Guerrilla History - Whiteness, Jake Paul, Boxing, & the Crisis of US Imperialism w/ Anthony Ballas

Episode Date: March 7, 2026

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we have a fascinating conversation on the intersection of boxing, white supremacy, geopolitics, and imperialism, a discussion that you are sure to find interesting an useful even if you are not into boxing itself! For this, we bring on Anthony Ballas, who cowrote the piece Shadowboxing with Ghosts: Whiteness, Jake Paul, and the Crisis of U.S. Imperialism alongside the inimitable Prof. Gerald Horne for Black Agenda Report. Be sure to read the piece and listen to this episode, and stay tuned for another discussion with Tony soon, alongside Dr. Horne! Anthony Ballas is an organizer and a PhD student at Duke University. His work appears in Monthly Review, Protean Magazine, Caribbean Quarterly, 3:AM Magazine, Truthout, Middle West Review, CounterPunch, Scalawag Magazine, Peace, Land and Bread Magazine, and elsewhere. He also the host of the De Facto Podcast and co-host of Cold War Cinema.  Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You remember Den Ben-Brew 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, unfortunately not joined by my other usual co-host, who of course is Professor Adnan Hussein,

historian and director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada. Adnan is on the road today and was unable to join us for this conversation, but don't worry, listeners. He'll be back for the next conversation. With that being said, we have a really great guest today and a really interesting topic. One that, honestly, I am not the best suited to host the conversation for on, which we'll talk about in a little bit. But the guest is terrific, and I know that the conversation will be extremely fruitful. Before I get to the guest and the topic at hand, I want to remind you listeners that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making it and having conversations like this by going to patreon.com forward slash gorilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. So with that being said, we have, I believe it's your first time on the show, Tony, but we have a longtime friend of the show. Adnan and I are both very familiar with you. I've been friends with you for a couple of years.

years at this point, long overdue and having you on, but we have Anthony Ballas, who is an organizer with NFE local 4935 and a PhD student in literature at Duke University. You may know him from his other podcast that he does the de facto podcast, which has Gerald Horn on frequently, as well as Cold War Cinema, or you may know him from his writing where he writes prolifically all over the place. Tony, how are you doing? It's nice to have you on the show. Hi, Henry. Thank you. I'm doing well and I'm very happy to be here. Absolutely. It's a pleasure. Like I said, I mentioned Gerald Horn's name specifically because the topic at hand is actually an article that you co-wrote with Professor Horn. It's titled Shadowboxing with Ghosts, Whiteness, Jake Paul in the Crisis of U.S.

Imperialism. It came out a little over a month ago on Black Agenda Report. Really interesting article. and I am just going to tease also that listeners in the next couple of weeks you're going to hear Tony coming back on the show alongside Dr. Horn as part of our African Revolutions and Decolonization series to talk about soundtrack to a coup d'etat. But, you know, stay tuned for that. Unfortunately, Dr. Horn wasn't free for today's conversation, but Tony was. And so here we are. Tony, I mentioned that I'm not the best suited for this conversation. And that is because I am extremely, out of the loop with popular culture, with people who were going to be talking about like Jake Paul, whose name I believe I have heard before, but I have no working knowledge of beyond what I have read in your article and other other articles that I've seen him referenced in from time to time. I don't really know anything about him beyond that.

So and also. Yeah. I think in some ways I am lucky. but again, maybe not the best suited for the in-depth conversation on him as an individual. And additionally, we're going to be talking about boxing quite a bit. And I do know a bit about boxing, but I'm not as intimately familiar with the sport as you or Dr. Horn. I do want to start off by discussing, well, I guess let's talk about this article that you co-offered with Gerald Horn. Gerald Horn has done work on boxing before and the political economy of boxing.

I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about how this collaboration emerged. I've mentioned that you've done a lot of work with Professor Horn before, but on this topic, how did this come about? And what did each of you bring to the analysis that we're going to talk about within this article? Sure. Yeah, I can talk about that. So probably two or three years ago, maybe two and a half years ago, maybe two and a half years ago, I read Dr. Horne's book on boxing and political economy called The Bitter Sweet Science, which he put out, I think maybe in 2022 or three. I can't remember. And I think I had him on

to talk about that text on the de facto podcast. It's an excellent analysis that text. I really loved reading it. And I've long had an interest in boxing and sports more generally. And so I was very taken by the topic. We had a great conversation about that book of his, which you can go find on the de facto podcast YouTube channel. And then I asked some questions about this rising, quote-unquote, star of the boxing world named Jake Paul, who's a sort of maga figure for the sport of boxing.

An outsider who was brought in, arose in the ranks of the sport through sort of specious means, to sort of shake up the sport and also function as its savior to make it great again, restore it to its former glory because it's, in the U.S. context,

lost a lot of viewership. It's sort of Paragon sports channels like HBO Sports and so forth, went under. And so he sort of comes in to fill the void. And from Dr. Horn's analysis of the sport, it's deeply invocated with the history of racial politics in the United States, and Jake Paul figures in the history of the sport as a sort of continuation of those politics, and that's what

we explore in this piece. But the way this piece came about was a sort of updating, an attempt to update the story that Dr. Horn tells in that book for our present moment. Just a continuation of the sort of analysis that he brings the 20th century up until the 21st. I mean, he does cover a little bit of the 21st century in that book, but it was just an attempt to update the story he tells in that book to today. And in terms of what each of us

brings to this sort of writing or this analysis, I would say I'm sort of a supporting act. Anybody who works with Gerald Horn is a supporting act, I'm sorry to say. Yeah, I know that's true, definitely. The analysis that you see in this piece is very, very similar to the analysis you see in his book, which is a materialist political economic analysis

of the sport of boxing and its entanglements with organized crime, with anti-black racism, Jim Crow, and geopolitics in the period of the Cold War, in the period of World War II, in the period of the first red scare in the United States, and the period of Vietnam, and just other eras in U.S. history. I think if I bring anything to this analysis, it's a focus on some of the popular culture, on representation, on the way a figure like Paul is perceived in the U.S. context as a continuation of this analysis, excuse me, of this political history that Dr. Horn has already commented on. And just stuff like that, I suppose. If you read the piece, you could probably discern who has, who's contributed more to individual paragraphs even.

I hope that answers your question. Yeah, it was just, you know, something that I was personally curious about because, as I mentioned, everybody who works with Gerald Horn is inevitably going to be a supporting act to his, his greatness. And I don't say that in a flippant way. I'm pretty sure that every time I've ever referenced Gerald Horn on the show. And I also am including the times when he's been on the show, which he's been on three or four times already and he's again going to be on soon with you. I believe every single time I've

mentioned him, I call him America's greatest living historian. And I mean that genuinely. I would definitely put him in that upper, like absolute top echelon of living American historians, particularly of historians that look outside of one narrow field, which, you know, Gerald Horn is, as you know as well as anyone. His analysis, analyses don't just range temporally across American history but also geographically across

the entire world and also in terms of different topics of interest, everything from jazz to boxing to you know, transatlantic slave trade, everything that you can possibly imagine. Gerald Horn is deeply aware of

and has very critical thoughts on. So yeah, I was curious of how one goes about trying to fit into working alongside him as you did. But I do want to get into this article itself. Your article opens with really what's a, I guess, a haunting image of AdWolgast, shadowboxing with the ghost of Joe Gans. And as you mentioned in the article, Joe Gans had been dead for almost 20 years at that point.

