Rev Left Radio - Millennial Marxists

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

Matthew John from This American Left joins Breht to discuss his book "Millennial Marxist" and a slate of contemporary political topics  Find Millennial Marxist here: https://linktr.ee/millennialmarxist Check out Breht's guest interview on This American Left: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-3-a-conversation-with-breht-oshea/id1529673234?i=1000498698013 Outro music "Riot Rhythm" by Sleigh Bells Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode I have on Matthew John from This American Left and the author of Millennial Marxist on to talk about his book. And then we just get into a broad discussion on a plethora of topics from the end of neoliberalism to the rise of multipolarity to this time of reaction we're living in in the United States to what could possibly come next and so much more is really a spontaneous organic and wide-ranging conversation in which we touched a lot of different bases so again this is matthew john his book is millennial marxist and here is my conversation with him enjoy Hey, my name's Matthew. I go by Matthew John, John being my middle name. I'm a writer. I'm also a notorious Instagram shit poster. And recently had my account suspended by Instagram, but that's another story. I've been writing for probably most of my life. I couldn't really pinpoint when I started, but I've been writing poetry, short stories. I've kept journals for many. years. And in 2017, I started writing political commentary. And this was shortly after Trump took

office. And I continued. I was posting on medium.com a blogging platform. So I was getting some traction, some attention, some good feedback. And I also was submitting my work to the Hampton Institute. Many of you might have heard of the Hampton Institute, a working class think tank. So I basically kept writing political commentary, usually responding to current events. This is all kind of from a leftist perspective, but I got to say I was kind of a baby leftist starting out. And I kind of evolved politically over this time. This was about four years of writing. And eventually I was kind of burnt out in writing in the middle of 2021.

And I looked back at everything I had written. written, and I was, I just got the idea to, you know, combine it into a book. So have this collection of political commentary that I thought was still relevant and something I put a ton of effort into. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. And of course, the name of that book is Millennial Marxist, and we'll talk about that shortly. You're also the creator and co-host of This American Left, a podcast as well as a social media page, correct? Yes, correct. But unfortunately, this was the page that got suspended by Instagram. But yeah,

we're still, we were on a long hiatus with the podcast because of me working on the book. But yeah, we still will be releasing episodes in the future. Well, yeah, really quick, huge shout out to Hampton Institute. I love what they do over there. But I'm actually kind of curious what got you suspended from Instagram.

I wish I knew specifically, but I had a lot of violations. Ironically, many of the times it was just posting pictures of Ukrainian soldiers, you know, and they just, they just happen to have a Nazi armed every single time. Yeah. Yeah. Coincidentally. And just other things that I think there's a kind of a bias against leftist political views. Absolutely. And there's, there's been more information recently about the Department of Online Security kind of coordinating with these big tech

companies to censor certain perspectives. So that could have been part of it. I'm not sure. Exactly. And that's the thing that people should be aware of is just like straight up the government intelligence agencies telling social media companies what to take down what's misinformation a lot of these people like especially on a topic as complicated and nuanced as the rush of ukraine war you know a lot of these moderators or people on these social media sites probably don't have the nuance to understand what is an acceptable position what's a conspiracy theory etc so the intelligence agencies just tell them like you know this platform or this page or this post goes against our you know what we're saying is the correct information and so of course that's going to hit uh you know left wing

accounts and and figures just as much as as the right uh funnily enough uh our sister podcast gorilla history just got tagged with the label on instagram of based in russia so our our show gorilla history has a has a instagram page now i'm from the u.s obviously my our audio engineer for guerrilla history is from the u.s. odd non is from Canada And my other co-host, Henry, currently lives in Russia. When we started the show, I think he was in Germany or just leaving Germany, but he's born and raised in the United States. And so it's very clear to us that this label based in Russia is just a label meant to sort

of scare people or make us seem spooky or untrustworthy or, you know, Putin puppets or whatever. And it's just, it's absolutely wild that they did that. But that's what they do. Yeah. And I remember back in the day, like journalists like Aaron Matte were totally predicting this, you know, that Russia Gate would have this effect of demonizing the left. And that's basically what's happening, especially the anti-war left. Absolutely.

Absolutely. All right. Well, let's start this conversation. And this conversation is going to go many places. We're going to talk about civil war. We're going to talk about the end of neoliberalism. We're going to talk about multipolarity, et cetera. So we're going to cover a lot.

But I did want to kind of start off kind of just focusing on this book and promoting it. let people know, you know, what it's about and that it's out there. So I guess the first question is, what made you want to write this book? And what were you trying to accomplish with a millennial Marxist? Well, so the interesting thing about it was by the time I decided to write it, it was like mostly done because, you know, it was this political commentary I had already written over the course of four years. But yeah, I kind of went back and looked at it, and I realized a lot of it is still relevant and especially kind of one of the background themes is like this political evolutionary trajectory that I've noticed is very common with like progressives who were kind of

very supportive of the Bernie Sanders campaigns and then you know suddenly it's like Biden is president like what the fuck and just moving more towards revolutionary politics so I kind of wanted to show my own political evolution. and I think it's it resonates with a lot of people but also it's just like I noticed since I was writing for a very general audience on like medium you know I had no idea who's going to see my articles or what kind of background information they had so a lot of it is very like rudimentary and I think it it provides a good kind of introduction to the left just people who are like maybe liberals or baby leftists or progressives or whatever and they they want something to um find out more about just a leftist perspective in general. So that's why I think it's a valuable resource. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

