TRASHFUTURE - Socialism with Ponzi Characteristics ft. Grace Mauser and Álvaro López

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

It's the free one! Riley speaks with DSA members Grace and Alvaro about the long years and efforts the organisation put in to secure Zohran Mamdani the democratic nomination for NY mayor… apparently it’s more than just TikToks! But first, we revisit an old, old friend and look at a shiny new piece of hardware. Check out the Mamdani campaign site here! The national site for the Democratic Socialists of America is here! And the site for NYC DSA is here! MILO ALERT Check out Milo’s tour dates here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/liveshows Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to this free episode of TF. Sorry, it's late. Sorry, I have been in Germany. Yeah, it's late, but it is free. So, you know, can you really complain? Exactly. Get what you pay for. That's what they say.

Yeah, that's right. Yes, I was in Germany and my understudy as a replacement host when I am in primarily Germany is feeling unwell. So it is a day late. You can't get mad at me, not allowed. So the other thing, you may notice that this is a featuring episode where we're going to have another conversation in the back half, a conversation that I wanted to have for a while. I've been sort of trailing for a bit. I've finally managed to set up with Alvaro Lopez and Grace Mouser, who are the, respectively, the electoral politics coordinator for Democratic Socialists of America, New York, and the co-chair of New York City Democratic Socialists of America talking all about the what I call like the iceberg of the Tsarind Mamdani campaign, the many actual years of organizing that went into it. So we can once and for all dismiss this idea that because he's personable and good at making short form video content, that that is what you need to do politics. So I've already had that conversation, and I promise you it was an interesting one.

So do stay tuned for that. Also, another little bit of housekeeping, I have made the executive decision to talk about everything to do with Israel, the Samud Flotilla, the crackdowns on rights of free expression, and the aftermath of the attacks on the synagogue and on the mosque in next episode where we'll be talking to Eleanor Penny about that. Yeah, so if you're looking for all that fun dessert stuff, you'll have to wait till Friday. Yes, that's right. But I actually want to talk about something very serious, which is, I don't know how to tell you. this, Jordan Peterson is under spiritual attack. Oh, no. Not again. This keeps happening to this guy. The witches from TikTok are actual projecting to my location. They're putting powerful hexes on me. It's very sad. It's weird, though, how he seemed to have come under constant spiritual attack

ever since his daughter took over the management of his life and diet. Oh, no. You notice that, That he seems to have, like, developed a series of, like, Bolsonaro-level insane maladies. Well, look, all I'll say is Michaela Peterson and the Etsy Wiz are never in the same room. And make of that what you will. Yeah, that's right. We should do, like, a sort of Salem witch trials, but for, like, to determine what's going on with Jordan Peterson. Yeah. So, Michaela Peterson says, to be honest, I think a lot of this is a spiritual attack.

We're getting spiritually attacked. My new board, Audrey, almost died of heart failure for no reason in June. Dad got sick as soon as he came to stay with us in July, and then needed a hospital and so on and so on. It's been one thing after another in an unworldly type of way. And it's like, all I'm saying, all I'm saying is that maybe, maybe, the get scurvy on purpose diet is causing him to become unwell. The woke moralists say that you're having your scars open up due to a vitamin C deficiency

isn't good for you. Well, I say up yours. All I'm going to say is that like when Peterson does kick the can, which may be sooner rather than later by the sounds of it. I am looking forward to booking a flight to Toronto to have a little visit in the Jordan Peterson spa, which I imagine Michaela will be constructing in the aftermath of her father's death.

The Jordan Peter Sonson. That's right. I was trying to sort of draw like very congratulate towards a parallel between him and Captain Tom only because I do feel like the running theme here is this like girl boss who flew too close to the sun type of situation. The reason this came back to my attention

was just like, I was having dinner with like family recently and I did think the thing that so often happens I was just like oh you know and they're the Jordan Peterson people and a cousin was just like who's that oh yeah I forgot that there are people

who just don't know who that is that's actually really fun well that's really interesting because I don't know how old your cousin is but like well yeah actually like this only works if I know how old your cousin is your cousin like she she I think it's important that I say she is like 29

oh okay alright fine okay so actually ruined because I was going to say that like there was a moment of time where like this was yeah because I was thinking back to that period of time where Jordan Peterson, where there was that big, like, Jordan Peterson is, like, influencing the youths and, like, you know, his sort of, he's got this, like, uncanny ability to reach young men and all that type of stuff. And it's just like, well, the young men now, like, don't really sort of talk about him or know him. And, like, I think one of the

sort of great tragedies of Jordan Peterson, if we are to sort of think about it in most terms, is that, like, he was this sort of, like, flash in the pan whose odor sort of lasted a lot longer than you'd expect, but, like, has sort of... Because of eating all that raw meat. That's, right. But then, like, he sort of just became too weird for them. And then as the right just kind of, like, radicalized, I feel like, yeah, there's this real sort of sense of, like, he got discarded.

And now, like, at best, he's sort of seen as, like, that weird guy who can't stop crying and also, like, keeps going to the hospital. He keeps going to the hospital for, like, invented diseases. Like... Someone's got to have a disease for the first time, you know? Oh, yeah. I'm sure he's, he's had several for the first time. But yeah, he's, this is, this is what got me thinking about him again,

because this was when I was having this conversation in August in Canada, that I was like, okay, I'll just look him up, so he was done recently. And the article was, controversial Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson is being expected to, quote, take time off from everything after being exposed to a moldy environment, his daughter says. Taking time off from everything. Isn't that just a coma? Again, he's got fine form for it. Yeah.

Well, so I have this theory about Jordan Peterson and maybe based on what Hussein said, this actually doesn't hold anymore because he's like finally. fallen from his perch. But I think that at least back back, like, maybe like a year or two ago when Peterson was more in the discourse, my theory about Peterson is this. It's a test for whether people are online or not. Because if you ask, like, if you ask someone who's

truly online about Jordan Peterson, they will either be like, oh, yeah, the cool like not soy guy who has the like Chad, you know, based opinions or whatever. Or they'll be like, oh yeah, the fucking freak who like gave himself meat poisoning. Whereas if you ask a truly normal person about Jordan Peterson, they will go, oh, what, the guy

who wrote that self-help book. Like, people, Like normal people don't know that Jordan Peterson is weird. They just, they just, they've seen him in airport bookstores. Like, they're just like, oh, the guy wrote like the really normal. Because the self-help book is like quite normal. And they have no idea how insane he is. I don't know. I think the self-help book, I read some of it.

