TRIGGERnometry - "Biden Presidency is Just More Failed Neo-Liberalism" - Aaron Maté

Episode Date: April 4, 2021

Journalist Aaron Maté joins us. Book Jeff Wayne's The War of The Worlds: The Immersive Experience for friends, family and work outings here: https://thewaroftheworldsimmersive.com/  Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissen. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is a US journalist. Aramate, welcome to Trigonometry. Thanks for having. It's great to have you. Listen, a lot of our viewers we were just talking before won't know who you are, but we feel that you've got a very interesting voice to add to the mix. Tell everybody a little bit about who you are, how are you where you are, What has been the journey that brings you here talking to us?

Well, I'm a journalist. I'm a leftist. And I work for an outlet in the U.S. called The Gray Zone. And I also write for the Nation magazine. And my focus for the last few years has been primarily this Russiagate obsession in the U.S. And how Russia was blamed for basically all of America's domestic problems, including the election of Donald Trump, and how I think that feeds into a very dangerous dynamic

of encouraging a, you know, Cold War militarism between the West and Russia and also excusing failed neol liberals for their own failures on many other bad outcomes. And that's take up a lot of my time. But I also cover generally foreign policy and particularly the, you know, how the U.S. undermines governments abroad

that it doesn't like for reasons coming back to the fact that these governments stand in the way of US hegemony. So that's pretty much the focus of my work. And that's, I can go through my long life story, but I'll save that maybe for later. Yeah. Well, so you basically, would it be fair to say you represent the anti-imperialist left? Would that be about right? Certainly people would associate me with that. I try to avoid terms like that personally just because I just think I represent factuality. But sure, yeah, in terms of if you want to sign a category, absolutely. I'm definitely a part of the entire period of stuff. I don't believe in the self-appointed right of strong states to interfere in the affairs of others. Well, we'll probably get into more of that.

But the first question I wanted to ask you relates probably more to the media landscape than anything else because Russia Gate has obviously been a big part of your work. And the way it seems to work nowadays, if you oppose essentially lies about someone like Donald Trump, which is what we're talking about, that automatically means you're a huge fan of his and you're secretly, you know, Trump-adjacent and all the rest of it.

Are you secretly Trump-adjacent, Aaron? I am not secretly Trump-adjacent. No. No, no, I'm not. No, I really, when he won, that was a very dark couple of weeks to process that. And his presidency, I think, was a disaster for the U.S. and for the world. And I really did not want him to win re-election. The problem, though, is that I also don't think that Joe Biden and the part of the party, of the Democratic Party that he represents were really a, better alternative, except for the fact that I just think they're less worse. So I'm not a big fan of Joe Biden or anything he does. I just think that the Trump and the people around him were so dangerous. And part of the reason why I opposed Russiagate from the start was not only because I thought

it was based on a lie and a lot of deception and that there was just key pieces of evidence were missing on all these core claims. But also because I thought it was actually a big gift to Trump. because if you're Trump, would you rather have your opposition focused on your policies like, you know, this tax heist in which Trump's tax cuts transferred a massive amount of wealth upwards to the top 1% or pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal or pulling out of a bunch of arms control accords with Russia or tearing up environmental treaties? Or would you rather have them focused on this crazy conspiracy theory that you're really

a puppet of Vladimir Putin, and there's this secret conspiracy going on. And as soon as we find all the, as soon as we find out the smoking gun, your presidency will be over. Well, if I'm Trump, it's an easy choice. I'd much rather have my opposition turning into crazy conspiracy fanatics. And that, unfortunately, what the Democratic Party was for pretty much the bulk of Trump's presidency. It was Bluenon, as I call it, as I call it. We've heard of QAnon. The Democratic Party was Bluinen, literally. every single day, liberals being bombarded with conspiracy theories about Trump and his associates conspiring with Russians. And it was all a scam. And we saw that when at the end of the Mueller

investigation, they came up with nothing. And the only reason some people thought they might have found something is because there was more deception and more disingenuous rhetoric to make people think that there was something. And really there was nothing. And I think it was a disaster for the opposition to Trump and a disaster for the world because another impact of all this was to encourage increased confrontation between the U.S. and Russia, which I think for many reasons is a very bad thing. And, Aaron, why was it that they were so focused on Russiagate when it comes to Trump? Because let's be fair, if you've got a target, I mean, if there's a lot to criticize on the bloke, why is it that they were so focused on Russia? Well, let's start with how

