Rev Left Radio - Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

Episode Date: May 14, 2022

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò joins Breht to discuss his book "Elite Capture". Together, they discuss what elite capture is, how the language of social justice has been co-opted by liberal elites, the difference between deference politics and constructive politics, and much more!  Find the book here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1867-elite-capture Outro music: Organizing Steadily (ft. Amihan and RAHSELLA) by Power Struggle Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, I have Philosophy Professor Olu Femi-Tai-Wo on to talk about his book, his new book, Elite Capture, How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics and Everything Else. This is a really timely and important text. I know we've talked about a lot in the show, liberal ideology, co-option of revolutionary energies into the maintenance of the status quo, and this text is really a breakdown of that process and how it happens. We were kind of time restricted. I had to go get my kids from school. He's very busy doing interviews and other things as well. So this interview was a little less than

an hour, which is a little shorter than we usually do. But as I said, you can go check out the book. It's definitely worth diving deeper into this argument. And our good friends over at Millennials are Killing Capitalism also did a wonderful interview with Professor that I encourage all my listeners to go check out if you haven't already, especially if you listen to this episode and want a little more, definitely go check out their interview with him. So yeah, without further ado, here is my discussion with Professor of Philosophy Olu Femi Taiwo and his book, Elite Capture. Enjoy. Hey there. I'm Femi Taiwo. I teach.

philosophy at Georgetown. Yeah, and thank you so much for coming on. I'm really excited to talk with you about this book. I know the book's been making the rounds in general, and especially on the left, there's been a lot of talk about it. So I guess first and foremost, maybe even before we get into the book, I'm somebody that comes out of philosophy. I have just an undergraduate degree in philosophy as a philosophy grad school dropout. So I'm just kind of curious, how did you get into philosophy and who are some of your biggest intellectual influences? I got into philosophy. I kind of backed into it. I was studying political science and economics. Those were my majors back at Indiana University, which is where I went to undergrad. But I had heard that philosophy, politics, and

economics was a thing that people grouped together, and that seemed to make sense to me as far as, you know, wanting to know how the social world works seemed like, you know, one way of going at it. So I just kind of took philosophy classes just as part of that kind of way of thinking about organizing what I was learning, and I just kind of liked it and kept taking classes. Yeah, and then I know in your book you mentioned figures like, you know, Phenon, Paolo Friere, Emil Cabral, can you talk about some of your intellectual influences, especially with regards to this text? Yeah, I mean, there are so many influences but amyoka cabral is maybe

the biggest one my dissertation was just staring at a few of the things that he said while he was fighting the war of independence against the Portuguese empire on you know

with the people of Guinea Basau in Cape Verde which is a prominent part of the elite capture book also that political struggle So I thought a lot about Cabral. I've also, you know, really been influenced by Plato, weirdly enough. You know, it's a kind of something of a love-hate relationship, you know.

Yeah, Plato, I, you know, I can't stand Plato. I think he's a fascist and, you know, he's squirrely. But, you know, in a really kind of interesting, and thought-provoking way, and he sets up issues in ways that make me rethink some things that I think. And then there's historians, you know, so many historians I've learned a lot from, you know, Eric Williams, Walter Rodney, you know, a ton of people on that side of things. Wonderful.

Yeah, fascinating stuff. I guess to move into the direction of discussing your book proper, this is a good opening question, especially for those who might not have had the chance to get a hold of the text quite yet. But can you just kind of talk about, you know, why you wrote the book and sort of what you hope to accomplish with it or the intervention that you're making within it? Yeah, so, you know, I've been in various versions of left culture. You know, I'm an academic, I've been grad school, I've been in organizing spaces, and I've kind of seen different ways that people have reacted to identity politics

and sort of wielded identity politics. And on the one hand, I just consider myself on the team, right? I think of myself as doing identity politics, right? Pan-Afghanism is a huge influence on how I think and what I think about. It's how I would identify myself if I really had to. But, you know, a lot of the ways that people were using identity politics and spaces and really jive with what seemed to me, be good about it.