And there are definitely parts of it that like, I remember that no one else seems to. But there's like that moment where like he wants to be up a child. And then there's that moment where he writes like for a page about like, he has this like really weird like sort of moment where he like is this like, I need to discipline this child by hitting him. And it's just very, very strangely written. And there's another part where, like, he cries because he sees, like, he sees a cat on, like, a ledge somewhere.

And it's just like, this is, this is, like, a bit weird for a self-help book. Okay, let me revise my statement, relatively normal by the standards of Jordan Peterson. What I was also going to say is that a new litmus test of deciding, like, who's online, truly online and who isn't, is asking someone if they know who I show speeders. Yeah, or like, hey, do you believe yourself to be in a queue for a medbed? Do you think you're getting your medbed care rationed? But no, this is like, he appears as though he got more jealous. He's given himself more jellons from eating too much meat.

And now he's like, yo, I went into a moldy environment and cleaning out an attic. And now I have to retire forever. And all I can assume is this is nothing to do with my crippling benzodia addiction. This is nothing to do with my like all meat diet. This is nothing to do with the insane experimental treatments that my daughter took me to in Russia. It must be demons and more gelatin. That's all it could be. Amazing.

I look forward to hearing more about this as it develops. Yeah, let's see. But also it's like, if you want to talk about, you know, the elements of the right turning themselves into just some of the most, because it's not just internet to know about this. This is all very internet concerns to have. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Of course. Yeah. Everything they care about is stuff normal people never think about. Even being like, oh yeah, I have more gelatin. I'm under attack by demons. This is just, he's posted himself into possibly dying. That would be such a funny thing to bring up at like a town hall. Like when you go local MP, like, I'm on a attack by demons.

Yeah. What are you going to do about the demon problem in Basildon? Yeah. And the 33, this is being invented again. The 33-year-old YouTuber Michaela Peterson said her father has been suffering badly from Morgelons, basically, since 2017. She said that Peterson only ate meat, which has helped to curb symptoms, but recently hasn't been enough.

He's opening up all these scars and bleeding profusely from his gums, but it hasn't been enough. Yeah, this is... Like, yeah, my father, who drinks only piss, has recently taken a turn from the worst. I can only assume that he's not drinking enough piss. We're upping his dose of piss,

and we're hoping for the best. Yeah. So I guess he's had to retire, retire from everything because of a combination of not eating enough meat and, of course, demons. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's tiring.

battling demons all the time. They've got to have their meaning. There's something very trump about that. He's had to retire from everything. Yeah, he's had to retire. He's not doing a single thing. He's just lying around coughing up mold and fighting off demons. He's got a bad case of mojolans.

We're going to kill Moorgelans in this administration. Yeah, so the other thing I want to talk about before we get to the interview with Grace and Alvaro is another very important thing. I want you to both cast your mind. And you with the listener as well, right now, close your eyes. Take that mind, cast it back, right? Cast it back about, I don't know, eight months, eight or so months. So when it's casted, just let me know, just say aloud.

Okay, Riley, I've done it. And then people on the bus are in the gym are going to be like, what are you talking about? Sam Holtman partnered with Jody Ive. Now, Joni Ive, to remind you, was the famous product designer behind like the iPod, the original iPhone, the IMac. Like, this is like the guy who invented all the Apple products that changed. lot of how people interact with computing. So, Open AI bought Joni Ives design company, Love Form, for $6.5 billion, or I guess maybe

they just gave them some Nvidia graphics cards. Like, I don't know what they actually did. Well, sure. Yeah. I mean, you know, that's as good as $6.5 billion, I think. Well, apparently. Stock in Open AI, which is an intrinsically valuable company. They did this.

They were like, all right, we need to launch a physical product. We need to launch an AI enabled physical product. And also, it's going to solve all the problem. of the modern age by not being a phone. Oh, thank God. By not being a phone. Yeah. Because the problems of the modern age are all phone.

Well, because all the problems are in my phone. Yeah. Or the problem is all kids are looking at their phones. They're looking at iPads and so on and so on. We need to give a way for people to be constantly plugged into and cut off from the context around themselves, but without a screen, I guess is the problem. So we need like a big AI dummy. It's comforting to suck on.

So dummy, of course, being a pacifier for American listeners. Yeah, no, just like a big dumb guy that you suck on. Yeah. Well, that would be a good idea. Yeah, that's the optimist robot. Yeah. Apparently, I don't want to alarm you, but they're grappling with a series of technical issues. Oh, no.

Yeah, who could have? Open AI, technical issues? Who could have foreseen that the next palm-sized device without a screen that has an always-on microphone and series of cameras that people talk to to interact with after the fucking one that burns a hole in your chest, and just like does racist racist accents. After the rabbit, after the friend, I thought certainly

this is still a winning idea. It just needs someone to do it better. Sam Altman is being the fucking Kier Starmer of the AI enabled piece of hardware. The wearable Starmer AI. Oh, God.

Kirst Stamer? That's right. I know. Would that work? Yeah. Please, like me. It's a palm size device that reminds you to be sensible. Wait.

are you going two miles an hour over the speed limit? Remember, if there's a policeman around the corner, you can get three points on your licence. Oh, I see you're deciding to protest the atrocities that the British government's involved in. Might I suggest that might be hurtful? Houtful to me, to Kirstama. Yes.

I would consider it a favour to me if you stayed home. Taking your Kirstama AI, like palm tablet thing, to the Palestine protest. And it's just, he's just quietly from your pocket going, I disagree with this. I don't think this is British. shortened good taste. Anyway, yeah, astonishingly, the palm-sized device

out of screen that takes audio and visual cues from physical environments and response to users' requests. This thing we've seen people try to make, I think, four times now. What do you know? They haven't yet solved the critical problems that caused all of the other attempts at making this to be just completely worthless. Now, how would we characterize the main problem with this? Is the main problem with this that I don't understand what the fuck it's even supposed to be?

