Rev Left Radio - Understanding the Mechanics of Liberal Co-Option and Rhetoric

Episode Date: April 27, 2021

Breht went on CommieCon's Twitch stream as a guest to talk about liberal co-option of revolutionary energies and movements, how it happens, the role ideology plays, the essential and central importance of black and indigenous struggles for socialist revolution, and much much more! This is part one of a two part series. Part two will stream live this Saturday 6pm CST, 7pm EST (May 1st) here: https://www.twitch.tv/CommieCon  ----- Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio or make a one time donation: PayPal.me/revleft LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

Hey everyone, Dave here. Today's episode is one in which Brett made a guest appearance on Comic-Con's Twitch stream to discuss liberal co-option of revolutionary energies and movement. Brett recorded this one from home, so his audio is a little rougher than usual, but overall it's still totally listenable. Also, this is part one of a two-part interview, and part two will stream live this Saturday, May 1st, 6 p.m. Central, and p.m. Eastern. We will provide the link in the show notes for anyone who wants to watch that

live. And if you're on Twitch, definitely go show some Rev. Left Love to Comic Con and his community. Now, let's get into this show. All right. Check, check, check. All right. And chat, if you, uh, chat, if you, uh, If you need me to, just let me know if you need less me and more Brett, which is, I mean, that'd be the choice that I would make personally. But yeah, anyway, everybody, please welcome back in. Brett O'Shea from Rev. Left Radio.

Thank you so much, man. I don't think that, I don't think we've had nearly the same level of excitement and response from any of the interviews that we ever did and as positive as a response as the one that we did with you and having you come aboard and chat. And so many members of your community came in here and were super supportive and have had nothing but nice things to say. And everybody that came in here, it's really, so Twitch is a unique thing. right twitch is a community in which you never know who somebody is that jumps in into your chat

or follows or or something like that and it's one thing that i can say for sure about like the community that follows you and and is that everybody that came in that was like hey uh heard you on rev left radio chatting with brett um everybody that came aboard as a result of that because we always ask you know, hey, how'd you find us type of things? We're like a pretty small channel here. Everybody that said, hey, you know, I heard about you from Rev Left and stuff. Every one of those people were super positive, had exhibited like, no, there was no, like, problematic language or weird, uncomfortable attitudes or anything weird like that.

And you're probably the only person who's. community it was just a hundred percent fucking thorough uh so and and one thing that you got to we always say is that your community is a reflection of you i'm really thankful to you for for cultivating such an awesome community so thank you for doing that yeah that's that's for me that's incredibly high praise i i do agree that you know the people that tune into you they tune in because they see a reflection of themselves and the community that i could create of people that are just like humble loving people it's it's the the most gratifying thing about about doing the shows and to hear that that you've had that experience with with our community it's a beautiful thing and yeah there's there's

no higher praise than that so i'm glad to hear that awesome awesome man yeah um so kind of without uh without further ado um again thanks for coming on and for those just joining us uh brett and are going to be discussing something that I've been kind of kicking around in my head for a while now. And that is the idea of liberal revisionism within organizing movements. With it being such a potentially hot summer coming up in terms of, you know, organizing efforts and street actions and things like that, I want to sort of let people know what we saw last summer or what at least I saw last summer, and many other communities did too in terms of liberals coming in and having the blessing of those in power in local cities to try to take the, you know, take the energy

out of radical movements. You know, you can think of things like the idea of going from like abolish the police to going to a hard idea of really defunding the police and, and reappropriating those funds to better community um better community programs to well that's not really what defund the police means it's actually this thing and it's just like back pedal back pedal back pedal until it turns into just kind of a whimpering set of like bland uh incremental reforms that don't even end up getting past anyway and and they just wither away and that type of thing so yeah as dorian says from Abolish the Police to vote for Joe. So, so yeah, and we should probably just kind of jump into the questions.

Thank you again to the community for popping questions in here and that kind of thing. I wanted to kind of kick this off with the first question. And that is how specifically do liberal organizing groups come in and kind of co-opped like radical organizing movements in the show? streets. What are your thoughts on that? That's a big question. And I think the place to start is the why. Why does there need to be a process of co-option? And the why is pretty obvious because there is this popular upswelling of energy that can either be funneled into the maintenance of the system through co-option or solidify into a confrontation with the system.

as a whole. And particularly when we look back at last summer, we look at what's going on right now with yet more never-ending fucking parade of cops killing unarmed black people, even 13-year-old children, there is this radical potential for that to turn into a critique of the entire system as inherently white supremacist, inherently anti-black, and for that movement to, in some conditions solidify into a confrontation with both parties in the state as a whole. Now, the Republican Party's job is to basically give you the middle finger, to demonize those fighting for basic equality and liberty, fighting for freedom, fighting for the same things that Republicans pretend to believe in.

They're just giving you the middle finger on Fox, on talk radio, demonizing Black Lives Matter, etc. The role of the Democrats is to do what I said earlier, is to funnel that popular energy into the maintenance of the system so that that energy does not become a confrontation with the system. Nice. And there's a million ways you can do that. You know, you mentioned it turned into a vote for Biden, right? And it's particularly ironic that people like Joe Biden, one of the architects of the crime bill, one of the leading rabid dogs of the carceral state for decades, longer than I've been the live. He's been on the floor

of Congress arguing for stricter, harsher, anti-black, carceral politics. And then Kamala, who of course comes out of, out of prosecution, sort of that entire legal framework of prosecuting criminals, et cetera. So you have

two people who have done nothing but spend their careers contributing to the very carceral state that then the energy against that carceral state gets funneled into supporting them. And, you know, there's a million examples we could talk all day. Obviously, I think Black Lives Matter is a great example of the co-optive process. Black Lives Matter started in many ways as this

grassroots energy. It was put forward by a few individuals, the quote-unquote leaders, right, that gave the rhetoric its spin and put it out there. But then just, I mean, I was involved, I'm sure many of the people listening were involved in grassroots movements and protests all through last summer, where it was just a cry. It was a screaming out from the grass grassroots and there's been some critiques of it that it's that it's a low bar that black power is better and those critiques i think only gain steam with time as we see what's happened but what has happened the leaders that the the you know the people that created that movement some of them i think i just read an article the other day one of the one of the creators is is a millionaire moving

into like a one really six million dollar apartment right interesting you have politicians fully taking on board the black lives matter rhetoric rich white people in suburb putting Black Lives Matter signs on their houses and on their businesses, and corporations, huge multinational corporations, some of them which profit from prison labor, profit from third world labor, exploited labor, around the third world, etc., are claiming that mantle. And once that happens, once it is corporate friendly, you know you've now lost that, at least that rhetoric to the, the, the, the, the,

powers that be to the co-optive process. There's arguments for bringing it back, arguments for changing it, whatever it may be. Obviously the energy is still there. It's still being used. And even though there's internal critique by black radicals saying to switch it to something like black power,

but I think that that gives us the clearest and most recent example of the full co-optive process. And I have a couple other things I want to say on this question, but I'll bounce it back to you and see what your thoughts are so far. Yeah, for sure. So a, um, and, in great perspective. Um, so a couple of things that that, that, um, stood out to me. So, um, just as an aside, um, you kind of mentioned that

the crime bill and, and, and Joe Biden and that kind of thing. And even, even when I'm going through like my day to day, just like, been all like social media type stuff on some platforms, like, I have an Instagram account. Um, but it's just for me posting like dumer memes and shit like that. Like, um, it's, it's not for anything. serious but i was flipping through it and at one point somebody had posted something real and i was like going to kind of share that in my stories and stuff and this thing popped up from instagram that said um it was a fact check thing and it said um this is actually false uh the 1994 crime bill did not result in mass incarceration of black people and that was a thing from instagram saying