the Democrats lost in 2016. So you have Hillary Clinton, who is the embodied. of this neoliberal war mongering establishment. Hillary Clinton, who supported the war on Iraq, who supported the dirty war in Syria, who supported the destruction of Libya, who supported so-called free trade policies that decimated the U.S. working class. So she comes along and she's the candidate for the Democratic Party. She faces this clown in Trump, a reality TV show host who, is able to convince people because of his rhetoric on the campaign trail that he has some kind of

working class champion who is going to take on the establishment and drain the swamp. And enough people in enough states were so disgusted by the Clinton-Obama legacy that they were willing to take a chance on this clown, Trump, who was saying things like, you know, I'm going to bring back jobs and bring back our factories. and he also was criticizing the foreign wars that Hillary Clinton had supported. And that worked. And I think there are many people who probably didn't believe Trump, but I think they were so contemptuous of what Clinton represented that they figured,

why not go with this guy? He's at least saying the right things. And it worked. So for Democrats, if they want to do honest self-reflection on such a humiliating defeat to this clown, then that means that they have to reflect on their. their actual positions, which would require them to come up with a genuine anti-establishment alternative to Trump, to challenge him on. So instead of Trump's fake populist anti-establishment rhetoric, for Democrats to learn from 2016 and then challenge him and defeat him, they would have

to come up with a genuine anti-establishment alternative. But the problem with that is that that would mean undermining their own power and privilege within the failed system that let Trump become president. And they couldn't do that. So they had to come up with a bunch of excuses for their defeat and in a very classic dynamic, find external enemies to blame. And very early on, that became Russia. So Russia was now at fault for Trump. Russia was the reason that we had Trump because Russia brainwashed millions of Americans with their sophisticated social media posts and their hacked emails. And moreover, there was even a conspiracy between Trump and Russia.

And that is how Trump got to the White House, not because of our failed policies. So I think that at its core explains it. And then you have a convergence of factors and other privileged sectors beyond the Democratic Party leadership. You have a media that gave Trump billions of dollars worth of free airtime. So they also don't want to do some honest self-reflection. And moreover, if your focus is on Russia and you're blaming Russian oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska for Trump, then that means you can avoid scrutiny of, American oligarchs, people like Sheldon Aedelson and Robert Mercer and all the other billionaires who

preside over a rigged system, frustration with which Trump was able to exploit. So for a media that serves these same powerful interests, blaming this external enemy serves a very useful purpose. And finally, you also have elements of the national security state who also tried to undermine Trump. That's very obvious now with all the false leaks that they put out, falsely suggesting that there was evidence for a Trump-Russia conspiracy. They didn't like Trump, not because they don't like his racism, but because they didn't see him as a suitable steward of the U.S. war machine. He's a buffoon, and he says the wrong things.

He's actually honest sometimes when he talks about what the U.S. really does around the world. So, for example, in Syria, when he kept U.S. troops there, he said very openly, we're there to take the oil. Barack Obama or Joe Biden would never say that. They'll say we're there to confront ISIS or to, protect our strategic interest, they wouldn't be so blunt like Trump is to say, yeah, we're there for the oil. So that's not good when you have a president who was being honest and who was pulling the mask off of the empire. And plus, there's one very more, there's another very important

factory here. Trump on the campaign trail was successful in criticizing the foreign wars that the national security state survives on, basically. He was criticizing the war in Libya and the dirty war in Syria. And so that's not good when you see that having appeal amongst a large base of people. So ascribing all that to Russian influence was a good way to stigmatize it and a good way to say that this is not how we talk in the U.S. This is all Russian influence. So it's bad and it has to be taken down. So I think all those factors are what explained why we got four years of Russia Gate madness. You raise a lot of really interesting issues there, Aaron, which we'll dig into. But You obviously talk about the 2016 election.

If we move forward a little bit to the election that's just happened. First of all, let me just a quick fire question. Do you think if there's no COVID, Trump gets elected again? I do think Trump would have gotten elected. Yes, I think there would have been, or at least a much stronger chance that Trump would have gotten elected. And in fact, there's a new book by a couple of reporters, Jonathan, Allen, and Annie Parns.

