Rev Left Radio - Dr. Redcrow Vs. Turkey/ISIS, Cuba, Trotsky, Hegel, and Q and A

Episode Date: June 23, 2017

This is a unique episode. We are releasing bonus content from our episode with Dr. Thoreau Redcrow and from our Maoism episode; this bonus content will be bolstered by Q and A sessions with Brett answering questions from listeners. We will also use Brett and David's music as transition between subjects.   Dr. Redcrow recounts being on Cuban national television, meeting Subcommadante Marcos, and getting arrested in Turkey for his political activity, and narrowly escaping being handed over to ISIS for beheading.    For our Maoist episode, we had a bathroom break through which our mics stayed on. We talk a lot our experiences with right wing professors in college, the myth of Marxist professors at universities, and Taylor threatens to fight Hegel and Lacan while praising Heidegger.   **Please take the time to rate and leave a review on iTunes! This will help expand our overall reach.**   Donate Follow us on: Facebook Twitter (which we are new to, and trying to build up): @RevLeftRadio or contact us at Revolutionary Left Radio via Email Random Songs of The Week From Friends:   Featured as the outro music You Are Not Alone by Two Tone Runts Organizations affiliated with the podcast: Omaha GDC NLC   Thank You for your support and feedback!

We're educated, we've been given a certain set of tools, but then we're throwing right back into the working class. Well, good luck with that, because more and more of us are waking the fuck up. So we have a tendency to what we have, we have earned, right? And what we don't have, we are going to earn. We unintentionally, I think, oftentimes kind of frame our lives as though we are, you know, the predestined. People want to be guilt-free. Like, I didn't do it. This is not my fault, and I think that's part of the distancing from people who don't want to admit that there's privilege.

When the main function of a protect and serve, supposedly group is actually revenue generation, they don't protect and serve. It's simply illogical to say that the things that affect all of us that can result in us losing our house, that can result in us not having clean drinking water, why should those be in anybody else's hands? They should be in the people's hands who are affected by those institutions. People engaged in to overcome oppression, to fight back, and to identify those systems and structures that are oppressing them. God, those communists are amazing. Welcome to Revolutionary Left Radio. I am your host and comrade Brett O'Shea, and today we're doing something a little different. I had two guests lined up.

Nick Smith is going to come on next week to talk about Appalachia and the Appalachian Working Class. coal mining in the history there. And then I have James Rocha from the LSU philosophy department coming on that same week to discuss, you know, leftist analysis of pop culture. So given the schedule disparity, both of them decided to come on that day. So this leaves this week wide open.

So what I figured I would do is release some bonus content from previous episodes. And this bonus content is extremely interesting. When I was listening to it, I was just totally entranced by what Dr. Thoreau Red Crow on the Kurdistan episode especially was talking about. It's so fascinating. He talks about meeting subcommandet Dante Marcos in Chiapas, the Zapatista leader, or, yeah, whatever you want to call that. And then even going to Cuba and being on Cuban state television, chanting pro-Fidel slogans, which made for a novelty.

of an American coming on, the Cuban radio show to talk about that. So that's going to be really interesting. That's all coming up. And then they're kind of relatively shorter clips. I mean, I think the Thoreau Red Crow bonus content is about a half hour. And then we have some bonus content from a bathroom break during the Maoist episode. That's about 10 minutes. So what I figured I'd do is I'd fill in the gaps with some question and answers from our audience.

And so that's what we're going to do today. We're going to kind of cut in some bonus episode content with some Q&A. And then we're going to use the music from me that I've made music for almost a decade now, but I've never released it. It's not something I've done for other people. It was almost like an existential therapy for myself. And so me and my sound engineer, David, who is the sound engineer for this podcast, you know, we've known each other for over a decade. And I used to come into his house and record my little. songs in his basement and we've been doing that in the most recent i think was a year year and a half ago

i made my last you know cd but nobody's ever heard it so i figured i'd interject some of some of my songs and then he has a band and we're going to interject some of his his songs you can go into the episode summary and look at all um the the links and the names of the bands and everything like that if you're interested in that but it's just a good way to transition between segments for for an episode such as this um so what we're going to do right now is we're going to start off with some questions that I put out on our Facebook page. I just tossed out, you know, to send me questions, and our listeners came up with some. So one of the first ones is from somebody whose name I can't pronounce because it looks

to be in a foreign language characters. I don't know how to say this name at all. I'm not even going to attempt it. But their question was, give us your opinion on this shooting of Steve Scalise. So Steve is a Republican politician. who last week was shot among others at a, I guess, a Republican baseball practice. They're going to have a Republicans versus Democrat baseball game. And what turned out to be a Bernie supporter, anti-Trump, liberal sort of fellow,

came with a gun and shot a bunch of people at this Republican baseball practice. Now, going and just shooting random people is what on the left is referred to as adventurism. It's one of those things that doesn't achieve. any goal it might demonize the left more than anything or give the mainstream media and the right fodder to demonize the left and it achieves it achieves virtually nothing if it achieves anything it's it's increasing sympathy um for politicians among among the broad population um in america so i'm not at all defending that person i mean it seems to me that he had a violent past i think i read something that he he was he was domestically violent against his

his child and his wife. So this is by no means somebody that we should look up to or think is anything but a deranged dude who did a bad thing with no political goal in mind. It was just an outburst of anger and whatever other problems that this individual might have had. But the question is, are we going to join in this chorus of, you know, swinging back and forth and having candlelight vigils for this for this republican politician who spoke at clan rallies who supports the health care bill that's going to strip health care from from 20 to 25 million people and who puts forward a broad policy project that is status quo on the right on the

Republican Party which which you know hurts workers hurts minorities inflicts further oppression on vulnerable communities am I going to lose sleep over that? Fuck no. Fuck no. Fuck no. And I'm not going to join in this like, all politicians come together and let's have a moment of solidarity because this is crossing. I mean, that's just bourgeois bullshit. Do you think that Steve Scalise, or however you say his name, do you think he lost sleep over the two people that got stabbed to death? Three people got stabbed, two to death on the Portland public transportation a few weeks ago when they were standing up to a Nazi who was hurling slurs at two Muslim teenage girls. girls and got stabbed in the neck. Do you think he lost sleep over that?