USA today had debunked that and i and i was sitting here looking at it and i'm like two my face blatantly this social media site is trying to gaslight me into believing a thing that definitely unequivocally happened did not ever happen and was not was not real and to feel that to feel that like um i don't know to to feel that gaslit by looking at something that's telling you no no no and knowing what i know the the average person If I'm going to be like, wow, I'm feeling really gaslit around the average person is just going to be like, oh, I guess that's not true. You know, and that's that was really a shocking moment for me. It also really quick.

It also obscures that the building and the construction of the carceral state is not just limited to that one crime bill. It's a million things from rhetoric to mainstream media coverage to presidential campaigns to smaller laws that don't get the, the, the, the attention. So, you know, they make that one pedantic, non-true, but technical point on this one bill. And it's supposed to obscure this larger reality that is right in front of our eyes, you know. Sure. We all have Google. We can all Google. Yeah.

Yeah. If, uh, if, if you don't think that that, uh, in fact, disenfranchised black people broadly or, uh, you know, perpetuated, uh, generational poverty, uh, please Google. But, um, another thing you, you were kind of talking about was the tie in between like corporatism and, um, like the Black Lives Matter movement. And another thing that sort of came to mind was like Stonewall and like pride parades and things like that, right?

Like we went from Stonewall, you know, a radical movement, you know, by black trans folks, started by, you know, a black trans woman. And going from that to Nike, you know, Nike and Haliburton. sponsor your local gay pride parade you know and like the corporatism and and you obviously you know you see members of the LGBT community pushing back hard against that that corporatism but that's what really comes to mind from what you were saying about once the the corporate world or you know once capitalism gets involved in something and and they can they can commodify it and say oh there's a dollar to be made here in this if we if we greenwash this or whatever it may be um that's that's

another way that liberals will happily happily allow um corporations into to pay money to be involved in anything you know whether it starts with good intentions or not you know i mean you might as well put uh at that point once your movement becomes so commodified you might as well just put a registered trademark symbol on whatever the catchphrase of the day is and then at that point just run with it you know uh you know black lives matter sponsored by whatever um and that's that is definitely something to be feared for sure with within movements and and that's a good point that i didn't really even kind of consider just because i'm so wrapped up in like my own personal experiences uh with liberals uh co-opting movements in in on the ground organizing stuff that i

fail sometimes to stop and take a step back and consider, like, the broader, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, of, of a movement largely at like the national corporate and international corporate level, you know, and, and you mentioned the, you know, the signs that, the liberals would put in their windows is a feel good thing, like a platitude. And, uh, yeah, you're right. It's that, that's why liberalism, I think uniquely is a threat to radical, people, even much more so than, say, energy from like conservatives and things like that, because conservatives, at least we know where they stand. At least we know that they hate us. At least we know

that they want people dead. And as long as people are making money, they don't care. You know, liberal energy comes from the place of, well, you know, I am doing my part. Look, in my window, there's a Black Lives Matter sign. You know, they'll go and wave signs at the protest, you know, noon until about 2.30 or three and then they'll go home and if there is a homeless person too close to their stoop then they'll call the cops on them right so it's and and that do that duality uh that lives within the liberal mindset um cannot recognize itself you know it's it's somebody said to me one time that that pride was the most damning sin because pride fails to recognize itself and I think that that that that's really true for um like liberal revisionists and and liberals

broadly um as far as that that's concerned um as far as like actual on the ground organizing you know I primarily organized in Denver and out there in Denver there was a liberal group called we are love Denver walled they called themselves and this group seemingly kind of formed like out of nowhere. It was run by completely unknown people in the organizing community, but they seem to have like a ton of poll with, you know, getting a lot of press meetings, press, you know, meetings with the mayor out there, Mayor Hancock, all kinds of stuff, you know, and they were one of those liberal groups that were explicitly against like any type of radical action, you know,

and echoed sentiments like, you know, well, even if people are dying, you know, it's never appropriate to smash property or, you know, the cops just need reformed. We just need more training or different things like that. You know, that was their messaging essentially, you know, um, you know, and come to find out that, you know, several prominent figures within that that group, um, were involved directly with the mayor's office or worked in the mayor's office, um, or had connections to city council members or even were directly involved with uh dpd out there and stuff um you know and but once once that stuff came to to light it was already kind of too late um you know that damage was was done to the

organizing efforts out there largely and in in Denver so um so that's that's kind of my perspective with with that question yeah absolutely and i think that speaks to this dual nature of the co-optive process, which is that sometimes it is conscious, right? Sometimes it is a conscious attempt on the part of representatives of the status quo or the system overall to come out and to co-opt or shift or move a protest in a different direction that is more in line with their interest, et cetera. But often, it's unconscious and it's structural. The co-optive process is a sort of automatic structural process that happens. It doesn't need to be conspiratorial. right like the corporations and the democratic party don't need to get together in a smoke-filled

room and say how do we take BLM and defang it and you know co-opt it it's just it's a process that naturally happens and given the lack of general political education among people given the lack of a structural sort of real organized movement it's a grassroots decentralized thing that can have its own benefits but given a lack of focus of solid leadership political education among the masses, etc. It's just an easy thing to do. There's nobody, there's no organized force that's going to prevent that co-option because the energy itself is so diffuse and unorganized.

And so that happens a lot. And, you know, in order for something to become co-optible, in order for something to be corporation friendly or democratic party friendly, it has to be reduced to mere symbolism. It has to just be a mural. along the street a sign in your room or in your house or in your business um you know some some wearing kente cloths right and taking me forgot about that one i had repressed that man yeah the shame is bottomless but it has to be reduced to a mere symbol because the other the

the only other option is for it to be a real confrontation and threat to the material hierarchy of capitalism colonialism imperialism which i say hyphenated because it's one system. Sure. And so if you really wanted to solve the structural problems that give rise to things like police killing black people, anti-blackness in our society more broadly, or a million other issues, I'm just going with this Black Lives Matter issue, it would take material redistribution of wealth and power. And that can't happen. No.