Is that sort of problem one? Yes, that's a big one. The other issue is, I like that this is the FT, has reported this. Despite having hardware developed by Ivan, his team, obstacles remain in the devices software and the infrastructure needed to power it. Obstacles remain. Yes, I think Miley have correctly pointed out the issue is that this is, this is something that they're doing to justify their valuation, not something that they're doing to solve

the problem they're solving is we need to justify her enormous valuation with any product. Yeah. And when you understand it in those terms, suddenly it makes a lot more sense. Well, quite. Maybe actually these guys aren't so dumb after all. They're just trying to solve a problem with their investors, not a problem with the customers. Oh, heavens, no. Now I'm on board.

These include deciding on the assistance quote unquote personality, which we've seen before with the friend, privacy issues, and budgeting for the enormous computing power needed to run opening ice models on a mass consumer device. Ah, well, that's a problem they love to have every time with whatever project it is. Yeah, well, I mean, like, a good thing about, you know, if you have the ambition to sort of roll our technology, that is supposed to sort of operate in every facet of everyone's life, my thinking would be a big, would be a sort of good place to start to figure out how much power you would need to actually do that. But that feels like something that was like, it was like, oh, yeah, we can just like, that can just be an afterthought. And now having to sort of deal with like, oh, like, you know, you need a lot of energy. Like, you need a lot of extension cables to be able to run this thing.

Yeah. If I want to wear this as a wear, because we remember the wearable device initially, the, um, was going to the humane pin, right, in order to power it, you needed to wear a battery pack that burned you. Yeah, great. Like, what's this solution here? Are you just going to have like a steam engine on a backpack? Is that what we're going to do?

Starbar AI is simple. You wear this diesel generator. It plugs in safely to the diesel generator backpack. And all you have to do is stop off at Texaco or BP to fill up every few hours. We recommend if you're wearing the Starma AI to stay out of enclosed spaces for more than a few minutes. Well, Starmer AI is not compliant with you, Les. You try to walk into London and you just get turned around.

Yeah, I'm having to become Captain Gatsow because of my Starmer AI. So, compute is a huge factor for the delay, said one person close to I. If Amazon has the compute for an Alexa, so does Google for its home device. But Open AI is struggling to get enough compute for Chad GPT, let alone an AI device. And they need to fix that first. That's the other thing I want to segue into here. Recently, some research has been released by Global Action Plan and Foxglove, which are environmental charities, that if the UK is planning to build 100 data centers, right, building only

10 of them erases all of the gains from changing over from every electric vehicle switched to from the fullness of time to now. Great. Okay, well, that's really good. I'm really pleased that that's all worth it. But what they haven't factored in, though, is all the savings that will be made by all of the large old ladies dropping boulders onto glass bridges. Well, yes, and all of the sensible fiscal decisions people will make with a Starmer AI in their pocket. That's right. Do you really need to make this journey? Could you just stay at home and maybe eat a chickpea-based meal?

Don't stay at home. Patronise a local business. Why not go to Pratt today? Darmus SponCon? Yeah. He's like clearly reading off a page. I feel considered popping down to Screw Fix. A fantastic range of fixings.

Bluetooth is the number one source for men who want to go extra rounds. things in the coming years in the economy are going to be hard but not as hard as I am after taking these Bluetooth pills oh boy

will my wife be getting a seeing to this evening but yeah like okay congratulations like this thing is worth half a trillion dollars

it seems like in order to power its non-product not just this but every other non-product they have it's just about like what

taking any greenhouse gas emissions progress progress backwards by decades and what we have for it is like what we're trying the friend again we're doing like a fucking PlayStation portable or Nokia N gauge

a 2007 Palm Pilot this thing that has never fucking worked. We've never worked. Toby doesn't have to write his own emails anymore because he can just go to hit like reply with chat GPT. Yeah but now you can just do that with your little thing I guess that you either wear or carry like I don't

fucking know what is this thing even supposed to look like? Is it like just a ball that taught that listens to everything around you all the time. It should hover next to you. You're in like an argument at the pub and then like Stabber's like, here's what you should say to that guy. You could get two, one with a little halo and one with little devil horns.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like this. This is a better product. People would buy this. Yeah. I think you should take a swing at him. He looks like he's too drunk to get out of the way. So I'd ponder with the face, but it would probably make you better looking.

So a person close to Open A.I. I said, no, this is normal. It's fine. of the product development process. Someone from the company reassured us that everything was fine. Thank you. Multiple people familiar with the plans said they were working on a device roughly the size of a smartphone that would communicate.

You would communicate with through a camera, microphone, and speaker, possibly multiple cameras. It would either sit at a desk and be carried around by the user. And again, so it's like the vision, the vision is just you having a convert. It's like we're fixing screen addiction, not by taking out the addiction to being cut off from the context of the world around you

and totally absorbed in the internet. No, we're fixing screen addiction by making you do that, but like by talking to a thing instead of by looking at it. Yeah. Feels like they've not understood the mechanics of what's going on there. And it's also led them down the fascinating path of like, well, what if phone didn't have screen? Even though that's a feature literally no one wants or asked for.

It's like saying like, hmm, well, a lot of people in car accidents, they die because they fly through the windscreen. So what if a car didn't have? have a windscreen? What if we developed a car that was just solid steel all of the way around? Yeah. I think it does, yeah, it does sort of miss the point that like, and this is like, this applies to lots of conversations about like digital addiction and everything. I think there's a lot of focus on like screens and scrolling and all that stuff. But like it's not really like we've had devices with screens like the entire time, right? Like every device that we

broadly used as a consumer has had some sort of screen, right? It is not the screen. The fridge, for example. Well, yes, the fridge. Yeah, for example. But also just like, you know, the game boy or like you know the original computers like we've had screens the entire time we use tech like the issue is not to do with that the issue is to do with like partly i guess like the way to summarize it is just like how annoying a lot of a tech is in the sense of like it's sort of like it's sort of like it's sort of like when we talked about all the sort of like when we talked about the other device that i think the friend uh device but like the one where it's sort of like it's supposed to interact with you all the time and you wear it on your chest or whatever and the

whole you know the fact that it's like has it having to sort of constantly notice you about stuff and like you kind of keep having to like give it more and more permission to sort of encroach every aspect of your life in order for it to work. That's the actual problem. And it's like one that, you know, it's getting rid of the screen is not going to solve that broader problem, which is that like in order for this technology to kind of be perceived as valuable, it needs to permeate into every aspect of an individual's life. And in more and more invasive ways because what it's actually doing and what it's actual purposes is to like collect and monetize as much data as possible.

