Guerrilla History - Political Traitors and Sellouts w/ J. Moufawad Paul & Immanuel Ness

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we bring on two wonderful comrades to take on a pretty big topic of traitors and sellouts, the processes that take place that cause ideological changing, and some case studies of this phenomenon, including the discussion of Zak Cope's recent heel turn from Thirdworldist to radical free market capitalist and Zionist, and how to try to prevent this from happening within our organizations and within ourselves.  We could not ask for better guests to tackle this topic than returning friend Manny Ness, who had collaborated with Cope in the past, and J. Moufawad Paul, who in addition to being a friend of the show also wrote "Obituary": Zak Cope in the aftermath of this situation.  You definitely will want to listen closely here! J. Moufawad Paul is a professor of philosophy at York University and the author of several books including Continuity and Rupture, Politics in Command: A Taxonomy of Economism, and Critique of Maoist Reason.  He also is one of the editors at the fantastic Material journal, and has a blog M-L-M Mayhem that you should check out. Be sure to also follow him on twitter @MLM_Mayhem. Immanuel Ness is Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York and Visiting Professor of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg.  He is the author or editor of numerous works including Organizing Insurgency: Workers' Movements in the Global South, Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class, The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, and the incredible Journal of Labor and Society.  You can follow Manny on twitter @ImmanuelNess. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You don't remember den, Ben, boo? No. The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome to guerrilla. History, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims

to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki, joined as usual by my co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing well, Henry, looking forward to this conversation. It's great to be with you. As am I. I'm very much looking forward to this conversation, and I have to say, it's great to see you as well. on the road recently, but reconvening for this one, and I'm very happy for that. Before I introduce our two esteemed guests, I want to remind the listeners that they can help support the show and allow us to make episodes like this by going to Patreon.com

forward slash guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And you can keep up to date with everything that Adnan and I are doing individually and collectively by following us on Twitter at Gorilla underscore pod. That's, again, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A underscore pod. So we have a terrific episode ahead of us today. It's political traders and sell-outs is the topic, and we have two really great guests, one who is a many-time returning guest, and another one who we've been friends with for quite some time, but are very long overdue and actually bringing on the show.

I'm going to open by introducing Professor Emmanuel Ness. Manny is a professor of political science at City University of New York. as well as some other places and has written several books which we have talked about on the show so you can find many episodes with Manny in the past and he's a great personal friend of us. Hello, Manny. It's nice to have you back on the show. Hello, Henry. Hello, Anna's pleasure to be here as well. Absolutely. Always nice to see you, my friend, and joined for the first time. And as I mentioned, long overdue by Josh Mufawud Paul, who's a professor of philosophy at York University,

is author of several books, including continuity and rupture, which you can hear episodes about, I think all of your books, Josh, on Rev Left, are, you know, former sister podcast. So be sure to go and check out those episodes that Brett did with Josh if you haven't already heard them. But Josh, it's nice to have you on the program. Happy to be on here, and I'm excited. So thanks for having me, Henry and Anon, and I'm excited to be on here with Emmanuel.

Absolutely. So it's not going to be the last time you're going to be on, by the way. Once you're on, once you get roped in forever. Just ask Manny. So the topic today, as I mentioned, is political traders and sellouts. And the listeners might be wondering how this episode kind of came to our minds in terms of putting it together. Some of our listeners will be aware of a chapter in a book that is just coming out. It's in the Pallgrave Handbook of Contemporary Geopolitics, geopolitics, geopolitics, and anti-capital.

It's a chapter from Zach Cope. Now, some of our listeners will be familiar with Zach Cope's work, but this chapter really is something of a departure from his previous work. I think it's fair to say, and we'll talk about that a little bit. We don't want to make this episode about Cope individually. We want to talk about this more broad tendency and trend for some people who are comrades in the fight to then dramatically depart from the fight and joined the forces of the far right. But I think that because this episode was spawned

by the, to some, at least in my own opinion, shocking turn of Cope, we should address this specific point first. And I'm going to turn it over to Manny. And I'll say one person who was probably the least shock about Zach Cope's heel turn was Manny. Manny's worked with Zach Cope over the years and has been warning us for a well over a year that there were some indications that this could be coming. And needless to say, that came to fruition. So, Mani, I'm going to turn it to you to start with. Can you talk a little bit about who Zach Cope is? What was his early work like? I know that I believe I've referenced some of his work on the program in the past. I believe specifically the wealth of some nations I've

referenced on a few episodes in the past, but could have also referenced some of his other work, I found quite useful as well. Can you talk a little bit about what his work was centered on? And then also this, like I said, you had kind of noticed some interesting or uncomfortable trends in Cope stretching back over a year at this point. So if you could talk a little bit about that, and then we'll turn it over to Josh, who wrote an quote unquote obituary for Zach Cope. Thank you, Henry, Anon, and Josh.

It's a pleasure to be with you as well. I think all throughout the period of time that I had known Zach Hope, he was a very strong-willed person, and he actually taught me a lot about ideas and so forth that many others came to embrace. For instance, his most important work, in my view, is divided, world, divided class. and I tried to promote his work as much as I could. Of course, it needed no promotion whatsoever because he really was advancing new ground for the contemporary era, for instance, on the question of the aristocracy of labor,

on the question of the value drain from the Global South, in which the beneficiaries are the global north and so forth people who are in rich countries. And his kind of very critical perspective on Westerners, one that I see increasingly embraced by college students and young people who are viewing the world in the way that coped it. I have to make this caveat that Cope is not the only person that actually had advanced this. I mean, what can go back to the work of Ardiri Emanuel, for instance, on the question of unequal exchange, but Cope popularized it in a way that I think was very important, especially

a divided, world, divided class. It was republished in a second edition as well, and, you know, he got to know a lot of people on the left, for instance, very many comrades. I'll just say that we have. I won't mention any names. And I'd have to say that I really admired his work, and I admired his determination as a person to advance this, what I would consider to be a position that is moral and correct,

but also within the context of a Marxist framework. and one that was principled in that way. So he also was my co-editor of Journal of Labor and Society. He decided to leave. I won't get into the circumstances of that. So this goes back to 2000. We're now approaching 2025, so it goes back for some time. You know, if you disagree with some people, it's like,

for instance, the end of the friendship in certain instances. So I'm not going to say anything, but that's the sense I got all the time, that if I held a contrary view, which I frequently sometimes did, agreed with most of what he had to say, but I hold my own views, it was like a dagger for him. And so that's the only personal thing I can say, that you disagree with him, you have to either agree fully or you're out the door, so to speak. And, well, you know, I don't think that's necessarily a productive way of engaging people.

But in terms of the shift, I did see it coming for a very long time, and I can get into that, but I think you may want to talk to Josh about that, other things. Yeah, I will turn it to Josh. as I mentioned, Josh wrote an obituary for Zach Cope on MLM Mayhem site that you take care of Josh and a very entertaining read. Can you perhaps talk a little bit about this chapter that came out? You know, your assessment of Cope's work previously and then this latest shift in him. And then after you talk a little bit about what you analyzed within that obituary, we can turn

towards the broader trend of former comrades becoming traders and sellouts to the cause. Yeah, I mean, I didn't know him as well as Manny, obviously. My kind of interaction with Cope had been because I was his very first book, divided world, divided class, if you were talking about, my first publisher, Chris Plebadeb, Carl being the person behind that, he like, I sometimes, back then I would do a number of books. I would do some copy editing work for Carl, too, just because, you know, it's an activist press that needs help. So I was, I was given that manuscript to copy edit. And so that was my kind of interaction with it. For me, I found it was a very important book because it was, like, you know, important to get that argument for the labor aristocracy back out there.

