The Daily Beast Podcast - The Right-Wing’s Spooky New Acronym DEI Betrays an Old Prejudice

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

This week on The New Abnormal, University of Louisville Associate Professor in the Departments of Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Pan-African Studies Dr. Kaila Story joins us to talk about the new acronym conservatives are flinging about, and why it’s taken flight. Plus! Editor of The National Interest, Jacob Heilbrunn, joins us to talk about his new book, “America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators.” 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. What an excellent show we have today. Dr. Kalia Astori is an associate professor at Louisville University and will talk to us about the right wing's big spooky new acronym, DEI, and what it is and what they seem so afraid of.

Then we'll talk to editor of the national interest, Jacob Heilberg, who will tell us all about his new book, America Last, the right century-long romance with foreign dictator. But first, let's have some fun. Welcome to the new abnormal. I would like to welcome back to the show, Danielle Moody. Thank you so much. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, I guess it was a little bit of a screw up. We won't name names.

We won't say whose fault it was, Jesse Cannon. But we will. Listen, files get mixed up. An old intro was accidentally dropped into the show that only had me and Jesse. on it. So people thought that Daniel had left or been fired, and I'm happy to say that neither one of those is the case, and I hope that neither one of those is ever the case, Daniel. Thank you, Andy. I really appreciate it, and I'm giving Jesse a side-eye. But welcome back, Seamus. That's all I'll

say is welcome back, Seamus. Oh, dear God. Yeah, I'm back, and I'm very excited to be here to talk about all the ways that Donald Trump is like Jesus. And following Easter, I think that's really important distinction to make. But, Andy, please, take it away. Tell us why Trump is like Jesus. Now I have to open that story. You know what? Sorry.

You're fired. No, so over the weekend, which of course was Easter weekend, Donald Trump shared an article on his little truth social thing. The article was entitled The Crucifixion of Donald Trump. It was published at the Washington Times. And basically the entire article was talking about how Trump has been unfairly charged with crimes. None of this is unexpected. He's been basically doing this for a while now, maybe not so overtly.

But sort of what do you expect he is treated like Jesus by people on the right? Mm-hmm. So, you know, I guess you get told that you're the Messiah enough times and maybe you start to believe it, Daniel. It's just wild. And I honestly, I know now why there are so many cult shows that are always like popping up on Netflix because you really have to understand the psychology of these people. And I don't mean like doing what cable news does and going to that faithful diner where only

white people eat omelets in the Midwest. but like the way that he thought to himself, let me hawk Bibles right in time for Easter. And like that wasn't an April Fool's joke and that wasn't like an S&L skit, although they turned it into a skit, that like in your mind you think that this is a great idea and these people will buy it.

But what they're not buying, of course, obviously as we're watching in real time, I pray that this is not a joke though, that his stock right now is absolutely plummeting. of his truth social media, but it's just, I don't understand what goes on in Donald Trump's world and his head and the Rambo imagery

and then the Jesus imagery. It's terrifying. 30%, Andy. 30% of the people believe that he is Rambo Jesus. He's the second coming of Rambo, lock and stock, lock and barrel Jesus. It is wild to me. Yeah, it's absolutely.

bizarre. And of course, not content with just sharing an article talking about how he is like unto Jesus. Trump also posted a super long little screed, again, on Truth Social. On Easter Sunday itself, this was in all caps, of course. So just read it. You'll hear it as if I'm shouting it at you. Happy Easter to all, including crooked and corrupt prosecutors and judges that are doing everything possible to interfere with the presidential election of 2024 and put me in prison. He talked about Crooked Joe's DOJ thugs. He referred to special counsel Jack Smith as deranged. And this is how he spent his Easter. Much as Jesus spent his Easter, I believe, Danielle, firing off screes in all caps. Yeah, the real truth social, you know. And then to top it off, you have one, just then attacking Biden because it was trans.

Visibility Day on Easter, which by the way, Transvisibility Day has been on March 31st since its inception in 2009. Easter, however, is on a different day every year. But somehow this was Biden's fault because he also controls the calendar, the weather, all things, according to the right as they were attacking him on social media for his normal proclamation that he's been doing since he was president on national transvisibility day. It's like the insecurity, the toxic masculinity, the just the foolishness from the right, like nothing stops them. Like there's no pause. Like they are just what happens when you're just

operating from your ego, right? Like there's no other commentary going on, but like just a delusional, what is it? Flow of a. consciousness. Like, it's just, I don't know, but bravo to Joe Biden for being able to control the calendar. I can't wait to see what's coming next. The amazing thing is, and I feel like this was kind of like a version of the Streisand effect, where I think more people probably learned about Transvisibility Day from right-wing idiots who were mad about it. And I think all they did was give more visibility to it. So, you know, the whole thing was just weird to me. But the idea that there can't be other things going on on the same day as a holiday. There was a lot of sports on TV

yesterday, Danielle. That wasn't in the Bible. Are you sure? And maybe it's in Trump's version of the Bible. Maybe. It might be. Yeah. But there was a lot of college basketball. There was pro basketball. There was hockey. There was baseball. There was even a NASCAR race yesterday. But like you said, these people, they are the softest and just, you know, the same people who whine about safe spaces and whine about, oh, are you triggered much, and wine about cancel culture. They spend their whole lives aggrieved and triggered and wanting safe spaces, as if America is not one gigantic landmass of safe space for Christians. It's insane that that's not enough for them, that they want more.

They're truly soft, and they can't handle anything. And, you know, and then they're going to go after Joe Biden because he put out a proclamation. It's so pathetic. Like, I don't even know how much more we can talk about it. But you know what else is pathetic, Andy? What's that in you? Thank God you're here. I know, thank God.