Because the moment that becomes the real pillar of the movement, you're never going to see a corporation give you the thumbs up on that. And in fact, like in Georgia right now, right? going through that voting law, which is a naked attempt by the Republicans to just reduce voting turnout specifically among poor and blacker communities. And you see all these corporations coming to the forefront speaking out against it. Okay. And it's safe for them to do that because you know, voting in this liberal vague sense is like something that's like a core test, a core pillar of who we think we are, et cetera. But the moment like voting gets so open that people start to vote for closing corporate tax loopholes or radical redistributions of wealth,

that corporate support for voting broadly would just disappear completely. And that, I think, is at the core of the issue, this difference between if we can reduce it to mere symbolism, we can co-opt it. If I can put out a Black Lives Matter sign, I'm just saying I'm a good person. I don't have to do anything. I certainly don't have to make any changes in my life. Sure. I certainly don't have to give you any money.

Right. Maybe a little donation here and there, but that's it. I can do that, and that can become a democratic and corporate thing. But the moment it actually challenges hierarchies, all that support will completely dry up. And you'll have just as much opposition from the Democrats as you with the Republicans. God damn. Well said. Well said, Brett.

Yeah, that's outstanding perspective, man. And I would just say, I guess my final thoughts with that is that, yeah, it feeds into, the natural ego of people to want to be able to feel as good, because everybody's the hero in their own story, right? It gives into, it lends itself to the idea that people want to

feel as good as they possibly can about themselves with the absolute like least effort on personal accountability at the same time. And again, you know, the difference between conservatives, conservatives are like, no, fuck you. And liberals are like, no, I

am good like you said you know i'm i put the sign out i do the thing um i teach my kid not to say the words and and this and that you know and um but they see nothing wrong at the end of the day with they they really see nothing wrong with capitalist co-option you know they're just fine with you know your city's gay pride parade sponsored by nike and haliburton they don't see they see no conflict there. Regardless of how blatant it is, they can explain it away and say, well, it's just the, or the world is just the, you know, it's nothing, nothing with any meat or anything like that.

And again, they have the platitude. They have the, you know, empty symbolism, as you said, that they can just kind of cling to. And it allows them to put it on shirts, you know, put a sign at their house and, and show off to their neighbors in the burbs that, you know, they are very progressive. They are very wise and they have greatly learned. Meanwhile, you know, they mumble under their breath about these people as they would claim. You know, they in hushed tones and stuff like that or they call the cops on people or they further disenfranchise people within their community or they consider. you know, well, this is blight or this is, you know, different things like they. They've got a million

different ways to explain away their, their personal prejudices without actually directly addressing any of the substance of the arguments that the movements like Black Lives Matter put forward. Yeah. Yeah. And I would just add one more point before we move on as well, maybe two. This idea you said earlier, which is really interesting, that liberalism does not know itself ideologically, and this co-optive process often happens due to the fact that most liberals aren't aware of it. It's happening. They're playing a role in a process. They don't understand. And I think that is the benefit of Marxism, because Marxism is this meta-perspective. You know, you can even say leftism more broadly. I mean, anarchism certainly has these critiques

as well. Of this meta-perspective on history, on politics, on ideology itself. Like, you know, If you can stand above ideology and see how it functions, it doesn't mean that you can escape it. It doesn't mean that you'll never have any ideology, but it means that you have now a different perspective from which to consciously embrace an ideology. For me, that is politically speaking Marxism, right? But I'm not a Marxist because I've been forced-fed Marxism my whole life. And liberals are liberals, conservative and what we would call liberals, all the same thing, in a passive way. they've been conditioned into it and they've been conditioned to think that that politics is a result of their own deep thinking and sort of, you know, their own agency. So that's interesting. I really like how you put that does not know itself for itself. And even like Marxism will say stuff like, you know, the working class needs to be a class conscious of itself, right? That, again, pointing to that meta perspective on the historical role of the working class. And individual working class members becoming conscious of themselves as members of a class engaged in a class struggle. But the other thing I wanted to say, and this speaks to the broader point of co-option,

is, you know, the left broadly, liberals included, like the broadly conceived left, how we talk about it in American mainstream culture. It's sort of got culture, right? Movies, music, mainstream, popular, just thoughts, like liberalism has dominated the culture, but conservatism has dominated politics and economics. And one of the pillars of co-option, is to relegate as much popular energy that it can't directly co-op through like the Democratic Party to culture so that you can self-express your radicalism. We can get on Twitter and talk about it all day. We can buy chaise shirts. I can go make a hip-hop album, you know, shitting on the system every single song.

I can make a podcast critiquing capital is like, you know, culture is wide open. And in fact, it's almost like a release valve for this, for this discontent and this racetrack. radical energy to funnel into in a way that in the process of reducing it to culture reduces it to symbolism, right? Because if you want real power, power exists in the realm of politics and economics. But if we can keep you in the realm of culture through, I mean, not to say that culture is not important, it's a piece of the puzzle. But if we can, if we can keep you specifically and exclusively in the realm of culture, you can be as radical as a form of self-expression that you want. It doesn't touch

the material hierarchies of society. And I think that broader trend is certainly at play in the co-optive process. Everything from what we've been talking about to things like punk bands and reducing radicalism to aesthetics and stuff. You know, sometimes, and

I participate in it too, like it's the only real sort of arena of society where this stuff can be expressed meaningfully. But there's this growing contradiction now where we've hit sort of the limits of what we can express culturally and now we're more and more people are realizing we need political and economic power but the system as a whole is not

willing to allow that like you know that's that's where it will draw the line even to Bernie Sanders they won't even allow a Bernie Sanders to get a little a little piece of that pie so that's that's an interesting contradiction that I think is coming to the forefront uh in the last decade it will continue to god damn um yeah so I just want to say going forward in in our discussions what's probably going to need to happen is I'm going to have the questions ready and then I'm going to ask you to to write your response and then I'm going to allow you to say half of your response and then I'm going to say the other half of your response because this whole thing of like you getting to talk and then me following you is not working super well for for me

and my my credibility amongst my community so we're going to have to switch it up in the future another thing i do really appreciate you saying though was the fact that you you know you listed um like podcasting and and other things like that in terms of you know like i can do these things you know but but they um aren't necessarily like real um at the same thing as as having like you know building political power and things like that but i'm glad that you left out streaming because as we know streaming is real praxis so i'm glad that you left that out uh and I did that on purpose. Yes, yes.

Thank you. Thank you for recognizing the real praxis in streaming, yes. That's why the chant goes, no gods, no masters, no podcasters. It doesn't go, no gods, no masters, no streamers. See, not only does it not rhyme, but it's factually incorrect and a historical. Good historical material reason for why that's the case. Absolutely. Oh, yeah.

Left's right says, out of your jobs. to your gaming chairs. Okay, cool, cool. So, yeah, then the next kind of thing that I wanted to chat with you about is the question is, what kind of liberal propaganda red flags do people need to be careful of when consuming media regarding revolutionary movements, leftist leaders, or events that we don't have a lot of context for here in the States? Yeah.

