Rev Left Radio - War on the Iranian People and the American Mind (Workers' Lit & Rev Left Collab)

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

(recorded on 3/1/26) - Breht went on Workers' Lit as a guest! "The American ruling class is at war. Physically, they are at war with Iran, pummeling the country with unrelenting airstrikes, slaughtering civilians, and doing their best to make yet another nation unlivable. But they are fighting another war: a psychological war against every one of us. They are building a world of declining literacy, misinformation, confusion, and fear. Combine those two wars and you get an apathetic American populace even as its own country murders untold innocents Breht O'Shea of RevLeft joins Aysha, Jen, and Jacob to discuss these dual wars and how we can fight back." Check out more from Workers' Lit here: https://www.workerslit.com/ Make a donation to Socialist Night School via Venmo @OmahaNightSchool

Hey everyone, just popping me really quick to kind of set up the context of this discussion. This is me going on the Workers Lit Pod to talk about current events, the information landscape, the war on Iran, and lots of different topics. The conversation is organic, it's funny, it's open-ended, and we have a really good time. These comrades are our longtime friends at this point. We've collaborated with them many times. They used to operate under the name of the socialist shelf. So you've probably, if you're a longtime Rev Left listener, probably heard some of our collaborations in the past.

They've switched to Workers Lit Pod. And it's the same, more or less, the same group of characters. I think they reformed a little bit with some of their membership. But anyways, great comrades, wonderful human beings. And we have a wide-ranging, organic, free-flowing conversation on so many relevant topics. I also want to point out that I am recovering from a respiratory infection. So my voice throughout this conversation might be a little dry or give out a little bit. So I apologize for any congestion or anything like that.

I also wanted to remind people that here in Omaha we're running a second iteration of our Socialist Night School six-week program where, you know, last year we had 40 plus participants coming in once a week for six weeks, learning, you know, core elements of theory and practice from Union, the Omaha Tenants United, Free Farm Syndicate. I taught classes on historical materialism. And we just had a really great time and really a great success. We brought a bunch of different people from different organizations together. We provided free food and free child care. And we wanted to do it again. And we wanted to make it even better and refine it. And we've been doing that.

But we also, of course, need funding to make this as good as possible to provide that free food and the high-quality food and to provide free child care for the participants as we do. I think really crucial political education work in our community at this crucial time, no less. So if that's something that you might have some extra disposable income and would like to support with your money, I'll leave a Venmo to our organization in the show notes here. And you can donate $1, $5. Anything helps, just basically supporting a really good, I think, effective program that we've kind of created from nothing

and are now running for a second time in our community. we were really happy with the outcome the first time. And I think this sort of communal political education is incredibly important and I think ultimately effective. So if that sounds like something that you want to support and in these hard economic times, you are blessed with the disposable income to be able to do so. I'll leave the Venmo in the show notes. And we really deeply appreciate your support.

I promoted this one other time and the response was great. I think somebody donated $1,000, which just takes up. huge chunk of our fundraising goal in the first place. So we got a long way with that. We just have a little bit further to go to really make this the best six-week program that we can make it. So again, if you are so inclined, please help there. Without further ado, here's my wonderful conversation with the great comrades over at Workers Lit Pod. Enjoy.

So we had an entire plan for today. And we're going to still use some of it. But things are moving, unfortunately. history moving extremely fast. It will not be news to anyone listening to this podcast that the United States and Israel has struck Iran. They've struck Iran hard. Iran has counterattacked. And it is, I mean, we're now in a situation of significant war going back and forth. There's explosions all across the region. Numerous Gulf states have been hit both their infrastructure and also U.S. bases. Iran's supreme leader.

It seems has died as well as much of their military leadership, though they continue to fight on. And there's been promises from Israel and the United States for regime change. It is an extremely dark situation that everything I've tried to write about, I haven't quite been able to piece it together. So let's open the episode just by saying, fuck these people. And without further ado, I'll just introduce our guest here. we have Brett O'Shea returning to the pod from Rev Left Radio. Brett has been covering the beat of just people being the United States Empire being the worst for, I don't know, a long time now. Been in the game for a minute.

So Brett, thank you for being here. Yeah, thank you so much. It's been almost nine years since we started, been nine years now at the end of this month. So it's crazy how much time passes. And it's always an honor to work with you, good comrades. So thank you for having me. And also usually just on the book side of the podcast, but we have her on today is Isha Yufara. She's here to be mad with us.

Hello. Auditory medium, but we appreciate it. I have also waved bag, so it's fine. Well, folks, before we kind of get into the thick of it, I guess, to tell people we are recording the morning of March 1st. This is going to come out on March 2nd. So, you know, be aware of any kind of updates that have happened till since then, you know, we'll see. But the situation as it stands is, of course, back and forth, very fluid situation, all-out war, it seems, is beginning. And, you know, the best I'm seeing from our sort of pundit liberal class, if they're not outright supporting it, is saying, well, he should have got.

gotten congressional approval. Can we get some initial reactions? Yeah, basically the only, the only good responses really have been like Zoran and Ilhan Omar as you. Basically, they think it's just saying like this is they're like, I think the only ones, maybe a Rashid Taleb as well. Yeah. In elected government. Through the light of Islam.

Yeah. They see the situation clearly. Uh, well, I, I, I regret to inform you. Fox News this morning ran an article that said, The squad is cheering for the caliphate. To be expected. They're not, but sure would be cool. That's the, that's the new British, the new British dog whistle for Muslims is sectarian.

Oh, God. They've been using it a lot for the green victory. That it was the sectarians who brought them to victory. Yeah, but, you know, with, with the few exceptions that we've already noted, the obviously the Democratic ruling class, they don't have any problem with this in substance, right? They have these procedural grievances. They know that their constituency wants them to fight back in some way. The only way that they can fight back, like a Chuck Schumer, for example, is just to do this little rule-mongering, procedural whiny, complaining bullshit that just completely obliterates anyone even having to try to listen to him. Gavin Newsom tries to thread the needle between a more progressive stance and a Chuck Schumer dead in the water.

stance and just comes across as the first three sentences of his press releases, condemning Iran as the U.S. goes in and bombs and slaughters innocent fucking people. And this is the, this is the Democrats hopeful for, for 2020. It's all quite sick. And, you know, yesterday the overwhelming feeling that I had, even though as many on the, many on our side knew that this was coming, right? After the 12-day war last summer, there was no way that there weren't going to come back in, right? the whole point from toppling Syria to the genocide in in in Gaza to everything that the imperial apparatus has been doing over the last several years has been ultimately to get to the final domino regionally which is Iran so while on one hand we knew this was going to happen the overwhelming feeling that I had is just this feeling of like fucking dread and despair and repulsion at

this society that we live in not only run by the dumbest and most evil people that have ever been shit out on the planet, but also being surrounded by honestly like the majority of Americans, which are just totally apathetic. I mean, even after the Iraq war, I was hoping that maybe we'd have a little bit more punch this time. Maybe we learned some lessons. And in some sense, we did. But just like walking in a zombie land where people just go about there. And I don't even want to, you know, discourage people. I know regular people have a lot on their plate. It's hard just to keep your head above water in this society. But just the combination of insane, evilness with just soul rotting apathy.

I mean, it's just, it's, it's hard to, to be a thinking, feeling human being in this society. I mean, regular people have a lot on their plate, but regular Iranians and Palestinians have a lot on their plate too. And they got to deal with the shit. Absolutely. Yeah. The feeling that I've had is just that time is a flat circle.

Because like, there has never been a time in my life that I can really remember that we will They're not at war with the Middle East. Like, I remember, like, you know, I'm old. So I was, you know, in middle school when 9-11 happened. And, yeah, ever since then, it's just been, like, constant. Yeah. There's something, like, so surreal about having to just go about your life while this is obviously happening. My partner is, we're moving his dad this week.

And so he's, like, rebuild. building a porch for him. And so we had to go to Lowe's last night, like to get some more beams or whatever. And I'm just like all this stuff going on. And he and I are talking about how all this war and destruction. And, you know, people are just at Lowe's going about their daily business. And it's so surreal because like we still have to do these things. We still have to get his father into a home, right? But on top of all this, and then I was looking for actions happening in Austin to see if there was a protest or something. And I came across a group of people online. I didn't go down there. But there was a group of people at the state capital with Iranian

flags. And I was like, oh, cool. And then I scroll down. And they were like cheering for war. They were like cheering for regime change. So yeah, I don't I don't know. This country is. Yeah. I've actually been taken by surprise. I probably shouldn't have been. by how jazzed some of the diaspora is on this. And I think it's like because I'm, I'm Palestinian and that diaspora is extremely anti-American imperialism, has never trusted, you know, without, you know, there's a couple pic-meas who are, you know, Massad, basically. But it's like an extremely educated and extremely organized.

diaspora. So it really shocked me, actually, to see how many people are just like, no, actually, this is good. Yeah. Same with the Cuban diaspora. They're doing the same shit. Can I venture a distinction there? I think there's a huge difference. There's many differences, of course, with these diasporas. But in the Palestinian diaspora situation, it's always been, it's just, you know, Nakva and then dealing with the fallout of the ongoing genocide for decades and decades. With Iran and with Cuba in particular, there were, there were, there were pre-governments, you're right, pre-revolutionary governments that actually had a ruling class, an elite bourgeoisie, a national confidore class that benefited greatly from that state of affairs.

