. Like, living in hell. Like, fuck my life. You know. And it's like, okay, well, fucking let's do something about it.

Yes, act like a fucking man. You know what I mean? Like, don't just be like, oh, that's the thing is I will say, this is one thing I'll ever push back on. As most of the time, I'm like, if people, people will say all kinds of stuff about you online. It's just like, what are you going to do? You know what I mean?

It's just like, it's just another word for I don't like you. And great, you know, if you can't please everybody, you can't. But people often sometimes call me like irony poisoned. I'm not irony poison. I'm not an ironic guy, really. I just am kind of funny. And I think there is a difference there. And sometimes obviously I use ironical humor.

But like I don't like live in an ironic way. I don't approach the world in an ironic way. And but I think that there is this thing where like people get into where they're like, I'm Mr. Ducci, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, what are you talking about? Yeah. No, you aren't. You work as an actuary, you know?

Yeah, the American Communist Party guys like Jackson Hinkle and shit. But like, I mean, I, is he still part? Do they sell uniforms? I don't know. They, they seem to dress alike. And I know they have like fleeces, kind of like, you know, what you might find at a The Coeur Zip. A swag event.

But yeah, like, I think a lot of their like sort of fan base. I mean, that's, I think actually that's a pretty good example of almost what we were talking about earlier. Because I think that guy has is who, I admit, I have not ever watched. anything he's done. So I don't know. But I know he's a live streamer. And they sort of turn that and it's like a collection. I feel like a lot of people at the top of that group are like kind of live streamers or like TikTok people. And it's sort of like they kind of transform their fan bases into an organization. And, you know, I don't know. The problem is, is a lot of that fan base kind of acts like groipers online.

And like will attack people in the same way or like do these things. They sort of like really and talk to people in this really incendiary way in order to, like, get a rise out. It's like basically, they do like kind of this boyper shit. And I don't know. It's just, it's, so much of it is just people acting antisocially, which is like, and now I sound like Jonathan Chate, or I mean, I don't know, Chate is an example,

but like one of those like older guys, but I'm like, I think people, and I'm guilty of this in the past myself, I try not to be so much anymore, but people really act antisocial online. And it's not good because there isn't, Like, how you act online can definitely affect how you act in the real world. For sure. Yeah.

Or in the living world or whatever. And it's just, it's bad. Um, it, you know, it's, it drives you crazy. Yeah. Yeah, it is bad. And I think, you know, something you just said really resonates is like, you cannot create a political formation out of a fandom. Like, however coherent you think your politics are, like the subjective position of

any person or a small group of people, like that was not what the Bolsheviks were. Yes. You know, like that is not what the fucking Cuban revolutionaries were. Like, these were people developing through dialectics, plans and like a point of view on shit.

And recently I've had some outreach from people boosting the DSA as like a potential vehicle. Maybe it is. I don't know. I've never been. to a DSA meeting and what I see about them online, again, online is like not inspiring the most confidence. Yeah. But from the collective perspective of people that do have at least some unified point of view

on where things are at and like how bad things are and what's needed to pull us out of this fucking deep deep pit. Very, very, like you said, you know, it's almost as though the bourgeoisie, like, had a checklist of, okay, let's see, international institutions, UN, okay, we're going to wipe them off of the map and turn them into a fucking imperial vassal.

Two Chinese now. Yeah, yeah. European Union, you know, we're going to have them pass like a big human rights bill and then gut it of any sort of mobilization against the true. violators of human rights, which are, you know, the successors to their colonial depravities in the rest of the world. The legal system is utterly, I mean, I say this as a lawyer, right?

Like, I have no hope whatsoever. You know, you see the constitution and the laws of the United States violated on film every single day. And it's like, are all these people going to get justice? I sure as fuck wouldn't bet on it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a drawing board, and they say the darkest hour comes right before the dawn. So maybe, Brace, you could join me in a call for some creative thinking on this. I'd like to continue the conversation another time and any final thoughts that you have on that point. But I do think that those of us who do approach this from a Marxist position, like, and thanks to, you know, our discussions, off Mike and a lot of the discussions I'm having with Marcus,

like been getting back into a lot of theory in a way I haven't in well over a decade. And if you take that shit at all seriously, like it demands some real dedication to liberation in a way that I think there is a large, large demand for. And maybe it's first just being against what there is on. offer and maybe it's through that that we can actually figure out what to be for. Yeah, I mean, you said that better than I could. It's just, I would love, first of all, I'd love to continue the conversation again, because I really actually enjoy talking about this stuff.

