The Daily Beast Podcast - Dems Should at Least TRY Gaslighting Their Way Out of Biden’s Age Crisis

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

With their current presidential candidate facing a crisis of confidence, Democratic politicians and liberal media figures have been casting about blindly for an alternative. It’s a fool’s errand, The New Abnormal co-hosts Danielle Moodie and Andy Levy agree. Then, CNN correspondent Elle Reeve shares some of the findings from her new book: Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics. Plus! A conversation with Samhita Mukhopadhyay about her recent book, The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears.

We're back from vacation with an excellent show. CNN contributor El Reeve joins us to talk about her new book, Blackpill, How I Witness the darkest corners of the internet come to life, poison society, and capture American politics. And I'm halfway through that book, and it's fantastic. Then we'll talk to writer and former executive editor of Teen Vogue, Samita Mukapaya, who's here to tell us about her new book, The Myth of Making It, a Workplace Reckon.

And she'll tell us how we as a society can move past the grip of hustle culture. But first, let's have some fun. Well, we picked a great week to go on vacation. It was totally, it was like nothing happened here. Nothing happened that needed to be talked about. And it was nice because, Danielle, I don't know about you, but, you know, I could go a week without even thinking about politics

because nothing was going on. Yeah, I felt like I was on a deserted. island. It was really nice. It was calm. It was as if, you know, the Supreme Court didn't torpedo America before the 4th of July send us the biggest fucking nuclear bomb that it experienced as a nation. And then immediately it left the news cycle because, you know, there's nothing more important right now to everyone on this planet than Joe Biden's age, his fitness, and a really bad debate. So it's as if the Supreme court didn't do anything that should alarm us at all if a serial criminal with 34 felony counts

was impeached twice, incited an insurrection, tried to kill the vice president of the United States, but apparently the next time around, he doesn't even have to worry about these pesky things called lawsuits or law and order because he's above the law. So all is well. I'm going to glad that we took a break. So it's interesting because, Danielle, before we started recording, you said, Joe Biden, got to go. Oh, Danielle did not say that. Danielle did not say that.

Because what Danielle would love, then I'll just talk about myself and the third person that Donald Trump talks about himself. I would love for Democrats to show just half of the, I don't know, commitment to their candidate the way that Republicans are committed to a felon and an alleged rapist. I wish that Democrats would find a way to circle the wagons instead of feeding Maga talking points and looking for ways to make the next four months even worse than they were going to be. Like you give Democrats like a win, they will turn something into a loss. It is the special power of Democrats to turn bad situations fucking worse.

I don't understand why we can't gaslight our way out of this the way that the Republican Party does all the time. Donald Trump had the biggest inauguration size of an audience. Donald Trump looks like an Adonis. Donald Trump is 200 pounds of muscle. Donald Trump is, you know, is amazing with a full head of hair. Like, they find the ways to just keep the spin going. Us, on the other hand, though, no. Joe Biden is chum in the water right now.

And it is amazing. And it wasn't even done at the hands of Donald Trump. It's being done at the hands of his own party. Yeah, I guess there's a couple of things to say to that. One is that the Democrats, at least far more so than the Republicans, have this sort of unfortunate tick of being tethered to reality. So it makes it a little hard. You know, the Republicans, as I've said, and as we've said repeatedly on this,

it's much easier to lie and to just make shit up than it is to tell the truth to be backed by fact. So the Republican Party, particularly under Donald Trump, has just shown that it has no relation to reality. It doesn't care to have a relationship to reality. It prefers the easy lie over the hard truth. And the Democrats, believe me, I hear what you're saying. And man, I am torn on this whole thing. But the Democrats are, I hate to say it, but there's a way to say this in that the Democrats are actually being more responsible in at least having the discussion. And look, Biden has made it clear. He ain't going anywhere.

Yeah. And I don't know at this point what would change his mind. I really don't. The only thing I could possibly think of would be if, like, I think it would have to involve Barack Obama and maybe Bill Clinton sitting down with him face to face and saying, look, Joe, you know, you got to do this for the good of the party. And I'm not saying they should do that. I'm just saying that's the only way I think that it would get to him and maybe make him rethink that. Because, man, he is just, at least publicly, he is not showing any signs that he's going anywhere.

And look, I'll just say one last thing and then turn it back over to you. I think both of us, Danielle, would have been much happier had Biden not run for reelection. Maybe I shouldn't speak for you on that. But I know I would have. because of his age and because of everything else. But that ship sailed a year or two ago. And I've been saying for a long time now, stop calling for Joe Biden to drop out. And there were all these fantasies being published.

You know, this is pre the debate. And I thought all of that was insane. And it was columnists needing to fill space. I am torn, though, because that debate performance was God awful. And I think he probably is not going to drop out. But I don't know. Take it away, Daniel. He's not dropping out.

I mean, he just sent a letter and posted it on social media to the Democrats saying, guess what? I'm not fucking dropping out. So we can stop debating on whether or not Joe Biden is going to drop out because as of this morning, he sent a letter to all Democrats all over the world and said, I am not dropping out. So here is my feeling. Yes, Republicans are disassociated from reality.

and that is fine. But you know what? It works for them. At the end of the day, the thing that I want to see shift is not Joe Biden sitting down with more one-on-one interviews. Fuck the media.