The fact that Donald Trump can, what do we call his broke-ass Twitter? True thing? Like, what does he do? Whatever. He posts the horrific image of a pickup truck covered in fascist, maga, regalia. But what caught some people's attention, but for me, not nearly enough. media attention of an image of Joe Biden hogtied to the back of this pickup truck. The Republican candidate for president of these United States put that up on social media

and we're just all kind of moving through it like this is normal okay behavior. Mind you, the man incited a mob, right? Applods and uplifts those who perpetrated. violence against the police on that day and as political hostages. And now he is showing them what he would like to see done to the current president of the United States. And there is not, to me, enough outrage. Like, this is the poison that Donald Trump has created, which is the normalization of political violence and our complacency around his escalation. Yeah, absolutely. And you and I have talked about this on the show and why it's important to keep pointing these things out and to not get numb to them and to not just roll your eyes and say, oh, well, that's just Trump being Trump again.

This shit is important. And, you know, I think I can also probably speak for both of us when I say that it's not entirely shocking that this happened in the land where we grew up, Long Island, probably the reddest part of a blue state that I could think of. But yeah, we can't stop pointing this stuff out. and we can't stop pointing out how much he has just normalized violent imagery and violent language. And honestly, with January 6th, acts of violence. You know, all of this is of a piece. This goes right along with January 6th. The people who are in prison for that, who he refers to as hostages was the last thing he called them,

and has said that he will, you know, pardon all of them if reelected. All of this is just to normalize any bit of right-wing violence. that happens in this country. He's not going to stop and his supporters aren't going to stop. And we have to keep calling this shit out. I don't understand like the collective shrug around it. Do you know what I'm saying? Like this is not just a blip.

It is it is escalation. You can you can see a timeline from the 2020 presidential election, the campaign rather, where he started, where, you know, the big law. and all of these things, and then they're building a gallows, you know, a few months later on the steps of the Capitol building. He's attacking all of the judges and the judges' families that are hearing all of the fucking legal cases and drama that he is up against. He is receiving gag orders because there are his followers that are listening to everything that he's saying.

When you had some of those folks from January 6 provide testimony and say, we were acting on directives from the president of the United States. And then this man is putting out social media images like this. Like, I just don't understand how Donald Trump is able to be outside of a prison right now while he's on trial in all of these different places. Like, I can think of no other political figure that is as dangerous. in America right now than Donald Trump. Yeah, absolutely. And look, Danielle, I'm old. And, you know, you're a bit younger.

So you may not remember back in the day when Kathy Griffin held up. Donald Trump, I guess it was a mask, so it looked like a severed head and it had ketchup on it. The outrage on the right. The absolute outrage. And, you know, she pretty much, she got canceled, et cetera, et cetera. The difference is, A, she's a comedian. She wasn't the nominee. for the Democratic Party. And B, a lot of people on the left were like, what are you doing?

You know? And there's none of that on the right with Trump, with, you know, the exception of the usual suspects, the nine or ten people who are still left, who are firmly anti-Trump. But the vast majority of people on the right are either cheering Donald Trump on when he does this, or at best, they're being silent about it. And no one on the right comes out and says, man, you can't do that. Like, that's the image of the president of the United States, you know, hogtied in the back of a truck. You can't post that. Nobody does that. My point is there is just there's no counterbalance on the right at all.

There is no counterbalance to Trump when he does these things. There's either cheering or there's just, at best, there's silent disapproval. What the fuck does silent disapproval do? Nothing. Not a thing. And all we're seeing, we have seen judges in this country be attacked, be killed. be killed, their family members, be killed because of criminals that shoot them and what have you. So we saw Paul Pelosi beaten with a hammer because of rhetoric attached to Donald Trump.

We've seen, you know, people be arrested for sending arsenic and bomb threats and all of these things. Again, followers of Donald Trump. So I'm just like, are we all just holding our breath and waiting for someone else to die in order to make the connection? I don't understand, like, what we are all waiting for. And when I say you all, I'm talking about, like, the media's ability to just move on. You want to have a week-long news cycle on Biden stumbling upstairs. Yeah. But Donald Trump posting violence is like, oh, we blink and it's done.

Yeah, absolutely. And look, part of that is because he does something insane and awful every day. But that shouldn't matter. Like you said, this stuff needs to stick in the cultural memory. This stuff needs to be remembered so that each of these incidents don't seem like isolated incidents. And so they are seen as part of a pattern and as part of a whole. And look, over the weekend also, Trump linked to an article, New York Post article about the daughter of Judge Merchant, who is the judge in charge of the trial regarding Stormy Daniels

and the hush money payments. And he tweeted this article about the judge's daughter that included pictures of the judge's daughter. And it's just he knows what he's doing. He knows that this is a veiled threat at the judge. And he knows that that's how it will be read by way too many of his supporters. And all it takes, as we've seen over and over again in this country, is one asshole with a gun to do something really, really horrible. And then, of course, you'll hear talk from the people on the right who were silent will suddenly be like, you know, well, yes, this is unacceptable. This should never have happened.

but they won't say it while he's doing it. And that's the problem. After the fact, if something horrible happens, maybe they'll step forward, but they sure as hell won't say anything before the fact. They're not going to step forward, Andy. You know what they'll do? They'll blame D.E. and I. Yeah, probably.

Yeah. You know, there is no sense anymore of any type of responsibility that Republican politicians take on at all, right? they will just find a way to pivot, deflect, and blame it on DEI, on Biden, on Democrats, on trans youth. Like, there will be no responsibility. If there's something that happens, it'll be like a quick thoughts and prayers and then on to the next thing. Oh, don't politicize this. Oh, this wasn't Donald Trump's fault.