And so that creates a really reactionary strain in those diasporas down the generational lines in a way that in particular the Palestinian diaspora doesn't have. But yeah, the Cuban and the Iranian diaspras are very similar in that way. And that's why when people say listen to all Cuban voices or listen to all Iranian voices, I immediately tune out those ones. Yeah. And it's interesting. There are, yeah, there were there were people protesting for it. I mean, in Atlanta yesterday, where I live, on the belt line, there was, there was a pretty significant, you know, pro regime change. I guess I won't say protest rally. You know, they're not, who are they protesting, right? But there, there was, then there were protests against the war downtown.

That were more sizable. But, but still, you know, not significant enough to, shut down the city or anything along those lines. I wanted to note, though, because I think, you know, we are a podcast about the battle for the narrative, looking at how the narrative has been shaped. There's basically two angles on this that have come out that have been allowed to dominate the mainstream. There is one, you can be wholly for it. And that's, you know, Fox News is in the bag. A lot of people on, a lot of people even on the liberal networks are in the bag.

Of course, CBS is in the bag now. Or you can be of the. the Chuck Schumer position that we stated, which is basically saying, well, to quote his statement, when I talked to Secretary Rubio, I implored him to be straight with Congress and the American people about the objectives of these strikes and what comes next. Iran must never be allowed to attain a nuclear weapon. The American people do not want an endless and costly war in the Middle East. The administration has not provided Congress and the American people with critical details about the scope

and the immediacy of the threat. My prayers are with our brave American service members. So like, you know, that's the other, that's the other take that you can have, right? And then I guess there's the third, there's the third secret thing where you can, if you're online, you can say this is all about the Epstein files. Which is, you know, I mean, I should, you were saying something off mic that I feel like maybe would be good for maybe good to say again if you're cool with that. I mean, so it is about the Epstein files in that like the Epstein files exist in. service of this. So like this has been a neocon project for about 50 years. And the whole Epstein cabal of like Mossad and probably the CIA and that those people exist to make stuff like this

happen. So it is about the Epstein files, just not in the way that people are saying. Or rather the Epstein files are about this. The people who are willing to be pedophiles are also willing to murder children at a girl school. Like, you know, it's a, things don't have to be distractions from other things. I mean, that might, it might be in Trump's head. But the idea of like, oh, it's a, it's very newsbrained. It's very like everything is about my timeline on Twitter brain, you know. Also what it is is it, it's a reactionary conspiratorial stream.

Yeah. Where all of politics has to be understood through a sort of cascade of conspiracies and the attempt to cover them up, as opposed to any actual material analysis. Like you just said, I mean, this has been in the books for years and years and years. Every previous imperial adventure in the region has in some sense been tied to ultimately toppling Iran. And I think Aisha said it best about the Epstein Files. It's not that this is a distraction from what's going on. It's just that the Epstein Files reveals a global ruling elite who are engaged in these naked imperialist acts of aggression and mass murder.

And the people in the Epstein files are the people charging forth with this disastrous anti-human murder campaign in the region, but it's not a distraction from one thing or the other. And I think that's a very like sort of elementary school way of thinking about politics. But unfortunately, it's very prominent in part because of the epistemic crisis of late capitalism that are outlined kind of hints towards. Yes. And there was another mass shooting last night in downtown office. right at 2 a.m. when the bars got out, at least 20 people were shot, three dead plus the shooter. And it is the same problem. It is the same society that produces both of these things. And I think people, for some reason, have a hard time connecting that, that what we do abroad is the same thing that we do to ourselves here. And until more Americans see that and understand that this is all the same oppressive death.

and destruction, like, we're going to just continue this cycle over and over again. Yeah. Also, I think that, like, the big reason that everybody is so Epstein-pilled, Epstein brain, is that, like, the Epstein files are salacious. They're kind of fun to think about, you know, like, in a disgusting way. Because people always are, like, anything that's like, oh, sex perverts is way more fun to think about than, like, murdering little girls in Iran. And I think that there is a level of like, like the obsession with like ritual, sexual abuse in reactionary quarters is, I think, to exoticize violence and be like, we could never do that.

These Illuminati perverts are doing this. They did this for Satan. But we're, we don't worship Satan. So we're good. The violence we do is holy. You know that there's an interesting. line. You're right about like this sort of demonic obsession with this conspiracy about sex predation on children in particular, going all the way back and probably before the satanic panic of the 80s and 90s. Remember like just a few years ago there was this whole save the children thing from the reactionary right, the wayfair incident. Oh yeah. Stop grooming our kids. Like this is a long. Yeah. I mean, exactly. Pizza gate is obviously a great example too. This is this long boiling, simmering thing. But the huge irony of it all is when it's finally exploded onto the scene, it was their political tribe that was most directly implicated.

And so that that just creates continual cognitive dissidents that just further fragments the mind of the reactionary. It's all, it's all quite insane to watch. Because the truth is like, sorry to just keep going on about the Epstein files, but like the truth is that like sexual predation of young women is normal in our society. It is a normalized thing. It's not normal. It's normalized. Like, so there is this desire to exoticize it because our society is just obsessed with fucking young girls, basically. Yeah, it's, it's one of the many sicknesses of this rotten society. And, and I mean, in Iran now, at least killing young girls at this at this girl's school, that some people immediately jumped into our Instagram comments to defend.

Israel cannot, they cannot fucking, if they go one day without murdering a bunch of children, they will explode. Yeah, the opening gambit. They're like, okay, well, who's our, you know, biggest target, right? The, I, um, okay, yeah, so I was going through basically articles this morning trying to see, okay, is there anyone in the press, the major press that's condemning this? I saw, okay, to go through it illegal. I was trying to see if anyone was put, because, you know, let's put the, let's put the, um, you know, morality aside for a second, like, under international law and also under American law, again, like we, we do technically have laws about going to war, uh, illegal. So the only major, uh, the only major, um, publications that are using the term illegal very largely are the guardian and Politico and both of them are using it in quotes to quote, basically, uh, Politico used it to quote mom Donnie. Uh, and then the guardian used it to

quote like the guardian article was a little more like okay this maybe isn't great uh you know not not nearly hard enough but you know as left as i suppose you can conceivably go uh within that thing fox of course fully in board but washington post this morning says the hour of iran's freedom is at hand new york time new york times this morning iran got trump all wrong and they were like they thought he was he was weak a jc my my home town's paper consider iran's call for democracy through the Atlanta civil rights lens that was this morning. Oh my God. I mean, I mean.

And I read that because, you know, and it says, this is, I just can't believe. It's, it's literally just been 20 years since Iraq. Like, it literally is like nobody remembers further than two weeks. Like, everybody's like, oh, they're going to create like greet us as liberators. Mission accomplished. Like, I was, I was. I was like 15 when that was happening. And I, I like remember that and I'm thinking about it constantly.

And now people who were like, you know, fully grown voting adults just like it's like they've completely memory hold it. It's completely insane. And it's frustrating. In that AJC article, the headlines insider, the headers of sections are struggle for freedom is not limited to one generation and change in Iran is will be driven by ordinary citizens. which I do agree with, but maybe not in the reason that they think. The USA Today took a bold statement. I support regime change in Iran, but only when Congress votes for war. Heroes.

Heroes. And then this is interesting. CBS, I was actually like, I mean, kind of darkly laughing at this this morning. CBS, you know, after writing several op-eds being, or not op-eds, but articles, you know, being fully in the tank with this. We know Barry Weiss now running CBS. Not that they were great before. And then they showed polls on American opinions, their own polls and their own polls,

less than a fifth of the United States supports removing Iran's leadership by force just a couple days ago. And the same poll said more than three-fourths of the country would want their own elected representatives involved in any national security decision. and those same polls, they got asked directly, what if the only way to stop terrorists from getting nuclear weapons was to go to war? And a majority of Americans still said no. Absolutely.

