Rev Left Radio - Confronting Antisemitism and the Fascist Far Right

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

Our good friend Brendan returns to the show to discuss definitions of fascism, the history of antisemitism, Gramscian political tactics, the fascist riot on capitol hill, the class make up of fascism, and much more!  Episode featuring Brendan and Jon 'The Lit Crit Guy' on Antonio Gramsci here: https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/gramsci Outro Music: "Hot Water Rising" by No Thanks Support and check out their new album here: https://no-thanks.bandcamp.com/album/submerger ----- Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio or make a one time donation: PayPal.me/revleft LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. On today's episode, we have back on the program longtime friend of the show, multiple appearance guest, my good friend and comrade, fellow organizer Brendan, to talk about fascism, anti-Semitism, and really to dive deep into the history and the complications and our understanding of fascism, how fascism, man, of fests in different context, etc. And we've done lots of episodes on fascism throughout the history of Rev Left,

and we're going to continue to do so because it's an important and huge phenomenon current in our society and is only getting stronger as the center falls out. And it is the, in so many ways, opposite of the world that we on the Socialist Left envision. So it's important that we don't fall into easy, knee-jerk, you know, shallow understandings of fascism.

And once you, think that you have a good grasp on what fascism is, I think it can be helpful intellectually to complicate that puzzle a little bit and make you think through things more systematically because like everything, fascism is an ever-evolving, open-ended development and not a static thing that can be grasped once and for all. So we navigate and go through and explore many of the complications, the nuances of fascism, how we define it, what the history of it is, how to identify etc and you know Brendan didn't plug anything at the end of this episode but I'll plug it for him is his band you know he's a local music artist as well as an organizer and his band is called

no thanks they recently released an album called submerger that the outro song at the end of this episode will be one of the tracks off that wonderful album he describes it as a sort of gothic Marxist anti-fascist album and I love I love the band I've seen them perform live. I just absolutely enjoy the music, and I hope some segment of the listenership to Rev Left enjoys it as well. So stay tuned for that at the end, and we'll link to the, in the show notes,

we'll link to his band so anybody who likes that music can go and find it and support a local Omaha punk band and full of great comrades, anti-fascists, and organizers that I love very much and have personal relationships with. So definitely support them if you are so inclined. And as always, if you like what we do here at RevLeft Radio, you can go to Revolutionary LeftRadio.com, find the Patreon to support us on, and in exchange you get bonus monthly content. But you can also find our sister programs, Red Menace, that I co-host

with Allison Escalante and Gorilla History, that I co-host with Adnan Hussein and Henry Hakamaki. So if you haven't explored those other sister programs and you like what we do here at RevLeft, definitely check those out as well. If you can't support us financially, I totally understand these are rotten times, but even leaving a good review on iTunes can do a lot. You know, once in a while, reactionaries, fascists will come across our show, and they'll try to, you know, flood the rating system to bring down the ratings of various left-wing shows. And so anytime there's a left-wing show, whether it's ours or anyone, that you enjoy, make sure to just go spend that three seconds, you know, throwing a five-star rating to those shows

because I think every left-wing show does have some waves of reactionaries who, in almost every case, don't even listen to the program, but just see the title or just see what it's basically oriented around and we'll, you know, leave a shitty comment just to take that rating down. So those little things that they do help. So without further ado, let's get into this wonderful conversation on fascism, anti-Semitism, and a bunch of other topics with my good friend and comrade, Brendan. Enjoy. Hi, my name is Brendan. I am a, I don't know, semi-frequent guest on the show at this point.

And I'm always happy to be here. Not super happy to be talking about fashion. but uh here we are the world we live in yeah well welcome back to the show um i've lost count about how many times you've been on but you know this is an this is an episode that has been long in the making i've wanted to do an episode on on not only fascism which we've covered many times but specifically focusing on anti-semitism i've had some scheduled episodes in the past that for various reasons um you know the fault of no one they just never manifested they fell through at the last moment, the guest backed out,

had something else to do, et cetera. So it's a long time coming, but it's also fairly timely because we're seeing, you know, just in the wake of the fascist riots on Capitol Hill and the fallout from that. And the role that anti-Semitism plays and not only fascism, but the conspiracy theories that are the bedrock of fascism,

whether here or elsewhere. And we'll also get into, you know, areas and blind spots that the left might have when it comes to substantive sort of account or critique of anti-Semitism and how sometimes that's not as centered as perhaps it should be. So I think this would be a wide-ranging conversation, sort of taking detours when and where they arise, and just trying to think through not just anti-Semitism, of course, but fascism overall because it is a slippery term.

It's historically sort of ill-defined. People can very easily overuse the term. even be guilty of that. And perhaps me and Brendan may have some disagreements about when and where to draw the line and call something fascist, which is interesting to explore. But I think particularly at times like this, it really behooves the serious principle left to think through the nuances and distinctions of this movement and its historical antecedents and where it might be going. And that's all in the service of better equipping ourselves and others to combat it. So I couldn't have a better guest than Brendan. And that's why I have them on to discuss this. So let's go ahead and just

get right into it. And maybe starting with the recent riots is the best place to start since it's fresh in everybody's mind. So reflecting on these recent riots, how can we make sense of the ideologies at play? And again, like, you know, what are your thoughts on calling, you know, I've been calling it a fascist riot, for example? What are your thoughts on calling this group of many different people and ideologies, fascist? Well, I think, like, the event itself was clearly, like, a fascist event. It feels like it's right in the fascist playbook, both like the new and the old fascism. And, you know, if people are walking around with swastikas and shirts about the Holocaust,

you can assume that they're quite comfortable with fascism. But, you know, I think that it's also fair to guess that some people who were there were probably just there. because in their minds they're just supporting Trump and then somebody was like oh we're going to take the capital and they got caught in mob mentality I think like what's dangerous about

fascism is that it can utilize non-fascist actors I think like another thing we really need to consider is how many of these people are probably just like I don't know what I would consider sort of neo-confederates whose end goal isn't

fascism but since their goal is still white supremacy, they're quite natural allies and there's significant overlap between those two groups. Yeah. You know, we talked about this a little earlier about calling the neo-Confederates fascist and, you know, that's something that I would sort of instinctively do is refer to that entire sort of subsect as fascist. You know, and certainly there's fascistic elements. Do you think that term fully applies to two groups like Neo-Confederates or, you know, where do you draw the line there or where do the where do the nuances come up there well i think i think it's in my opinion fascism is is um kind of got like sort of like a class collaborationist

sort of setting and like a significant amount of you know what we would consider maybe like the like deliberate neo confederate types are are like fascists like david duke like he's a fascist we don't need to be like nitpicky there but i mean the history of the confederates in the South, anti-blackness, white supremacy, Lynch law and all of those sorts of things. I think it's a phenomenon that doesn't require fascism by any means. So I think just being aware of like that America's white supremacy doesn't need to be inherently fascistic to be violent.