He's just talking. I don't know when responsibility will ever be taken. But I know that what Trump is waiting for and what he is egging on, is violence. And when he talks about this upcoming election, and we called it out on this show, and, you know, and people wanted to part and parcel out the language around bloodbath, right, that he said, oh, the election, it's going to be a bloodbath, you know, and oh, but he didn't really say that and he didn't mean it and blah, blah, blah, who are you helping here by trying to, trying to make it seem as if he's not, he doesn't know what he's doing and what he's saying

and what he's hopeful for. It's, oh, the election will be wild. Like, that's what he's hoping. If I don't win, you know, wild shit is going to happen. Mm-hmm. Like, hopefully your ass going to jail. Folks, I am very excited. I believe to welcome back to the new abnormal. Dr. Kyla Story, who is Associate Professor for Women's Gender and Sexual Studies with a joint appointment in the Department of Pan-African Studies.

She also holds the Audre Lord Chair in Race, Clash, Gender and Sexual Studies at the University of Louisville. Hello, hello. Hi, Danielle. it's so good to talk to you. I'm a huge fan, so I'm so excited. Oh, girl, I stay on your Instagram. I stay commenting on the things you post.

And so it's good to be in conversation with you. You know, as these attacks continue from racists who are leading the Republican Party with regard to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and we're watching racist white governors in states like Alabama ban DEI, ban any, you know, mention whatsoever of diversity and trying to use this quote unquote reverse racism. I had to talk to you because what is happening in these states that started on college campuses is absolutely ridiculous. And I think that the pushback isn't enough.

And as a professor, I wanted to get your thoughts on what you see happening and why you think, that this is happening right now? Yes, of course. And you're absolutely right. It's happening nationwide, particularly in southern states, like you mentioned, Texas, Florida. And recently, this past legislative session here in Kentucky, Senator Mike Wilson introduced his bill, which it was originally Senate Bill 6. And then when it got to House committee, the House changed the bill drastically and actually buried an additional bill underneath it, which was House Bill 9 by Representative Decker, because the bill changed so drastically from his initial Senate bill after it went to the House, they ended up not passing it, not talking about it.

I think everybody, all of the student organizers and many of the folks who work in student resource centers at UFL were watching the legislative session end at midnight last week to ensure that they didn't bring Senate Bill 6 to discussion and vote because here in Kentucky, we have supermajorities in both houses. We have the super majority in the Senate as well as a majority in the House, all Republican. They could have made it law here in the state of Kentucky. There were several issues that came up in the discussion, both for Democrats and Republicans, there were questions about what is this going to do in the face of the NCAA when it comes

to black athleticism and black athletes? bringing their talents to schools in the South. You know, what is the response going to be from our NAACP? You know, recently the NWACP caution African Americans from traveling to the state of Florida and particularly black athletes bringing their talent to that state in the face of anti-D-EI initiatives. There were also conversations of what does this do to our colleges and universities accreditation when our accrediting bodies have so much to do with DEI initiatives. And I think that all of the folks who are against this kind of legislation and recognize that this is in reality a cover for anti-blackness, anti-queer and trans identity, and are very clear on what these bills represent.

I think that the reason why GOPs and Republicans across our nation are focusing so heavily on these initiatives and resource centers is because they recognize the empowerment that comes to marginalized communities when they're, they are presented with robust and three-dimensional scopes of history and our country and education, they see the power and empowerment in it. They see this new generation of black and queer and trans young people as really against these old fashioned agendas when it comes to conceptions of humanity and rights and equal justice. And they're really not having it. And they're really opposed to it. We had a lot of student organizations. organizers talking about the benefits of DEI through scholarships and resource centers that are on campuses. And for Republicans to be intentionally bent on taking these resources away from students, they are

particularly interested in taking them away from certain students, Black, Latin students, Asian students, LGBTQ students. And what they feel as if is happening is that these students are coming to campuses, at least when it came to our legislator, they felt like somehow conservative quote unquote, I put that in quotation marks, but conservative viewpoints are squelched in classrooms, resource centers, and on campus in general, and folks who are pro-life,

folks who are anti-queer, folks who want to say that, you know, talking about black people is reverse racism, that they see those conversations as being antithetical to the university. And this is the confusion that they have because, I mean,

essentially universities are created. right, as spaces that are supposed to be free from political and religious interference. And so this is why they're created. This is why tenure is created. So professors and students can engage in political discussions and debate without these kind of reprehensible consequences of religious fundamentalism as well as reactionary politicians. And so that's the reason why they're created in the first place. And I think they clearly understand. that our kind of purview and our ideology as a nation has been switching to a more progressive and inclusive country.

They see the university as at the helm of that ideological shift and they want to get rid of it. This is very clearly part of the fascist playbook is that whenever there have been authoritarian takeovers in countries, who do? they go after first? They go after the sources of education and intellect and conversation, which are the universities, the professors to shut them down. And I wonder, you are a professor that teaches the next generation and we talk a lot about where Gen Z is right now in terms of, you know, leaving university and heading into the workplace. And I want to get a sense from you as to how they are feeling about these attacks, whether they be queer or black, Latinx or otherwise, how these

students are feeling about the shift that the GOP is trying to create in our society right now, this pushback. Oh, that's an excellent question too. The students and the student reaction on our campus at University of Louisville was really, really telling because the group of students that organize the protest against these bills, the 14 anti-LGBQ bills that were. introduced this session as well as these kind of three anti-DEI bills that were introduced. All of them fell flat. All of them failed and didn't become law. But they were initiated.