I had, even the time that I did it, I reviewed it back then. I had some, some disagreements with it. I felt it lacked a certain amount of dialectical nuance, and it's, I guess, it's merger with exploitation, super, exploitation, but still it was like it was something that I thought was really important. I think I mentioned in that thing. I have this memory of like when it came out. I had to go do this talk. I had a friend that was at the Jan Van Aik Center in Maastricht, and he was one of the people involved in editing the book. And he wanted copies for it for launch for this thing. And I'd been invited to speak there as well. So I have this memory of lugging like 50 copies of that book in a suitcase across the cobblestones

of Maastricht and you know doing that but yeah I mean I was surprised by the shift I would since I never knew personally or anything like that

I wouldn't have seen it coming I just kind of saw him always as being involved in doing this kind of like what would be called third worldist kind of Marxist work right so I didn't

so for me I mean I think the questions of that that kind of the time in cheek obituary which I wrote was less about Zach Cope's switch, but more about just the broader questions that this, this, um, this discussion is going to be about. I saw Cope Moore as kind of a, because everyone had seemed seemingly shocked by this, who didn't know him or were going all over trying to find errors in his thought earlier on and or you had a bunch of like kind of different, some people that who's name I'm not going to name were like his stuff was always garbage and using that. I just, I don't find that helpful. I find that because there's a lot of people I know. from now but even in the past who've like switched their politics and have fallen by the wayside and there is something interesting to discuss about that

that happens that you know is a normal phenomenon as people aren't always the same people throughout their lives yeah I thought that was a very interesting point that you made and clearly related to research that you're doing about personhood and subjectivity and thinking through these things as not some kind of continuous essence that exists of a person. And you characterized that kind of view and some of the approaches of trying to find some kind of original sin in his work as very much kind of religious sorts of thinking, of seeing, you know, there must have been some evil originally there that just was concealed, but it eventually came out, you know, or some kind of approach like that.

And I thought that was quite interesting. It reminded me of another kind of, from a social perspective, a sort of religious kind of, religious sort of narrative, which is the conversion, you know, and the way in which narratives of conversion are marketing a new sense of identity that also can capitalize on the expertise of the convert that you were, I was finally part of, I think you referred to a few people like this, Bernard Henri Levy and others who can more authoritatively reject the so-called pathologies and, you know, misunderstandings and so on of a community that they were formerly part of and

identified with in marketing their unique authority or scholarly kind of claims in the present and the rewards that may come from it. As a medievalist, I'm very familiar with, you know, Jewish converts to Christianity who denounce their former co-religionists and write like a polemical work or an attack on, you know, their former co-religioness and too much acclaim and celebration. And I wonder if something like that is pretty powerfully related to many of the high-profile leftist figures and activists who do an about face and wondering what you think about that as a kind of structuring narrative that's part of the, you know, part of the phenomenon that that we could appreciate. Yeah, I think that's a good way to talk about

it, this kind of religious language of conversion. It's always interesting to me that it's like people who, you know, as you pointed out, these former leftists, Marxists, that become part of the either the hard right or the liberal, any kind of like anti-communists where they denounce they're celebrated as if they are more authoritative than the people who have have remained Marxists. Like why should remain Marxists? Like why should they be the authorities? Because they switch. They kind of just, you know, as opposed to the people that have remained Marxists their entire life. And it's because there is an authoritative, it's already the discourse of anti-communism is the normative position, right? So if it's seen as being the way the world should be, then when people ideologically shift to it, it's like they've woken up. up, right? They've realized reality as it is. And that's why they're the real authority. So they can tell the inner workings of the delusional mind, the delusional mind being communism. But yeah, I mean, it's it's in that modern notion of like the of so-called realism and pragmatism and which, you know, it sees communism as being an aberration and something like that, that that that is put. But it still does echo that that that religious dogmatic view of conversion into the, to the, proper way of seeing the world. Yeah, I mean, just sort of following from that, there is a kind of religious thinking at play, of course, in valorizing capitalism and free markets and so on. I mean, you know, the actual empirical evidence, you know, there's very little, it's such an

ideological perspective, you know, that it's a lot like religious things. thinking itself. And that's sort of the religious position of the Christians welcoming a Jewish convert, which is that, well, they've seen the truth. And it ratifies, you know, kind of the presupposed position of religious truth or of truth in this case. You know, but I was wondering a little bit about that, maybe that kind of point, is that these conversions are celebrated because, which to my mind is, you know, I don't know if this is a case where he's being celebrated. Maybe it's not. Maybe nobody in the broader community really cares that, you know, this particular person.

And maybe it's left us who are caring more at this moment and seeing it as a betrayal or treasonous sort of behavior. But it is interesting if it does lead to a kind of important career or, you know, in contemporary liberal. and capitalist society, because it suggests in a way a certain kind of, you know, some senses of doubts. I mean, you don't need these kinds of conversion narratives if you're very clear that, in fact, and I think this is a moment, unlike, say, immediately after 89 in the early 90s, where there was such triumphalism, you know, because of geopolitical changes. And I think it's quite interesting that, you know, he's articulated these positions in a handbook

on contemporary geopolitics, that this is a moment where the capitalist consensus is, in fact, under more powerful threat than at any time in the last several decades, where there's a critique of neoliberalism where, you know, you're even mentioning, you know, anti-imperialist politics among young people in the first world, in the industrialized north, is taking off. and then you also have movements towards, you know, multipolarity. So in some ways, this is a kind of attempt to reinforce a narrative that is, in fact, actually under threat of the sort of almost religiously assumed truth of capitalism, and as particularly in its neoliberal variety as being the end of history, right? You know, and there really isn't more history. All of a sudden, histories come back.

And so maybe that's one component. I'm wondering, you know, Manny or Josh, what you might think about the relevance of, you know, taking up these positions in this moment, you know, might be. I want to add one thing in from a non-religious perspective. So Adnan is mentioning very interesting things about religious converts, but also something that I come across very frequently as somebody who lives in Russia and researches the Soviet Union is when you see these defectors from the Soviet Union, there is, the celebration in the West of the defector for the sake of being a defector from communism

and not an acknowledgement that this is an individual that comes from a society with millions upon millions of supporters of the system. But you don't see a focusing on the supporters of the system. You see a focus on the defector as somebody who sees the horrors of the system that they are living in, and then comes to the light, much in the same way that you're describing with the religious converts, Adnan. But what you then see is that these individuals go to the West and often are supported wholly by the Western imperialist states that they defect to, are given a platform to speak about the horrors of the Soviet Union.

And the interesting thing that Adnan brought up and that I'm going to be. going to also put in there from this perspective as well before I turn it over to Mani and Josh is that again look at the moment the historical and political moment at which these defections were being upheld it was at a moment when there were alternative systems within the world to neoliberal capitalism and it is precisely because of these potential alternatives whether that was China whether that was the Soviet Union whether that was the DPRK, any alternative system, when you have a defector come out, they are being upheld in part because you have to denigrate those alternative systems at a moment when there were

viable alternatives within the world, much in the same way that Adnan is describing that today we see this denigration of Marxism by former Marxists being upheld because there is, at this present moment, a feeling, a popular feeling that this system is not working and that there must be alternative systems present. And it's because of that that there is this denigration of Marxism that is being propped up by the imperialists, much in the same way that we saw at that historical period when the defections were taking place. That's my perspective, at least, but I would like to just add that in from my perspective and see what our guests think about what Adnan had said as well as that transgression.