And you and Dr. Horn use this as a central metaphor for understanding this character, Jake Paul, who you were just discussing and who is going to be one of the central figures of this conversation, but also by extension, U.S. imperialism. So can you walk us through that metaphor of wool gas shadow boxing, a ghost of Joe Gans? and how you see boxing functioning is what you call a cultural tuning fork for broader political and racial anxieties. Sure, yeah, excellent question. Well, Ad Wollgast is sort of a tragic figure, but the tragedy that he represents is not at all singular to the sport of boxing, which is just to say that he's not unique. he is a figure who excelled at the pugilistic arts such that he experienced brain trauma and around 1912 or 15 somewhere around I can't remember exactly he sort of has a mental break

as people might call it and he started to experience these delusions where he would he experiences about I think in in 1912 which really almost permanently disables him. And he's actually confined to a state sanitarium where he experiences this delusion that he's going to return to the sport, make a comeback, and fight the first black world champion in the 20th century, who's this Joe Gans character, who was the, I can't remember what his weight class was. He wasn't a heavyweight because Jack Johnson was the first heavyweight champion in the 20th century. a black heavyweight champion.

But Joe Gans was an early champion from 1902 to 1908 or so. But he experienced tuberculosis and was failed by that disease, tragically, and somewhere in the early odds. And Wolgast thought he was going to box him well into the 1920s.

And he persisted in this delusion. And it was written about in some of the sports commentary in the 1920s even. People, you know, some of these early sports commentators in the New York Harold Tribune,

for instance, were commenting on his debilitated state and this persistent delusion. Now, we don't think it's at all

a coincidence that this character wants, has a delusion. He's going to fight the first black champion of the sport

in the 20th century because this is the era of Jim Crow. This is the era of racial apartheid. This is the era of eugenics and things of that nature.

And so there's a political valence that attaches itself to this sort of delusion. And we use this as a metaphor, the sort of permanently punch-drunk state of Ad Wollgast is not just emblematic of him as an individual, but it's emblematic of the sport of boxing. Very shortly after this period, you have Jack Johnson rising to, some would say, infamy, given that he is a superior boxer in almost every sense of the word. and he becomes the first black heavyweight champion of the world, such that, that, and he, to the great anxiety, I suppose, of almost every, every white fan of the sport of boxing, let's just put it that way, who then endeavor to hunt for what is called the Great White Hope,

a Great White Hope to defeat this champion. There may even have been a great white, White Hope Association form that was an international in character to literally hunt for who's this who's a champion who can defeat this, this black boxer. And the fear there is obviously one of black superiority versus white racial superiority. And the persistent perception that white people were superior physically, mentally, and so forth, which you, of course, get in this period of U.S. history, and you probably still get in the period of U.S. history

that we find ourselves in today. And that's where Jake Paul will come in later. But we use this metaphor of shadowboxing with phantoms. And these phantoms take on various forms in the ages. So you have this phantom of, of a sort of great replacement theory for the 1910s and 20s with a black superior boxer replacing the white race. This is also the period.

Actually, let me just back up and say that when Jack Johnson defeats Jim Jeffries in 1910, you actually had riots, race riots, the Johnson-Jeffries riots, taking place in numerous states across the United States. And the film of that, The film of that, of their fight, was actually banned from being circulated and being displayed publicly. Because people were afraid of seeing a black boxer felling a white heavyweight Jim Jeffries.

So that is really just sort of a sign of the persistent anxiety, racial anxiety that was experienced in this time and the attempt to curtail it through legal and extra legal means. And I'm kind of getting and kind of going departing a bit from your question. Well, actually, let me, let me, if I can, I would like to pause us here for a second because you're talking about Jack Johnson and this is a particularly striking point of the piece. And like I said, I'm not intimately aware of the history of boxing and the nuances of boxing, but I do know about Jack Johnson, even I know about Jack Johnson. And you mentioned several of these episodes that take place with Jack Johnson,

the 1910 riots, the banning of the film showing him defeating this great white hope that they had brought out of retirement from Australia. And interestingly, one of the main champions of banning of this film was none other. I found this when I was reading up on the incident, you know, after reading your article, Teddy Roosevelt was one of the main champions of banning the film. Teddy Roosevelt, who of course famously was like, missed. macho boxing president man. And he was, Teddy Roosevelt was one of the main promoters of boxing as a sport back in that period of time.

And he was also spearheading this movement to ensure that this film would stay banned, this film that showed Jack Johnson, the black heavyweight champion defeating the Great White Hope from Australia. He ensured that this would stay man. And it stayed banned in many places until the 19th. You also mentioned legal and extra legal persecution of Jack Johnson. We can talk about the Man Act prosecution that took place of him and his exile that was forced. And then connecting all the way with essentially the president because that that prosecution wasn't pardoned

until Trump in 2018. And you note you note in this article that as evidence that myths providing ideological cover for white supremacy had been struck by Johnson's victory in that famous championship match. Given that Trump, who pardoned Johnson, is now back in power and has embraced figures like Paul, are we witnessing a counteroffensive or a deliberate project to resurrect those same myths that you had talked about in the past, past. Like you said, there is like, there's a continuity of this in terms of always finding this enemy and having to find, you know, the hope against the enemy, but that enemy has changed. You know, I'm curious of how you see that reconnecting with the present.

Yeah, that's, that's great. And that sort of gets the essence of what we were attempting to do in this piece because it's great that you bring up Roosevelt, who not only popularized the sport, was, of course, you know, the mind behind the seizure of the Panama Canal. The, you know, he often would, he had this sort of aphoristic approach to U.S. Empire, which would speak softly and carry a big stick. And he was depicted, you know, in the early odds, in these political cartoons, straddling the U.S. and the Caribbean basin whilst carrying a big stick, right? And so he's one of these early 20th century figures,

well actually late 19th century figures of U.S. imperialism participating in the Spanish-American War, of course, in the Philippines. And he also, just so happens, as you already mentioned, to be one of the popularizers of the sport of boxing in American history. And that itself, with Trump, we see an echo of that sort of thing. we see an echo in terms of not only was he was he trump a promoter of the sport of boxing in the 80s and 90s where his um the trump towers um or at least the trump name was attached to

to very high profile fights Tyson um lennox lewis and so on and so forth and of course we see this project of U.S. Empire continuing under the Trump regime in various ways, in his first presidency, his first iteration as president, certainly, but really in an accelerated form in his second term as of 2026. And so there's these parallels with the past that sort of draw a line between figures like Roosevelt and figures like Trump that echo, if not rhyme in a certain sense, even if they speak to different conjunctures. But I do think that Paul, as a figure, who as I already mentioned, is a sort of outsider to the sport, because he's not a professional boxer. He had to leapfrogged the process typically taken by these athletes, which would be

to train. We never mentioned who he is, by the way. I just realized, so, you know, like, I didn't know really who he was before reading this article. Probably some of our listeners are in the same boat. So, yeah, can you tell us also who he is and then why this leapfrogging had happened? Yeah, good point. So Paul, and I apologize in advance for bringing this person to anyone's attention.