Now, it's like 52% said no when they were asked like that, because that's a very, very misleading question. But even then, most Americans were like, fuck you. Yeah. You know, and that's not to say, you know, and Brett, you said correctly the start, and we were talking about there is an apathy. but it isn't it's an apathy it's not a it's not a war hungariness you know it's a we don't want to think about this we don't want to do this shit it's not enough it should be a burning anti-imperialism

but I do I do uh I mean to say it gives me hope it's not not helping any Iranians that the average American feels this way but it should be noted that they shouldn't we should not allow people to trick us into thinking that the average American has any interest in this right but it doesn't matter what the average American wants. And I think that's why they're not even trying to manufacture consent for this. They don't even have to go to the UN and have yellow cake or whatever anymore. Like none of it matters. Like I did see that there was, I forget their names now,

two senators were trying to force a vote on like a war powers resolution. Yeah, they'll probably vote on that on Monday. And Schumer and others were trying to stop it because they don't want to have to go on record to say that they support it because it's very unpopular. But again, it doesn't, it doesn't matter what the people want. They know that that's not who they represent and that it doesn't actually, they're going to do what they want anyway, whether or not they have public support for that. And that's why I think they're not even trying to pretend that it is popular or that it is

to protect people anymore. They just do it now. And to your point, I mean, let's compare and contrast the Iraq. war with this one. A lot of it's like maddeningly the same with as far as how the elites are maneuvering a little bit. But there's even like less of a selling point. Right. It's like they'll toss out some sloppy shit like WMDs. Even though Obama had the the negotiations already settled and Iran already totally agreed never to do to create a nuclear weapon. Then Trump came in and tore that

up. Then supposedly bombed their sites forever so they'd never be able to do it. And then six months later like they're about to do it any second again. It's just like all crazy making. but the popular support is different. With the Iraq war, you know, in the relative immediate wake of 9-11, and with their actual concerted efforts to convince the American population through their propaganda channels and also through these congressional hearings, that there were serious WMD stuff, and people were still pissed off about 9-11 and hurt and confused in all these ways,

there was actually a nauseating amount of popular support for the Iraq war at the beginning. Obviously, by the end of the Bush second term, people were completely fed up with it and there was a shift in our politics. But at the time, I remember, I was like a fucking teenager, like just like listening to like conscious hip hop and like protesting by myself in Omaha. And like, you know, people had like bumper stickers like, you know, stand behind our troops or in front of them. Like, you know, people were driving by just like flipping me off, honking, throwing shit at me for, you know, just being like against the war in general. And, uh, that has shifted. But what's also shifted in those intervening years, we've never.

never had real democracy. We've never even had a representative republic in any serious way, but there were still like these fig leafs of democratic procedure and like this basic sense that, you know, the Americans are rather dumb, but their basic wants do kind of get funneled through. That's been completely obliterated in part by the shift hard into like the Citizens United era, where even the fig leaf and pretense of democracy has actually just been completely dismantled. So now there's a complete disconnection from even the appearance of like representational politics and democracy from the actual policies of the United States, which has been charted empirically by like university studies, which show that there's a zero percent impact on what American citizens want and what actually manifests in policy. So there's less popular support than ever for this shit, but there's also less attachment to that popular support with regards to its influence on actual policy. and and I think yeah I just I think that's in part just this naked unleashing of money in politics which has always been there but has been you know ramped up in the past 20 years

I think too it's I I in no way am saying this to give flowers to Tucker Carlson because he's a fucking horrible backwards person but he did get Mike Huckabee to say something interesting the other day on his interview with Mike Huckabee who's the ambassador to Israel again no credit to Tucker Carlson horrible guy. He wants war at home, not more overseas, you know, but he, he, uh, a question he asked on basically, okay, you, you know Americans don't want war with Iran and yet you support war with Iran. And Mike and he goes, do you care what Americans think? And Mike Huckabee said, oh, well, of course we care what Americans think. And he goes, so you still want more with Iran. He goes, well, what Americans think don't impact foreign policy decisions. And, you know, and I mean, he also, Tucker also. got him to admit that he supports the greater Israel thing. Which like really, I mean, like, of course we been new, but like getting him to say it was crazy.

Yeah. He said Egypt, like all of it. Like, yeah. Speaking of which, Israel just officially announced they're cutting off all gas shipments to Egypt because they're worried they're going to run out of fuel. So, you know, fingers crawl. Is it true that Israel like dropped their initial bombs on? school girls and then we're like peace we did it. They're definitely still attacking, but it seems like their primary munitions right now

are having to be used on defense. Yeah, it was so funny because it literally is like, it's like you're at like the bar and and your bitch little friend like starts a fight with a bunch of big guys. And then as soon as the big guys get involved, he like runs and hides and you have to fight all these guys. Like that's literally what Israel doing that feels like. Well, and you literally have a situation right, where one of the. the aircraft carriers are closer to the coast of Iran launching most of the attacks. And our other

aircraft carrier is along the coast of Israel, basically absorbing strikes. And yet, a lot of stuff is getting through. You know, I'm not a military expert. I know, I know what I've read. So I'm not going to make any predictions on war or whatever. What I can say comprehensively is there's essentially maybe three countries in the world that have the power to match the United States Air Force in like a prolonged war. It's just a very difficult thing to do. That said, the, let's say, shock and awe of original United States strikes. One, Iran is a country that's able to do damage back. We're watching it right now. Two, the idea of, okay, you obliterated a country, you flattened it. It's over. There's a lot of countries that got through that phase, right? I mean, the DPRK had every building bigger than one, that, than two stories flattened. in the 50s and still is against the United States. I mean, like, Vietnam, they bomb the shit out of it. Vietnam was able to resist.

So it is a still, it's a still doable thing. I mean, like Yemen is another example. That said, we can't make predictions on where this war is going to go, but what we can make predictions on is it seems to, well, what I can say is it seems to me, and I'm pulling here from, you know, some friends of the show, including Vijay Prashad and Vincent Evans, who were saying that they, that, uh,

there are more it seems right now the u.s united states that the model now for regime change quote unquote is less regime change and more just like Libya or just like yeah let's shatter the country and leave it which is why you you're not hearing a lot about boots on the ground maybe there will be but what what do we think about that is it are we just in the era now of just like bashing a country and leaving it to die like no we don't care what happens to them at all in fact i think complete destruction and anarchy, at least as far as our ruling class is concerned, serves their favor. They can, you know, make a lot of money off of that. Yeah, no doubt.

I mean, their main preference would be like a total puppet regime. That's harder and harder to do. The lesson that the American elite has learned from Iraq and Afghanistan is not that you don't go in and destroy countries, is that you don't try to nation build them afterwards. That actually, functionally, it serves the interests of Israel and the United States just to have a Libya situation. just to completely decimate civil society, infrastructural society. Ideally, they would like for ethnic tensions,

like in Syria, to emerge and consume the country, de facto Balkanization. All these things would serve the Israeli Greater Israel Project and U.S. regional hegemony just as well. There is a preference for total regime control. I mean, they would love to pull the puppet strings of these societies, but they will definitely settle for it. And actually, from the American perspective,

they're not going to do, I think, boots on the ground and try to do nation building again. That's the one thing they won't. And what Trump is hoping is that they can go in, they can do these decapitation strikes, they can basically send the entire society into chaos, and then he can step back maybe after a couple weeks, maybe a couple months,

and before the midterm certainly, and say, see, this is not a forever war. I didn't do that. You already see Maga cult freak fucks talking about like, hey, if this is what this looks like, I'm kind of on board. If it's just like Maduro stuff and going in and decapitating governments and letting them pick up the pieces, that's not really forever wars. That's not trillions of dollars. That's not boots on the ground. So I'm kind of with it now. And I think that's going to be the attempt on the Trump administration's behalf, not to recoup the left or the independence, but at least to try to sustain some level of support among their own base. And another thing I wanted to mention is we're obviously in the very early days of this. This is not going to be a 12-day war. I think it's safe to say it's already regional in scope.

And I think all players are kind of slow-dripping their stuff at first, right? Like even Iran is not using their best stuff. And again, I'm no military expert either. But if you're going to have a more prolonged conflict, there has to be a constant thought of what do we have left, you know, how do we escalate things? You don't just shoot all your biggest stuff right up front and then have nothing after that.

So I think what we're seeing with Israel, I think what we're seeing with Iran is a little bit of like, you know, some strikes, some strikes, surgical strikes, precision strikes, shock and awe strikes, like on that elementary school. I don't know if that's a psychological thing or some sort of satanic ritual that they're doing

would they have to sacrifice children or just trying to. I mean, they're definitely doing a satanic ritual because a bunch of fucking psychotic evangelicals run our country. Literally, yes. But so, so, yeah so that's just one point and the other thing i wanted to say is just about the um the algorithm of it because we talked earlier about the apathy of the american people and you know reading through

this outline which we might may or may not get to in part or in full um you know there's a fragmentation of our media landscape now where it is jarring to realize that there are many people in your life friends friends family co-workers who actually don't get this stuff on their algorithm they might get a little thing here or there they might see a news flash you know, but they're not getting like, stuff that we're looking at when we open up our social media apps is not what even my wife is necessary looking at. My daughter is looking at.