And I'm in the media and I'm going to say fuck the media. And this is the reason why. Because every question that is asked about Joe Biden's age as a media coach, what I want, Biden, and all of the Democrats that go on television, that go on radios, that go on podcasts to say, is the only number that you need to care about is 34. 34 felony counts. The only number that you need to care about is the fact that there are

nine Supreme Court justices, six of which just gave the next president free reign to go on a crime spree. And we already know one of the former presidents has been on a crime spree his entire life. I need every single question that is asked about Joe Biden's performance, his age, his health and his wellness. I need him and everyone else to pivot it back to the existential fucking crisis our democracy is in. Stop feeding the fucking ravenous media class who thrives on gossip. It is not going to serve us and it is sure as fuck not going to deliver us. what the people of France just did for themselves, which is to hold on to democracy a little bit fucking longer. That's what this is about. Like, I cannot stress it enough. Four months until an

election, and we're talking about changing candidates and going on some type of what, American president, American Idol type of show where we can pick the next white guy because nobody wants the black woman. And the only reason why we keep having these conversations is because all of a sudden America realizes that a woman of color is a heartbeat away from the presidency. Because none of the conversations that people are having are they talking about the fitness and the prosecutorial skills of Kamala Harris. If he were to step down, it has to be Harris. And any other plan or this idea that was floated of having like a rapid fire open primaries,

that is just flat out insanity. It absolutely has to be Kamala Harris. and I would probably go a step further and say that if he's going to drop out, he probably needs to resign the presidency, let her take over. Let her be President Harris for the next four months. Let her have Air Force One. Let her go meet with foreign leaders. Let her be presidential to give her a leg up in four months. Yes, I don't want to go too far in a tangent there other than to completely agree with you that any talk of it being anyone other than the current vice president is nuts and needs to go away ASAP.

Yeah, it's just, I mean, the reality is. we have structures in place. We do. It's called the vice president of the United States. Yeah, for sure. There are an order of operations to things. I also want to remind people

that it is not one person that runs the fucking administration. It is teams of people, teams of them. And so I don't want to be talking about Joe Biden's health. I really don't. I want to talk about the health

of our democracy. I want to talk about the fact that we have a weaponized Supreme Court that is hell bent on bringing this country back into the 19th century and doing so unopposed. I want to talk about the fact that if Donald Trump becomes president again, he's never leaving. And that Project 2025 will become the law of the land, which means no abortion anywhere ever. No people of color anywhere ever.

What they are offering, what they want to deliver to the American people is probably the scariest thing I have ever seen in my life. I didn't live in 19th century America. Thank fucking God. Okay, so let's pivot and let's talk about Project 2025 because in the last week, one of the things we saw just in the last couple days, I think, was President Trump and some people around him trying to distance himself and themselves from Project 2025, which is interesting given that if you look at who makes up 2025, as Don Moynihan reported on his substack, 25 of the 36 authors listed in the mandate for leadership document of Project 2025 have worked for Trump. 25 of the 36. This includes Russ Vaught, who was Trump's budget chief. This includes Spencer Cretion. I mean, the list goes on and on. Johnny McEntee. He was hired by Trump to screen his presidential appointees. Guess what? He is also hired by Project 2025, as Don Moynihan reports, to do the same job.

They are one and the same. And I'm really gratified to actually see the media. The one thing they're doing right is they're starting to have. on 2025 and get into the details and what it says and what it calls for and, you know, things like you said, like bye-bye abortion, buy-bye pretty much all reproductive freedom, including birth control, et cetera. Project 2025, we've been sounding the alarm on this for a long time. I mean, you and I, Andy, let me just toot our own horns, have been talking about Project 2025 for well over a year. Yeah.

No, absolutely. I will say that, you know, we have been talking about. it much longer than most people in media. Can I run down some of the things that are in, like, because look, well, you tell people, first of all, if you're Googling for Project 2025 right now, you can still go to their website, but for some reason, it has mysteriously left the pages of the Heritage Foundation, the very foundation that put all of this together and got all of the funding to put all of this together. But here are just some highlights.

For those of you who are not going to read 900 pages of hell. So Project 2025. End no-fault divorce. Complete ban on abortions without exceptions. Ban on contraceptives. Additional tax breaks for corporations and the 1%. Higher taxes for the working class. Elimination of unions and workers' protection.

Raising the retirement age. Cutting Social Security. Cutting Medicare. Ending the Affordable Care Act. raising prescription drug prices, eliminating the Department of Education, teaching Christian religious beliefs in public schools, use public taxpayer money for private religious schools, and free and discounted school lunch programs,

and civil rights and DEI protections in government, ban African American and gender studies in all levels of education, ban books and curriculum about slavery, ending climate protections. Those are just some of the highlights. Yeah, I don't think it's an example. exaggeration and I'm generally not of an alarmist personality. I honestly don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this in many ways, if Project 2025 becomes the blueprint for the future,

it is in many ways, it's the end of America. I mean, in so many ways, a lot of the ways that you just mentioned and just so many more. And again, Republicans are now running from this. Marco Rubio went on, I think, with Dan Abash over the weekend on, CNN State of the Union, and also tried to distance the Republican Party and Donald Trump from Project 2025. Stephen Miller, who has worked for Project 2025 and recorded videos for them, says he has nothing to do with it. Clearly, a memo went out saying, stop being so public about all this stuff. And like you said, even the Heritage Foundation is scrubbing stuff from their website. But if you go to the Project 2025 website and you go to the About page, the three names listed on the