Okay, I can make a few comments. I think both of the questions were highly relevant to understanding people who defect from a specific cause or people who convert to a different religion. I actually am one of those, and this might be heretical, that believes that communism is a religion. Now, that may come as a shock to you, but. I strongly feel that there is no such thing as perfect ideal types, as Naver would say, and that the true Marxist and dialectical materialist is somebody who believes in socialism, not communism. Now, of course, you can call the state a communist state and so forth and so on.

These debates went on in the Soviet Union about whether the Soviet Union was communist or not. But most people think of communism in different ways, but when you, when you raise the question of conversion, I realized to myself that, in fact, people do convert within various forms of, all right, I'll just say, shall we say Marxisms, because there's not just one Marxism. There are many different kinds of Marxism. And one, you know, of course, there's Maoism, there's Trotskyism, there's Marxism, Leninism, there are a whole host of others and deviations of certain types. But one aspect that really became very pronounced, actually, I think, in the late 20th and early 21st century was this whole notion of revisionism. And the point would be is that once a... state may have implemented certain policies, a socialist state, that were inimical to what one

believed the doctrinaer ideas of communism were, well, that would represent a complete break, and then actually this actually fulfills what I'm just talking about before, a complete break with the system of socialism, and then you have to oppose it. So if you don't agree with one thing, then you don't agree with everything. And as I was pointing out with respect to Zach, that was basically his modus operandi, or it is his modus operandi until I stopped speaking with him. And that is, for instance, if there is any deviation whatsoever, even if it's tactical or strategic, well, then it's no good anymore. It's just completely for the waste spin. And so, you know, for instance, one could look at the Soviet Union between the period of 1917 and 1956 and say, well, okay, that was its apogee and China between the years of 1949 and 1976 around that was its apogee and so forth.

And there's no sense of nuance whatsoever in this context of non-revisionism. So, in fact, when one would refer to oneself as a non-revisionist, non-revisionist, Marxist, Leninist, well, that meant that you hate the Soviet Union when it existed. You hate People's Republic of China and the PDRK, and we can go on and on, Cuba, et cetera. All of them have faults. There's not one country in the world that you support. okay well you know there were problems that went on with respect to the period of the soviet union was a highly tumultuous era and so forth as well as china post-49 revolutions have shifts

and turns that one can never predict necessarily except for a basic i think direction that they all have so um i am absolutely not going to be converted from atheists. And that's, okay, you may call that a religion or not, but that's actually, it's hardwired in my body. It's, and my brain. I'm not going to be, I'm not going to shift from that position. And, you know, people have these moments

when they do take these shifts. But in fact, they may be actually related to the progression of the way they think. So if you hate every socialist country or self-described socialist country, well, then what is there? You know, for instance, if you think that the DPRK has flaws, which it does, just as any other state does, there's always room for improvement, well, then you're going to always say this country is not measuring up to my level. So, you know, when we think about people who defected from the Soviet Union, although I know people who defected from the United States to the Soviet Union, or we know people in that category, that they, I think these are people who are probably more opportunistic in the way they behave. They didn't really have the ideology to begin with. Those people who are defected from the Soviet Union or other countries, DPRK in the contemporary era. So I see that as a opportunistic form of defection. I don't think Zach Cope was opportunistic at all in his defection, if you want to call it that.

It was more of what he really was. So for instance, if one argues that Cuba is an ecologically diverse country that has the cleanest atmosphere and land in the world, well, okay, yes, but they have a problem because they have engaged in certain forms of market within their economy. Okay, so then we deep-six Cuba, and it's no longer relevant. My strong conviction is that, in any case, whenever you have people who are completely devoted to their religion, which I would say communism could be, if it's in certain ways, well, then they're going to oppose every single system that actually exists, actually existing socialism that would be. I also want to go on, but I want to lead room for Josh.

Yeah, and I'm sure Josh has some alternative analyses here. And so I'm looking forward to this generative discussion that we're going to have on this point. So Josh, feel free to you go in from your perspective on that. Yeah, I mean, for me, I am, I do tend to be one of those people being a Maoist that, you know, believes, you know, is an anti-revisionist and, you know, doesn't think that, you know, the thing's China state capitalism and upholds that for reason. But I think the difference is, and we can have these disagreements and I have these agreements a lot with people who I see as, as, as comrades in other ways as well, is I think that there's a strain of, you know, of a kind of anti-revisionism that would, you know,

see almost as the principal contradiction, uh, these, the revisionist states as a bigger enemy than the ultimate imperialist states. And that's, that's the kind of unnuisance thinking I don't like, right? Um, it's like, when you're spending all your time criticizing, like, Cuba or, or China or, you know, things, instead of like, more than you criticize America and, countries you're like in Canada like if you're in the US and Canada in Britain these are like the you know the the the strongest imperialist countries and that's like it's your responsibility to kind of criticize those first and foremost and so people going after you know projects that were socialist at one point that you know I have I have a problem too

as being the main enemy is something that like that's that's a very bizarre line of thinking for me it also ends up detracting from like a lot of a lot of issues I mean on the other hand I find that people in this kind of the what I would call the ML revisionist camp have there's some groups of the people to somehow think like Russia is still socialist, which is really bizarre to me as well. So it's like there's this and that's also a form of unnuance thinking. And I, but I, you know, I want to get it back to the main topic because one of the things that, you know, Mani you brought up to is this kind of religious thinking that that is within say communism as well. And I know that I know about thinking recently like read that

that book on the manifesto that China Mayville wrote, who I like it more as a novelist than a theorist, but I do remember him bringing this interesting stuff about this kind of like religious thinking within communism too, but that he saw as valid in this interesting way. I don't know, but it was reminding me of that. That's a bit of a side point. But I think before we talked about like the people that were converting, like the conversion story of the people leaving communism, I feel that there's this kind of religious thinking in a lot of communist circles that I was pointing out

and that piece I wrote that I'm very uncomfortable with that is that that original sin that we do the same thing where like there's someone changes their position and we're like well they couldn't have ever been like an authentic comrade in the first place right it's like and that's that kind of thinking reminds me of my like Christian family wouldn't there be people like you know like myself or something like that that walked away from their role

you weren't really a real Christian and it's like people change right and it's like I I'm more interested in the questions of why these shifts in subjectivity happen? Well, that would be, I think, a good question to raise. Why do these shifts in subjectivity happen? We were kind of thinking, perhaps there were some psychological or ideological kinds of factors for these sorts of shifts. I would say, you know, in addition, what are some of the structural, historical, and geopolitical conditions that reorient people's commitment. So maybe just let's pose that out there for everyone. Why do these shifts happen if it isn't just a matter of their thinking was always flawed

and there was always some kind of critical failure embedded in their approach intellectually. Why would there be this phenomenon happening frequently enough that, like we can sort of say that there is a history to, you know, to some of these kinds of conversions or defections or reorientations where people have left avowed, you know, Marxist, leftist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist sorts of analysis and political positions for ones that are, you know, much more accommodatable either liberalism or downright, you know, right-wing, you know, militarism and right-wing Zionism, for example. So, you know, how do you think about these things happening in terms of what the factors are?

Well, on the question of Zionism, I can certainly say that, I don't know what the, I forget the acronym that progressive on all things, but Israel, that it always comes as a shock to me when You have people who are leftists, and when it comes to what the Zionist entity does, they completely shift their position, and the Israelis become the exception to the rule, so that they're allowed to wreak havoc throughout the world, whereas other countries that don't even do that, I mean, don't engage in the kind of violence. atrocities that the Israelis do are treated as to be apostates of some sort of or another. And I think a lot of this has to do with actually society as a whole, which, especially in the United States and the West as a whole, we're living in imperialist states, which are buying into or actually propagating the kinds of ideas that it's okay to kill, assassinate somebody like Hassan Nasrallah. I found that to be shocking, actually really shocking to come out of the U.S.

government, a person who was assassinated and was a leader of a, I would say, a revolutionary movement in many ways. You know, in some respects, I do see. believe it or not, that, you know, you can have some kind of religious faith and also be committed to a specific cause. If you're disciplined and so forth and so on, that cause being social justice and so forth. So while I say I'm an atheist, I accept and welcome people like Nostra who were disciplined and strategic in terms of fighting against hatred, actually, because Nostrullah did not believe in hatred at all. Zionism is a complete ideology of hatred, in my view.

