Rev Left Radio - Leftist Podcasts, New Atheism, and the October Revolution (w/ Dan Arel)

Episode Date: October 2, 2017

Dan Arel is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author of The Secular Activist; and Parenting Without God. He has also written for The Hill, The New Arab, CounterPunch, CommonDreams, AlterNet, Time Magazine, Salon, and many others. He hosts the Danthropology Podcast, a weekly show that covers politics, religion, and current events. Dan can be found around the country speaking on issues such as social justice, political activism, and secular issues. Topics Include: Atheism, Differences between the far left and far right, doxing, The October Revolution, different leftist tendencies, talking to regular working class people, leftist podcasters, hip hop, and more! Find Dan at: http://www.danarel.com/danthropology-podcast/ @DanArel Our Outro Music is "Banks Are Made of Marble" by Sole which you can find here: http://www.soleone.org Check out Sole's podcast "Solecast", which we discuss in this episode, as well as Channel Zero, a dope collection of anarchist podcasts which you can find here: https://channelzeronetwork.com Please support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio  and follow us on Twitter @RevLeftRadio  Follow us on FB at "Revolutionary Left Radio"

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Tune it in and turn it up loud Revolutionary Left Radio Starts now Welcome to Revolutionary Left Radio. I am your host Ann Comrade, Brett O'Shea And today we have Dan Errol

from the Danthropology podcast on to talk about atheism, media and just general politics. So, Dan, what's up? How you doing, man? I'm doing well. Thank you for having me on. It's an honor to be on the show.

Yeah, it's an honor to have have you on. Do you want to introduce yourself and say a little bit about your background for anyone that doesn't know who you are? Sure. So like you said, my name's Dan Errol. I am a journalist, two-time author. I've written a book in 2013 called Parenting Without God, which was just a sort of book for parents that don't have religion, but we all live in societies full of it. So how do we talk to our kids, et cetera, et cetera. And then my second book was the secular activist, which was about church and state separation activism. People that maybe have seen my writing, it's been kind of everywhere.

I've written for Time Magazine, Huffington Post, Pathios. I had a blog there for a very long time, and Alternate was a home of mine for quite a long time, and a salon and so forth. And I'm sort of just an activist and professional pisser offer of the alt-right. Yeah, absolutely. You definitely ruffle fucking feathers over there. Apparently, I do. It wasn't really the goal, but if I'm good at it, I might as well keep doing it. Yeah, exactly. If you're speaking the truth, then you're going to piss them off, so that's a good thing. Pretty much, yeah.

All right, let's go ahead and orient our listeners to you. So what is your political tendency, and maybe you can say a little bit about that? Sure. So I consider myself an anarchist, and it was a windy road to get there. I think since since probably high school in the late 90s I really started identifying with Marxism and Socialism and Communism and sort of teetering back and forth on where I was there even you know being young and having like my first election coming up I think at that age I was still more like okay so I'm I'm a socialist but I have to vote Democrat because that's that's my option and then as I got older And, you know, you vote. My very first election was Bush Gore.

And if there's any election to disenfranchise a voter, it's that one. When you're like, wait, we won everything, but that guy didn't win. Like, you know, this last election, you know, you see Clinton gets the popular vote. Trump, you know, gets the electoral college. And you see a lot of voters confused. You know, go back to that age when, like, you vote for the first time. And then you're like, my guy won everything. Wait, the court's doing what?

Oh, I guess my vote doesn't count. And then from that point, it just rolled where, you know, I was, you know, I didn't know what kind of socialist I was. And I used to, like, sit there and I'd read books, you know, from Lenin and then I'd read books from Trotsky. And I'd bounce all over the place trying to figure out what I was. I could never really pinpoint it. I just kind of felt like, okay, I'm a Marxist, but like, what groups, like, should I be working with? Where do I fall? And so I started just working with everybody.

I mean, from DSA to Socialist Party USA to like connecting with people at Black Rose. And then, you know, really after this election and really like, you know, being involved in so many groups and trying to get involved like on the streets with them and realizing that everybody that was putting in the work were anarchists. And all the other groups I tend to, you know, and nothing against them. They're all doing their own thing in their own way and they're all contributing. something but it wasn't it wasn't a lot like I felt like you know they were like let's make a petition and let's stand in solidarity but it was the the anarchists that were going out and being in the streets and at that point I was like you know I already can pretty much consider myself a libertarian socialist or libertarian communist every want to call it and here I am feeling

so much of what the anarchists do and I was like I'm gonna I'm gonna embrace this labor and really take it on because they're out there doing the work and also like the the ideas they're putting forward just fall in the line so I don't need to like try to say like I'm this kind of social or this kind of Marxist I just suddenly felt at home among anarchists and thought you know I'm just going to take this label on and embrace it and love it and so that's where I am yeah it's super interesting it kind of mirrors my development in some ways I mean I actually kind of had it reversed. So like at first, when I was leaving liberalism, you know, I was with the DSA for a little bit. And then I embraced anarchism and called myself an anarchist for a while.

And then I just realized in my own personal sort of development that I owed so much theoretically to Marx and I found so much in the Marxist perspective that I just sort of embrace that label. So like now I kind of view myself as maybe, you know, a libertarian Marxist or just a Marxist with no caveats. I draw from Leninism, which I know you do as well. I draw from anarchism, and even I draw from Maoism to some extent. So it's just kind of interesting. I think a lot of leftists have sort of like arbitrary and accidental things that happen along their political development that will push them one way or the other. And for me, that kind of makes me want to decrease my sectarianism because I can kind of see how people come to different conclusions.

Do you kind of agree with that? Do you see what I'm saying there? I very much do and you know it was um it wasn't that long ago that uh the the rapper soul uh from soulcast podcast he had posed a question on twitter like do you consider um anarchist leftists and i know a lot that don't consider themselves leftists they consider themselves like you know left of left almost to the point they they kind of disconnect but i thought to myself and i responded to him i do to the extent that i think that we all need to start, stop worrying about what kind of Marxist or anarchist or socialist or communist that we are and realize that if we're all going to be left of liberal, and I'm, and I don't mean Bernie Sanders

left of liberal. I mean true, you know, left, then we need to start working together because broken apart, we are an even smaller minority of people in the streets. Oh, definitely. And talking. And if we just embrace our similarities, I would love for us to sit down one day and debate at a table what kind of, you know, future we're going to have after we've, you know, overthrown and taken over. But we're not there yet, and we're not even close to being there yet. So why are we arguing over our labels and, oh, he's a Leninist or he's this and he's that? I think we can draw from all of it. We can, and if we're smart enough, we can look at the good and bad.

we can say this is what Lennon did that was fantastic and this is what Lennon did that was awful but here's what so and so did and we can kind of build all this and learn from history and build something new because we have lots of examples to look back on on you know if it's even failed revolutions or revolutions that never took place

but were you know they were working towards or revolutions that happened and we can look at you know how did they work and how did they fail and what led to their failure and we can build off that. So I kind of feel like we should drop so many of these labels and just sort of embrace the fact that we're all leftists. And if we're going to worry about anything,

it's that we need to stop letting liberals call them self-leftists. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I could not agree more. You know, as you said, it'll be a luxury when we can actually debate where to go with the revolution. Like, you know, then we'll have the real questions of like, is Leninism the way?