I have a reading group that I talk about it with. I mean, it's once a month, but other than that, it's just like random conversations with friends. But I think one thing that I can't stress enough is that like it's, and this is something that's from the Lukash stuff, it's like, if you have, like ideas about organizing or if you have ideas about stuff, you really have to go see your ideas put into action. And like, you know, if you listen to this right now and you have a lot of political ideas, in some way, find a way that you can, you can see those ideas at least worked out

a little bit, even if it's just like not something you have to completely, you know, dedicate your life to whatever to join a party. But, you know, if you're curious about like labor or the working class or something like, you know, try to actually study that up close if you're not already a member of it. And, you know, if there's like strikes in your area or whatever, try to get involved on a level where you can actually see how organization works, because that's another thing, is organization, you can have all these highfalutin ideas and read about democratic centralism and know, you know, this is the best way to organize a party in this way,

and this way, and this way. It really helps when you actually deal with it firsthand. and can understand how it works on an actual personal level, because that helps you sort of solidify your ideas and see what works and what doesn't work, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I just, you know, it's tough because what we're saying here is that you should be politically involved, but also we're saying we don't know the way politically forward. And so I can understand how that might be a little difficult.

But I think that there's a way to thread that needle, which is just, you know, it's small steps if you're just an individual and we don't have a mass movement yet. And if you're not at a party or whatever. But it's small steps. A step, as long as it's not in a really crazy direction, is a step nonetheless. And it's like, at least you will learn. And if you can use that knowledge in a future, you know, time and place to push a struggle forward, then that's a good thing.

You know, it's still a war. That's how I view it. There still is a class war. The class war didn't, there wasn't a class peace declared in like 1991. It's still a class war. And now it's almost just like individual sort of fighting these sort of small guerrilla actions on their own or secret sympathizers walking around. And so I think viewing it as a war and what you can do as a soldier in that war.

And this isn't sort of, to talk about what earlier, I think a lot of people like want media figures as something to be a general and maybe think that they themselves can't do it if they're just, you know, not a famous person or whatever. But that's just not the case. You know what I mean? Like, not like it's just, it's just, that's not how it worked. Everybody has, has, has the potential to lead in them. Some people are really good at it.

I don't think that I'm one of those people. But everybody has the potential to be a, a worker among workers or a soldier in the, in the great army of labor. And whether you yourself are one or not, you know, the working class, you know, is, is the working class. I'm not a member of the working class. I'm a part of a new class, an amazing class that they're inventing.

But no, I'm a, I don't know what I am. I think that I'm, I call myself petty bourgeois, but I think that I might be a craftsman. A medium-sized craftsman. But there still is just, you know, two real main sides here.

It's the working class. and the owning class. And, you know, there's other classes there, but those got to pick aside. And I hope people pick the right one. That is what is up. Thank you so much. I hope this was coherent at all, man.

I did not sleep a wink last night. Oh, I think that we got out some good nuggets. We had a great discussion. I enjoyed having it with you. I think there is a through line to be here. And I think we left some lines of discussion open for the next time. And, you know, it is a process. We'll see maybe the Insurrection Act will get invoked before we talk next time. And our communications will be even more monitored than they already are. But there's just

one more reason to do this type of shit. I firmly believe that whatever the next step is, like, it's got to be something with a mass appeal, something that you can justify on its own merits, you know, not acting under the cloak and dagger. Yeah. And not watering down the message so that it has appeal to the ruling class or to the spectacle. Because, you know, certainly like as a smaller podcast operation, like we really just, we call it a labor of friendship. we really like move forward because we like doing it together.

Yeah. And I think that that's also, you know, you guys clearly have that element in Trunon. Yeah, I really like working with Liz. It's also just have, I'm, I will say, once I fucking start hating doing it, I'm not going to do it anymore. Even if the podcast is successful because I'll just, it'll be that way lies such misery. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And so as long as you're doing it out of love and out of like passion for, for the subject and for the people that you're doing it with,

like even though you want it to be successful and you want to reach people, I think it's good to also not be like, well, if I say this, I might alienate such and such a person. And once you start thinking down that path, you're going into a dead end. The only, I will say that I,

the only time I ever do that is with accents. No, we have a funny thing where every time the show gets way bigger, we end up doing like five episodes in a row on a subject that nobody gives a fuck about it, everybody hates, which just always makes me happy. Because at this point, I have the opposite of audience capture. If everyone's like, talk, because everyone right now is all, really, I realized the other day, I was like, everyone just wants us to talk about the news. And I like, that way, if we just did like a show recapping the news every few days,

I think people would love that. And like, I will, they can never do that. Yeah, because then you're just playing catch up. Exactly. You're playing ketchup. And yeah, someone else already said it. You're just saying in your own voice. It's a race.

Then there's something to be said for that too, though, like why people want somebody to just repeat their own thoughts to them in like a more authoritative way. You know, that's a dark road to go down. Yeah. Well, you know, meanwhile, folks, we are always eager to hear from you. If you do have any ideas, any organizations, let us know. We'll be happy to give our thoughts, jump on board, whatever. let's get off the internet. Let's do more shit out here in the flesh. Brace, thanks again for being with us.

Thank you for having me. Always a pleasure. Let's do it again. Most definitely. Most definitely. And on behalf of Brace and on behalf of Dick, I am Don saying farewell and keep on digging. Listen to me. I've got a message for you. It's a possibility, yeah. The revolution comes as soon as not carrying from days.