And I think you definitely accomplished that. And, you know, there's plenty of humor. Like in the preface, you're kind of, you know, not taking yourself too seriously, but at the same time, you do reach out to people and say, you know, some of this stuff might be a little hard to swallow it first. It might seem a little radical. But the whole thing is geared really toward, you know, lending a handout to people like that who, who maybe are sort of looking for a different political, you know, value system to adhere to, or as the center falls out of American politics, people are looking for alternatives left and right. And there is a lot of that, especially since Bernie, especially since a lot of progressives and liberal types, saw how the Democratic Party operates to get rid of figures like Bernie, who really put at the center of their campaign the economic reforms that are utterly necessary to decrease inequality and stabilize society, et cetera. But that cuts into. corporate profiteering and the, you know, disproportionate power that the rich and corporations have over our political system. And since both political parties are ultimately answerable to

capital, figures like that get absolutely, you know, tossed aside. So I think that the book really accomplishes what you, what you aimed for it to accomplish. Thanks. I appreciate that. Definitely. And so you said that you, this book is obviously a compilation of different essays that you wrote, when was the writing, when did the writing take place, and when did the writing stop and the, you know, the compiling begin? Okay, so, um, the very first piece I wrote was in 2017, April of 2017, uh, responding to Trump bombing Syria. And, uh, I guess as a little preface, you know, I was on Facebook a lot back, back in the day, as I'm sure a lot of people were just arguing with family and friends and things like that. So I was kind of used to just

I guess writing political commentary in a sense in terms of like these debates with people. So I was working as a server at a restaurant and one of my co-workers, just a nice guy but a liberal, he posted on Facebook basically praising Trump for bombing Syria. And I was like, what's going on? Like, I need to, so I just went on this rant about this topic. And from there, I just continued writing for about four years. The last one was April of 2021, so pretty much exactly four years. And like I said, I was kind of burnt out on writing. You know, Biden was president.

I was like, I don't really have anything else to say. This is ridiculous. But a few months after that, that's when I kind of went back. and I decided to combine everything into a book, and that process took about a year. There's a lot that goes into it published through Lulu. It's kind of self-publishing. They're kind of a print-on-demand service, but I also had a graphic design comrade who wants to remain anonymous, but they were huge in terms of completing this project, so shout out to them.

Nice, yeah. Well, so basically from 2017 to 2021, you're writing and then you spend more or less a year compiling. And I've noticed that things have dramatically sort of changed since that time. I talk about it in terms of like the political and cultural wins have certainly shifted under Biden back towards the right, I believe. But how have things, how do you think things have changed since you sort of wrote all these essays and put them all. together, how have things changed, especially since you were writing in 2017 through 2020, 2021? Yeah, I think one of the things from a geopolitical standpoint is I was really thinking that the Cold War with China was going to escalate significantly, which it did, but there is a much

greater focus on, you know, Russia, of course, with the Ukrainian proxy war. I obviously didn't see that coming, and I was also one of the people who didn't really think Russia was going to invade, because, you know, U.S. government officials were saying it, and they lie quite often. So that's been a huge difference. I was not expecting that, but there is kind of the historical, just Biden in 2014 going to Ukraine and meeting with some neo-Nazis and that sort of thing, and obviously the U.S. supporting the coup, the 2014 coup. So that's one of the things. Another thing is just how much the labor movement has expanded, and that's very heartening, very exciting. I was at a Minnesota Nurses Association rally recently in downtown Minneapolis,

and just seeing this very, like, militant kind of attitude that's developing that I see as, like, pretty much just, you know, class solidarity and class warfare. a lot of the speeches that were given were very anti-capitalist and in some cases probably not even on purpose it's just like it's us versus the employer you know the private hospitals so that's another aspect that's a very positive development that I've seen yeah absolutely those are those are certainly important developments and shifts I think and as I kind of alluded to earlier like you know under under the the Trump administration when Trump came in it was kind of a surprise for everybody. Um, you know, Bernie was sort of robbed of the candidacy by the, by the Democratic Party in particular, especially in 2020. Um, and every, I mean, after that, I mean, after the Trump thing, you know, but during the Trump years, the winds were really blowing in the favor of the left. Uh, we had tailwinds at our back, you know, people were getting radicalized, people were getting mobilized, protests, riots, burning down police headquarters. I mean,

it was very clear that the left in general broadly conceived was on the move in a way that it hadn't been in a very, very long time. And that was wonderful and great things came of it. But inevitably, the pendulum swings the other way. You get Biden reelected and you have several years of reaction in the face of movements like Black Lives Matter and all of the various protest movements that sprouted up around Trump. And now I think we're living in this time of reaction, this time of. of under Biden where the right is on the move in a lot of ways. A lot of the liberals and the half-hearted types who were just like, you know, orange man bad. Once he got out of office and Biden got in, a lot of them sort of sat back, you know, detached from politics, recoiled into their own personal life. The sense of urgency that a lot of people on the left had under Trump kind of dissipated and people kind of floundered or weren't as excited. You know, you could see just like the protesting and the rioting really kind of come to an end. And then you see the real rise of reaction. Reaction was there the entire time, but under Biden, you know, they have more of the tailwinds

in their favor. And I see these wind shifts knock a lot of people around. I think like a lot of the recent incarnation of these right-wing reactionaries masquerading as communists, masquerading as Marxists, I think, are a symptom of this time of reaction we're living in. And one thing about opportunists is that, you know, opportunists fundamentally sort of check the wind to see which way the winds are blowing and go along with that. Or being unprincipled are simply blown around by these wind shifts, such that somebody in 2016 or 2017 who was like supporting Black Lives Matter and anti-Trump and was going to protest is now like, you know, flirt. with these reactionary strains of ostensible leftism or socialism or communism, but it's really

just reaction masquerading as such. And so I thought that was an important thing to point out and kind of highlight how opportunists get either cynically take advantage of wind shifts or kind of get blown around by it. And I think that's what's happening. And it's only a matter of time probably until the wind shifts in the opposite direction. And a lot of these these mac of communist types will either disappear completely into a relevancy or drop the this thing altogether and just become you know a run-of-the-mill reactionary um but kind of what are your what are your thoughts on on any or all of that um so one thing i've noticed is like the question i have for mega communists is um they're very supportive of china and like how are you

going to convince you know white 55 year old conservatives that you know china is not our enemy And I just, also like, you know, I feel like MAGA is kind of an Americanized form of kind of a fascist ideology, which is, you know, the most anti-communist you can get, really. So I feel that it's so contradictory that it's just laughable. Unfortunately, it's a real movement, though. Yeah. But like you said, hopefully it will die out soon. Absolutely. And I always say a lot of these people will just, once the wind shift again, they'll just become reaction.