It could just as easily be, you know, capitalist. Or like the old Confederacy had like a very like old school. aristocracy, if you will. I think like the thing about neo-fascism really in general is it's trying to replace like one set of elites with another, like a set of people who weren't necessarily like elite before. And again, I think it's kind of, it tends to try to strike itself in a third position sort of way. And a lot of times where they're going to manage the differences between the different classes for the good of the nation or the white race or Europe or whatever the fuck they're thinking. I think it's an interesting sort of debate to have and, you know, elsewhere in our

conversations you've referenced Pinochet and you say, you know, maybe we don't apply the term fascist to Pinochet and you're obviously putting class collaborationism as a front and center piece of fascism. Would you like to expand on that just a little bit? Yeah. I mean, I think like with Pinochet, you know, it's a counter-revolutionary dictatorship. And I think sort of the knee-jerk reaction, not just among the left, but really in most of society, is that if somebody seems like overly authoritarian to you, you jump to calling him a fascist.

Which like, you know, sometimes in the shorthand, that's totally cool. It gets the point across. But in other ways, it's like, you know, I think like people have been calling repatriation. Republicans, fascist for so long, even when they weren't doing fascistic things, it probably deadened a lot of people to that sort of like point where it's like, okay, like, hey, for the past four years now, this has been a fascist party. I think it's like, I think some people are like, oh, they're always saying that about us. Yeah. I use Pinotche as an example because I think he's, he's a neoliberal dictator. And I, the coup that was carried out there was carried out, you know,

like basically under the blessing of the United States that did their best to sort of destabilize the economy and create the conditions that would allow that coup to happen. But, you know, I mean, these are military establishment people. These are people who were, you know, some of them were part of the Allende government and trusted to be so. What they did was like unconstitutional, but fascism doesn't really care about not like, it doesn't require being. unconstitutional. In fact, fascists love to utilize, like, the hallmarks of liberalism whenever, wherever they can to get themselves into the positions they need to get to. But Pinotche, you know, like, again, it's very, like, capitalist. It's very, it's neoliberal. A neoliberalism and fascism end up, I think, dovetailing and can even

maybe overlap in some cases. But you're not really seeing like a petite bourgeois class base. You're not seeing the desire to kind of tamp down class antagonisms like with pinocche it was a desire for the capitalist class to crush the socialist movement right and what we see with fascists is it's a it's a lot of times middle classes who are trying to smash the working class movement and then hey maybe they can nuzzle like nudge the people who are at the top out of the way too and and take that place does that make sense yeah absolutely and so yeah in certain instances it's the ruling elite clamping down. But I think in this instance on Capitol Hill, for example, you know, there are certainly members of different classes at play. But, you know, we've talked

about how the core base of that movement and it comes out in these interviews and it comes out in the identifications after the fact of who are involved is really this Petit Bourgeois class strata that is leading the charge here. And part of that, I think, comes out of the economic crisis that falls out of the pandemic and this downward pressure being put on these. on this middle class, on this small business-owning class, and the subsequent reaction to Black Lives Matters, which threatens, you know, because in America, the petty bourgeois is so tied up with hierarchies

of not only class but race, that Black Lives Matter is another threat to them from a different angle that they're reacting to, and we saw that all throughout the summer with these big, you know, $60,000 extended cab trucks and these expensive boats, you know, Trump's boats, motors, et cetera. And as we're looking at the people falling out from this riot, I mean, the lady that was killed, Ashley Babbitt was a small business owner. You know, multiple people were either,

you know, lawyers, retired Navy colonels, doctors, small business owners, etc. And so, you know, if Pinochet's, you know, Chile is not fascist in that way, would you agree that the movement we're seeing right now here in the U.S. is more fascist on that front? Yeah, I mean, I would say at this point, it's more fascist than not. I mean, it's been going that way, and it's pretty much terrified me for a while. I don't know why anybody's, like, debating the fact that there's, like, a fascist movement in the United States. Like, after Charlottesville, it should have been really obvious how big it has gotten. You know, I think there are a lot of people who we could probably say had economic anxiety.

that are part of this movement people who are maybe not the sort of people who didn't have anything but the people who are are afraid of losing what they have but that's also like it's also it's about status too and not just economics like a lot of these people are are afraid of losing you know I mean not to be like lazy about it but their privilege and they're sort of like privileged status in our society they feel like all these people are attacking you quote unquote attacking their way of life and there's something that they probably really do believe so you mean you can be a doctor and think that you know people are trying to i don't know subvert your social order i i would imagine a lot of doctors are quite comfortable with the amount of like

privilege they have in the health care system relative to to a lot of people and things and and maybe are apprehensive of like something that would democratize that like medicare for all you know absolutely so zooming in on on american fascism you know it has many intertwined elements as all fascist movements do anti-semitism anti-blackness we see anti-communism this fear of antifa and marxism or the sign of one of the frontliners storming the capital was you know the real invisible enemy is communism there's also this machismo there's like this this middle class well-off white guy syndrome that likes to spend thousands of dollars on tactical gear and sort of give his life meaning through a performance of hyper-masculinity,

which I think is a crucial role in all of this. There's also the conspiracy theory elements. You can't talk about this movement without talking about QAnon. And, you know, QAnon is actually less of a specific conspiracy theory more than it is, like, a structure that any conspiracy theory can sort of be plugged into. And, you know, it's sort of a calling board. sorts that you can plug in any conspiracy and make it make sense in the overall structure, which I think makes it so powerful and potent and viral because it doesn't necessarily

cancel out other already existing conspiracy theories but actually can be plugged into them quite easily in many ways. And it's like a sort of an ongoing collaboration project. Like, you know, everybody sort of pitches in. They can decode Q and you follow your favorite Qanon decoder and, you know, what their analysis says you more or less align with and defend against other analysis and stuff. So it's also this unfolding cooperative thing that, you know, doesn't necessarily meet its own ends in some ways. So all those elements play a crucial part, especially here in the U.S. and, you know, anti-blackness

specifically. While we see anti-Semitism, anti-communism, machismo, machismo, and conspiracy theories in many fascist movements, the anti-blackness, given the history of the U.S. is also incredibly important and you can't understand this current movement without understanding its reaction to these historic Black Lives Matter protest this year. So can you talk about these different elements and sort of how they come together to form the basis of what we're calling American fascism? Yeah. I mean like as you said you can't ignore the sort of anti-blackness and the white supremacy. I mean like this country is built on among a couple of the things like the institution of slavery. So anytime you're going to

to have sort of like a class society or like an egalitarian society in this country. It's going to have an anti-black foundation. And as you said, you know, the masculinity thing is a big part of it. A lot of the research I had been doing to prep for this episode, there are a fairly common element of like this sort of toxic masculinity, ideas about gender roles, ideas about like, I don't know, linking sex and violence, some bunch of stuff like that, that we find to be like reoccurring themes in a lot of the people who are willing to go out and commit like violence in the name of, you know, their right wing movement. And so that's a big part of it too. And yeah, the anti-communism, fascism and communism are pretty much opposite ideologies because communism's supposed to be egalitarian and it's supposed to be international. Right. But they're also like kind of competitive. competing over the right to, like, present an alternative society, because fascism is also opposed to, like, liberalism, you know what I mean? Yeah. And it needs to crush these progressive working class movements to destroy that threat to that, like, new order that they're trying to justify.