And so that would be my response to the question. I just want to go back to the point is that I think that now that we're thinking about the whole question of people who are turncoats or some kind of spies, You have the one group of people who are disappointed and disillusioned, let's use the term disillusioned with what we see in the world and feel that, as Josh said so eloquently, that any socialist country is worse than United States because they have flaws. And then you have people who are actually doing it for money or fame or some kind of profit in one way in which they're going to advance. their careers, and those would be the defectors. I don't think, on the other hand, that people like Kim Filby, the British-Soviet spy, was a defector. I think he had a very strong belief throughout his life that what he did was correct and that he did it out of a commitment to socialism,

actually existing socialism, and I think that he should be applauded for that. I would also say the same thing for a man I knew, Philip Agee, who also was not necessarily committed to socialism when he started out, but he saw the brutality of U.S. imperialism in Latin America and other places and said, I'm not going to be a part of this and shifted out of a moral necessity. that we all have a moral necessity and atheists or whatever a position one can take has a morality and I think it's wrong to say that you don't

if people do that. So I would say that we do have these two types or three, maybe types of reasons why people shift in the case of cope, it's perfectionism, it's idealism, going back to angles and so forth or what, you know, Engel, the purity complex, et cetera.

And with others, it is out of personal advancement. And with still others, there's a moral compunction to it. So I want to make sure Josh has the opportunity to respond to this question as well. But I also want to add in, you know, when we're thinking about this question of psychological and ideological factors that can lead someone changing from a position of, being a socialist or communist and anti-imperialist to suddenly changing to being a Zionist or free market capitalist. I know we haven't talked particularly much about Cope's piece itself.

I will have it linked in the show notes, but, you know, he basically comes out as a remarked capitalist, imperialist, Zionist, in this piece. But it does also invite discussion, this question, on cognitive dissonance and identity crises that individuals might face when they're confronted with disagreements or changing circumstances. And when these individuals are exploring their own personal biases and the way that they're confronted with that, there are a lot of underlying factors, some of which Manny was hinting at. But, you know, thinking about this cognitive dissonance and identity crisis as well as, you know, the ideological whiplash where an individual, and this touches on what has been discussed

already, where individuals that perceive failures or contradictions within their belief system or their previous belief system, something that they had held deep commitment towards, then react to by overcompensating to a diametrically opposed ideology. You know, there is also the potential for that component in there as well. So I wanted to throw those. potential nuances in here before I turn it over to you, Josh, and see what you have to say on both Adnan's question, what Manny said, and then also these couple things that I wanted to put in there as well. Yeah, I mean, like for me, it's more like, and this is maybe just because of the recent project I was working on, which was on the, you know, returned, you know, talking about

the subject again and the person, but it's, it's more like, you know, I see it's hard to address people's psychological factors for switching, first of all, because unless you're your therapist, or you know them personally. It's a little bit difficult, but also psychology rests on a lot of other things, like the ideological position that we're in society, too. And I feel that, like, we're, as I said before, I don't think anyone is ever the same person their entire life. Like, we have this idea, both, both continental and analytic philosophy, have kind of dispute, have long disputed the idea of having a stable personhood, right, in different ways. And it's kind of a fiction that we have. We're kind of like a process, right? And

And part of being that process, and there's the political point, is that, you know, ideology is a really big for the formation of our identity from the very beginning and as we grow up and how we speak and see ourselves. And we actually might, sometimes, oftentimes we may be like, like two multiple people at once almost. Like, have ever had that idea where you're one person with one group and another person with another group because of like kind of the different ideologies that we interact with as as humans as we go about? And so one issue with that is that I feel that there's like different, different moments and different practices you're involved in your life kind of will cause perhaps shifts in the person you are. And we always got to remember that like bourgeois ideology and imperialist ideology is the most compelling in these societies, right? It enacts the most power. Like it speaks the most. It's not always, yeah, I mean, there might be payoffs for it sometimes.

Like as Mani said, there could be like a seller because you're an opportunist and you get money. but it's also just kind of the normative way of seeing the world. It's like in everything and your family and your peer groups and everything like that. And that exerts a pressure. And I always, I feel that like if you're not involved in some kind of like organizational practice or have had that history or in contact with people that are doing that and you're not like in contact with people and struggle at some level, it gets harder to to like sustain a kind of revolutionary position. It's like, I know, and it's like, I know other people, there's people that have been close friends of mind that are now like liberal politicians that used to be radical. And then you saw them, they dropped the way they didn't want to do any organizing. They thought they knew better than everyone else, which is that's a very bourgeois individualism kind of thing, right? And then from there, it's like you would, you could chart their political degeneration. And it just happened almost naturally, right? They would cut ties with people in the activist organizational circles. They would start hanging out with different people. And it wasn't always careerist, right? It just seemed to be just easier in that way for them.

So in any of us, I think these shifts happen because of these ideological pressures. But in the same way, they can happen the opposite way. Like I like what man, he said about, like, you know, and he mentioned it a couple times about how there are people that, that like, shifted and ended up supporting, you know, socialism and things like that from the capitalist. And this history is full of that as well, right? It's if those are the stories that dominant ideology doesn't want to. tell. But it's full of that as well. There's people that are involved because they end up

involved or connected or around certain communities that are radical. And it influences them. It influences the way they see the world and how they shift this people as well. I know like I was going back to reading a bunch of Phon back when I was doing this book. Fanon is always someone I returned to. And I, and I was also rereading Aducetiotu's book about Fanon too. And even he points out there's these moments where Fanon talks about even people from at the moment like an anti-colonial movement has a certain strength, there's even people from the settler side that will join the anti-colonial movement who like ethically understand that and they shift their subjectivity and they shift their personhood. So I think it's helpful to think about that. So that's the,

that's the good way that we want people to shift. But unfortunately, there's the bad way that happens as well where people shift towards a, you know, a bourgeois side or liberal or universe. Well, I want to follow up on that. So, you know, you're talking about these shifts. We've been talking about shifts left to right, but as you point out, both of you, Manny and Josh, there are also ships from right to left. But, you know, the reasons for these ships have to be analyzed differently because the ideological worldview that they come to is born out of a different kind of analysis of the world. So I'm one of the wondering if we can talk about and analyze what are some of the patterns and the stages of

disillusionment and ideological shift that we can observe in individuals who transition from left to right like we have been doing thus far. You know, how does that shift kind of happen? But then also, how do those patterns that we see in individuals who go through a left-to-right ideological shift compare to people who move from the right to the left? Because, again, we have to analyze this sociologically as well as from a political science perspective on these ideological conversions. And I know that Manny had talked a bit about morality within ideology and within these kind of religious, you know, and using religious as a very big term here that isn't just talking about formalized religion. a morality that is steeped within these, and utilizing that to also discuss how these ships happen and how morality also can play a role within that.