Or in five years, it'll just be voting Republicans or whatever. So keep on that. Yeah, there's like anti-Semitic rhetoric coming in and it's just like ridiculous. Exactly. You're not bringing, you're not bringing MAGA to the left. They're bringing you to the right. And like these people are just straight up at this point, and especially on the LGBTQ question, just straight up reactionaries, just straight up bigots. And they're acting like their bigotry is actually principled true Marxism and everybody else is a fraud.

It's just laughable. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, kind of in the same vein of this time of reaction we're living in, just this destabilized era that we're living in broadly, are this increase of political violence. Certainly, I think, since the Trump election, things shifted, at least during my life, to a great degree of political violence happening all over. Certainly, there's been periods all throughout American history, but that's been the case, but born in the late 80s, growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, that sort of political violence was not present in. in most of our lives as millennials. And it really came back on the scene in a big way in 2016. And now even to this day, we're seeing more and more instances of, you know, violence.

And it's not taking the form of organized this state versus that state or this region versus that region like it has in the past, but it's taking the form of the sort of singular acts of extreme violence, sometimes mass shooting, sometimes targeted attacks. And it all kind of feeds into this broader question of where is America heading? Are we heading towards the Civil War? This is something that people are constantly talking about as of late. So I'm just kind of wondering what your thoughts are on this political moment, on these sorts of attacks, on whether or not you think there is the possibility of civil war. And if not, what form will this political violence, you know, ultimately take?

What will it take to calm down political violence and move into a new era where they're kind of like the night. or early aughts, there wasn't that sort of political violence at the fore of political life. But even as I say that, of course, I'm thinking of the Oklahoma City bombing and the militia movements in the 90s. So it's never been without it, but it seems like it has increased as of late. So what are your thoughts on just political violence and the fear that people have of a coming second civil war? So I think that, you know, in a sense that Trump was seen as an aberration when, you know, from a leftist standpoint, he was, he was more. like a pure expression of American values, you know, white supremacy, bigotry, just the extension

of colonialism and genocide that the country was founded on. But I think that also since neoliberalism kind of created Trump with these more precarious conditions that resulted, I think the material conditions have a lot to do with the increase in right-wing political violence and right-wing terrorism. But it also is this, you know, expression of like trying to save this notion of American exceptionalism. And it is kind of terrifying. And I did write a little bit about the need for, you know, community defense. But, you know, I do think the material conditions are a huge part of this. And if there was a way to, you know, make the U.S. a socialist country, I'm pretty confident that this would, this political violence would, would decrease. But it is also kind of

this terrorist wing of the capitalist class that kind of reinforces the status quo. So, yeah, it's really something to be aware of and to fight back against. Definitely. And I do think, like, and you're right about this, the ultimate solution, like if you're just, even if you're somebody like in the ruling class that really wants to stabilize the country. or, you know, for various reasons, like the way to do it would be this robust, it's almost like social democratic reformist movement that shores up the economic precarity of average working people that brings back unions and what they do for working people that decreases inequality through, you know, heavy taxation on the rich and on corporations and a reinvestment

in education and health care and infrastructure, investing in the people such that the American people feel invested in the country. And when when those things go away, when jobs are shipped overseas, when inequality skyrockets, when people's lives become more precarious, this sort of political violence is an inevitable sort of result. But even still, I think especially in context of wondering about like the Civil War, is a lot of people, especially on the right, a lot of these people that, you know, anti-maskers, that, you know, stop to steal types, all these types, They do like to envision themselves as not only victims, but like rugged heroes fighting against tyranny. And so they like the aesthetics of carrying a gun to the state house and, you know, wearing the skull mask and flying the American flag.

But I think when push comes to shove, even with the economic precarity in American society, the people that make up this side of the debate, often very white in the majority of religion and racial categories, they're often too, comfortable. Like, you know, if you, if you can afford a $70,000 extended cab pickup truck, you know, I mean, are you really going to risk it all to go die in a fucking gunfight in the streets with people you don't even know? It feels like a lot of this is political posturing. A lot of this plays into certain narratives that right-wingers have about themselves, this certain mythological view they have of themselves in this victim complex and this endless grievance machine. But I feel like ultimately when push comes to shove, a lot of these people would go inside their house and lock the door before they picked up a gun and

started killing people in the streets. So I just, that's kind of my take. I mean, you know, what do you think about that? Yeah, and then this goes back to kind of people realizing the sort of petty bourgeois character of the January 6th riots, people who, you know, had enough money and time off of work to be able to come to the capital on a weekday or whatever. and yeah it's just i think this is why my out said like reactionaries are paper tigers um i think they overwhelmingly are cowards you know absolutely whereas something like the cuban revolution you

have just a handful of guerrillas you know sacrificing their lives for the proletariat and it's just a huge contrast yeah i was listening to a reporter on vox today just because i i melt my brain with with you know stuff from across the political spectrum but he was talking about going to like um one of these stop to steal things uh whereas there's like this this community and the people that came out that were yelling at these like poll workers uh were all white people and the poll workers just happened to be like all black people and a lot of these people these white people were you know like when you interview them and say i'm not racist at all nothing to do with race but it's like you're in this context and you're part of this ideology that is so clearly