And so I'm experiencing that in spaces and I'm seeing a lot of criticisms that are coming from places that aren't, you know, where I'm coming from, right? Whether we're talking about the political right wing or the kind of conciliatory centrist

or even left people, but left people were criticizing identity politics from a position of, you know, what people often call class reductionism. You know, none of those were really getting at what bothered me about identity politics. And so I wanted to try to say something about the way that identity politics was being wielded that, you know, didn't throw the baby out with

the bathwater. Yeah, absolutely. And I think you absolutely succeed in that and you bring a lot of clarity to this discussion in the meantime. Talking about identity politics, can you kind of discuss the origin of the term as it's used today? And you talk about how it was initially and it's sort of an attempt at unity, but that concept has sort of changed and perhaps through co-option and other forces devolved since then. So I was hoping you can kind of talk about the origins of that politics and about the term identity politics and how it's changed in popular culture. So the origin story is the Combay River Collective, a group of queer, black, feminist, socialists. they were people who had been in a variety of movements in organizational spaces before they formed this collective. They were veterans of politics.

Some of them had been active in racial justice movements, some in movement spaces for gender justice. A number of them had been in the National Black Feminist Organization. And, you know, I think for all of them, there were things that those spaces were getting right, of course. You know, you should oppose Jim Crow. You should oppose patriarchy. You should oppose misogy noir, as people say it nowadays, right? The kind of intersectional issues faced by black women. And I think, you know, it seems clear from what they said themselves, both when they made their original manifest.

and then later when they gave, you know, a number of interviews, including the whole book of interviews with Kami Amata Taylor. You know, they opposed the things that those movements opposed, but they also opposed a kind of, you know, a kind of unity based on setting your own issues aside, right? Which I think is worth opposing. We could, you know, one vision of left unity or class unity we could have is, you know, everybody shut up except about, you know, wages and benefits or something, right?

Or narrowly turned economic issues. And I don't think that's a model of left unity or class unity that even makes sense of labor history, much less of how we should think of identity politics nowadays. So what they said about identity politics is, look, you know, from our particular vanquist, point from the particular ways that the various systems of oppression interlock and form our social conditions, we reserve the right to make our own gender, make our own priorities, and start from there. And starting from there, you could get to coalition of politics, you could get to working with other people who are affected differently by those systems, and that's, in fact, what they went on to do. But the point is, we're going to start from an

understanding of our situation and analysis rooted in our situation. And, you know, I just, I can't find anything to, you know, disagree with there. You know, that seems like an insight and it's an important one. Yeah, absolutely. And how is that term, especially with regards to how they meant it initially, sort of changed and devolved over time? I know you touched on it a little bit in the opening question. But like when people hear identity politics now, it's often, you know, used in a way that is diametrically opposed to that initial, you know, operational definition. So I'm just wondering your thoughts on that. I think the most important thing to say is that it got popular. So when they formed, they were, you know, they were very plugged in

activists. They were making an insight, right? They were adding a kind of, they're adding a political insight and that they were doing it from a basis of a lot of political experience and knowledge and there were just a few of them and so it was based on what they had experienced and what they had learned and what they had thought up and now you have this term being used by you know thousands and thousands of people including some people who are like them right some people who are coming from movement context and, you know, coming from a place of deep kind of principle and commitment, but also other people, right? You know, and one of the things I try to get across in the book is that it is a mistake to think that, you know, we have to root around in these ideas to explain why they get used in particular ways, rather than just appealing to the social world that these things get popular. and so what's happened is just that a lot of people who don't have their politics who aren't

trying to do the things that they were trying to do have gotten use of this term and a lot of institutions that also don't have their politics didn't have their politics have their politics have gotten a hold of this term and the way that those institutions and people are set in the social order, the versions of identity politics that are going to kind of win out are going to get circulated most often have to do with all the regular stuff of who has resources and power in society. Yeah, absolutely. Now let's talk about the elite capture because of course the name of your book is elite capture, how the powerful took over identity politics and everything else. So I'm wondering who are the elites? Because I think a lot of times, especially on the

reactionary right, the Tucker Carlson's of the world. This term is used in a very specific way, not to denote the ruling class, the capitalist class, those with actual money and power, but a certain sort of liberal elite, or sometimes it can actually just mean somebody with liberal arts university education at this point. So I think there's a lot of muddying the water around that term. So with that in mind, who are the elites and what is elite capture with regards to identity politics in particular? So the elites aren't some stable group for the most part, right? What eliteness is is relative advantage.