Do you think he loses sleep over people losing their house because they went bankrupt because they couldn't afford health insurance or because they were denied coverage because they had a preexisting condition? Do you think this person loses sleep over the untold number of black Americans who are shot down in our streets by pigs? Of course he doesn't. So I'm not going to lose any sleep over him. I'm not going to elevate the person who shot him and I'm not going to lose any sleep and

play in this little liberal bourgeois pity party for this politician either. He got shot in the ass, which is intrinsically funny. And then he has government health care of it. Nobody died. He'll get over it. He'll have plenty of pity parties thrown for him. He'll get a standing ovation when he walks back into Congress and all that bullshit. So the last thing he needs is for leftists to bend over backwards and tears over his ass getting shot, literally. So, I mean, it is what it is. It's not something that I'm going to sit here and dwell on. I don't know. One of the interesting things when I sold at your last time was on Cuba is, you know, I mean, Cuba's sort of, if I had to say right after the issue of the Kurds, Cuba's probably the issue that I know, you know, the second most about as far as, you know, various areas that I've studied and covered.

I mean, I've been to Cuba personally of, you know, I've interviewed, you know, I mean, Che Guevar's family. I've been to his grave site. I've done, like, a lot of different, you know, research with Cuba. but I basically traveled the whole length of the island. I was there on like the 50th anniversary of the Revolution there in Havana. Funny story, actually. I was interviewed by Cuban State TV. We were, this is in 2007. And, you know, so it's the 50th anniversary of the revolution. It's January 1st.

And I'm like, down, you know, downtown Havana. And they have this big effigy of Uncle Sam and they're like lighted on fire. And, you know, they're all dancing around it and everything. And then, you know, here I come, like walking up. And the state TV's there, and my English isn't very good, you know, but I have a few, like, you know, revolutionary slogans and things that have memorized in Spanish so that I know I'm going to yell out. So the TV crew comes up to me and hands me the mic, and then they, like, zoom in on me,

and then I just, like, start yelling out all these, like, Spanish phrases, you know, like, hastily all these, like, different things, you know, like, Viva, Fido, and all these things into the, and then I guess for, like, the next couple days, the state television just kept running that over and over, because it was like, here's this, you know, random American guy, like, as we're burning the effigy, who was, like, in downtown Ivana. And it wasn't, like, a tourist area. I was, and it was just, like, the straight-up locals who were just, like, burning

the effigy, you know? And then, you know, here I come, like, in the background. And it's just funny, you know, like, it's the state TV, like, playing it, you know. That is amazing. That is amazing. Because throughout the island, people kept telling me, oh, I saw you on TV, you know. Hey, you're the guy who was with the effigy on TV, you know. That's so great.

like the next couple days after that, everyone kept saying, you know, because in Cuba, they only have, like, three channels. So, you know, like, one channel will be educational, and it'll be, you know, everybody this week is going to learn French. So they'll literally, like, the whole country will start learning French words one week, you know, and you'll watch the one educational channel. And then you have the one national channel for, like, the news. And then you have the one channel for, like, you know, leisure, I guess you could call it, or, you know, sometimes telenovelas or different things. but you know on official events all the channels become the same thing and so pretty much anybody watching tv at that time you know saw what was going on but damn that's so crazy because i kind of i'm kind of conceptualizing as i go this this building socialism series

so i did cuba i'm doing you know kuristan rojava all that and then i want to do an episode on the zapatistas as well um like modern day examples of socialism of various kinds of in action. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you say that, too, because I mean, I've been to Chiapas also. Would you be interested in coming on, especially if you work out the Skype stuff, have you come on and discuss the Zapatistas as well? Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably, I definitely couldn't discuss it as fully as I could, you know, Cuba or Jigavar or those things.

I mean, I have been to Chiapas. I have, you know, briefly met some coming to Dr. Marcos. I mean, I actually have a tattoo of them on my leg. but and when I showed him the tattoo of him and he's like oh I'm much fatter than that now you know because he's kind of like self deprecating yeah yeah does he speak English uh yeah a little bit I mean he you know he was a professor you know up in Mexico City yeah a lot of times he pretends he doesn't know English though because he kind of uses it so he can like um like listen to what you know English language reporters are saying and see if they're talking to

eyes about him or whatever but I mean he you know he's fluent probably about six or seven different languages actually although he doesn't speak a lot of them unless you really like speak to them you know to him in those languages but uh when I saw him he was going around with a with a one-legged rooster and he was using the rooster as like a symbol of the indigenous forgotten you know Indio or you know American Indian American of Chiapas

and it was like a really good visual because it was like this one-linked rooster that he would bring around with them everywhere and he's really big on like poetic symbolism and things Yeah and he's a nice guy The only thing is is you know I don't know if I would be qualified

to speak that much on the Chiapas issue I mean I do know a lot about Zapatista and Marcos and those kind of things but definitely not as much I would, Cuba J or the Kurds or BKK or, I mean, I would say my field of expertise is actually, you know, my degree is international conflict analysis, the concentration and global conflict. But what I specialize in is studying, you know, armed guerrillas, so, you know, any past armed guerrilla movements and things. And so because of that, there's some overlap with the, you know, with the guerrilla element of the Zapatis that I have. but as far as how they set up the form of government in Chiapas and stuff,