It also is how they're going to grow their base, and it also gives them the support of, like, big business and the authorities, and that's really useful. When the cops don't take you as much of a threat as the left, then you can get away with a lot more as we see time and time again throughout history. in the United States just this summer. But like where the conspiracy theory part is really, I think, mostly where the anti-Semitism comes in. I mean, in this day and age, one can like not be a racist in the sense of like believing in race or biologically superior races or even knowing like whether the person they're targeting is a member of a certain race or not. and still engage in racism, whether it's through dog whistles or like sort of like these culturally encoded ideas about like poverty or anything like that, what is or isn't respectable. And so the same thing applies to anti-Semitism where for a lot of people, they don't necessarily need to say, hey, you know, this is the Jews. They can use any of the classic buzzwords, right, which would be things like, you know, cosmopol.

or like cabal, you know, Zionist. Globalist is definitely one of the newer ones that's like really big, but like what, you know, what is globalist? It's international, like the international cabal, right? So it all ties back to like these old anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. I remember being in high school and having a friend who was kind of getting into conspiracy theories and then he showed me this website that was like anti-Semitic as hell and it was like and Stalin was a Jew and Lenin was a Jew and blah blah like and just like the whole thing and I was like dude dude like why are you on this website and he's like I don't care about any of that I'm just interested in the conspiracy

I'm like are you shitting me you know I'm Jewish like why would you think that I would like be interested in this website um but it also like important like forms are really like important like traditionally with like the fascists um specifically like the nazis because i don't think italian fascism needed anti-semitism to function um but but it was a key part of like the nazi germany ideology right so like the whole thing was you know jews created capitalism Jews created communism. Communism is a Judeo-Bolshevik plot, right? And essentially, like, if you crush one, you crush the other. So they're able to utilize people's, you know, anti-Semitism, which has got a very long history in that part of Europe, and then use that to gear people towards anti-communism. You can use people's anxieties about the Bolshevik revolution, and you use that to get them in this anti-Semitic movement. And so kind of like the threat is one in the same traditionally. And so that's something that's coming. into play here. But where it comes in with like the American neo-fascism is that it helps justify the worldview of like some of these neo-confederates and militia groups and all of the

other sort of like white supremacist counter-revolutionaries we're talking about, right? Because white supremacy is based on the idea that whites are superior. So hypothetically like in any matchup, especially in one where they have the money in the guns, which they tend to to in this country, they should be able to win out right that like if you think that they really believe what they believe that's the mentality you'd think they would have so you know that would probably come with a lot of cognitive dissonance and stress when you know let's say the confederacy loses the civil war right or when in the aftermath of that though white supremacists managed to frustrate reconstruction and install Jim Crow laws, and then, you know, now you've got a people's movement that's working to repeal these Jam Crow laws, you know.

And it's the same thing for any other movements, like the feminist movement, gay rights movement, anything. How are these, you know, inferiors in the minds of these whites able to win? And then it can tie into a theory that's pretty similar to like the German sort of mentality after World War I, that they should have won World War I and the only reason they lost is because of the Jews. And so I think a lot of these white supremacists believe that. And the really hardcore ones pretty explicitly believe that. So they really think that there's this secret cabal that controls the media. It's got all of the influence and all the resources, who's infiltrated like Western culture, white culture, and is subverting it from within.

How are there so many protesters on the streets? Oh, well, you know, this wealthy Jewish person is paying them. You know, how, you know, could Trump have lost? Well, there's a mass election fraud. You know, these are people who believe that the Holocaust didn't happen. So they believe, like, the degree to which, or like, people who believe that, like, Jews have, like, managed to, like, fake all of these archaeological digs in the Middle East and stuff like that, like, the degree of manpower to make that sort of thing happen, I don't really even see how that's possible. But they believe it, right? And that's how they justify their losses and how they, like, maintain their sense of superiority and the face of the reality that they're not any better than anybody else.

Yeah, absolutely. And, yeah, I mean, you know, Alex Fuentes, one of the, one of the, you know, talking heads of the far right was present at the Capitol riots is doing a lot of talking after the fact. He's a Holocaust scenario. He's like, he's like 22 or 23, and he has this huge audience of far right. fascist and one of the pillars of his whole idea is Christian domination and, you know, coupled with Holocaust denialism. And then, you know, we don't talk about it a lot anymore, but even just a few years ago, it was the articles were being written about the Great Replacement Theory, which is, which is centered on Jewish people controlling migration flows from non-white countries into white

countries. And so even the immigration thing that riles up the far right is tied back to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. And then the other point you may made about, you know, conscious anti-Semitism and, you know, it being sort of the ambient background noise of all of these conspiracy theories and all of the far-right ideologies, even if people partaking in it aren't conscious of that. I think that also plays out with anti-blackness on like something like the Proud Boys, where, you know, the Proud Boys will have people of color in their midst. They will have even, I think Enrique Otario is, you know, not white, I guess, and so you'll have even leadership that is people of color, and they'll, they'll,

use that as an example of how they're actually not at all. You know, white supremacists, they're not anti-black. They're just Western chauvinists and nationalists, et cetera. But in the actual actions of Proud Boys time and time again, it is the targeting of black people. I mean, there's instances where they're drunk roaming around D.C., you know, and they just see a black guy coming home from work and physically attack him. And so, you know, the actions will speak louder than a lot of what they want to advance. And I don't even know sometimes. if the proud boys advancing this were not racist lying really believe it themselves or if they're being cynical i'm sure it depends on the individual spouting that nonsense but it cashes out and how these

movements actually act in the real world and the the sort of ambient background anti-blackness anti-semitism that is always present whether or not it's it's conscious in the mind of the individuals engaging in these activities you know yeah and i mean hypothetically you could be a part of this movement and not be anti-black or not be anti-Jewish, like, as an individual. Right. You know, I think they're like, I'm sure we'll talk about it later, but there is definitely like a shift in the right where concepts shifted. It's not necessary, for some of these people, it's not about biological race.

For a lot of them it is, but for some of them it's about Western culture, right? So there's nothing, like, there's nothing wrong with X, Y, or Z population. acting in that manner that maintains like what you know what the proud boys are calling like western chauvinism right because you know you're still protecting like the quote unquote civilization which is like a white subpremises civilization so there's there's that but um you know not every not every member of this movement has to believe that they're doing it for for racist reasons the other side of that right is this sort of classic like anti-Semites always argue in bad faith, like sort of the thesis that like Sartra put out. And it's pretty

accurate. And I mean, you can just see it with like, you know, some of the alt-right and even like TPUSA type people where they're like, you know, we're going to say a statement that like maybe is blatantly false. No, it's blatantly false. And if you don't respond, then you, then people are going to believe the lie and it's going to enhance my argument. Or if you counter that, you can say, oh, I'm just kidding, right, or I don't mean it like that, or, you know, you're reading into my words that's got nothing to do with white supremacy, even though it very well might. So there's definitely like a deliberate bad faith argument from a lot of these people. Yeah, without a doubt. And another way it manifests, I think even among the people that, you know, on the Trump side, even just broadly, like the MAGA crowd, the way the anti-blackness manifests, and a lot of them will say, you know, I'm not racist.