motivated by racial animus and you're sitting here with a bunch of white people screaming in the faces of a bunch of black government workers. And then the journalist was, as he was talking to one of these guys, the guy got a call. And he said, I have to cut this interview. I have to leave. And the reporter asked him, why? Why do you have to leave? And he's like, I just got a call that BLM is showing up and I got to get out of here. And they're like, well, why do you have to get out of here? Like, what are you scared of? He's like, I don't want to lose my life. I don't want to die. And so, for me, for me, that revealed the profound fear that is at the center of reaction all reaction i think this also you know kind of gestures towards mouse quote about being a

paper tiger they're not to say that there aren't reactionaries willing to kill and die because there certainly are and we see that all the time but for the most part and in reaction in general it is really motivated by this deep and often illogical and irrational sense of of fear and fever dreamish paranoia and and you know it drives a lot of these people to it drives them crazy in a lot in a lot of ways, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I think it relates a lot to their privilege as well, economic and racial privilege that they're so comfortable, but then at the same time, you know, so willing to back down on their beliefs. Exactly. So, so ultimately scared when push comes to show. There's also the, the urban and rural divide as well, like in the first civil war, obviously

it was regionally, you know, sort of separated such that the North and its army and the Confederacy and its army and you have boundaries and borders. and territories, that just no longer exist. And now it's such that even in deep red states, the big cities within them are bright blue. And so it's really, it's divided in such a way that there could be really no organized civil war in the sense that it was the first go-round. But the form that it can take is like just constant, low-level political violence. I mean, 60s and 70s, right? A bomb was going off every day.

There were several high-level political assassinations. We never burst into civil war, but that lasted for quite some time, probably a decade or more, of real political chaos and heightened political violence. And I think we're more likely going to live and we are living through that sort of period than we are, you know, 1860, 1865. Yeah, I agree with that, definitely. For sure. Well, let's go ahead and move into maybe we can talk about the international situation, particularly on. um you know the elect like some things that have happened recently lula got elected over balsanaro an incredibly close race like profoundly close like 56 yeah like 56 million versus like 57 or 58

million um and and i really i really thought that was going to be the pretense that balsanaro was going to use to completely deny the election but it doesn't seem like that's happening which which is interesting um but yeah do you have any thoughts on any of that um i did see some like kind of Bolsonaro supporters, some images and video of them

like blocking off highways and shit like that. I mean, that's kind of the same thing that like Venezuelan

right wing opposition members did. But yeah, I don't know, I don't think it'll go anywhere. I think it's a

pretty solid victory. Yeah, and it's very promising also because we're seeing sort of a renewed kind of pink tide

or whatever in Latin America with, you know, other countries like Colombia and Honduras electing leftist or center-left, whatever you want to call it, presidents. So there's at least this renewed diplomacy in the region that also extends to usually Russia and China, certainly to Cuba, certainly to Venezuela and Nicaragua. I think

Gustavo Petro, the new president of Colombia, recently met with Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, reestablishing kind of diplomacy and friendly relations. So, yeah, this is a very promising development in terms of, like, multipolarity that I've noticed, yeah. Yeah, well, one of the things with regards to multipolarity is obviously this trade that's going on between China, Russia, Latin America, the global South in general, being much more hesitant in the global north to jump on the anti-Russia, pro-Ukraine, let's drag this war out forever. This is a fight for democracy bullshit. They're not buying into it. They're not playing along with it. In Latin America in general, there is a renewed sense of like sort of pan Latin American solidarity and, you know, a coming together of Latin American countries to sort of work together and cooperate.

And the BRICS alignment, you know, you have Brazil, you have Russia, you have India, China, and South Africa. That's a huge sort of development on the multipolarity front because the multipolarity front is not just military alliances, it's economic alliance. and that is absolutely happening right now. And all of this seems to suggest both internationally and domestically that the period that we've been living in that we've been calling neoliberalism from roughly the late 70s, early 80s till today, is coming to an end, both domestically and internationally. And I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on the possibility of the end of neoliberalism and I don't know what could possibly come next, especially in a context in which, let's just

say multipolarity really does blossom and adds a layer of complexity to the scenario as well. Like, do you agree that the neoliberal era is coming to an end? And if you do, what do you think or what can you possibly see that might come next? Yeah, I think

that, you know, the U.S. as being kind of the leading power or the only power kind of promoting neoliberalism around the world usually at the barrel of a gun. I think they've had a lot of, the U.S. has had a lot of foreign policy fail And even just kind of the tide turning internationally in terms of like the recent UN vote condemning the blockade of Cuba.

This is something that, you know, is usually just a ridiculous vote that has like, you know, 185 countries in favor of ending the blockade in like the U.S. and Israel opposed. So I think the U.S. is showing more and more that it's a rogue state. And, you know, failures like trying to overthrow the Venezuelan government in recent years that failed. The Syrian proxy war, I think, failed. But, you know, ultimately still did tons of damage. But, you know, Lula was actually one of the main founders of the BRIC system. So this is very promising that, you know, Brazil is going to be back in this. Bolsonaro was not really a fan.

Bolsonaro was actually under, you know, for this UN vote, Brazil. actually abstained from the vote on the blockade of Cuba, which is interesting. But yeah, this is a renewed kind of economic diplomacy between all these countries that have been targeted by U.S. imperialism over the years. So it is very promising. And just like economic relations and trade between these countries, I think is really a step in the right direction and China being maybe one of the arbiters. and just somewhat neutral because they have a very diplomatic foreign policy that's just really trying to have relations with any country possible.