I didn't focus as much on that. A lot of the things that I do in my academic research look at the idea of radicalization and how people are turned to violence based on their pre-gritty life, and then how they pre-gritty life leads them to take up on guerrilla warfare. And so I like to focus more than this sort of, psychological aspect and the material aspect of how the conditions create the rebellion or the uprising or whatever more than the sort of inner workings of how the product looks after it's

created yeah did your education um like were you already coming to with like a marxist materialist bent or did did your education like increase the the sense of materialism that you have yeah i would say I did my undergraduate in economics and political science, like a liberal arts school in Illinois. And I would say, you know, like my first two years of undergrad, I wouldn't even say I was leftist, actually. I was sort of kind of exploring my way through various different things. I had sort of a little phase or I had kind of a, I even had like a embarrassing sort of libertarian phase, I guess, for a little while there. But I was actually really leftist in high school. I was sort of known as the, oh, like it's a commie or whatever, in high school.

And then in undergrad, I started to open up to some of these ideas, you know, that now I see sort of as more reactionary ideas, but for a first, you know, year or two, I was open to those. And then I actually went to Tanzania, and I lived in Tanzania for six months. I went to the University of Dar Salaam in Tanzania. And then I lived with the Maasai tribe in Tanzania also. But while I was in Tanzania's at the University of Dar Salaamah, I studied Ujama, you know, Julius Seneer, the leader of Tanzania, had a form of African socialism that he called Ujama. And I studied that while I was in Tanzania.

And that was sort of my, you know, awakening to various other aspects of socialism. And then after studying Ujama on African socialism, that's also when I got really big and to Che Guevar. So I was reading a lot of his texts. You know, he had, when he went to fight in the Congo, he first went to Tanzania. And so there's actually a connection there with him and Tanzania. A lot of the bookstores and stuff there have a lot of Che books.

And you see his murals and stuff on the walls in Tanzania and stuff, because he had come to Tanzania and lived there for a while before going to the Congo in 1965. And so then I was reading that, you know, I was studying that as well. And so then when I came back, For the last, like, year or two of undergrad, I was definitely becoming more and more leftist. And then as I entered grad school, I did my master's in international conflict analysis, and then my PhD. By the time I was done with that, I was, you know, three clicks to the left of Glad the Impaler. I don't really know where I'm at now.

I mean, I still wouldn't even say I can be sort of put on sectarian lines because, you know, I don't really take certain positions as far as certain leftist figures where someone will say, oh, well, do you favor Toski or son, or do you've ever mowed? I sort of borrow equally from all of them, you know, and the good parts that each of them have, I embrace, and the parts that I don't think make sense, I sort of discard. And sort of any leftist or Marxist writer, I'm open to reading, and I don't take them personal as figures you know so for instance one of the i really actually like the writing of trusky a lot but sometimes i don't like truskyists as people online i feel the same way yeah you know but his

writings themselves i think are actually really good and a lot of the people that bash him i think haven't read his writings or they're going off of people that call themselves you know trotsky lights or trotsky is and so you know they're the fact that they are annoying they figure oh you know that They discard him, you know, his evolutionary writing based on the fact that people who claim to support his writings all, you know, how they behave on mine. But, you know, same thing with Mao, you know, some of the Maoists on Facebook and stuff that people don't like, and then they discard all of them out. But I think there's a lot there that has value as well, you know, linen, even, but I'm also willing to read and, you know, take some. stuff from, you know, even anarchists or syndicalists or Luxembourgists or, you know, anyone who sort of has an idea that I think has value, you know, Murray-Bocchin's really, you know,

the Kurds are embracing at the moment. And so, you know, any of these ideas I'm willing to, you know, be open to. I think, I think, honestly, that is the best, it's the best way to approach it, because once you, once you shut yourself off to a certain thinker and, you know, play the sectarian a game of I'm going to embrace this person to the exclusion of this other person you automatically like you are saying lose something of value everybody has something to say you don't have to agree with

everything somebody says to find some gold you know in what all they have to offer and I feel that way I feel that way about a lot and I've had struggles trying to identify myself because there is this impulse in the human mind to want to say this is my team you know this is my tendency I'm going to defend

it but I honestly find it so limiting and if I'm always learning I'm always reading more things, so, you know, I'll read one book, and then I'll be like, oh, yeah, I like that. And then I'll read another book arguing against that book. And I'm like, well, there's a lot of good stuff in that one, too. So I just think you should stay open in that way. Yeah, I mean, one of the, you know, I try not to sort of fractionalize

into the point where people believe like they belong to a team, right? So they say, like, oh, I'm this. And then they hate all the other people that are the other things. You know, it's almost like a quasi-religion at that point where, you know, the Catholics hate the Protestants or whatever. So it's like this sort of rivalry. And then they end up discarding so many things of value from those other sides. And, you know, I think that's one of the drawbacks, especially of Left Book or the Internet

or these things. There's so much writing that people will never even, you know, look into because they figure, oh, well, that person's A-blank. You know, I don't believe in that. So I'm not even going to give it a chance to. read it and i don't really have any sacred cows or things that i i feel may not be wrong so yeah um you know i think that i even think that the different theorists themselves disagree with each other the different times in your life yeah i i really like young marks actually even more

than older marks you know i think sometimes he disagrees with himself yeah um you know and i I really like older Ingalls, actually, more than younger Ingles. You can see the evolution of their thought as they age or as they experience more things. And so, you know, when someone will say, oh, I'm A-Blank, you know, oh, I'm a Marxist's well, which marks are you talking about? You know, the one of 1844, the one of 1848, the one of 1852, the one of his later life, you know, his thought developed and evolved over the course of his life as well. absolutely and there's a whole other thing that we didn't even get to but yeah i mean um