It's called Lucky. The book is called Lucky. And it's about Joe Biden's election. And it quotes one of his advisors who says that COVID was the best thing that ever happened to Biden. So even from inside the Biden camp, there's a recognition that if not for COVID, Trump would have been in a much stronger position because, look, the economy, at least on paper, was doing pretty good. And again, going back to Russiagate, what had the Democrats offered the public for four years? insane Russia conspiracy theories and basically the fact that they're not Trump.

So that was the sum of their opposition pretty much was that we're not Trump. Oh, and also Russia is at fault for everything that's going on in the U.S., including Donald Trump. So Democrats had not offered voters very much. They hadn't really put up a very robust opposition to Trump's actual policies. So I don't think Democrats had given the voters enough of a case

to win back the people they lost in 2016. And so I think it's very plausible to speculate that if not for COVID, which Trump handled so terribly, that he would have been in a much stronger position. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world. So let me tell you about something that's actually right. Sleep, specifically getting more of it, better quality, the kind where you wake up and feel like a human being, rather than someone who's been thrown down a staircase. Most mattresses are just layers of synthetic foam and crossed fingers. You're spending a third of your life on the thing. and most people have no idea what's actually in it. Avocado green mattress is different. Their mattresses are certified organic, built from natural materials,

designed to actually support your body properly rather than just hold you in one position until morning. The craftsmanship is real. These aren't mass-produced objects. Someone has put thought into them. I'll be honest. I'm not the person who thinks carefully about where he sleeps. My dating history will tell you that.

I'm the person who's been on the same mattress for eight years and called it, fine, but the older I get, the more I notice that fine isn't actually fine. Your body tells you, if you're going to invest in anything for your home, your bed is the one that pays you back every single night. Avocado products are made, not manufactured, and thoughtfully crafted with real materials to deliver lasting comfort and support. Go to avocado green mattress.com slash trigger to check out their mattress and furniture sale. That's avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. Avocado green mattress.com slash trigger.

And Aaron, we, after the 2020 election, you know, everybody was using the phrase, the adults are back in the room, the left's back in charge. You get a little smile from you there, you see? Still haven't lost the old comedic charm. Aaron, what is your opinion, these already laughing, about Biden. What does Biden represent to you? Biden represents the same neoliberal establishment of the Democratic Party that lost to Trump in

2016, that under Obama presided over a massive loss of power at all levels of government, except for the White House, until 2016, when they also lost the White House as well. And, you know, he supported every hawkish foreign policy position. over the course of his career, pretty much every one. There are some exceptions. He authored the infamous crime bill, which led to a massive increase in imprisoning people of color. He has been a longtime friend of Wall Street, especially the credit card industry. So Biden, to me, is just a, you know, a figurehead for the same old neoliberal elite who didn't offer voters much. this year, except the fact that he wasn't Trump. And I think enough happened for people to just get sick

of Trump and how much of a clown he was, that that was enough to push Biden over the top. But will that be enough to hold on to power? On the domestic front, you know, he's not been terrible. I think he's been better than Obama, although that's not hard. He just passed this stimulus bill that will cut child poverty in half. It will increase subsidies to parents with children. It will expand Medicaid. Those are all good things. At the same time, did he fight for a $15 minimum wage when Joe Manchin blocked it? No, he didn't. He could have actually pushed that through, but he caved on that. So he, I think, has learned some lessons from Obama's failure. Obama, who I think was a very tepid leader, but not that much. And to really make effective change, you have to have a movement of

people behind you. But Biden and his circle, I don't think, are interested in that. They just want to work with the Republicans that they can and centrist Democrats and push through incremental reforms that do a little bit, but don't do that much, that, for example, can't even get to the level of giving people a livable wage, like $15 an hour, and can't even give everybody health care, which is just a global scandal that the U.S., this supposed, you know, civilized country can't guarantee health care to all of its citizens, especially during a pandemic. So do I think Biden will be able to overcome the corruption and dysfunction of the neoliberal wing that he represents to win again in 2024? If he runs again, I'm not very confident of that. Aaron, it's really interesting

having this conversation because of all the criticisms that have been made about Trump, over the last four years, five years now. We didn't really hear from the mainstream much of what you're saying. You criticise this tax policy, which there's a lot to criticize. I very, very rarely did we on certainly on this side of the pond hear any of that. And many of the other things you're talking about. And at the core of what you're saying is you talk about Biden being a neoliberal and you call yourself a leftist. Can you explain to people who may be unfamiliar with the technical terms what you're talking about when you're. you say him and Clinton represent neoliberalism and what you mean when you talk about being a leftist.