And that's pretty much all that I mean by it. And you can't say, in general, who an elite is until you've said, like, who you're comparing them to, right? So pick a group of people, picked however else, you know, the group of people, you know, the group of people in the world who play basketball or the group of people in the world who are white or the group of people in the world who go to this university, right? And then just put them in order of the relevant kind of social hierarchies of power and then the people near the top are the elites. And, you know, the right wing are using the kind of flexibility of the term elite to actually block people for banalizing power, which I think is, should be the purpose of, you know, making this kind of. distinction in the first place.

You know, there's a few kinds of people, you know, maybe there's a few individuals who are elite in so many senses or just, you know, elite in such an all-encompassing way that we could just call them elites without making this kind of comparison, right? Maybe Bill Gates is an elite in whatever room he walks in on, you know, all the social strata that matters. But for most of us, that's not going to be the case. And, you know, I use myself as a kind of example of this in the book and in general when trying to sort through this sort of thing, right? If you're talking on the scale of black people in general, right, if that's the discussion we're having, very clearly, very clearly, admirably, right?

comparing my living conditions my income wealth and social power to most black people you know black one percent very easily if you're comparing me you know as an assistant professor compared to other professors who outrank me and maybe then maybe not right and all of those are kinds of relative questions about how we compare people in group groups. But what it comes down to at the end is how power is distributed in any kind of group we might be talking about. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense as a functional term that gets this analysis off the ground. So then the next question is just what is elite capture, particularly with regards to identity politics? So all elite capture is, is taking that concept of relative

advantage and then mapping that on to how the social world works. So, if you have a group of people and there are there's an elite there's a sort of subgroup within that there's some people who have more stuff wealth power than the other people then you can ask well does do things for the whole group revolve around their interests and their needs right it's probably better to put it to what extent do the dynamics of the whole group depend on their interests and their needs, right? Elite capture is more like a thermometer than it is an on and off switch. But the more group politics revolve around the around what's going on

for the people at the top of a group, the more elites have captured that group's politics. Can you give us some concrete examples, contemporary examples, even of elite capture in our society in particular? Yeah, so the politics of representation are often an example of, an example that people talk about a lot under this heading, right? So we're trying to debate whether or not, you know, we're trying to debate racial justice, let's say, or think about racial justice or advance racial justice in practical terms.

And that conversation ends up drifting towards, you know, whether or not there are movies about a particular race or starring a particular race of actor, right? That's a clear case where, you know, that is of a clear material interest to a very small but powerful and influential subgroup within the total set of people of color. but it's not clear what the whole group gains from there being, you know, more movies starring black people or more movies starring Asian people or whatever it might be. I see. Now, I've kind of long argued that, you know, one of the more potent innovations of liberal ideology in the past decade or so is the specific co-option of social justice language as a weapon against the working class and anti-imperialist left. and I think this dovetails with your analysis quite well. Especially, you know, folks to the left of, I mean, even like a Bernie Sanders, for example, a tepid social Democrat got labeled a racist, a sexist,

and in one particularly desperate and absurd attempt to slander him, even an anti-Semite. I know Elon Omar has faced similar accusations, particularly when she critiques Israel, and folks to the left of these people certainly get fired upon in this way as well. So kind of what are your just thoughts on the elite capture of language in particular, and how important is language in the fight against racial capitalism and imperialism? Yeah, I think there's definitely, you know, something that you could see as co-option of social justice language. Elsewhere, in something that I wrote with a colleague, Enzo Rossi, there we argued that there's a kind of woke aesthetic that's been captured by the powers that be, our leading example of that being here in, Washington, D.C., where I live,