And what's interesting is about the initiators of these bills were overwhelmingly white, cis, straight of a certain age. And the resistance, the student resistance to the bills were Latinx, Asian, various age groups, various gender identities, various sexualities. And so there was a very diverse group of students, including white poor students, who resisted and wrote letters to their legislators, who organized a protest on campus, who made like phone banking calls to legislators to tell them to say no. The students are really, really excited to be at the university. They're being introduced to history and literature and media and things that they have just not been introduced to. 8 through 12 and they're hungry for the information,

thirsty for the information, excited and enthusiastic about it. And these bills to them scared them so much, not just because there was a possibility of them losing a scholarship or that this resource center would disappear, but that it would also affect curriculum in the classrooms. And these students are making friends and forming community with people who are very different from themselves,

different races, different gender identities, these different sexual qualities, and they don't understand the previous generation's, you know, resistance to making community that is diverse and making friendships that way. And so even when they're going home, right, on vacations for Thanksgiving and different holidays, and they're here the inward tossed around, they hear, you know, homophobic or transphobic epitaphs. They challenge their parents and their aunt and uncles and grandparents to think differently. And I think that that's what's really getting to the heart of many of these legislators is that it's now coming into their homes and their environments. They're saying things. Their children are like, uh, dad, no, I have trans friends or no,

you don't say racial epitaphs in my presence. I'm not tolerating it. They know what anti-racism looks like. They know how to be accomplices and allies to race and justice struggles. And they're challenging their home environments, you know, and this is what makes I think the legislators think, oh, there's all of this indoctrination. There's all of this indoctrination and that's campuses in these classrooms. And in reality, it's no. It's that the students are presented with history in a robust way for the first time and they are challenged.

And then they begin to think differently and advocate differently. And I think that this is what the GOP sees as indoctrination and they're making students do this because they know that they're raising them completely different. And it's a wonder that once young people are out. actually shown the gamut of our history and our beginnings and has immediately changed their tune on whatever they were previously indoctrinated to think and pushed back against these things. So students, all walks of life were mad, pissed off and really engaged civically to really challenge their legislators and senators, you know, to not pass these bills and to vote against them

in these kinds of ways. So yeah, they're really on board with professors and other students nationwide who are resisting these kinds of pushes to NDEI. And I also think that GOP is seemingly confused in general as to what that even means. Yep. Come on. They think that DEI is African American history. They think DEI is LGBTQ history. Because we've seen in states in the north, like for instance, Washington, they're saying, no, now we're going to have LGBTQ history.

and literature as a core part of our curriculum in our universities in response to GOP's Nationwide, trying to change it to be banned or to be against. And so, and that's what I kept telling the students that, you know, when we're in black studies, Pan-African studies, women and gender studies, we're teaching feminist history, women's history, we're teaching about pay inequity. We're teaching we don't have paid paternal leave or maternity leave. We're one of the only developed countries in the entire world that doesn't. These things are outrageous and ridiculous. and the students recognize that. What they think is DEI is literally inclusive curriculum.

Literally, black studies, women's studies, LGBT studies. These are activist-oriented disciplines where students had to protest and sit in president's offices, board of trustee meetings and demand that they get curriculum that is reflective of their experience and their identities. And now that those things have been instituted and they've created such empowerment and power within these communities, Republicans, I think, are recognizing that and they want to squelch it and their first stop, like you mentioned, is intellectualism, is books, right? We had the book ban.

We had the facts on critical race theory. Now we have these bills being pushed, all to just squelch the intellectual rigor and inclusive education. I mean, do you think, too, that the fact is we know that there have always been these characters throughout history who will do anything in order to uphold white supremacy, where I think that we are missing those that need to push back against the Republicans push to continue to spread their kind of indoctrination, their whitewashing, their bills that they put out like Ron DeSantis, you know, so that white people don't feel bad about themselves, et cetera, et cetera,

is the conversation that needs to happen, that needs to shift, which is that this is just racism. Instead of talking about it as, oh, this is the pushback against D.E. and I, this is just racism and white supremacy. Do you think that there is a problem with using their narrative and language to push back against their whitewashing? Yes. And it's this weird situation in which they want to initiate all of these bills. They want to get rid of resource centers. They want to ban like in Florida, how they ban the discipline of sociology altogether. But they also don't want to be called racist. They also don't want to be called white supremac. They also don't want to own what they're actually doing ideologically, I think, and emotionally, they want to say, well, no, this isn't this.

We're just trying to create fairness. And what their tactic is is to actually use leftist language of inclusion, right? I mean, that's what our GOP was doing. This legislative session saying that, well, these conservative opinions are squelched out of student voices. Students don't really have a voice to express themselves. They're being suppressed almost similarly to what black students might have felt in the 60s. when there were no black studies programs that conferred degrees.

And so they used the language of activists and the left to make it seem as if these bills are about fairness and equality. And right, I mean, just using all of these buzzwords. And they're absolutely not. They're absolutely a way to further white supremacy and anti-LGB and anti-Black sentiment. I mean, period. I don't know where the disconnect to them comes, like not wanting to be seen as a racist, but pushing for racist legislation. And I was telling my students,

our legislators, you know, this past session were really being like picnies. Like they were initiating these bills. And they almost didn't even seem passionate. They just were like, hey, Desanthus, look at us. Hey, Texas. Look at us. Right.

We pick me. Pick us. Look at us. We're going hard for the GOP. You know what I mean? Selling it. And pandering to who they assume their bases who have the same kind of reductive and polarized views.