I ask people in my life, hey, did you hear about the Iran War stuff? And there's a few people that said, what? No, what's going on? And it's like, holy fuck. That's new. I discovered this through like, so I have recently, like, warmed my relationship up with my mom,

but for a long time I didn't talk to her. and when I finally started talking to her again last year she basically had like not heard about Gaza like it had been like two it had been like two years and she literally was like oh did something happen like it was really and and like her daughters are Palestinian like my dad is Palestinian like and she

like she didn't know so that's like the level of people were operating at like scary Yeah, because it's like really, like, because she, she's not really online, so she gets, like, cable news, I guess. And she's, like, watching, like, but she doesn't, like, she's like, oh, I don't like news. It's all so depressing, blah, blah, blah. Sure is. Yeah. But basically, like, yeah, there is just, like, the only person, like, the only person with any sort of big following, who I have seen actually have a good take, as usual, has been Hassan Piger. And, like, but to watch him, you have. to go on Twitch, right? Which like nobody, like what is Twitch? Like, fuck you. Even I'm too, even, even I'm too old for that. I don't even know how to get on Twitch. Yeah, I, I will like, like, Twitch like literally slows my computer down. Like, Twitch is basically malware. Yeah. So fuck you, Hassan. I will not watch your stream. I'll just watch clips. I just,

yeah, the clips are great, though. I always, I watch his clips, but I don't even know what Twitch is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I've streamed on Twitch and I don't know what Twitch is. Um, so yeah, it's like trying to get any, any motion going on the left is really hard because everybody, like from the left, I mean, because it's, it's like, everybody is broke. Everybody is tired. Um, nobody has any fucking money on the left. So it's really hard to like, um, get breakthrough. Yeah. Except Hassan, his son phone the revolution. That's why we should have listened to when sarcasm just in case. no one's no we should have listened to the lady who was the former national chair of the libertarian party that emailed us to ask to come on workers lit to talk about her cryptocurrency that's why we should that's why we should have had her on so we could have been getting our money up for sure yeah when she emailed me I was like for like a debate and she was like to hawk my cryptocurrency

and I'm like fuck you how about you give us one million crypto yeah and then we'll have you on and then yeah for eight for eight million I will stop That was like, yeah, that one was crazy and also the guy that like runs TPSA in Arizona being like, do you want to have a principled debate? And I was like, do you want to like, never mind. You want to, I can't say anything I have in response to that. Yeah, do you want to suck my dick and balls? Yeah, exactly. I think it's, I think it's interesting too, like looking now, you know, because our original outline, if folks feel like I'm unstructured today.

And it's because we had a completely different outline. And it was primarily about something that's directly related, which is like disinformation, misinformation, misinformation, media literacy in the state of America, like the American media diet. Right. And like, I mean, some stats that I pulled for that episode that I'll just read now that I think are directly related, right? You know, I wrote Indiana University found that X the Everything app, which I'm referring now to is the Everything app blaze your glory. All hail Elon Musk because that's basically. it's called now. Which is interesting.

Less and less Americans are actually on there, but the pundit and journalist and media class, and highly on there. I literally think that's why there has been this idea that there's been a huge right word culture swing in the U.S. When there really hasn't been. Yeah. Like, because all of the, all of the politicians and all of the journalists are fucking addicted to Twitter.

So they just see a bunch of right wing bots constantly and think that that's like what people, but most people aren't on Twitter. Like, even before it fell off, Twitter had a very small user base. And it was all just like liberal elite capture. I mean, like I get more engagement on blue sky. Me too. Then I got on Twitter at the end. And I had way more followers on Twitter than I have on Blue Sky. And Twitter is, you know, purportedly like 2,000.

thousand times bigger than Blue Sky or whatever the math is. So, but, but yeah, they found that 0.25% of users on X the Everything app, Blazorio, Haley, on Musk was responsible for the proliferation of 78% of widely spread misinformation on the app.

And that the majority of these people were being paid to do so. Kideo Kojima was right. About everything, yes. All every, every time. Yes. The MIT did something with the Internet Society that found that fake news spreads 10 times faster than its measured but factual counterpart. And the same study found retractions are almost never viewed.

And when they're viewed, they're not taken seriously. The Guardian found that not only were teens primarily looking to TikTok for advice in life, including on things like mental health, education, like decisions that they make in politics, but searching basically. questions, at least half of the videos contain serious misinformation, and many were just not helpful. I want to add a lot of it was not malicious. It just wasn't helpful or was just wrong. It was just teenagers talking to teenagers saying the most salacious things. 77% of people say they have been fooled by AI content to later figure out it's fake.

I would add, these are 77% of people that were self-conscious enough to realize that they have been fooled. In that same survey, 93% said they believe AI images and video should have to say that they are AI, which is not the case. And then according to the U.S. government and its private partners own data, and I work in education so I can confirm this, from the National Center for Education Statistics, 54% of adults in the United States read below an expected sixth grade reading level, and 21% of adults are defined as definitionally illiterate. 64% of fourth graders in the United States do not read at their proficient level that they are expected to. So we are on track for it to get worse. And 44% of U.S. adults acknowledge that they do not read a book in a year. I would imagine the number is higher because that's just people who are willing to say, yeah, I don't read.

We really do need to do the episode on the book feed. We do have to do that episode on three-kewing and like literacy, like that we were talking about doing. because I think so often when I see people like, I see it like happening in front of my eyes where people just like completely misread something and then go off about it. And I literally think it's because they've been taught to like the way that like phonics, this is a whole different thing. But like there is a huge movement to push against teaching phonics and basically just teaching kids to guess what something says.

Like, that's literally how a lot of people were taught to read. And it's not like, I think, I don't think it's the main reason for misinformation. But I think that it's, it's literally had this huge contribution to, um, the lack of literacy in this country. I'd like to add, uh, at Grock, is this true? Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, that's the, uh, interesting thing is like every socialist revolution, right?

Like, so many of them throughout history, one of the first things they did is launch a literacy campaign and we always kind of thought well in post-industrial like capitalist western societies maybe we won't have to take that step but now it's dawning on us that late capitalism has returned us to the point that in post-industrial techno capitalist societies the first fucking thing that socialist revolution will have to do is raise the literacy rates back up to dignified levels um it is staggering it's an it's an attack on the public it's a long-standing attack on the public school system it's some of these you know stupid policies these educational shifts It's the overall just attack on the nervous system that is the modern screen-filled dopamine

casino environment that everybody lives in. It's all of these things at once. And it benefits, obviously, the ruling class in so many different ways. That's the exact sort of populace they want, especially as they shift to try to replace us with AI, whether they'll be successful with that gambit or not. It's still to be seen. But that's certainly the environment that a techno- oligarchic fascism, can rise and can dominate.

And I think we're seeing that. But the interesting thing there is that a lot of these elites are also brain damaged by the, like, look at Elon Musk. Look at the people on X. Like they're also brain damaged by their own creation. And so there's an interesting element there. Also the drugs. The ketamine doesn't help. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, the interesting thing is, yeah, I was going to note on that is it seems not all of them, but a number of them are, you know, drinking their own bullshit. Trump, I remember, he gave this interview after the, after the deportation of Camarro Brigo Garcia where he said, well, look at this. And he held up an AI image of him with knuckle tat that said MS 13. And the reporter said, well, that he has six fingers in that picture.

Right. Like that's. And Trump said, just say I'm right to that guy. Like that's what he said. Just say I'm right. is I sometimes wonder how much information Trump is getting from the ghouls around him that is fake. Like not not to be like Donald Trump is being used because he's also very evil. But like I remember that little moment when the reporter held up the murder of Renee Good.

And he seemed very uncomfortable by it. Like he, it seemed very like he had not seen it before. And he literally said, I don't like. to look at it. I don't want to look at it. Like, so I wonder, literally, and all the stuff he was saying about Portland, like it being a war zone, I wonder how much stuff he's being shown that is just not real. Yeah. Well, you can track literally what Fox News is saying and what he's posting about, too. Um, you know, that's, that's the interesting thing. A lot of the, uh, a lot of the, like, billionaire capture of media, part of it is, yeah, they're trying to control people's minds. But another part of it is

they are like performing for a very small audience. Right. Like, like we acknowledge, Elon Musk has taken over Twitter has killed a lot of its user base. I don't think Twitter has succeeded in driving your average person for the right. What it has done is like a, you know,

a sort of elite media pundit class has been driven further right by it. So there is that CBS. And now the Ellisons are taking over CNN, you know? Right. I mean, also like you see stuff like what's his face that, um,

that New York. Times reporter, Jamal Bowie, like, retweeting a white supremacist calling Hassan Piker anti-Semitic. It's like, what are we doing here? Like, what are we doing? And Gavin Newsom just retweeted Richard Honanilla, that guy. So, like, I mean, God, Gavin Newsom being like, I'm just like you. I can't read. Like, yeah, we know, buddy.