So that's a great question. Definitely shifts the conversation a little bit more to, like, what that makes me think about and correct me if I'm, you know, misunderstanding this, but like specifically to like revolutionary movements around the world, not even necessarily internally because internally they just won't be covered or they'll be covered in a way that is co-optive naturally, right? Right. If they're going to be covered at all. So speaking more broadly, there's a few things that I thought about, like, because, you know, it's in the interest of the, of the U.S. ruling class and of global capitalism more broadly. to not only repress its internal dissent through co-option or sometimes with explicit violence if it can't be co-opted, and also to squash and kill and eliminate and turn public opinion against

any movement around the world which threatens it, just by the nature of being different, of forging a path that's not just wide open to markets and the financial institutions of the capitalist West, right? So you think of a million different movements from Cuba to Bolivia to, you know, in the Middle East and Africa, all over the world, there have been these attempts to buck this system, to fight back against imperialism, to build society in a different way,

and that can't stand. And the U.S. media is just a mechanism of the U.S. ruling class to control narratives. So a couple things come to mind when I'm thinking of red flags for propaganda. And I think I've talked about this. I know I talked about this before, but perhaps even on your channel of the use of the term authority, And, you know, this is an easy word that hits the American ear poorly because America tells itself that it's the land of democracy and freedom and we're liberty lovers and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that whole mythology that's constructed around what America is and what it stands for itself, that it tells itself and then believes, right? So authoritarian is just the right, perfect little word to obscure any differences.

it just means anything outside of what we consider acceptable. That's left or right. Authoritarian is never used to explain or to describe something like, I don't know, nuking to Japanese cities and slaughtering babies and children and families. Interestingly, yeah. Yeah. Or the Vietnam War when it decided to slaughter people wholesale

just to stop competing political ideology from taking root in a country that America doesn't control or shouldn't, control and just go down the line. I mean, internal, the way the dissent is cracked down on the protests last summer, every night was just brutality upon brutality and no accountability whatsoever. So, you know, authoritarianism is never America. It's always somebody else. So whenever they just use that word, it's a lazy word, because what does it mean? You know, define authoritarianism, not go to the dictionary definition and look it up, but tell us how this system that you're critiquing is authoritarian. And importantly, let us know how you're not. You know,

Because what gives you the moral high ground to talk about that society being authoritarian, implicitly in that accusation, is the assumption that the one saying it is not authoritarian. So right there, you have a huge assumption that needs to be questioned. And sometimes there are authority. Like, I'm not denying the existence of authoritarianism. Like, it exists, but what is it and who's calling who that word? So that's a red flag. And like I said, it might end up being legitimate. It might not.

But to question that is, I think the first thing you got to do, advance the red flag. Another one is when they talk about it's a threat to American national interests. You know, this is another buzzword that has been used for the Iraq war, for every intervention abroad, at least in my lifetime. It is always, and even in the Cold War 2.0 ramping up against China, it's always this talk of it's the threat to American national interest. In fact, the intelligence community just came out this week and said the number one threat to American national interests is China. Well, what are the national interest exactly? you know why is china a threat to those national interests and in what ways are we a threat to china's

national interests right so again these are the this is the use of vague terminology which sounds important sounds official sounds serious but which when you begin to poke and prod at it is just completely meaningless and it's often used as this trojan horse through which to ramp up public support for the eventual conflict that that that's going to come. And so they're doing that right now with China, but it's not limited to China. I mean, it's every time they want to intervene in any way because they have to justify it in terms of actually it's a threat to us.

It's not just that we want geopolitical control of this territory. It's not just that we would like to have resource extraction from that country. No, we have to justify it to our home population as this is actually in your interest. It's our national interest. And then the third thing I would say that it came to mind that I would love to hear your thoughts as well is talk of human rights violations. Again, sometimes there legitimately are human rights violations that need to be confronted and ideally it's a multilateral global attempt, something like the Holocaust with Nazi Germany. There needs to be a global response

to that absolutely horrific, you know, I mean, human rights violation is too tame of a phrase, like the genocide attempt. But at the same time, it's vague when it's just thrown out there. And so, like, just recently with China, again, there's this huge attempt to create conflict with China. And one of the stories that came out last week is Chinese people are locking up Christians who want to pray or some shit like that. Like on major newspapers, you can Google it. It was this week. I actually, I've been out of the loop so hard that I hadn't even heard of that. So I'm getting this news firsthand right now.

So I'm pretty excited here. So go off, King. It was framing China as like, no, now they're, okay, Muslims are one thing, but Christians. Now they're cracking down on. Now it's Christians. Does this work? Does this get you pissed? Right.

What about this one? Exactly. They're coming for the suburbs next. Yeah. So that, that I think, those, all those phrases are just used interchangeably by the media, by politicians, by the intelligence community to obscure their real interests and obscure why the thing in question is an enemy. And so whenever you hear any of those phrases, at least begin to think, poke and prod. And again, sometimes it's legitimate most times, the vast majority of times, it's absolutely not. And it falls apart in the face of any sort of critical thought.

Absolutely. No. Solid, solid points. I'm really glad that you mentioned the piece about authoritarian or authoritarianism. because not only is that a term that is bandied about by conservatives when it's regarding anything, even communism light or communism adjacent or tangentially related to communism broadly, but it's also a narrative that gets put forth by liberal revisionists, by even by people that call themselves. as well, quote unquote, socialists. I mean, there's there's plenty of streaming media figures right now that I'm sure come to mind for many people in the community that will immediately just anything that is more radical than

what they're proposing automatically those people are tankies. Those people are authoritarian. And these people identify as socialists, you know, I don't even need to name the names. People know the names of these folks. And that's how you can sniff out liberal revisionist bullshit. When they don't want to engage with the pointed critique from the pointed materialist critique of the bullshit that they're saying, then they just like conservatives, just like neoliberalism broadly, what it loves to do is just run to the term authoritarian. and it um it loves to to um you know blanket things as like quote unquote tanky or what the fuck ever um i'm an anarcho communist and i always try to emphasize like mls are comrades

mls are practiced comrades emos are very knowledgeable comrades and i don't personally allow people to uh shit on comrades that i know they're good comrades by slandering them uh according to their tendency as quote unquote tankies it's not even a term that i use broadly um because because that term of authoritarianism is just such a easy tool for uh radlibs and and um you know neoliberalism broadly to just uh slap right on over any type of radical movement um as being like rooted in authoritarianism it's bullshit um and so and then the next piece you were kind of mentioning was American national interests. And I mean, is there, as far as leftists, I think that this is something kind of 101 that we should try to understand is that America will

never account for its own human rights abuses or its own failings in national interest when it comes to death and poverty and exploitation broadly. So from where, what I've personally seen in my short time on this earth, American national interests tend to be things that basically anything that will enrich the United States as a country to the detriment of who gives a fuck, basically, you know, the global South broadly. But I mean, what we're America, enrich a segment of the-