But yeah, that's what these bills are, to me, plain as they're just another type of tool and form of racism. And it's almost similar to, you know, you had Bull Connor back in the day, segregation now, segregation forever. And he looks like a fool now. So I don't know what now that history has ran its course, right? And so now when we look back on Bull Connor sentiments

or those grown adults who were spitting on black children and the Little Rock Nine when they were integrating schools, like now you look like a fool. You look like a racist hate monger. And I'm not sure why there's this disassociation from that, but the legislation mirrors that sentiment exactly. And I also was telling my students too, like this idea that white kids are in classrooms and when they're introduced to racism or white supremacy or, you know, racial capitalism like an enslavement or the prison industrial complex, you know, I'm like this idea that white children are sitting in classrooms feeling bad implies the fact that they somehow think they were all planters, they were all enslavers.

Y'all didn't have no money. Y'all didn't have no money. And if your family for the past three generations has been poor and impoverished, more than likely your family was poor and impoverished during that time period as well. So everybody wasn't an enslaver. Everybody wasn't making laws. Everybody wasn't a property owner. And so this idea that somehow all white people, right? And not to say that white people themselves don't participate in privilege and power and personal privilege and power when it comes to racism. But in terms of executing it structurally, institutionally, that was a select few.

And it wasn't y'all, okay? Because Thomas Jefferson people still got money, okay? And you have to watch you 10 and all of these other folks, they still are Uber wealthy. And if your family just isn't, right? You might have, they might have participated historically on the personal level, saying the N-word or being there to spit on the Little Rock Nine. But they weren't in a power position.

and that's the thing that they fail to understand. And when they're exposed to like true and accurate portrayals of history, this is something they'll come to get. But I think that that's the other thing. On the one hand, it's a valorization, this idea of I feel bad or I feel sad about racism when, you know, anti-racists have been advocating for white people to think about racism, not feel, right?

I mean, the people who are pressed by racist ideals do the feeling. You can do the thinking and advocate against these initiatives. But in terms of having these. emotional feelings tethered to racism, that's never been the aim of anti-racist. The aim has been you need to think structurally and institutionally about how racist ideals are propagated and advocate against them, but not to come away from a conversation and say, oh, I just feel so sad that I think that the people who are harmed by racial capitalism are the folks that are sad and stressed out.

You know what I mean? So it's that thing all at the same time. on the one hand, a valorization of their own historical position. And at the same time, not wanting to be associated with hateful speech or being racist, but using leftist language to try and, you know, I guess, fool their own constituents and the people that vote for them into thinking that, oh, it's not about racism. It's just about equality. It's just about fairness.

And isn't the University of All Ideas being accepted and this kind of stuff? Yeah. Dr. Story, I appreciate your breakdown of the way that all of this is happening because I think that it's important for folks to really understand very clearly the game that is being played and at whose expense it is being played and who will inevitably lose in the end of all of it. And I just want to thank you for making the time to join the new abnormal and provide us with a much needed breakdown of where we are and where we find ourselves. Really appreciate you. Thank you so much, Danielle, and I appreciate you and all your work and your show. It's absolutely wonderful. Keep informing the people and we'll just have to keep moving and keep advocating against these things.

A hundred percent. Jacob Halbrun is the editor of the International Affairs Magazine, The National Interest, and the author of They New They Know They Were Right, the Rise of the Neocons. His new book, America Last, The Rights' Century Long Romance with Foreign Dictators, traces 100 plus years of the American rights, love and admiration for right-wing authoritarians and its distrust of, if not disdain, for democracy. He joins me now to talk about it. Jacob, thank you so much for being here. Thanks a lot. So you write in the intro to the book that, quote, the longer I've listened to conservatives

today talk about Hungary, Russia, wokeness, the deep state, abortion, immigration, and media bias, the more I've become convinced that many of their arguments are not novel. And I'll say that I was at least passingly familiar with a lot of what's in the book, the America Firsters' admiration for Hitler and Mussolini, the conservative love affairs with Francisco Franco, Jonas Savimbi, Augusto Pinochet, et cetera. And I want to talk about all that. But I want to start the way the book does, because I have to confess, I didn't know much about Kaiser Wilhelm II, who ruled Germany from 1888 to 1918 and a person who you straight up call a monster. Can you briefly describe why you say this, and then we'll get into the American rights view with him? Well, Kaiser Wilhelm the second set the 20th century

on a dangerous course. He sent Lenin to Russia and toppled the Romanov monarchy. He precipitated World War I by giving Austria a blank check. He engaged in colonial ventures in Africa that prefigured the genocidal warfare of the Nazis. And after World War I, when he abdicated on November 9th, 19th, he blamed the Jews for Germany's defeat and said they should be gas to death. And a number of members of the Hoan-Solaran family, which was the monarchy, then cozied up to Adolf Hitler, as did Kaiser Wilhelm himself. Okay, so then let's get to where the thesis of your book really starts,

which is the American rights view of Wilhelm, which was obviously not quite as, I don't know what the word, not quite as critical as you are. And I guess that brings us to people like H. L. Mencken and George Virick, right? It does indeed. There was a lot of pro-German sentiment in the United States. There have been huge waves of emigration from Germany to the United States, starting after the failed revolutions of 1848 in Europe. And Verick and Mencken both were descendants, both had German ancestry and were violently pro-German. Virick served as an actual German espionage agent during World War one and had a publication called the Fatherland that declared that it was Britain, the democracies that were the true warmongers, and that the United States should stay out of World War I.