God damn it. It's something I think that we often, or like that we skip over when we're talking about this destruction of education and like the lack of adults being able to distinguish fact from fiction or fake news from AI from whatever. Also a big part of that is this school to prison pipeline. And that's so much of the reason why they don't even care to educate the children anymore, right? There is this big divide in education that even when I was a kid in the 90s, I didn't have words for it at the time

But like I took a test when I was in first grade That put me on a different tract And the tract I was on luckily I did well on that test And we got extra funding And we were pushed for to do more things I learned how to do research at an earlier age I got to go on extra field trips It was fucking great

And I didn't realize how different that was My brother Not a stupid person But didn't do good on that test right was put in just the regular tract and he had much worse teachers right and it's it's so much worse now since no child left behind since the bush era and the last two decades that there really is just we don't care if we educate these people we're going to put them in prisons where they're going to work for a dollar a day because that's the only types of jobs that we have available for

these people here in the states anyway we're either going to put you on a tract that's going to force you to go into coding or becoming part of the like intelligentsia or the tech elite or never going to replace all of you with AI. They're going to do that now. Yeah, they didn't have that when I was a kid. But it's either you're going to go on that tract or we're totally okay with keeping you illiterate and putting you in prison over weed and and keeping you for free labor. Because capitalism requires an underclass.

Of course. And that's always been true. So like in order for some people to be rich, some people have to be poor. Exactly. It's just so blatant now. Yeah. Yeah, they really, like, I think it's like, I've quoted her before saying this, but I think like November Kelly from Trash Future said they, you know, they always have had, you know, the deck has always been stacked, but now they're sick of even having to play. Exactly. That's really well put. And I also wanted to like mention as we're talking, like, make no mistake, the. The kids of the rich can still read, right? Right.

Yeah. Yep. They are, they have carved out a separate parallel society to our own. The kids of the rich are making the one new other Wuthering Heights movie. Yeah. Although I don't know if Donald Trump Jr. can read. That's a good point, actually. I'm sort of thinking of the kids of the rich and I'm like, hold up.

Maybe not. But, um, but yeah, like there's this public school. Like the first thing I would do if I was dictator of America, abolish private schools and make these assholes fun public education to the hilt so that when they have, to put their kids in there, they're getting the education that they want them to have. But the more they can separate them out, pay for their own schooling, extract their resources, whatever is even left from these schools to say nothing of the tax bases that already don't have them, they're going to continue to do it. And the other thing I was going to, I was going to bring up to you guys,

and I've seen if you all noticed this as well, on X in particular, since the strikes against Iran have begun. I have seen a radically disproportionate amount of like even just like the sloppiest Laura Lumer type cheerleading posts get tens of thousands of likes, right? Ted Cruz, Ted Cruz, who is usually shit on on X, you know, is off, his ratio to everything he says, comes out in support of this, gets 51,000 likes. Like in any one instance, you can say, well, maybe they just took off, you know, whatever, but I truly believe that especially now, as we've seen over the preceding months, this like sort of these Zionist billionaires entrenching and grasping on to these information streams across, you know, social media and mainstream media,

they're now really turning their leverage in this moment as much as they can. And on X, when you go there, the whole playing field is just so clearly tilted from even what it was a week or two weeks ago with regards to the numbers. that pro-Israel and U.S. stuff gets compared to the numbers that critics of this war get. It's actually startling to see in real time. When I was writing my novel, I have a section where when the rich people look out their window at the worst, when the rich people look out their window at the poor section of town, there's a filter and they see the poor section of town as being like a nice place to live.

And my editor was like, do you think this is too on the nose? And I was like, I promise it's not. Like that's like that's the love that's a level we're at. I love that you always find a way to drop that. Although by the way, please buy Jacob's book. You should. You should.

I'm poor. I'm broke. So as this fighting goes on, we have no idea how many people are going to die on either side. It is overwhelmingly likely that the majority of people who die are going to be Iranian because we know how fighting this kind of world was work. But there will be Americans who die. there have already been, certainly,

there have already been Israelis who've died. There's going to be people from other, you know, American aligned Gulf states. You know, I'm seeing some really gnarly images out of like Abu Dhabi and Dubai and Dubai. And there's reports of explosions in Riyadh. Multiple oil tankers have been hit. Now the oil refinery just got hit. You know, it's very difficult to keep up with.

We on the left, such as it is, such as as as splintered and as non-institutionally dug in as we are, but with people that do listen to us for whatever reason. You know, you're tuning in. We have to talk about the fact that like Iran has the right to shoot back. Like they just do. And it's it's it sucks. Right. Like it sucks to think about. I don't enjoy the thought of violence. I am not a

violent person. And yet we cannot we like we can't mince. words about this. Iran has the right to blow up American bases. They have the right to shoot back at Israel. They have the right to shoot back at any country that these launches are happening from. And it does not matter that Iran is not socialist. It doesn't... I'm gay. Right? I know that life wouldn't be great

for me in Iran. But if I was in Iran, my greatest threat right now would be being blown up by like whatever. So like, we need to like not mince words to. It's not just we're worried about the Iranian people. It's the Iranian state has the right to violence in a moment like this. And that's

We don't have to fetishize that. We can say, I hope every American soldier rebels and doesn't get hit by that. But we don't have to be like, I'm so happy that people are dying. But people are going to die. If you bomb an elementary school, I hope you're playing gets shut down. You know, I don't think that should be a crazy thing to say. Yeah. No, I have to, I have to, you know, of course, be sort of careful what I say, not just because of, you know, saying an inflammatory thing, but also, like, morally, like, I do have to consider, you know, the value of human life writ large, even out of.

even outside of the forces arrayed in this combat. And to defend our own humanity, we have to constantly sort of be thinking about the humanity of others outside of the political situation. And I'm not talking about necessarily soldiers. They signed up for it. But innocent human life anywhere is innocent human life anywhere. And we have to stay tethered to respecting that. But of course, Iran has every right to do that. I saw a clip.

A high-ranking military official from Iran was being interviewed by like an AB. NBC, NBC type thing. It was a guy and a girl host. I'm sure people can find it online if they haven't already seen it. But they were just kind of like asking him about, you know, you've already like bombed some American bases.

And we just like, they were kind of like confused. Like, you know, can you like, can you come out and say that you guys will stop bombing American bases? And like, or like kind of like, why are you bombing American bases?

Like that's not right. And the guy kind of laughed. He's like, you're bombing us. Like you are literally bombing us. And so we're, bombing you back. You see how this works? And these two like dead-eyed, soulless little corporate media suits were just kind of confused by that. It's just like startling to see it. Even in a literal war, it's like, hold on though. Our guys are precious.

Like, you can't actually bomb our guys. And it just shows this sort of insanity in the American mind. But yeah, Iran has every right. And I hope Iran wins this war. I'll say that. Like, I truly believe this is a war of aggression on behalf of Israel and the United States. U.S. in pursuit of the Greater Israel Project on one hand and on pursuit of U.S. regional hegemony on the other. And in pursuit of that naked political imperialist and colonial ambition, they are willing to murder and slaughter men, women, and children indiscriminately. We've already seen Gaza genocide. We've seen Israel attack six, seven of its neighbors. Iran has every right to defend itself. And they are literally being victimized here. they are being aggressed upon and in the same way that I wish and I hope that Palestine wins when they're fighting back aggression from Israel. I hope Iran wins with this with this thing. I've come to

call the U.S. and Israel. We all know that they are now officially, basically rogue terrorist states. And the true legacy that Israel and the U.S. as an alliance and a singular entity carry forward is the legacy of the Third Reich. And I call the U.S. and Israel the Fourth Reich, equipped with a genocide, equipped with Laban's Rome and equipped now with a sort of insane drive to take over the world and possibly create the preconditions for World War III, right? A small mistake. We saw what happened. What set off World War I? An assassination of one guy going up and popping a king in Serribejo or something. I forget the exact details, right? Arch Fernad. I forget the details. But that set off World War I. And so now we have a regional proliferation, you know, a regional war already.

And any miscue, any little escalatory ladder can easily possibly lead to World War III. And there's an argument that we're already in it. Russia, Ukraine, Pakistan, Afghanistan, total regional war throughout the West Asia, continued colonialism and resistance to it in Africa, attacks on Cuba, attacks on Venezuela. Like, okay, if this is not World War III, like this is the precipice of it. So this is the 21st century Nazi plague. And the only way it can be defeated is the same way the first one was defeated by the world coming together and putting it down. And that has to happen or else we are being ushered into a hellish future where the U.S. and Israel dominate not only the region, but in but large parts of the globe.