Enrich a segment is an important, an important caveat there. Yeah. I mean, what were American interests in South America, right? we've got lithium mines in Bolivia will coup whoever we want famously Elon Musk right oil in Venezuela I mean man Bolton and Elliot Abrams really tried to fucking kickstart that one you know and on and on it goes I mean anytime that we we hear about things like American national interests that should immediately set off alarm bells in your head because you have to keep in mind the people that are saying this is an American national

interest, look at the people that are actually saying that. Look at the people that form the foundation, the groundwork, the framework, rather, of what an American national interest is. And if you look at those people that are forming the frameworks for what American national interests are declared to be, and you're like, I mean, I don't trust this person. Why the fuck would you trust them to? tell you what is in the interest of American of America broadly when it comes to interventionism in another fucking country um you know not to be not to get to Jordan Peterson

on this shit but it's like yo you maybe need to clean your own room first Bucco you know like um so and and then the last piece was was the human rights violation um I mean again Japan like what like we we still have never accounted for that you know the indigenous genocide we still have never accounted for that uh 250 uh years of essentially free labor uh on the backs of people who benefited nothing from it uh we we've definitely still not accounted for that i mean so who the you know countries like germany uh hitler got his um His ideas of how to suppress and genocide people from America, you know, the, the, the, the genocide of, of indigenous peoples in America, you know, slavery within America. I mean, it's, it's not like, it's not like Hitler inspired America.

I mean, America inspired Hitler. You want to talk about human rights violations of one of history's greatest monsters. I mean, we literally wrote the book for him. um on that shit so in what place at what point are we looking at another country and saying oh but these are human rights violations it's like you don't even what can recognize what a human rights violation is when it's happening in your own country perpetuated by your own government um so and it's not and it's not just what about america it's like no no cynical it's so cynical to even and you care you don't care yeah it doesn't matter at all you will gladly eradicate

you know hundreds of thousands of people as you've proven time and time Again, when it's in your slightest economic interest, so, you know, there really has to, for that to be a sincere claim, there has to be some genuine moral, like, concern about it. And when that is stripped away and its complete cynicism and opportunism, it makes even the, the purported fight for human rights that much just, it just reduces it to nothing, you know. No, and you're right. I should backpedal a little bit. I take that back. I should not have come across as being like in a what aboutism in terms of America. No, you're absolutely right.

It's not, it can't be reduced to just a what aboutism in America because that in and of itself is a liberal talking point, right? You're just doing what aboutism. Exactly. And that kind of thing. So, no, thank you for the, thank you for the correction and the reframing there. I guess my final piece on that would just be that, you know, a couple of things. things beyond tendencies toward you know horseshoe theory um and such that you know even even people

that call themselves socialists or whatever um you know the take that we need to work within the existing system and just kind of patch it up is is sort of my one of my big red flags um when somebody's like no we we can breathe new life into this you know um it's a flat tire that they're like well let's just hook up a compressor to it and and pump it back up Yeah, you know, and I would say, I'd also say that a big red flag for me personally is when I hear people talking about the insisting on the belief of the American dream, you know, that narrative and the platforming of like rags to riches figures are people who lack revolutionary energy, but they fit nicely into neat little like ID poll categories, you know, people like Pete Buttigieg or people like Barack Obama that. that they can lift up as being like, look, we are very smart. We are very progressive and do nothing in the process, you know, because these people check the boxes for them.

Yeah. Representation is symbolism. To them. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, and, you know, in terms of like the American dream narrative or the rags to riches figures, I mean, they don't make the media doesn't make movies. that are rags to slightly better rag stories.

Like, it's not a thing, man. Like, that's not what puts asses in the seats and sells popcorn. Everybody in America loves a, hey, look at the comeback kid. You know, everybody loves that shit. And that's the shit that we have pumped into our brain constantly is the idea that it's like, it doesn't matter where you started, you know, the rugged individualist bootstrap narrative plays out in media and were programmed with it so much, even in like cartoons and things like that. And that's that's why that narrative, that American dream narrative, that rags to rich as

narrative when everybody's got a fucking anecdote of, well, I knew a guy that came here with nothing, you know, or that's why politicians love to famously do that. My great-grandfather came here with fucking nothing. How many goddamn times do I have to hear a fucking politician sit here and tell me about his like great great uncle horatio that came here with nothing but like a hobo pack and and some dreams and shit and built a monopolistic uh corporation how many fucking times do i have to sit here and listen to this this liberal bullshit that justifies capitalism while we can walk down the street and see people starving and dying you know i mean um yeah i don't know i'm gonna go

on a rant so i'm gonna go ahead and cut myself off at that point yeah no i mean i i echo every all of your sentiments, and I'll just say a few more points, things that I wrote down as you were talking that I wanted to touch on. The tankie thing, great example, right? It's almost like an inverted form of authoritarianism for the left, for like the intra-left disputes instead of aimed outward towards an external enemy tankie serves the same function as authoritarian inwardly for the left. But it's even now escaped beyond those boundaries where you'll see fascists or right-wing conservatives calling people tankies now. so that that word has caught on and in fact there was a post like last week or something

from anti-fash Gordon who showed pictures of boogaloo boys you know they're trying to co-op this anarchist aesthetic and they have this they have this jacket that says like anti-state and anti-tanky right so that that rhetoric gets easily co-opted by the right you know what I'm saying look it up it's really interesting of that of course the boogaloo boys are I mean, nonsense, right wing. Oh,

yeah, no, we've had many a discussion about how the fucking boogs are not goddamn comrades here. Exactly,

exactly. So there's, there's that, just interesting, and it just serves that in, a similar function. I hope this,

I hope that that last piece doesn't mess up your, um, your interview next week with Jimmy Dorr. Yeah. Well, shit, I have,

I have something to say about Jimmy Dor later on the question. Oh, that's a very interesting thing. But, just a couple, a couple more things really quick. so talking about this propaganda and the use of like human rights violations or American national interest and this is something actually Jimmy Dore talked about

on his show which you know once in a while I do I agree with them like he makes good points sometimes hey broken clocks are right twice a day Brett yeah and he has this hypocrisy with his whole approach and shit but the Russian bounty story which we heard from mainstream media during the Trump era right because it's all feeding into we like to make fun of the right for their conspiracy thinking about the big lie about the election and QAnon shit but the Russia theory was conspiracy theories for liberals. It was a way to explain the Trump victory

without having to take account for democratic failures, without having to look at America for what it really is and how Trump is a genuine reflection of a huge portion of it and its history. So it fell into its own conspiracy thinking. It was the Russians that did it.

And they had the story where the Russian government, straight from Putin's desk, was offering bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan. Now, that was just a CIA leaked thing to the media that all liberal media picked up and ran with using these narratives of national interest and human rights violations. It served them at the time because Trump was in office. But they came out that that was completely false. And there was no good evidence from the beginning.