And he relentlessly ridiculed Woodrow Wilson. H. L. Manken did not engage in espionage, but he traveled to Germany. And he worshipped Germany as a country that was both culturally, politically and economically superior to the United States. He saw it as a kind of Periclean Athens in modern style and wrote an essay for the Atlantic saying, going so far, and I don't think this was in jest, even though Mencken was a satirist, but we have to remember that he was violently opposed to democracy because he thought it elevated the herd. He was kind of a Nietzschean, and he believed, he wrote in this article that Germany should conquer the United States and we would be better off for it. And those views he never really shed.

He too was a racist and an anti-Semite and was, of course, opposed to American entry into World War II as well. Yeah, I have to say, I learned a lot about Minkin from this book. And I think I sort of had the view of him that he was this sort of like, oh, he was just sort of an irascible curmudgeon. No, he was a really bad guy. Definitely. I mean, he, as I call him, the founding father of what we now call the old right, which is the hardcore, the radical right, which is opposed ultimately to the Enlightenment, but what we now call rule of law and democracy. Mencken, you know, made all those jokes about democracy, but they actually weren't jokes. He genuinely believed that it was elevating people who did not deserve to. to occupy the positions that they did. He despised Coolidge and Warren Harding as well because he didn't think they were conservative enough. He was a radical libertarian. So I want to talk about just moving a

little for the interwar period because it feels like that's where these figures on the right really started leaning into historical revisionism, which as you write remains to this day central to the rights romance with foreign dictators. Is it accurate to say that that's really where this patterns sort of started? It does, because I identify three waves of revisionism, one after World War I, one after World War two, and then after the end of the Cold War. Now, it really starts in after World War I, and what's the guiding thesis? Blame America first. We shouldn't have intervened. It was globalists who dragged us into the war. It was the merchants of deaths. It was the Jewish bankers, Jacob Schiff, Coon and Loeb, and that this had led to America to embark upon a cruis

for democracy that proved to be none at all. Instead, America should retreat from the rest of the world into isolationism, and you should have a fortress America. All the themes that we hear Donald Trump enunciate today were formulated originally in the 1920s and 30s. Yeah, it's just fascinating. Look, obviously, feel free to disagree with me, but the sense I had while reading the book was that maybe the best analog for the esteem today's right holds for an Orban or a Putin was, what we saw in the 1920s and 30s with Mussolini, maybe along with Spain's Francisco Franco? Definitely. Though there was, we can't forget, there was too, a lot of admiration. It wasn't, you know, we talk about America first. We talk about isolationists in the 1930s.

But some of these people were not isolationists, which implies that they were neutral. They were, in fact, pro-Hitler. They wanted Hitler to serve as a bulwark against Bolshevism. and they believe that we should be supporting Hitler and that the only result of World War II was that we allowed Stalin to engage in mass conquest in Eastern and Central Europe. No, absolutely. And obviously, I want to get to Hitler in a minute, he said, conversationally. But I really did feel like, you know, Mussolini was really where the whole, as you point out, family values, the posturing of strength, anti-immigrant, anti-democracy. It really feels like sort of the pro-Musolini faction is maybe, again, the most akin to what we see

today with the people that the ardent Putin and Orban Chuliers. I think there is a lot of truth to that because Mussolini, we have to remember, was the first. He was in some ways the model for Hitler. The Beer Hall putsch in 1923 was an attempt to emulate Mussolini's march on Rome. And Hitler didn't come to power until 1933, much later than Mussolini. So, yes, a number of people, including Warren Harding's ambassador to Rome, Richard Washburn Child, revered Mussolini as a modern leader who could oppose the kind of decadence that had taken place in 19-20s America with the flapper era. They saw Mussolini as a virile man, the same way you hear American conservatives today touting Putin right or Orban as masculine, pro-family, and anti-gay.

Yeah, the comparisons were just so striking and sort of like a Venn diagram that was just a circle. It really was unbelievable. Let's talk about Hitler. And I want to touch on something that you sort of referenced earlier. And I was wondering if you think, or the sense I have that it's sort of, is it fair to divide the right here at the time into two camps? The one that was just straight up pro-Nazi, as you said. And then the other that would say things like, you know, no, it's just not our business. Or would even say like, yes, Hitler's bad. but FDR is just as bad. Is that a fair demarcation or were most of the people claiming to be in sort of the latter group, really just the former and they were hiding it? I think it's very tricky. You had Herbert Hoover visiting Hitler in March 1938 on the eve of the annexation of Austria by the Third Reich. And Hoover meets with Hitler and emerges, very pleased and says that we should not worry about the Nazis taking over Central Eastern Europe. It'll be a good thing. It'll help promote stability. And then in the Republican Convention in 1940 in Philadelphia, Hoover again blasts the Roosevelt administration for attacking the top officials in the Third Reich.

I think maybe, you know, Hoover probably falls into the somewhat more neutral camp. But I don't think he's as far gone as Charles Lindberg who accepted a medal from Herman Guring. Right. And explicitly denounced Jewish influence and said that Jews in Hollywood were dragging us. into World War II. So, yeah, there is a distinction. And you should remember, too, that there are legitimate isolationists at this time. There are, you know, both on the left and the right. People did, you know, there's obviously who would want a repetition of World War I? No, for sure. And that's why I find this kind of interesting that there is this sort of split and

there are these legitimate isolationists. But it also feels like there were a number of people who were using isolationism as a cover to actually map. ask their sort of deep admiration for Hitler. 100%. You have George Van Horn Mosley, who is an army general, testifying before Congress and saying that Jews coming to the United States should be sterilized and that you can wipe out the red menace with a couple regiments sent from the White House. That's Trump-like language.