And, like, the web, this is supposed to do that. It's supposed to do that in a much more, like, invasive way. And it's just, it's amazing how it's like, this is the point that, like, the tech guys don't understand because they just live in a very, very different world to, like, the people that they are supposed to be selling products to. And they do address that, right? Well, they do address that. It's like, okay, well, we hear the problems we think we have to solve, right?

Again, this also shows they are living in a very different world. The problem they say they have to solve is, number one, they have to solve the problem with chat TPT where it never knows how to end conversations. It just tries to keep you interacting with it forever. So they have to solve a fundamental problem with large language models generally. Number one, easy, right? So this issue is ensuring that the device only chimes in when it's useful,

preventing it for talking too much or not willing to finish the conversation. Great. Perfect. So unsolvable problem. Perfect. Secondly, they're recognizing that other smart speakers like Amazon Echo or with Alexa or like Apple Siri, they're like not very good. And so their plan is to say, we're going to do Siri, but better. Uh-huh. Yeah, no one's ever thought to just do it better, obviously.

Yeah. So the concept is that you should have a friend who's a computer who isn't your weird AI girlfriend. Like Siri, but better, said one person who was briefed on the plans with open AI looking for ways to be, quote, accessible but not intrusive. Another person said, model personality is a hard thing to balance. It can't be too ticophantic, not too direct or helpful, but doesn't keep talking to feedback loop. And again, what that sounds to me, that's a fundamental problem that nobody's been able to solve because it's a problem that's inherent to trying to cram a large language

model into like a little necklace that you wear that talks to you all the time, because that's crazy. That's the same thing to do. You're saying it has to solve every problem that currently exists with number one, its various form factors, which has never been resolved, talking assistants in general, and the AI-based hardware in general, and fucking large language models in general. If you solve all of those problems. Yes, this might conceivably be useful for something. But I don't, like, if you go to someone, right, in the, in like 2002 and you explained what a smartphone would be, right? I think they would get it. They would understand, oh, wow, it's like I could go on the, I could go on the internet anywhere. And I could use a, we have multiple applications because the

screen is able to change the context of how I interact with any particular piece of software. I think the implications of that would be quite clear, which is not just that, you know, you're going to have the world's most important application, which is, of course, the beer app that lets you simulate drinking a beer. Dude, I can watch limp biscuits rolling anywhere. Yeah, well, yes, quite. But you could see, oh yeah, I could see how that like enables new ways of interacting with information. I don't see how this enables new ways of interacting with information other than just, well, what if open AI was involved? Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, it feels like, well, it's like so many of the things we talk about on this show, it's solving a problem that does not exist by creating a bunch of new problems that are worse.

Thank goodness. Someone's finally doing it. Yeah, what if? You know how you all want to use a phone with no screen? What? No. Well, what we've done is we've created a phone with no screen that spies on you all the time

and it interrupts you and it doesn't work. And for some reason, it's Keistama. And you're like, well, they're like, bye! Why have you done this?

Oh, you've already gone. I see you've already gone. It's also evaporated all of the drinking water on earth. Anyway, have fun. And all you need to wear is this diesel motor in order to power it. It's perfect. Yes.

No notes. Yep. Excellent. Cannot wait to buy this particular product. I think Ed Zittron was the one who compared it to the N-Gage. So thank you, Ed, for that very apt comparison. The thing is, though, the Nokia N-Gage is so much better than this. The Nokia Engage was at least an attempt to solve some kind of real consumer desire.

Yeah, it was an attempt at a smartphone without understanding the changes to the current cell phone technology that would be required to enable something like a smartphone. But they were going in a direction. as opposed to being like, okay, we've got all this money. Like, we have all these large language models. We got to do something with them. I don't think Nokia is separate from that problem. Yeah, the Nokia Engage was like, you know, it was like beta max.

It was like, it was like an attempt that failed, but at something which ultimately went on to exist. Whereas this is like, what? Sorry, you're doing what? With this? In this way? Okay, all right. No criticism implied of Ed Zichron. I'm just saying he could have gone further.

I welcome Ed's comment. I don't welcome Ed's comment He's against the future Which is artificial intelligence And data centres Yeah that's right Stop being such a ludd eye Ed

Yeah Ed Zittron I Kirstama I go so far as to say I resent it That you're doing down The UK's brilliant future As a large data centre

We're all going to be data One day Anyway I'm going to throw to myself In the past future With Grayson Avarro That's the other podcast We're doing past future

Hello welcome to past future The podcast where it's the past Man. That's what I'm going to throw to myself in the future past, past future. We're going to talk to them. And then we'll see you in however long that edit turns into. Hello, everybody from the first half. It is me in the second half. And I'm sure, well, I'm actually not sure we had some great laughs in the first half. given what I know we will have been talking about. But we will at least, I think, have some, let's say, hopeful and actionable messages for the future here in the second half because I'm being joined by Alvara Lopez, New York City, DSA's electoral coordinator and Grace Mouser, the co-chair of New York City Democratic Socialism America to talk a little bit about all of the actual organizing that went into Zoran Mamdani's victory in the Democratic Party primary. and that is continuing to go into his campaign to actually be mayor of New York.

First of all, Alvaro Grace, thank you very much for coming on the show. Second of all, it was just TikToks, right? It was TikToks and that he's personally charismatic? That's all it was. It's amazing if you just find the right handsome candidate, you can win socialism. Yeah. Honestly, it's like, it makes you realize that if we'd had TikTok in 2008, you know, Obama might have actually delivered on all of his campaign promises.