But he is a Disney and YouTube star turned boxer. And so he, he, he's one of these, you know, YouTube influencers, him and his brother. I don't even know the nature of that sort of popular entertainment, but that's really what it is. And sometime, probably five or six years ago, he decides he wants to be a boxer in his 20s, in his mid-20s, I suppose.

And so he endeavors to do so, backed by a tremendous amount of funding from various sources to be able to do this. And the typical way that a boxer rises in the ranks is to go through it, well, to train, first of all vigorously for years and decades as a young person. I mean, imagine someone in their late 20s or 30s saying, or early 30s saying, I'd like to play basketball at the professional level.

People would just laugh at them, right? Or baseball or really any other sport. For some reason, boxing, the sport can already accommodate this sort of story in a way. and some of the history of I think boxing has already kind of created a structural role that a person, a structural place, let's say, that someone like Paul could enter in and entertain this sort of idea. But he decides he wants to be a boxer and he leapfrogs the amateur division and starts fighting other influencers, non-boxers, retired and aging MMA stars, mixed martial arts. he fights various, I have to emphasize this, non-boxers, okay. But he starts to declare a win-loss record as though he were a legitimate boxer, you see. And he does that to sort of gain a certain form of cultural capital, I guess you could say,

so that he can fight figures like Anthony Joshua, who he just, just lost to in December of 2025, or Mike Tyson in, I think it was the fall of 2024. And he starts to build a reputation as though he's a real boxer. But I think, Henry, you're correct when you say that he sort of is hailed as this outsider brought into the sport. under the cover of being the savior of the sport, but really to perpetuate a MAGA sort of agenda for popular audiences. He endorses Donald Trump in his presidential campaign.

He just was seen at the Olympics, the Winter Olympics, sat next to J.D. Vance. And so he's sort of a friend to the MAGA movement and this administration. and we also consider him, though, to be a sort of symbol, more than a metaphor, I would say, actually, of imperial decline in the U.S. Because, well, we can get to that, I suppose, in a moment. Does that answer to your question? Yeah, it more or less does. And if I then can follow up, I know that who, which direction do I want to go? because I also want to talk about the lineage that goes from Jack Johnson that you trace through this article, but then also this contrasting the Great White Hope phenomena from the Johnson era with the Great White Hype phenomenon of the present. I guess I'll take the lineage question first.

So in the article, you trace the lineage from Jack Johnson through Michigan's own, Joe Lewis, and I say that because we were chatting before we hit record. I think most of the listeners know I'm from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Joe Lewis, of course, hailed from Detroit. And up through Muhammad Ali to the present. And in the article, you show how boxing has consistently, quote, localized geopolitically intrigue in the ring. So I'm wondering what distinguishes the current moment from those earth.

earlier eras. This is something that I think you were alluding to a little bit earlier in one of your previous answer. So is it that previous iterations had actual political substance like anti-fascism during the Joe Lewis era, civil rights, you know, Vietnam, Muhammad Ali era, black power, which of course ran for many years, while the current era, the Paul era, and you know, I have air quotes here, listeners, is all about hollowly. spectacle. You know, is that, is that what we're seeing is that these, there was political substance previously where today it's all just about the spectacle? Or is that too simple of an analysis? No, I think, I don't think it's too simple of analysis, but it's tough because

the sport has always been a spectacle sport, right? It's always been a way of, of staging, you know, two great forces, budding heads that represent different political formations or different ideological orientations and things of that nature. I mean, when you mentioned, so we just talked about Jack Johnson and the Great White Hope, right, that that was a staging of racial spectacle in the early 20th century in the United States. And subsequent years, of course, you have Joe Lewis fighting Marx Schmelling during the rise of the Third Reich in the late 1930s. And so that was viewed as a, a staging of, you know, an anti-fascist,

you know, Joe Lewis representing an anti-fascist sort of figure against the rising ties of the Third Reich in Nazi Germany. Schmelling being a German fighter. Of course, Schmelling was not a Nazi himself. That should be noted, but he represented that in the ring. And post-war, post-World War II, that is, the rise of figures like Muhammad Ali, who famously

refused to be conscripted into the Vietnam War and suffered spending time in jail as a result of that, but standing in for anti-war, anti-U.S. Empire. So various eras in the history of the sport have localized geopolitical tensions and antagonisms

at a very at the level of spectacle at the level of the sport itself and I don't think that what Paul and some of these fighters that he's fought who are

you know let's again non-boxers until he fights Tommy Fury who was the brother actually of Tyson and Fury

the former heavyweight champion who actually you know Tommy Furrier being an actual trained boxer. And Paul, of course, loses that fight. I need to emphasize that.

He loses his fight against the first time he faces an actual boxer he loses. That should be noted. But I don't think it's necessarily that it's a hollow spectacle because the sport has always been about spectacle. It's always been about masculinity. It's always been racially, it's always had a racial sort of connotation or been racially inflected to localize racial. antagonism in the U.S. context. And I just see I see Paul as a continuation of that, but

almost in an inverted sense, because Paul rises in the sport. And it's a very similar way that Trump rises into politics, to the presidency. Again, an outsider who becomes the insider under the under the cover, the ideological cover that he's going to drain the swamp, let's say, and restore America to its former glory. And that former glory, is really a period of imperial decadence. Similarly, Paul rises from the outside as a YouTuber, you know, something very contrary to the typical image of a hyper-masculine boxer, right? And he's viewed as the savior of the sport.

But this all takes place within the context of Trump's imperial. machinations, globally, the Trump administration's imperial machinations, I should say. In the Caribbean, in Venezuela, Iran, and elsewhere,

and the perennial tensions, of course, with China, with Russia and so forth. And Paul comes to represent, it's, it is somewhat hollow because it seems, it's pretty, he's not, you know, I don't think people take him as serious,

seriously, as people took boxes like, obviously like Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson, for instance, but he still makes a lot, I mean, there's still a lot of money at stake. He still has a mass audience. And so from one angle, it's sort of culturally hollow, but from another angle, it's a very, a very potent example of this continuum of the continuation of this sort of history from the 20th century into the 21st. Even if it's responding to different, geopolitical contexts. So it's sort of a tough thing, I think. Just briefly as a follow-up, because I do want to get to the Jake Paul story aspect of

this as well. But I'm curious if we can look at the public's view of each of these great champions that we've just talked about from the past and how there were various perspectives of them and how the geopolitical reality at that time also. influence the view of the individual champions. So if we talk about Jack Johnson, Joe Lewis, Muhammad Ali, of course, they were the greatest of their respective eras. They were peerless. There was nobody who held a candle to them and their respective errors until they got to essentially retirement age. But as we talked about with Jack Johnson, there was a public

