Rev Left Radio - Morning Riot: Left Media, Labor Unions, and Political Parties

Episode Date: October 28, 2021

On this inaugural episode of Morning Riot, Mel sits down with Breht O’Shea from Revolutionary Left Radio to talk about Rev Left Radio and its origins, Mel and Breht's doxing experiences, the reconciliation bill and why the Democrats are absolute dog shit, anarchism and marxism, the pace of technological advancement and its impact on institutions, the dialectics of struggle, the relationship between labor unions and the revolutionary left, how to relate to regular people and not be a hyper-siloed online weirdo, the importance of personal ethics, humanizing the radical left, and much, much more!  Subscribe to Morning Riot: https://morningriot.libsyn.com/ Support Morning Riot Podcast on Twitter and Patreon. Intro/Outro: Karl Casey @White Bat Audio

My name is Brett O'Shea, the host of Rev. Left Radio and co-host of guerrilla history and Red Menace. Happy to be here. I actually wanted to talk to you about guerrilla history. How did that start? Yeah, no, it came out of nowhere. It was one of those opportunities that you don't expect and just opens up and then you participate and you're very happy you did. I was just out of nowhere reached out to by Henry, and my co-host, Henry Hakamaki and Adnan Hussein had worked together on the day. David Feldman show, sort of progressive, long-form podcast or like seven-hour episodes and

stuff. And they do some hosting and they guess and they met each other through that. And then I guess they were both fans of Rev Left and they thought it'd be really cool to have that voice, the sort of like less polished, less academic, you know, that working class voice that I guess Rev Left is known for. So they reached out and said, you know, you'd be a good addition. Adnan is the director of like religious studies at Queen University and is a practicing Sufi Muslim and has all that expertise and then Henry's an immunobiologist I think in grad school and he lives

in Russia and has some unique experiences and I come out of a philosophy background. It's like you know us three together be kind of interesting and so yeah and then they they have the academic in road in a lot of ways that I don't so they'll have like a lot of familiarity with like a book coming out and how to reach out to them in a network that I'm not always tapped into. So we get some guests that we otherwise wouldn't have got. And like Henry, for example, recently got the founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines. And to be able to talk to him and learn about the communist struggle in the Philippines firsthand from the creator of the organization. You know, it's just absolutely fascinating.

So, yeah, it sort of happened as a beautiful opportunity that I said, let's do it. And it's turned out great. And, you know, with all three of the shows, it's kind of cool. I get to do something a little different. With Rev. Left, it's like whatever the fuck Brett wants to talk about, which gives me the full freedom to do anything. Red Menace is very like, we'll read a text of left political theory and we'll teach it and we'll elaborate on it and have a discussion about it. So it's more philosophy-oriented. And then Gorilla History allows me, you know, to really dive into history itself and to focus on that.

So I kind of think all three benefit each other and play off each other. Nice. Yeah. You've been podcasting for a long time. Yeah, I know. How long has it been, what, five, five years? Coming up on five. Holy moly.

I remember when you got all stoked about, we're going to pull out some old history here. Maybe some context for listeners. Brett and I have been friends for, what, five years now? Longer, maybe. Right around there, though. Yeah, we met right after Trump got elected. Right? In fact, our first activist activity together was,

sneaking into, what was it, the turning point, USA, yeah. And to monitor them to see how far right they were. So we were like basically strangers at that point. Oh, yeah. But we went on a mission together. Yeah, we went on a mission together. We showed up in Camel Hats and shit and sat through this Turning Point USA meeting where these college Republicans were talking about the affirmative action bake sale or some shit.

Yeah. And Fidel Castro had just died and they opened it up with like whatever, that song, like, bye, bye. I forget the exact song, but it was like, they're all, like, dancing on the grave of Fidel Castro. I was, like, biting my team. That was an interesting time. That was an interesting time for politics, too. Turns out they were just young Republican dorks and not, like, neo-Nazi fascists. Yeah. Fast forward a couple of years.

Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, Brett and I met, and we organized together with the Nebraska Left Coalition for a number of years, what, two. And then you started your podcast, and I can remember. We were sitting on the patio of caffeine dreams, I think, and you were talking about the podcast idea for Revolutionary Left Radio, and then fucking got started. And now you're like pretty much just like your recognizable name and sort of like someone that the American left really turns to for political education

and, you know, helping people get interested in leftist ideology more broadly, you know. what here's a question who is the most if you can if you can answer this who is the most impactful guests that you've had oh shit or maybe top five if that helps yeah that's really because we're hundreds of episodes in and sometimes it's quite a blur and I have to go back and think about all the guests that I've had I don't know about the single most impactful I know some episodes tend to stand out to me looking back that I'm particularly proud of one that does that always jumps to mind is the episode we did on Vietnam and the clips we used in that episode were particularly heartbreaking and I remember reading about it prepping for it doing it releasing it

adding the clips in watching the documentaries and just being brought to tears like constantly from that and I learned a lot in that entire process about the Vietnam War and being able to tell the anti-imperialist story that doesn't emphasize the anti-war left in the U.S., like so many ostensibly left versions of the Vietnam War does, but really emphasizes the Vietnamese perspective was huge to me. I would really have to go back and go through them. I could probably conduct a list of ones that really impacted me, but what I try to do is take some core lessons from every single episode that I can then go forward and I think one of my

great skills is not necessarily being a creator of leftist theory or anything like but a synthesizer and a connector so I can make these connections across topics and every episode that I do gives me new touchstones and new data points to make those connections and to show how all these things are intimately connected historically philosophically socially politically etc Um, so yeah, it would be hard for me to say the most impactful and even trying to separate one guest out from the others is a very difficult, uh, process as you know. So I have to give that more thought, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

What's the weirdest part about podcasting full time? Shit, man. I mean, the whole just being able to do it full time, like is absolutely mind-boggling to me and I am racked with anxiety every day that it's going to go away because my entire life since I was 15 come from a lower working class. family. And if I wanted anything, I had to start working. So I started working at 14, doing manual labor on a golf course and worked at Pizza Hut and worked at Long John Silver's, you know, worked shitty retail jobs. I worked at a gas station for a long time. And it really fucking sucked. Like, you know, the first 15 years of my working life is these shitty jobs barely getting by.

I had a daughter when I was 19, so I have that extra responsibility. And just, you know, not like I used to deliver pizzas for example and my car would break down because I didn't have the gas and I'm always playing this game of like I go to my job as a pizza delivery guy I have to use gas to get the tips that I'm hoping will be enough to put gas in the thing so I had to call my buddies to come like pour gas

in my shit like pizza on my passenger side so just being able to escape that is I'm incredibly grateful for I took out a $10,000 loan actually to quit my retail job because I couldn't at the level our Patreon was at it was unfeasible for me to do it but i was like i'm really going to put everything i have into this so i took out a 10k loan and i was like this gives me five months of breathing room to turn this fucking thing into something um and i just went as hard as i could and it worked out and i just

recently after four years has been able to finish that debt so i'm paid off with that debt and it got me and my family through covid my wife went through a pregnancy that she lost and is pregnant again so we've been pregnant for a fucking year um and to have her not be how to have her not be how to go out and work. You know, she's worked at Walmart. She's a bartender, a waitress. That was her jobs before that, has been amazing. But then every single day, it's like, when is this going to end?

This is, I feel guilty because other working class people in my exact position that feel the exact same, you know, existentially devastating feelings, don't have that escape, don't even have the opportunity to escape that. So there's guilt. And then there's anxiety that it's all going to go away and I'm going to be tossed back down into these shitty fucking jobs that I fucking hate. They really, you know, with, I am predisposed to depression and shit, but like that stuff really crushed me.

And so, so it's, you know, when you get the thing that you've always wanted and could not imagine, this is rewarding. I'm my own boss. Like, holy shit. It's very Buddhist in that. Like, you also get revealed all the anxiety and the guilt and the negative side that comes with it. So, you know, nothing in life is wholly good.

Do you have a plan B at all? No, I know. No. No. This is the only skill I have is to be able to talk pretty words. Oh, but that's a good skill to have. It is. It is. And I'm blessed that I've been able to turn it into something that can support my family. But plan B, like I don't know. I think all my buddies are in unions, so you can go through that process. Your apprentice for a while, not earning great money, the first one cut from a job site. So those first few years of being in a union are really rough, but if you can get past them, it pays off. So I would maybe go in that direction or like truck drivers because there's this huge labor squeeze.

Wages are going up for truck drivers, supply chain issues, et cetera. So that could be something that I could at least make a living and support my family with. But yeah, I just, you know, I would like to be able to do this. So, yeah. I mean, me too. I like podcasting. And it's interesting because it allows us to tell our own stories. It gives voices to people who would otherwise never have voice.