You ask them, like, we're against racist. A lot of them will say that, especially on just like the regular Maga Trump sort of regular normy people. But the funny thing is, is the only black people who are seen as their equals or seen as legitimate black voices are only the ones that agree with them that will only indulge their fantasy of white supremacy implicitly. And all other black voices arguing for any other sort of politic are immediately dehumanized, seen as illegitimates. I mean, black congresswomen, for example. are just a million different ways that they're dehumanized and delegitimized and not seen as legitimate representatives in the government, etc. So they really tell them themselves in that way. And there are there are Trump supporters out there who really will think, you know, I am not racist. I really am

against racism. That's not cool. But then the only people, only black people they grant any legitimacy to is like Candace Owens or whatever, you know, weirdo gets up at a Maga Rally and parrots their stuff back to them. And so I think that's also a very insidious way that they can sort of maintain that cognitive dissidents. Well, I'm not racist and this is why I'm not racist. Look, and I like this black person, only because he agrees with everything I say, but still he's black and so I can't be racist. And I think that's a huge, huge thing on not necessarily the consciously fascist aspects of the right, but on that sort of mainstream MAGA right. Right. I mean, they, like, if it benefits the fascists, then it benefits the fascists, whether the people are

conscious of it or not. I'm sure there are plenty of people in Germany who never joined the Nazi party who still, in fact, it's very obvious that there were, who still helped reinforce that regime. And there were probably, I mean, you know, a lot of the Nazis were super anti-gay, and then people love to point out that there were gay Nazis. Like, the gay Nazis don't disprove the fact that Nazi Germany was killing gay people. It just means that there were certain people who didn't agree with that specific part of the ideology. And another thing that's going on, right, and this is definitely like a fascist thing. It's an authoritarian sort of thinking that I think the Republican Party is really like enforced within itself for a couple decades now. And it's a big

part of why this sort of like fascistic party within a party is able to flourish is that it's, it becomes about the team, right? Like you don't have to think. You just say whatever your team says, and so you know you don't you don't critically think how come these republicans that are always talking about how you should like be a hardworking person and how you know how you need to pull yourself up from your bootstraps like why are they so like critical of the fact that aOC pulled herself up from her bootstraps and used to be a bartender like they won't shut up about it right what a huge huge like example of them yelling about something thing that they tell everyone else they need to do.

Like these Republicans don't think, oh, maybe they're doing that because she's like a threat to their worldview and she like is like, you know, a young person of color in Congress and these Republicans don't like that, right? No, like the followers aren't necessarily, they don't want to think that deep. So they're just going to trust what their team says. And there are like a lot of studies that show that Americans will basically agree with whatever the party line is. regardless if it's a shift.

So, you know, it's like you can say, you know, $2,000 checks socialism on Tuesday. And then on Wednesday, it's the best policy ever. Yeah. And, you know, and Mitch McConnell has betrayed the party by blocking it. And then the next day after that, you can be against it again. You know what I mean? So a lot of it's like group and team think as well. So it allows people to hear these.

which which reinforce within people these sort of racial biases right like you know if the person doesn't ever have to consciously realize that thug is a coded word for it to do its job and make that person more racist right right yeah absolutely and another another irony that I like to point out is these people that you know they're your they're the fuck your feelings people they have it on their shirts in 2016 when Trump won they said fuck your feelings he's your president, you know, you see the Ben Shapiro's logic and facts, but nothing is more feeling oriented than this exact stuff that you're talking about, because it's sub-rational, it doesn't need logic, it doesn't need to be internally coherent. It is just feeling.

And Trump's appeal, which a lot of liberals and even people on the left, can't fully understand, like, why do people like this guy? It's not about his business acumen. It's not about his ideology or his intelligence. It's about how he makes them feel. And, And that is the basis. There's something very central about that aspect of it to fascism, this, you know, in psychoanalytic terms, you can call it this libidinal energy or whatever you, however you want to describe it. But there's also this massive projection where it's like the things that they do, they project onto others violently. And they're the biggest cry babies like this, you know, the same people that like fuck your feelings, he's your president. When their president loses an open and fair election, they just completely deny reality because it doesn't feel good to them.

It doesn't feel right. And even talking heads on Fox News would be their argument when there's no evidence whatsoever of widespread election fraud is just like they'll revert to saying it's a gut feeling. And you feel it too, right? Guys, you feel that gut feeling. Something just isn't right. And so it's this projection and this exact inversion of everything they claim to be. I mean, if it wasn't so inherently dangerous, it would just be utterly laughable.

But I think that's also a crucial pillar of this entire movement. Yeah, I think that's funny too. When you think about it, these sorts of different tendencies within the U.S., right? I think the facts and logic sort of line kind of comes from like these neoliberals who are really into science in their own way. Like the Milton Friedman computer projections prove that capitalism is the like superior system. And that's, I mean, this is one of the ways I would differentiate it from like the sort of neoliberal bureaucratic authoritarianism of somewhere like Pinochet is, is like, They'll bring in the experts, right? It's their experts, but they'll bring them in.

And so when they say things like facts and logic, that's what it's coming from. But the gut feeling, like, you've got to act, right? This is like, again, this is that sort of like macho, like masculinity. Like Trump says what he thinks, and that's what I like about him, you know? Or like, fuck your feelings. That sort of mentality is kind of a contradiction to the facts and feelings thing. And I think, like, the base doesn't care. They'll just parrot whatever is going to help them own the libs, which I think indicates that more people in the base have that second mentality than the first.

I think, you know, I think that the, like, sort of neoliberal think tank people are kind of in denial about their own belief in facts and feelings. But I think that they mean it, at least initially. Yeah. Interesting. Well, let's go ahead and keep moving on. And I think the best way to advance from here is to dive into the history of fascism. So, you know, let's dive deeper into the question of fascism and the role that anti-Semitism plays in it. Can you talk a bit about the history of fascism, specifically how it developed in Europe and how it was so from the outset inherently tied to a sort of ambient anti-Semitism that was prevalent at that time? Yeah, so, I mean, in Europe, we might have talked about this on like,

the Gramsci episode two. But like in Italy, it's really kind of a response to World War II. And this failure in World War II of the internationalists, like socialist parties to actually endorse internationalism. We've got exceptions. American socialists, Italian socialists and Russian socialists, were pretty strongly anti-war. But, you know, in Germany, in France,

a lot of the socialist parties essentially like supported World War I. And that completely destroyed the socialist movement in a lot of places other than Russia. And a lot of socialists were like, how can this happen? You know, Mussolini was a socialist, and some of his other friends in the fascist movement were also socialists who formed their little clique. In a period where there wasn't really strong leadership, and I think that's probably part of why Mussolini was significant at all. So they end up switching to a very strong pro-war stance because it seems to them that nation is a stronger motivator than class. People are going to go with their national interests over their class interests. And then tied with like, you know, what is kind of a theory of imperialism, a country like Italy was never going to get strong as long as countries like the United States, not the United States, sorry, really England.

in France and like sort of the like countries that had a more developed capitalist economy and like these larger overseas empires, you know, um, would frustrate them. So like the idea was, was to like switch from a class struggle to a national struggle. Now Germany was inspired by Mussolini specifically, like especially tactically the way that like the strikes were like how Mussolini would, would break strikes, who, how he would, you know, kind of alternate between like this sort of like anti-legal violence and go into, you know, more like legal parliamentary measures and all of that was really effective. And, you know, I think the socialist movement in Italy was kind of already on the backslide by 1921 anyway. But to really like hit it hard was what the

fascists were good at. And so that definitely inspired Nazi Germany. But for Nazi Germany, you know, there are some, like, liberal scholars who argue that, like, Italian fascism and national socialism are different phenomenon and ideologies, and I think there's an argument to be made for that. In Germany, it was pretty much always anti-Semitic. If you just, like, look at the history of, like, Germany, anti-Semitism is not a new thing. When the Crusades started, the Christians just ended up killing a whole bunch of Jews in Germany before they even, like, like went to the Middle East to go, you know, do the same thing to Muslim people there. And so that sort of stuff doesn't necessarily, like, go away very easily, as we can see in the United States with, like, anti-blackness. And so it was, like, a really popular motivator. And, you know, you've also got, like, there's kind of, like, a cult around Wagner and Wagner's music and Wagner's idea of, like, the German spirit.