search for some great white hope who would be able to defeat him. And when they couldn't, there was riots that break out. Joe Lewis was a different situation because as we talked about, there was the rise of fascism. And Joe Lewis, even though he was a black champion, and in his early career, as far as I remember the Joe Lewis story, and again, do correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm definitely not as intimately familiar with boxing history as you are, Tony. But from what I understand, there was much more animosity towards Joe Lewis in his early period of dominance, but as he went further into his period of dominance, that coincided with the conflict with the rise of fascism in Europe. And as a result, Joe Lewis went from being a black

champion to an American champion, where there stopped being this highlighting of the racial aspect of his greatness to his national origin of his greatness. And so he became really championed by the mass public, even at a time in which racial relations in the United States were still extremely not only tense, but, you know, dangerous for the average black person in the United States. But Joe Lewis became held up by the American broad, popular consensus as an American champion. And then we get to Muhammad Ali. And this is another very interesting case because, and again, do correct me if anything that I'm saying is not correct, Tony. But my understanding of the Muhammad Ali's situation is that again in his relatively early career

he was generally not viewed very positively by the white public. Obviously he was a champion of the black boxing community in the United States but the white public really didn't like him. And of course there is the whole situation about him, you know, having his title stripped from him regarding Vietnam. And the view of the American public around him at that time was decidedly hostile, let's say, at least the white public's view of Muhammad Ali. However, his greatness was such that over time, the view of him became much more positive. That's not to say that there weren't extreme racists that were always,

anti Muhammad Ali. But as far as I understand, like his greatness was such that even those who had an inherent but not explicit racism within themselves and had previously been opposed to Muhammad Ali or, you know, which root against him anytime that they would see his name come up on a card, they came to not only respect him, but also like treat him again as a great champion of the sport and an American champion of the sport. That last one I think is the most, for me, it's the hardest to understand in some ways because the Jack Johnson situation is very cut and dry. The Joe Lewis situation, again, if my reading of it is correct, is, is pretty easy to understand as well. But the Muhammad Ali one where like greatness transcends in a way

over time, the racial animosity that had been hoisted upon him in the early stages of his career. That one is one that's really interesting, particularly given the period in which that was taking place. So I know I did not say any question in that. I'm just curious if my understanding of that is correct. I'm kind of looking for a bit of guidance from you, Tony, and if you have any commentary on that. I think that's spot on, honestly. And it's interesting to think about Muhammad Ali's greatness transcending that period of politics in a way. But he was certainly seen as a figure of resists. against U.S. Empire and his resistance and to, again, being conscripted into the efforts in Vietnam

and being very outspoken to that effect. As a personality, you know, he's very different than people like Joe Lewis. He's very outspoken, you see. And that may have contributed to his image during the late 60s into the 70s, really mid-60s, actually, because he rises to fame in, I think, 1964 when he defeats Sunny Liston, in a bout that actually, some would say is contested because I'm certainly not endorsing this view, but some would suggest that Sunny Liston was pressured by certain members of organized crime to throw that fight. And that's sort of a lore that follows the sport of boxing as well, its imbrication in organized crime. but I think what you said is is very spot on

but it may have to do again with Muhammad Ali being very outspoken and being almost his own spokesperson and deeply political and he so he has this this patina of greatness certainly which is not at all manufactured it is because he was a superior

in the ring but he also had his political sort of outspoken he's an early supporter of Palestinian resistance also it should be mentioned and so I think that

that that is different in a way but he's building off of the political image of people that came before him so he's deeply inspired by people like Jack Johnson for instance right he takes him almost as a sort of model for how to maintain his politics and his

elite, athletic prowess simultaneously, that's very different than what we have with Jake Paul, who is a sort of, he's not a figure of resistance, at least for resistance in the way you and I would like to think about resistance. He's a figure of a counter-revolution, we could say. He is a figure who is installed in the popular sphere to perpetuate the MAGA agenda. and he doesn't have physical prowess and athletic prowess,

or pedigree in the sport at all, like these other figures. But nonetheless, he's risen to his sort of popularity. And it's just all very, very odd, but also rather on the surface in a way. You know, I was thinking about Roland Bart, who has this great essay from the, probably the early 50s about wrestling as a spectacle sport

if anyone's familiar with that and he talks about how wrestling is sort of everything operates in out in the open right you have a struggle for good versus evil

taking place in the ring and audiences understand exactly what's happening because all the gestures all the moves they're hyper amplified so the meaning can come across it's interesting

boxing's very different I think there are shadows in boxing, as shadow boxing being the metaphor here. And one of those shadows that we see today is this question of whiteness, which attends to Paul's career in a very interesting way and unique way, I think, because he is able to leapfrog this process

typical that other fighters wouldn't have to fight, you know, as journeymen and as amateurs for many years before they can even have a popular audience like Paul, or have these opportunities to fight these great heavyweights, for instance. And that's sort of typical of U.S. whiteness, honestly. And so he has a different political valence, different racial manifestation, obviously, in the ring, than these other figures.

And that's responding to the particular conjuncture we find ourselves in once again. That brings me up great to the other point that I wanted to make in that where I was deciding which of the two questions to ask. It brings me up perfectly to where you invoke in this article the Great White Hope phenomena of the Johnson era and then make this contrast with the great white hype of the present. So I'm wondering if you can elaborate on that distinction. what's the difference between searching for a white champion to restore racial hierarchy versus manufacturing a white

influencer as champion through pure spectacle and platform power? That's a great question. You know, it's almost too perfect because if you, if you, again, I apologize for having to introduce your audience to a figure like Paul. But it is, it is, you know,

an interesting example of this thing. when you look at his career what he's done, he really should have chose a different path because now his record is going to be filled with asterisks in the record books because again he hasn't really fought any boxers and when he has it hasn't really turned out well for him

as evinced by his latest bout with the British Nigerian boxer heavyweight champion formerly undisputed Anthony Joshua wherein Paul received a compound break in his lower jaw, which has potentially laid him on the canvas for good, because he may not be able to return to the sport as a result of that. So he really should have chosen a different path in the first place. But what makes him a great white hype is precisely that he is installed as a sort of savior to the sport, which is, as I already mentioned, sort of waning politically and

economically, specifically economically, because the sport has lost viewership, it's lost popularity. And he was seen as of someone who's going to re-enact. invigorate it and get the money moving again, essentially. But the hype part comes in because the way he ascends is not at all genuine, but he also, you know, you have to look at the promotional material use in some of these fights, for instance, like in his fight with the former and youngest, formerly youngest undisputed heavyweight champion Mike Tyson. Paul fights him in a sanctioned bout in 2024

to great intrigue and spectacle, obviously. But in the promotional material of that fight, Paul is literally dressed like Tyson in some of these very iconic moments from Tyson's career. So he dons the beret, which was a symbol of black power, actually, in the 80s and 90s that