Do we take over the state? Do we not? I mean, those questions are premised on the idea that we've won something and we can start governing and we have power. And so that'll be nice to have those conversations. But right now, it's overall kind of destructive. I mean, we need each other as much as anything else. Yeah, if we're fighting with each other, we're not fighting the enemy. Absolutely.

Yeah, you mentioned Seoul. I'm actually going to Colorado this week and me and Seoul have planned out a meeting. So I'm actually going to meet him face to face and we're going to do a podcast together at his house. I'm really looking forward to that And so You're on Channel Zero with him, right? Is that correct? I am, yeah, we're on Channel Zero together.

I approached him pretty When he announced it, I kind of immediately rant him and it was like, I want in. Yeah, for real. I was like, don't leave me behind. Yeah, because it's really funny with Soul and I won't make it a long story,

but in the late 90s, early 2000s, I worked at a store with one of my best friends back in New Hampshire and he used to listen to Soul all the time and I wasn't super into it at the time until like I started listening to the lyrics more

because at that point now I'm much more into rapid hip hop because of the messages I'm hearing in them but at that time I really wasn't and then I started listening to his lyrics and I was just like wow like even if I wasn't like that into the hip hop like music as a genre like what he was

saying was so important and so I got really into it and then now like 12 years later or something like that like just to randomly end up connecting with him having him on my show being on his show and now doing Channel Zero with him it's been it's been unreal but uh he's he's putting in some work and uh I think you'll probably have a really great time hanging out with him absolutely and for anybody that doesn't know Channel Zero is basically like an anarchist collective of anarchist podcasts and so they just kind of like it's a tight-knit group of a bunch of

different anarchist podcasts and they all have their own website you know and they kind of help each other out, plug each other. It's a great thing and I love to see it. I was actually really big into the indie hip hop scene in the early 2000s. So I was a huge fan of like, you know, Anticon and Sage Francis and Rhymesayers and, you know, atmosphere and all that stuff. So as a late teenager, I was like listening to Soul and I was listening to all those guys. That was my main musical interest at the time. So it's so funny after all these years that, you know, I'm going to go meet him and we're both doing radical leftist podcast and shit. It's funny. fucking crazy how history works out that way.

Yeah, it's a small world. He's actually from the East Coast, like, just like an hour from where I grew up. Really? Like, that's kind of where we live. Now he's in Colorado. I'm out in California, but it's a small world to, like, live so close to each other and know nothing about each other. And now we're in different parts of the world and we're connecting and, you know, doing

this. It's pretty surreal, but it's, it's rad. And, you know, Channel Zero is awesome. To be, to even consider that, like, my podcast is anywhere near, like, a podcast with crime think. And it's going down. And I feel bad that I can't remember the name of the podcast for the guy from Dead Prez. But it's just amazing to just even have my name somewhere in that mix.

It's unreal. Yeah, I mean, fucking Dead Pres might be the single biggest influence on me politically. When I was 1819, listening to Dead Pres like radicalized me. Like they pulled so much weight in my own political development. So that's just, it's just crazy. But I love the community that's propping up. I love that we're starting to create our own, you know, alternative media outlets and we can present our own narratives and we can have our own discussions.

We don't have to depend on the corporate bullshit or these liberal, you know, milk, toast, cable news outlets, like we do it ourselves and something beautiful is happening. And I'm glad to just play my small, humble role in it. Yeah, it's great. And seeing that media that's coming out has been fantastic, too, because, you know, if we look at, like, the alternative to us, like, you know, if we look at the far right, and how they're doing media they're very successful at it

but it's so it's so much differently done like look at if you look at Info Wars and Breitbart like they're creating a narrative they're creating these stories and these lies and myths to sort of push what they want but then if you go to like it's going down

you don't see that kind of story what you see are activists writing from their own perspective right and you see your podcast the podcast are talking from their perspective and having guests on, and what you don't see is, like, you know, sensationalized headlines. Right. You know, like, we're not calling Hillary Clinton a lizard person and thinking that she's from, like, we just critique her or other politicians' stances, and you can verify that these are stances they hold.

Yeah. Where we're not saying, like, trust us, we think they secretly believe this. We're saying, look, this is what they believe, here's where they said it, and here's why we don't agree. Oh, absolutely. And so it's radically different what we're doing. and I think, you know, they've been successful at it, but I see the left's attempt at this really growing and building up steam. I mean, it's going down and just exploded.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's fantastic. It's really good because the message is getting out there. Yeah, and I'm always saying, I think I tweeted this once, but it's like this, as far as leftist podcast go, this is not a zero-sum game. We should all be lifting each other up. We should all be amplifying one another, you know, sharing our audiences and kind of cross-pollinating in that way. There is like no reason to be competitive at this.

And additionally, when you were talking about the right-wing media versus left-wing media, there is like a certain like grassroots base to the left that's not on the right as far as the media goes. And then there's a intellectual rigor. Like there is no conspiratorial bullshit. Like, you know, we don't need to lean on lies and mythologies and clickbait to get our ideas out there. We just have real conversations with real working class people engaged in the real struggle and that's where our strength is you know and i think we should just keep plugging away at that as much as possible yeah i think that's really been beneficial is like you know one thing i really took away i don't know if you ever watched the uh the vice little like vice mini

documentary after charlottesville uh where they was that girl embedded herself with the um these these these white supremacists and she said why do you think the left has been so successful and his response is trust like we trust each other fuck yeah and we work and we work together, and we don't look at each other as adversaries or competition. Yep. Like, I want your podcast and your website to be just as successful as mine or anyone else's. And if I can help do that, I'm going to. And I'm not worried about a listener giving to your Patreon over mine.

Right. Like, I want them to. If they're listening to what you're doing and say, that's where I want you to go, put your money there. Exactly. Put your review there. Put what you can in to help whatever outlet or, or, person you think is doing what aligns with you, get there. And if I can point them in that right direction, if it's not me, then we need to be doing that. And that's how we're going to build.