the mayor painting Black Lives Matter on a plaza near the White House on the street where protesters were getting their asses kicked by the cops. So, you know, it's a very kind of uncanny

resistance to the way that the actual world is working, that this aesthetic has managed to navigate for certain powers that be. but you know i i do think there is a healthy amount of situations like i just described right you know the mayor um painting black lives matter on the street but increasing the police budget there's a healthy amount of just kind of cynical very clear-eyed co-optation of left figures

and aesthetics and ways of talking but i also you know one of the things one of the things I centrally argue for in the book is that, you know, we should kind of provincialize those examples a little bit, right? Because what's happening on systemic level doesn't actually require that we think that's what's happening in all or even most cases. You know, I think it's just simple as if a term gets popular, there's going to be a range of people who get to, participate in the actual social practices of using that term of producing media, using that

term, or that analysis of holding events or issuing grants, using that term or analysis. And it's just the case based on how we've set up society that the most advantaged people are going to be extremely overrepresented in what movies get made, what grants get issued, what newsroom conversations are like about all those things. Why? Because, you know, we have set up the world to disproportionately allow privileged people to make the decisions about all of the above. And at the same time, world historically speaking,

we're on the other side of an extremely violent, deliberate war to erode the kind of left institutions working class institutions that could have constrained those people. So you have a kind of double movement in terms of upward redistribution of resources, wealth, and social power, while the kinds of organizational constraints on that wealth and social power get eroded. And those are the two things that, those are the two dials that turn elite capture up or down. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. In your book, you also talk about deference politics,

the sort of culture built around identity politics and its relationship to elite capture. I was hoping that you could help the audience understand what that term means deference politics and then its relationship to elite capture in general. Yes, the difference politics is just a way of describing a sort of moral, intellectual, and or practical reflex that people have developed, or at least it seems to me that people have developed. So one thing you could do is you could look at oppression, right? And you could learn the lesson from oppression that a lot of people have argued that we should learn, right?

Which is that, you know, marginalized people, disadvantaged people sometimes have advantages in, figuring out things about the world. It's the people who are disproportionately incarcerated that know more than anybody else what it's like to be incarcerated, what's like to be over-policed, what those systems are like from an experiential standpoint.

And that seems true, and that seems important. But one thing you could do about it is you could say, well, if I meet a person from a social category associated with oppression, if I meet somebody who is a woman and I'm not a woman, if I meet somebody who's trans and I'm cis, if I meet somebody who's a person of color, if I'm white, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to follow their lead in general.

That's going to be Plan A. And then any other complications that Plan A doesn't solve, then maybe I have some other moves to make. But what I'm going to start with, my default orientation to politics is going to be doing what somebody else from an oppressed group tells me to do. And I just don't think, you know, there's a lot of things wrong with that,

but I, you know, maybe the most direct thing to say about it is it's actually your job as a person, as a participant, and whatever it is that you're going to be doing politically. It's actually your job to figure out what it is that you think, what it is that you're for, and what it is that you're going to stand. for it the end of the day. It's not the job of the person of color in the room with you or the woman in the room

with you or whatever it might be. It's your job. Yeah. And yeah, so in this regard, something like, you know, an elite representative of a certain oppressed identity group makes it to the upper echelons of the political or economic system, like a vice president, for example, Kamala Harris. And then the fact that she is a member of an oppressed. minority group, as there's sort of a move to try to defer to her and her lived experiences

and any critique of her position in the hierarchy of power and wealth is labeled as a racist or sexist attack on her identity in particular. Is that kind of the basic outlines of how this works in practice? Yeah, that's definitely a way that it can work in practice. And I think one of the things that I tried to call attention to that your example just there is a good example of is, you know, it's not as though we're taking some kind of random sample from the particular oppressed community we might have in mind, right? The people that we encounter and the reason that we encounter them, those things have everything to do with the oppressed system that we're trying to respond to.