Paul's excuse me Tyson's giving some of these interviews that you can find on YouTube that are like so iconic

and baked into the American imaginary that you've your listeners have probably seen things like that but Paul is sort of mimicking it

mimicking the presentation style he has the facial tattoos that are that he's wearing he's adorned with that are like Tyson's he mimics

his style of speech, his affectation, and his sort of, you know, Lisp that he's, that characterizes his manner of speaking. And he really mimics his whole presentation style going through different eras of Tyson's career from when he's young to when he's older and in his prime in the 90s and so forth. And I read that almost metaphorically or analogously, I should say, to whiteness asserting itself into history. whiteness asserting itself and changing the course of how we tell history, which is, of course, itself something that represents a battleground in U.S. society currently

when you have these attacks, state level and federal level, but really state level, attacks on history as a profession, history as a discipline, and history as a discipline that is taught in public education and higher education. And so the height part comes in that just in terms of building this spectacle machine around this figure like Paul to perform these various ideological maneuvers reassert. It's almost like a counter-revolutionary figure in terms that he's resisting the great replacement theory of history, which is that figures like Paul are being overshadowed. Figures like Trump are being overshadowed at the local. at the domestic and international levels, America is being overshadowed by rising blocks

around the world. And so there is a resistance to that sort of thing. And you see that in the ring as well as you see that in the arena of US politics. And the hype is really a reference to the hype machine, I guess, that sort of tries to build and encrust this ideological content around these figures to put forth

that sort of political and ideological agenda. But it's also hype because when you see him perform in the ring, he's very disappointing. You know, people will claim to be very impressed with him, but all I see,

I'm no expert, but all I see is a guy running around sort of doing cosplay, and it's very dangerous for him. And he may end up like Ad Wollgast if he's not careful. You mentioned cosplay and that actually your last answer brought up two of

different things that I wanted to talk about. So I'll just ask them together because I think that they, they will go well with what your previous answer had brought up. Your talk about Paul's mimicry of Tyson is fascinating, both within the article as well as within your last answer, this digital insertion of himself into historic moments. The copied tattoo. locations, the affected Lisp, what you describe as whiteness, reasserting its claim to history,

and Paul editing himself into a history he took no part in. So one of the questions I have for you is, what do you make of the fact that Tyson, the original, is himself a black man whose body and biography became the raw material for Paul's appropriation? You know, what do you see that as a form of race? ventriloquism. But then also, speaking of cosplaying, you also talk in the article, and I, again, this is something I'm not intimately aware of myself, so do inform me as well as the listeners. You discuss his performance of Puerto Rican identity within this article, and you connect

his performance of this identity to the long history of U.S. settlers claiming native identity, like just to name some of the names that you bring up in the article itself, Dog the Bounty Hunter, somebody who unfortunately I have seen his face, not personally. I mean, I've never watched. I know he has a TV show. That's about the end, but like really kind of a scary looking face. Buffy St. Marie, Cher, Johnny Depp. So I'm wondering if given Puerto Rico's colonial status and its function as a post-colonial laboratory for financial.

extraction, post-Maria particularly. What does Paul's identity arbitrage tell us about how whiteness operates underlade imperialism? That's an excellent question. It really actually gets to the root of one of the main feces of this article or premises, which is that Paul is staging his performance as a boxer threaded through Puerto Rican political economy or the political economy of U.S. Empire and its reach in the Caribbean in Puerto Rico, because Puerto Rico is a territory, of course, of U.S. society, but it's not a state. So it does not have the sort of tax structure that other states have in the United States, for instance. And so Paul is able to operate in Puerto Rico as a sort of tax haven. Well, he doesn't have to pay taxes.

for his income, for instance, that he, for his revenues from this, uh, this endeavor in the sport of boxing, he's able to just reap tremendous dividends from this. And that also gives him the added bonus that he's able to perform this identity arbitrage,

as we call it in the article, insofar as, I mean, he literally come into the ring wearing the traditional Puerto Rican, um, uh, boxing trunks,

which have a certain design, a certain flare. He calls him, himself El Gallo, which is a Spanish term, obviously, that does not pertain to Paul as an individual. And he wears the rooster sort of El Gallo headdress, or he's been pictured doing so, at least when he enters the ring in some of these pre-fight depictions. And so that's very similar to the sort of settler colonial iterations of whiteness and the claims to land and native identity that you see.

in various eras in U.S. society, Dog the Bounty Hunter, being just one iteration of that, who claimed Cherokee ancestry as many other settlers' descendants did, but really, you know, of Polish descent. And that's something that has been explored in various works by various other scholars. Just a quick note, dog the bounty hunter operated out of Hawaii.

He was a bounty hunter, as his name suggests. but he also operated out of Denver. You'd see him in Colorado. I saw him once, actually, because I grew up in Colorado, and I saw him once in downtown Denver where all the bail bonds places were near the jail, the Denver prison or whatever it was, the Justice Center. And I saw him when I was a young kid,

and I remember thinking, boy, he's a lot shorter in real life than he appears on camera. just goes to show you how the camera and the hike machine can really distort the image of these figures. Because I think even as about a 13 or 14 year old, I was still a lot taller than him. And that struck me when I was a kid because he's supposed to this larger than life, you know, figure. But anyway, I digress. And it comes to Puerto Rico and Jake Paul's, it's very convenient for him to operate out of Puerto Rico, as I already said. But then he's able to sort of project this characterization that's bringing together these two threads actually,

his Puerto Rican presentation of identity and his presentation as though he were Mike Tyson in various moments of his life. It is certainly a form of ventriloquy, ventriloquism. It brings together the sort of settler-colonial history and the history of racial animus together. essentially these depictions are a form of blackface when it comes to to Mike Tyson. I would suggest or Paul's presentation as though he were Mike Tyson. And that has been part of his ascendancy in the popular as a popular culture figure. But it's, it's, there's a shadow cast in terms of the representation of his representation and his presentation of himself, which is different. I want to suggest, and we don't get to this.

the piece, but again, when Roland Barth talks about as wrestling, as where everything's on the surface, all the symbols are very easily digested by mass audiences. We understand who the evil character is, and the good character, and the good character will overcome evil, and there'll be a sense of justice manifesting in the ring.

That is not at all what's happening with Jay Paul in boxing, which is a sort of parallel sport to wrestling. In boxing, we might have a good versus evil sort of thing going on or geopolitical intrigue, as we've called it in the piece. But there is a, there's something beneath the surface taking place that we need to talk about. It needs to be more out in the open, which is that Paul has risen on the, on the structural, structural sort of dynamics of settler colonial identity and geopolitical, really is just imperialism, right? with the U.S. claim to Puerto Rico.

So political economically and sort of culturally, Paul is able to obtain the popular status that he has by narrativizing himself through this Puerto Rican identity, and, yes, as you put it very aptly, Henry, using Tyson's career as a sort of raw material on which he can build his own, that is, I think, more than a metaphor for the history of settler colonialism and slavery in the United States. And that connects the other historical thread, you know, from the 16th, 17th, and 18th and 19th centuries on this side of the Atlantic to the 21st century. And so that's really where Dr. Horn's work comes in to re-narrativeize and provide a more acute historical analysis of this long duration of U.S. imperialism and white supremacy leading up to the present, for which Paul just represents one pop culture iteration thereof.