You know, you've got like Breitbart who's, you know, fighting over advertising. And, you know, we've just, we've stayed away from that and we've made something natural and we've made something that we all want to support together, which is, I think, just really speaks volumes about what we're doing. Yeah. And you mentioned that, um, that Vice documentary, it's so funny you mention that for two reasons one because i literally right before you i interviewed tanisha hudson who was interviewed in that mini documentary and so i'm going to release this episode and her interview this throughout this week um and it was because of that interview with her that i reached out to her and so we just we just did an entire episode on you know white supremacy in the confederate south

what happened in charlottesville what the fight that's still going on trying to hold the the local government accountable there um so that's just i mean that's just awesome but also Also, the thing that you said, it also peaked my interest when I heard that, you know, far right winger say the left has this advantage on us. They have solidarity. They build that up through activism. They know each other. They love each other. They trust each other. They're hitting the streets together. And that's something we don't have. You know, like these alt-right protests, these are just fucking assholes flying in from around the country that don't know each other. And they're just, you know, just they've never engaged in that day-to-day work of activism. And so they don't have those. networks and those connections on the left we have it you know like the omaha gdc will reach out to the twin cities gdc who will reach out to the colorado springs gdc you know or whatever and uh and that's that's our advantage and so we should keep building those those um connections as much as possible and this is one way to do it yeah i 100% agree so speaking of podcast i guess we'll just jump around a little bit why did why did you start your podcast and do you think shows like ours like

influence people does it like help people develop politically how do you view the goal of these podcasts. You know, I started it sort of out of boredom. I had some time, and I wanted to do something else. And I kind of, the idea came about when I was still focusing mostly on secularism and church and state separation work. And I had done a lot of recent work at that time, and I wanted to get it all out there. But I was a little too busy to write it all, which is, you know, my main outlet, but some of it wasn't even worth writing.

Like, I couldn't write a full article about some of the things I was working on. Like, I called this school and got them to stop making kids, you know, pray. Like, that's not a great article. And so I was like, well, I'll start recording these bits and then have on, you know, guests that may be working on something similar. And within the first episode, I kind of changed focus almost immediately. but it just became this thing where I was like I'm going to help get other people active and teach them that you know whether it be church and state separation or or politics in a different form that it's accessible and that was the entire point of my second book the secular activist was you don't have to be you know this huge nonprofit you don't have to have a million followers on Facebook or Twitter to be an act activists and to make change. And after a few episodes of the show, I started the show a week before the election.

And my first episode came out just days before Trump won. And right after he won, it kind of switched pretty quickly because my second guest was Larry Decker, who is the executive director of the secular coalition for America. and we were supposed to come on and talk about secular activism and instead we talked about how you know Trump is putting the lives of the LGBT community in danger and it was a really powerful episode for myself like there was one where there were tears from the guest when he was frightened by what was coming

and the feedback from that was so powerful on you know just like getting people to say like I need to be involved that I immediately thought, okay, from this point on, I'm sticking to, you know, fighting for these leftist causes because they're going to impact real lives. I think things like, you know, making sure kids aren't forced to partake in religious practices at school is incredibly important, but I think that, you know, LGBTQ people staying alive, transgender people not being murdered and, you know, fighting, you know, with, along the side of Black Lives Matter. all these other things are just so much more important that I had to, I had to, you know, pick this up right away. And I probably at the time would have told you no, we don't make that big of an impact.

We just give people something to listen to. But the emails I get have proven me wrong on that. People coming in and saying, like, well, you know, I never really agreed with your socialism, but now I kind of understand why you're there. And they might not be there yet. But at least now they're listening to me explain why I feel a certain way, and they can relate to that. Absolutely. So they can say, like, you know, I consider myself a capitalist, but wow, you are right.

We can't leave health care as part of the capitalist system. And that's just a nudge. Because from there, it's one other thing. You know, oh, you know what, education shouldn't be a for-profit thing. And then, you know, you just move one step at a time. And I think before you know it, you've got people thinking, You know, maybe this capitalism thing isn't working out. And so I do think they make a difference because I think at best or at worst, it's giving people better explanations to how we feel where you don't get that in a tweet.

And you can't even sometimes get that in an article because you can't get someone to sit down and read 1,500 to 2,000 words. You know, they're going to lose interest. But they can pop this on at work and listen to an hour show. Exactly. And yeah, that's what I was actually going to say as well about this. It's hard for working class people to sit down and read a book. And with the sort of attention span that social media has kind of inculcated to many of us, it's difficult to even sit down and read an article at times. But with podcasts, yeah, you can pop it in while you're going to work. You can pop it in while you're washing the dishes at home. You can pop it in while you're at work doing shitty shit. And you can learn. And so that's a great thing. And I get emails as well. And that's kind of my. position like even if one person out there is listening to my podcast and they're learning and they're getting something out of it I'm going to keep doing it because because I feel like that's important and as far as moving people to the left I mean hell if you move somebody that is a center right person to become a center left person you've done good work like that means

something so yeah it's the emails that it's really the emails that keep me going I'll get an email from like a college student in Belgium I'm saying thank you so much for everything you do I've shared your podcast with like my professors or I'll get somebody being like I've always had these ideas and these feelings but I've never had the words or or labels to attach to them and because of you I can now have a more robust leftist identity and I can start organizing with people because now I know what these terms mean and you know that makes it all worth it so I hope we're you know pebbles in a pond but I hope that the ripples you know reach out to other people and that's why I'm going to keep coming back to this microphone until everybody stops listening yeah and I think you touched on

an important point where you said I'm fortunate to have been able to educate myself so well in Marxism and the left and history that's a privilege I had I mean I was able to number one go to college which so many people just don't

have the opportunity and I'm fortunate that I have the kind of job in family life that lets me sit there and read all these books and sit down and read articles and so many people don't have that and so I think you what you are where you said really touches on you know people finally get like they get to hear these

thoughts that they have but don't know what they are yeah because they haven't they've been grinding away they don't have the luxury of knowing that they're marxist because they don't have time to read a book by marks yeah and so yeah i think uh you really nailed it there that you know it helps build community and it helps you know break people out of shells and make them make them feel not alone which is really important. Yeah, and everybody that's listening right now, like I really feel love for these people because it is a community.