The far right gets dark money propping it up. So even things on the right that seem ostensibly grassroots are always either astroturfed or have dark money funding it because capital has an interest in that entire political program. Corporate liberal media, clearly, you have an ability to get big money and advertisers and everything like that. But working class, raw, communist, we have to depend on ourselves. We're always going to be underground and independent by definition in a capitalist society. and so just seeing the amount of regular working people that are willing to toss out a few dollars to keep this program going gives me a sense of real responsibility that I have to use this platform responsibly and I have to be continually learning so that I can be good at what I do and not good in the sense like I'm just happy with the job that I'm doing but like to make a meaningful impact on people and to be able to convince people of our point of view and young people

coming up like now I'm in my 30s and looking at people that reach out to me in high school or in college and saying you know you're a fundamental shaper of my political worldview you know that is humbling a lot of pressure pressure the responsibility that comes with it I try to take that very seriously so yeah it's a whirlwind I mean it is a lot of pressure I mean um you know I don't have nearly as much podcasting experience as you I actually got my start in podcasting by coming on your show and meeting Pearson and getting into coffee with comrades, which was a really fun show for a time, you know. And there's this weird, you have a public face, you know, you're off social media pretty much entirely. So that's kind of a difference between us is I

still have a Twitter account that I started because I went on your show and wanted people to be able to reach out to me. And there's just really interesting thing that's been happening over the last year because I gained shitload of followers while I was reporting on protests in Minneapolis and Omaha and people recognize you when you're like out of the bar and stuff and say hey follow your Twitter I love your

shit you know and it's just like it's like oh cool great wow okay so now I actually have to just like be someone that can be relied upon you know in whatever capacity it's a lot of pressure you don't you don't yeah you don't really get the

the benefit of being able to fuck up in private you know so you really have to like think about what you're talking about when you when you do these types of shows and stuff and um I don't know I don't think I would change how I've done my work you know what I mean I do I like working in media and um I like working in in academia and I like being sort of like a public intellectual in a lot of different ways um but it is very strange the sort of parasocial relationships that people start to build with you on social media and they have these certain expectations about who you are and how you act. And sometimes it can be kind of awkward to interact with them. You know what I mean?

It's very strange sort of relationship that you have with your listenership sometimes. And to be on both sides of that parasycial relationship because, you know, there are plenty voices out there on the left and just more broadly intellectual voices that have been crucial for me that I still listen to, that help me think through complicated issues. And so I am in the position of listening to another person who doesn't know me, but I've listened to hundreds of hours of them talking. And, you know, disagree with some things, agree with others, get something out of it, obviously, because I continue to listen. And that's really what the parissocial relationship is, is like, you know, you listen to them for many hours. They don't listen to you for many hours,

and that can create some weird discontinuities in that, in that relationship. But being on both sides of it, where I have listeners, but also I am a listener. You know, it's kind of, you're in this weird disposition. Yeah, it's interesting how you interact with those people. Most recently, I started a, like, Twitter DM sort of acquaintanceship with Peter Gelderloose. Who just randomly decided to,

he's an anarchist scholar who wrote, oh, nonviolence will not save you, I think is what it's called. Wow. Ah, wow. It's been a while since I... Blankin. Blankin hard. But I quoted a lot of his work in an article that I wrote for Protein magazine

that keeps coming back around about extinction Rebellion. And one day I just sent him a DM because it's like I've read all your stuff. You're on Twitter. I have a question. So, you know, I sent him a DM and I was fully expecting him to be a certain way. You know, this very upstanding, you know, stiff kind of guy who's writing, very principled anarchist writing. Niceest dude I've ever talked to, you know, super chill guy.

Couch surfing in Spain, I think, you know. Like he funds all of his work by essentially just. like hopping around in these various squats in Spain and writing these really interesting philosophical sort of essays about various aspects of anarchism. And he's super nice, you know? And I think it's really interesting that you sort of build up this perception of who these people are. And then when you actually get to talking to him, you realize that like whatever absurdity

you've sort of built around them due to their celebrity or they just, you know, they talk about a lot of things that you jive with. You know what I mean? Um, and then they're just human beings. Yeah. You know, and fallible human beings at that, you know. And I think there's a difference there with writing and podcasting. I think podcasting, I've said this many times is like the most intimate, um, sort of media form, even more intimate than seeing somebody. Like a YouTube channel, you'd think that's intimate. And in fact, why wouldn't it on its surface be more intimate than podcasting? Because you actually get to see them. And, but that's precisely what makes it less intimate is like the person on screen, whether it's an actor in a movie or just a

YouTube content creator, is out there. You know, you're looking across the room at the TV and seeing them with podcasting. It's in your ear. And I even made this point recently with my interview with a YouTuber, Hakeem, that's even more intimate than listening to the radio. Because in your car driving the radio, the voice is disembodied, but it's still like at arm's reach, you can turn the volume up and down and it's like the whole car. But when you put earbuds in and you listen to a human being talk, it almost takes on the form of your inner dialogue. You know what I'm saying? And that creates an insane level of intimacy that I feel as a podcast fan,

that I've listened to a podcast since they became a thing. Well before I was a podcaster, I was deeply a podcast fan. Right. And working my shitty jobs, podcasts got me through it. And so I was able to be like, this works for me. There's some spots here on the left that are not filled that I feel like I can meaningfully maybe fill. So I'm going to give it a shot. And so it's been interesting.

But even with writing, it might be, it's different because, you know, when you write something, you sit back, you consider every sentence, you have a certain voice that comes across when you write. But to be able to talk to somebody who's written that, it's very different, you know. But podcasting is like you get to be truly yourself and people get to kind of feel like they know you because in some sense they do. Right. And you know me. I am who I am on the show that I am off. There's like zero space between that.

And that level of me just being 100% myself, I don't have a choice. I can't be anybody else. And I'm not the sort of person that would pretend to be. Right. It is interesting because the people that have a relationship to me that have listened to hundreds of hours, they do know me in some fundamental sense. In fact, if you listen to like hours and hours and hours of Rev. I've left, like you know me more intimately, like my inside than like people in my family.

Yeah. And like friends I've had since I was in grade school. Right. So that's certainly there. And I want to reciprocate. Like, I wish I could, you know, I guarantee people listen that if I got a chance to meet them one-on-one in person, they would be my fucking friends and we would hang out and go get drinks together and shit.

Right. But I don't always obviously get to do that for space and time and all those other reasons. But, yeah, it's surreal to be in that, in that position for sure. Yeah. I think maybe, like, we know we're fucked if we suddenly start trying to affect something that isn't anything other than who we are. Exactly. You know.

And anybody that does do that, any discernible person sees right through it. Right. Well, and there's still some sort of pressure to kind of like act to that sometimes, you know. And maybe it's just like the last 18 months or so. But like a lot of my social interaction has been online and it's kind of like push me to this point where I'm like reevaluating my relationship with social media and the internet because it's becoming, it's not necessarily something that's. wholly unhealthy but it takes up a lot of my time you know um and it makes it less fun you know

waking up every day flipping on twitter scrolling through whatever doom news is coming coming across twitter getting outraged before you've even had my cup of coffee and you know i've ruined my entire day you know what i mean yeah and like um i when i was working over the summer i was working at noise here in omaha i you know made a bid for trying to be a full-time journalist didn't work out as well as I wanted it to yeah yeah I didn't really work out as well as I wanted it to but it was a very illuminating and good experience to work with these these reporters but I ran into some situations where I had to get a Facebook that I regularly updated with you know I'd be as part of the noise news ecosystem on Facebook and they asked me to make a completely new Twitter account for like my professional work And I found myself having to stifle my own personal politics in public in order for me to do the job. Because even though Noise is a nonprofit independent news service, they strike out near the political middle, you know. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

They're trying to represent what is a very diverse readership within, you know, and also address a news desert in North Omaha. and there's very specific reasons why they make their coverage that way. But it was difficult for me because, you know, me, I have and always will be outspoken about my politics, even as they sort of shift in change as the years passed, you know. And it was very strange to me to have to separate those two sides of myself, you know, obscure one for the sake of professionalism, quote, professionalism. and sort of temper back the other, the more personal side, right, and make it clear that these are my personal opinion. You know what I mean? It was very strange over the summer to have to do that. Now I just kind of obscure, like, where I work.

I don't really talk about, you know, where I'm teaching or any of that. The listeners could probably glean where, you know, simply just so that I can keep my own political perspective from getting trampled on. and, you know, threatening my livelihood because that's the reality in this country when you're a leftist. Sometimes you speak a little too loudly, you know, and you end up getting, you know, unjustly murked for it. Or just targeted.

Yeah. Because of the platform, I've been doxed three times. Our old show, The guillotine was brought up on InfoWars and hearing Alex Jones rail against you is fucking surreal. I've had FBI agents show up at my house. So, yeah, with being, I know you have. I know you've been doxed by the right. Yeah.