The problem is we didn't have the TikTok. That's what it all was. That's what Marshall Gams will tell you, you know. So I wanted to have you guys on. I've been wanting to have this particular conversation for a while because, you know, we've been following the Zoran story with some interest from over here, largely because he came into politics with the kind of message that we think excites people and makes them hopeful for the future and that could actually make their lives better.

And we've been missing that for a while over here. Recently, we have, of course, had the rise of a new Green Party leader, Zach Polanski, who is, I would say similarly sort of concentrating that left populist energy around him. And I guess what I wanted to do is have that conversation about the conventional wisdom that seemed to have sunk in across politics of the English-speaking world, which is that Zoran Mamdani basically TikToked his way into winning the Democratic Party primary in New York and will continue to tick-talk his way into Gracie Mansion. So can you just, between the two of you, just address a little bit of like, so what is that

theory of change that people seem to have and how, just how wrong is it? Well, I do think the comm strategy that Zoran and his team adopted was important. They invested early in this. They had very consistent, both visual messaging and, you know, rhetorical messaging. But two things I think a lot of the coverage misses. One is the importance of the actual message, of course, right? If you had a really slick, cool, fun video, but it was talking about how we really need to think more about small landlords and their struggles.

I don't think that would have taken off quite as much. So the message about affordability... I was just going to jump in and say, it seems like that's the end. Cuomo approach, right? Which is, I just have to make TikToks about small landlords. Yeah, he's trying, although he also lacks a lot of charisma, I would say. And then the other piece in Alvaro can expand more on this is that once someone saw these videos, once someone was inspired or interested and ready to do something about it, there was a huge and robust field apparatus that was able to absorb them.

So you could very easily go from seeing a video on TikTok or on Instagram or later on a actual TV. And you could say, hey, this guy seems great. I think an affordable New York is great. Maybe I'm a socialist even. And you could find a canvas that was, you know, a mile or two away from your home. And you could actually put your pelletakes into action. Yeah, for sure. I think that, I mean, I would say one thing about Zeron's mass communications, what was really good about it was just how simple it was and how it was such a positive vision that millions of people can identify with in terms of just whether how things are so out of place and out of priced things were for us, whether the prices of eggs or just how we can afford to have children. And like, I think it was just saying it in a way where it wasn't just.

just kind of like, this sucks, but more just like join this movement to like change it. And oftentimes progresses or, you know, position themselves as kind of these saviors. But like, as Grace mentioned, like we positioned in a way or saying that we're building this movement, come join us, and it's going to be fun. We're going to be able to organize our neighborhoods and you can plug into 50 different campuses all across the city to get to know your neighbors while we talk socialist politics and, you know, class politics at the doors. So I think that, like, the mass comms was very important.

He is handsome. He does communicate well. We'd be foolish not to put him in front of a camera. But fundamentally, it also comes from him as being, Zeran being a great organizer, coming from an experience of running different elections and helping New York City DSA's electoral project. So there's a lot that goes that's in there as well. Yeah. So I think also for sort of the, I'd like see more international listeners, can we just talk a little bit more about the relationship between the

organizing machine of the DSA and the Zoran Mamdani campaign because I think it's easy to imagine, oh, this guy just started running, decided to have socialist messaging and good TikToks, got a good team around him, and then bam, there he is. But there is actually this very long, years-long process to get the machine ready to actually make this happen. So if you could talk a little more about that relationship, that would be great. Absolutely. I mean, it really goes back to 2017, which is when Zeran joined DSA and became active in our electoral strategy. So like many American leftists, DSA was energized and revitalized and by Bernie Sanders campaign and then, of course, angered and galvanized by the election of Donald Trump in

2016. So in 2017, New York City DSA put its electoral structure. strategy based on the idea that we could identify candidates and really run robust field programs into action. And Zeran was the field director. He was a first in field organizer and then a field director on one of those campaigns on a city council member candidates campaign named Hatter El Yatim. That campaign lost, but Zeran was, I think, brought into the theory of change that was really built on door knocking and conversations with regular New Yorkers about the issues that affect their lives. A couple of years later in 2019 and in 2020s, Zeran ran for assembly. He was part of a recruited DSA slate in 2020. We won his race, of course, along with four other

state legislators' races that helped us create the Socialist and Office Committee. And then From there, Zeran was very deeply embedded in DSA, both in our co-governance project and how we actually navigate the legislature with a mass organization and with individual electeds and in our electoral and field work, how we build campaigns that are really founded on canvassing. But the ethos of those campaigns is that we don't gatekeep the skill. you need to actually make a campaign run. So anyone can doork, of course, but we also believe that anyone with the time and interest should be let into strategic decisions, both in the realm of field, like where are we canvassing, what are we saying to them? We also try to open up comms strategy making.

How are we talking about these things? Where are we placing social media? How are we branding ourselves, fundraising, political questions? We really try not to gatekeep these skills, and that is how you scale up. Doing that iteratively from 2017 to 2025 is how you have enough people with enough skills to scale up to win an election across the whole of New York City. Yeah, because what are the things that strikes me about what you've, what you've discovered, the actual process you've described. of building the people who make a campaign infrastructure is just how different this is to conventional wisdom of how you run a political campaign. I mean, if you ask, if you would ask

your standard Democratic Party person, they'd be like, well, you pay seven figures to a consulting firm run by my cousin. And that consulting firm then just does all this thinking for you. And then your volunteers, they should just be happy to be there. You give them the script, but it's very rigid hierarchies. It's very closed. And it's based on almost like a priestly class with professional knowledge that has just only, I guess, by coincidence, has utterly eaten shit every time it's been deployed. And if you want to compare it to a more British experience, then we think of this kind of thing as like dark arts, right? Where you almost hate your own volunteers. You try to avoid working with them as much as possible. And you hope to get elected just by maintaining friendly

relationships with journalists who you will just give briefings to. And then sort of of constantly sabotage one another. Again, another strategy that eats shit every time it's been tried, right? It is remarkably refreshing to sort of think about how there is actually alternative to either 25 million pounds to, you know, someone's cousin or another sort of series of backstabbing press releases to the Murdoch owned media. Yeah, I mean, I would love Alvro to talk more about how we spread out those skills and scaled up those skills in practice.