And in a world so devoid of community where, you know, neoliberalism and late capitalism just gut any semblance of community from our lives to be able to go online and listen to people that think like you and listen to fascinating interviews with people who have, like you say, had the privilege to study this topic and write a dissertation on it, and now they're putting it in the everyday words that working class people have access to

where before the internet, they never did. You'd have to go to Yale's library or something and go through the dusty bookshelves to find a book, and now you can just pop in your podcast in so we can educate working class people about their condition, and that's a beautiful thing. I do want to talk about this, because I think it's interesting. You've, like, uniquely been targeted by the far right. You've been the target of, like, doxing and pretty horrific harassment by the fascist right. Why do they single you out?

And what was some of the worst stuff that you had to deal with over that? I don't really know what made me so singled out, because I feel like some of the things I'm doing aren't any worse than others, worse being objective here to them. But, you know, it really exploded on me at first when I came out in favor of Richard Spencer getting punched on January 20th. that was like that that was the first push I got from the atheist community and like the right leaners in the atheist community uh podcasters are or YouTube people like like Dave Rubin and uh Stephen Knight who goes by the name Godless spell checker they have a big right wing following they consider themselves liberals but if you read what they read or listen to what they do or you know even look at their audience Like, if you can call yourself a liberal, but you're only being listened to by the alt-right, guess what?

You're probably not. Well, you're probably not where you think you are. And so they shared, you know, they retweeted like anything I would say about, you know, defeating Nazis by any means necessary and calling me dangerous and trying to use sound bites from podcasts to make me sound like I'm, you know, even more dangerous. You know, you carefully edit a podcast and you can get someone to say anything. and I think so that put me on some radars from the right wingers that listen to them and then I think the worst of it probably came twofold first I said ice I said posted a tweet like not all heroes wear capes and it had you know immigration officers and I I tweeted at them that they spelled terrorist wrong

and that got some retweets and one came after me and he came after me and he he's like, I can't believe you're calling cops terrorists. And I said, well, I actually just called ICE terrorists, like being very specific. And he said, oh, that would have been really bad if you said all cops are terrorists. And I just retweeted them with the subject, okay, well, let me clarify, all cops are terrorists. And that exploded. Where is the lie? Where is the lie? Where is the lie? Find it for me. And I mean, I started getting podcast requests. from like right wingers immediately like you need to come on and defend this i'm like okay

what time and uh and then so from there that's i think around that time was when i i noticed i got docs for the first time uh and that they posted my home address they posted uh every account i had online i mean a reddit account a facebook account twitter and any site i'd ever written for even like a small little known fact i i cover professional hockey as well like as a hobby and we have a we have a minorly professional team here in town and I have a press pass and I go to their games they listed all the sites I've written about that like any like they they tried emailing the Huffington Post to get me fired I don't even work there like I freelance there once in a while if they would have if I get the email for Huffington Post saying you can't write here anymore I would have been like okay yeah like but that's what they had and then so they were coming on pretty strong and every time once in a while I'd say something they didn't like and they'd keep coming after me

and then on the 4th of July I just posted a picture I said happy 4th of July and it was a burning flag and that had Ben Shapiro coming after me and the daily caller or whatever they're calling all these websites they just exploded they couldn't believe that I would do that

and you know I should be shot and killed because soldiers fought for my right to burn that flag I think that's contradictory to everything you're just said. That's super ironic that you say that. But, you know, I got to say, I prefer it be me. I'm not afraid. I know that what they want from me is to quit the Internet and to be quiet.

I have the luxury of being a cis straight white male. These threats don't hit me like they would if I was. transgender and thought somebody could actually kill me. You know, I'm not a person of color who literally is afraid to walk out the door and be harassed on a regular basis by

law enforcement or others. And so if some, so when, you know, you know, you just just didn't mention like how bad has it gotten. The worst it gets is, you know, someone emailed me and told me they wanted to throw me out of a helicopter. Yeah.

Well, if I get a free helicopter ride, I'm just not going to take it. like that's the worst i've got coming to me is like from now on i can't take free helicopter rides because i can't trust them but that's it like so i consider myself fortunate that i'm in this position but also that uh that i'm comfortable with the harassment and i don't let it you know ruin my day to day so they can bring it on they're not going to win yeah exactly and you know what for what it's worth your enemies are my enemies like if anybody fucks with you You're like, I have your back 100% as far as I can.

And I've not been targeted to that degree, but because of my local activism, I've definitely ended up. My name and my pictures have ended up on some far right-wing websites as a possible target. The only thing that complicates it for me is that I have children. And you do too. Is that correct? Yep. Yeah, I have two as well.

And, you know, that makes it more difficult. If I was a single man, I might go a little harder. I might take a few more risks. But when you have kids to think about it, it can get scary pretty quickly. And I felt that fear myself. So is that a concern for you? I mean, yeah, it's something I predicted. So, you know, I keep accounts with them pretty locked down.

Just some people just, you know, it's just my private life is my private life. yeah and my public life is my public life and i do my best to keep them separated uh and so far it's worked out for me um but yeah i mean it's a concern like i told my son's school that he like i we had to sign waivers in case the media shows up to you know record that day i've i've made that he's not allowed to be on tv yeah and that kind of sucks for him like because that's i've never being a kid being on tv and it was fun yeah but i don't want my people know where my kid goes to school yeah no exactly so i don't do that but um but that's about it and i and then the grand scheme of things i don't really think something would happen because like i said i'm being attacked by trolls

right like i'm being attacked by people that really just attack people all day and they go on 4chan and they you know they act off and they tweet celebrities that like you know they beat mean things at celebrities so pathetic that's what they want so you know any any serious threat i ever get i'll take seriously. And if I feel like it's my life or anyone's is in danger, I'm going to act. But, you know, one thing I got to say is, and it kind of wraps back something you said earlier, the one thing

I will always remember for the rest of my life is anytime it's ever gotten really bad, my inbox and my DMs on Twitter, my message on the Facebook, fill up with leftist activists saying what you said. Like, we've got your back. Are you okay? What can we do for you? Yeah. Can we bring you something? Like, you know, we have friends in your area. Can they bring you dinner?

Yeah. And I'm like, you know, I'm not hiding in my house. I can go out and get dinner. But it's wonderful to know that, like, if I felt like I needed to, that there's people out there that will help. Absolutely. And that they care. And they don't even know me. They know me as a personality online.