and Wagner was like a massive anti-Semite and the people were already kind of pushing this sort of theory that there are two great races in history right this like Aryan race that doesn't really exist in any way shape or form and the Jews and they're in eternal battle and all of human civilization can basically be like traced to this battle and the good guys of course are like the Aryans right which are hypothetically like this like Indo-Germanic people that the Germans just really weren't, right? I think, like, J.R. Tolkien, I might be remembering wrong, but the Nazis wanted to, like, publish The Hobbit or something, and they sent Tolkien a letter asking, like, in a coded sense, like trying to ask if he was Jewish before they posted it. And so we wrote a letter that was basically, like, an FU. I mean, I think one of the points that he made was that, like,

Romani people have more of a claim to being that sort of Aryan race than these sort of like Germans do. But anyway, so all of that sort of stuff ties really into the fascistic ideology in Germany. In Germany, like I said, like for them, Germany is not, you know, is in a middle position between like Britain and between Italy. Like they had a great military. They, you know, had some colonies, not as much as England, but more than Italy for sure. and so on how could they lose how could they lose well we were stabbed in the back who stabbed us in the back the Jews and so they kind of combined this sort of race ideology with fascism and that is

more or less the kind of ideology of of like Nazism so like the sort of anti-Semitic conspiracy was a big part of it you know and so they loved things. like protocols of like the elders of Zion, you know, and like, so like the Bolsheviks are Jews and the bankers are Jews and whatever, anybody you want to hate. Does that answer the question? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a fascinating little dip into, into history. And it also made me think about how it's really important to note this, this whole construction of this Aryan race is this fascist retreat into a mythologized past. And that's something we see on the American right today with make America great again is the obvious example and then you ask these people you know when

was America great they all give you a different answer everyone every answer shittier than the last and more historically incoherent than the last but it is this this retreat into to something that never quite existed before as opposed to an advance forward into progress and America first which is you know a line that that Trump makes great use of and the American right makes great use of was actually it came out of Nazi sympathizers in the U.S. trying to keep the U.S. out of World War II. And they would, they organized under the banner of America first as a, as a way to not intervene against Hitler and Nazi Germany. So, you know, this has a deep, long past and it's radically connected. And that leads perfectly into the next question,

because those connections go even deeper, which, you know, and the question I'll ask you, and we can bat this back and forth a little bit is, what happened to the Nazis after World War II? And what role did the U.S. play in providing cover for some of them and even continuing their work in some interesting ways? Yeah. After World War II, you know, or Germany ends up being kind of divided up. Russia and the Western powers are kind of trying to establish like the balance of power in this new world order, right? So hypothetically speaking, there was going to be denotification, a bunch of war criminals were going to be put on trial, yada, yada, yada. This is never going to happen again. But in reality, right, like you've got Operation Paperclip where they're

like, all right, we're going to take these Nazi scientists and we're going to put them in, you know, our science thing so we can out science the Soviets. There's a lot more of that sort of thing that's going on than people realize. So, I mean, you know, in Germany, in West Germany, a lot of like former people who were like judges and stuff during Nazi Germany end up being judges in post-war German. So businesses that worked with the Nazis, German and American businesses, which were going to be investigated,

basically like the U.S. and I assume other kind of capitalist institutions were like, hey, you know, let's tone that back. Let's not like dig into potential like support for war crimes from the like steel industry or whatever. But I think the scariest and most striking example is that there were people like literally SS officers who managed to go to usually the US but also like, you know, again, West German and like Soviet intelligence services and say like,

hey, you know, I have all of this German war information on the Soviets about what's, about their sort of networks in Eastern Europe. You know, we'll give that to you if you don't prosecute me And in fact, if you give me a job. And so some of these intelligence services are like, yeah, you know, we're anti-communist enough that we will absolutely protect this Nazi war criminal and give him a job. And not only that, but some of these people, like, managed to stash away some wealth, which we can assume was taken from, you know, Jewish and Romani victims of the Holocaust. And so they had that money.

Now they get to be part of intelligence network. and they had the opportunity to kind of survive and form these networks that are going to be important in the resurgence of fascism later. I think they're like idea, I'm sure that some of them were really just so anti-Soviet or so anti-US that they really meant to help those countries. Certainly, like, enemy of my enemy logic, but also part of the logic is that, you know, this sort of balance of power between the United States. in Russia can't last forever and we might be able to like play the two against each other and

that was also something that some of these Nazis thought yeah incredibly interesting and yet for those I mean I'm sure most people do know as you said but the operation paperclip was this clandestine CIA backed operation after World War two to take a bunch of Nazi scientists and and you know provide them cover protect them from prosecution give them alternative names and backgrounds and then use their knowledge against the quote-unquote Soviet threat. And that leads to something I always say, which is, you know, it's not so correct, you know, counter to what we're taught in schools that America defeated the Nazis. I think it's much more correct in many interesting ways to say that America absorbed the Nazis, took them on board, and those Nazis would go on to become a part of

American culture and increase that ambient anti-communism that was already present, but, you know, pushing it further. And the whole operation papercliff, of bringing over and saving these Nazi intellectuals and scientists was rooted entirely in the anti-communist crusade against the Bolsheviks and wherever socialism or communism cropped up around the world. So we see this anti-communist pillar go way back to even things like Operation Paperclip. And then another thing that I don't think is talked about quite as much is M.K. Ultra. We think of M.K. Ultra as the CIA doing a bunch of unethical, horrific experiments,

But in many ways, I think Operation Paperclip and MK Ultra are connected, and the inhuman experiments that Nazis were conducting in a lot of these concentration camps, a lot of those experiments, you know, if not completely, at least in part, were picked up and carried on under the guise of MK.K. Ultra and related projects. And remember that 90% of all documentation related to MK.K. Ultra was destroyed. Everything we know about MK.K. Ultra today just comes from a small slice of paperwork that was actually misplaced in a different building. And so when they were all burned in response to an investigation, those survived. And so, you know, imagine what we don't know regarding M.K. Ultra. And if you're interested in that, we just released an episode on our

sister podcast, Gorilla History, where we talk exclusively about MK Ultra. But in so many different ways, that fascism, the Nazi fascism was carried over into America and still lives on in many ways. to this very day in our own society. Let's go ahead and move down the line a little bit historically, and I was hoping that you could talk about fascism in the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, particularly the rise of the European new right. You know, what caused that emergence? And even because I know you are fascinated in a part of the punk scene,

and you're obviously a lead singer of a punk band, the American punk scene and how that fascist versus the anti-fascist fight started on that level. So you can take that big question in whatever direction you want, but I just, just continuing that history of fascism. Yeah.