But they're kind of in this position now where they're being cut off from the U.S. So it's almost like an involuntary kind of alliance that's building up just out of necessity with Syria, Iran, Russia, China, all of these Latin American countries, Cuba all coming together to, ultimately fight against neoliberalism and, you know, some of these shock therapy programs that are usually imposed by the IMF and World Bank and things like that. So, yeah, it's very exciting. Yeah, and the American hegemony that sort of holds global neoliberalism together is hopefully, and I believe, honestly, coming to an end. And yeah, you're right on that vote about the ending of the Cuba blockade. I mean, just every year, just this grotesque display of the United States and Israel versus the world. But in this last instance,

Brazil under Bolsonaro abstained, and interestingly, so did Ukraine. Yes, yes, exactly. Why would Ukraine abstain? Well, it's very obvious. They're not a puppet at all, yeah. Exactly. And that's the sad thing because, you know, when we talk like this, and I try to go out of my way to, like, I don't want to rob Ukrainians of any agency. And I do think that if you're invaded, no matter for what reason, you have a right to defend your family and your community.

But we just cannot deny that the entire Ukrainian government and this entire. scenario is the U.S. standing behind Ukraine, kind of shoving them towards Russia, not compromising, refusing to negotiate, and really creating a proxy war for the U.S. as benefit because the U.S. wants to grind down Russia. And instead of having to fight them themselves, they can completely dump arms and funds indefinitely into Ukraine, sacrifice countless Ukrainian lives, and continue the bloodshed, which is great for the military industrial complex and its profiteering. It's great for U.S. empire's geopolitical aims, at least it thinks it's great, which is to wear down Russia. But, I mean, all this stuff is happening at the same time when

people all over the world, even in these European and American societies, are less and less on board with this. Europe is going to be punished severely this summer or this winter because of its, you know, attempts to sanction and step back from economic engagement with Russia. And it's seeming increasingly, at least on the economic front, if not the military front, that Russia kind of thought several steps ahead and has been able to, to some extent, these are brutal sanctions, but to some extent continue to weather the storm and have at least enough internal political legitimacy and support to not have a real crisis domestically on their hand. So I don't think it's playing out the way that America hopes it was going to play out. and I feel like America really wants to drag this thing out in a way that really a lot of other countries and certainly the populations within those countries either are completely disinterested in or actively antagonistic toward and it's sort of this this sort of it's not even an irony if you're on the left you know this is how it works but it's the liberals and the Democrats that are the most bloodthirsty here that are the most you know hawkish on continuing the bloodshed drawing out the conflict continue to dump weapons and arms into Russia and even the squad, this little progressive cadre of ostensible lefties, wrote this most mild motherfucking letter ever imaginable.

Like, maybe we should talk to them sometime, guys, and was just humiliated and shut down and had to retract it by the Democratic Party itself. So, I mean, I grew up during after 9-11 in the Iraq War, and of course both parties were fully on board, but it was really the conservative right that was just like getting in everybody's face, escalating all the time saying if you're not with us you're against us everybody who doesn't support this war as a traitor

etc and now it's just like so interesting how the roles have flipped and it's the Democrats and the Democratic Party leadership that just wants more blood you know yeah and I think this is another outcome of the Russiagate conspiracy theory that had you know melted the brains of liberals

starting in 2016 people watching too much Rachel Maddow but yeah this is a you know a tangible effect of this you know, U.S. imperialist propaganda and people just being kind of foaming at the mouth and saying like we need in some cases like promoting

nuclear war which is horrifying you know having op-eds in the New York Times saying you know the U.S. can win a nuclear war so yeah I mean it is yeah it's terrifying but it's also kind of understandable given the kind of

status quo and just the push for war kind of on a bipartisan basis. Yeah And it's kind of funny because the two big, you know, enemies, the two villains in the American mind are Russia and China. And both political parties have picked up one of those as their main target. The Democrats are anti-Russia to the core. But as you said earlier, with regards to these MAGA communists, trying to convince MAGA folks to be pro-China, it's the GOP really caring. I mean, of course, both parties engage in both of this, but like they're emphasizing their hate of China and the Dems are emphasizing their hate of Russia.

But it's all one military industrial complex and it all serves one. an ultimate goal in the end, you know. Exactly, yep. It's wild. Yeah, so like kind of thinking about the possibility of the end of neoliberalism abroad, I've, you know, becoming more and more convinced that it really is sort of ending. A lot of the things that have happened over the last several decades and a lot of the mechanisms in place are falling away.

COVID showed the precarity and the fragility of these just in time global supply chains. And I think what we're going to see over the next several years, from, many countries, especially in light of climate change and increasing climate disasters, is a sort of a recoiling back, maybe not wholly into the nation state and isolationism, but to like regional supply chains instead of global supply change, the reshoring of manufacturing. So this Taiwan issue has promoted the reshoring of microchip factories here in the U.S. And so I think we're going to see more of that. with that and the shift away from oil, like America is really good at natural gas now and

exports energy. So it doesn't necessarily need to be constantly engaged in the Middle East any longer. And Saudi Arabia is sort of seeing that trajectory play out and is sort of backing away from or testing their, their allyship with the United States and embracing China more openly, which is an interesting move on their part and really shows that, I mean, if Saudi Arabia seeing these tectonic sort of shifts in the global order, it's at least one, you know, canary in the coal mine among many others. And so I just see a lot of that internationally with the rise of multipolarity happening. And then domestically, even on the right now, right, even on the new right or, you know, these instantiations of like younger politicians trying to

run in the GOP, it never cashes out in policy. But in rhetoric, there is the shift towards broader economic reform. You know, like they talk about it in terms of like real Americans and real American jobs and all this other sort of ideological mystifications. But there is a movement in both political parties, obviously opposed by the leadership in those parties, but bubbling up in both parties of we got to change, you know, end this neoliberal bullshit, end this inequality, we should be focused on investing in families. We should be focused on not several wars abroad, but putting money into our communities.