i was actually arrested by secret police in turkey uh how long ago is that and taken to their notorious prison called the abacar number five that i talked about and i mean i could hear guys getting tortured in the other rooms next to me um what was in their fingernails pulled out they had this big vat of just feces that they make them like bathed in you know yeah i mean it was It was basically like something I had like a saw movie. And, you know, I was held in there until when the Turkish police basically kidnapped me and threw me in a windowless van, one of my friends saw them do that. And so he called the Turk, the U.S. consulate in Adana, which called the prison and told them

that they knew I was there. So the Turkish interrogator, who ironically was educated in the U.S. at Syracuse, comes in and tells me normally we would torture you, but you're an American and we don't want an international incident, and the U.S. knows you're here. So they end up releasing me, actually. But had that not happened, they were going to basically hand me over to ISIS, and you would have seen me on one of those beheading videos, and they would have said, oh, well, Thoreau just wandered across the border and got captured by ISIS and got killed.

What were you thinking when I was going on? Were you scared out of the, I mean... Oh, yeah. I mean, I pretty much figured they were going to hand me over to ISIS, and I was going to get beheaded, really. when I was sitting in the van you know five guys basically threw me into a windowless van and I'm basically thinking okay well at least my friends saw them take me

so he's going to know what happened they're not going to be able to lie and just say I disappeared or whatever but I yeah I mean there were moments there where I figured that I was probably going to die at some point and you know they released me and then I had sort of a long thing that you could make a movie out of of how I escaped police through various cities and things.

But long story short, as I came back to the U.S., when to enter the U.S., I was going through Ireland and the U.S. customs, which clears you in Ireland before you come back to the U.S., the only port or a place where you can be cleared pre-U.S. is in Ireland. And so there was an interrogator there in Ireland who went to my arrival high school that I went to for ninth and 10th grade in Florida, just ironically, who was my same age and who went, you know, I played football, and he played for the other football team and stuff, and he was the interrogator in Ireland who was interrogating me about all this. And so, I mean, we hit it off really well. He's playing no situation to him, and he was actually on my side by the end of the interrogation,

but, I mean, they went through all my bags, they went through my computer, and they went through my phone. I had to show them everything. I had to turn my computer on and show him every single thing on my computer. I was interrogated for a long time, I mean, several hours by the U.S., and by the end of it, the guy in Ireland who worked for, you know, the U.S., was actually on my side and was like, man, it's good turkey, man, that's messed up. And so he then wrote a positive thing in my file, which when I flew into Florida, I was again interrogated, but they were able to pull up the notes that the guy in Ireland wrote about me, and then they basically cleared me at that point.

Wow. But, I mean, it was a total or a deal. It was crazy. Is there any, like, publications you ever made where you've told these stories or especially the story about being, you know, kidnapped by the Turkish government? Now, see, that story I didn't even put on Facebook or anything because I didn't want to raise, you know, the issue or the situation. You know, I mean, people that know me personally know about it.

I've talked about it in speeches and conferences and things, but I've never, like, posted about it. But, I mean, I've told, you know, lots of people about it. But it's actually, you know, in my dissertation book, I talk about how I was arrested and things, which, you know, will be accessible through ProQuest soon. And then through, you know, when it's published commercially, you know, people will read it there. But some of those things I talked about on social media as far as, you know, like, turks shooting at me on the border in Kobani and things like that and they gassed us with like some kind of really potent gas that made my face feel like it was going to melt off i talked about those things but i didn't talk about being arrested by by turkey or some of those other things

and that's because i didn't want to bring attention to the fact that um erdogan then several months later some of my kurdish friends say hey the rope did you see that well i mean they call me Sora, which is my Kurdish name, just read in Kurdish, they said, you know, Saur, did you see that Erdogan gave you five years in prison? And I was like, what? And I pulled up this article. And I guess they had a show trial for me there in Turkey without me present, where he gave me five years under the basis of attending an anti-ISIS march while I was in Turkey. What the fuck? the official charge was attending an anti-ISIS party, Turkey.

That's even how they worded the charge. What was that? That's how they worded the charge? Yeah, I mean, it was attending an anti-IS march, you know, within Turkey on behalf of the BGA or whatever, you know, but attending, you know, attending the anti-IS march was the thing. Wow. You know, basically at that time, you know, B.A. was fighting ISIS,

and so there was a huge rally going on. in the city of Ahmed there that I went to and there was probably 5,000 Kurds at this huge rally and, you know, people were waving PKK flags and stuff because this is during the fight in Kobani and I'm present there in the big march, you know, where all the EAA flags are and stuff. At one point a little kid hands me a flag, a VK flag, and I hold it up, and one of the Turkish undercover police that are posing as a reporter snaps a photo of it while I'm holding the flag. So when I was in the Turkish prison, they pull out a file. And in the file, they have the picture of me holding the flag in it.

And, you know, what was this you, da-da-da-da-da, and of course it was me. I'm the only one that was like me there. Yeah, I'm going to say. So are you scared to, like, are you ever going to go back? Is that even an option? Or are you going to be, are you too scared to do that because you'd be arrested or something? Well, I mean, I would definitely not be legally able to enter Turkey again. I mean, I would, you know, I could enter Turkey.