And now that Biden wants to pull out of Afghanistan, right, they're coming out and saying that that whole thing was a lie. So it's just very interesting how, again, that rhetoric gets marshaled in certain instances. You mentioned the Nazis being inspired by the U.S. They were directly and explicitly inspired by Jim Crow segregation, or how do we segregate the Jewish folks into ghettos before the genocidal extermination campaign. And then they took explicit inspiration from the indigenous extermination in North America for their own purposes of exterminating, this time industrially, Native America. Americans, indigenous people. And then after World War II, what did America do? We frame it as we fought the Nazis, not true.

I mean, we fought them, I guess, but it was the Russians and way more than just Americans, right? But what did they do afterwards with Operation Paperclip, they reabsorbed the Nazis. So they gave the Nazi intellectuals and scientists, different names, brought them to the U.S., where they lived out the rest of their very cushy lives, serving America's Cold War against the Soviet Union. So even liberals will buy into this thing, like, we're yeah well we support antifo because look what americans did we kicked their nazis asses why isn't that you know yeah that is not the yeah that is not uh talk about liberal talk about liberal revisionism man yeah yeah calling america anti-fascist uh calm the fuck down pump those i just wanted to offer a recommendation too

because it gets it a lot of the shit we're talking about um HBO max just released a show called exterminate all the brutes by raoul peck who was the author or the director of the young Carl Marx and I'm Not Your Negro, right? He did this four-part series called Exterminate All the Brutes that just goes through extensively from a materialist from a materialist point of view as well, because he is a Marxist. Who is that by? Raul Peck, he's the director. Exterminate All the Brutes is the series.

And me and my wife are on episode three or four. And it just gives a really clear-cut view of what America really is, how it really came about, and how modern-day fascism in the... the West broadly is a direct result of colonialism and the racism that it generated. Wow. I'll have to check that out. Thank you for the wreck, man. Yeah, it's really good.

And one last thing. Now all I got to know is know somebody that's got HBO Max. I'll hook you up after this. Yeah. That was, that was definitely an ask for that, by the way. And one last thing, just talking about the liberal mind and passive indoctrination and the idea of giving you ideas that you then. think are your own. It covers the nuclear slaughtering of innocent Japanese people in the show.

We talked about earlier in this show. And when you talk to a liberal or conservative, right, and you bring up this critique, like, hey, the U.S. did not need to drop one, much less two, bombs on innocent people, no doubt. And it was really just to flex to the Soviet Union and to the rest of the world that the U.S. had invested so much money in the Manhattan Project and developing this weapon. It wasn't not going to use it. And it wasn't going to necessarily use it against white Europeans. True. There's that element too.

And what will they say? They'll say this exact argument. Well, you know, if we didn't drop those nuclear bombs, then there would have been a ground war and a lot more people would have died. The ground war. Yeah. This is a perfect example of indoctrination where there's no study of the actual situation. There's no humanity as far as like would I ever accept a foreign government blowing up

me and my family, right? None of that. It's just this knee-jerk vomit out this argument that they've heard a million times and they feel as if they're vomiting out something that they themselves came to the conclusion to through critical thought and a real understanding of history. Right. It feels like intellectualism to them. Yeah. Yeah. And I just argue. I was heard people run that, run that experiment. Talk to a liberal or conservative in your life. Bring up this critique of this slaughter of Japanese innocent people and just see what they'll say. And I guarantee you eight times. times out of ten it'll be that exact argument yeah and and it also that also uh presupposes that an um the an american life uh is more valuable the the potential for the loss of an american life is more valuable than the guaranteed loss of life of of a japanese uh person and american military military somebody yeah yeah and and that is just uh an absolutely wretched uh um

wretched idea that if a liberal puts that forward, you you definitely directly need to hammer them on that point because that is a wretched, wretched perspective. Yeah, no, that's legit. Thanks for the perspective on that one. And so the third one, so this was a question from the community, going forward, these are, these are questions from the community, strategies for how to kind of counter those liberal talking points when we encounter them in our organizing circles.

Now, this I think is one of the hardest ones for me personally because it can take so many forms and it can be so subtle within interpersonal dynamics in organizing circles, but I'm kind of curious on your thoughts on that. Yeah, it's definitely tough. And one thing to say about many liberals, especially those engaged in organizing and activism,

they often come from a good place. Like these aren't, I mean, there are some like shitty people and opportunists and cynics and stuff, but for the most part, like a liberal person is who is actually involved in like a protest movement or trying to organize an event. They want to make the world a better place. They're coming from a place of good intention in their heart. And I think starting with that and not assuming cynicism on their part and not assuming that they should know better is important because, you know, for all of us to get where we are. I struggle with that a lot, man. When I hear that stuff in organizing circles, I'm just like, I do have that knee-jerk reaction to be like, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

And I have to fight that a lot because you're right. I do need to remind myself that like, not everybody is a fucking nerd on this shit like I am. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, and just reflect on how long it took you and what you had to go through to get to the understanding that you're at today, you know, and other people might not have had the access to a certain book or a certain mentor or certain. influence that you had and so not everybody had a brett o'Shea yeah well yeah or any other number of people that are wonderful at trying to communicate this stuff so starting from a place of humility

and granting them the benefit of the doubt from the get-go can set the tone of a more constructive conversation and then i would usually employ instead of this like barrage of facts or telling them why they're wrong i would employ a socratic method which is you know a method by which you approach the conversation through an open-minded questioning of certain assumptions that they have. And it can often even be set up through finding some common grounds. Like, you know, where do we agree? Let's establish that. And then now that we have this sort of common ground of giving each other the benefit of the doubt and seeing we're both coming from sincere places, let me just ask some questions about certain things. And it depends what the

topic is. I can't get hyper-specific because it can be so broad. But beginning with that, asking, you know, if a liberal is giving some talking point, asking whose interest does this talk, like let's break down this talking point. What does it mean? Who's advancing it? You know, what, if we're going to read it cynically, like the person that, not you or I, but whoever this, the third-party person that's pushing out this idea, you know, let's just assume maybe some cynicism on their part, whose interest are they serving? That sort of questioning, that line of questioning based in humility and decency will get you a lot further than ever trying to dominate somebody intellectually.

Because the moment that you begin exerting your ego, their ego comes to the forefront and now they're defensive. And they're never going to, they're never going to let you humiliate them or let you walk away feeling like I totally intellectually dominated that person. So I mean, you're just asking for that. whole conversation to fall apart. And then just more broadly, when I think about something like an issue, like a very popular issue on the left that there's so much disagreement on is the question

of China. And it's not even just like is China socialist or not, but this is like, you know, is China bad? Is there like the government bad? Is it do bad shit? And then here's a resource. Here's a source. This argument can go all day.