Project 2025 team are all associated with the heritage. It says Paul Dan's director, Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation. Spencer Cretion, Associate Director, Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation. Troop Hemingway, yes, that's his actual name. Associate Director, Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation. This is the Heritage Foundation's baby, and they are doing this for Donald Trump and the Trump administration. They are in bed with the Trump administration on this. And I will just quickly, you know, remind people that in this last week, we had a quote from the head of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, saying that this is a second American revolution and it will remain bloodless as long as the left allows it to. Basically saying, we are taking over this country. We are fundamentally

reshaping America and you need to surrender and accept this or it will not be bloodless. Correct. So again, this is Project 2025. This is a second Trump term. This is what a second Trump term will consist of. And Danabash did a horrible job letting Marco Rubio skate on this. And Trump put out on his dumbass truth social that he had no affiliation with 2025, didn't remember, didn't even know what it was, which is either an obvious lie or someone needs to look at his, you know, his mental capabilities. because again, so many of his people are involved with it,

and we cannot allow them to pretend that this is not the blueprint for Trump 2.0. This has been out. This has been out fully in full view. They are not telling us lies. They are not pretending to be of another ideology. They are not pulling a roper dope on the American people. It is just up to us to pay attention to all of the things that they are saying. You have people in the Senate, you have these senators that introduced the life at conception

fucking bill, right? Like these people are not playing around with where they want this country to be. As a former educator, the fact that you would roll back free and reduced lunches, the fact that you would allow in the supposed one of the wealthiest countries in the world for kids to go hungry because that's how deep your fucking hatred is. That's how you believe that government serves no purpose but to punish and not support people? This is the world that will happen in four months time and be forever. Because again, this is not a Donald Trump second term. This is a Donald Trump forever term. And I posted this while we were on vacation because who took a

fucking vacation this week. I don't know. But I posted just to remind folks that do you know what was passed right before Hitler took power? The Enabling Act. That's what it was called in Germany, which gave him the power of guess what? A king, which is exactly what the Supreme Court did on July 1st. That was America's version of the Enabling Act. You can do whatever, whenever, however, to whom ever, and you will never face any consequences. And so what stops him, Andy? What stops Donald Trump? Because it's not going to be a general Millie that says,

by the way, you can't shoot protesters in the leg, it's against the law. What law? Yeah, we should give a shout out, by the way, to someone who picked up the slack for us when we were on vacation, and that is Taraji P. Henson. Thank you. Yes. Yes.

Because she was, if you watched the BET Awards or saw the clip, you know, it was, It was definitely all over social media. She gave a really good speech warning about Project 2025. Yes. From the stage there. So definitely, you know, shout out to her. I'm not going to say that I had reached out and said, look, I'm on vacation this week, so I need you.

Can you do it for us? Yeah, I'm not going to say that that's what happened, but who knows? There's really no way to know. There's really no way to know. Ellie Reeves' coverage of the Unite the Right March in Charlottesville for Vice News's HBO show was an award winning inside look at the white nationalist movement behind the fascist rally. Even if you haven't seen the documentary, you've seen the footage captured by Reeve and her fantastic crew. She's got Emmy, she's got Peabody, she's written for Vice, The New Republic, New York Magazine, the Atlantic,

The Daily Beast. She's currently a CNN contributor, and she's written an absolutely incredible new book, Black Pill, How I Witness the darkest corners of the internet come to life, poison society, and capture American politics. She joins me now to tell us about it. Ellie, thanks so much for being here. Well, thanks so much for having me. So let's start with the basics. What is the black pill? What does it mean to be black pilled? So by now, people who are on the internet a lot know the way the far right has taken a metaphor

from the matrix, where you take the red pill and you are transported into the real reality where you see the machines control our destiny or the blue pill where you go on living in a pleasant fantasy. So from that spawned all these different ideas of different kinds of pills. But the one that I think is most important is the black pill, which is a kind of gleeful nihilism. It's not really about ideology. It's a feeling that society is collapsed and utterly corrupt and irredeemable. So therefore, you're justified in taking any action to bring about a new golden era. Like, you want to hasten the downfall of society so that something better can come

along after. You want to be the meteor that takes out the dinosaurs that are like our elites. So the black pillow, I think is really important in understanding how different kinds of extremism, different subcultures are able to rationalize to themselves very unethical and immoral behavior, whether it's a white nationalist march or storming of the Capitol. Let's talk about how all this started with factions of the right, however you want to define them, being blackpilled. As you say in the book, when you were at the Capitol on January 6th, you looked around and thought, how would they feel that they knew it all traced back to the psychedelic epiphany of a three-foot virgin? So tell us about a man named Fred Brennan and an online forum called Wizard Chan. Right. In the mid-2000s, a website

called Four Chan was created. It has become sort of a fountain that produced all kinds of dark parts of our culture now. But it's an anonymous message board and many other different subcultures saw that and took inspiration from it. So Wizard Chan was a proto-in-cell site, involuntary celibus, these kind of political virgins. The name comes from the slang wizard, which means someone who has reached the age of 30, still a virgin. That person they attributed magical powers, right? The line between irony and sincerity is very, very blurry here. So Frederick starts running Wizard Chan after posting there for a while. He is a severely disabled man. He has brittle bone disease. So really, really light amounts of pressure caused his bones to break. He estimated he'd had more than 100.

His spine is very curved. It's very painful. And he believed that his condition meant he was doomed to celibacy because no woman would ever want them. On Wizard Chan, they create this whole cosmology, this like ideology that in the natural order of things, men and women are all ranked from one to ten in terms of hotness. And in the old days before feminism, tens date tens, eights, dates eights, threes date threes. But because of the loosening of sexual rules, feminism, that kind of thing. All the hot men are sleeping with all of the women. The eight, nine, and ten men are sleeping with all of the women, leaving no one behind for the ugly men. And so that is why they were dedicated to bringing an end to feminism. That's why they're so angry at women, because this is meant they're, you know, the excess men of society.

I'm online poisoned enough that I know about all this stuff, but it's still absolutely incredible to read about it and to read about how it all got started. And then Fred eventually comes up with the idea for 8chan while he's on shrooms with a woman he's actually having a relationship with. And 8chan really spawns much like 4chan, a lot of the darkness that you're talking about that led to a lot of things of mass murders and also January 6th. I want to come back to that later.