Rojava or Iraqi Kurdistan, but as far as entering Turkey, I probably can't because of the five-year sentence Erdogan was somehow opposed from power or something. My God. I probably wouldn't be able to enter the country at this point, unfortunately. Well, I could go on forever. I still plan on, you know, going to Rojavel later this year and to going to Iraqi Kurdistan. I may even teach in Iraqi Kurdistan. so I don't let that stop me but as far as turkey

you know touchy I fancy myself a rational animal and by logical extension I want to know what's happening yo analyzing myself until I feel a lot like a cannibal but that's the norm in this society it's fashionable anxiety and depression and just par for the course Melancholy, fatigue, stress, man, my heart's been to war. My ship's stern, smashed the shore.

I got lost in the storm, but struggles the price you pay. It's the cost to be born, so I'm gonna pay it. Where's my wallet at? Life handed me my pride, and so I swallowed that. Stared straight into the sun, that's where Apollo's at. So I embraced my emptiness. They call me hollow man. I'm just a hologram.

Particles and atoms, barnacles and fathoms. It's harder growing a chasm. No stars and no planets, no gases. It's all random. Nothing inside of me. basically a fanzings. They call me hollow man. You can call me hollow man. I'm like a hologram. I'm fucking hollow man. They say atoms are composed of 99% empty space. That goes a long way and explaining the blank face. I'm a blank page. An immaterial, materialist,

ephemeral and nihilistic as shit. Vacuous physics. Flash me your digits. Mind signifies zero. You should have listened to Sigmund. I'm Freudian slip. been falling to Nietzsche's abyss. Vic and Stinian silence, Vipasani and bliss. They call me Holo Man. And you can call me Holo Man. I'm like a hologram.

I'm fucking hollow man. I'm fucking hollow man. The next question comes from Douglas Cage. They ask, What are your thoughts on the mainstream media's pushback against Antifa, in particular, an anti-Trump sentiment in general? Well, the mainstream media

you know for all this talk about the liberal media well sure it's liberal but what does that do for the left it's not you know let's be very clear the liberalism and leftism are two very different things that the media to some extent is liberal i mean even fox news and talk radio is liberal if you think of liberalism in the broadest sense possible you know philosophical liberalism encompasses what we consider america like liberals in america which are just you know the left wing of capital and then but also the right also the green party also libertarians broadly speaking liberalism encompasses them all so we do have a liberal media because liberalism is the ideology of capitalism so what else would you expect but there are differentiations to be made there and the difference between msnbc and fox news is

real they're both trash but there's a difference there so we shouldn't expect them to be sympathetic to left-wing causes. And Antifa is, as Dr. Mark Bray said, you know, social revolutionism applied to fighting the far right. It is fundamentally a leftist tactic and is rooted in leftist ideology. It's anti-state, it's anti-capital, it's anti-racist, it's anti-far right. And so we should never expect, even the most liberal of media, you know, the MPRs of the world or or whatever, to treat Antifa in the far left with anything but disdain. I will recommend this, though. There was an NPR interview with a guest I had on, Dr. Mark Bray,

who's a visiting lecturer at Dartmouth, got his Ph.D. from Rutgers, anarchist. He went on on the media, which is an NPR show, and defended Antifa, and he defended it so robustly and so wonderfully. And the liberal host was kind of taken aback. by just a super articulate leftist coming on and defending leftism. And so I think it's called For Antifa, Not All Speech is Free, and the show is called On the Media. I'd really encourage people to go check that out.

That's one of the rare instances where the mainstream media led on a leftist voice, and it turned out really well. But generally, they're going to treat Antifa as criminals, as thugs, as property destroyers. the police are going to see Antifa is way more of a threat than they see the far right because the police is already a reactionary institution. I mean, this is an institution rooted in classism and racism and bigotry. So when they look to the far right,

they don't see an enemy, they see comrades. When they look to the far left, they see a real enemy. Because we critique the cops. We critique the system that gives rise to the police. We critique the racism and the violent bigotry that the police promote. You know, when the police go into a,

a minority neighborhood, a community of color with an impoverished condition and shoot and kill people with no justice, no reprise, no accountability. I mean, who are they going to, who are they going to relate to more? The far left or the fascist right? Of course it's going to be the fascist right. So, I mean, it sucks that we're, that Antifa or the left is viewed in these negative ways. Of course it sucks, but it's to be expected. And the best that we can do is try to be as articulate and as uncompromising and as, and as ethical as we can be in our defense of ourselves and our movements. And we cannot ever, ever, ever let the far right have free reign. We just can't do it. Now as far as tactics and the best way to go about it, we'll have some differences there.

I mean, I don't think that everything anybody's ever done in all black is good. I mean, it's not like we have no critiques of when and when not to apply the tactic of anti-fascism or how to go about fighting the far right. Of course there are critiques. And I encourage people to start thinking critically about what does work and what doesn't work because ultimately winning over hearts and minds is something that we should at least, to some extent, be worried about. but and I heard this phrase once that it was it was it was from a long time anti-fascist organizer I forget his name and I'm really sorry but he said we don't want the anti-fascist movement

to just be a vanguard fighting a vanguard we just don't want it to be able to just be hey here's two really fringe groups fighting each other in the streets we want to be rooted in the working class we want to be rooted in our communities we want to show up to things that affect the people that that we care about and that we live around. And so maybe for every single event, you know, Black Block is not the best tactic, certainly. It's just a matter of really thinking rationally about what's what the best thing to do here is and then going about and doing it. But there's a line that we cross. I mean, if you have an organized fascist march in your community, people holding Confederate flags or Nazi flags, going down doing Seagihail salutes, who cares what the

fucking mainstream media thinks. Who cares what anybody thinks? That needs to be stopped and it needs to be stopped forcefully and it needs to be stopped right now. But for other events, we might think what's the best way to approach this? The last thing we want to do is allow the far right to make themselves out to be victims because that's what they want more than anything. They want to be martyrs. You know, they want to look like, you know, that's why they hide behind these notions of free speech. They call their literal Nazi rallies, free speech rallies. I mean, you can't get more Orwellian than that. But it's convincing to the media. It's a buzzword for liberals. And so they'll hide behind this construct of free speech, and they'll recruit and organize fascists. And that's a very dangerous

thing. And the left has to be really smart with how we go about pushing back against that narrative and pushing back against those movements. Because, you know, this is going to have reverberations in this society for a long time. And we can't waste all of our political capital or all of our social capital, you know, over-extending ourselves or giving fodder to the right. So it's just something to think about.