Yeah, and you mentioned geopolitics. I'm going to get to that in just a second. Unfortunately, listeners, I have one more question about, Jake Paul before we get to the geopolitics, but I promise it'll be the last one that focuses on him because, yeah, I find him a tiresome figure, even though I didn't know about him before. But it is apropos of the conversation. So I do want to ask about how your piece situates Paul within the manosphere, as well as the monetization of grievance, the broader drift of celebrity towards reactionary, politics that you point out. So again, this is another point where I am not the ideal person to interview about this because I am extremely divorced from any knowledge of pop culture and

pop culture and celebrity today. So, you know, like, I know some of these names. I have heard them from time to time, but I have zero working knowledge of like celebrity today. But you do mention Andrew Tate. I do know a little bit about him because we had Brett O'Shea. had mentioned him in a previous episode that we had done either before Brett left from guerrilla history or in one of our, you know, annual collaborations with, with the Revolutionary Left Radio. I think it was in one of the annual collaborations. So you mentioned Andrew Tate losing a fight the same weekend as Paul.

I'm wondering if you can talk about, and of course I bring up Andrew Tate because of this aspect of the Manosphere. is there something specific about combat sports that makes them particularly hospitable to this formation of monetization of grievance, celebrity drift to reactionary politics? Or are Paul and Tate simply the most visible exponents of a much deeper current in American masculinity today? Well, I think that it may not have to be an either or question because when it comes to the man is, You know, there are numerous figures who sort of, or we could say exemplars of that sort of toxic masculinity that you see forwarded in American media. Paul, Tate, but I'm also thinking of figures like Joe Rogan, who's, you know, tremendous

popularity in the U.S. media with his podcast, which I don't remember exactly, but he has something like 40 million viewers potentially, or had at least at its hot. He's cited in the Russian media pretty frequently. I mean, you might find that interesting, but like here in Russia in the media, I often see Joe Rogan on Joe Rogan's show, this was said in Russian media, like really bizarre. I mean, he's a central figure. I mean, you know, for for US media under the patina of being independent media, which is just not true at all. But he also, you know, has has a combat sports history, incidentally. He was a M.MA. fighter, I think, or he at least trained as such. And you can see him on YouTube performing various sorts of kicks and punches and things

like that. So he's also part of that sort of sphere, I guess you could say. But I'm sorry, what was the second part of the question, or after the or? The second part of the question was, sorry, I have to go back up in my notes. Let me pause for a second so that I can cut this out. So whether there's something specific about combat sports that makes them particularly hospitable to the formation, or are they simply the most visible exponents of a deeper current in American masculinity? Right, right. And so I do think the Manosphere, you know, accommodates this sort of character in it, to be front-centered in U.S. society. Because, you know, it's not just the history of slavery. It's not just the history of the settler colonies, but there's this question of masculinity in the United States.

I mean, you mentioned Teddy Roosevelt, who was one of these figures of popularizing, who popularized boxing and a certain form of masculinity in the 20th century. I mean, think about figures like Donald Trump, who is one of the most sublime versions of toxic masculinity one could ever ask for, given his, the background that we know of him and even the stuff that we don't know that is being made ever more public and held under scrutiny given the, release of these Epstein files, at least half of them, which, you know, if anyone needed empirical verification of certain predilections and inclinations that they had regarding this figure, well, then look no further than those files because everything is, all of our deepest, most disturbing inclinations are being verified daily in 2026 by that release. So these figures, that they represent a certain toxic masculinity again, and combat sports has always accommodated that sort of persona.

And so really, when you have figures like Paul, figures like Andrew Tate, who has been accused, even charged with sex trafficking in Romania, he has some sort of strange tie to Baron Trump, who's the son of Donald Trump, that I'm not sure I could explicate. I'm not sure what to make of it at this point, but perhaps we'll know more about that later.

It's not at all a surprise, to me at least, that these are the figures that have been, that have risen in the ranks of popularity in U.S. media in various forms, be it president or YouTube sensation or in the boxing ring, because those things have always been front and center in U.S. society. And we're seeing them spread internationally, obviously, with these figures like Paul, excuse me, like Tate.

But it was very nice to see, I have to admit, I was very pleased to see Paul and Tate hit the canvas in back-to-back bouts Christmas 2025 that weekend. They both ignominiously met their demise with a one-two punch from back-to-back. And it was a pleasure to see, I have to say. No, fortunately for the listeners, we're going to be getting to geopolitics. And, you know, there is still this connection with Jake Paul, of course. Oh, wait, can I say one more thing actually about the Manosphere thing? Yes, please. Go ahead.

Because, you know, it's interesting to see that in his latest fight, Paul, and sorry, again, I'm returning to Paul one more time, but when he fights Anthony Joshua in December of 2025, he comes out not sporting these, these, the paraphernalia of Puerto Rican identity as he normally has, but he's sporting Hulkomania paraphernalia. Right.

Which is a reference to, you know, Hulk Hogan, who was the recently deceased World Wrestling Federation star, who's also a Trump friend, who, whose career was marked by various forms of, of these same sort of controversies like he was accused of being abusive so you have this sort of toxic masculinity.

He was on tape saying some very disturbing racial slurs in reference to, I think, something having to do with his daughter. And it was picked up by the tabloid press. But after the genie was out of the bottle, it couldn't be put back in. And Paul was celebrating this character in the ring. with this heavy sort of leather gear, anyone who grew up in the 1990s would understand the color palette, red and black and yellow, which is sort of Hulkomania colors. And so you had a celebration of this sort of toxic masculine manosphere-type figure who's deceased. So, you know, Freudian might say you had the name of the father living on, this representation of Paul or of Hulkomania via Paul.

and I think, I don't think it was us, although we do mention it in the article, someone at least, maybe it was Gerald or myself, thought that, well, he's wearing this heavy leather gear just before his fight and dancing around like a buffoon before he faces off against this superior boxer, Anthony Joshua. He's probably exhausting himself and sweating bullets under that thing under those hot lights. And so that probably contributed to his poor performance, which is itself a nice metaphor for his for what we saw that evening, and perhaps what we'll see, you know, moving forward in his career. But that, again, links to this question of the fall of U.S. Empire, which is, I'm sure, where we're getting

through. Yes, and this article connects these seemingly disparate dots as I'm going to try to do with this question. So, you know, this fight that you, this last fight that you were talking about with Anthony Joshua, you mentioned earlier that Anthony Joshua is a British boxer of Nigerian origin. and this fight taking place just a couple months ago, I guess, in some ways, has renewed U.S. attention on Nigeria, but it is not the only thing that's renewing U.S. attention on Nigeria. We have cultural figures that I have, again, I'm not going to keep pointing out how ill-suited for this conversation I have, but Nikki Minaj going to the U.N., which I did watch this speech, and making

a really bizarre speech about Christian genocide in Nigeria because Nikki Minaj is evidently the expert on the Christian genocide in Nigeria. But, you know, she was invited by the U.S. representatives to the UN to go and speak about it. And at the same time, we also have the missile assaults in northern Nigeria by the U.S. military. You then draw parallels to the jazz ambassadors deployed to the Congo before Lumumba's assassination. More on that in our next conversation, Tony. I'm wondering if you can walk us through how you see these cultural and military threads weaving together. What role the soft power play in preparing the ground for hard power? You know, that's a great question. And I'm glad you picked up on that in the

piece because it's sort of suggestive because we couldn't formulate, and I still can't formulate a consistent sort of analysis in terms of pulling all these threads together. in one statement where I can say this is what they're doing. But it is curious to note, as you just did, that it just so happens. That same weekend where Paul is fighting this British Nigerian boxer, Nikki Minaj in a few, maybe a week or a couple or a previous, gave this speech at the UN decrying so-called Christian genocide in northern Nigeria. And then it was Christmas morning when the Trump administration authorized a missile strike on northern Nigeria.