So having any sort of voice and putting yourself out there somebody on the far left in this country, it's always been true that you're going to put a fucking target on your back. And with kids and shit, it's been particularly difficult for me. Yeah, it's surreal to have to, like, warn your family members that someone may be throwing shit at their door, you know. Especially after the events of last year, you know, and the recent news that came out of Minneapolis, that cops were hunting protesters and journalists and stuff.

You know, when I was in Minneapolis, getting stalked by vigilantes in the neighborhoods of Minneapolis. I followed that scenario. That was terrifying. And having to sneak out of the city because they blocked off the bridges to St. Paul, we were going to get arrested if we rolled through and couldn't go back to our home. hotel room and you know coming back to omaha and all of the protests and all of the shit that happened and the fucking lawsuit with the city and everything the bridge incident the bridge incident which is still fresh in everyone's mind uh images from that night are insane oh my god yeah it was

nuts it was that was an experience um you know i saw some of the folks that that were arrested that night a couple of months later no a couple of months ago yeah it was down down under bar and there were a shitload of the mayor i don't I don't know, it's a karaoke or a show or something. It's a spot for the local left. They recognize me, and we had a conversation, and of course, we're all drunk. So this is the first time that we had had, like, a chance to talk to each other after that incident happened. And it's, like, fundamentally changed quite a few people, you know, just the experience of that 48 hours of having a protest, getting cettled on a bridge, getting brutalized on that bridge.

Like, let me tell you, the amount of police on that bridge was absolutely. insane. There were probably 50 or 60 people in SWAT gear with guns on their giant fucking guns walking around, you know, talking shit to the protesters and, you know, some people are coughing because there's just like capsaicin everywhere from the pepper balls and, you know. Not being allowed bathroom breaks. No, when you're locked up for hours. No water, nothing, you know. And then seeing them on the back end, you know, me and Gizari Kuala was another media person who was detained and let go we were outside the jail that next day and these folks are coming out shell-shocked dude it's traumatizing fucking wild shit you know um and like to top that all off

you get doxed by fucking Nazis and that's because when you get arrest by the state then they look at that happened to me too you get arrested your name's on the news uh with this protest so then you are you know you're easy target because your real name your real face is up on the news um and then yeah you get targeted by the far right so you get your ass kicked by the state and the far right picks up the crumbs it comes after you yeah i got i got um some of my reporting on jake gardner got picked up by far right pundance and shit and um yeah it's not fun to have to like call your mom and be like hey by the way if someone random knocks on your door don't open the door you know we're going to try and scrub the internet of your address you know what i mean

i ended up having to move early i cut my lease early and moved to a different part of the city because people were yelling at me on my fucking patio and shit really yeah like what's Passer-byes or? People who knew me by name. Don't know if they got my information off the internet, but this was after I got doxed and before the doork from the FBI, you know. Just like, fucking wild experience. I was like, you know what?

Just going to cleanse my hands of this place and move on. You know what I mean? It's just wild, you know. It's not new. It's not a new phenomenon in the United States for this kind of harassment to happen. It's literally always been the case. Mm-hmm. And it just feels especially dangerous given the events in this country in the last two years, you know.

And the ability for the internet to just have a bunch of people go after you. It's not local anymore. Like it used to be like, you know, if I was a fucking fascist in the 60s and I hated what was happening, you know, I could maybe like do a hate crime against somebody in my town. But I couldn't meaningfully do anything about the guy like Malcolm X in Harlem talking shit. But now with the internet, doxing, you know, posting your address online, knowing where your kids go to school, where your wife works, like you, the harassment can be done remotely in a new way. And so that broadens the sphere of people who can go after you. And after one of my docks is like, my mom would get creepy letters from fucking psycho Nazis talking about we're going to come visit you. And, you know, you're directly to blame for your son turning out like this.

Like, we're going to punish you because you created him. And my mom's not fucking political. Well, she couldn't even tell you the difference between a Democrat and a Republican. And she's like, what in the, like, you know, scared, calls me crying and shit, man. Like, oh, it's absolutely brutal, but you're right. Just another instantiation in a long line. And for, like, black and indigenous people who took that, who still to this day, and historically I've done that, it's not just harassment. It's, you know, bullets and heads, Malcolm X, MLK, getting set up by the state, you know, Leonard Peltier, et cetera.

The uglyhoods in an intergenerational trauma. And Malcolm X got his house bombed with his babies inside. They threw a bomb in the room where his little kids were sleeping. Holy shit, you know. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So. Fucking insane. It really is a right-wing fucking white supremacist country.

And then it doesn't really like the left, doesn't? No. No, it doesn't. Well, speaking of, I mean, we're probably going to see a GOP presidency in 2024, you know. Yeah. The Biden administration has not really been doing so hot either. Yeah. How's that bipartisanship working out for you, Biden?

I mean, I think you've probably been following it a little bit closer than I have. You know, I get snippets on Twitter and shit. But the last I heard was the infrastructure bill is totally stalled out and has been gutted. And we've got certain political players who are stalling the whole process. And, you know, what have you been seeing? because I personally have not been able to take a look at it as deeply. Yeah, lots of thoughts. You know, I always put it this way as like when the Democrats are out of power,

they say we can't do shit because the Republicans have all the power. Okay, vote for us. Okay, we do, you know, or the Americans do. And then you have a Democratic president, a Democratic House, and a Democratic Senate. And then what happens? The conservatives inside the party serve the role that the external Republican Party does in times of being out of power. So you literally just be able to, and it's a rotating cast, so every time that there's this context in which the Democrats have a real chance to push through something transformative and actually live up to what they say that they want to do with this country, there's always somebody, and it's always somebody new, a couple people often, that rise up within the party and then prevent it.

So in this case, this go around, it's fundamentally or primarily Kirsten Cinema and Joe Manchin. and it's Kirsten Cinema is an interesting thing because she comes from grassroots progressive organizing and then gets in the sister she is like the perfect cautionary tale of what happens

when you get that power right because she is to the left of the Democratic Party criticizing liberals talking about all these things that need to happen for regular working people gets into power

and becomes one of the furthest right in the Democratic Party getting millions of dollars from all these corporations that she does the bidding of now like you literally have a context in which, you know, she's opposing the government being able to negotiate drug prices and she's getting paid $500,000 from the pharmaceutical company or in Joe Manchin's

case. Literally, he used to own and then he had a handover to his son, a business in the fossil fuel industry, which every year gives Joe Manchin himself $500,000 from this coal basically fucking company. And he's the one standing in the way of the climate aspects. of this reconciliation, $3.5 trillion dollar reconciliation bill. And so these climate things are going to be gutted simply because one West Virginia millionaire who has a vested interest in maintaining

the dirtiest form of the fossil fuel industry doesn't want to do. And this is all legal. Like what he does with his company and the fact that he profits all is all above board based on the ethics committee of the Senate and stuff and he'll be the first to tell you that I'm doing nothing wrong and he's technically not.

But these people who, It's like pure corruption and it's front and center. And so with this reconciliation bill, the first time in our entire lives, where there could be something that actually helps regular people, you know. And we're all skeptical of the electoral system. I know that. But this reconciliation bill in its fullest, most robust form would provide, you know, free, universal two-year college, child care, huge, most America's ever done on climate.

And it's all being gutted and it might not even get through in the end. And so then what do you have to say? Well, we're the Democratic Party. Our brand already sucks ass. Like, everybody fucking hates us already. Biden's going to be the next FDR, all these promises, we really need a change. And you get in, and then you can't do anything, not because of the external Republican Party, because of your own party itself. And that's because of the way that these parties are funded, the donor class, and how the Democratic Party itself functions.

So, you know, it's just like how many times do we have to live through the same exact thing? before enough people say fuck this. I think there is a grassroots need all across the political spectrum. There's a desire for another fucking party,

something else. You know, people would be happy with a European-style parliamentary system where at least there's multiple parties and you have to form coalitions

and give some representation to anybody not in this tiny sphere of either reactionary right capital or like smiley-face capital. Right. It's both sides of the same coin. It really truly.

truly is and it happens every time it happened with Obama it's happening again and then what happens well you're unable to do anything and then the whole country takes a hard turn to the right somebody like Trump comes along and says I'll just blow this whole fucking thing up I'll put my middle finger in the face of all these assholes and what does he actually do serves capital this bay his biggest policies were huge 1.5 trillion dollar tax cut for the rich opening up public land to fossil fuel drilling an extraction all those executive orders pulling us out of the meager far less than enough climate stuff that we were already in so he's serving the interest of the worst elements of capital but he does it under the guise of telling the whole system to fuck off and so working class white

voters get sucked in by the culture war shit and like liking the aesthetics of somebody saying whatever the fuck he wants but then their economic interests are actively and immediately undermined and they can't quite see it because of this huge propaganda apparatus that the right has been able to put together the left cannot match. And so the right controls a narrative on everything. Right. And then even the ostensible left, CNN, New York Times, are the corporate left and they get to do messaging control as well. So this reconciliation package isn't looking very good.