Then you have Elizabeth Dilling, who was publishing conspiracy books about Jews and was called the female furor in Nazi Germany. She visited Germany, attended the Nuremberg rallies, thought everything was hunky dory. There are a lot of these, these are the characters that I focus on in my book because, interestingly, it's, you know, it really is turning over the proverbial rock. There is much more of this than we have ever acknowledged. Absolutely. And that was one of the things I found absolutely, you know, just completely fascinating about the book. Let's jump to the post-war era, which, you know, obviously overlaps with the Cold War.

And that gives us the man who's considered by many people to be the father of modern conservatism, William Buckley Jr. How does he fit into your thesis here? Buckley is an ambiguous figure because as a child, when he went to prep school, he was an ardent admirer of Charles Lindbergh, delivered his speech defending him in America First. He read a publication called Scribner's commentator, which was also devoted to lauding Lindbergh and isolationism. After World War II, Buckley emerges at Yale, and I trace his intellectual path. And he writes the first denunciation of the university from the conservative perspective, God and Man at Yale. He says that we've abandoned the free market values and Yale has become anti-religion. And Buckley sort of serves, he's a transitional figure.

He pivots the movement. He takes, you know, there was the old anti-Semitic anti-communism. He takes that. He sort of tries to shed the anti-Semitism. and just focus on maintaining a radical right that calls for rollback of communism. Now, where before the conservatives, they said we shouldn't intervene abroad. Now they're denouncing Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower for being too passive in face of the communist peril. And in particular, they focus on an Asia-first policy, saying that the peril, that it was totalitarian and gutless liberals in the Roosevelt and Truman administration, who sold out America and that they allowed communism to triumph in Asia. It's interesting because we're talking about what today would be considered,

I guess a neo-conservative belief of projecting American power into places like Asia and stuff like that. But as you get to in the book, you could take conservative figures like Gene Kirkpatrick and Pat Buchanan, who were very far apart in their beliefs about projecting American power. But they didn't really leave room for the Holy Ghost between them when it came to supporting and advocating for right-wing dictators. And I find that even these two people who were so sort of disparate in their views of the projection of American power, both sort of had this admiration for dictators. Yeah, and Buchanan actually wrote a column after Kirkpatrick's death calling her the one good neocon. What united them was anti-communist fervor. And

in Kirkpatrick's case, you know, she wrote a whole essay saying that we should back dictators right-wing dictatorships, that they were not a bad thing, that they would eventually perhaps turn Democratic. But she supported the Argentine junta when they invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982. She denounced the nuns in El Salvador, who had been assassinated and raped by right-wing paramilitary groups. She went way over the line. And she was, of course, called Jonas Savimbi, one of the greatest profits of our time while pouring scorn on the African National Congress in Nelson Mandela. Buchanan is more of an old right figure.

Yeah. And he keeps the Mankan tradition alive. And that is the tradition that he then, in a way, handed over to Donald Trump. I do think, Pap Buchanan, with his political campaigns, laid the groundwork for Trump, anti-globalist, anti-free trade, and opposed to supporting democracies abroad, finally, Buchanan also lauded Vladimir Putin in a column calling him is Vladimir Putin one of us, by which he meant that he's a Christian, anti-gay culture warrior. He said, he's really a paleo-conservative. They saw no distinction between Putin and what they believed. Yeah, and that actually brings me to my next question,

which is how much of a role both over the last hundred years and now, would you say religion plays in the worldview of the pro-authoritarianists? And by religion, I of course mean Christianity. It certainly played an immense role. Now, is this true Christianity? I mean, to embrace violence and dictators, Franco, to embrace Salazar in Portugal, to embrace apartheid in South Africa? I mean, for me, it's the obverse of what true Christianians. is supposed to be. But it is a right-wing conception that figures like Buchanan definitely forwarded. And they support for the Catholic Church in Italy as well. It's, again, all of these themes have flourished over the decades and have come back today. Yeah, because look, Donald Trump,

who I think we can all agree, is not the most religious guy in the world, but he or the people around him have learned that if he couches his speeches in the language of sort of evangelical Christianity, it works wonders with his audience. And this seems to build on what you write about what's been going on for these past 100 plus years. Yeah, I mean, Trump is the consummate brand salesman, and he has now turned religion into his newest brand. He used to pedal stakes or Trump University. Now there's a, there's a good piece, I think, in the Washington Post today, saying how he is veering towards really what is blasphemous language, comparing himself to Jesus Christ, and demanding an even higher degree of loyalty and worship from his followers.

And I guess before we leave, I want to move away from religion for a second, but I want to get to something you write early in the book, and it may actually be in the intro. I couldn't remember. You mentioned that you say, quote, a proclivity for authoritarianism is American to its core. And I thought, that's really what this all boils down to, isn't it? Unfortunately, yes. I mean, these strands go back to the Civil War or before, but they have taken on a kind of mass quality today and in the 1920s that I thought that this was behind us. I have to say, I was naive. I didn't realize the extent of it when I began exploring and researching for this book.

It was an educational and even shocking experience for me to find so much of this material and that these figures, they may seem remote to us today. You know, I focused on Merwin Hart, who is a New York financier, Lothrop Stoddard, a eugenicist from the 1920s. But, you know, Stoddard came out with the rising tide of color in 1920. That really is the great replacement theory. And it's shocking to me that people are so susceptible to what really is old wine and new bottles. Yeah, I have to say that reading the book, it was kind of stunning. Again, I sort of had a general sense that, yes, as they said on Battlestar Galactica, all of this has happened before and will happen again. But the degree to which everything now, you know, it's copy-paste from the stuff that you just mentioned, stuff that we were seeing in the 1920s, 1930s, etc. And the book is absolutely fascinating. It's called America Last, the right century-long romance with foreign dictators. It's out now. Jacob Halberin, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Danielle Moody.