That, I can't say specifically that this is what was taking place, but I can tell you that in a conjunctural analysis, that those things all took place in a very short span of time. And I found it rather curious. And so it made me think about the role of soft power historically. and there may be a couple of things to draw from that. The jazz ambassadors, which we'll discuss later, obviously, but this was a cultural front that the U.S. State Department put forward

to try to lubricate U.S. hard power elsewhere in the globe by deploying cultural figures. And it seems like the Trump administration was relying on a similar format, form in deploying Nikki Minaj to the UN to sort of provide ideological and cultural cover for what was about to take place. But I think, I don't think it really is working.

You know, that's the difference here. I really don't think that what we're, I think that what the Trump administration is doing is recycling a lot of these old forms from the 20th century and even the 19th century in terms of U.S. imperialism. And this is something that Dr. Horn has talked about frequently, rehashing and recycling these old

forms like a deployment of soft power in the form of the jazz ambassadors, in this case in the form of Nikki Minaj, to try to do something similar, but it's not really working the same way. I don't think that she's convincing many people. I think that her career is maybe even affected negatively by this

sort of thing. And she's also appeared on the Amfest stage sat next to Eric Kirk, the widow of murdered right-wing commentator, Andrew, excuse me, Charlie Kirk. I'm getting all these manosphere figures confused in my head. They all blend. Right, they all do blend in a way.

But, and so she's clearly taken a particular ideological line very recently, and it's, it's caused some people to speculate, well, why is she doing that? There must be some sort of quid pro quo arrangement. between her and the Trump administration. I think she did obtain a sort of one of, you know, Trump's golden citizen card or whatever it was. She probably had to pay a certain amount of money to do so. But, you know, this all takes place within an increasing

anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States as evinced by ICE deployment in various states in the United States. probably, you know, your listeners are probably very familiar with what has been taking place in Minnesota, for instance, or previous to that in, in D.C. And so, Nikki Minaj is a sort of figure who is deployed, I mean, she's, I don't think she's of U.S. extraction. I think she is from the Caribbean, if I'm not mistaken. I'm the wrong person to ask. You look like you, you You looked questioningly at me, Tony. I'm sorry.

I can't help you. I guess neither of us can answer that question. But, you know, I think that there's a quid pro quo type of arrangement. I don't know what it is exactly. But it's a strange, it's a strange thing to have her name come up like that. But she serves a similar role, it seems to me, as someone like Paul. I just saw her name in Russian media today as well. And you know what it was?

She had, and I'm, we're recording this on the 22nd to February. not that this really matters, but I just saw that she had, again, I might have some detail of this wrong, but what I saw in the Russian media is that she had posted on some social media site, that she had just been gifted an autographed Bible from Donald Trump. I don't know, I have no idea what's going on here. I mean, first of all, who autographs a Bible? but yeah she she says that it's like I think she said it was like the most touching gift that she had ever gotten an autographed Bible from Donald Trump so this is something that's still going on you know she was

trotted out the reason I bring this up Tony is because she was trotted out in December to you know to lay this groundwork for what appears to be some destabilization efforts in Nigeria and you know in increased American intervention in Nigeria and West Africa more generally because we are going to inevitably see more American involvement in West Africa. But we're here like in the latter half of February and we still see this, you know, integration between Nikki Minaj and the Trump administration. And I don't know enough about her to understand why there is this integration between the administration and her happening. You know, in the past, it's seemed like these cultural figures that were being utilized, the soft power opening this,

you know, laying this groundwork for hard power. They were like, now let's see if I can make this sound interesting. They were like weapons of mass disruption where they would start to, they would start to disrupt things. They would lay the seeds present for the weapons of mass destruction of the American military and the American imperial apparatus. And I say mass destruction, not in terms of nuclear chemical biological, but rather the fact that imperialism, by destroying these countries and trying to topple governments

that don't align with imperial interests, destroys the lives of people in these countries. And so it is, you know, a tool of mass destruction, even if it's not of the nuclear type. But now what we see is these people are just like weapons of mass distraction rather than anything else because I don't really see how this is operating in the same way that it did previously.

Like you had just said, Tony, with regard to the jazz ambassadors in the 60s with Lumumba versus what we see Nikki Minaj doing and, you know, the Trump administration's involvement with Nigeria. Like, really, it just is a distraction at this point, even if it looks like they might be trying to lay the groundwork for something. Yeah. Yeah, so you're right. It's like, it seems all very transparent at one level because it's like, well, these

efforts, when you pull all the threads together, they're not doing much to try to conceal what they're doing, it doesn't seem to me. But you have to also consider that the previous channels for this sort of soft power have been just disrupted. If you remember not so long ago, Trump, this was probably, this was a year ago, actually, Trump installed Elon Musk and his Doge Department of Government Efficiency, Kabbal, I guess one could say, to, you know, to make the U.S. budget run more efficiently, right? That's all it was doing.

That's all you wanted to do, right? And so what they did is they defunded USAID, which was one of these traditional routes through which the United States would endeavor their soft power tactics globally, particularly in the on the continent of Africa. And then also Voice of America, which was a radio show that had,

I mean, it was long then, one of the channels through which the United States would spread sort of culturally, you know, through the jazz ambassadors and other forms, U.S. propaganda, I guess you'd call it. And that itself has now become defunct recently. I think as of last year. Yeah, yeah.

And so they're relying on old tactics but don't have the old infrastructure. And the irony being they have themselves, Trump's and his administration have themselves, they're the ones who defunded the infrastructure. So there's something kind of. Well, what happens, Tony, is that, you know, there's, they say that they're streamlining and, you know, cutting waste. Of course, if you look at the government budgets, the budget has gone up. It hasn't gone down.