If it does come through, it's going to be a tiny shadow of its former self. I think that the progressives in Congress did a good tactical job of tying the bipartisan infrastructure bill that has Republican support and can easily pass with the reconciliation bill, the more progressive bill. They have to go together. And then the moderate Democrats agreed to that initially, but then they're going back on their word. So, I mean, applaud to the progressives for finally having some spine. It's never enough and it's always too late, but I'd like to see a little bit of it. And we'll see how it plays out, but it's not looking good. And then if this doesn't come through, or if it does come through and the Democrats just

can't tell Americans that they did it. they're going to be fucking blowed through by probably Trump 2024. Yeah, I mean, midterms are coming up. Yeah. So this

majority that they have that they fucking, they blew the chance. They blew the fucking chance, as they usually do. I mean, the midterms are going to be disgusting. They're not going to be fun. No.

And then we have to deal with another presidential election campaign. And I'm curious, I'm curious to see who else runs in the Republican field Trump's definitely going to try Pete Rickett seems to be positioning himself with his rhetoric

Could there be somebody with less charisma Like my God, you have no chance This dumb bald head of eyes Oh my God The fucking living in the state is Infuriating Infuriating Just to pivot just a little bit

The fucking gerrymandering fiasco That happened a couple of months ago where they, so the Democrats successfully filibustered this gerrymandering attempt to buy the Republicans in the unicameral. But the Republicans responded by just creating a larger congressional district that included more Republican areas. So they still won. Yeah, exactly. You know, they still won. They annexed part of Sarpie County so that now that's all part of the district that has an entire electoral college vote.

Yeah. So that they can dilute the voter base. and the only blue district presidentially in the state, you know? And so you like... Because here in the Omaha Lincoln area, we were the blue dot in a red sea, right? Like, it's the one district in Nebraska

that voted for Obama twice, et cetera. And so by expanding those districts into the rural area, you dilute the blue vote with red ring, exurban, in rural votes. And so that's what they're doing. Yeah, you know, we don't do a winner-take-all. electoral college. So it's important to at least keep one blue district in terms of

presidential elections. And we're one of the only states that does that, right? Yeah, I think there's two Maine and Nebraska. Two others. Two others, I think. Maybe Maine is the other one with the unicameral. I don't know. Yeah, very rare. Even though it's, you know, probably would benefit for it to just be that way in every state. But yeah, oh well. But yeah, it's a, it's a sleek situation politically here. And, you know, for all of the sort of shining lights that we're seeing with, you know, increased class consciousness and the strike wave and things moving forward in that sort of general direction, I don't think we're going to be able to stave off a fascistic GOP presidency in 2024. And at that point, we are well beyond the ability to

even in the sense of climate change to try and tamp down the rapidly accelerating effects of global warming. The American right has for long had, you know, fascist and anti-democratic strains within it, but for most of the last century, it's been this bipartisan consensus on basically neoliberal or, you know, centrism or whatever, especially since Reagan. But now what you're really seeing is with the demographic shifts, uh happening in this country the white right wing often older long time majority is losing some of its certainly cultural power and is in fear of losing its economic and political power and so

we're seeing an anti-demic whatever shards of democracy america's ever been able to have and we can talk about that but explicitly anti-democratic um strain in the republican party you know under the banner of Trump and it articulates itself as if it's a defense. So we're going to pass these laws through these red states that restrict voting. But we're going to still say that we

totally believe in it. And the fact that we're doing this is not to restrict voting. It's actually to protect it from voter fraud that we've completely invented as a justification. Or using Trump's big lie as a justification to be like, well, see, look at they stole this election. You believe that, right? Fellow Republican?

Therefore, we have to do these draconian voting right bills because they see what's coming. They see that this country culturally already has moved in a direction that they don't like and will they don't like any directions that culture's moving because they tend to be moving in a direction opposite from them who wants to go back

and they're seeing that they do have some advantages institutionally. They have the Senate which is a fundamentally anti-democratic institution. They now have the Supreme Court through the fuckery of Mitch McConnell and just stealing a seat from Obama and then allowing Trump to put three on. So they have that as a fundamentally anti-democratic institution.

You have the electoral college, which over-emphasizes the rural vote compared to the population centers. So you have these institutional advantages, and then they're trying to maintain this basically minoritarian rule. About 35%, I would say, I would argue

about 35% of this country is like on the Trump train. There's Republicans that will choose Trump over a Democrat, but they're fundamentally not like hardcore, you know, oinking hogs. Right. 35% of this country and they won 100% control of this country. And elections are not going to get in their way.

And every election from here on out, the Republicans are going to say was stolen. And that's the new norm. It's not going to, like, lose an election in 2028 and be like, well, they won fair and square. Those days are over. Right. And so these crises are mounting the illegitimacy crisis of, the government itself all across the political system is mounting and something has to give. What will that be?

I don't exactly know. It could maybe they'll be like these fundamental realignment. Maybe we'll have an expansion of political parties. Maybe everything will fall apart and there'll be something like a civil war. Like the trajectories that America could take from here are multifaccently. They're going very many directions. If I was like somebody who benefits from American Empire as it is, a capitalist, in charge. I want to maintain this system. And I want to maintain this legitimacy because I don't

want to have to turn to fascism, which is imposing the system by force. I like, you know, this sheen of democracy. What's best for this country to maintain its legitimacy? And it would be like something like Bernie Sanders style social democracy. Concessions. You know, these people are suffering. Like if we give people like healthcare and we do these things that we can easily fucking do and it really wouldn't threaten our overall position. It might a few companies would like the insurance industry might go out of business or whatever, but capital would be preserved. That would be the logical thing to do. And social democracy has been used in precisely that way historically as a release valve of these tensions that are building up concessions. But this ruling class on both

political parties seems unwilling to do that. Right. And so that is going to not be able to release that pressure. And it's going to continue to build up on the left and the right. And it's going burst at some point, but exactly how it's going to burst and in what direction, who fucking knows. We're in for some interesting times in the years ahead. What a time to be like, holy fuck, yeah. Yeah, I was having this conversation with my roommate recently about the crisis of legitimacy that's been sort of ongoing for the last couple of years, I would think. Certainly, like, ruptured heavily last summer, you know, and then in the money. you know, in the weeks leading up to the election and then in the weeks leading up to

the insurrection in January, just this like simmering, really like broiling cauldron of just this, this is the collapse. This is the start of the collapse of what we know as our institutions, right? And, you know, Biden's election felt like some sort of like stopgap measure to what was previously just rapid acceleration in that direction, you know? And I think that's also part of the reason in my limited sort of perspective here is the reason why we don't really have an idea of the direction of where this next rupture is going to go. Because on its face, the Biden administration is in a lot of ways preventing that acceleration from happening, but is also branching off into a new different type of like,

piece of collapse of what's going on in this country, culturally, institutionally, economically, you know, and now we have the added sort of strain of sort of, you know, what's the big bogey word now, global supply chain collapse or bottleneck, you know, leading to food and product shortages here in the United States. The continued major crises of natural disasters due to climate change all happening sort of on top of each other constantly, you know. And then ineffective local and state and federal governments that are not responding appropriately or don't even have the resources to respond appropriately to these things, right? And what is it leading to?

Probably the most militant labor movement we've seen in the last 25 to 30 years, right? We are also seeing what is likely going to be continued sort of mass movements like we saw last year you know at this point they happen what every year and a half to two years we have these giant mass movements that just sort of rupture occupy standing rock yeah Ferguson Baltimore yeah they're happening more and more and more yeah and so you know at what point maybe the maybe the maybe the way and I think we've talked about this before like maybe the ways to to not necessarily predict or expect a certain thing to happen when it does happen but to just prepare for it anyways, you know, and to, you know, build the sort of, to be an anarchist,

to sort of prefigure these types of these places, either locally in your neighborhood or, or whatever, these initiatives that are going to be able to react appropriately to whatever happens next. Totally. And hopefully, you know, stop yourself from starving your death at some point of the future. I don't know. It's just, it's wild. Yeah, it is.

It's wild to live here, man. And a couple of things on those fronts. We just did an episode in Rev. Left, you and I about the labor movement. I wanted to make this point, but I'll make it here. You know, Union Joe. Where's Scranton working class Joe Biden, right? This facade he props up about who he really is. When these massive unions are happening, this labor uprising,

he could easily use the bully pulpit of the presidency to come to their aid, to take their side explicitly, and then you would force the media to cover it more in depth. Right. If Joe Biden starts using his pulpit to, But, I mean, where is he really? We hear Jen Saki all the time, but you really don't see Biden very much. No. We could talk about why, but he's not out front and center like Obama was or like Trump was.