And so that, to me, speaks volumes because I've never had that from another community. Yeah, absolutely. When religious right comes after me for my work in atheism, honestly like i know a lot of wonderful atheists but they don't come messaging me asking what they can do no it's it's interesting because yeah i got a message once from a fan in brazil um and and they because i play my my daughter at the beginning of these episodes like she just does a little plug for like you know follow us on twitter and donate to patreon blah blah blah and so like some of the listeners know i know i have kids i've talked about it and when like the charlottesville stuff

went down. I had just a person from Brazil, Lauren, reach out to me and say, like, I really hope your kids are okay. And, like, let me know if there's anything I can do for you. I know I live in a different country than you, but, like, I'm thinking about your kids all day. And, you know, that just, that made me want to cry. Like, that brought me to tears. Like, it's a beautiful community. And that's our strength, you know, our solidarity, our sense of community, the fact that we have each other's backs more than any other, like, political ideology or subgroup of whatever organization. It's the far left that is so dedicated and so loyal and so loving and so welcoming and so inclusive for the most part, you know, and that's why we know that we're on the right side of

history, and that's what keeps me inspired and keeps me going. Yeah, and it's an interesting thing, too, because I can probably speak for you here as well, but when I'm arguing with a right winger who I think is a dangerous or vile person, it's never crossed my mind to threaten their family or their kids. Oh, right. Yeah, never. And I never see that from the left. I mean, and it's not to say there isn't a leftist out there who's so before somebody snaps back and says, hey, that one time. Like, I'm sure there's, there's crappy leftists.

But as a whole, it's not something that you see being used as a threat from us. We're worried about that person, their ideology, and their group. We're not worried about their families. And we don't attack them or make them feel unsafe. And that's a tactic they use against us. you know it's like I said I don't feel that they're they are looking to come after our families and that those people exist too but as a whole it's a threat they use because they know it will scare us that's it because they know it would scare them but we never use it back and we shouldn't I'm very thankful we don't because I think that gives us that moral high ground and it shows the world who we are but it's just such a weird like what a weird thing to threaten like oh it's you know I have a friend who posted a picture of his kids once and someone said like oh it would be a shame if you know ISIS beheaded them because he isn't hard enough on Islam

Jesus fucking Christ and it's just like what a like what would make you say that like if Richard Spencer posted pictures of his kids I would say nothing exactly yeah I totally I totally agree I mean and I feel like deeply like if you threaten my kids if you try to come after my kids if you target my kids like it's war like I I will fight and die to protect my kids. But I also think you're 100% correct when you talk about the differences between the left and the right and what they will do, what they won't do. And even when it comes to our most militant aspects here in the U.S. of Antifa, it's like punching Nazis. It's not shooting crowds of people.

It's not running people over in cars. It's not walking into churches and mowing people down. We'll knock a fucking Nazi out and let him sleep on the street for a little bit. But he gets up, he goes home, you know, he lives. to fight another day. I'm not saying that if push comes to shove or there's a certain situation that is extremely threatening and lethal violence needs to be used. I mean, that's a different discussion. But so far, what we've seen is a huge asymmetry in who we target and how we target them. And even when we're dealing with the most vile people on the planet, we still have a certain

level of restraint that is commendable. And I think doesn't get enough praise from the mainstream media or from any parts of our society. And I think we should think about it. that. Antifa hasn't killed anyone, you know, and that's important. That's very important, considering that 28 lives have been taken since January by white nationalists. And, yeah, and Dylan Roof walking into a black church and mowing down elderly people, and, you know, it's... Right, and it's, you know, people lose the fact that, you know, everything we talk about is defensive. Yeah. If you come to our community, we're going to do X. Not, we're coming for you. Right.

And that's, it's lost in a lot of people, I think. But I also think the media is probably never going to come around anyways. They love scapegoating the left for everything. So I think, you know, anti-activists, black block activists, everybody, just keep doing what they're doing. And don't worry about optics because optics will never be in our favor anyways. Yeah, a little bit earlier you're talking about the sort of people that proclaim themselves to be liberals, but actually have this weird following of right wingers

because they spit out these horrible ideas and they're surprised by it as well. And I kind of want to, this segues nicely into another question, but I never tire of taking Sam Harris to task. But I listen to his podcast because I like to keep an eye on that sort of like centrist liberal bull crap and their line of arguments, blah, blah, blah.

But he expresses extreme surprise at the fact that He has so many Trump supporters and alt-right Pepe Twitter followers and on one of his podcast, he's like, I don't understand it. I come out here and I talk bad about Trump. Half of my audience are these alt-right assholes and I don't get it. And then like in that same episode, he said, Black Lives Matter is a divisive, dangerous, and retrograde organization. And Antifa are goons attacking peaceful Nazis.

And you're like, Sam Harris, all that rationality. And he still can't figure this one out, huh? buddy. It's a real head scratcher. But it, it segues nicely into this question, which is you came onto the scene as an atheist activist of sorts. And from my understanding, you know, your political development on the left led you away from certain aspects of that community, i.e. the new atheist movement. Can you describe your intellectual development over those years specifically and kind of how you evolved into the anarchist you are today with regards to how you view the new atheist movement? So, like, maybe you can just, like, focus on talking about the new atheism and your critiques of it.

Yeah, of course. Yeah, you know, I think for a lot of, a lot of people that come out of religion, I almost think, like, the new atheism, like, mindset is almost like a right of passage or, like, a normal progression. Because so many people leave religion angry. And then you have new atheism, which is kind of angry. and it's very you know religion is the cause of all harm in the world and they make a good case at face value for that being true like or at least like they have this veneer of of you know this is the truth and they point to these examples that you know they're they're not very nuanced they're just like you know look they're taking they're attacking education and you say oh my gosh can't believe that. And then, you know, after 9-11, you know, books by Richard Dawkins came out and they, and they showed, you know, this, you know, look, this is why Islam is bad. And they tried to, you know, they make, this is why, you know, it's worse than Christianity and worse than this. While never mentioning things like, you know, the U.S. is bombing the living crap out of the Middle East, that's why they hate us. No, it's religion. And they put this argument for it. And if you're not, well versed in all of this that's an easy thing to fall into

and but you know for me when I came in it had a lot to do with the work I was kind of doing which was you know I cared so much about church and state separation and education especially like the education of evolution at school

I was seeing it taken out of so many schools it was never even taught to me in school like it was I was leaving high school barely knowing evolution was a thing people believed in because instead of dealing with any controversy around it or anything by school just skipped it they didn't even talk about the origins of life they just went right to something else and so I kind of

got into this and then like you find that Richard Dawkins is you know writing books about evolution and you read his books you read his scientific books and they're wonderful absolutely they're not like they're not this like mean old cremuchin that he is now but like there's these great and even like you know the selfish gene which has kind of been refuted by scientists over time which is how science works anyways

but it's still at its own value it's a great book like I read that and felt inspired by it to be more involved in science and so I'm reading these books and then I'm thinking wow he's really brilliant and then so you listen to some of the topics he has and he never went too

weird on Islam for a long time and so like you kind of found this road. And then you have Hitchens who I'd be like, oh, I don't really agree with him here because he's too right wing on, you know, Iraq. But the thing he says about the Catholic Church is so right. And so for a long time, you know, especially for me, and this is what I still see from people into atheism, is you excuse these people's really bad behavior on topics because they happen to be right on one or two other things. And you say, oh, I don't agree with Sam Harris about X, but I agree with him that, you know, this religious thing is a bad problem, and I don't agree with Richard Dawkins when he talks about feminism, but I agree when he talks about, you know, Theocracy in our schools.