But I want to ask you throughout the book, you interview leaders in the All Right Movement. movement, people like Fred Brennan for a time, Richard Spencer, Matt Parrott, Matthew Heimback, Chris Cantwell, countless others. What made all these people talk to you? Because it was really incredible how you were able to gain access to them. Yeah. The short answer is everyone wants to tell their story. Right. And almost everyone that I've ever tried to interview on this beat will eventually talk to me even if at first they scream obscenities at me for half an hour. It's not true of everyone, but a lot of them. Over time, I built some credibility with them by just knowing my stuff, like knowing all this obscure stuff about Wizard Chan and Four Chan and that kind of thing.

And then finally, after Charlottesville, this was a traumatic event for these guys. There is this sense of like, okay, we went through this thing together. Like they see that in me, you know, even if we were on the opposite sides. You know, it's like soldiers who fought on opposite sides of a war. At this point, it's just not that hard to get them to answer my phone. go. Yeah, that's absolutely amazing that you basically just through dogged reporting and showing up to all these events and covering them that that somehow made them more likely to talk to you because, like you said, like you'd all been in the shit together. There's a key point you make in the book

that a lot of these people are not stupid and that it's a very, very serious mistake to think that they are and to not realize that just because they believe in stupid or evil things, that smart people are not capable of that. And there was a particular moment in the book that was chilling for me. When we learned that in the mid-2000s, I think he was a teenager at the time, Matthew Heimbach, who becomes one of the leaders of the All Right Movement. He goes on Amazon.com and he buys an SS flag and the Turner Diaries. And Amazon then suggests to him that he might be interested in things like the bell curve and mind comf. And that just was, first of all, scary that Amazon is doing this to people, but also sort of hammers home your point that a lot of these guys, they're not hayseeds,

they're not quote-unquote trailer trash. A lot of these guys are actually smart and readers. Yeah, they're very well read. I, you know, I end up like having to learn more about Nietzsche than I ever expected to. Yes. So I think this mistake is dangerous for two reasons. One, it's very comforting to imagine our political opponents, our stupid hayseeds. And that, because it means, they're not our danger to us. But I also think it's dangerous is that smart people are susceptible to very bad ideas. And it's something we need to check in ourselves. Because what has been most disturbing to me in a decade of reporting on this is the little ways

in which their ideas trickle into mainstream culture, whether it's a little bit of sexism, a little bit of eugenicism, like emphasis on IQ and that kind of thing. We're seeing like a lot of guys in Silicon Valley. echoes some of the fascism of, honestly, stuff I read in post by teenagers on 4chan 10 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's incredible. And it was also, I cannot believe how many of these people were influenced by Charles Murray's book, The Bell Curve.

It seems like almost everyone that you talk to or wrote about in this book cites that as a very early influence for them. Absolutely. It's vitally important to them. So for Matt Parrott, one of the white nationalists, I profile, he didn't have a lot going on as a kid. He, you know, wasn't cool. He wasn't rich. But he tested for having a very, very high IQ. And as he puts it, he kind of turned that into a cult of self-worship.

So then he comes across the bell curve, and the bell curve says IQ is inheritable. It's immutable, you know, can't change it. You're either born smart or dumb. And it's the most important thing in determining the outcome of a society and an individual person's life. So he seized on that, as a lot of these guys do. They think of themselves as brilliant. you know and again like give them a math test maybe they'd be amazing at it that doesn't mean that they're moral people it doesn't mean that they're ethical people it doesn't mean that they're

immune to bad ideas yeah i mean it's just crazy it's like everywhere you look you know i was like covering you know like seven years later i'm covering the federal civil trial where the guys who organized charlottesville are being held accountable for what they did and on the witness stand they're going back and forth about charles murray and what a great guy he was and what a committed scientist who was so misunderstood. Yeah. I remember when that book came out and the big sort of controversy around it, but I sort of hadn't thought about it in a while, and it was just amazing to me how influential it was for the rise of the alt-right. Another thing that struck me is something you said in the

book. He said, every white nationalist you've spoken to has told you that Gamergate changed the white power movement. And I thought that was, I guess, in retrospect, it makes sense. And that's also where Fred Brendan and Ait Chan come back into the story, right? This is in I think 2014. Right. Gimmergate begins when a video game designer accuses his girlfriend of trading of positive reviews for sex. It didn't happen.

The positive review didn't happen. But this triggers this misogynist harassment campaign by video game fans against women in the industry. It gets kicked off 4chan pretty quickly, which is, you know, kind of amazing. Like, 4chan does have moderators and it has a line, right? So Fred Brennan, he, he's. notices this. And he has created this site inspired by a mushroom trip that's supposed to be like 4chan, but even more free. Even more free speech is allowed because users can make their own boards.

So he starts interacting with people who are part of GamerGate and he hooks up with this guy Mark Mann, who is a big part of GamerGate and man goes out to other Gamergate influencers and like, hey, come here. Come to 8chan. 8chan is a place where you can talk about GamerGate. You can organize these hate campaigns. And so that took this tiny site from like 100 posts a day to eventually like a million uniques a day. Why do the gamers turn far right? Like it's not immediately obvious why they would. But they start kind of warming up to Donald Trump. Like he's really funny. He's ridiculous. He makes people that they don't like angry. And so while they're on this message board, this old white nationalist message board stormfront starts raiding 4chan and 8chan and

trying to radicalize them and turn them more extreme, turn there maybe a little soft racism into very hard, like full on neo-Nazi racism. And so over time, that mix turns into like a real movement of thousands of people. And one of the things that you point out is that a lot of these boards, and you mentioned it earlier, like 4chan and whatever, a lot of people start. started on them sort of posting ironically. And then it's just that the more that they went on these boards and were surrounded by people who were posting the same things. And then obviously to be the king of the boards, you have to become even more extreme. But over time, that irony sort of metastasized into what they actually believed. Yes. And reporting on this has just made

me very aware of that the line between irony and sincerity is actually very blurry. It's not a bright line. So there's this principle and many people who are part of either in cell forums or white nationalist forums have said they've seen this to be true, which is that when one generation of a message board is like parodying something, like say they're posting Hitler memes just to piss people off. They're doing it ironically. They're making fun of Nazis, right? The next generations that come on, they miss those social cues and they take those posts as sincere. And as more people come in, over time, the community becomes the thing that it was created to satirize, right? It actually becomes the parody.