But, you know, you say that they have dismantling. this infrastructure that had maintained different imperialist tactics. But the thing is that they're only dismantling the covert infrastructure of American imperialism. USAID is a covert organ. I mean, it's not a covert institution, but their aims are covert actions within the victims of imperialism. Voice of America, they claim that it is bringing the truth to people who have the truth hidden from them by their own governments. But as you point out correctly, that is the propaganda mouthpiece. That is a covert action of imperialist propagation, of narratives, of efforts, and it's laying the groundwork for these things. So when they're dismantling the

infrastructure of imperialism, it's only the covert infrastructure of imperialism, which then leaves them with the overt infrastructure, which they then invest even more heavily in, which is why you know, look around and you see the efforts of the Trump administration. And it's not that they're more imperialist than Obama's administration or Biden's administration or Clinton's administration or the Bush administrations or Reagan's administration or Carter's. Anyway, go back as far as you want. Go as far back as you want. It's not that they're more imperialist. It's that the covert side of things has completely fallen by the wayside, so it's just nakedly overt imperialism that we see today. I 100% agree, and I appreciate the qualification on that point, that it appears accelerated

and enhanced simply because the veil has been lifted and the money has been rerouted. One could say, I mean, the symbol for that is the renaming of the Department of Defense, the Department of War perhaps. It's always been the Department of War, but now the building just has come into itself for what it has always been. I think that we're seeing something similar with soft power and hard power, those dynamics that you were just speaking about. I can't remember. I was going to go somewhere else with that, but now I'm forgetting. Sorry, I have one final question for us. Maybe it'll either jog your memory or maybe it'll bring up something that, you know, we can loop into this. but I do know that we're running a bit short on time before you have to go.

So here's the final question that I have for you, which is, again, related to geopolitics and imperialism. You describe the Trump regime as shadow boxing with imagined opponents, going back to this original metaphor from the article. And you point out Venezuela, Iran, fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, all the while suffering from imperial fatigue and terminal decline. So the piece ends with a question. Will U.S. imperialism abandon its delusional shadowboxing or continue swinging wildly at specters imagined and long departed?

You, you know, essentially point out that it's most likely the latter. What would it take for this pattern to break? Or are we just simply watching the final rounds of a long, ugly fight? That's a great question. It's hard to say, if you read that piece, you'll see, as Henry just cited, right at the end, Dr. Horn and I are putting our money, even though we're not betting people, on the latter point, which is that we expect that the United States will not go down swinging. And like a dangerous, punch-drunk, old, retired fighter who somehow still finds themselves in the ring,

the U.S. empire is unfortunately not like Ad Wogost, not just a danger to himself, but a danger to the entire world. And so the metaphor sort of falls short here, actually. When you're shadowboxing with phantoms in the ring, you only put yourself at risk. These aging fighters are still dangerous, of course.

Mike Tyson is still very dangerous in the ring, right? Even if he's lost a step or two, right? He still has all of his power. Similarly to the United States, even in this period of imperial fatigue where you have these rising blocks from around the globe replacing the centrality of the U.S. dollar, for instance,

the United States is still a great military power on the globe. And it is still thus very dangerous, but not only to itself, you see. That's where the metaphor ends. And I'm not sure what to expect other than let's not be utopian and think that this aging fighter called U.S. Empire is just going to retire gracefully. That's what we're seeing in the Caribbean. That's what we're seeing in Venezuela with the kidnapping of Maduro and Silia Flores. That's what we're seeing in this buildup of military material in the Middle East currently, as we're speaking, with

the potential war with Iran. And that's what we're seeing, that's why we're seeing a Russian fleet currently on route to Cuba to deliver hundreds of thousands of barrels of, of gallons of oil rather, to break the siege, the blockade rather,

of the American blockade of Cuba. Keep in mind also that during, during, in the aftermath, it was either in the lead up or in the aftermath of the kidnapping of Maduro, and Celia Flores, that the United States actually was seizing oil tankers in the Atlantic or in the Caribbean region, some of which were Russian flagged. And that is a serious flashpoint geopolitically.

And I don't think we should look at that with any sort of utopian, with our utopian goggles on. We should be very careful and examine these things very closely because the United States still very dangerous, even in its fatigued form. So that's ultimately the message that the imperial engine moves forward, but it may be fighting a peric war, as imperialism perhaps is always a periodic war in a sense. But it's tough to say, honestly, Henry. But that's the main thread here, the main conclusion, I guess, from this piece is just notice where we're at culturally. It can give us a sort of insight into where we are geopolitically. But that's not, that's not

expect, you know, a graceful end to this thing called US Empire. Yeah, I don't think anybody's expecting a graceful end. But, you know, this was a great conversation, Tony. I'm really looking forward to the conversation with you and Professor Horn about soundtrack to a coup d'etat, which, you know, we've been talking about the jazz ambassadors often on listeners. That's what that is based on. So you can look forward to that in the next few weeks after this conversation comes out.

That'll be part of our ongoing African revolutions and decolonization. series. And Tony, here's to many more collaborations in the future. It's been, like I said, we've been friends for a couple of years, but we have been very tardy and actually like doing, doing a recording together on any of our shows. But I can assure you that's going to change. We have many things planned for the near future. So, um, great. Thank you for having me on and look forward to many more collaborations. It's my pleasure. Can you tell the listeners, again, our guest was Anthony Ballas. Can you tell the listeners where the they can find you in your work if they want to check out more of it.

Well, yeah, you can find me on the site formerly known as Twitter at Tony J. Ballas, I think. It's B-A-L-L-A-S. You can find me on Blue Sky under a similar name. You can find my work, various periodicals and journals. This piece in particular, that we've been. talking about is on the Black Agenda Report. And thank you to the wonderful, one of the wonderful editors,

Margaret Kimberly, at that journal who helped us with this piece. And you can find my work at various outlets like Truth Out, Counterpunch, Journal of Caribbean Quarterly. I don't know. You can find them.

They're all over the place. Just Google Tony's name. You can find a lot of articles. Peace land and bread. You can find some stuff to Dr. Horne and I did together. Yep. And then of course, de facto podcast

and Cold War Cinema podcast, which I co-host with a couple of my close comrades. Yeah, and I'm going to shout out de facto podcast in particular because I know listeners of our show are big fans of Gerald Horn. I mean, you can't really listen to this show without being a fan of Gerald Horne, not only because Gerald Horne is just the best,

but we've had him on many times in the past and he's going to be on again in the future listeners. But the reason I'm shouting out de facto is that I think that the best interviews that have Gerald Horn in them are on de facto podcast. And I'm even saying that, you know, noting that we have many interviews with Gerald Horn on our show as well, I think that the best interviews of Gerald Horn are on de facto podcast. So you definitely want to check out that show. and, you know, Cold War's Cinema. Really interesting show as well. Oh, thank you.

I'm hoping I have the opportunity to be on it in the near future. I'm just going to say that on air so that you feel obligated. Well, the obligation is from my end because I've already invited you and your name is already on the list. Great. Looking forward to it. So listeners. Again, you should look up all of the stuff that Tony is doing. You can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995.

H-U-C-1-995, but I haven't been online for like a year at least because it's basically impossible for me to get on to social media these days because of all of the restrictions. But what I would recommend that you do is help support guerrilla history and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. So on that note then, and until next time, listeners, solidarity. Thank you.