I don't have all the answers on that. I mean, things are going to have to develop as they develop and we'll have to, you know, approach those developments as best as we can. Just something to think about. I guess it's a success where my head and arms meet my chest but you get burned once you move your hand

you get taught sun you start learning I'm looking just myself today, I check my eyes and look okay, I'm just lying to slide into the wet floor. I wonder how I and the love song I was never capable to tell you swear I might be able to stop from running all the way

that you got you running for one year Yeah I know that it's easy to run to me, but I'm too deep, my head is drowning. A six-ed jump of a journey to never to form the sun. When he talks, his tongue is tired. He's drug-in-drubbed child to lie, but when he seems magical. This fucking punt, but nobody knows. This is just how I found out how mean and evil.

I can't be the hell. And next thing on my eyes and it takes life from the where she is. Now I'm laying in the grass I just think. I'll roll me, care you don't stop these days. Do my day for me. That was a fool of studio. Speaking of professors, we're about to hit this cultural revolution. Oh, man.

That's my next point. Run those bourgeois educators out of town. Communists only, please. Brett, did any of the folks in the philosophy department ever talk about politics? Oh, man. It's so funny you say that. Let's get all three classes so I can pour him even. Yes and no.

My mentor was Rory Conscious. He was the political philosopher. At you and O. Yeah. And he helped me, my paper to go to grad school was on Marx. And he helped me with it. And they all knew that I had Marxist sympathies, and I'd argue for Marxism explicitly

against, like, libertarians and shit in class. But I was still kind of, I was still undereducated at that point. Like, I could argue, like, if I went back now as a Marxist, compared to me as a Marxist, it would be much different? But I've reached out to Rory Conscious the other day, like, would you want to come on to the podcast and discuss political philosophy? We can talk liberalism.

We can talk anything you want. And he kind of gently and politely kind of sidestepped his way out of it. Well, I mean, I say that because, you know, there's this reputation that college campuses are these, you know, bastions of Marxism. Yeah, right. No one ever talked to me about politics. Like, my own, you know, my own leanings have been, like, self-learned and self-taught. And if anything, like, they had a complex when if you talked about politics,

they would try to remain as objective as possible. Yeah. Because they don't want to play into the stereotype of goddamn leftist professors. Right, especially in the philosophy department. Oh, fuck. Things that reactionary say that would be awesome if true. Yeah, exactly. Like, English, I don't think, has those hang-ups in some ways because it's quite based on critical theory.

I'm about to say that, yeah. Which is all about the application of Marxism. Yeah. So I had several professors who were openly, you know, political, openly questioning of, you know, political dorms. I had one avowed a Marxist professor who was probably the best one I've ever had. And he was like, you know, basically preaching Marxism in Gen. A. Classes, like, people not just from, like, English. But people from, like, education departments and shit would be.

coming up and he'd be it was like an american literature class so he would go through america and a year step he would show how this culture of production was influenced by its time and place and material conditions and it really sort of was an incredible eye opening experience like basically the dawn of racism uh just sort of this the whole colonial imperial imperial project i should do an episode of critical theory my school my school is a actionary shit hole. Where'd you go? Creed.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I had one Marxist professor. He gave me way too many passes. I actually had weird experiences where I'd have more right-wing that were, like, they were more comfortable saying they're right-wing than the left-wing were saying their left-wing. Like this one critical thinking professor came in with like America flag shorts and shit. It was like, I had this one professor of meteorology who handed out Fox News articles about why climate changes is a hoax.

I'm like, I'm in fucking college and I'm getting this. So that was at Metro And then I went to UNO And then for grad school I went to a year at Lincoln But that was Yeah Those two right-wing

Deviants were from Metro I was like What the fuck are you doing And I would push back on them too I'm like this is propaganda This is not right And he's like There's definitely a lot of right-wing

Bullshit at UMO But in the English department I feel like it's just a whole other set of You know I don't know I think they're freed from the taboo. Like political scientists and philosophers,

political philosophy departments, they have to, like, I don't want to come off as subjective here. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I know that Taylor's done. John, I can say this,

but a lot of philosophy departments, like, I feel like everybody coming out of there is, like, kind of just politically. That's so apolitical almost. Yeah. Yeah, or indoctrinated with liberalism. Yeah.

I actually met Taylor in our philosophy department. That's how we knew each other. Really? It was a grand old time. I think both of us did different, didn't we both address, because we took a German idealism class or something that were related. Yeah, yeah. And you did, did we both do Marx?

I did Husserl. Okay, you did Husserl. Yeah, I did Husserl. I did Husserl to this day have a hard-on. You didn't do Hagell, Taylor? Fuck you, Hagle. It's a fucking idealist. Someone completely and totally divorced from the material condition.

Of course. Influence philosophy. No Marxist denies that. That's why Marx put him on his head. Completely divorced from the, particular conditions that shape each and every individual. And I think that I can go on and on and on and on and on. There's an obscurantist.