And of course, it's going to be articulated differently on the left and the right. But I think it goes hand in hand with this international shift. You also see this domestic shift. And you see it in more countries than just the United States as well. So I do think we are kind of living through the end of neoliberalism. I think we're living through a new realignment, though I'm not confident what that realignment will actually cash out and look like. A lot of people on the right want us to believe that the GOP is becoming the party of the working class, that the GOP is the real center of working class energy. And it's the Democrats who have been, you know, wholly captured by the capitalist ruling class and the elites.

And to some extent that's true, certainly on the Democratic side, they've completely abandoned the working class. But I don't, I'm not convinced that the Republican Party is going to, in policy, become the party of the working class. I think they're going to, just like under Trump, pay lip service and rhetoric toward those ideals, but in practice, answer just the same as the Democratic Party to their ruling class and capitalist owners and the donor base that supports both of these parties. So what is your take on this idea that the Republicans are becoming the new party of the working class? Yeah, it's definitely bullshit. Yeah, I mean, I try to emphasize in my book that, you know,

the Democrats and Republicans, I kind of say are symbiotic components of the, you know, dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. They're not really, I mean, in a very shallow sense, they're kind of competing for power, but there's so much overwhelmingly they have in common just enforcing, you know, the neoliberal capitalist model and austerity that goes along with that and just internationally, obviously, the bipartisan foreign policy consensus. But I think, you know, something about American politics is like just every time a new president gets elected, let's say it's from a different party than the last one, they're seen as like consistently abandoning their agenda to the point where like they're at a disadvantage for the midterms every cycle. So I mean, I don't know how many times this is going to have to happen for people to like realize that the politicians from both parties, they're just loyal.

lying about their agenda to get elected, but yeah, it's, I don't know, the tax cuts for the wealthy and all the things that Republicans do more. I just don't see, you know, people, I mean, I guess they could be duped again like they were under with the Trump election, but I just see more and more people becoming a little bit more radicalized, especially young folks. There's all these statistics of millennials and Generation Z kind of supporting socialism over. capitalism and you know i think that's just going to continue into the future yeah and and why wouldn't it i mean like i always say like millennials and gen z have had our face shoved in the shit of this failing political and economic model our entire lives exactly so why would you expect there to be

continued support and that's why i'm saying like from the perspective of the ruling class seeing young people moving hard to the left seeing the political right getting more extreme more conspiratorial more violent um of course capital's short-term interests are always going to prevail but it's just like, just from an objective point of view, a long-term strategy, if you want to stay atop this hierarchy and you want to re-fortify legitimacy in the United States, you would have to move aggressively in this economic reform direction. Whatever party does it, I think would be incredibly, you know, popular. I think average Americans would embrace that and support that. And it would re-legitimize for a whole new generation, at least, the American state for most people. Of course, people like us would have plenty of critiques and continue to be out there, but they can make us more fringe if they actually solidify the economic base of society and spread out the wealth and reinvest in communities and peoples. You could really tamp down the anger, the legitimate anger on both sides of the equation and sort of re-legitimize the nation state.

But, of course, in order to do that, you have to buck off the donor classes of one of the parties at least. not both, and you have to take on the capitalist who are short-term oriented, you know, quarter by quarter. We need to grow our profits. And huge changes in that are not going to be met well by the rulers of this society. So it remains to be seen how exactly this whole thing is going to play out. There is something, though, kind of shifting or touching back on Ukraine that I wanted to touch about or talk about really quick. And we talked about this before we started recording. but it is this Washington Post article that came out and I first read the headline and I was like, what? Oh, interesting.

And then I read the details and I was like, ah, you almost got me. But of course, people like you and I that are critical of this war, we're critical of it in the sense that we want to end the bloodshed. We don't want Russian working class people or Ukrainian working class people dying. We don't want European working class people shivering in this winter. We don't want American working class people to send billions and billions of our tax dollars. to fund and arm Nazis in Ukraine. So the working class of all these societies are hurting,

and I think from a class perspective, you should aim for the end of this war, which means negotiating a compromise. No side gets everything they want, but every side gets a little of what they want, and we come to an agreed peace. Now, this is called Putin propaganda and misinformation by the centrist liberal elite media,

but it's just a rational and logical, point of view if you want to end the bloodshed. So this Washington Post headline is U.S. privately asks Ukraine to show Russia that it's open to negotiate. Okay, well, this seems like a change in American policy who has absolutely refused any compromise, any negotiation efforts in favor of war. So this seems odd, right? So, of course, I'm going to read these details. And let me read this detail really quick for everybody out there. The Biden administration is privately encouraging Ukraine's leaders to signal an openness to negotiate with Russia and drop their public refusal to engage in peace talks unless President Putin is removed from power.

But, and this thing goes on to say, the request by American officials is not aimed at pushing Ukraine to the negotiating table. Rather, they called it a calculated attempt to ensure the government in Kiev maintains the support of other nations facing constituencies wary of fueling a war for many years to come. So this entire headline about the U.S. is nudging Ukraine to say, hey, we're open to negotiate. And then you read down a little bit. And it's like, oh, not to actually go to the negotiating table, but simply to do a PR move to convince constituencies in other countries, Europe and America, who are bristling under this continued war and the sacrifices they have to pay for it. It's a PR scam, basically. Don't actually negotiate. Just give the appearance of being willing

to negotiate so that we can go back to our people and say, we've got to send them $10 billion more dollars. I mean, look at Ukraine is trying to negotiate and the Russians won't let them, right? So, absolutely grotesque. Yeah, any thoughts? Well, yeah, because I don't remember all the details on this, but there was

a time sometime after the invasion, February 24th where Zolensky did want to negotiate with Russia and the U.S. basically killed that negotiation process. So, I mean, from the beginning, even since 2014, I don't think there's any indication that the U.S. was ever interested in keeping Ukraine neutral, which is kind of what a lot of Ukrainians wanted, especially, I don't know, like, it is kind of divided between East and West, but having a neutral, like, you know, Victor Yanukovych, the president that was overthrown in 2014, you know, he was seen as someone who was negotiating between East and West.