So I don't know who wants to take that, but... Well, maybe one way to specify that as through an example, well, it's less about the right-wingers. It's still more, I mean, I'm more obsessed and concerned about these left-wingers who go to the right-wing. They're more of a problem for me. Yeah, there's is sort of like well-welcome, finally, you know, if you actually do want to, you know, join the cause for social justice and human liberation. That's great. But, you know, I've noticed, for example, in terms of patterns, I don't know if this is true, but it appears to me that there's been historically over different eras, a pattern of Trotskyist to different forms of right-wing. kind of politics. And of course, the most obvious and famous one are all of these cases of you know, Trotskyists to neocon, like in the United States. There is just such a well-worn path

of a certain kind. I mean, most of them were Jewish intellectuals, who were Trotskis, who became neocons and then also identified the neocon cause very much with a kind of muscular aggressive Zionism and thinking about that the United States needs to, you know, kind of, you know, so there are different kind of dimensions within it, but overall, it just seemed that there was quite a big trotsky to neocon. And we might as well pull out the name Christopher Hitchens when, you know, talking about this trotskyist to neocon pipeline. And in his case, it was specifically around the Iraq War.

But, you know, he was very well. It was happening even before the Iraq War. Yes, it was definitely a 9-11 kind of response. He was already very much identified with this kind of neo-Atheism and the best field in which to enact kind of the and mobilized, mobilized the kind of aggressive neo-Atheism was against, you know, Islam. movements. And you could see that he had already, by late 90s, started to have real divisions with Edward Said, someone who he had collaborated with before as a very pro-Palestine, you know, figure, but he had migrated somewhere in the 90s, you know, into discomfort with the Palestine cause. And I think it was around the time that you have the collapse of the Oslo Agreement. You

have a collapse of the secular liberation movements and the emergence instead of Hamas and, you know, Hezbollah. And that helped effectuate his kind of transformation into, you know, a kind of clash of civilizations type ideologue who, you know, really adopts like kind of a Huntingtonian view of the world. And so that, I think, I think he's definitely a great case of it, but there's so many previous cases of it as well and at risk of adding in the neocon movement you know at risk of adding in too much to this question for our guests you know we have some previous conversations that we've had on the show ad non about the underpinning you know justifications and reasons for Islamophobia but one of the other things that we see in addition to this this Trotskyist to neocon pipeline is we also

see a lot of people who are from various tendencies on the left maybe not you know hard Marxists, but people that are on the left that have some latent Islamophobic tendencies present within their ideological and their worldview, that then when these moments come up, as you mentioned, like 9-11, like the Iraq War and Western intervention, imperialist intervention into the Middle East, it provides an opportunity for this latent Islamophobia to also pop up, which in some cases is congruent with other tension. issues that they may have where their tendency provides other justifications from making rightward shifts into this, you know, neoconservatism. But in other cases that we can see,

it really is in some individuals, the latent Islamophobia that is the driving factor as well. So I know I said at risk of making this question, a huge question. Yeah, maybe that's a sub kind of component to investigate, but I think the overall kind of trajectory is a very interesting one that it does seem yeah it's a path think of people like Paul Berman you know kind of left socialist but then they become you know sort of humanitarian interventionist yeah you know there's just like a there just seems like a very well-worn path and that's one that I've just always been curious about and I just wonder if anybody on the panel you know has some

thoughts about whether that is a genuine pattern or just an accident. Is there something about who is attracted to Trotskyism or the nature of Trotsky's point of view that helps facilitate that path? Because it just seems to be more susceptible than many other kind of orientations on the Marxist left to, you know, right wing, you know, right wing politics. you know, people like David Orowitz, you know, we already mentioned him. And of course, you know, Islamophobia is very crucial there. I want to sort of separate it out a little bit, but it seemed like people like him were already turning against, you know, the anti-racism solidarity of the 1960s that they had been part of into talking about crime and how terrible, you know, like that move had already been effectuated, it seemed even before they came into. you know, Zionist Islamophobia. So it just seemed that there was a Trotsky

to Neocon kind of lip that seemed very comfortable to make. And I'm wondering how and why that happens. I just want to make the point that Zach was never a Trotskyist. That's clear. I just want to make that point.

Unless there's something about him, I don't know. And I'd also like to say that Trotskyism is the ideology of the U.S. government, really, to some degree, in terms of its foreign policy, as well as imperialism, because it fits right into the narrative that the United States and its allies in the West like to propagate. So, for instance, with respect to the war against the Palestinian people, the United States has interests and so forth in the region. they are being advanced by the Israelis. I don't want to use any other term.

So the Israelis, and they, you know, for instance, are doing the dirty work for the U.S. and are happy to do it. And so, for instance, with respect to Trotskyists, going back to that point, we can also see this in Ukraine with the various letters and statements that are signed to fund the Ukraine war to kill more people, when any person who actually understands the dynamics of it from the inside, or at least has studied it closely, you know, recognizes that NATO had a role in this war, that the war could have been averted.

And I'm really, really kind of shocked whenever I hear Trotskyus, or people who are in Trotskyists, but don't use the term Trotskyism, but, you know, without the name, they, you know, they only talk about what Russia is doing. They're not talking at all about the actual existence of fascism in Ukraine and throughout Europe in many ways. And so, though, they have this holier than that opposition. Of course, I will say the most Trotskyists that I know have a pretty good position on Palestine, but not all of them. I think Christopher Hitchens might be an exception to that rule, maybe because he was a neo-athist. I don't know where that comes from. I did know him personally, but I don't want to talk about him in a disparaging way at this

point. That already is a disparaging way to say that. But I think that you have this kind of lack of understanding and completely shutting off any kind of rational thinking about what are the actual causes. Again, it's not the United States. It's always somebody else. Whether they're socialist or not socialist, whether it's a state you like or you dislike, you know, I think Americans and Trotskyists are also part of this, are interested in ignorance. They'll completely shut off ideas that they don't like and not learn about them when they actually may have something to gain. I think we as intellectuals should try to be open to whatever comes our way and also pursue it. So, yeah, I'll read Nietzsche because he's important.

I disagree with his work for reasons that I could articulate because he actually does. lay the pathway toward fascism in many ways. But on the other hand, I can see why other people like him. So I think that to answer your question, there is, yeah, that point about the Trotsky to right-wing pipeline, which has been articulated to Trotsky, so they don't like it, but it's actually the truth. So, for instance, people who are engaged in supporting wars around the world that are imperialist wars, as is the case in Europe and frequently also in West Asia, are Trotskyists, whether by name or whether they act as Trotsky's. Yeah, I can't say much about the Trotskyist to Neocom Pipeline, even though Manny said stuff

and that covers it probably better than I would know. I would also, though, just ask, is it endemic just to Trotskyism? Because, like, I find that that, like, David Horowitz, I don't think was a Trotskyist. I thought he was part of the new communist movement. It kind of like was kind of corrected around Panther circles and things like that. But maybe I'm wrong about that. Possibly, you know, it's always so hard to tell. Yeah, I don't want to exaggerate it. It just is something that I've seen and I wondered, okay, is there something particular? I think you're right. It does happen in a whole variety. I think the kind of ideologues that became like the hardcore anti-communists who used to be communist in France, for example, all came out of the ML circles, right? Both Maoist and other like other ones, but they were in the May 68 kind of circles and things like that. Those, all those people, none of them, like maybe there were some of those Trotskyists, but the majority of them came out of like ML organizations. And so it's like this, it's just could be a problem with, you know, people in the imperial.

religious centers who who like you know who move towards bad politics for some reason and I don't want to say I might be troubling the broaders here because also I'm not a big fan of Trotskyism let's be honest but but I do think it's something that are a lot of tendencies have a problem with it's and I think like the stuff the stuff that was brought about Islamophobia and Zionism and things like that is important especially now at this moment and seeing people that aren't necessarily Trotskyists or or even necessarily Marxist-Leninist, but may have been some kind of quasi-Marxist, anarchist, leftist, something like that,

that after October 7th, they're saying some of the weirdest things, right? Not necessarily all of them are going right-wing and supporting Zionism, but the need to like denounce Hamas and be like, well, I'm pro-Palestine, but I'm against Hamas, like throwing in that qualifier.