He was a fucking obscurantist. He never wrote one coherent sentence in his life. It was all, it was an absolute spirit banana pants. Everybody you don't like you describe is an obscuretist. Because I like, I like fucking coherent writing, Phil. You should see what happens when you mentioned Heineger. I like to read, I like to read books that I can fucking read. L-A-N.

Fuck, Lecon, I will I'm going to fight him. I'm going to go France, I'm going to find his grave, and I'm going to fucking fight him. I'm going to dig his body out of the ground and beat it up. I want to have a discussion about that. I don't know what Brett, when you're in school, did you like

the analytical bullshit? Are we like into continental? I'm a conti. I'm a continental and I was sick of the analytical bullshit at some point. I'm a continental philosopher but I like to read books that like have an actual sentence structure. And aren't just, you know, philosophical concept, philosophical concept, zebra, banana pants,

Hagelhead. That's an actual direct quote from one of our books. Yeah. Jesus Christ. That was a big thing. The analytical philosophy, and turn me off at grad school I dropped out. I was like, it's super analytical. That's fun.

It's fine. We can do, you know, formal logic, and we can break down arguments and pick apart shit. I was like, but continental philosophy is way more robust. It's deeply rooted in the human experience. And it is more political. It's more political explicitly. Yeah. And it tends more towards obscurantism, which I don't endorse.

If you're going to write, if you're going to write kind of obscurely. I didn't wake up to expecting that I hear the word excuritism five times, but, you know. Damn it, damn it, damn it. Or banana pants. Express yourself clearly. Write about things that make sense. And don't try. We just started a Patreon page, and we're going to put out bonus content from our episodes

that don't get put on the regular shows, this might be one of those critics. Taylor's rant about fucking Hegel and fucking LaCon. Hegel. I'd like to talk to you later about Lecon. Hegel would just write like, oh, the things that appear to be like

as if almost nearly, but only as much and so far as so much, you know. And that would be, like, that translates directly into fire trucks are red. Tell me that fire trucks are red, Hegel. Just write that. It's like three words. That's a way to hide behind some inherent lacking in your philosophical argument.

That's what Hegel did. That's what La Cahn did. And so many people, that's what Derrida did. The postmodernist in general. Like how Heidegger kind of hid behind the fact that he was a Nazi. Heidegger was not an actual Nazi. I will. Oh, he's like pro-Hydiger? Yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, no. Jesus Christ. I think you can divorce. I can think you can divorce his philosophy from his politics, but you can't deny he's a fucking Nazi. Well, here's the deal, okay? Hideker was a good we can talk about this on record whatever We'll be on record

We'll talk about this later I'm talking about you about like hot and shit Okay Okay I feel the hunger I feel the hunger Pings of a starving artist I don't want to work in offices until I'm

Stardust I wish I could commodify my art Attatch your market value to my fucking leading heart. Yeah, that would be so swell. I wouldn't have to serve coffee to yuppies from hell. I wouldn't have to slave away my days for a way to hit the grave, which resent written all over my fucking face. I watched my parents play the same game. They broke their backs every day for insanely lame pay. I got Molotov cocktails to toast the next president, slaughtered the elephant on the altar of decadence. Pants sagging, straight tatted with a black

Black flag, black pants, black footies, and black masks. Hawk, a movie on every Mercedes Benzazi. Smashing the win, lose the fortune, 500 companies. Tomorrow I tell the person like a gangman. Or a truckload of soldiers can be blowing on. Because it's all part of the play. When I say that one little aware of die, well then everyone loses there.

Well, then everyone loses their minds. Introduce them energy. Obset and established order and everything becomes chaos. America! Justice and Liberty for all. Yeah right. We ain't falling for that dumb shit.

We know exactly who run this. Banking Corps. For whom this entire system functions Profits over people, that's the way they run the game, fam. Voting Democrat ain't gonna change that. We gotta hit the streets and organize and fight back. Radicalize, radicalize, radicalize, damn. This last question comes from Max Hill.

They said, Until I heard your episode on Maoism and the Black Panthers, I wondered if there would be a way for the people to not just fall into chaos. Seems that if people learn to take care of their own own in their local communities and form working relationships, then those communities will be more able to handle crises that come their way. Do you think there is a revolution that will come? Will it come upward from the people? Or do you think it will be in response to a natural

disaster that the wealthy are largely insulated from? There's more to that question, but I'll end it right there because I think that's the gist of it. I certainly think that for a real revolution to happen in the United States, it's only going to be in the face of something truly monumental. That could take the form of a natural disaster.

That could take the form of an economic collapse. Or that could take the form of automation displacing so many workers and stressing the welfare state to such an extent that something has to give.

But I do not think that we as a human civilization are going to make it out of the 21st century without one of these things happening. So the goal is for the left to organize and be ready for it, whatever it may be. You don't organize in the wake of a disaster. You organize and recruit and build up before the disaster strikes or before, you know, hyperautomation starts to get implemented. You start having some organization that non-politicized people can turn to when they realize that they're out of options. And that's why organizing right now is so important. As for how the revolution will occur, I have no idea. It depends how history unfolds. It depends how material conditions

operate and how they move. I don't know exactly how it's going to be played out, but the wealthy are pathological if they think that they can just spoil this world, run the economy into a cliff and hyper-automate all labor in the world and not think that those problems are going to seep into their doorsteps. Now, the way that they orient themselves gives the illusion to themselves that they can do this. So they can isolate themselves in really rich communities. They can have gated community, literally gates around their neighborhoods so us rabble can't get in. They can have huge mansions outside of the city on insane plots of land with armed security guards and all of this.

But as capitalism intensifies, the amount of people with that much wealth shrink. And so no matter how much money and resources and body guards and distance they can create between them and us, at some point there's a breaking point and we have way more numbers. We outnumber them a million to one.