And that's, I mean, the White House did this mealy-mouthed, both-sidesism response to the labor uprising. When you could easily do, if you really believed it, but of course they don't. It's a facade. It's a way of getting votes. And seeming like a multimillionaire credit card corrupt fuck like Biden is a working-class guy. The other thing, though, about where we're at as a society, you know, we can think of this as, like, well, it's optimistically, where are we, and where are we going? We could, it could be the case that, and I'm not saying this is true, but it might be, because all the trajectories could be possible, that Trump is one of the last institutional gasps of this white reaction that is dying out, that less and less white people believe in, and it's this obnoxious last death throw, or one of the last death throes, and we're in this. interregnum where the society has shifted away from, you know, mainstream American culture as

it has been for the last 40, 50 years. But the people in power are still there. So we live in this gerontocracy where Biden, this 80, you know, Biden, Bernie, Trump, like all these people that are even at play to lead the country are from a previous era that even Bernie was a progressive edge of that previous era. But that era is dead. But it's like it lives on in zombie form through these old-ass politicians who's political, like Joe Biden, who's whole political, he's been in fucking the government for 50 years. You know, his mindset is the 80s and 90s mindset that is already dead. The media is living on the momentum that is built up over the last century,

but nobody really, and Fox News and CNN, like less and less people every day pay attention to him. I mean, Fox News's audience is older and whiter, and they know that. And CNN doesn't have any more legitimacy than they do. You left and right are calling those fuckers out. So, you know, best case scenario as a society, we're sort of living in this weird interregnum where the new world is sort of being trying to be born and the old world is dying. And we'll look back on this in 100 years and say, well, things turned out pretty well.

This labor union turned into a new renaissance for the working class that reshaped policy. And the Republicans were forced to give up this anti-democratic, explicitly fascist Trumpian thing. when they saw that the demographics has shifted such that they could not maintain power that way. And the corporate Democrats lost all credibility and they had to actually become a party of the world or whatever, you know. You can see things going now. Now, the radical Marxist in me is very pessimistic of that. Yeah. That would be nice. That would be nice. Yeah. And it would vindicate people who believe in this gradualist. Things get better over time. But I'm very suspicious of that narrative. And ultimately, Capital still has this country by the throat.

Right. And that's ultimately what matters. They choose the parties. They buy the politicians. They dictate the policy. And so being able to use the democratic mechanisms and allowing culture to drag politics along with it is overly optimistic. And I think, and I think what's really going to happen is that something's going to have to break. It's going to be ugly.

The next 10 years is going to be a fucking increasing struggle. And, you know, something's going to have to give in a major way. give is not going to be people gracefully handing over consent. It's going to be like conflict. Yeah. So that's more likely what's going to happen. Well, yeah, I mean, that's a huge thing. It's like we are living through conditions and wealth inequality that is worse than the gilded age. Yeah, amazing. You know, absolutely insane amounts of wealth being hoarded. Worse after the pandemic. Miniscule number of people. And they are flaunting the spending of that cash in our faces going to space and bullshit like that you know and we're seeing trillions and wars

that nobody supports exactly um and that sort of that inequality is is filtering into every single thing that's happening um we we can't escape it right um and the gradual sort of move toward to censor that to rein that in to break up tech monopolies for example or whatever the the things that are happening in the various committees that are you know investigations that are happening at the federal level aren't going to produce enough of a change in the material conditions for the working class. Exactly. And something's going to, something is going to snap.

And, you know, more than likely it's going to be, you know, another rupture like we saw last year, except maybe more sustained, perhaps more violent. Right. But, you know, we- And it was pretty fucking violent. It was. I mean, incredibly violent. It was.

And it happened so quickly and spread overnight. Yeah. people being shot in the streets like left wing activist shooting and killing right wing activists and vice versa fist fighting every fucking week in major capitals like insane amount of shit that we kind of moved on from and we're still kind of in the foggy aftermath of but when we look back historically it'll really stand out yeah I mean and having you know we both live through it and um participate as much as we could in it and you know and uh I have never seen anything like what I saw in Minneapolis uh it was the most joyful experience I've ever been in and also the absolute most terrifying thing you know you really see what the police state can do when threatened and it's not fun and it's sort of a preview

of what the left is going to experience when things really start getting worse you know pretty much every police budget in the country was increased after last year Isn't that funny? Isn't that funny? The whole Democratic Party is like, yeah, you know, the police really need to be reformed. Like, defunds a little too far, but, you know, and then they get in and it's like, yeah, let's increase money. Because, I mean, ultimately, what, they are the ones that benefit from this society, they want to be protected from the fallout of the chaos that their policies have created.

Ultimately, that's always going to take precedence over any ideological, like, we should shift these funds to, like, health care. Right. Right. And, you know, any fundamental change is going to happen in this country is going to come at the end of such a, a violent rupture. I mean, you see that all the time. Uh, Chile didn't get any serious change until they rioted for weeks and weeks, you know. Or even America's history, abolitionism, civil rights, these are long protracted struggles with immense amounts of reaction and violence in the meantime. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and also like you mentioned, the, how fast everything is changing. The speed of technological change is, is disorienting. We're now in a globalized economy. There is no going back.

this nationalist rise from Modi to Bolsonaro to Trump to Orban and everywhere in between is fundamentally a reaction against globalization. There's the economic globalization where there's like NAFTA and the trade and there's legitimate critiques of that. But the problems are globalized, pandemics and climate change. The world is globalized through communication. There is no going back fundamentally. We can make the global order much better in socialists, internationalists.

We want that. under capitalism it takes a very specific form and plenty of reasons for critique but what was often overlooked i think is the speed of radical technological change that is going that that is going to put huge pressure and already is on every institution that exists and it's only going to continue its rapidity it's going to get faster and faster and faster and build off each other um and that is going to put real stress on these institutions that are not pliable enough to keep up um and so you know that's going to cause, and already is, and it's going to continue to cause a bunch of disruptions globally. But then there's also, you know, what gives me sort of some hope is there, you know, this dialectical

relationship between what's happening. So, like, what is the impact of a Trump? Well, it lit a fire under the ass of the left, you know, these young people coming up who are, like, are instinctively and aesthetically and viscerally opposed to, like, racism and Trump's grotesquery moved left. You know, the Trump movement It's like, make America great again. We want America to be what it used to be. But no single president has done more damage to the international reputation of the U.S. So it's like everything that they want to do also creates the very resistance to that. And it's also true on the left.

Right. When we advance, reaction is inevitable. So you have Black Lives Matter saying, hey, this racial struggle is not fucking over just because Obama's president. There's still these really real issues. We're going to make that a fucking thing. And in the moment you do, you have a right-wing reaction. So these things are going to go back and forth, and the right doesn't have that sort of dialectical view. They want total and complete control.

But every time they try to assert it and grab it, it creates the blowback that is the very thing that dislodges their grip in the first place. And they can't really come to terms with it. And I think that's one of our advantages. And I also think that the left, it's worth saying because, you know, sometimes people can get too down on themselves. Like the left isn't where it needs to be. And that's true. But the left is incredibly bold. And the left has huge numbers.

much more than the right, and we're more organized than the right. When the right tries to get together, it can't quite do it. If there's fascist movements in any city, the left organically rises up to counteract it. When the right wants to do something like it, it has to fly people in. So, like, January 6th is like in the last four years, the right asserting itself, or Charlottesville, the right, and what actually has to happen is you have to get all the right from all around the country concentrated in one place to get the numbers. But with left-wing protests, the women's march more liberal but whatever black lives matter more militant um occupy anything like that even the resistance to trump when he got elected and the fucking huge protest that broke out just for the

fact this asshole was elected is in every major city the numbers are already there right and so we have these numbers we have this boldness burning down the fucking police department and chasing the cops away um last year when they were at the gates shaking the gates around the white house and the white house had to turn us lights off and Trump had to go into the safe room and shit like holy fuck like what would have happened if those fences would have fallen like for that moment there I was on the

precipice like this could be some wild shit yeah if the left gets in we're still not organized enough but like what happens if the left does a January 6th style thing you know it's like are we going to be in there taking pictures with our shaman helmets and not really know what to do if there's more organization

could we actually take some I mean who knows be taking gunfire from the cops You would be, I think. Definitely. And there would have been more security there from the get-go. Yeah. There would have been the National Guard already present if it was a left-wing thing. So the reaction from the state to the left versus the right is glaring. But, you know, it is interesting to see, you know, looking back on the uprising over the summer and just the organic nature of it and how quickly it rose up, right? And how quickly it organized itself within what, like 48 hours? Yeah.

You know, and each city takes on a particular character that's based in, you know, that city. For us in Omaha, it was the tragic murder of James Scurlock. And then the police response and the DA's response afterwards. And the broad sort of umbrella of racial justice against police brutality took on a message that was very important to this locale, right? And sort of illustrates the plurality and the universality. of these ideas amongst the left, you know, which is scaring the fucking shit out of the state. Yeah. Scaring the absolute shit out of them. And the right. Yep. And the right has to resort to conspiracy theories to make sense of it. Because if they didn't resort to conspiracy theories,

they'd have to admit, like, there's a lot more of them than us. They're in all these cities. They rise up organically in every major city. So they have to be like George Soros and Antifa's being funded by something and Venezuela still, you know, they have to admire themselves in these conspiracy theory is to make it make sense in a way that doesn't explode their entire idea, which is that they are the silent majority. That, you know, most people agree with me. And if we only were able to get our, you know, but the truth is less and less people believe in their bullshit every day.