And then as I became not, I don't think I became more of a leftist, but I became more active in my leftist work. It became something where someone would say, well, sure, like you care about this, but, you know, you, you, tweeted that, you know, Sam Harris, it was really great about this and that. How can you say that when he said this? And at that point, I had said, I need to evaluate who I'm propping up. And as I started doing that, I'm tired of excusing bad behavior because they're right once or twice. You know, I'm sure Charles Manson was right about one or two things. I don't go defending him as a

Well I guess he's not a serial killer But whatever he did He was a serial killer by proxy By proxy I don't say Look he was But he was a good musician Like we don't say that

We just think of these people are bad people And you know I don't say You know well you know Hitler may have killed a lot of Jews But those trains run on time Right right Like you don't say those things

We don't think that way And so I had to kind of really start dissecting what my involvement with these people was. And so my first thought was I'm just going to hold them accountable for these views. I don't have to say I hate Sam Harris, but I need to ask directly, why are you saying this? And what I got when I started doing that, not to, you know, not just to Sam, but to, you know, smaller names and people that are just involved in that community as a whole was immediate pushback. and name-calling. I said, you know, why aren't we talking about U.S. foreign policy when we talk about, you know, radical terrorism?

You know, we're just pointing the finger at religion, but we're not talking about anything that is uniting, you know, people to take up arms and give their own lives for something. Like, we didn't talk about that. And, well, you're just a regressive left who's excusing Islam. Oh, God. I thought, oh, here we go. And I realized that they weren't interested in having actual discussions that made change.

To them, it was religion is the source of all evil, eradicate it, and the world's going to be a beautiful, peaceful place. And the truth is, that's not true. If Islam and every other religion disappeared tomorrow, I'm sure there's a percentage of people who might be good people that are driven to do bad things by what they're in terms. interpreting and what they're reading, but it's not going to stop happening if, you know, we keep bombing them. They're just going to unite under a different banner or flag of some sort. Exactly. Like, you know, when I look at Islamic terrorism, I look at people using Islam as a recruitment tool just as the way that the far right uses Christianity here as a recruitment tool, and they go and find things that they can say, look, the book you believe in says, X so you have to

you should do this but I can also go on this book and find nice things but they don't focus on those they go to the evil and so it all unravels and as I started kind of picking through this everything around me started falling apart and I'm like wait what are they doing

what is their goal how are they going to make the world a better place and then I think at that same time these people like Harris like when you mentioned they're getting further and further right or at least at least they're being more open about it where you know harris goes on and says well it's a scientific fact that black people are just less

intelligent now to prove my point here's douglas murray who is a known racist that thinks the same exact thing yep but no one thinks that's a scientific fact exactly only racist think that's a scientific community does not agree with douglas murray and is it is it charles murray or Douglas or Charles Murray There's both of them He has both of them on Douglas is a different Murray Douglas is another shitty

They're both terrible right wingers Yeah For some of the last name Murray just does not go well with that But yeah Douglas Murray writes for the spectator Or something over in England And he's just as bad

But yeah Charles Murray And the bell curve And I'm like wait And then you know And then you know Peaceful Nazis And all this

You start looking at it you say, shit, I don't have nothing to do with this. Like, even like the small percentage of things I think New Atheists might be right about, I don't want to be identified with what they're building. Exactly. And a broken clock being twice, right, twice a day does not make everything else they're doing defensible. And at that point, I just had to throw my arms up and say, I'm out, and I'm going to use this audience I've built within this movie.

or my voice within this movement with an audience I have now to start calling this out and at whatever price that is with losing you know losing listeners losing readers and but I can't I'm not going to play along just to keep people listening to what I have to say yeah and that sort of just drove the plane right out of the sky yeah I think I I really am kind of so fascinated by this because we have had very very similar developments because I've said on this podcast before I used to be like in my late teens you know very early 20s I was I was a new atheist and as my leftism grew and developed contradictions started to appear between the positions I held as a new atheist and the positions I held as a leftist and when you say that the first time that you were you were you know hit with a criticism of one of the new atheists you you recoiled into a defensive mode you're like, hold on now, and you know, you would get shitty with them, and you'd argue with them, and you'd dismiss them, and you know, you'd walk away, but it would stick with you. And then the second time, and the third time, people that you like, hey, this is kind of fucked up that they said that, right? And you're like, oh, man, that is fucked up. And so, like, over time, you build up your anti-imperialism, for example, and that contradicts with what they're saying U.S. policy should be in the Middle East, and then you have to choose. Well, are you a new atheist? on this argument? Or are you a leftist on this argument? And over time, those start to really

bump up against each other. And over time, you're forced to pick aside. And I view leftism as an advancement on new atheism, precisely because new atheism is inherently liberal, but it's also just very idealistic in its analysis. So, like, it will analyze terrorism as merely a byproduct of bad ideas, right? It'll say, Muslim, believe this, this, and this, therefore they do these terrible things. A leftist will say, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Let's look at the material conditions that they're operating in. Let's examine how Western imperialism has created an absolute, you know, chaotic war zone. Let's look at how after World War II, the Middle East was divided up arbitrarily by Western powers, you know,

with no care as to the sorts of cultures that were in these areas. And so now you have this new state and there's a bunch of different interests and a bunch of different people that hate each other and they have to now coexist under the same government because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so in this way, I think, leftists are, like, you're forced out of your new atheism.

And when you talk about like these simplistic narratives of religion is the root of all evil, which on the last podcast with The Magnificast, we did an episode on Christian socialism and we talked about these issues. And I kind of made the comparison to libertarians who have these same. simplistic narratives of government is always bad, taxation is theft. It's so shallow. The depth

of analysis is just not there. And once you find something like anarchism or Marxism, which actually has a really full-throated critique and understanding of history and why things are as they are, you can't help but leave those sort of more simplistic narratives behind, you know? Yeah, and I think that's pretty important. And I think also, like, it just has, this, you know, I think simplistic is the best way to put it, because it just gives the easy answer, and which is so funny to me, because

you know, a lot of times the new atheists who, you know, and sort of in my similar story was, you know, fighting creationism in schools is a big thing. And a lot of times, like, the memes around it, and that this conversation was, you know, creationists are lazy. They just want the easy answer. And the easiest answer is that God did it.