It's not a joke anymore. They're just actually Nazis. I mean, I even had Richard Spencer told me this once, like in 2016, before so much of the craziness had happened. He was like, yeah, I've met guys who said they researched eugenicist, anti-Semitic, racist texts, just to be better trolls. And in the process, radicalized themselves and started believing it. Yeah, it really is incredible. All of this sort of culminates, at least for the first time, in Charlottesville in 2017.

There's a thing that you wrote about, and you wrote extensively about Charlottesville, and it was just amazing stuff. And you talk about the planning that went on, whether it was on these chans or whether it was on Discord. There was one thing you said that I don't think I knew, and that is that the sort of now infamous Jews will not replace us chant was not part of any of that planning and was added. lived and was actually supposed to be you will not replace us? Right. Because these guys are very conscious of trying to win over what they call normies, right? They want to win more people to their cause. They don't just want a pure expression of their anger.

So there was a whole chant playlist that they had come up with. I mean, this is why they're dressed in white polos, right? The white nationalist movement was very self-conscious about appearing low class, low education. They wanted to look like guys you would aspire to be. They wanted to be hot. I mean, like, there's so much of this that's about this men wanting to be more attractive. So they created this chant, you will not replace us, to make it seem like they were the victims and that they were just, you know, solemn patriots standing up for their right to exist.

I mean, you also see slogans like, it's okay to be white, circle it around the same time, right? And the idea is that someone who is unsophisticated and doesn't know the background will come upon this slogan and think and see the media outrage and be like, well, what are you so mad about? Like, why isn't it okay to be white? Like, why should these guys want to be replaced? They don't want to be replaced. Like, what's wrong with having their culture? And so their over-enthusiasm, in addition to just kind of going the wrong way when they were walking around the UVA gang. Yeah. Led to them revealing their true selves and shouting Jews will not replace us. Yeah, that was absolutely incredible. So I want to jump ahead to January 6th. And at this point,

after Charlottesville, that turns out to be not so great for a lot of the alt-right people for Richard Spencer and people like that. And I guess, I don't know if you want to say it becomes more amorphous after that or it becomes far more 8chan centered and with the rise of QAnon and all of that stuff. But you say that most of the people you interviewed on January 6th were first red-pilled by the COVID lockdown and then black-pilled by the conspiracy theories that they'd found to explain it. Talk about that. Right. So one reason you see the alt-right fall to the side and something like QAnon come to the floor is that QNon has a much more palatable enemy, right? Pedophiles. Most Americans, they don't want to be Nazis. They don't want like a swastika. That's like a symbol of the bad guys that we defeated. Right.

We kick Nazis asses. So they go on to A-chan and they're still mingling with these conspiracy theories. You know, there was a very influential film called Fall of the Cabal that was on D-Live is where I found it. It weaves together these Q&ON conspiracy theories with the protocols of the elders of Zion, ancient anti-Semitic text and the JFK assassination. And they rewrite this anti-Semitic conspiracy theory to, again, like create this global elite cabal. And that's just a lot more palatable to people. There's just many more people who are willing to participate in a movement and a campaign against that than they would be against Jews or black people. It's an incredible throughline from, again, as you point out, from this Wizard Chan board on 4chan to 8chan and the rise of QAnon and January 6th.

I really was only able to scratch the surface of what's in this book. And I just have to tell people, this book read like a thriller or like one of my beloved hoodnots. I just gobbled it up. Like, I just read right through it. It's called Blackpill, How I Witness the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, poison society and Capture American Politics. Ellie Reeve, thank you so much for being here. And congrats on writing just, it's just an absolutely amazing,

like I know I sound like I'm, I don't even know what I sound like, but I just was really blown away by the book. Oh, well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me on and you're saying that because of writing a book is really hard. And writing about these things, was very emotionally difficult, so thank you so much for saying that. Absolutely. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new Abnormal, Feminist, Badass, Author of the New

New Book, The Myth of Making It, A Workplace Reckoning, Samita Mukapadai. Hello. Hi. Simita, it has been a long time since you and I have talked. You have done the most, have seen the most. have seen the most, have experienced the most. And as the former executive editor of Teen Vogue, of being behind the curtain, as I would say,

in an industry that I think is still very elusive, still very sexy, still very mysterious to a lot of people, you start out with your new book talking about, you had the dream life. You had made it. You had the Gucci bag. You had the front row seats at fashion show. but something was off. Talk to us about what happened in that world, in the Teen Vogue world,

and what your initial idea of making it, what did that look like for you? Yeah, absolutely. It is so good to talk to you and reconnect. So thank you for having me. I think that we talk a lot about like what life looks like on Instagram versus what it feels like in real life. And I was living the dream. I had this kind of perfectly curated life. I had worked really hard to get where I am, you know, or so I thought I had kind of made it to this position of, you know, less power and more kind of prominence, right? And it was exciting. It was exciting. I was becoming something more than just a feminist writer. I was part of something bigger that I had kind of always felt outside of, but for the first time felt connected to and part of. And,

but what I was also grappling with at the moment was that I was turning 40. I had some health issues at home with my father. I had to take care of him. I was not actually making as much money as you would think. And I wouldn't say I was struggling to make ends meet, but I was struggling to live up to the lifestyle that I think was expected of someone at that level. And so the cracks started to show in the facade and I physically wasn't feeling well. And, you know, I would never say that I was unhappy at the time, but my body was telling one story and my kind of online and on paper experience was telling another story. And this kind of came to a head when the pandemic started. And I stopped going to work. I had to stay home. And I immediately started to feel better. I was feeling happier.