So we've established that a lot of old Nazis survived and managed to maintain contact with each other. But they're kind of stuck in this limbo for a while. And kind of, I don't know, I'd say like in the 70s on, you kind of have like a European new right, which I would consider like revisionist neo-fascism.

You can say, like, the old Nazis, they're just Nazis. We don't have to call them neo-fascists. We've got the revisionist neo-fascists. We've got the, like, sort of nostalgic neophascists, and then you've got, like, populists. So these revisionist neo-fascists, their ideas are going to be to reinvent and rehabilitate fascist ideas while abandoning imagery that would have limited their appeal.

And I imagine also that there were a lot of real theoretical mistakes that these people thought needed to be corrected or they had their own ideas about how the world worked. Some of these people are, you know, they're not really interested in being just the new right, but to kind of transcend right-left dynamics, which, I mean, there are some similarities with, like, the post-left there. Their ideas are that things like ethno-pluralism

and the right to difference. So, like, we can have a world where there's a whole bunch, of different cultures who all do their thing in their own little spheres, right? They also, you know, these are the people who are like studying Gramsci and stuff like that. These are the people who kind of came up with a lot of ideas that the other kind of fascist groups took and ran with sometimes in ways that like maybe some of the thinkers of the new right would hate. But it doesn't really matter because it worked.

So, you know, you get these sort of like populist parties who are like, okay, yeah, let's abandon all the old traditional fascistic imagery. Let's take these sort of ethno-pluralist right-to-difference-type ideas. You know what I mean? And it's not going to be about supremacy. It's going to be about separation or whatever. It's a lot of these groups, they're like, you know, we're going to create basically mass political parties

where not everyone even maybe needs to be a fascist to be a part of it. They struggle a little bit until they hit on an issue. immigration. And again, right, like some of these new right people studied Gramsci and stuff like that. One of Gramsci's ideas is that there's this sort of like ideological struggle in this war of position that people need to create alliances and sort of like shift the ideological terrain that they're that they're working on. Right. So these like far right populists manage to this is the group that managed to like say like, hey, you know, we're these immigrants are the problem, right? Immigrants is amazing in a far right sense because it is the other. It can function

as a replacement for Jews or whatever who, you know, in some of these European countries, they just aren't there anymore because of the Holocaust largely. And it also can utilize things like Islamophobia and stuff like that. And it really motivates people. I mean, it's a key, like if you look at Trump, that was a key part of his appeal. and especially, and I think his election against Clinton, using that sort of like, you know, we just have to, you know, tamp down on the bad immigrants. They're the source of our problems. They're coming in and they're ruining everything, right?

And so they actually, they basically force the more mainstream right, the center right, and even the center left to start to adopt some of this anti-immigration rhetoric. They're going to get tough on immigration. So even if these like sort of like right-wing populace, don't manage to win the elections, although in some cases, like in the early 90s, they're like winning 25%, which is a lot. But even in the cases where they don't win, they're able to like shift the ideological terrain on the debate.

So going back to the new ride a little bit, like they studied Gramsci, and another thing Gramsci talks about is creating a proletarian culture. And so that combined with this sort of like post-rightism influenced a whole lot of people to do a whole lot of things, and they basically decide they're going to start, I mean, there's already been a pattern of infiltration, but they're going to, like, send people to ecology movements, you know. This current world order is destroying the planet. You're aware, you know, who's responsible, you know, whatever, all of that sort of stuff. And they decide to do that with like the punk scene, too. In the punk scene, you see a lot of people who are really

dissatisfied essentially with with like neoliberalism or like the build up to neoliberalism. And but also like in England initially like just satisfied with like labor and just the state of the country, you've got a lot of very angry young people who are interested in new ideas, interested in rebelling from traditional authority, interested in shocking, right, So in England, I would say there were, from the start, a solid chunk of consciously left-wing punks. And the sort of punk ideology of like do-it-yourself and stuff like that ties in really well with like sort of like the more like libertarian side of the left, anti-corporate, anti-consumerist, you know, very collectivist in a lot of ways. But there was also a chunk that was like just wearing whatever they wanted to. shock people like you know Sid Vicious and and Susie Sue wore swastikas at various points a lot of

punks did and some of them like didn't realize what they were getting into and I think like the clash who had a Jewish member and a Jewish manager ended up kicking Susie Sue out of one of their shows or because she had a swastika shirt on she ended up apologizing I think a lot of these people were 17 year old kids who were just like you know fuck you dad I'm going to shock you with this shirt being edgy yeah but the the far right looks at this largely working class thing and says hey what if we got in what if we got in on that and you know this is this is again this is like you know some of gromshy's ideas transplant into the right we're going to create a fascist counterculture we're going to create we're going to win this war of position by struggling over you know culture and

ideological turn. So they basically like astroturf Nazi oi bands and like always like a very working class subgenre of punk, like street punk if you will, which has borrowed a lot from skinhead culture. I think it's really important to note that like skinhead culture is in England initially was a product of white and black youth coming together and this very strong

influence of like Jamaican ska and stuff. So like the original skinhead music was ska. And there's still there's still that. There's still plenty of like non-political or like anti-racist skins and like the checkerboard colors that you see on ska kids. You know, that's like that unity thing.

And so like skinhead culture also has had that. But the right, there's a band called Screwdriver. That's a great example of this. got these, like, right-wing working-class bands that are going to, you know, basically spew right-wing ideas and right-wing ideology to these young, working-class kids and try to attract them to racism. And so there's already, you know, football-related violence in England. There's already, like, fights between, like, the punks and the mods.

There's, you know, anti-cop, race-related fighting going on in the streets, a lot of stuff like that. So there's already kind of a culture of violence that the right is able to really seize on. And that same thing was transplanted to the United States to California where there's a lot of Nazis in California. So like if you see things in like in American History X, there's a scene where there's like a Nazi punk show. And so, you know, in the punk side of things, there's always been this like anti-Nazi versus Nazi thing because it's like you're trying to steal our scene from us. We're going to fight you off. In some scenes very successfully, I've been led to believe in Nebraska, a bunch of punks beat up a bunch of Nazis in the late 80s and 90s when they would come to shows. And that's why you don't see people with swastika tattoos at punk shows in Omaha.