And the complicated answer is understanding natural selection. But then I looked at what new atheists are doing, with their critique of the world and they're going for the easiest answer they're not going for the in-depth critique of what's happening

and it's easy to say all religion is bad because we can point to almost all religions having bad elements there's bad people but there's bad people in everything

leftists have committed murder yeah like right Wingers have done it, too. And, you know, Richard Spencer is an atheist. Yeah. Like, so they place like this idea that atheism has to be more of a thing.

And I think also that plays a big role in, you know, when you leave religion and you're in your, and you don't kind of know where you fit, atheism does become a bit more than just a label of, oh, I don't believe in God. It sort of becomes part of your identity because for a lot of people, their Christianity or their, their religion that they were plays a role in their identity so they just replace it with atheism and that becomes part of their identity and I think for me I sort of grew out of feeling like I needed to identify

as one. I think yeah if somebody asked me if I believe in God or not I'll be honest and say no but why would I lead with that that has played such a little role in the way I think this world needs to be shaped exactly I just happen to be someone that thinks that

everyone deserves a home, health care, food, water, heat, electricity, and I just happen to not believe in God, too. Like, it's not, I don't believe in God, so I believe people should have all this. Like, that has nothing to do with it. You know, I was more of a Marxist than I was, you know, as, you know, as I was leaving, you know, the Christian faith, which I grew up in, I had already kind of reached that point of exploring Marxism and they didn't play hand at hand

they just happened to happen around the same time but they didn't influence each other so it's not like atheism led me to Marxism Oh definitely definitely So people kind of want to build atheism as more of an identity and it just

I think that I would have thought was a good thing years ago and now I would say now like no it's just a word to describe the fact that you don't believe in God exactly yeah I mean well said and a great point.

I couldn't agree more. It's kind of a sad thing being an old, like I used to be the new atheists or whatever. Going on the Facebook timeline is the worst thing in the world because when it's like 10 or, you know, eight years ago, here's what you posted. And I'm like, oh, my God, please delete that. But we're coming up on an hour.

I mean, I could talk to you for days. I would love to have you on just to talk about like parenting as a leftist and parenting. You wrote that book on Parenting Without God, but parenting as a leftist is also a thing, and I think we could have so many topics we can touch on, but for this last little part of the episode, I want to talk about the October Revolution. So I heard you talk about the October Revolution and the book, October, that you're reading during your appearance on Soulcast, which again, go check out Soulcast, part of Channel Zero, very important, go check all that out. But can you tell me what you find most, because you're an anarchist, so I thought this was interesting.

Can you tell me what you find most interesting about the October Revolution and what lessons like leftists of all stripes can draw from it? Yeah, so I became obsessed. I guess obsessed is probably the right words. I've read way too much about it and seek out documentaries or anything I can. And I'll watch the same sort of story over and over. It doesn't change. It all happened a hundred years ago. But to me, it's one of the best examples.

of you know what a leftist revolution can look like or how it would take place because we sort of have this fantasy in our heads a lot that the left is going to rise up we're going to take up arms we're going to storm into the white house or wherever you know whatever it is in the country you live in and say we're in charge now and it's all kumbaya and we're happy and suddenly anarchism or socialism whatever happens has taken over and it doesn't happen that way but i think too we all a lot of us that you know aren't familiar with the October Revolution sort of feel like

that's how it happened that Lenin was like enough is enough and they stormed in you know to the winter castle and took it and then it was over and Lenin was in charge but that didn't happen either like Lenin wasn't even in Russia

when the when the czar you know was overthr and it wasn't necessarily leftists that overthrew it was you know it was people in the streets and it was you know you know leftists were involved but so are other movements and then a provisional government was created that wasn't made up of leftists either it was people from the government that just wanted to not have the czar in charge and then lenin came in and they built a bigger push and you know the story goes on that they eventually pushed out the provisional government

and took over but i think the lesson is is that it doesn't have to be so cut and dry it doesn't have to be how we are envisioning it we have to we have to be vigilant in watching for every change and opportunity that maybe it's the libertarians that spark it we don't know like i don't know when this is going to happen i know every government in the history of governments has gone through it so we're probably not going to be immune but you know if we're if we're looking short term let's just imagine that it's happening in the next 10 years it might not be us that does it. But we can't be standing on our hands when it happens. And I think we can learn so much from how they, you know, they built, you know, the masses with the workers, how they spoke to

the workers to get them involved. I think a lot of times we miss out on that. We sometimes, I'll see group, especially like, like, DSA I feel does this a little too much for my liking, but they tend to talk to people and tell them what they need when it's in my view like these workers in factories these you know the working class and the working poor they know what they need what they don't know is that there's an entire country people willing to help them get it right and so our job is to go and tell them what they need is to tell them that we're there for them and that we need to listen to what they're telling us they need and how are we going to get it for and then get them involved in it

and that was one thing that I think the Bolsheviks did really well was that they went into these factories and they listened and these people became in charge of themselves they didn't you know Lennon didn't walk in and say I'm near a new leader follow me these people took to the streets on their own

they were fed up and they knew people there had their back so they were willing to do this work we're never going to get anywhere if workers don't feel that way if we continue to let the narrative be

well you have to pick left you have to pick you know Democrat or Republican or you're not going to get what you want we need to go in there and be like look there's another way and we're here for you what do you need what can we get for you what can we do for you how can we get that and then we just start working with them if we can build in communities places where we're

families can send their kids to get breakfast before school. You know, look at the Black Panthers. So I think what we look at is, from these revolutions, how did they do that? And I mean, the thing about reading October by China, I can't say their last name, Mayville, it's got a little hyphen thing in there. So suddenly I can't say, I can't talk. I'm like, wait, what is that? They didn't teach me that in my Rochester, New Hampshire English class. But is when I'm reading this book, which is really an intro to the October Revolution.