West between kind of Russia and Europe. And that's definitely not something the U.S. or NATO wants. So they want to capture Ukraine as another NATO state to further U.S. hegemony. But yeah, it's getting out of control at this point with the U.S. just finally acknowledging just how unpopular the war is, but still not doing anything different. And yeah, just the people.

stuff as usual nothing will fundamentally change as Biden said so exactly I feel like the U.S. end goal here is just to destroy Russia they want to see Russia disintegrate balkanize dissolve yeah yeah and and the meantime if it takes years and years of conflict well that's not a problem either because that's just going to be more profits for the military industrial complex to make more weapons to funnel more to sell more weapons abroad to Ukrainians and so like you know the short term is like nothing to lose and long term. It's like, yeah, we just want to see Russia destroyed, period. And there's no sense in which that's not true. And a lot of these liberals that would hear something like that is

like, no, certainly America doesn't want the end of Russia. We're not trying to destroy Russia. We're just trying to say, you know, you can't act like this on the international stage. There's consequences for belligerent behavior. But I think that is woefully naive. And the idea, even in this article, that the U.S. wants to drag this conflict out for, quote, unquote, years to come is very telling. They're interested in peace. They're not interested in ending the bloodshed. They're not interested in stabilizing the region. They are interested in destabilizing the region, fucking up Russia as much as they possibly can. If that results in a total collapse, that's great. That's ideal. If it results just in a slog of several years where Russia is occupied in Ukraine, that's good too. And so it's truly sick.

And I think more and more countries around the world are catching on to this bullshit. And I don't know how long America is going to be able to keep Europe in this game when you start seeing bread riots in fucking Paris and Berlin, you know. Yeah. And another thing is that in terms of U.S. sanctions, like, there are obviously the on-the-ground consequences are very apparent in terms of cutting off food and medicine for mentoring the country and having devastating effects on civilian life. But there's also, like, I recently saw there's, like, declassified documents from the 60s with U.S. officials, like, openly talking about the blockade on Cuba and just saying, like, yeah, the point is to, like, starve people to, like, destroy the infrastructure and to ultimately overthrow the government.

So that's, I think that's pretty clear that that's the goal of the U.S., you know, in Russia and anywhere else where they're meddling and sanctioning, especially Iran right now, too. Yeah, exactly right. And, you know, that's, that is just using human beings as fodder. That is the, you know, that is evil to the core. It is using human beings as a means to your geopolitical and economic ends. And there's no way you could justify that in any context. Although liberals will never stop trying, apparently. Yeah.

Well, let me ask you this as we get kind of close to the, to the end of this discussion. Do you have any plans to, because you are a good writer, and I do enjoy reading your work. Do you have any more plans of writing more books or starting a substack or anything like that? yeah um i have a tentative plan to write a book uh about debunking anti-communist myths so uh yeah this is kind of like because you know becoming a marxist i kind of one of the main kind of mind-blowing aspects was like learning uh about all of the fabrications that have been used against socialists and communist movements um you know there's like john stockwell former CIA agent kind of revealing all the

literally fake news stories that the CIA would write and circulate around the world about you know atrocities in Cuban things like that so I kind of and there's all these good resources online of like oh here's you know the Tiananmen Square massacre and all these different different examples of anti-communist propaganda and I kind of wanted to sort of like synthesize

all of those into one concise source but yeah that's one of my ideas I might write a novel. I don't know. I just have kind of a lot of ideas floating around. So, yeah, we'll see what happens. Yeah, definitely keep writing. And if, you know, if you go in that direction of, like, debunking anti-communist

miss, I think that's very useful. Some of our best, most downloaded and most revered episodes are like this, you know, defending socialism, debunking anti-communist episodes where we take on, like, the Black Book of Communism or whatever. And people really relate to that because we are, we're forced-fed it since birth, you know. yeah i love the Stalin episode by the way oh thank you thank you still our most controversial and most download i think we have a hundred thousand downloads on just that episode oh my god which is by far i've shared that i've

shared that yeah i've shared it with so many people so well yeah if you do ever write about debunking communist myths and if you do anything that like takes essays instead of a full coherent book you know kind of like you did here i would love to maybe write an essay or something and be a part of that definitely help you promote it okay yeah Excellent. That sounds good. And I always say for any baby lefties out there that might be listening, the book that I read many, many years ago that finally allowed me to call myself a Marxist because I too had to overcome my liberalism and my anti-communism was a book by Terry Eagleton called Why Marx Was Right. And he does a, it's a very accessible, I mean, he's a great writer,

a very accessible, engaging book that really debunks a lot of these base, fundamental anti-communist, anti-Marxist lies. And it was, it was, I literally felt myself as I flipped that last page over and set the book down, I like internally like registered. I am a Marxist and there's nothing wrong with that. I am a communist and there's nothing wrong with that. And that was just, you know, that was the book that I picked at that time that hit me just right. It might not resonate for everybody. But especially if you're kind of on the left, you might call yourself a socialist, but might be hesitant to call yourself a communist or or a Marxist. Why Marx was right by Terry Eagleton is a good one. Is there any books that you read that were crucial