And the, like, like, what's his name? Adam Schatz's book on Phenot, Like, writes this book on Phnom's article. Someone who studies Fanon writes these articles that are, like, very, like, believing the Zionist narrative of October the 7th. And the one that was super surprising to me was like, and none of these people went fully right or fully liberal, but they always try to, like, do this kind of really weird thing where they can accept certain parts of the Zionist narrative while still trying to hold on to something progressive, which is a really interesting shift like Lewis Gordon who is someone whose work I looked up to

as like a as a scholar of Fanon who some of his early work wrote all this stuff about like how the violence of the colonized is justified like like was tweeting like again like stuff that sounded like it came out of the Israeli state right at the beginning of that and that he didn't tweet ever again about it but he's never walked back

his comments about that which are diametrically opposed to stuff he's actually written and that that's that kind of thing that's happening is something. Not that to make the conversation more complex, because that's not a full defect, it's not like someone going to becoming a complete reactionary right away, but it is this gradual shift, right? It's this gradual shift towards a position that if you're not going to be on the side of, of the people fighting back, like on the ground against, you know, like Israeli

settler colonialism, and you're going to believe Israeli settler colonial propaganda about that right away, then like, why are you saying you're still on the side of Palestinian self-determination? Well, this is a problem, Josh, that we see with many academics. I know I'm speaking to a bunch of academics here. So, you know, I'm not talking about you, my dear committed comrades, of course, but it is a problem that we see with many academics where when it is just philosophical or when it is just theoretical work that they're doing, the work that they do is exceptional. They are willing to say that they will stand

with the colonized, with the oppressed, to the hill. But the moment that it becomes something that goes beyond the realms of philosophy or theory, and when we actually see something happening within the real world that they have to do real-time analysis of, that's the moment where we see that they shipped from their previously published work. That's why we see, as you've mentioned,

Fanon scholars who should be able to analyze and who in their previous theoretical work have analyzed the necessity for there to be violence among by the colonized against the colonizer and who in their work have indicated that they would stand with the colonized against the colonizer the moment that the colonized begin to stand against the colonizer, they become wishy-washy on the subject.

Or it's why we have some scholars who, you know, I'm loath to call out scholars by name because this is a very common phenomenon, but like Spivak is one who comes to mind where push comes to shove and all of a sudden they're silent. They're willing to be outspoken when again it is within the realm of theory and philosophy. But when there is actual practice that is being carried out, that follows, not follows their work specifically, but follows the theoretical and ideological line that their work would chart. They become silent rather than utilizing their expertise within the subject to stand up and say, look, this is why this position is a correct position to take, a moral position to take.

this is something that we see within the halls of academia far too often and you know not in the case of you three certainly you know you are all very firmly committed and outspoken when it comes to these issues but it is something that we see broadly I don't know if either of you want to follow up on that before I go into the next question or not yeah I have to say something specifically because you know I agree that you know there's a problem with like academic leftism and academia in the way that it creates kind of a petty bourgeois consciousness around things. But I think in this one

it's there's something a bit more to this because it's not just happening in academia. Like Adam Schatz is not an academic. Right. In some ways also that's like I'm like this book he writes on Phenon, it's like people that are Phenon scholars are like it's actually not that good. Anything interesting in it,

he actually like Atu Situ Situ said it first and better as an actual did the scholarship. And I think it's just not that that grade of a book. But he's like, you know, he's a, he's a journalist. He's not, he's not within academia. Someone like Lewis Gordon is an academic, but also Lewis Gordon comes from like the position of a colonized person as well. So that was like truly hard. That could have been his academic thing. But in the past, he's always taken kind of contentious views in there against other people and it's been good on that. The normal academics that are like,

that are just kind of end up being liberal at the end of the day. I'm not as interested in them because you can predict where they go. It's the position of these kind of unpredictabilities and how Peter's out outside of academia as well. As I said, that kind of thing where these people that are in the left that are, you know, they're very pro-Palestinian,

but as soon as like Hamas does something, right? And there was that kind of thing. They immediately believed exactly what Israeli state-sponsored media was saying, right? That entire narrative that is now been shown to be full of holes. They believed it right away, right? People were doing that right away. Like, it's like, look how monstrous to colonize. And it's that view. It's a view that the colonize when they resist is always going to be monstrous. Like, people were happy with them

being victims, right? And then as soon as there was resistance, people that would be in, like, not all, not the hard left, but I'm talking about the people that would generally be supporters of this. And not everyone in, but that shift is something that I find interesting. This need to like denounce the anti-colonial violence. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point. It's really definitely worth thinking a little bit more about that. I think Abdul Jawad Omar's response to Adam Schatz's article was excellent. I would love to talk with him more about it and other things that he's been saying.

But I think, you know, there is obviously some kind of blind spot that support for Israel and the way it plays a role in the imperial system, the history of anti-Semitism, like there's definitely a complex set of pressures that configures left intellectual thinking about this from Europe, North America, you know, I guess you could say Europe and it's settler states, you know, that is hard to parse because it seems like it has more to do perhaps with history than it does with like clear intellectual reason, you know, like you can easily see the oppression of the Palestinians and understand that this is, maybe part of it is whether or not people really accept fundamentally the characterization of Israel as a settler colonial state. I think maybe that's

kind of crucial. And this gets complicated by people's ideas, comes back to religion again. Even if they're not religious, they culturally seem to have a recognition of some kind of legitimacy to the land that comes from the biblical narrative. And that connected with, you know, recent history of anti-Semitism of genocide in Europe. a, you know, they manufacture some contradiction there that's very, very difficult for them sometimes to unravel, you know. And so maybe that's, that's part of it. But I should probably let, you know, Henry move on to another question unless somebody wants to respond to that. I do think, you know, lastly, since you did raise Henry and, and I think everybody has sort of mentioned that there are some particular features of, Islamophobia that are important in some of these strains of what we might think of, of left liberally kind of condemnation and the willingness to kind of see the United States and its empire as a force, a necessary force for world transformation in facing, you know, some kind of,

you know, anti-rational sort of threat, you know, and you see that with some people who are easily converted to the neocon position is almost like, yeah, it's not great, but it may be necessary, you know, in the same way that perhaps they think, you know, Marx condemned capitalism, but he said it was the most progressive force in history. It's changing the world. And it's kind of necessary that certain things happen in order, you know, for future liberation to actually take place. And this is the vehicle that we have in the shape that history has taken. And so some people seem to convince themselves that being a Marxist is not, you know, that is not just a surrender to the victory of capitalism, but it's that, well, you know, this is the

necessary tool for changing the world and that ultimately will have these positive impacts. I always find that like a very accelerationist sort of kind of position. But it could be seen as it could be seen as inhabiting that. It's not that like the America actually is so wonderful. It has all of its problems, but it's doing something that's necessary in world historical terms for the transformation of the world. That might be one kind of like false ideological safety net and some of this some of this sort of thinking, perhaps. Yeah, if either of you want to respond to that before I turn to the next question, feel free. Just really briefly, I think that from, you know, gathering from the conversation we're having,

first is that I think that people relate to their own world and don't have a sense of the other. And I think this is probably part of most people's shift away from the left. So that, you know, when I said progressive except Palestine, PEP, well, that means something because it becomes close. So if one has a relative, a spouse, et cetera, who may have a different position and may actually be from a specific ethnic or religious group, they may actually support, they may actually try to shift their position. And I see that happening a lot with respect to familial relationships. I'd also say with respect to the genocide in Europe, of course, many more Soviet people died during that war. But the genocide was a significant event that took place, more of an event. It was, you know, horrible.