And this is on the left. But, you know, the question you have to ask yourself as well as others, because it really matters that you ask yourself this as well. um is how much do you really know about this issue you know because because your level of certainty and the aggressiveness with which you're asserting a position should be in proportion to your actual knowledge about it and that takes true honesty on your part to uh to to sort of gauge where your genuine knowledge is and then to be humble enough to put forward uh an opinion which you might have with the with the humility that that reflects a proportionate attitude and when it comes

to china you'll have some like 19 year old white YouTuber speak with extreme authority on a country they've never been to a country they've never read a book on a country from which they don't know a single person in their lives who've lived and experienced that and they don't know any historical perspective on it exactly and they'll they'll tell you what it's like to live a day in the life in that country. And I'm just using China because it's an obvious example, but it could be on anything. Right. And so beginning to just pick apart that in yourself and then being able to pick apart it

in somebody else. Like, do you really like, where does that source from? Okay, well, let's break down that source, you know. It's, it's an arduous process. It is. And there's some people that don't deserve that time and energy from you that are obviously never going to be won over or are playing the ego game and aren't going to arguing in bad faith.

Exactly. And so you have to, has to also gauge that and realize that that's not worth your time, but I'm assuming in many instances where a well-intentioned liberal is in an activist space, these conversations can be productive and you can find common ground. And you can plant seeds or you might not completely obliterate their misconception on something, but you can certainly plant seeds that later will blossom as they come across more and more information. Solid. Yeah. Now, great perspective. And like I said, that was something that I myself struggle with.

So I was mainly just kind of wanting to hear your perspective on that and to kind of, you know, for those that don't know, I mean, Brett is obviously not just, you know, just involved in podcasting and sharing information like that. Brett is, is a thorough organizer, does a lot of outstanding work in his hometown and in his state out there as well. So, you know, not to gas Brett up here or anything like that, but it's, I respect Brett not just as, not just for the information that he disseminates on these topics, but also because he is, is an organizer with Stripes who, who is organized cross tendency for, you know, many, many years and that kind of thing too. So, so when he's discussing this topic, that's, he's putting on his organizing hat broadly. And you can see that as he's discussing it, you know, how you can win, not win arguments, but win people over in terms of the arguments that you're making and things like that. So because, you know, if you are going to invest to the energy, thank you nowhere, lost in nowhere, if you're going to invest the energy, the emotional energy that it takes to get involved in an argument with somebody, you need to go into these arguments or these discussions rather with the purpose of trying to end it amicably and in a way that that person walks away with, you know, a positive perspective

on your, your attitudes towards it. And you can't do that by sending it up in a contentious way. And again, as Brett said, you know, this does not apply to people who are arguing in bad. faith. This does not apply to people who are just intentionally sea lioning or different things like that. Just trying to waste your energy and muddy up the conversation. You know, this is, this is assuming that this person is within your organizing circles and this liberal person is arguing in good faith and is genuinely maybe misinformed, but they are otherwise a potential comrade. Yeah. And face to face. I mean, you're not going to get this sort of shit on social media.

Right, right. All the algorithms and incentive structures are against good faith conversation. I don't even try. So, I mean, that's the place if you want to drop the elbow and be shitty and like dunk on somebody. Go on social media and do it. From the top rope, man, from the top rope. Okay.

And we are kind of coming up close to time here a little bit. Got about 15 minutes or so. So maybe we got enough time to kind of get through one more question. and we can kind of see how we're feeling after that in terms of maybe continuing the conversation another time or, you know, whatever you got time for down the road. But this next one is how can white people fight capitalists who are using racism to undermine solidarity? And then there's some additional, I mean, the racism or edginess of supposed, quote, socialist streamers or YouTubers, you know, media personalities and their vocal fans who somehow seem to be everywhere. So I guess the focus on this question would would sort of be people who are maybe masquerading as socialists or, you know, who are liberals with a proposed agenda that are actually, you know, spreading, whether intentionally or unintentionally, you know, capitalist propaganda and using racism or tropes or stereotypes as a sort of like edgy. subculture to attract other people to their particular platform or whatever it may be.

Yeah. So it's a tough question because it's highly dependent on the individual and exactly what they say and where they're coming from. One thing is for sure is that. Oh, sorry, it was clarified for me, aka sort of like settler socialists and that kind of thing. So yeah, and that's actually perfect because that's what I was going to get into is like there is this settler, you know, white chauvinism and an unexamination of bias and assumptions that it's just so easy to fall into in this society. Everything in this society incentivizes very lazy thinking on these topics. And so for you as an individual, if you really want to be a serious thinker about these issues, you have to do. the serious work of trying to deep dive on the history of settler colonialism, of white supremacy,

how it manifests in your politics, and how things like capitalism are intrinsically and inherently connected to colonization and imperialism. Colonization, of course, being the motive force for the generation of racism in the modern sense of the term, right? Anti-blackness, anti-indigenous, all these assumptions and biases that are so prevalent among white people, white settlers in the West, come from this historical process of colonization. And if you don't understand that, your analysis is starting from a point of ignorance.

It doesn't get better from there. And something like Exterminate All the Brutes, which I mentioned earlier, goes through the systematic analysis of colonialism, which if you're interested in learning more about this process, about how the process of colonialism generated modern racism as we know it today in all its instantiations and still lives on to this day in these racial divisions you watch the watch the show like that or do the readings of countless colonialist

decolonial thinkers which we highlight on on all the shows rev left guerrilla history red menace we talk about this a lot in fact the next episode of red menace is going to be on ame seser's discourses on colonialism it's really essential. that you do that work and you understand that historical processes and its relationship to modern racism. Now, having said that, that's what I'm saying for people who want to learn more, not make these mistakes. When it comes to white sort of streamers

or people on the left proclaiming themselves as socialist, basically engaging in some version of class reductionism where classes is set as in conflict with racial identity politics, that is an inherent mistake that can stem from, it does stem from a misunderstanding of what capitalism is and what racialized capitalism feeds on, which is the either divisions along race

or the attempt to not see color or to downplay the importance that race plays in modern society. And that second one can be generated in the center, on the liberal left and on the radical left. You see it all the time. The important thing, I think, is after you have that understanding of how capitalism is inherently tied to racism, how racism is and always has been a mechanism of dividing and weakening the working class, it can give you some ammunition as far as pushing back and arguing against those that would try to disclaim that. And on the right, they just divide you up by race and say, like, to their followers, like, this is fact. But also it's present in conservatism, like, you know, identify with your whiteness, not your class.