Andy Levy. Danielle, who is your fuck that guy to kick off this shitty week? Oh, damn. Sorry, I meant glorious. I meant glorious week. Right. I'm like, sometimes we try and be hopeful at the beginning. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

So my, I think it's been quite some time. I don't know. This may be someone making their debut into the fuck that guy. Hall of Fame, but this person has been a fuck that person for me for a long time. So let us welcome Caitlin Jenner. Caitlin Jenner was at one time one of the most famous people to come out as trans. When she gave her interview, I believe it was to Diane Sawyer, the views of that were huge. And it was the first time that people were seeing an Olympic icon, an athlete,

someone so popular in the in the psyche of American sports come out and have this conversation. And I think that for many inside of the LGBTQ community were hopeful that her coming out would spark greater conversation and awareness. We couldn't have been more fucking wrong. Like there like there couldn't have been a more overhyped coming out and a more overhyped fucking person than Caitlin Jenner who just every day proves that it. It does not matter whether or not you are trans or you are black. I mean, the caping that people will do, the self-hate that emanates is just, she's like the

Candace Owens of the trans community. It is just. So let me say what she did, which, you know, we talked about at the top, which is that Easter fell on the same day as transgender day of visibility. And since 2009, transgender day of visibility has been on March 31st. Easter is on a different Sunday every year. So Caitlin Jenner, however, decided to take to Elon Musk's website to say how disgusted she was. And this is exactly what she tweeted.

Quote, I am absolutely disgusted that Joe Biden has declared the most holy Holy of Holy Days, a self-proclaimed devout Catholic as transgender day of visibility. The only thing that you should be declaring on this day is he is risen. Caitlin, shut the fuck up. Like, honestly, no one has heard from you since you have left the Kardashian family. And you know why? Because you suck. You suck as a human.

You are a terrible, like, terrible embodiment of self-hate. and thinking that for some reason that if you carry the water, still for patriarchy, if you stand for like the Republicans that somehow they're going to welcome you back into their good old boys network, they are not. Like you're not going to be their trans best friend.

Like it's just not going to happen. So I don't know who the fuck her audience is, but like this post, I would just go away. Caitlin Jenner, go away. You serve absolutely no good anywhere. And I would just respectfully like to say, fuck off from all of us in the LGBTQ community. Yeah, fuck that gal.

Yeah, you said it. So, Andy, yes. It's a brilliant new week here in America. And how are you starting off this week with your fuck that guy? I want to talk about a judge named Adele Mungy. And he is not my fuck that guy. guy. What he is is a nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals, who, if confirmed, would be the first Muslim American to sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals. I guess not unpredictably. Republicans don't

seem to want to confirm him. If you watch the confirmation hearings at all in the past week or so, you saw, for example, a Republican senator John Kennedy asking Judge Munji if he, quote, celebrates 9-11. What the fuck? Yeah. Again, this was at a Senate hearing. this is what we've come to. Look, the obvious choice here is to say, fuck that guy for Senator John Kennedy. But I'm going to go ahead and give this, my fuck that guy, three Democratic senators who blocked the nomination. Joe Manchin, surprise, surprised. And two Democratic senators from Nevada.

That's Jackie Rosen and Catherine Cortez Mastow. They both have talked about how Judge Munji, in their eyes is anti-police. And apparently this is because he sits on an advisory board for an anti-Islamophobia center at Rutgers University. And what he does is advise on academic research. But apparently that organization held an event that he didn't even know about in which they had someone speak who had been charged with shooting a police officer. So that makes the judge anti-police apparently. And it's just, it's such the cowardice of these three Democratic senators who are going to prevent a guy, who, by the way, was the American Bar Association labels as exceptionally qualified. They're trying to tar him as being anti-Semitic. Meanwhile, even the ADL, which is, let's just say not my favorite group these days and for a while now,

but even the ADL has come out and said that this is absolutely ridiculous, that he's not anti-Semitic. This is a full-on Republican smear campaign, and these three Democratic senators have decided that they are going to join in on this. They ultimately are the ones who get my fuck those guys for this glorious week, Daniel. I'm just so fucking tired of people from marginalized communities having to apologize when white people are never asked to apologize for a fucking thing. Like, so you're Muslim, so you have to condemn every single act of terror. Like, where are we asking the white senators to apologize for January 6th? And the acts of white domestic terrorism, which are a lot fucking more prevalent than any foreign, quote unquote, foreign terrorists. When are we ever asking all of, you know, the tele-evangelists to come on television to denounce

white domestic terror? I'm just so fucking tired of this and like, and these Democrats, and I use that term loosely, like, who are you doing this favor for? And this is when people get really pissed off and they say, oh, Republicans and Democrats, they just both be carrying the same water for white supremacy. And this is what that looks like. Fuck those guys. Before we go, I just want to point out that when he was asked,

this inane and straight up bigoted question, you know, whether he celebrated 9-11. Judge Munji's response was basically was like, no, of course not. And then he said, my home was attacked. He lives in New York City. And it's like the idea that he even has to say that, a guy who was in New Yorker, but that's the point is that to them, to Senator John Kennedy and everyone else on the, you know, I think Tom Cotton was another one. America is not Judge Manji's home because he is Muslim. So he has to get up there and say, hey, I live in New York. These motherfuckers attacked my city. The idea that he has to even say that is just, it's so sad and it's just, the bigotry

is just off the charts here. So fuck all those 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 with production by Jesse Cannon and Shamis Culler. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh,

and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.