It was destruction of people in Europe. But one would think, one would actually think that people who actually recognize the genocide in Europe that took place during the Second World War would actually be more sympathetic toward Palestinians as opposed to being more hostile to them. And I'm just completely befuddled by that fact because it makes what the Israelis are. doing is making a mockery out of that history. That's all I wanted to say. Moving on, the next topic that I have is another pretty big one, but I think a pretty interesting one, which is I want to talk about the extent to which external pressures, such as state surveillance, professional blacklisting, personal threats, contribute to the decision of left-wing activists and thinkers to change allegiances and become the

the sorts of sellouts that we're talking about today, because the extent to which external pressures can contribute to ideological shifts, they vary significantly from an individual to another. But I think it's pretty undeniable that, at least in some cases, these factors like state surveillance and blacklisting have a pretty profound impact on the decision-making process of various individuals and that the surveillance creates a climate of fear that can lead some to self-censor and others to just abandon radical beliefs for fear of persecution, as well as things like worrying about social mobility, professional mobility, job opportunities, and that in some cases leads some people to take more mainstream or less controversial positions, but in other

cases, I think that it can be even more insidious in that people aren't just doing it opportunistically in order to preserve a job, but this constant culture of fear of surveillance and repression by the state actually can cause these people to question, truly question their ideological convictions, and then seek out alternative analyses that then cause them to actually become a traitor to the cause, more so than a sellout, somebody who actually changes their ideology, believing that they have come to an alternative analysis upon their own volition, but actually, you know, we're being influenced the entire time that going through this process due to these external circumstances. Just saying, with respect to the surveillance and blacklisting, we see this happening a lot in the United States and elsewhere with the rise of these organizations that are tied to Israel, for instance, like Canary Mission and so forth, but many, many others that have isolated people. people and condemn them in many ways. I would like to say that many young people are in fact victims of these organizations and have to pay off organizations to be taken off these lists. So it has created a lot of trauma amongst people. I don't know whether they really change

your positions, students and so forth, young people who oppose what is going on. in Gaza right now, but it creates a lot of psychological trauma because they are placed on lists because of reasons the VAT are what? They're basically supporting a just cause. So, notwithstanding what you said earlier about Adam Schatz and his, basically what one would expect out of him, even though he wrote that book, I've had on, you know, you expect that out of somebody who has written for the New York Review of Books, or now is the U.S. editor of the London Review of books. But these young people who actually have a belief are going to be completely either marginalized completely from any kind of future, or they're going to make that shift

that Henry is talking about because of this culture of fear. They're going to make that shift and they're going to be shut up and begin to change their line, even if they don't believe in it, perhaps. Because I don't really think people necessarily change their mind out of fresher. They may conform, but they still maintain their beliefs. That's my view. I could be wrong. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it is, like, I can see as possible that, like, forms of repression And I mean, I know this is my kind of view that, you know, like the, that ideological and repressive state apparatuses are very entangled, right? So like repression and ideology go together. But speaking just about kind of surveillance and different forms of silencing, like the ones that Manny described, I see like people that have gone through that. It's been more that they've just burnt out and been silenced and just been like, I'm just going to be silent now. I've done my work for the movement. I still believe it. But it's just more that they've just more that. they've just been resulted in a deep depression of being targeted. It's not like their views have changed, but it has, it has created this chill, right? And that's kind of the idea. It's like just

the silence people to chill them. I haven't seen people that have gone through this. I know a lot that have gone through that. I've been, I have a history of being targeted and through my work too, right? And I just feel it just, it just creates stress and burnout. Like I, the people I know that fully burned out from this, they never, they never switched their ideology. They just were like, okay, I just need to take a break from things and been on a position of burnout and silence for a while. Yeah. I mean, well, there was also one third possibility, Manny, of the two you mentioned. It's also perhaps this generation of young people changes the culture dramatically. And so that's the hope, of course, that they will, but they are going to be subject to marginalization and have to contend with all the consequences of a repressive environment,

you know, may lead, you know, not to sellouts exactly, but much like you were saying, Josh, people just being tired of the constant struggle and burning out. But let's hope that doesn't happen. I wanted to ask actually a little bit about what we could be doing and, you know, what approach we might want to take. I mean, there's two directions. One is, of course, how we might engage, you know, people without simply kind of ostracizing or isolating them, you know, I mean, I think we do need an ethics of being able to disagree and have these sorts of discussions so that we can work through differences and focus on the things that we actually do share in common, rather than push people away from communities of intellectual and political support such that they might,

you know, flip, you know, to another side. So that's one kind of point of how we can do that, sort of fostering and, you know, maintain kind of shared commitments that are actually deeply, deeply felt. And the other side of it is something that you said in your short piece, Josh, at the very end, where you started to point out that if you take this perspective, that we can be different people, have different personalities, depending on different contextual, circumstances and ideological pressures and so on, you raise the specter, the disturbing specter that like if you were ever at some future point to be pushed into some position as like a milk toast liberal or worse, that you would hate that person, right? But like, you know, you one can't guarantee. That was a sort of disturbing, I guess, consequence, logically.

of the analysis you were taking. But so I guess my point, my question is, is insofar as you can't exactly predict what those future ideological positions and so on will be, what kinds of resilience, let's put it that way, might we build for leftist intellectual and personal development and characteristics to stave off, you know, I would say, God forbid, but we, you know, some people don't believe in God, you know, but lest we find ourselves in such a position, is there anything that you would think that we might be able to do in terms of building the pliability and resilience to weather such changes while still maintaining strong

commitments to these universal values of justice, you know, even if other aspects of our analysis might be, you know, shifting and so on. And I guess I'm just sort of saying you've got, you've, you've, you've thrown out something that could be, you know, quite a disturbing thought to many. And I want you to try and help us not feel so destabilized by the possibility that we too could be. That's what you raised is that we too could be Zach Cope. I don't want to be. I know you don't want to be. What can we do about it?

Yeah, I mean, that's just, I put it at the end because it is, it is a worry. Because I know I have like, you know, changed my positions on things. and I think for the over time for the better. But, you know, and I have seen people I considered comrades, right, have the, like, that I would have never expected, like, someone who was like a close comrade of mine years ago is now, like, running as this liberal politician in Toronto. And it's like all of us who are friends who knew him are kind of like,

we saw it happening over time, especially when he cut ties with us, but now it's like we're sharing these videos of his campaign. We're like, what the hell is, like, this is just, this is one of my friends was like, oh man I as soon as he left like the ranks of organizing I knew this would happen to him I don't know if that's true but anyhow the thing is that it's that it's that worry right and but for me I think the way to absolve that is like we are social animals like this what we are as as so that's what human being is these kind of social historical animals you know that kind of Marxian sense and I and I think it's it's the communities you surround yourself with and if you are at a community that's filled with kind of oppressed and exploited people and that it's interested in getting rid of oppression and exploitation, right? An organizational community, a community that is, you know, in the general antagonistic relationship with the state, right? It's, it's, it's, you're not, that's going to build up the resilience, right?