And so we're likelier to get exposed to particular kinds of people, right? kinds of people who the social structures the organizations the institutions that we live in are likely to promote and expose you to there's a reason that a lot more people know

Harris's name than the name of somebody who's incarcerated and those are aspects of the social system that we should also be trying to change and not just, you know, whether or not people take care of seriously enough. Yeah, and in your book, you, towards the end, you bring up this idea of constructive politics and this is a way out of, or at least a way to combat, if you will, elite capture.

So I was hoping that you could talk about what you mean exactly by constructive politics and how this could possibly, you know, get us on the road to combating a lot of this, you know, elite capture, if you will? So a little bit ago, I was saying that there are basically two things that fuel elite capture, right? Inequality itself and the existence of or lack of existence of effective organizations or social practices that constrain the effect of inequality. So you can make elite capture worse by giving elites more of the less, more of the

stuff today than they had yesterday, right? If you do that, they're going to be even more able to promote their political perspectives and ways of thinking and ideas than they were yesterday. The other way that you can make elite capture worse is you can destroy the organizations like unions, like tenants unions, like movement journalism that might constrain elites. and so the constructive view is pretty much just the opposite of those things right what we could be up to when we're thinking about what to do politically is just trying to close the gap of power between those on the top of this system and everybody else and what you need to do the ethos you need to have the kind of plan a you need to have i think the kind of plan a you need to have i think the kind of plan a you need to have is to build stuff. Some of that stuff might be literal, right? If one of the gaps is education, let's say, in some parts of the world, it might be that you need to build a schoolhouse, a literal physical structure to do the stuff.

But some of the building might be organizational or institution. Maybe it might be building a union or a tenant's union or a debtor's union, you know, a workers union or debtor's union or a tenant union. It might be building a social club around sport, around art, to bring people together so that, you know, they might be more tied together socially and more willing to help each other out in other ways. Right. It might be building tools. It might be building databases. but it's putting things together and building things, changing what the practical environment

will be like tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, those are the things that we could focus on rather than whose lead to follow in a particular conversation. Right. Yeah, I've recently been kind of reading into some of the history of Italian communism in particular, and one of the things that they did success, at least for a period of time, was to be able to build up an alternative culture with mechanisms of education, of sport, of leisure, of study that was sort of parallel to the more broader mainstream and oftentimes reactionary Italian culture. A lot of people, it seems, on the U.S. left today, are sort of stuck in an unproductive place of a lot of the rhetoric and discussions and

communications are on these huge platforms owned by some of the richest people on planet earth. And that can sometimes give people, especially, you know, maybe younger people, a sense that they're contributing, a sense that they're combating the elites. I mean, if you can go on Twitter and underneath a comment left by somebody that's super rich or powerful, you can kind of dog on them, ratio them, et cetera. And this maybe gives you a fleeting sense of striking back. But I think what you're advocating for is more real world building up. of, you know, forms of actual power that can not only just be defensive, but can actually go on the offensive. And, you know, union, the labor movement, for example, is a shining example of this.

So I'm just wondering what you think about that. Am I on the right page? And do you kind of agree with me about this sense that social media can give people of being countercultural or combating the status quo while kind of being funneled into the energies that maintain it? yeah i definitely think you know you know it could give us a sense of that we're participating in combat even though nothing's at stake right you know or at least nothing is directly at stake obviously you know things might happen because of what's what people are saying on social media but you know the actual act of ratioing somebody doesn't change the world right um so that's definitely one thing it could do, you know, another thing it could do along those same lines is just

also help create the bad kinds of conflicts within our spaces. And I think we all probably have experience of this, right? Somebody who we maybe could be friendly with or at least could productively work with in a political context. We end up you know, at odds because there's a three-day, quote, tweet war over, you know, the proper reading of some obscure Kotsky essay or something. Yeah, and, you know, so there's definitely a thing that social media does here. And social media just inflames a thing that has always been true, which is, you know, social movements are social, right? And who likes who, who gets along with who. That will never stop being a part of politics.