And so they have to build these sandcastles in the sky about what's really happening. Well, George Soros is funding these Antifa people. They don't really believe in like racial justice or anything. They're just like opportunistic crisis actors or whatever. And so that is kind of, that's kind of interesting to see that they have to try to resort to those explanations, you know? Yeah. And that's the strength of the left.

And we should compound on that. We could always use more organization. Because what happens when you don't have pre-existing organizations is crisis hits. They're spontaneous uprisings. But then they either get co-opted or the energy dissipates. And they're rarely sharpened into political demands that can be backed up with force, which is what you fucking need to actually advance these things politically and economically. So the left is also decimated from anti-com.

communism, Red Scare, neoliberalism, and we're over in the last 10 years since Occupy, and probably maybe you can even go back to like WTO in 99 and in opposition to the Iraq war, such as it was, as the left re-finding its feet after decades of being obliterated off the map of internal American politics. And that's going to take time. And so we can't be too impatient with that process developing, but it is developing and it's getting stronger every day. Well, you have to also consider, you know, the inclusion of the introduction of the digital era and the new technology, right? You were talking about technology earlier, and, you know, there is a strain of media studies that really looks at the concept of alternative media as it

exists within ostensibly left political circles, particularly new media, digital media, modes of sharing information, whether it's wikis and pirating or, you know, info shops and culture jamming, these types of new ideas that have been introduced with the invention of Web 2.0, right? And how they're being used by organizations to inform and to energize and call to action, right? And it's a fast, it's part of what my book is about, right? I'm focusing in specifically on the last like five to ten years or so of particular, like, modes of information sharing, the rise of podcasts and live streamers, right? particularly the last year about how this information was shared across the country,

how we knew it was happening in Portland because someone was live streaming it. Immediately. Yeah. And how we could mobilize defense funds across state lines and communicate with each other. And, you know, see, you know, ultimately how that can be leveraged for further political organizing. These types of technologies haven't been, they weren't popular in 2012, you know. I didn't even get a smartphone until it was 2012, you know. And, you know, we weren't necessarily...

I had a pager in high school. Yeah, right. Flip phone. Junior in high school, I had a pager. Flip phone that my sister and I shared. Yeah, that's all I had, you know. And, you know, Occupy was organized a lot online and, you know, had the ability to organize these sort of things through Facebook and various websites and stuff.

But now that we have, we see these more integrated and somewhat more organic ways of communicating with each other, either on social media platforms or secured messaging platforms, and the various nodes and networks that we've set up, what does that look like in the next 20 years, you know, because it's only been about five years that we've really been kind of playing around with this technology and seeing how this technology works for organizing on a large scale, you know?

Yellow Vest protests started on Facebook, but did not stay there, you know? And you see the way that these movements are reacting to technology that we didn't have in 2003. Totally. You know? And what does that look like? and how does that change how these movements interact with each other?

Right. You know, sharing GoFundMe's for strike funds 700 miles away, you know, and getting people from overseas helping these workers' movements. Totally. Those types of like internationalist and fully national sort of communication and solidarity is unique to our current situation, I think. Exactly. You know.

Yeah, and that gets to my point earlier about the globalization of so many things, including communication. and those impacts are making the world a smaller place like you know like if there's an uprising tomorrow in fucking tunisia or in japan we would know about it immediately and we would see visceral images of it immediately what is the impact of smartphones on black lives matter like if you were not able to fucking take your phone and say this is what the police actually do because everything before that you took the cops word for it cops don't lie there's enough white americans who believe that bullshit to be like you know whatever the cop says

goes. Black people are over exaggerating how hard it is. You could easily say that as like a cloistered white person, but like even like the right had to like deal with the George Floyd. Come on. Look, see? Or um, so many instances of like clearly innocent Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Philando Castillo, like so many instances that if without that fucking video evidence, it would have been easily manageable and knocked away. You could convince enough white Americans. it really didn't happen Chauvin is right why would we believe

George Floyd over him but the video evidence can't be fucking contested and so that globalization of communication is going to have huge impacts and then the entrance

of quantum computing the entrance of genetic editing the artificial intelligence you know we are a global world and like it or not and it's going to take different forms but there's no going back

to the little nation states and even like war like large scale war between America and China is less likely than it was 70 years ago because the globalized economic system America can't

you know we can't take China not trading with us it'd be absolutely devastating to our economy and it's kind of interesting how it works to prevent real large scale conflict like we've been able to see in the past so there's pros and cons to all this because the other side of

allowing leftists to give funds across state lines and international borders is the hyper-perveying of right-wing conspiracy theories that come on those same exact platforms well and you know the high surveillance surveillance by the state 100% surveillance by the state i mean i got a door knock over a tweet really yeah what was the tweet the tweet was uh it was uh new year's eve tweet just expressing you know i love you comrades we've we've shown that we can burn down a police precinct and and uh i got a door knock like two months later uh cops said we're here about your tweet and i was like what tweet i have 18 000 tweets and they pulled out a printed copy of it and someone had tagged the FBI underneath it and i and they were like do you know

anyone who's ever burned down a precinct i was like no man i'm a journalist like what like are you serious you know they immediately pivoted to have you been threatened because of your coverage and i said of course i have i just got doxed and you're here right now you know and rick oterio who's sitting in a rotting in a jail in dc knows who i am you know and they're like oh wow here take our card we'd love to have an ear to the ground about what's going on it's like absolutely not you know but the fact that like this communication also comes with total mass surveillance i mean we've been living in a police state for as long as we can remember you know it's been that way always you know if we didn't live in a police state we wouldn't hear that fucking helicopter every day exactly you know um and that

that surveillance is also something that is a struggle for uh particularly the american left you know which is the sort of center of this quote unquote technological progress in terms of communications networks um even though our infrastructure is crumbling at least our internet's good you know exactly um but you know we have these these these districts in california and we have you know the the absolute domination of Amazon. And Amazon's, you know, a wire service kind of networking that they do with various other conglomerations and things like that. It's pervasive. People listen, you know, ads, listen to our conversations.

And we have sold ourselves to the branded content of the Internet unknowingly, you know. And again, yeah, we can't go back. There's no way to go back from that. But how do you move forward? And how do you leverage these networks to your benefit? Right. while also knowing that as much as you can try to obscure yourself, you can't do it completely without just shutting the whole thing down.

And to do that is to cut yourself off from the rest of the world. Right. And just with the dialectical point, like this is pushback, this feedback, everything happens, and then there's a reaction to it, and a reaction to that, and reaction of that. And so we see the state using these social media outlets to intimidate and harass and crack down on and surveil. But then we also see the rise of people taking their online privacy

see more seriously encrypted apps. Now on Twitter, you know, if you're on the left, and I know you know this now more than anybody, watch what you say because you don't need to say something that technically is not protected by freedom of speech. Anything at all that allows them to come knock on your door is a way for them ideally to get a finger in that pot to see what the left's doing. But even if they can't do that, they're intimidating and harassing you and disincentivizing you from either doing that again, using your voice at all, joining protests.

When a protest is brutally cracked down on, like, the bridge or earlier when I was arrested a couple of years back on 2017 after Trump with the rally against the fascist right, there is always the attempt to make it as harsh on you as possible. So the charges are ramped up. You have to spend a lot of time going to the courts, paying money, whatever you have to do. And that whole thing is to dissuade you. So grabbing a journalist and arresting them, well, they were just a journalist. They're technically, you know, you shouldn't be doing that. They're doing exactly what they know they have to do. because the next time that journalist wants to go out and cover street protests, they're going to think twice.