just say quickly that the professional political class has an interest in making sure you think those skills are dark arts, right? Like are these kind of difficult, somewhat complicated, maybe like a little scary set of skills that a regular person cannot and does not want to access? And our campaigns are on the idea that actually most people, can do this shit. In terms of like how we were able to really scale up the skills and also to scale up our field operation, I mean, I'll say one thing in terms of what you're just describing about the atomization of our society and just how politics is just shit, as you say, is that it's been so disconnected from actually changing people's material lives. And I think that that's

kind of the core of why we run socialists and the Democratic Party battle line, because we, want to change our political terrain and want to offer material changes to working class people and build an organized base for socialist politics. But I think part of when we also talk about like, you know, this mass army of like now 70,000 volunteers, people are always asking like, where did you, you know, it's just like, wow, really all these people are on TikTok. And it's actually like really old school fundamental tactics, which it goes back to what Grace was saying before but really is about having a core an army of electoral organizers who can quickly train and locate new people to take up more leadership roles and to scale up that project and I think we did

town halls we used a lot of momentum tactics and also doing like mass rally canvases and literally here you know we had leaders who were just like their goal was to suss out 10 15 new people who can you know replicate themselves and continue replicated themselves in order to to build basically an volunteer army that became the size that it became now. But I think that's one part of it that I think is extremely fascinating to see that. And that's that relational organizing that was happening in the ground for people who have been really committed to our electoral project. And also, the other thing, what I go back to, right, is because we're not really talking

so much about policies here because we've talked about Zoran's policies before on the show. We think they're obviously very good. But I think policy is also important for this kind of organizing because the reason that you need to pay consultants millions of dollars or pounds or whatever, wherever you are to try to organize for your sort of standard neo-lib Democrat labor politician is the policies aren't exciting and nobody likes them. So no one wants to get up and go knock on doors for them unless there's something in it for them. Or rather, there is something in it for people who go knock on doors like Zoron or people who go knock on doors for Zach Polanski over here. It's what's in it for them

is political change that makes their life more livable, right? And I'm sure, like, you could say, oh, well, the representative whoever's cousin, their life is certainly more livable with 25 million pounds, but we can't just do that person by person, unfortunately. Right. Yeah. And that, I mean, that goes back to like the, sure, the TikTok school, but it's not a medium. It's the message, right?

Like, it's what he was actually saying on, on the videos. And also to spend eight years building an ever-gold. growing volunteer army across, not just the mayoral election either, but across like state legislator elections as well. There is just so much of that constant everyday work of, as you say, Alvaro, not just trying to win everything at a stroke, but finding five people who can find five more people. And finding those five people, maybe they find someone else who has the capacity or the time or the willingness to learn or might already have some other skill that can be useful and just constantly slowly expanding over a period of genuinely years.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a socialist pyramid scheme, exactly. I would just add in, I mean, the 50,000 volunteer number is the most cited in media, but the number that I'm most proud of is that we had over 500 field leads. So those are people who are, it's actually a pretty high. high responsibility position in the campaign. Those are people who are trained to lead canvases. And that is how you have something for 50,000 people to do. And part of the training of those field leads is that they should be looking for other field leads. So if someone is coming to a

canvas consistently, is excited, is good at canvassing, is asking the right questions, invite them to a training so that they can become a field. and start leaving their own canvases. And let's also talk a little bit about who's being canvassed, right? Because if you, as I do, unfortunately, for my job, I have to, follow political media in the UK and the US, then you're going to see the sort of elite public opinion coalesce against, you know, any kind of anti, like, counter elite program, often by claiming the counter elite program is itself elitist. And this is now, I would say, swung fully into gear against Zora. where the, like, NBC, for example, recently as recently as yesterday, released an article about how, okay, the people who volunteer for Zoran and the people who are swayed by Zoran

and the sort of in the Mamdani campaign, these are transplanted New Yorkers from somewhere else who come to New York to do sort of precariously high-earning professional jobs and proper New Yorkers, you know, quote unquote, you know, who are actually much more conservative. This includes, for example, older black voters are the ones that are being talked about most in this NBC article. But this is like generally, they also say, okay, if you've lived in New York for a long time, you won't like Mamdani. If you moved here last year from Iowa to work an entry-level job at, I don't know, Deloitte, then you are much more likely to like Mamdani. I mean, obviously, that's a narrative that's meant to delegitimize his campaign as being for affordability by saying, oh, no, proper New Yorkers hate affordability. They love when the city is expensive, because that's what makes it in New York.

And so how would you respond, I guess, to, like, that contention and how are you fighting back against these, like, I would say, I'm going to go on a limb here and say relatively baseless accusations of elitism. Yeah, I mean, one that the number one indicator of if you were going, if you voted for Iran as age. If you are under 45, you were pretty likely to vote for Saran, which I think is not an indication that you're a gender vire. Right. There are people who are from New York who are under 45 who live here. But it is an indication that you are of a generation that has really more than others and maybe you're more aware of it than previous generations. You've lost access to a bunch of stuff that you grew up thinking you would be able to get like a home you own. But in New York, even an apartment that you can afford and that is large enough. to raise a family. And under 45s are also more likely to have children that do not have, that cannot yet go to public school, right? So they have to pay for private child care. That was a core platform playing for Zeran. So these, it makes a lot of sense to me that younger people are more excited about this affordability platform. And this includes younger black voters. It

certainly includes a younger Hispanic voters, South Asian voters turned out in record numbers for Saran. And I think it just speaks to some of the generational divide in terms of how we understand the economy and our place within it. And it's not about who's a true New Yorker and who's not, but it's more about these generational questions. The second thing I would say is that, I mean, New York, is built on people coming in and and bringing new ideas to the city. This has been true literally since the city was was founded and people who want to make claims on who's a New Yorker and who's not are almost always doing it because they have a conservative political agenda. Yeah, quite. I mean, it's the moment anyone talks about, I think, the sort of emotional commitments