I was sleeping better. My body started to swell less. And that forced me to kind of look at what I was putting myself through. And part of it was I believed that I had to over-exert myself, not just exert myself, not just satisfy the brief, but I had to go above and beyond, even to receive a small modicum of success. And that was the kind of charade that started to fall apart for me. What's really interesting. And I talk about this a lot on this show and other shows that I do, which is this kind of awakening that happened for people who I also want to acknowledge like the privilege in being able to work from home and having had that reflective space

during a really heightened and traumatic time in our country and in the world, which was COVID. And being able to recognize, I think, that your body might have been going, going, going, but once it had the opportunity to pause was like, oh, I like this much better. And what did that feel like not just the pause from the treadmill, the paws from the hamster wheel, but this idea that we're consistently told that our worth is connected to our productivity. Our worth is connected to how many likes we get, how many people are talking about us. What happened to you during that time to kind of come to this reckoning of how we are engaging with something that we need, which is work in order to make money?

Yeah, you make a really important point. It's true that the whole working from home during the pandemic got a lot of air time. But at the height of the pandemic, only like 35% or something of Americans. were actually able to work from home, which was the number that actually surprised me. I thought it would be a lot more than that. So everyone else kind of either had to continue on or they lost their job. And it was certainly a position of privilege to have the space to kind of reflect. And I think that part of what happened for me, or I should say I know part of what happened

for me is without the glitz and glamour of the kind of job, right? You couldn't do events anymore. You're not going out to dinner. You're not having all those opportunities to get to showings or to fashion or any of that, what are we actually doing, right? Like when we're not distracting ourselves with all of the things that these jobs, you know, the positions that they put us in, when it's just me and you sitting on a Zoom, right? Or it's me in the computer or me in that email. You really do have a chance to reflect because you're not being distracted by all of the other things you can kind of consume that I think

help us, you know, perpetuate this lifestyle, this on-the-go lifestyle, right? Like I was working all the time because I had my phone. I was taking Ubers everywhere. So, you know, whether I had time to take the subway didn't matter. I was jumping in a car and getting from place to place. And when you're that busy and you're that distracted, you don't have space to really reflect on the bigger picture. And this is all while, you know, Danielle, we've known each other for a long time. Like our language, you know, our language on these politics is quite articulate. Like I say this knowing that I believe in, you know, labor rights. I believe in equal pay. I believe in equality of the workplace. And yet I was still so beholden to this idea that I had to exert myself and work myself to, you know, literally being in, you know, in a

ill health to feel that I was successful as a woman, as someone who was making it. And I think when all of that was stripped back and I faced the reality, like we all face that reality. You know, we were like, oh, the most important people in our society are medical care workers and people that work in grocery stores, right? And, you know, the people that help us take care of our children and help us take care of the elderly. Like, these are the people that actually are the joints that hold our society together. And everything else started to feel less meaningful because you start reflecting on, well, it's not that I don't believe that my work is impactful or that I think what I do is valuable. But what about my family? What about my friendships? What about my body and my health and all of these

things that I have been putting to the side, you know, and kind of countering to this idea of what success and female ambition looks like when the reality is to actually be a holistic and integrated part of your community is a completely different thing. And I think a lot of people had that realization around 2020, 2021. And I don't think that now that the cat is out of the bag, it's very hard to put it back in. right? You won't talk to a lot of people that are willing to go to the office for 70 hours a week anymore. That was totally normal before the pandemic, right? You are not going to see that today anymore. Like, people are not willing to sacrifice so much of their life and their happiness for the purpose of a hamster wheel that honestly is literally a hamster wheel, right? Like, it's not the glass

escalator. It's not like we are still paid less. We are still overlooked for promotion. That's even more so true for women of color. So all of that work and where has it actually gotten us? And I think a lot of people are asking that question right now. You know, and I think too, like, because another thing, so during the pandemic and people still get COVID folks and people are still unwell with long COVID, but the fact also is that all of the articles that came out during that time kind of pointed to a very whiny generation. Like, well, the millennials are now 40, but like Generation Z and, you know, and entering into

the workforce and who are we to truly demand real? work-life balance that isn't a bumper sticker that is saying, you know what, for the quarter of us that we're able to do our job successfully from home, why are you trying to get us to come back into the office? What do you say about the headlines that kind of pointed to a very privileged and whiny set of people as opposed to a very greedy set of, you know, CEOs and shareholders that have long-term corporate leases that they couldn't get out of. And so because I have to suffer, you have to suffer too. What do you make of the conversation that has been happening around work over the last four years?

I think that kind of management class, I don't mean us because, as I said, the cat is out of, it is very clear that the idea that if I work, if I keep my head down and I work as hard as possible, I will be rewarded for that work. And while that can sometimes be true in the short chairman, it can be true temporarily. And you and I both know that hard work does. help, right? Like, there is hustle. Like, you know, I would be lying if I didn't say that how hard I've worked has paid off in other ways. It's made to me not financially as financially as much as I'd like to, but certainly, you know, writing a book is ambitious in and of itself. But I think the basic

idea that if you work hard, you'll be able to pay off your student loans, you will be able to buy a house, you'll be able to afford groceries that has unraveled because for most people, they actually can't, right? Where we're suffering from crippling debt. Most young people today know that they'll never be able to buy a house and the kind of both with the interest rates we have and the level at which people are expected to work and the cost of rent. And so I think that that has created, that is why I think so many workers are agitated. And I think it's very easy to focus on, you know, this what is considered, you know, the kind of gen the flippant attitude towards work. Like, I don't want to do anything. And, you know, and I'm not saying that's completely false

either, right? Like, I don't think that the great resignation or quiet quitting. Like, I think those are real trends and there's a real discomfort and distaste for how work has played out. But I don't think the solution to that is telling people that they need to over exert themselves or they're not going to get ahead, right? We need to think about what an equitable workplace actually looks like. We need to think about what it looks like to have employees that are engaged, that feel like they're doing work that's impactful, that feel that they're being recognized for that work, that feel that they're being included in bigger decisions that are happening in the company. And that is, that is to me, that's a generational shift. It's a cultural shift, but it's also.