I think it's like, but when you go and you're just like kind of a lone academic or a lone person, you said, you're never going to be alone, right? You're going to be with a different peer group, a peer group that is amenable to that kind of thing, right? So it's like, it's, it's the peers you surround yourself with, the people that you, that you are involved in as comrades and things and the practice, the practice, both the intellectual and on the ground social practice that you're involved with in those groups. I think that's the only way to build any kind of resilience. I mean, if you're just going to go off on your own

and think that you're beyond criticism and that you can figure it out better than anyone else, and you're going to end up becoming a different person that is going to be antagonistic to the person that cares about social justice and anti-oppression and anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism and all of that. Like, I'm grateful that I have like a community. Like I'm like, you know, around people that are like, you know, it's like, I'm not always the same, but even it's just like, you know, people, it's like, you know, my wife's family is Palestinian, right? So it's like, and a lot of them, none of them always have the best politics, but when it comes to issues like this, they're starting to see these residences. It's like they have this history and this feeling of oppression

that is, you know, and then it's like, you know, I'm friends with people from all of these different oppressed positions and I have organized and, you know, people from those positions as well and they hold me to account. I think that's important being like held to account and being able in that community to have that accountability. I think that's very well said. That's like, you know, having the humility of being socially accountable, I think is a very good restraining force from getting too far away from actual social movements and, um, and, and, uh, and the ethics of that. Yeah, uh, mani, I don't know if you had any other thoughts. And particularly the other side of it, which is, you know, how we can build up our own individual resilience

by being part of social struggles and connected with other people, but also how we can keep others from, you know, exiling themselves or being outcast and ostracized simply because we have these disagreements and, you know, we take positions and we care about these issues and it sometimes can push people to abandon, you know, those commitments, as they say. seek approbation elsewhere? I think that's very important. One of the problems, I think, those of us who have positions that are either left and also beyond that, who are determined to change the world and take power, because some

people just want to change the world and not take power, as was pointed out, by a scholar, Sure. I think that there's a need for practice that many people who are Marxists, Latinists, whatever you want to call it, Maoists, et cetera, are isolated. Or they're in these very small groups and they don't really have a larger world. But, you know, I could be isolated too, but I'll go out and see migrant delivery workers who are making a, pittance delivering food for well-to-do Manhattanites and try to speak with them and talk with them or find people to talk with them because they speak a different language and so forth. But I think what is the problem with the left is the focus on theory before practice. So if you don't engage in practice, how could you even develop a theoretical understanding of the world? So for young people and for leftists, if we can call that term, first of all, we have to agree to disagree on specific issues because otherwise we're not going to get asked a number of questions.

Certainly there are areas that cannot disagree about, for instance, the question of genocide that we see. But I think that there is, you know, a very important point that was made by Josh, that we should be able to adapt our ideas to positions. That's, I think, how I've developed my thinking. You do as much work as possible to understand something, and you're convinced, and then you throw away your earlier work. work and say, well, I was wrong. I did that in a recent article that I published where I criticized

myself in a book that I wrote in 2014 about autonomism. And I was very much interested in workers' centers and so forth. And I realized after a while that they are not the panacea that I had thought they were, that actually they may be good transitional places for workers, but without question, you really need to build a strong organization. And that comes out of practice, absolutely out of practice. And that practice leads to theory as you're dealing and addressing questions of workers. This is not just a question of the United States, but it's a global question, in places in Africa, Asia, Latin America, where people are highly oppressed.

Those are the people that we should be organizing. And, you know, the question of solidarity is also crucial. I'm living in the West, and most of my friends are not in a certain way, that they're not in the United States. And so I think we could build solidaristic networks with people throughout the world. And, you know, so we don't have to be really isolated in that sense. And then, you know, work with them in different ways. Well, I found this discussion to be very fruitful and very stimulating. I want to thank both of our tremendous guests for their time.

They've been very generous. We've been here for about two hours already, both on and off. recording. I'm going to turn it to each of you for closing statements and also to let the listeners know where they can find more of your work. So we'll start with Josh Mufawud Paul, who of course is a professor of philosophy at York University and is author of the books, The Communist Necessity, continuity and rupture, critique of Maoist reason, politics and command. Like I said, I think that there's episodes about each of those on Rev Left with Brett. So, you know, listeners, you should definitely read those books.

but you can also listen to episodes that Josh has done about each of those on Rev Left. Josh, what are your closing thoughts on this conversation and then close out those closing thoughts with directing the listeners to your work? Well, I thought this conversation was great. I really enjoyed being in and I like the kind of the spontaneous nature of it

and the different perspectives from all of you. It was really useful for me and enjoyable. And as for my work, I guess some of it. It's all in different places. And I know that one of the companies that published my books now, it's like kind of collapsed because of a whole bunch of other political things that happened in it. But I do have a book coming out in December with Roman and Littlefield.

And on the theory of the person and subject, but that takes a very definitely radical lefty line on that as well. as one would expect from you. And listeners, you know, he says that there was a spontaneous nature to this episode that he's just pulling the curtain back a little bit. We may sound prepared for guerrilla history episodes. We read a lot, but, you know, peeking behind the curtain, this is very spontaneous in its nature, not just this episode, but all of our episodes.

Also, now turning to Emmanuel Ness, who, as mentioned at the beginning of the episode is a professor of political science at City University of New York and author of many books we've talked about several of them on the show before. I know that for sure we've talked about migration as economic imperialism that was a relatively recent episode of ours with you

and we also talked about organizing insurgency workers movements in the global south. I think that was the first time we talked with you, Manny, but you've been on the show four or five times at this point one of our more frequent guests and we're hoping that you'll keep coming back What are your closing thoughts on this conversation, and can you let the listeners know how they can find more of your stuff?

Okay. First of all, I'd like to respond because you have raised a very interesting point. Josh and Henry, on spontaneity, I think as a Marxist, we have to capture that spontaneity and build around it to an organization, as Lenin would say, and Stalin said as well in his outstanding work foundations of Lenin. that spontaneity is something that develops out of the working class, but it also develops out of these kinds of discussions. And we need to build on that to ensure that it is not lost. And so anyway, that's some kind of trying to capture that notion. And, you know, with respect to the question of betrayal and so forth, I think we have to be honest with ourselves living, you know, throughout our lives. We have to expect this to happen.

We will always have people who will shift positions that are going to go their own way. You know, for instance, they may think they're correct and so forth, and they may be joining different groups like the Democratic Party or a liberal Democratic Party in Canada, et cetera. The point is that we have to expect this to happen over and again. It is shocking when people take such a large about-face and become neoliberal neocons when they were at one time third world scholars who inspired many people. And I think that we take these blows and we go forward. As far as my own work, I'm working on a book.

China and its labor movement. So that's what I'll say. Great. And of course, listeners, we will have both of their works and also social media information in the show notes. So if you want to keep up to date with things that they're tweeting on Twitter, I refuse to use the name X. I will have the information posted there as well as links to several of their books. So be sure to check those out.

Adnan, how can the listeners find you and your other excellent podcast? Well, you can find me on Twitter at Adnan A. Hussein, H-U-S-A-I-N, and check out the M-A-L-L-I-S, a podcast by the Muslim Society's Global Perspectives Project at Queens University. And we deal with Muslim diasporas, the Middle East, Islamic world, topics like that of relevance, I think. We don't do as many episodes as we should, but I'll hope to remedy that by the time listeners hear this episode and get out there and check out the M-A-J-L-I-S. Yes, and listeners, of course, you know that the Mudgellis will have our crossover episode that we did with guerrilla history on very soon on Islam, the Commons, and quote-unquote democratic socialism, which is based off of the new book, readings in al-Mushhtarek,

an edited book that was translated from a 19, what was it, 1983 Adnan, text, by the leader of the Iraqi Communist Party, a really interesting book and a very interesting discussion that we had with the translator of that book. So if you haven't heard on the Gorilla History feed came out a couple of weeks ago at this point, you will be hearing it on the Mudgellis feed as well very, very soon. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995. That's H-U-C-1-995. You can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com. forward slash gorilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And you can follow us on Twitter to keep

update with everything that we're doing individually and collectively at Gorilla underscore pod. That's, again, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-Pod. And until next time, listeners, solidarity. So, you know, Thank you.