of proper people, whether it's proper English people, proper New Yorkers, proper whatever, to some kind of regressive or hierarchical system, then inevitably you can dismiss them as an utter charlatan and just pay no attention to them except to direct mockery at them. I mean, the person I'm thinking of here is quoted in this NBC article is Bradley Tusk, who ran former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's 2009 reelection campaign. So definitely an unbiased source here. But he says, If socialism and far left-wing politics is about helping the poor, the poor don't feel that way about Zoron. The reality is Zoron's agenda and politics are extremely appealing to young, upwardly mobile New Yorkers who are newer to the city and worried about their ability to stay here and like

the idea of someone like Zoran disrupting the system. And again, it's like what Tusk, what I think Tusk is doing is something that we're very familiar with in Britain, which is that insinuating that actually it's more working class to have been born in the 50s or 60s and more elite to have been born in the late 80s or 90s, right? That's a, that's a, that's a rich decade because you have iPhones and avocados and the cultural markers of youth and that proper working class landlords were all born in the 1960s. And it's almost jarring to see that deployed outside of the UK. But yet he is, he is certainly doing that here. And again, what if you look at what he's saying closely, what he's saying, oh, they've just come here and they're concerned about staying boo-hoo. And it's like, well, hang on.

Everyone comes somewhere at some point. And why shouldn't they be able to stay? Yeah, exactly. And I mean, coming from Tusk, who is a multi-millionaire and Avenger capitalist, critiquing people who make, you know, 75 to 120,000 in New York, which is in the city is middle class and can be hard to afford in many ways is absurd. I'd also just jump in. It's so frustrating to hear these big new.

liberals talk about how after decades of lowering expectations of gutting social safety net and like everything that the government, hollowing out government capacity, then to say that like, look at the poor people who are not taking the risk to like vote for a democratic socialist. It's like, yeah, these are the folks who have the most to risk who are trying to protect their livelihood and it will be probably the most challenging to like went over to like a bigger project. This is not something that just relates to. to New York City. This is something you see in London as well, in England on like, we know, all these left parties where a lot of their base is in like the, you know, the PMC class or like

the professional class. And we are, our goal is to actually, you know, have a big coalition and a big party. But like, it's just so frustrating when they try to take these political talking points into something that's just about, you know, cultural narratives or just like, you know, who's living where and who's buying what type of ice cream or something. I mean, the, this is also goes back to, and I think what you were talking about, right, is you're talking about brick by brick building an actual big tent. Because you're not, it's not just that young professionals turning out for Zoran. And it's not just young white professionals turning out for Zoran. That's just what Bradley Tusk wants you to think, that the people turning out from Zoran are more likely to be young. They're also more likely to not have as many assets as well, right? That's a huge, a huge dividing line here as well. that what you've done is you actually have created a big tent. It's just that the common sense definition of big tent on somewhere like NBC is that it must incorporate conservatives as opposed to it must incorporate lots of people of varying demographics

who might not have every interest aligned, but all of whom are being hammered by the same thing like affordability, right? You actually do create a big tent. It's just you don't create a big tent that includes Bradley Tusk and NBC or an arcade like The Guardian or the Times or whatever, are unwilling to understand that there is a big tent for progressive politics in some way. It just, it does not and cannot ever include them. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, we see not only in America, but in countries across Europe, across the world, that one of the reasons that Democrats, that the establishment, you know,

center left, moderates have been failing and losing ground is that they're trying to triangulate to this kind of made up person that wants to have this big tent that you're talking about where they are like interested in fascism, but only the correct amount of fascism. And I mean, I think a perfect example of that actually was after the marches of the far right in London a few weeks ago. where Labor released, where Kirstarmer released a graphic that was like, oh, well, you know, the far right talks about deporting people, but I've actually deported people. And it's like, well, if someone wants to deport people, if they hate immigrants, there's a whole party, there's a whole wing that is actually fully embracing fascism. So there's no need to triangulate with like the correct amount of fascism to appeal to that. person. So we in America, and I know the left across Europe too, is rejecting that type of

exclusionary politics that some people are calling Big Ten, but is actually in many ways premised on, you know, leaving out certain demographics that are deemed politically toxic by consultants and by media pundits. And we're embracing an inclusionary politics that's grounded in a material reality, in affordability, and things that are getting harder, but that we know that the government actually can fix and we're demanding that they do so. But we can do that without excluding immigrants,

without excluding trans people, without, you know, buying into racist ideology. And we're demonstrating that. I think the rise of the far left in America and in Europe will hopefully show that you can embrace material politics that affect a wise swath of classes and demographics without casting anyone out. Or rather, casting only the people out who are demanding in bad faith to be in, I'd say. You know, casting out the pundits, maybe, and the consultants.

The last thing I also wanted to just sort of mention as well, you sort of raised this and you spoke about the sort of the pundit role, right? I think we're conditioned a lot of us to understand politics as basically a transaction where you are gassed up in some direction by whatever media you consume, you know, whether you're, you know, like being radicalized into being a sort of anti-Trump Maoist by like the Canadian news as my father currently is, which is really funny to me. Or whether you're, you know, constantly being sort of terrified by Fox or whatever, you understand politics fundamentally as something you get from pundits and political leaders and then you weigh up what you prefer and you go

pull the lever sort of once every X years, right? And to think of politics like that is to seed all opportunity for entrepreneurship to people who will cynically demand to be in your big tent, right? That the big tent must include them, me, the pundit, the consultant, the person who is largely benefits from things being as they are or for changes to benefit the people who are already in power. And I think what we, what we've outlined here, right, the thinking about not just Zoron, the media personality, which ultimately leads to people saying, wow, what a great media personality. He's so good at politics because look at us how great his media personality is, not to say by the way that he isn't, because he's actually very talented at that, but that in

order to try to build a big tent that doesn't include, you know, Tusk, for example, Bradley Tusk, You can't just think of politics as this transactional relationship with whatever newspaper you read or TV channel you watch or political leader that you watch the clips of on Facebook, but it actually requires just going and doing something else, which means talking to people, which means getting people involved, building that organization, building the structure. and then all of a sudden, you have your tent and Bradley Tusk's not in it. And he's now confused about why he's not in it because he thinks, well, hang on a sec. I know how politics works, which is, it is this transactional media political leader thing. And I'm always supposed to be in. Why am I not in? And what we've outlined here, I think is just a powerful alternative to that. I mean, I'd say that one of the things that really excited me about the Zeran campaign was just how he was able to create these opportunities for building meaningful relationships for working people through his campaign.