to your political development? Yeah, I think the number one book was Black Shirts and Reds by Michael Parenti. Nice, classic. Yeah, and then I was reading a few books kind of, because, you know, there's all the anti-communist stereotypes about the USSR. So I read Walter Rodney's book on the Russian Revolution. I thought that was really good. There's also Red Star Over the Third World by Vijay Prashad. Oh, yeah. It talks about kind of the influence. of the Bolshevik revolution there is this random book

it seems really obscure it's called What is Marxism all about and I think that one helped me a lot I found a PDF of that book and then just you know there's like State and Revolution by Lenin

obviously a classic I was browsing around a lot on Marxist.org and just reading shorter pieces by Marx angles, Mao even Stalin so it's just a lot of stuff

and just like talking to people learning things from comrades and things like that. But it was a very gradual process over the course of, you know, I mean, at least four years, probably. So, yeah. Yeah, similar as well. I mean, these things do take time and there's so much to learn and explore and so much liberalism to examine and uproot that it is, it's a time thing. And it's one of those reasons that I am particularly, I just scoff at these reactionaries who are committed anti-Marxism. and anti-communist, but don't know shit about it.

You know, like, Jordan Peterson's the obvious example where he's going to debate Jijek, and to learn about Marxism, he just flitted through the communist. Yeah, on the way there. Yeah, in the back of the car and got his ass kicked. Yeah, exactly. It's ridiculous. And, like, quoting the Black Book of Communism and stuff like that.

Like literally fascist lies, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's fascinating. The bar for anti-communism is so fucking low. It's below the ground. Yeah, exactly. It's fun debunking it, and it's kind of empowering learning about the true history of socialism and stuff. It's super empowering.

And the thing I always think when I do this debunking is it's good in its own right, but it's like, you know, we are, if you're a communist, if you're a Marxist, if you're a socialist, you are a part of this truly beautiful, if imperfect, if messy, you know, tradition. And we've been completely robbed of that. We've been told it was just this horrific nightmare after nightmare after nightmare. And once you start getting into it, once you start debunking that shit, you start to clear the way to be able to really look at that tradition in all of its dimensions. We're not romanticizing it. There's plenty of aspects that are wrong, as is true for any political formation or tradition. But that is really this truly beautiful tradition full of amazing, courageous freedom fighters that goes back centuries. and once you can kind of clear the way of debunking some of these main anti-communist talking points

and orient yourself to that tradition, it's beautiful. And especially if you're on the left, I mean, in an American society, we're so atomized. There's almost no cultural tradition that we can embrace except the American patriotism one, the little fairy tale version of American history that conservatives want to teach our kids and that we were often taught in high school. If you don't like that, if you are opposed to that, as I am, there can be a sense in which you're kind of driftless like you're like okay i've completely unmoored from this romantic fantasy about american society i have no patriotism or love of the

nation state or the red white and blue in me whatsoever it kind of sucks i wish there was a tradition i could have i wish there was something i could fight for and of course the socialist marxist even anarchist you know the broadly conceived communist tradition is full of of treasures and jewels that you can embrace and I really like seeing other people go through that process you know yeah definitely and even within the u.s there's you know the black panther party and there's the militant labor movement of the 1920s and 30s so there there are you know movements that we can relate to just within the u.s. as well as internationally exactly the people that fought against the u.s. empire specifically indigenous and black people have a storied and beautiful tradition

you know on this continent of fighting back and that's what i identify with that's what I support. That's the tradition that I glorify, you know. And there's a lot of beauty in that. Yeah. All right. Well, my friend, I loved the book. It's called Millennial Marxist. It's a really great account of crucial years in American history. Like, we're just living on the other side of it. But I think as time goes on and things settle down or work themselves out or shift and change, we'll look back in 10, 20, 30, 50 years and we'll see this period of time that we're living through right now as really crucial. One way or the other, whether we're in an eco-dispopia in 50 years or this radical movement has happened globally and we're in a whole new era of

socialism or anything in between. We're going to look back and see this period of time as particularly crucial. And your book, Millennial Marxist, covers that in a really unique and interesting and creative way. So appreciate the book. Is there anything else that you would like to plug or anything else you want to point to before we wrap up? I guess I could just say kind of like where to find me on social media. And I have a link tree in my bio for both of my social media pages that goes to like different ways to buy the book. It's published through Lulu, so that would be my preferred method.

But so like Instagram, it's Matthew the Marxist, all one word. And then Twitter is Matthew John 666, M-A-T-T-H-E-W-J-O-H-N-6. 66. And like I said, I have a link tree in the bio of both those pages that goes to pretty much all the ways to buy my book, including a PDF digital download. So, yeah, please feel for you to buy the book. Absolutely. Yeah, I will link to all of that in the show notes so people can find it as quickly and as easily as they can. And again, I really appreciate talking with you. I appreciated coming on your show a while back. Are you going to revitalize this American left? You're going to keep keep it going right it's not it's not fizzling out is it no i think we're going to keep going

we've gotten a lot of requests to continue recording episodes and i'm i'm now living in minneapolis uh with my sister hannah not not in the same house but like in the same city um so we're connecting a lot and we have plans to record more episodes so yeah definitely and yeah i appreciate you coming on that was about a year and a half ago or something yeah i might link to that in the show notes as well so people can check that out if they had if they didn't hear my appearance on on this american left but i just I just wanted to say Minneapolis is only about a five, six-hour drive here from Omaha. And I have a good friend who very well may be moving to Minneapolis in the next year or so.

So I'm probably going to find myself up there in the next year or a year and a half. And if so, I'm definitely going to hit you up and we can have a beer or something. Yeah, that sounds great. All right, my friend. Thank you so much for coming on. We'll talk again soon. All right. Thanks a lot, Brett.

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