And so any delusions they have that they're going to build underground cities, or isolate themselves from the consequences of their own belligerence. It's pathological and it's not going to happen. So revolutions will always come from below. It's just a question of will they be hijacked at some point by a small cadre of people who think they know best? And we've learned from history that we have to prevent that. We have to prevent a small group of people taking over and speaking for us.

Only we can speak for ourselves. but these things are complicated they're contingent they depend on a whole slew of factors that none of us have control over and and none of us really even fully can see because it's in the future so the best we can do right now is just get organized is to think as hard as we can about the future think about ways that we can start solving problems that our communities face right now and try to be as prepared as possible because we don't know how exactly this system is going to break down we only know that it's going to break down. Let's be honest.

Can you imagine capitalism, this neoliberal death machine, lasting for another 500 years? Of course not. Can you imagine it lasting another 100? It strains credulity to think it can last that long. It is in a death spiral. It's eating up the globe. It's shitting the globe back out on our doorsteps.

It's robbing more and more people of wealth and resources. It's stripping us of meaningful, gainful employment. It's bumping up against his own limitations and taking it out on the world. This system is already in a death spiral. I truly believe this is late capitalism. But I have no idea what's going to come in the future. I am not a determinist. I don't think that socialism is inevitably going to result from this turmoil

and from these next series of crises that are inevitably going to occur. Marx himself didn't think that socialism was inevitable. It could just as well descend into barbarism, or as the questioner puts it a mad max or water world situation. It could descend into chaos, into barbarism. So we just have to start planning now. We have to do the best we can. We have to educate ourselves. We have to help educate others.

We have to show solidarity with our community. We have to start meeting needs that the system can't meet. And I think that if enough people are focused on this, project and as neoliberalism continues to break down more and more people will be looking for alternatives and we have to be there with our arms open already ready we have to be there already ready to embrace them and bring them in and work with them and that starts with getting your fingers dirty in the community in which you live and it starts with being a good person it starts of being a decent human being.

You know, if you're somebody who is an outspoken leftist, but nobody respects you or you have a history of being arrogant or ego, egotistical, or, you know, hurting the people around you or not being trustworthy, not only do you hurt your own self in the views of other people, but you hurt the cause. If you're the only person that this random person in your social circle knows, who advocates for socialism or communism or anarchism or whatever, and you're a piece of shit, well, then you're not doing the movement any good. So I'm not trying to be bourgeois

and liberal about this because I think that it's not the primary point to make. I think it's a small point to make, but an important one, be a good person, be trustworthy, be loving, show solidarity, help people in need, and set an example of the sort of world that you want to see. Because when people inevitably start to look for alternatives to this system, they're going to look to people that they respect, that they think are wise, and that they think are fundamentally good people. Nazis and fascists aren't good people. For the vast majority of human beings,

when they see somebody talking about white supremacy and getting rid of people of color and put the Jews in the oven, they are disgusted by it. That's our advantage over them. So be a good person, outshine those motherfuckers, educate yourself and do the best you can to organize in your community and make real gains for the people you care about. All right, that sums up the episode for today. Thank you so much for listening. Next week we're going to have two guests. If everything works out, we'll have two shows recorded on Sunday, edited and put out by, you know, end of the week. Maybe we'll split it, you know,

over a three-day period so that there's some time to listen to one and then we'll release the next one so people can listen to that. But we have a lot of good things planned. We have, um, we have an episode in about two weeks we're going to record where we just prop up arguments that are commonly used against the left. And we have somebody who's an admin from the anarchist memes page, very intelligent, um, great comrade of mine that I've known for years. He's going to come on the show and just start knocking down these arguments one by one. So if you have any arguments you really want to see address, maybe the human nature argument, which I touched on a bit here. but I want to go way more into detail

or some other arguments that you often hear propped up against the left that you really want maybe to learn how to defend yourself against or just to hear what other leftists have to say about those arguments. Tune in for that. It's going to be in a few weeks.

So we have a lot of good things planned. Thank you again for listening. It means so much. This show does not exist without the dedicated listenership. I see, you know, repeat people commenting on our Facebook page. sending us emails,

spreading the words, sharing our posts. You guys mean the world to us. We love you guys. Thank you so much for supporting us. All we're doing is just trying to raise class consciousness, help educate each other. We don't claim to be experts or anything. We're just regular working class people

that are sick of this fucking system and trying our hardest to find a way out of it. So I love you guys. Thank you so much for listening. And I'll talk to you next time. Nice. Yeah. Ptch.

PINN-HIN- M. M. M. M. M. Girl with me. in the bottom of it all told you what is significant and small everyone trying to put you in

your place based on your gender class and race it's your choice you did not choose but it's one you cannot lose they've got the numbers we've got the power so white who would matter you gotta lose you're not alone you've got alone you're not alone you're not alone you're not alone you're not alone you're not alone you're not alone you're not alone You fought for something that you thought was real, but being offended wasn't part of the deal, tuning into another few good speech when all they do is preach and preach and free. The world funding is just increased.

It doesn't sound like noble priest. We've got the numbers, but we've got the power. Let's fight for what matter. You're not alone, you've got alone, you're not alone, you've got to know, you're not alone, you've got to know. Oh, I'm not alone. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. We will rise But we will rise and overcome But the better just not be in one You cannot do this on alone

We're not alone. We will ride and overcome for the battle is like we were. You cannot do this. Oh, you don't know. You got to know. You're not alone. You've got to know, you've got to know, you've got to know, you've got to know, you've got to know, you've got to know, you're not to know.

You've got to know you're not alone You've got to know You've got to know You've got to know I don't know.