Maybe I don't go to that one because last time I got arrested and that fucking sucked and I still have a court in it, you know. And so they're going to continue to use that and the left's going to continue to adapt. Just basic hygiene is really important. Assume everything you say online is 100% going to be monitored. And that's why I have a Twitter for my show, but I took away my personal Twitter because I would just say these algorithms get you worked up and all of a sudden you tweets. something and like fuck i forgot about that tweet the next day yeah but like two weeks later like you say somebody's knocking on my door about it so like what i do is i try to like every few months like a tweet delete as an app that you can use that goes and you can do it a week ago and everything

beyond six months ago and everything beyond but routinely just delete your presence as much as as possible well and you know again a lot of what we talk about is not actionable speech but the the feds do not care exactly and the fascists don't either the fascist don't either i mean all my tweets and shitlet I posted online, like an old Twitter account was found, and that's how they got pictures of me to put on their flyers. So, you know, whatever they can use, they will. There is no nuance online. So you may be speaking facetiously, but, you know, it doesn't really matter. Someone else could interpret it a different way. And that might put you in jail, as happened to an XYPG fighter in Florida. Really? Yeah, he tweeted about, during the insurrection, he tweeted

about inciting an armed response of the capital in Florida and he was arrested and he just got sentenced to I think five years in federal prison for him. Yes, Jesus Christ. So they watch,

they look for ways to exploit. And when the state sees the left and the right militarizing and getting more intense, they're going to crack down and they're cracking down on the right as well because for the FBI, there's not the racist,

Trump supporting cop on the street necessarily, the FBI believes the system as it stands and wants to defend it from both the far left and the far right now the far left inherently poses a more structural deeper threat to the status quo right all the right wants is their preferred millionaire to be in charge like you know they're not really threatening class hierarchy and shit like that but obviously if you let fascist violence get too out of control it's going to undermine the system it's going to take away like the monopoly on force that the state has so the FBI as like a more highbrow than the regular street cop agency is going after some elements

of the right, but will always be harsher on the left precisely because ultimately the left poses a deeper threat. And so you have this weird situation where the right, you like to see the FBI cracking down on the right, because when your enemies are engaged in conflict, it's good for you, generally speaking. And so, you know, you have like after January 6th, FBI is pulling these people out of their jobs in their houses, holding them accountable. It dissuades right-wing activism. them like, you know, so whatever, that's not terrible to see them fight. But we all know that the same lines they cross and the mechanisms they put in service of attacking the right will always and inevitably be used harsher and more intensely against the left. So you have to be a little, like, you know, like I don't want to show too much support for this.

It puts you in a weird situation. But they're trying to put out fires on their left and their right and something has to give. Is the system going to be able to adapt? or is it going to have to be dismantled in some way or ruptured from or confronted or like as we've been talking about some bigger conflict it has to happen to dislodge you know I don't know but yeah with every move that the state makes and that the right makes the left learns and adapts and we do something and they learn and adapt and so it's this never ending back and forth yeah um yeah we've been talking for an hour and a half really wow minus 60 though oh boy so about an hour yeah Well, we'll find a way to end this. Every time we start talking, this is what happens. Forever. I want to, I just want to circle back around just a little bit to, just to kind of like think

about the ways in which, given the, we had this conversation on your podcast about the strike wave and about specifically the Kellogg strike here and the ways in which the working class has come together in the last couple of months to really kind of push back against what are these tightening sort of lines of division. Really. In the face of an ineffective government, you know what I mean? And you sort of asked me the question. I've been asked the question before. I was on Robert Evans' podcast, and he asked me a question about this, about what sort of things is this particular strike wave going to do to sort of bridge the gap between these individual private sector strikes and a larger, wider labor revolution? I don't have an answer. Do you? articulate the question one more time? Well, the question is how do we bridge the gap between these individual strikes that are happening in the private sector that are generally apolitical but are rife with class

consciousness, right? How do we turn that into a more sort of general, nationwide, ever moving forward, like labor revolutionary movement, you know? The way you need to do that is you need to marry it to a political movement. and you know with two parties and the state of political consciousness more broadly and historically that has been the Democratic Party so you would take that union power it would be articulated through a political vehicle like the Democratic Party politicians coming out of the labor movement would emerge and would advance the project and nationalize the labor struggle that way in a previous time but since neoliberalism that's done since Clinton the Democratic Party is

firmly on the side of capital. It has been, the Republican Party is as well, regardless of what bullshit they fucking say. And so you have the donor class of both parties fundamentally preventing that from happening. Like I said earlier, even Union Joe, Scranton Joe isn't fucking coming out and supporting the shit in the way that he should. So, you know, as somebody on the further left than liberalism, those political institutions need to be created. They're there in nation form,

both on the anarchist and the Marxist left, but certainly developing them and reaching higher levels of organization and the left in this country doing the same thing that you were just mentioning that we want to see from the labor movement, which is jump out of merely localized organizations

and create something more national and ideally pass that international. So you have to marry it to a political program or are they going to continue to be isolated and capital is going to continue to dominate not only the media, but both political parties and prevent that coming into the political mainstream and marrying it to a vehicle. So that's why the activist left needs to be engaged with this sort of struggle and be present in all the ways that we mentioned on the show.

So that really is the task, is increasing our levels of organization. Something like the Black Lives Matter rallied last year, right, we've seen it be co-opted by the Democratic Party. And as far as that can happen, we've seen the energy dissipate. That's natural. It's nobody's fault. It's what happens. If there was higher levels of political organization on the radical left, we could have, as I said earlier, turned that into a spearpoint with political demands backed up by real force, but we didn't have it.

And it's the same thing now is happening with the labor movement. It needs to be married to a political program. That political program and that organization doesn't exist yet. We have to continue to try to create it. There's no easy answers here, you know? Yeah. What do you say to the sort of union presidents who, say, for example, a couple weeks ago, the couple left groups wanted to bring spaghetti to the strike line?

You know, Omaha Autonomous Action Bills itself is an anarchist and communist group who, you know, does mutual aid in homeless encampments. I fielded a phone call from Dan Osborne, the union president, who was terrified of the fact that anarchists would be showing up to the strike line and didn't know who this group was and asked me who they were and the work that they were doing. And it wasn't until I explained to him the work that the group does working in homeless encampments, providing mutual aid and, you know, being able to be a through line. to gaining supplies or these types of things for homeless folks who generally do not have the ability or the financial ability to gather these supplies. Finally, he goes, okay, well, then actions speak louder than descriptors. So there were people on these strike lines who heard the word anarchist, who heard the word communist, who heard the word IWW or red cardholder or socialist, and went, nope, sorry,

you know, fuck that. I don't like that. That's scary. You know, calls to mine the hay market martyrs, you know. Someone's going to throw a bomb at the Pinkertons behind the line. Like, we don't want them throwing bricks at these security guards. Like, that was the concern that they had is that these, you know, the far left is often associated with militant violence when the reality is we're just

a bunch of nerds who want to help each other. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it wasn't until these folks got a chance to, like, meet these individuals face-to-face and talk to them, that suddenly they realized they had so much more in common, and it wasn't really about the political ideology. Yes. Right? So I feel like there's always going to be this sort of post-red scare, post-anti-communist movement, post-cold war issue with people who are even, you know, ten years older than us, who are in their 40s, you know what I mean, who grew up with a specific idea of who these groups are, especially in a red state.

Totally. There's conservative guys in that picket. They don't like Antifa. No, exactly, right? So how do you even build something beyond that? I mean, the only thing that I can think of as we're talking here is just to emphasize the solidarity of the struggle and not necessarily talk about specific ideologies about who's right and who's wrong and what's going to work and what's not going to work. Because you and I both know that should a revolutionary movement emerge like that, it could go. way, you know what I mean? And there are going to be certain ideologies that end up emerging

as top ones to try and restructure society, right? At least that's my, that would be my take from it. People are going to be jockeying to try and influence that. And we saw that with the Arab Spring, right? And the yellow vests. Yep, and the yellow vests. Though they didn't really have an outcome that specifically called for a one ideology, you know, which perhaps was why it was so lengthy and so successful in what it did attempt to do, which is create a modern, regular protest movement. And they did that without the trade unions. Yeah, interesting.

Interesting. But yeah, it's going to be, it's interesting to think about, you know, a lot of folks that you see on Left Twitter and the like are always talking about suffusing these worker movements with revolutionary ideology. And it's like, you clearly have never talked to a worker before. You know what I mean? Like, you cannot walk down to a picket line.

say that you're going to save the day because you're an anarchist and you know what's next. You know what I mean. You laughed off the fucking block. At Warrior Met Coal, people got punched in the face because they went down there and they were fliring with socialist newspapers to a bunch of tried and true hard-headed red minors. What? Yes, exactly. You know, like how do you, I suppose this will be a conversation for another time because

we are really getting into it. But it's a question to consider is to, like, as we marry this to a political movement, what is that going to be characterized by? Struggle against the ruling class, probably going to be more successful than communist vanguard party. Right, right. You know what I mean? Right. And, yeah, I have some thoughts on this because this is really important. We'll end with this.

I have, you know, this back and forth because it's really important. This idea, like, you know, going out and handing out, like hammer and sickles or circle A's to guys on a picket, line you don't know what the fuck you're talking about is getting ahead of the people right in malice turn like getting ahead of the masses you're coming to these people not meeting them where they are whatsoever you're way ahead of them and it's just going to turn them off like fuck off it's not what this is about at all we're trying to fucking get food on our table um so in the short term the way to interact is you don't need to come out uh you know trying to turn this into your thing and this is where twitter silos and social media silos become disorienting because you get in

this idea if all you're seeing all day on your feet is like everybody agrees with you and they're far as fuck to the left, you get, you get detached from regular people and you can't talk to them anymore. So I personally make sure that not only talk to the people in my life, they're just normal fucking people, but like I engage with media outlets that normal fucking people would engage with. I do never, I never want to lose my grip on what actually regular people are like. I have my political program.