But the prominence it has in today's politics may have something to do with these platforms and who controls them and who abuses them. So one of the things that I think, you know, just like the Italian communists that you were talking about, but also white people in U.S. radical political history, you know, Fannie Lou Hamer and the Freedom Farm Cooperative, right? There's all kinds of creative energy on the constructive side of things, right? You know, maybe if you grow enough beings, it doesn't matter so much, you know, who ratios who. and you know that's that's not a that's not an electoral response though maybe those would work too right but but it is a constructive response but you know building farm cooperatives building schoolhouses building political parties whatever whatever's going to get it done but those are the questions to ask rather than you know who said what Right. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of a lot of the confusion, I think, also on the left surrounds the Democratic Party. And, you know, the idea that we could fight on the electoral front, but that does not need to be synonymous with joining the Democratic Party. You're seeing the Democratic Party as a mechanism through which we can pursue real change. In fact, you know, I see it as one of the prime barriers to it. But would you see the construction of a political party outside? the Republicans and Democrats, which challenge both of them as a, as a positive development for

the left and an example of what you call constructive politics? Yeah. If we got done, it would definitely be, it would absolutely be an example of constructive politics. I think the, you know, the questions there are totally practical. It's just under, well, either door number one, under current kind of labor law, election law, et cetera, is that, you know, on what time frame can that happen? And number two, what are the prospects of changing those kind of legal structures to make it happen sooner? But those are practical, tactical, tactical, strategic questions. It's definitely a goal

worth thinking about and worth trying to achieve if we can. But, you know, political institutions, like a workers' party like they have elsewhere in other countries. Those are clear examples of the kind of thing that would be constructive politics. Absolutely. Yeah, a lot of people, you know, these things will take hard work. They'll take working together. They'll take working with people you don't see eye to eye with on every single issue. And for those reasons and more, it's difficult work but absolutely necessary work to build these things from the ground.

up in their prerequisites to a lot of the big changes, radical, even revolutionary reforms that we would like to see in our society and in the world order, I'm going forward, but it does require that acceptance of this is going, this is not easy. But I am wondering, sort of as an aside to this and somewhat related, just kind of your thoughts on the Black Lives Matter movement, right? This huge historical, amazing movement, I think the biggest in American history in the face of police slaughtering of black people and incarceration, disproportionately of black and brown people, et cetera. But then there's this other side where not only about the leaders and their money, but also about how the Democratic Party leadership was in a lot of ways able to take

some of this energy and funnel it back into the maintenance of the Democratic Party and even into the election of Joe Biden. So I'm just wondering what you think and what you analyze about the Black Lives Matter movement and how it can maybe shed some light on what elite capture looks like in practice? Yeah, I mean, it seems like there are two major things to say. One is that the size of, you know,

the movement against racial injustice against police violence, you know, by some estimates, I saw figures as high as like one in 12 people at the 20th summer protests after the murder of Donna Taylor and George Floyd and Tony McDade

you know so I think that is a testament to a real kind of generational victory that's been won in the past few decades and whatever happens with Black Lives Matter

global network that victory isn't in the short term going anywhere though you know the assaults on critical race there and all that is definitely an attempt to roll that back in the long term but in the short term you know those wins are still here and so i think you know it's difficult and disappointing to see the ways that you know i think there's been some mistakes by leaders at the top there's been some successes by leaders in the democratic party who had the kind of explicit goal to peer off support in the movement and kind of funnel it into the Democratic Party, as you put it. And not even to change in the Democratic Party, but just this kind of woke aesthetic that we talked about earlier. So those kind of developments are disappointing, but those developments are inevitable. It's a large social system and the people who want it to stay the way that it is have the line.