Beautiful. I'm not, I've seen in my life Nazi punks, but luckily I don't think I've ever seen one blatantly show themselves at a punk show in Omaha. Although, I mean, I'm sure it still has happened before. but but I digress so so you know there's like this deliberate like anti-fascist logic you've got like dead kennedy's punk songs like Nazi punks fuck off um when the national front like one of these like right wing populist groups and starts like doing really well in england a bunch of musicians punk and reggae musicians set up um an event called rock against racism so they're deliberately pushing this sort of anti racist side of the punk thing and like we have to fight

these Nazis. I think there's still, you know, plenty of racism in the punk scene. But, but there is like this very conscious trend of trying to fight it, which is good. But, you know, so like the skinhead, the Nazi skinhead bands, the, the right term to call it is hate rock, because I don't, I don't want it to be associated with oi or skinheads or anything like that. So these hate rock bands set up like a rock against communism event. So it's this struggle. And a lot of times, you know, the sort of skinhead associated, or like a lot, sometimes they're called boneheads. So these sort of like Nazi skins, you know, they've got to overlap with like hardcore types of music, not like exclusively hardcore punk by any means. They find a lot of success in

metal. And then also like, again, sort of like, you know, that phenomenon of like, you know, football hooliganism. A lot of people like, who have that sort of like what we were talking about earlier that sort of like toxic masculinity mindset are drawn to these places for the violence and then the far right was really good at capitalizing on that and utilizing those people as sort of shock troops the other side of this is that the media focuses really heavily on them there's a rise in hate crimes in germany we're going to look at the nazi skins who are who are oftentimes the people who are doing the like direct act of violence but what it's done is taken focus away from the sort of populist groups, the infiltration, the revisionists,

because they're focusing on the sort of nostalgic side of things, the people who have their like, you know, swastikas and Sig Hail and, you know, are trying to smash people's face in with the boot. So the media looks at them and they are not paying attention to, oh, wow, this Holocaust denying group just gave this Republican politician a shit ton of money. I wonder why. The media doesn't pay attention to that. And it also allows mainstream society to shrug the blame off, mainstream society is going to look at the extreme violence from the neo-Nazis, and they're going to use that as a way to absolve themselves of their own white supremacy. Like, have you ever seen, like, when, like, Democrats are called

racist, they get so offended, right? Yeah. Or leftists. Like, we don't like being called racist when people call us out for some things that we have internalized. it's very uncomfortable. So I think, like, the media's focus on these sort of, like, countercultural, nostalgic neo-Nazis has allowed mainstream society to avoid looking at itself. And then it also de-legitomizes one of the most strongly, like, culturally left things I've seen in my life, which is punk rock where, like, you know, ideas like socialism

and anarchism and anti-fascist. and veganism and all of that sort of stuff isn't weird. It's like the norm. Right. And so like, but like what like when you look at like media representation of punk up until maybe very recently now that there's like been this very corporatized like consumerist punk and like you don't have to be a punk to dye your hair weird colors anymore.

But in the like in the 80s and 90s and even I remember like growing up in the 2000s, like punks are always like shown to be like these violent thugs. bully anti-intellectual types right and like you know people like the clash or x-ray specs they're right i mean they're writing songs like left-wing songs about really important social issues and and there's like a real social critique that the media has and the nazis have whether intentionally or not managed to completely like take out of what people think of with this culture yeah yeah that's incredibly fascinating and an array of great points, especially about how mainstream media conceives of these things and uses them as sort of

scapegoats to, you know, distract from the white supremacy inherent in the mainstream. You've mentioned a couple times the right utilizing Gramscian tactics. And I don't know if you've said all you've need to say about that or if maybe you could just drill down a little bit deeper. Like, what do you mean exactly by Gramscian tactics and how has the right been even at times better than the left when it comes to employing those tactics? So, you know, Gramsci, a lot of what we're talking about comes from like the prison notebooks right a lot of that work is is really theoretical and not it's not necessarily always clear how to apply it but some people in the new right adapted gromshy to a right wing idea and then some of these other groups started trying different things that whether consciously or not but in some cases is conscious they're going to apply gromshy so that means you know again like we've already kind of covered it basically, forming alliances,

you know, send some Nazis into the Green Party. The Green Party, most of the Green parties of Europe are pretty explicitly against fascism, but that didn't prevent fascists from infiltrating their parties.

You know, and you can, you know, you can run into hippies who buy into a lot of right-wing conspiracy theories in the United States despite not being right-wing themselves. Oh, yeah. And so like stuff like that to really like normalize um immigration is kind of the chief one when we're talking about like

politics and that war of position that like it's hard to think of an issue that helped shift the overton window to the right in the past 40 years in europe and the united states as much as immigration um but so like but like this sort of like unwillingness to compromise that we see on you know the more like neoliberal right paired really well with the new right. So the combination of both of those groups doing their two respective things was really shifted the ideological terrain. But another thing is that being willing to make alliances and outreach people and change the way you communicate in order to win them on your side, that's what the right is for some reason so much better at doing than the left. I was reading

this article called Skin in the Game by someone who used to be a punk, black man, who was like doing like anti-Nazi work. So that involved infiltration. How in the world are black people able to infiltrate and get a closer look at the inner workings of this sort of reactionary right in this country? It's because when they shifted from white supremacy to white separatism, Right. But they're arguing, hypothetically speaking, is a white ethno state of their own. So if you're a person of X, Y, or Z minority, it doesn't matter. In some cases, you can even be Jewish. If you're like, I think all Jews should go to Israel. That's the Jewish ethno state. There are some Nazis who are like, cool, go there, leave us alone, right? So they're willing to make peace with other people whose ideas will still advance their goal, even if they don't like them, right? So there are people who hate people of color, who hate them, but are quite willing, if not comfortable, but quite willing to have people of color come to these, like, you know, these militia expos or wherever it is that they're meeting,

especially if they can convince, you know, those people of color to hate some other group of, you know, whether it's convincing, you know, somebody to hate Jews or someone to hate immigrants or whatever um you know if they can if they can find common cause for a tactic they'll do it right and that's part of why the neo confederacy sort of clan types who again a lot of them are Nazis part of why that happened in the first place because there was a period of time right where the clan was still kind of really interested in like protestantism and and stuff like that and probably would have been opposed to a fascist state and now you've got people in the clan probably

who want a fascist state I don't know the thinking of the clan but this is kind of the vibe I've gotten but the clan certainly got rid of their anti-Catholicism largely and kind of just like re-aunt their anti-Judaism I think like David Duke has something to do with that

if I'm not mistaken I kind of lost my train of thought I'm sorry I hate this topic I understand so they're willing to to work with people to do a thing even if they don't agree with them right like they'll work with the neo libs if it means cracking down on people of color or communists they're willing to work with you know neo-confederate types because it's for white supremacy and now at this point it's it's impossible to really like pull the two apart i would guess the neo-fascism and the like you know more traditional american white supremacy anything like that you'll even find some right-wing people willing to support a couple left-wing ideas if they think it'll advance the cause overall and and there are so many attempts of the far right to unite amongst themselves I think like three or four years back there was a meeting

on like an event at stone mountain Georgia where like 11 like hate groups decided like announced that they were part of some team that exists now and that like thing broke apart but that doesn't mean that all 11 of those hate groups

couldn't have had presence on the capital last week they probably did or at least some of them so this sort of like that sort of stuff is what I mean I guess like it's pretty far from Gramsci once you get to that level of application, but like, you know, through the, through the

new right, it's made its way there and influenced some of these mechanisms. A lot of it's also just real politic too, you know, the Nazis who like got integrated themselves into like American or Soviet intelligence agencies, they weren't, you know, motivated by Gramsci. They were motivated by survival and real politic, you know. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's fascinating. And for those that that haven't heard, we have an entire episode on Gramsci that I can link to in the show notes so you can go listen and learn more about that. So let's zoom in towards the end of this conversation and I think the best way to end this conversation is to talk about how the lefts, particularly in America, might not fully comprehend the threat of anti-Semitism, the way it manifests, etc. So in