And I mean, I'll cite the walk he did, I think, the weekend before the primary election where he walked the length of Manhattan from inward, all the way, you know, going through Washington Heights, which is a Dominican neighborhood, hitting up, you know, midtown coming all the way down to the village like that was an exciting. And, you know, along the way he picked up a large gathering of people, this is politics in a way that hadn't been seen since like John Lindsay did that in the 60s. And it was a way that really made people a part of the spectacle. It made people part of like, even in a small scale, as there were parts of other people's TikToks, but they're behind the scenes and they were part of this bigger movement that was about to break, make history.

I'll say another one. And this one is I'm not that big of a fan of, but the scavenger hunt, just because I don't really know what a scavenger hunt is. But I saw what, it brought and I saw what it did and how many people came out to it and how a lot of people were going to parts of New York City that they would never have gone to with people that would never have been with simply through the campaign who organized this scavenger hunt as a way to appreciate with a short appreciation to the volunteers. But I mean, I'm saying these things because I think this is an example of not transactional relationships, but building meaningful relationships, which are all the foundations of long-term organizing and long-term

base building for any type of political project, but specifically a project that's like ours is built on collective power and collective capacity. Yeah. And I'll add that, I mean, people like Tusk, people who are, you know, have built careers or reputations on their political acumen. Want us to see politics as a sport, right? They want us to consume it as something on TV that we interact with, you know, maybe once or twice a year, maybe less when we go to vote. And then we just watch and see what happens. But we are not ourselves players in this sport. That's for professionals.

And they benefit greatly from that. And so they are very threatened when there are projects that build in things like Alvaro was talking about that build long-term relationships. or people feel empowered or people are connecting and and continuing to inspire each other so that we're doing politics not once or twice a year when we go to vote or even when we mobilize to canvas, but we are enacting those principles in our workplaces, getting involved in unions or unionizing our workplaces. We are engaging in legislative campaigns, demanding that legislator that actually move on the priorities that we demonstrated are important through electoral politics when we, you know, show up in mass in street protests and building those strong

connections, building those relationships that Averro was talking about is key to enabling those types of actions to happen. And those types of actions happen well outside of the sphere of influence of the professional political class. And so it's very threatening. to them. And they can't control it. They can't say, they can't find the right one or two people to talk to to, to ask them to stop. And that's, that's really concerning. You know, people in New York City, I think find DSA a little threatening by people. I mean, the political elite, sometimes find DSA a little baffling and threatening because they don't know who to talk to to negotiate with us because we are in fact a mass democratic organization.

So even if they have a meeting with me and I can share my perspective and share information about the organization, I can't say, you know, okay, we'll do this or yes, like, or no, I'll stop this. You become unable to horse trade with. Exactly. And that's, you know, by design. And I think people find that really frustrating and baffling at times. But it's actually really empowering to our members and that model of politics is empowering to the masses of people like us. And it takes power away from the political brokers. Yeah. I think we can conclude on the idea that what we've learned here, right, from this exchange, I think is that any social. political relationship that is not transactional, that is focused on organizing and campaigning that is outside the realm of this sort of professional political consultant pundit class specifically disempowers them. And that is good. It is good to do that. They should be disempowered.

They should be marginalized as much as possible and driven from public life. And this is the kind of thing that's doing that. And that's why they're scared of Zoran. But that's also why Zoran, I think it's not really him. It's like they keep firing at him. But there is this whole that's been in the years in the making that I think we've now seen a few pieces of, right, that are actually keeping this project moving. So we're all at a time. But Grace, Alvaro, I want to thank you both so much for coming and sharing your experience here today. Yeah. Thank you for having us. This was great. Thanks for having us. Yeah. And I'm going to throw back to myself in the future past, a joke I never get tired of making whenever we do one of these segments. But before we go,

if people are in America and they want to join the DSA to work on some project like this in their cities, where can they go? What can they do? Well, they should definitely join Democratic Socialists of America. If you're in New York, we would love to have you come out to a canvas. You can do that by going to Surround for NYC.com. You can join New York City DSA or just, you know, see what we're up to before you fully, fully join by going to socialists, that's plural, socialists. That's nmisee, and you'll find all the information there. And then you can check out DSA wherever you are in the country by going to DSAUSA.org. Perfect.

Okay. Now I'm actually throwing back to myself in the future past. But bye to you two. Thank you very much for coming on. And away I am to me. Ah, what a fantastic segment. I hope you remember 40 minutes ago. That's what Michael was talking about,

because otherwise, you would be pretty bewildered. Yeah, a little peek behind the curtain of how this podcast is put together. When one of those segments gets edited in, The rest of us, we do sit here in silence for 40 minutes and we wait for it to finish. And we're not allowed to speak because if we say anything, it will come out on the recording. Yeah, that's right. I put swords of Damocles over all of them. There's a new wearable technology, the sword of Damocles.

It keeps you motivated. Yeah, exactly. Look, I want to thank everybody for listening to the show. Remind you that we have a Patreon, but also remind you that you should. You want to support the candidacy of Zoran Mamdani, obviously in New York. you can volunteer with the DSA who are going to be canvassing for him, or if you would like to support the emergence of a Zoron-like figure in other cities around America, there are also going to be opportunities to join the DSAs, those chapters there.

Thoughts all going to be linked in the show notes. Anyway, thank you very much, everybody, for listening once again. Milo, do you have some cities to rattle off? Oh, yeah, I do. This week, if you're listening to the day it comes out, then tomorrow, Thursday, I'm going to be in Brighton. it's so important that you buy tickets for that if you're in Brighton. I cannot stress that enough. That normally sells out. And for some reason this time, it is not so good. We're not having so many problems in other cities. We've got Southampton, Sheffield, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Glasgow, Glasgow, I think are the others. I might be missing one or two, but all of the dates are on my website. Go over there. It's in the show notes. Smilerwebis.com.com. Come along and see the show. It's been fun. The show so far have been really good. It's been nice to see people from the pod. So yeah, see you there. Lovely. All right. Bye, everybody.

Bye.