And that is unacceptable on a human level. Yeah. Yeah, I, so not to bring up Hideo Okuima again. No, you should though, it's relevant. A video game writer. So, sorry, I'm going to spoil Metal Gear Solid for you, listener. So just mute this if you want to play the remake. So like in Metal Gear Solid, they're always fighting against something called the Patriots,

aptly named, which is, everybody believes this to be like a cabal of powerful men who are like instigating everything. But when they discover, when they finally get to the Patriots, they find out it is like a completely autonomous AI sort of. And it is just a endlessly replicating machine that has been designed just to create the conditions for more war. So it is, you know, the military industrial complex. It is capitalism. It is a thing that has been put into motion and then just keeps going, kind of without any propulsion. from any single actor. And I feel like that that, I mean, he, this game came out in like 2009.

So like this, I think, I don't think I've ever seen a better like fictional encapsulation of like what the war machine is. And of course it's called the Patriots, which is like, you know, what we love to call our, our brave boys. Yeah, but like that's what I just keep thinking about. I just keep thinking about the Patriots and like that we've. created this machine that kind of just will keep running unless we stop it. Yeah. And, and, you know, to not, you know, if you want to get like theoretical about it, like, that's the math of imperialism, right? If you, if, if you need the line to go up, the line of profit to go up, and the line of profit is not going up based on the conditions

in your country, you can squeeze down in your country, you can do layoffs, you can do all that, but you also need to seize what's beyond you, need to seize things you don't. have that's not to get things that you need it's to get things for the profit drive it's the that is the inherent math that led to you know that that that's why world war one happens why world war two was able to happen um and and it's it's that that that's the fundamental that's the fundamental logic of imperialism and we talked about hyper imperialism with v j prashad like a month and a half ago it feels like a year ago now uh when we talked about venezuela right um and i and i think and I think it's worth noting too.

I mean, I wrote a little bit about this on our social media. Marco Rubio gave a speech at the Munich conference. It's been less than three weeks, which is crazy. It feels like a long time ago. But he gave a speech at the Munich conference a few weeks ago. You know, in Germany, speaking to all the European powers and a few of you, like, critical Asian powers were there as well, like Japan, South Korea.

and it was a lauded speech. It got, it got, people were on their feet applauding the German minister of defense, things like that, because they were like, oh, thank God. And he said in that speech, first of all, he talked a lot about Western civilization, talked to how Christopher Columbus saved the United, the Americans with Christianity, you know, all that bullshit. But he also throughout, he said all the European countries have to stop apologizing for their past and their purported sin of colonialism. ism. He called anti-colonial revolutions godless in that speech. Numerous things like that. But he, in Germany, you know, to reference Brett's point, said, stop apologizing for your past. Remember your like holy tradition and help us in this grand battle for the West. That's not an act. I'm not crazy. He said that. You know what I mean?

Like, you know, you can, like, he didn't say, by the way, with the exception of the Nazis and the Italian, like, he didn't do that. You know, not that, not that any European country should get off the hook. Yeah. But Jesus Christ. That speech got very overshadowed by Mark Cardi's speech, which everyone sucked his dick about. Yeah. But for me, it was extremely just like he admit it. Yeah.

Like, he, he was like, wait, we all had like, we're, we're supposed to be in the club. we're in the oppressed the global South club you're not supposed to come after us and I have noticed that over the last couple days I have not I mean I've seen a lot of people be against the war and I've seen a lot of like you know but I haven't seen the level of like America is going to be hated across the world

like how could America do this that we got from Europeans while when we were threatening Iceland because to a lot of people this is bad, but it's kind of fine because it's normal because it's happening to brown people. And we're not, we're not threatening our quote unquote allies. And that just, because I got, I got real lit up by people calling me a stupid American when I was like, hey, you know, where was this heat for Gaza?

Where was this smoke for like America is going to be a pariah state? And people were like, oh, this has nothing to do with Gaza because you're betraying your allies. And I got a lot of smoke for that on blue sky. And I was just like, all right, well, whatever. I guess Europeans, you know, when we threaten white people, it's different, I guess. Yeah. Well, in Canada, by the way, endorsed this action. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. And Kier Starmor put out a statement saying he supports it. Because, you know, we got to have the whole club. Because that guy is a fucking ghoul. Well, yeah, so it reminds me the famous quote by Franz Fanon. Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster. in which the taints, the sickness, and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions.

And that's what Phonan is critiquing is what Rubio is lauding as the actual Western civilizational tradition. The irony, of course, here, in the same way that MAGA is the acceleration of American decline under the banner of renewal. These reactionary Western sieve freaks are the decadence, the degeneracy, and the decay of Western civilization that they propose to combat, right? Oh, yes, things that have never happened in Europe. Yeah, right. War. Exactly.

So, you know, to kind of bring us back around to, I won't say something hopeful, but to construction, to what is constructive. What is to be done? Yes, what is to be done? First, I guess I think how we need to finish out this conversation now is to talk about like what now. What is our task now? We've said some of it already. And I think the first thing I can say is just speak truly and plainly about what is going on. Do not obfuscate.

Do not say, do not, do not be mealy-mouthed. Do not be weak on this. Be very clear about what's going on. That's the first, that's the first thing. Be loud, be, you know, be unafraid. But what next? And I would love, I mean, any of you all are welcome to respond. But, you know, I mean, Brett, you've, you've been, you know, you've been on this beat for a while.

I mean, we've all, we've all been covering this stuff for a long time. But, but, but I would love to hear your thoughts, especially on this. Like, what, what, what's next? Because, like you said, this apathy is so sickening. What, what do we do? Because, like, as much as I went to, I mean, like, you know, went to the protest yesterday, right? It's awesome, like a couple hundred people there. It's awesome that a couple hundred people turned out on a busy.

Saturday in Atlanta where the traffic was so bad. And yet like, Jacob, have you considered that they should just vote blue? Good point. I don't want to discourage anyone from protesting. I'm not. I was there, right?

I support it. Do it. Talk. Like I said, that the first thing we have to do is speak plainly about what's going on. And massive respect, especially to PSL Atlanta that was able to like within like six hours call a protest and get it,

get it in the street and get sound and everything. That's great. But like, how do we stop? this shit. Yeah, I mean, same with here, chapter PSL in Omaha, did the same thing in a similarly short

amount of time. And, you know, God, God bless them. We, you know, that's the least we can do. Um, showing up, showing some presence, showing other people that drive by that there are people that are thinking, feeling human beings in this God forsaken society. Um, I have to, I,

I do believe that the energy, the latent energy, um, in, American society has been boiling, has been simmering. Most people hate this fucking government, not just the Trump administration. They hate the fucking elite. I work on construction sites around blue-collar guys all day long, and there's a fuck ton of opinions that are just, you know, all over the fucking map, good, bad, and

ugly. Every single one to a person believes in some sort of violent revolution against the entire ruling class, right? They understand, and this might be a function of. their unionism, but they understand the corporate dictatorship that we live in. There's still, and many people are still prone to conspiratorial thinking. They're still, they're still lured by reactionary thought. One thing that has happened, though, and I'm sure we've all noticed this, this cultural

swing between the left being kind of ascendant and then the right being ascendant. Like during Trump's first administration, you had the ascendancy of a sort of left populist energy, protest movements, George Floyd protest, right? Then there's a reaction to that, which is just dialectics, this is always going to happen. A reaction to that. Biden comes in off that wave in some sense, unfortunately.

Then you have the ascendancy of right-wing culture. Now all of a sudden the podcast bros are interviewing Trump. And now, like, Biden and being a liberal is seen as, like, stupid and cringe and it's actually based and cool to be like unapologetically pro-Trump, right? But then Trump gets into office

and like, oh, this fucking sucks. too. And so we're on this wild pendulum swing. So now we have a reascendant left wing, right? What we saw in Minneapolis chasing out ice. You talk to regular people across major cities in this country. They all hate Trump. They all lean sort of left. And what that... You have people like Will Stancel being like we should push Chuck Schumer out of a window. There you go. That's an example of the pendulum swinging, right? And but, but, you know, almost certainly what's going to happen in 2028, the Democrats are going to run. fucking Gavin Newsom.

America's going to be so fucking sick and tired of four years of Trump. They'll vote for literally a pile of shit on the sidewalk. Then the Democrats will take that as just a proof that their corporate centristism is the path to victory. And there's like a sort of doom loop that we're kind of stuck in. But while that doom loop happens, conditions get worse. Wars explode. Economic crises emerge. And dialectically, that produces an awakening in the population.

Palestine was an awakening. George Floyd protest. BLM was an awakening. Fucking Standing Rock was an awakening. This ice protest. These are all little awakenings that radicalize certain percentages of the population, get them into certain milieu where they might end up listening to a podcast like this or reading one of the books that you and I read.

And there is that energy that builds up, but that energy has nowhere to go. That energy institutionally hits the dead ends of the firewalls of the Republican and the Democratic Party. but those parties themselves are being ruptured from underneath by their own constituencies, right? You mentioned Tucker Carlson earlier. Hate the guy, right? In a lot of ways, he's a piece of shady reactionary, ghoul, all this stuff.