So if you don't know much about it, this is a fantastic book to start. But if you do know a lot about it, this is still a fantastic book because the way the story is told and through the eyes in which it's told, I'm learning things I didn't even know. It's struck, it's like Swazki's October Revolution, like the, you know. Russian Revolution. So it's just written in such a way that made me stay interested in the things I already knew. But when I'm reading it, I'm like, wow, this is so accessible. And what's amazing about it is how much of it, the political climate in Russia at that time feels so much

like everything we're talking about now. You know, this one person who's trying to consolidate power, the way they go about staying in power and using their influence to control and the people they put in charge, you know, the czar is putting people around him that are just going to be his puppet. And

just listening to the way like workers are being upset in there and they're protesting and I'm reading it saying like, we're watching this. Like if he would have taken out references to characters in time I could have been like, oh wait, is this just a news story and being written like that I think really sends home a message of the importance of you know leftist activism and you know is this thinking revolutionary even if we're out at that point now where we're thinking revolution yeah like we need to be thinking revolutionary thoughts

and and how are we going to accomplish these goals in this time frame it's wonderful to think about what's going to happen down the road but to me reading October really made me think about like what can I do now? Because I'm seeing these same problems and I'm seeing that, you know, the Bolsheviks were working on solutions. Well, are we? And I start, you know, and I think we are lots of communities,

but are we in enough? And, yeah, so I'm really just fascinated by it because I think like it and, you know, Russia and Cuba are two of the most accessible, I think historical stories of revolution. You know, China has it as well. but you just you have like this thing where you can you can really wrap your head around you know these revolutionaries going into communities and rallying people and empowering them

and not building a follow the leader movement absolutely and and i think sometimes um that's forgotten i think sometimes that that's undervalued but i do think that lots of different tendencies have taken that lesson so for example Maoists talk about the mass line, talk about interacting critically with the masses, getting feedback, altering your strategy based on what they want, you know, talking to workers. The IWW on the anarchist side of things, they're very much interested in organizing in the workplace, talking to workers, you know, unionizing. And then like Leninist organizations like the PSL, these people try to engage the working class. And I think that is so, so important. And you have to

meet them where they are. You can't walk into a workplace and start talking about dialectical materialism. They're going to shut you out as just irrelevant. But if you go in there and start talking about, isn't it weird how you work your fucking ass off, but you still struggle? Isn't it weird how you're made to feel bad that you have some character flaws in individual? Because even though you work hard, you struggle paycheck to paycheck to make ends meet, isn't that fucked up? and people will liven up. Just yesterday, I was at a bar drinking, and there was a guy from the back who came up, right?

He was a delivery driver from the back, but that part of the store had closed, so he came to the bar part to drink, and we got into a conversation. And, you know, this guy is obviously not somebody who has studied Marxism or anarchism or whatever, but we got in a little talk about, you know, how he struggles and how sometimes it's hard for him

to feel fully like a, like a, a person, like a good person because he's told that poverty or struggling is a symptom of bad character. And I, you know, gently, but like, you know, we were both engaging back and forth and I kind of gently reframed that for him. And I made that argument. I was like, you know, I'm not going to talk about Marxism with this guy, but I could talk to him about how the bullshit mythology that we're fed that says if you work hard, you will, you will be okay. And the actual reality that we face, which is we all work our asses off because we have to and we still struggle, you know, there's an interesting gap there. And he was so open to that. He shook, his eyes lit up

and he understood it intuitively immediately. And I think that is the goal of, you know, more advanced, quote unquote, more advanced segments of the working class, people with class consciousness, is how can you break these things down and communicate them to everyday workers and let them understand, you know, their own plight and reframe it for them. It's not that you're a bad person and you suck and that's why you're poor, but it's because there's systems hell-bent on keeping you poor so that certain other people can live lives of extravagant luxury and comfort. And people are open to that, you know, I've found in my experience. Yeah, 100% agree. You've, that's the message I think that we have that the other side doesn't because

the right is the one perpetrating that message. And so they go into these workplaces and they blame them and they tell them to work harder. And they're the ones that are in charge. They're the managers. They're the they're the ones that are putting

this oppression on them, but then blaming them when they don't get the raise. Well, you didn't get a raise this year because the company didn't make enough money because you didn't work hard enough. and they buy it because that's what they hear

they don't hear the other side and that narrative is told to them on TV too and liberals don't do a much better job of dispelling that myth not at all they often contribute to the problem yeah they still push the whole American dream pull yourself up by your bootstraps because they don't critique capitalism

they want to reform it they always say like oh you want to make fixes to capitalism but they never push those buttons of we need to get rid of it. And I think the way you frame that is fantastic is that I'm not going to walk into a workplace or a bar next to a factory and say, hey, you're having a draft day at work? Yeah, what's overthrow capitalism? Yeah. But if I start talking to him not about capitalism and not about dialectical materialism, but about the struggles he has. And, you know, just to put it in his mind that, you know, he, he.

is worth more because he knows he's worth more but it's been beaten out of him and to you know so you know people are here and that we want to help and that you know just just sort of getting them amped up to the fact that you know they're they wield the power because if that whole factory walked out that CEO at the top is screwed And they're told they don't have that power. They're just the ants, but they are what makes that place tick. And I think, you know, working, you know, class people, like, that's just beaten out of them.

That's part of the routine is to have that mindset removed. I think a lot of us have it when we walk into work for the first time. We're like, you know, look, I've, they need me. But then they go, we don't need you. We can just replace you. and then over time you start buying it and you believe that because you see it you see your co-worker that you know made a fuss over some safety concern get replaced and so you put your head down and you risk your your health and safety and they do that time and time again and everyone just goes to work keeps their head down doesn't cause any trouble you know you don't get that raise you don't make you don't throw a fit uh you know a lot of places in the south unions have left because you know the democrats pack up and took off so they had nobody there to defend them at all. And so the Wright came in and took over. So, yeah, I think you nailed it out. You know, we need to be focused on them and

empowering them. And that's how we're going to get there. All right, brother, well, we're well over time. I would love to have you back on. We have, I mean, we have so much more to discuss. I mean, we didn't even get to like half of the questions I had for this episode. But thank you so much for coming on. But before we leave, can you go ahead and let listeners know where they can find your podcast and find your writing and then maybe toss out a recommendation or two for people who want to learn more about anything we've discussed tonight. Yeah, you know, follow me on Twitter at Dan Arrell. Head over to Danarroll.com and, you know, find my work. And yeah, just, you know, look up my books, buy them at your local bookstore if you're interested,

or buy them right through my website. And yeah, I think Twitter and my website are the best places to by me. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Let's talk again soon, brother. Sounds great. Thank you. Banks are made of marble with a guard at every door. Valt of void with credit bind its first form. Credit snake-like lines suck zeros to an end. Absent of the human lives by which they were spent. The transfiguration of an Ashen Adam Smith on the crushed corner of any market intent. Even the X-Dent song, the first line was lifted from Dream banks in terms of in tombs. silver sums.

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