share of the resources for doing things. And so it is just is very difficult to advance towards changing anything and keep, you know, total control ideologically and otherwise of everybody in a large movement. It's just the nature of large movements that, you know, some people will be on different page ideologically from other people in the movement. And I don't think the standard for success is, you know, was the Democratic Party able to peel off anybody or even higher-ups? But, you know, the question from here is, will there be, you know, is it still possible to construct a version of the movement or a version of the network of organizations that the movement helped promote? is there a version of that where is there a version of working within that where there are real tangible games on the other side

that's a historical question that we have to answer with organizing but I am encouraged by the statement by the BLM 10 or I guess 10 plus at this point which was an open letter signed by a number of Black Lives Matter chapters and other organizations that was, you know, saying in really sophisticated terms, you know, here's how we would run a movement on this issue in a more democratic way, in a way that had more transparent and accountable decision-making processes. And I think that's the kind of thing that, you know, an analysis of the capture should lead us to support.

Yeah, absolutely. There's a there's a lot of, I don't know, arguments right now online, specifically around people's response to the leak from the Supreme Court that Roe v. Wade likely to be overturned, abortion rights in general, likely to be overturned in this country. And, you know, in response to that, after years of voting for Democrats and even of protesting and holding up signs, you still lose a basic right that the vast majority of Americans support having. And so there's this escalation. of tactics where you see people just going actually peacefully protesting just outside the house of like a Brett Kavanaugh, for example. And then you see elites right, left, and center having their own versions of meltdowns over this idea. And so I wonder what you think of escalating tactics in the face of anti-democratic elite decisions that strip us of rights. And if escalating those tactics and making these people uncomfortable is one of the one of the ways to to combat elite capture or at least start pushing the scales of balance in in a different direction like there's actually real personal consequences for you as an elite if you are on this on the wrong side

of these issues that we care about i'm just wondering your thoughts broadly yeah so i don't know I've seen a lot of people making kind of moralizing arguments about this, which I just find adorable. And, you know, and weirdly, you know, I never thought I would find myself saying this, but weirdly un-American. Yeah. You know, this country exists because people violently rioted when British Parliament tried to increase the price of paper. Exactly. And, you know, and, like, motherfuckers are out here acting like people holding aside outside somebody's houses, you know, is the total erosion of society. It's just, it's cute.

Yeah, so, so the moral arguments I don't take seriously, I would think there's an important strategic question that is based on the extent of violence that the right is capable and willing to promote. think that is something that we should take more seriously than we do on the left because you know the amount of guns in this country and the you know the amount of violence that has taken to create and sustain this country constant warfare um i don't think you know if you're fighting the right in this country you're not up against the kind of bespectacle liberals that i think a lot of radicals especially academics are kind of used to or kind of imagine sometimes when they imagine, you know,

people on the other side of them. And that's not really, that's not what this is. And so there's a real question on the tactical side about whether or not, you know, about what the response would be and whether or not that's something, you know, we feel prepared for.

But that's the only version of the conversation worth having as far as I'm concerned. Absolutely. Yeah, I agree with that as well. And community defense organizations, especially when they're tied to other organizations like labor unions or tenant unions or whatever it may be is, I think, another piece of this puzzle precisely because the right is so not only willing to be violent, but has the disproportionate amount of the tools needed to carry out violence. And this entire American history is nothing, if not a long parade of particularly white reactionary violence in the face of even the most tepid step. forward progressively. So I think that's going to become more important in the years to come. I just like the idea of making elites uncomfortable, specifically when their regime, this capitalist, racial capitalist, imperialist order is so, as you said, so daily violent. And now we're talking about the stripping of rights away from half of the population, literally violently resulting in, you know, women's deaths, the destruction of their lives. And then just being loud. at a protest outside a house is what triggers these people to get angry and freak out. It's like, you know, we have to defend ourselves, we have to defend our communities from the

elites and from their decisions. So it's interesting to see how that plays out. I guess this last question as we're wrapping up, because I want to be mindful of your time here, is just like, what do you hope to see from the left in the coming years? What would be a sign in five, ten years of a left moving, more robust? bustly in the direction of a constructive politic, in your view? Orders of magnitude, more people. I think, you know,

if you have way more tenants unions and way more people in the existing tenants unions, I think if you have higher union density, I think if you have more people in, you know, whatever left organizations, whether it's going to be DSL or DSL, DSA or PSL.