But he is playing an interesting role in the right. And he is sowing the seeds of division. And Candace Owens. Yeah, and Candice Owens, right? Really a Looney Tunes character in so many ways. I watched some of her stuff just out of pure amusement. I'm like, wow. My dad was like, yeah, she's crazy, but she's really hot.

but but they're serving the role of like splitting um the the the maga coalition and what is maga after trump is jd vans going to come and put it together hell no jd vance's career is over i truly believe that by attaching his fucking um career ambitions to the declining trump uh ship he is sort of ruined in in a lot of ways i'm of the position that when lenore first called him just dance vance his days were over yeah you're you're totally right uh bret because also like, and we saw this happen in 2020, right? We saw just Bernie being in the race pushed all of the other candidates to the left. And I don't know, like people like, you know, Senate races or House races in Illinois are like not a big deal.

But I watched the debate that Kat Abu Ghazala did with the other candidates. And they were all agreeing with her positions. They had to. Because she was like, we need to abolish ICE. We need to, you know, we need to put all these people. in jail. We have to, you know, we have to destroy the ruling class. And all of these guys, they had to agree. And they did. When they get, when they get confronted with this, you know, even if they're lying, which they, they are. Yeah, which they always are. But like, but they are forced to,

by there being the very existence of any kind of organized left movement, like forces these people into concessions. And of course, they will try to force us into concessions in, in back. But you're absolutely right. Like, this even being in the conversation is extremely dangerous. Right. Because I know that people, like, people call this incrementalism or whatever, but like, the thing is we do not have the, we do not have the underlying infrastructure for a revolution in this country. Because if you're going to have an uprising, you need someone there to take over. Like, if we had a robust leftist party, we, there could be some, you know, something motion in that, but there just isn't. And what we, what we need to do is right now, the state, we can. can't jump to violent revolution. We'd get fucking slaughtered. We don't have, like you

just said, the institutional power, the dual power, nothing like that. We have to take it step by step. And part of that... Also, war sucks. Civil war sucks. It's horrific. My father lived through the six-day war, and he lived through two cultural, like, two civil wars in Jordan.

And, like, that's, that shit sucks. Like, I know that there seems to be a lot of, like, leftists, like, fantasizing about, like, a civil war and, like, a revolution. but you don't want that. Not in the way, not in the way like that,

not if there's no plan, you know, not if there's nowhere to take over, not if, like, violence for violence sake is not, is not purifying. There's,

you know, that's not a, that's not a good thing. But yeah, Brett, I finished that thought. Well, I was going to say,

like, you know, what did all the revolutionaries that succeeded do? What did Lenin do? It wasn't just 1917. It was decades of work building up institutional power.

And in the U.S., until there is total fucking collapse, the electoral realm is going to be a, a key decisive terrain of struggle. And it's not necessarily that we're going to like, oh, vote a blue no matter who or even run a third party, though those might be emerging, you know, dynamics that occur. What the left needs to do is like the left, us, the left, the real left, is we need to sort of solidify our forces and become a power base in society that at first will only be able

to sort of influence the broader left politics. I think we're already seeing that. I think Bernie was an emergence of that. and we have to continue to build our institutional power. We have to continue to organize on the grassroots level. Join a union. Always join a union. You know,

I'm in one and my God are the contradictions everywhere. Like unions are not. I mean, they've been fucking neutered and co-opted in so many ways, but there's still a sort of baseline trade union consciousness that is more progressive economically than the average American, I believe, you know.

And even these dudes that I work with that might have right-wing or conspiratorial social and cultural views, they all, to a person, have like left populist economic views, right? The union has at least taught them that. And true, real true left power can never succeed without a significant chunk of the organized working class. There's no way around that. And there's a way in which the trade unions are the labor aristocracy and they've carved out a pretty comfortable life for themselves. And they're benefiting from the construction of data centers and all.

All these things, those contradictions are true, but still that is a necessary thing. Because as Marx told us, if you're going to fight capitalism, which is an economic system, you need economic leverage. And the only class and force in society that actually has that in any meaningful way is the working class. We're all workers, but we're scattered, right? We're not organized as workers, right? We're organized as leftists in our communities in many instances, but we're not organized in a lot of ways as workers.

So we have a lot of fucking work to do, but there's no reason to despair. If the Palestinians are still fighting, you know, if the people in the global south throughout the global south are still fighting, indigenous people are still fighting, what fucking right do people in the, you know, relatively comfortable people in the Imperial Corps have to despair and give up? Our lives are going to be struggle. That is the human condition and that is our historical moment. And so we have to build institutional power. We have to organize. We have to try to win over workers. But again, as this system fails, more and more.

more people start looking for alternatives, we got to be there with our arms wide open. Right. I've been seeing it actually in my industry. Like I'm, I'm a, I'm a video game writer. and the video game industry is collapsing. Like, about like a third of the entire industry has been laid off in the last couple years. So like there is just like, I've seen a bunch of people and there's a union effort now. And there's a bunch of people being just like, well, I don't have a fucking job. I might as well, you know, start organizing. I might as well. There is, there is no industry to be blacklisted from anymore. So everybody is kind of being like, this is actually bullshit. Like maybe we should. And that's kind of how, that's kind of, I think,

how union efforts happen. Like, like, conditions become so intolerable that the, the, the, the conditions sort of overwhelm the fear. Yeah. Absolutely. I, uh, something that left me feeling hopeful. Two days ago, we watched this documentary called 1917, one year, two revolutions. It came out in 2017. I'd never heard of it before. We just kind of stumbled across it. It has a bunch of archival footage that I've never seen before from the Russian Revolution, some really cool, you know, shots of linen, and it was all colorized. It was beautifully, it was very cool. Now, disclaimer, it feels like the director was kind of a trot. So, go with that.

But the point of it was, right, that it wasn't just the October revolution that we think about, but it was all of this building from the decade before and even from February of that year, that first time they went and took over the White Palace,

and then all of the, everything that happened between them, them trying to build this parliament and trying to use all of the different factions and how that fell apart. and how the Bolsheviks kind of had to take over and really like put their foot down and be like, this is what's happening. This is how we're going to do it. Besides the fact that it was just amazing to see this archival footage, I found it to be really hopeful in understanding that this struggle is a long struggle and that there is a lot involved in it.

And it's not just, you know, kill the czar, take over, la da, da, everything's great. but like there is so much they call it struggle for a reason and I definitely would recommend watching that if anybody it's it's only like an hour long short it's a French movie but it's dubbed over in English anyway I just found that there's a lot of stuff that you have to do before you can storm the Bastille unfortunately there's a lot of work to do yeah yeah I'll say to another thing that I've been reading about in some some length is the Cardinalian Revolution in Portugal, which didn't create, you know, a, you know, like socialist society or anything, but overthrew a dictatorship and, and ended several, helped end several imperial wars. And unfortunately, and people call the carnation revolution a bloodless revolution, which is completely incorrect because bleeding was done in Africa. The dying and bleeding was done in Africa.

And the defeat of these, these imperial forces of Portugal is what drove Portugal into a revolution, right? And I think that is also something for us to consider as these wars happen overseas. We need to be agitating among the military. We need to, we did an episode on William Gibson not too long ago with Trevor Strunk. And we made the point that William Gibson said he for a while pretended that he was a draft dodger because he was an ideologue, right? And we were cracking up because in a 2008 documentary, he finally admitted, I was a draft dodger because no one would sell me good weed if I was in the military and no women would date me. Like it was just like that in 1971.

Hey, whatever it takes. Yeah, we should make those conditions again. And you can get any pussy if you, uh, being imperialists. Yeah. That's also an important thing. Make it, make it a pariah. Make it difficult to be in the military.

And if you are in the military, do what you got to do to make it not work well, whether that is, you know, uh, consciousness objection or something else or I hear people were like flushing shirts down the toilet in the Gerald Ward to like make it like literally whatever whatever it takes you know yeah it's a it's a far cry from fragging but but you know we'll take what we can yeah i also both you know pooping yeah i also think like i know that a lot of people are pretty cynical about zoran just because you know he's not going to be perfect but the fact that his campaign worked against all of the uh Islamophobia against all of that money

and that like he could get a bunch of people who are primed to be very Islamophobic to vote for him by just being like, hey, I'm going to make stuff less expensive. Like that is, I think, indication. And he's like the most popular politician in America right now. Yeah. And like there is such an appetite for more of that.

And I don't think it's just because it was New York. I think it can work everywhere. The latent energy is, is the latent energy is searching for an institutional outlet and when you provide even an imperfect one it floods into it and with with zoron you know the thing that bothers me with zoron is when he starts talking about foreign policy and geopolitics you know that's what they always mess up um but when he's just talking about like policies in new york to help new yorkers i mean he's killing it and he's actually so far delivering on a lot of these promises in a way that even i'm kind of surprised by again

domestically i think there's a lot of political education that needs to be brought up on the internationalist front. Like we can't talk into these imperialist narratives about Maduro's a dictator. And it serves, it does not serve our movement. It actually, in the long term, weakens our movement to talk like that and to grant that ground to the imperial apparatus. But again, you're a mayor of New York. You don't even really have to talk about that. If you're not comfortable doing that, just talk about what you're doing in New York City and keep it moving in that way.