a much more equitable way of doing business. You can't just have an entire underclass of employees that are dissatisfied, underpaid, and don't, you know, of course they're not going to work anymore. And what's interesting is, you know, labor organizing historically has been focused on the working class, right? Fast food workers, home health care workers, you know, largely what has been considered unskilled labor, even though we both know that's skilled labor. What's interesting now is that, and this is why it's so easy to write it off as privileged,

is white-collar workers are now coming into consciousness about their labor rights. And sometimes that feels uncomfortable because you're like, well, what do you have to complain for? You know, you went to a liberal arts college. You have a cushy job. But the reality is looking at what the American dream has promised these young people and the reality of how they can execute on it, that is creating a dissonance and they're sick of it. And I think it's a great thing. Even if it sometimes like, you know, even me as like a woman of color who went to state school

and like scraped my way to get here, sometimes I'm like, oh, God. Like, you know, like, what do you have? to complain about, you know. But I think the broader issue and the broader friends are telling a story. And I think the only reason we're paying attention is because more affluent people are asking these questions. When you start out your book with you can't have it all, which is pushing back against this kind of hashtag girl boss, you know, imaging and branding that happened. I would argue probably from the late 90s into the early 2000s, like this was the vibe. I'm woman, hear me, or I can do all of these things. What does it mean now to admit that truth that you can't have it all? What does that mean

to you? And how was that reckoning with yourself when we grew up in the same generation and times, which is like, you can do whatever you want to do just as long as you work hard and put your mind to it. And it's just like, caveat, caveat, caveat, look at the fine print. Absolutely. And, you know, I will say, like, I think as women of color, we never really bought into that idea, you know, And I think that even though we were forced at it, and statistically, and I talk about this in the book, women of color kind of met the benchmark for having it all far before affluent white women did, right? Like usually they were more likely to be working out of the house, more likely to be, you know, primary caretaker, more likely to be supporting their parents and more likely to be a primary breadwinner for their house, right? And so in many ways, although it's not defined that way, women of color have been on the forefront of workplace feminism, even if that's not recognized. as like the fancy, you know, Cheryl Sandberg, lean in, I have it all moment.

So I don't necessarily know that I personally ever fully brought it to that idea, but I realized that I did have a sense of like, this is what it means to make it, you know, and this is how it means to be successful and having it all would happen no matter what. Like I would get all of the things I wanted. And now to be in my mid to late 40s and say, you know, why didn't I have children? Why didn't? And all of these things that I always felt like they're all going to happen for me. me because that's, I'm going to have it all. And realizing that there were serious material and

personal considerations I had to make throughout the way. And I did make what I call in the book to quote economists from Harvard a creeping non-choice, right? And I think a lot of, right? And I think a lot of women are facing that where they set about their career. They said, I can have it all. I'm going to focus on my career now. I'm going to focus on family later, only to enter their 40s and realize that there wasn't time to cultivate both. It is very hard to then find. and develop and cultivate that family based on the heteronormative terms that have been set for our society, right? Where powerful women are dinged for being ambitious. They're deemed for being successful. And they're considered less, you know, appropriate for marriage material or to be a parent.

And all of these kind of narratives that were navigating. And for me, work was a place for me to actively be a feminist. It was a place that I could own. I could be, you know, unapologetic about it by ambitions. I wasn't being judged for being ambitious because I was surrounded by incredible women like you, right? And it wasn't until I had to help take care of my parents that I realized what a lie that had been, that I didn't have the capacity. I didn't have the emotional capacity, financial, or actual time capacity to take care of them the way that I would have wanted to and the ways that I want to. And so it really is, I think, for many women, even when we say we don't buy into it, on some level we do, right? And we may say, it's kind of like diet culture, right? Like we're all like,

we know it's bad. And then in our heads, we're like, on Monday, I'm going to eat better. You know, like everyone does it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. And I feel that way about this kind of, you know, work hard, play hard ethos is that like we all tell ourselves that we know this isn't right. We know we can't have it all. But yet we still strive for it. And it really has to take some kind of life changing event, like a pandemic or some kind of serious health event to then be like, actually, maybe this is crazy. Like maybe I shouldn't be working like this. With just the couple of minutes that we have left, Samita, what do you feel like you have taken? I mean, I feel like people say that they write the books that they need and that are also needed.

What did you take and what are you hoping that people take away from this workplace reckoning? Particularly women and women of color who I think are really reimagining what success looks like. Like that's the thing too is that we were taught that, Success looked like one thing. Buying a home, getting married, having kids, and having a certain amount of money. And we know that that is not the thing. A lot of people can't afford to buy a home. A lot of people are living at home with extended family or have moved back in with their parents.

Like, what was considered success is not considered necessarily how we're measuring it. So what does that look like for you? And what are you hoping that folks take from your book? Yeah. So you're absolutely right. I am still personally in the middle of my own workplace reckoning. And as I say in the book, I don't have all the answers. But what I learned from this book and what I really hope is three things. I hope that people read this and they feel a little bit less alienated and isolated in their own experience. I do think that a lot of us are grappling with these very nuanced questions about our career and our ambitions. And it can feel as much as we can look at and say, oh, it's so exciting that young people organizing. And it's so exciting that people are speaking out. Many of us actually feel very alienated in our experience because honestly, these questions are really scary. I mean, work is our livelihood. It is the way that we stay alive, literally, right? So it can be very challenging. And my hope is that people feel less alone and they feel less like they personally have to solve for this because I think that a lot of what is peddled to women is that like if you work hard, you know, as you were saying, if you keep your head down, you can do this.