what ways does the modern left in America lack a substantive count of anti-Semitism? And why do you think that ultimately is. Well, I just don't think that the left is largely interested in it. Frankly, I don't know. There are certain oppressions that I don't think the left is interested in learning about. I don't think that they think of themselves as being anti-Semitic or anything, but they don't like care to learn about it. You know, I am sometimes I'm shocked like when there is like a shooting at a synagogue in the United States, for example, at how long. little I see from the left in terms of outrage. I think also, I mean, like, I think a lot of the left feels like they know it already. They're like, oh, I learned about the Holocaust in school,

which I, like, I have a Jewish upbringing, so I don't, like, I can't say for sure, but I'm highly skeptical that American public schools have done an adequate job teaching about the Holocaust, just like I can say that in American public schools, I learned about white supremacy and anti-blackness, but I know that it was terribly inadequate. Like, they basically lied about who Martin Luther King was to me, right? So, you know, I know that I'm pretty confident, especially, like, during the Reagan years, there was, like, a proposal to, like, add some Holocaust education to the curriculum. And the Reagan administration denied it on the grounds that it was not taking into a

account the views of Holocaust deniers and the KKK. So that's the country that we're living in. And I don't think, I just, I don't think the left really gets how, you know, some Jews are still scared. And like, Jews in America are really assimilated. I think that has something to do with it. But like, Jews in Germany, we're probably the most assimilated Jews in the world right before the Holocaust.

So that doesn't protect anybody. and I think that people who believe it does, whether they're Jewish or not, have their heads in the sand. I mean, I don't know. The left has also not been immune to this Nazi infiltration, whether it's through ecology or anti-Zionism or what have you. The Nazis that managed to have some influence.

Again, the Soviets had former Nazis working for them in the intelligence field as well. They had this white supremacist guy, whose name I can't pronounce Yoki or Yaki, he wrote Imperium, which is like the American MindConf, I guess. I've never read it, thankfully. He was, I think he was indirectly working for the Soviets

through, I think, the Czech intelligence agency. I don't remember off the top of my head in the 70s or 60s. I don't know. He killed himself after, like, he got arrested by the FBI. But so, you know, we're not immune from that sort of stuff. And we, I mean, Engels was right. writing about left-wing anti-Semitism in the late 1800s, and I don't think it's something we ever got rid of. I remember reading about, like, some, there was, like, graffiti during the,

like, Russian Revolution in the dual power period that said, like, down with the Jew Kaczynski, like, long-lived Trotsky or some shit like that. Like, aside from the fact that Trotsky is Jewish, and I'm not sure that Kaczynski was, like, which is funny enough, I mean, that shows like we've had this problem. I think a lot of the left is really in denial about some of the crimes, some of the socialist countries committed against various ethnicities, and that includes the Jews. There was a show trial in one of the Eastern Bloc countries where they accused this communist of being like, you know, some huge Zionist and he was like one of the most like fervently like anti-Israel politicians in the country.

But he was Jewish, right? And so they're like, oh, he's a Zionist. And, you know, they got him to confess or whatever, and they killed him. I don't know. So, like, we have those legacies, too. And if we're not willing to look at those, then we're not going to have the problem. I think it's cost us in a lot of ways the left Jewish people have made a disproportionately significant part of our, like, block in some countries. And, like, labor in England or, like, you know, again, a lot of the Bolshevik leadership.

And before they were all purged, we're Jewish. You know, there are labor bund, Jewish, there are Jewish labor parties throughout the world. And I think the left has kind of taken that for granted. And, and failed to, like, kind of just, like, honestly, it's, it's the same as anybody else. Like, listen to the voice of the people. Like, if there's an attack on Jewish people, like, don't be silent, learn about these things. Like, try to, like, figure out, like, hey, you know, a Jewish person says this thing is anti-

Semetic, maybe I shouldn't tell them that it's not. Maybe I should try to figure out why they feel that. But I also want to say that I think that Jews are increasingly looking at, when I was like doing research on the rise of hate crimes and stuff in the past several years, Jews

tend to think that anti-Semitism is apolitical and it's across the political spectrum. And again, I think like the right has successfully managed to influence the left and the center in the past several decades now. So some of those ideas do come from the right wing in origin. But also, I think like it's the media, I think, tends to like over-emphasize

how anti-Semitic it is. And there's a conundrum when you've got Nazis, Israelis, and like Palestinian freedom fighters who all push this idea that Israel is like inherently, associated with the Jews and then drops it when it's not convenient right like so if like somebody's critiquing Israel Israel will be like hey that's anti-Semitic even if it's not but sometimes there is a lot of anti-Semitism that comes in the anti-Zionist movement and I don't know it's really complicated to look to look at and it's really hard to unpack it and a lot of people on a lot of different sides are actually reinforcing one another's ideas and contributing to the problem. But I think the media tends to like overemphasize how bad of a problem it is on the left, not in terms of like

because it's not a problem on the left, but again, in terms of not fully addressing how much of a problem it is in the center and the right, right? The right tries to use this as a tactic. They're like, look at how much we support Israel, but they also rely on this entirely anti-Semitic conspiracy theory system. So they're kind of throwing weird conflicting images that confuse people, and the media can unintentionally play into it. And the media is not biased towards the left, like the right thinks, the media is biased towards the center. And so, you know, their coverage of Corbyn tended to focus on the anti-Semitism. The right doesn't get that like sort of attention. I don't think the media has done an adequate job talking about how anti-Semitic,

some of the things Donald Trump has said were, or like how much of a like undercurrent of anti-Semitism exists in some of these conspiracy movements. But like the media will post articles that I frankly think are anti-Semitism. Semitic saying that like Bernie Sanders like some Jews think Bernie Sanders isn't Jewish enough or whatever like some 77% of Jewish people vote for the Democratic Party like there's not an overwhelming amount of support from Jews for the Republicans because like the Republicans hawkish like stance on Israel but the media sometimes pushes that narrative I think that they like I've never seen an article about how the Tories in England are anti-Semitic but I've seen

a whole bunch about labor. So it reinforces it. So I think like a lot of people on the left get really offended. They're like, wow, they're just totally distorting us. They're really focusing on us. They're ignoring right-wing anti-Semitism, you know. But as a result, they like don't notice like, hey, you know, you're losing Jewish votes. And that might cost you this election. You know, I'm talking about labor. And it's just a really ugly mess. I, very much I am much more comfortable on the left as a Jewish person

than anywhere else. Yeah. So. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I think that is honestly important, nuanced analysis. And it's an analysis you don't really hear where you're willing to parse out these distinctions and nuances

that a lot of people just are too lazy to think through or they're too quick to foment themselves into a defensive posture or not. think through what's being said or what's being put out there. So I think that that's actually one of the clearest, best little explorations of this problem that I've come across. So thank you for that. And I think that might be a great way to end this wonderful, important conversation.

You know, this conversation, we covered a lot of history. We covered a lot of topics. You might agree or disagree with certain definitions of fascism, et cetera. But the thing that both Brendan and I wanted to accomplish with this episode is to, is to look at the complicated wrinkles of these things how anti-Semitism is related to anti-blackness, how the history of fascism fuels fascist riots to this very day and just not think of these things in overly simplistic terms

because at the end of the day, it only hurts the anti-fascist forces to have a half-assed analysis of what fascism is or to rest on your laurels thinking you understand the fascist phenomenon when it's in a constant state of evolution. So thank you again, Brendan, for coming on this show, and let's talk again soon. Thanks for having me.

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