And you have somebody like a millionaire, rich boy, Tucker Carlson, the heir of the Swanson Food Empire, telling working class white people why the elites are bad, you know, or, you know, why immigrants are bad. Take your eye off the ball. Look over here. But in liberals, the way that this manifests on liberalism, right, we're talking about racism dividing class solidarity, is that. Identity politics is presented stripped from class politics. We're talking earlier about symbolism, about not challenging material realities, about relegating radicalism to culture. This is all a way that you can have the opposite of the right of the way that they divide

along race, but you can have it play into the maintenance of capitalism overall by stripping class struggle out of identity politics. And then on the radical so-called left, blah, blah, blah, socialist left, it's that reverse, where then the identity politics is stripped away and class is put forward as if you could have genuine class struggle without a deep acknowledgement and understanding of the role that racism plays in the maintenance and construction of capitalism itself and class struggle itself. So although there's different strategies in every little part of the political spectrum,

but the principled thing and the right answer, and I feel confident saying this, is the marriage of a respect and an understanding of the specificities of race and identity-based oppressions. It just is true that you have a different experience in the United States of fucking America. If you're indigenous or you're black, then if you're white, that just is a fact. And you do not serve the interests of any movement, much less the working class, by denying that reality or downplaying its relevance. And so by respecting and understanding the differences of identity-based repression and then marrying that to a class struggle, what you get is the ability to create solidarity across identities through class struggle, but with a deep recognition of the reality of identity-based oppression. So you don't end up dividing the working class by telling black people that their concerns aren't that serious or,

by saying the N word on a stream and acting like that's not a fucking big deal if you're presenting yourself as a socialist or the million other ways that this manifests on the on the so-called left. That just isn't leftism. That just isn't socialism. And it's not even anti-capitalism. It's white chauvinism dressed up as radicalism. And it will only ever at best be a form of liberalism.

Yes. Oh my God. The fucking claps. Oh, yeah. No, solid. Solid fucking take, Brett, fucking meaty. I know that you're, you're vegan, right? No, I'm not.

Oh, I thought you were a vegan. I was going to say, I know you're vegan, but that was some real meat, man. I'll allow for the joke. But, no, that was, that was extremely substantive. And I think that that's exactly what I and a lot of other. folks kind of needed to hear on that because it is so frustrating to see people who are radlibs, you know, pulling this energy away from real struggles and pretending that they're not able to, you know, do multiple things at one time. They got to be class reductionist, you know,

as if it's impossible to walk and chew gum at the same time, right? Like it's impossible to fucking multitask in terms of, um, in terms of, um, um, struggles and things like that it's maddening it's it's it's deadly for for our comrades for our trans comrades uh for our our our black comrades our indigenous comrades um out there and and it's obviously a huge huge problem within the the leftist quote unquote media landscape um you know you have uh people like destiny or vash you know that that wave a banner for all to see sort of regarding their like progressiveness or their proclivities towards socialism or whatever but but then are you know defiantly resistant to uh to taking guidance from from vulnerable communities for marginalized communities and and very often end up doing horseshoe theory themselves right and in the process uh they give ammunition ammunition and they give validation to these far right talking points uh regarding the you know that they can be weaponized against the very communities that these these media figures claim to care about right that

they claim to be fighting for or whatever um you know and and they end up just pretty much saying the same thing um you know they they eventually get to um you know all all roads through through that landscape end up leading to horseshoe theory um in a way you know again you know when they don't want to address the pointed critique i think i feel like we're like looping back here or something almost to the beginning of the the conversation it sort of comes back to when they don't want to engage with the pointed criticisms uh the materialist you know criticisms critiques uh then they go horseshoe theory they you know it's not it's both sides it's these tankies it's it's that kind of thing you know and and it's another way that

they are able to just do reductionism um and and they are able to dismiss the very real struggles of all of our comrades out there. And it's deadly. It's deadly to them. Class reductionism is fucking deadly. It leaves people behind. But the people that are saying it, the people that are doing it, it doesn't leave them behind because they have nothing to fear from the system. They will always be the in-group as far as that's concerned. But that was magnificently said, Brett. And, um, and that pretty much brings us like basically right up to time here. Um, one more point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, go off. Um, uh, yeah, I agree with what you're saying. And it fundamentally comes from a hubris rooted in whiteness. There's a, there's a lack of

humility that comes into these things when you're met with some solid, genuine criticism. And you could easily just set your ego aside, um, realize that you're coming from, you definitely have some blind spots and then work through that process to come to a better, fuller, more robust analysis, which actually helps the movement that you're pretending to be in genuine support of. And it's very easy to be very arrogant when you're a white guy saying that race isn't that big of a deal. And it's a great way also to make other white people feel good about them not having to put in the work to learn. And you could build a really big, lucrative white audience by telling white people

that this race shit isn't worth paying attention to. So it's certainly lucrative, but the negative thing is that it weakens the socialist movement. There is not going to be a successful socialist movement. If it is not radically diverse and it's a diversity

rooted in mutual understanding and genuine respect and that is the basis of real solidarity. And if that's missing, then the entire movement for a better world is you're going to cut it off at the at the heels while pretending that you're working to it to advance it and so it is a problem and it just takes humility it just takes the ability to stand back and recognize

where your limitations are and in strive to be a more knowledgeable person with a better analysis i mean it would actually benefit you in the long run if you did that step but it's it's not always as comfortable as saying you know fuck these woke whatever the fucks you know yeah yeah and And, you know, the biggest thing that stands out to me is the fact that these people, again, it's the community that they build and their community is a reflection of them and they build this community that does not, as a result of their own actions, their community does not take kindly to any type of mistakes or admittance that, admittal that you admittal is that a word uh any any any any admission that's the word I was

looking for I've had a long day man uh any admission that you uh may not know something you know or there you have to be the arbiter of knowledge of all things at all times once you build yourself up to be this person once you once the I you've you build this iconography for yourself this this you develop this um parisocial relationship with your community that they view you as some kind of quote unquote like leftist messiah or something like that you cannot be receptive to feedback and critique from people openly you might be able to do it privately but you can't in in the heat of the moment and in real time say you know what that is actually an outstanding point and i had never really considered that and maybe i have a lot of

thinking to do here because it could be that my perspective on this is completely wrong. You cannot do that when you've built yourself up to be this figure. And so they, they lay in a tomb of their own design. And the more that they do it, the more that they build themselves up to, to be this arbiter of knowledge, the more they have to live up to it as well. And it's, you know, exactly right. Yeah. so but hey man thank you so much um is it cool if maybe we like bring you back on and we we do like a part two to this uh since this is such a big topic let's do it yeah the next couple weeks uh we'll get on the text and we'll figure out one of the upcoming saturdays maybe not next week but the one after i'll come back for a part two absolutely because i have

i mean i have answers ready for the other uh the other half of this question so um we'll definitely do it again and for those that are wondering uh those answers are just actually off the dome because Brett keeps that knowledge thing on him. But no, Brett, thank you so much, man. I'm always really grateful to have you on and stuff and get to share some time with you and pick your brain and stuff. And do you want to just kind of remind everybody where they can find you out there in the internets?

Sure. Yeah. First, I mean, it's an honor and a pleasure to come on your platform and to speak with you. I always love speaking to you on and off air. You're full of insight, and you have a great heart, and that means a lot to me. And then if you want to find anything I do, you can go to Revolutionary Left Radio.com. It has all three of our podcast, Red Menace, Gorilla History, and Rev. Left Radio,

and you can find everything associated with the shows at that website. Hell yeah. Brett, thank you so much, man. I hope that you have a great evening. My best to you and yours, and we'll talk soon, okay? Love and solidarity. You too.