And the reality is no, like put that pressure down. The second is that I hope people ask this question of what does it actually mean to have a satisfying life and to have enough. And I don't mean that. And I think it's important to add the caveat that women are already expected to settle for less. Right. We are already expected to say, you know what, that's enough. And so I don't mean it as like a don't ask for more money or don't, you know, but if you want the bigger job, know that that's going to come with a certain amount of stress. And so ask yourself, like, is that the job I need or do I need something else? Is there a different path for me or is there a different way to explore my creativity or my passions or the way I want to

make impact? And what does that look like? And are we just in this rat race to impress other people and, you know, those kind of bigger questions. But the last thing, and I think this is where it links to the bigger question is like, where are the places where we can be connecting across with other women and other disenfranchised people to actually start to build and create workplaces and collectives that actually address our needs? It is very easy to and comfortable to complain about work, right? and to say, I would rather quiet quit than organize for change. And I guess my message really is, you know, where is the opportunity for us to actually agitate for change in a real and substantial way?

Because at the end of the day, the quiet quitting and the doing stuff like just, you know, calling it in doesn't actually lead to happiness. It doesn't lead to personal fulfillment. And it doesn't actually lead to the kind of societal impact we need right now as we stand on the precipice of growing inequality, growing pay gaps, growing debt. So what is that change going to look like? And so what could that look like in our own life? Amazing.

Folks, the book is The Myth of Making It, a Workplace Reckoning. Samita, I'm so excited for you. Congratulations. Simita, I hope that you come back and visit us again on the new abnormal soon. I would love to. It was great to talk to you. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody.

Oh, thank you so much for calling me by my name. He could see it. He did. He liked it to. I still have vacation brain. It'll be back. It'll be back. But it's like the way you said my name was like it was alleged.

Like. F. F. A. How are you starting off our week back with your fuck that guy? Oh, man. This guy in North Carolina, Mark Robinson, he was or is the lieutenant governor. Yeah, he is the lieutenant governor.

And he's now the Republican candidate for governor. He's just, I don't know any other way to say it other than he's insane. Like there's really something wrong in his head. And he's shown this time and time again in the past bunch of years. So at the end of June, he was giving a speech. And I'll tell you where it was after I tell you what he said. But what he said was, these are quotes.

I'm going to quote. He said, some folks need killing. It's time for somebody to say it. It's not a matter of vengeance. It's not a matter of being mean or spiteful. it's a matter of necessity. By the way, earlier in the speech, he had been talking about people who have evil intent, including socialists and communists, uh, leftists, etc., etc. He said all this. He said some people need killing and explained why at a small town church. He was at a small town church. So he thought it was appropriate. First of all, he's a candidate for a governor. He obviously not appropriate for him to say that ever. But he thought that that was what he should be saying in a church. And there are really, there are no words for how awful this guy is. And he basically compared the quote unquote battle right now that is being fought by the Christian right to, well, I'll just read a little more of what he said.

He said, we now find ourselves struggling with people who have evil intent. You know, there's a time when we used to meet evil on the battlefield. And guess what we did to it? We killed it. When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, what did we do? We flew to Japan and we killed the Japanese army and navy, well, among us. others, et cetera, et cetera. And then he followed that with, he said,

some liberal somewhere is going to say that sounds awful. Too bad. Get mad at me if you want to. Some folks need killing. It is just unbelievable what the Republican Party has become. I mean, there's just no words. I'll just stop there and let you chime in. Just fuck that guy.

He's a fucking lunatic. But also, like, how many times have we heard from Republicans in different places and spaces talk about bloodshed, talk about killing. He's not the first person. And so we have to start paying attention to all of the things that are being said. They want the ability to kill people that they disagree with. God, uh, fuck that guy. Fuck all of them. Yep. All right, Danielle, I have to think that yours is a little sunnier than that. I wish. Look, I am just so outdone.

Like, I know that I shouldn't be shocked. And it's not even the shock. It's just the overt racism that the New York Post put out a couple of days ago. This is the headline. America may soon be subjected to the country's first DEI president, Kamala Harris. Oh, boy. what the fuck do you mean by that yeah gee i can't imagine right and so here's what i want to say congratulations to the new york post for showing just how fucking racist you are and two next time say

with your fucking chest and say the n word in the way that you actually want to say it because it's not a veil that you put over that people aren't dumb we know what you mean when you say DEI and by the way technically according to you then she would actually be the fucking second because Barack Obama was the first black president but nonetheless you know I just am so tired I didn't want to give this any energy but the fact is is that these type of fucking outlets need to be put out of their goddamn misery and need to be called out for what it is that they are doing we know what the Murdox do we know what they believe in. And the fact is, is that these people only see whiteness being associated with power. Everyone else is somehow there because of affirmative action. They're because of whatever. The only people that

are deserving are apparently those that are heirs to millions of fortune and like, and walk on water because of their whiteness. Like that is what these folks believe. No one else is deserving. No one else has earned their place and position. They've only ever been given it, which is so fucking laughable when you look at the people who are behind all of this. D-E-I push. So I just say to the New York Post, to the Murdox, to Maga, fuck you, fuck those guys. Have more courage. You had fucking white supremac marching down in Nashville over the holiday weekend as well with their faces covered. You're so tough? Show people who the people. fuck you are. Show people who you are, just like the New York Post did. Fuck them. Those are my thoughts.

Yeah. Charles Gasparino wrote this op-ed. I knew him a tiny bit at Fox, and I guess I'm not super surprised. I guess that's all I'll say. I am surprised, and I wonder if it had to be edited that the headline wasn't America may soon be subjected to the country's second DEI president. Correct. But yeah, fuck these guys. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production

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