But again, there's also a way in which, you know, I'm a very certain sort of market. who wants this sort of analysis and I'm asking for perfection where it can't emerge from quite yet. But yes, Zoran like Bernie before him is sort of a step in the right direction that we have to build on. And I'll give him credit on his Iran statement.

It was unequivocal. And that one, he was decent. And he also said that like Iranian citizens, like you're a part of New York City and we're not going to have. And that is meaningful. And that is meaningful. It's important to keep in mind that like

a Muslim guy who looks the way that he does has to move in a way that a lot of other people don't. Like he and like I know not not to like make excuses for him for him for some of the really like shitty things that he said. The snowball thing was so stupid. Well we fixed the statement. It was crazy.

We put it on our Instagram. We fixed the statement. Go and go check it out. We made some adjustments. But to like, yeah, I think there are ways that you have to move when you're a Muslim. and you have a name, like, for instance, Aisha, that you, you, you can't. Like, there's certain things you just can't say. Which is why I think, you know, let's keep building institutional power and to make a society where there are certain things you can't say on the other side.

Let's make it, let's make it impossible to say you one of one. Let's make it say so that you just can't be a white supremacist. Right. You, you, if you say shit like that, you should be afraid that somebody will come kick your ass. Yes. Yeah. And like, let's, let's be unapestable. apologetic about that. And just because we are not in a position right now to, you know,

uprise and overthrow the country doesn't mean that we need to be afraid of being like, no, like you people are going to get your teeth kicked in at some point. I think I think we have to also not be not fall into. We need to say that like there is a difference between good things and bad things. Yeah. I think that that so many of these statements, especially like the conversation around Gaza really does turn into that drill tweet that's like the wise man bowed his head and said there's no difference between good things and bad things you fool you fucking idiot like because like so many arguments just evolve into that it's like no some things are good like there is like we

talked about the hunger like the hunger games episode is coming out this week that we talked about and like she I know that the author has said that like she wanted to write a story about where when violence is justified. Like there is, there are times when, when certain acts are justified. And it's, it's not always like, you know, there is a difference between good things and bad things. Yeah. I want to just quickly say, too, thinking about historical analogs, I think it is worth studying the original Gilded Age, the late 1890s, right before the progressive era and eventually the

new deal for all the criticisms we have of that entire period. all the racism and all that stuff. That's, I think, the most analogous time in American history. And it is this country's own history. So I think there's something even more prescient to be learned from studying that. That was the rise of the communist party's heydays, right? Like the 20s and 30s, that was the rise of the IWW, the wobblies in the 19th teens. You know, and it was presaged by this sort of interestingly coming from Omaha, Nebraska,

this prairie populist party that had their first ever. convention right here in Omaha, Nebraska gave rise to figures like Williams Jennings Brian, who played a very similar role to that era that Bernie Sanders placed ours, even in his defeat. By the time he was out of politics, the Republican and Democratic Party had taken on board so many of the very policies that he introduced and were seen as radical at the time. And so eventually that culminates in the New Deal. I'm not saying that's exactly how it's going to go now, but particularly at the rise of militant unions and the rise of a communist party, that was two decades after the 1890s, which was the age of the robber barons and the

gilded age, right? But again, what precipitated the New Deal? Economic collapse in the world war. And I don't think we're getting out any easier. I think this go around, we're going to go through an economic collapse of some sort, although they have more financial tools in the Federal Reserve now maybe to control it so it's not as bad as the Depression, who knows, or a World War situation, which we're already pretty much in, and then layered on top, we have this environmental concern. And that is what is historically truly new, is this fucking pressure of climate change and pollution and the destruction of the biosphere that we also have to contend with. And that really puts a sort of timer on our historical moment in a way that hasn't really been present

in previous epochs. And I think we always have to keep that in mind. I'm just going to keep plugging documentaries. I just this week saw Abby Martin's new movie, Earth's Greatest Enemy. And it is literally about how the American military is not only the most destructive force on Earth in the way that we think about as in killing people and destroying cities, but it is the largest contributor to climate change. It is a two-hour movie, and she filmed this over the last five or six years. Our military is exempt from the climate protocols. It is not even counted in our emissions. And then on top of that, we murder marine life with our sonar.

We just dump literal shit, but also plastic and shells and all kinds, like literal humvees. We just throw into the ocean when we're done with them. Zero accountability on any of this. These struggles are connected. The struggle against imperialism, the struggle against fascism, and the struggle to protect our planet. It is all the same struggle. And we cannot separate these things. And people have to realize that and fight against the actual enemy, which is capitalism and the face of capitalism is the United States.

We laugh at the story of the Roman Emperor Caligula who declared war on the ocean. But we kind of did that with much more success, I fear. Even more insanely. Well, I think that is a good place to wrap up. I just want to conclude on saying our, we know we have Iranian listeners. Not a lot. I know it's difficult to access our podcast in Iran, but I've gotten emails from multiple of you. Especially shout out to that one guy who said, when the internet was out in Iran during the protest,

he got a VPN so we could listen to our podcast. Shout out. We are hearts are with you. We are going to struggle to try to keep this this attack from happening. And we are, we are fully in support of whatever the Iranian people need to do to defend themselves because they absolutely have that right. And we wish the destruction of the Fourth Reich and all the, all the, all the horror that's inflicted. And we have a lot of fucking work to do. But folks, I think I know.

know folks i think you all know who brett is redbleft radio you all are doing consistent great analysis over there um you know talking about different philosophical issues talking about the news talking about politics i mean i don't know if there's anything you've not talked about brett uh what what do you have a tagline for your show for me i've just like what i describe your show i'm just like the like quintessential like commie show like i don't know what else is like people have called it a college for communism yeah you know yeah but yeah i what I mainly try to do is I want a full human spectrum, right? When I do politics, it's not just political theory and history.

It's existentialism. It's philosophical. It's spiritual because we are human beings on this planet facing our own mortality in a certain historical epoch, united only by love. And it's more than just politics. And so I hope what I bring to the political discussion is like a full spectrum human experience. And that is why I get into philosophy. and Buddhism and Islam and Christianity and all these other things that we get into.

So I'm just happy to be able to keep doing it. I never expected the show to be as big as it is. And I just want to keep playing my tiny, humble role in this broader building ecosystem of like principal, not only like left wing and Marxist voices, but human, human voices at this very inhuman moment in our species history. And really this crossroads for our species. I think the 21st century is a crossroads for our species. We are either going the way of the dodo or we are going to figure this shit out and reorganize our political, social, and economic systems in a way that is harmonious with the natural world as opposed to outright hostile to it. So, yeah, I'm going to keep doing my part. You guys keep playing yours and everybody out there.

You have something to contribute. We just mentioned Abby Martin spends years and years making this amazing documentary. Nobody has to do everything. Everybody has to do something. And if you're out there listening, you have a role to play in this movie. you can have meaning in your life by literally fighting for a better world. What is the alternative to turn away from politics to recoil into your tiny little life of consumption and exploitation and wait for the grave?

Like, you know, what is the alternative? Where else are you going to find money? You're going to get on the grind set, start hustling, investing in crypto? Is that going to bring you happiness? Happiness is found by uniting with other loving, thinking human beings and fighting for a fucking better future for everybody that comes after us. That is where real meaning and reward is found. It's the antithesis of everything this society tells you to aim your life toward.

And so that's the message of Rev. Left. And now we're going to keep pushing it. Yeah, I'll never forget almost a decade ago now being in college. And we were doing a socialist reading group, reading Rosa Luxembourg and trying to figure it out. Somebody was like, hey, check. This guy talked about it and sent one of your links in our like group maze years ago. That's how I found your podcast and been a listener ever since.

but well folks go also go listen to how the red was won jen is doing fantastic interviews great work over there about fighting fascism in the south and if you need to take a break from the horrors all my maidens the podcast about elden ring with isha ish also although the episode that's coming out tomorrow if i can get around to editing it if i can stop playing bouldersgate for three minutes to edit my podcast episode um uh johnny from culture dumpster came on it and we talked a lot about politics. Oh, well. So it's a great podcast.

And, you know, stay tuning in folks. But, uh, and, and Brett said it best. Does anyone have anything before we close out? No, just thank you for having me.

For sure. Yeah, thank you for being here. All right. Well, we are going to keep following this. Once, last thing I'll say is, uh,

once again, love to the people of Iran. You have a good one. You have a good one. proud. Got money not sucking up on with a Monday with a mouth. But this tongue we enjoy. I'm such a tree.

Every being we share. I'm socialism.