I need to meet them where they are and we need to be in dialogue. I'm not telling them what to fucking do. And off the cuff, most people would reject my politics. if asserted ideology first. I'm a fucking Marxist that's sympathetic to Leninism and Maoism. They'll be shut the fuck up. But if you talk to me as a human being

and I relate to you as a working class person, I can talk with anybody. I've talked to hardcore conservatives. I've talked to union heads. I can talk to anybody on that level if I just know how to fucking be a regular person. Then these silos online stop you from being able to do that

and radically distort your vision of where regular people stand. That's one thing. So in the short term, go to people and just say, what can I do to help? You know, I'm here to show support. I don't need to tell you that I'm a fucking Marxist. Who cares? We can talk about that if we get to it.

But right now, it's your struggle. I'm here to lend support in whatever way. You mentioned going up and saying, what can I do? Right. That's how you approach. You don't hand out your fucking leaflets. Right. Now, in the medium term, the humanization process is important.

And this is where anybody can play a role. You don't even need to have a fucking social media account, let alone a larger platform to do this, which is in your family and friends, within your sphere of influence, be yourself. These are my politics. I am a communist, and this is what that means to me, and this is the world I want to build. And this is specifically, you know, my critiques of this system, et cetera. Now, people won't agree with you, right? Your uncle might not agree with you.

Your friend from high school might not agree with you. But you're humanizing that politic. So the next time that they're watching Fox News or Tucker Carlson or online in their own silo, and somebody's like fucking kill these commies, The first thing that's going to pop to their head is not like some distorted image of Fidel and Che or Stalin, but it's going to be my nephew. And I was, oh, let's not kill them. You know, they have some points. You know, so you're humanizing the thing.

And that's going to, that takes time. We are already doing that. The people in my family, for example, know exactly where I stand on things. And they are unable now to sit to put us all in a box and have some general dehumanizing stereotype about us. Same with my family. Yeah, exactly. So we're humanizing the political program without. asking people to agree with us yet.

But, you know, when the word comes to mind, they're going to think of you and me, not fucking stalling. Right. And that's really important. So that's a more medium term. We talked about short term, meeting them where they are, just asking how you can help. Medium term, humanizing our politics. And then more longer term is I would be completely fine with a political party that operates in

the electoral realm that is working class primarily. So you have the Democrats, you have the Republicans. if there's a multiracial, it can't be a fascist movement. It wouldn't be because fascism fundamentally is more petty bourgeois than working class proper and is always acted in defense of capital, not labor. But you have, let's say, a movement that comes up that is worker-led and it wants to confront the Democrat and the Republican Party. And people in this coalition are weird, right?

There's like some center-right guys and there's some union guys who don't have politics that we agree with. And there's like some black liberationist people and some fucking Marxist and anarchist. But we're under this thing that's, like, primarily like we're advocating for the working class. And we're going into the electoral realm to do that. It's a third party or whatever. Things would have to change to allow that. But things could. And I think most Americans, when polled, say they would love a third, fourth, and fifth option, please.

Yeah, yeah. And you can easily see a working class political party come up and say, hey, we can disagree about all these cultural war issues. But, you know, on these things, we're fundamentally about advancing the ball for working people. And so that could be a political project that could give voice and help develop that. These are all things that need to develop. It's not going to be anarchists and Marxist coming to the rescue of the world. It's going to be much messier than that. Oh, yeah.

So get that idea out of your head and then figure out how to operate in the actual concrete conditions we exist in, not in the Twitter silos or the world that we wish we existed in. Right. Those are at least gesturing to some of those solutions. Yeah. Yeah, it took about three and a half years of very patient. constant conversations with my mom to turn her into mom rat like she she's finally you know she at some point I think at some point last summer she came to this like conclusion about personal politics and

and where the GOP stood as opposed to where it was when she was younger you know um and it now when she thinks of this you know my anarchist daughter you know what it is you know it's me you know It's not some freaky bomb-wielding mask-hold, you know, wearing asshole on the street who's blowing up police stations, you know what I mean? Right. This caricature in their head. Right. It's this bookish, nerdy, dignified, you know, humbled as fuck, like weirdo who's just kind of like working a job and teaching and, you know, has these politics that informs how she acts. Totally.

And, you know, for me, uh, it makes my life better, um, to be more cognizant and aware of, of how to be helpful because we all live in the shittiest fucking system ever, you know, um, and I, it's, I really hope that more as younger folks are coming into the, the beginning stages of their political education, which I remember being an upstart anarchist when I was 16. Yep. I was fucking insufferable. Yeah. Oh my God. Horrible. Totally. Just not.

When you first learn, you're over and stuff on your hand. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And you really don't have a real understanding of how these systems work. Yes. You barely even, like, figured out how what it means to be a working person. You know what I mean? And you read like a shitload of political theory that you don't fully grasp. And then you just run your mouth off. Exactly. And now online, you can do that. The hubris of youth. Oh, my God. You can do that all the time. And, you know, thankfully when I was like 19 and 20, I had people who just kind of like carefully sat me down and was. like, okay, dial it back, have you considered this perspective, you know, and like really kind of like help shape politics. And then post-Trump, like, really just kind of went running with it to like really understand these political systems. And any sort of conception of revolution is messy, is probably violent, is not going to look like your idealized version. You might

die in it. You know what I mean? It's not going to look good. But hopefully on the back end, what happens is an improved society. It may not be utopia, but it's going to be better than this one. Exactly. You know? And tempering your expectations for how that happens makes you a more effective leftists, really. And a more effective human being. And sort of helps you give pause when you would rather punch a conservative in the face instead of, say, you and I are on the same page about problems.

Have you considered this solution instead? exactly you know and yeah and every conservative i personally met like co-workers anybody that you've been able to be in my life and actually know me as a person none of them hate me you know we're fucking cool and that's so important to be able to do that um don't dehumanize them if you don't want them to dehumanize you and meet them somewhere and you'll often find when you talk to like a working class conservative not like a fucking weirdo trump yeah we're not talking about fascists or trumpists or queon folks whose brains are scrambled eggs yeah but regular like working class conservatives you talk to them you get past the bullshit and you're willing to criticize

your own side you can open up a conversation and find out that you actually agree with a lot more than you thought and they're not some fucking monstrous racist piece of shit who hates people that don't look like them that the caricature that you create about them and you're not that for them and when you're talking about operating and humanizing your politics within your friend and family group being a good person is essential to that because if you're kind of like a shitty selfish asshole like yeah your family has to love you no matter what and make you friends i've been friends with them for a while you know you're not really reliable well your politics are going to be far less convincing uh in that context but if you're

really fucking you go out of your way to be a good person uh to really help the people in your life that are in need um and ideally your community as well that also speaks volumes how do you actually behave and treat people um that will that will color what what they view your politics as you know yeah he's a communist he has some crazy ideas but when i need help moving you was the first to show up. And, you know, when I lost, whatever, my mom, he was the first person to send flowers and, you know, that sort of shit. That's where the moral comes into this. And, you know, we talk about structural issues and you don't want to be an individualist. I get that. But we also have responsibilities at the individual level to be as good of a person as we can be. And, you know,

that old Gandhi quote that is often maligned by the left because it's too simplistic and it is, be the change you want to see in the world. You know, there's a place for that. It's married to broader collective structural transformative project but holding yourself to a high standard of behavior of taking ethics seriously of trying to consciously cultivate and grow your own character in the right direction also helps the political project that's coming out of your mouth when you go to try to convince somebody and so that's why I think you know ethical standards and setting them high for yourself and really practicing being a good person not just saying I have the right ideas, therefore I'm a good person. But no, it doesn't matter what you think about the world.

There are leftists that have great ideas that are assholes and pieces of shit that nobody trusts or likes. And there are conservatives that have shitty ideas, but you know, have hearts of fucking gold at the end of the day. Right. And so marrying those things, I think is part of this project as well. Yeah. Well, I think that's actually a really good way to end this conversation because we could go on forever. Absolutely. Like, it's always fun talking with you. You need to come back on and I would ask you to be my co-host, but I feel like you probably have way too much shit going on. But yeah.

I won't be a frequent guest. Please do, yes. Thank you so much for coming on. This is probably going to be the inaugural episode of Morning Riot. So I really appreciate you taking the time. Any final words or thoughts or you want to plug your shows or anything? Yeah, well, just thank you so much for having me on. I love how our relationship has evolved over the years.

It's really cool to see where, we've ended up so far, and I look forward to where it goes in the future. For anything related to me, you can go to Revolutionary LeftRadio.com, find all our shows, social media, all that shit. Cool. Cool. Thank you. Absolutely. Thanks for having me.