I think we'll leave that in. That's a good humor break. I don't know what's going on there. But, you know, all of these organizations that exist to fight, right, to fight for a better world, a fair world, a more just world, and that exists to do so and make it easier for people to. to do so um if those have more people and resources that would be my primary metrics of whether or not the left is doing its job yeah definitely we try in our own tiny humble way to contribute to the bringing of people over to the uh to the revolutionary left um but yeah thank you so much for for coming on the book is elite capture how the powerful took over identity politics and everything else

it's a great book. It's actually on Audible with a great narration as well, which is how I read the book. It's easy to do when you have multiple kids instead of sitting down and reading. So however you get it, definitely go check it out and support Professor Taiwow in his work. Before I let you go, though, can you just let listeners know where they can find you and your book online. Yeah, you can find the book on the Haymarket or Pluto Press websites. Pluto Press is UK. And you can also find out bookshop.org. another good way to get it, support local bookstores and whatnot. And you can find me on Olufemi-O-Tai-Wo on Twitter or Olufemi-Otaiwa.com. Perfect. I will link to all of that in the show notes. And thank you so much for coming on. Let's do it again sometime.

Appreciate it. Thanks. Politicians do not take time out to organize the community. As a matter of fact, they appear to be afraid to organize the community. But reality and truth tells us that the only way you get power is when the people, people are in fact properly organized. That's our major task is to organize our people because we really have our power. Mobbing with the homies,

yeah, you know we roll deep, solidarity carried through youth and OGs. Move-ins buried like seeds rooted in unity. We connect from the west to the east. I pray for peace. Then put prayer into practice. A-O-M the masses, then go and take the prism of this system. Flip that shit on its axis. Guarding the world.

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Fuck around and find out. It's the only way to go. So each one to teach them to reach some believing. Freedom is in arms length of way. Spray painting the message on the walls make a way. He'd the call. Can't wait another day. When doom is at the door rise up with the wretched in the poor bang bang. change brain i've been organized them i've been through these city streets i've been organized

i've been through these streets i've been organized them i've been through these streets holding up picket signs mobilizing steadily i've been organized them i've been through these streets i've been organized them i've been through these streets i've been organized them i've been through the city streets holding up picking signs mobilizes steadily the population of asians and penitentiaries are going up steadily some say incrementally the slave labor that made America billions has never been reparated to descendants of the victims. The problem with men, they tend to defend their friends instead of fight for femmes and never they lends.

If you fucking were Biden to Trump, you dumb, I could give you a million reasons, but I'll start with one. Persecution of people deemed illegal is evil. Children separated in cages looking feeble. Fascists are here, fascists are here. Better organize your block and stock up on gear. The man in the mirror ain't sitting on hands. On plans writing up a list of demands

It's in your hands To flip the script flip the switch Waker from this dark abyss I'm pissed rich that run the world With an iron fist than hurl More violence and get gone Gripping that white girl Poor that plow

Workers that wipe they brow Rising rebellist Spied by chairman Mao The how the what Painting your gut Brain analyzes the pain And decides it's had enough The rough rug and raw

Proletarian elite in the charge Like Steve's pulling golden chariots. I've been organized them. I've been through the city streets. I've been organized. I've been through the city streets. I've been organizing. I've been to do the city streets. Hold it up, picking signs, mobilizing steadily. I've been organizing. I've been to city streets. I've been organized. I've been through city streets. I've been organizing. I've been through the city streets. Holding up picking signs. Mobilize and steadily. Responsibility for organizing our people rest on each and every one of our shoulders, not just on one person's shoulder, not just a need on the community, not just

a preacher, but everybody has a responsibility to help organize the people. Perhaps in our discussion today, as we said, this can come across more than anything else, then we're going to have served our purpose, that is, the responsibility for us.