And I get a sense of that that is largely economic in your case. But break that down for us. Yeah, well, basically, ever since I'd say around the Jimmy Carter administration, the Democratic Party has consciously abandoned the working class, consciously undermined unions with which they used to be very closely tied. and instead gone for an alliance, a voter base based on the professional class, and relying on the donations of Wall Street, which became infinitely more power in the 1980s with the deregulation policies overseen by Ronald Reagan.

And Bill Clinton, when he ran, pretty much ran with similar policies economically as Reagan. So it's pretty much, instead of a, Democratic Party that is, you know, champions workers. It's one that is tied instead to massive corporations and Wall Street and sees deregulation and unfettered finance as sort of the vehicles for growth, allowing for worker protections and worker rights to be consistently undermined. That's been the direction of the Democratic Party since pretty much the Carter administration. And if you look at how what Clinton did with NAFTA, the so-called free trade deal, which moved a whole bunch of jobs abroad, completely decimated U.S. manufacturing, deregulating the telecommunications industry, which led to a greater consolidation of corporations owning the media.

And then his foreign policy have also continued hawkishness, which is not that much different than the Republicans. you see basically a one-party system in the U.S. between involving the Democrats and the Republicans, they only differ slightly on social issues. So where Democrats differ is culturally they're more evolved. So they believe eventually, it took them a long time, actually. It actually took them until the Obama administration to even recognize gay marriage. But basically, they start recognizing cultural and social rights a bit earlier than the Republicans do.

That's basically the essential difference between Democrats and Republicans. And that's what defines a neoliberal is pretty much the same economic policies and foreign policies of Republicans. But on cultural social issues like gay marriage and the separation of church and state, they're, you know, they come along with a more, I think, evolved position a bit earlier. And what about you? When you talk about you being a leftist, what is it that you want to see the U.S. government doing? Well, at home, I'd like to see the U.S. government provide for its people's basic needs. For example, health care. It's just a scandal that this country, supposedly the wealthiest in the world, does not guarantee health care for all its citizens, unlike every other industrialized country. And abroad, I like to see the U.S. stop terrorizing the world, which it has done for over a century, especially since coming out incredibly powerful after the Second World War.

So today, you know, the fact that under Trump, you have an attempt to overthrow the government of Venezuela, and you have an attempt to overthrow the government of Syria and overthrow the government of Iran. And to illustrate just how bipartisan this is, Biden comes into office and he's essentially continuing all of Trump's policies. He's keeping the sanctions in place on Iran, Syria, and Venezuela, which deprive those governments of much-needed revenue and are helping to. to weaken the states of those countries. And most importantly, are impacting, as they're designed, the civilian populations of these countries, which have a harder time importing medicine, which plunge a lot more people into poverty.

And all because the U.S. doesn't want their governments in power. So, you know, because I oppose all these things, you know, you can call me a leftist. And I've just always identified with any effort to challenge illegitimate power and any imperial power that is interfering in the affairs, of other countries, while meanwhile depriving its own citizens of their basic needs. And Aaron, don't you think that the Democratic Party lost... How can I put this? Any legitimacy with the fiasco, with what happened, with Bernie Sanders,

and it looked like he won the Democratic candidate, and then it then disappeared into the ether and Hillary was elected, despite the fact that most people didn't even want her as a candidate. Well, look, I have no affection at all for Hillary Clinton. And I certainly think that what they did to Bernie Sanders was a complete scandal. And yeah, they don't have any legitimacy in my eyes. But, you know, look, she did still get more votes than him. And you can argue that he would have won, if not for the DNC rigging the primary against them.

It's possible, but we don't know that for sure. We don't. And look, Bernie won again in 2020. And he didn't win. it's just a fact that, well, certainly, of course, there is bias and even efforts to sabotage Bernie Sanders by the DNC. And in fact, there are probably people in the DNC who would rather have Trump win re-election than Bernie Sanders if he had been the candidate. It's still a fact that it's very hard to mobilize leftist candidates in this country and leftist sentiment because there's so much against it. And it's just quite possible that we haven't arrived there yet with Bernie Sanders.

that even without the rigging of him, that it just might not have happened. So, but yes, to answer your question shortly, of course they were biased against him and of course they tried to undermine him and it speaks to the obstacles that left his face in trying to build power. The same thing we saw in the UK with Jeremy Corbyn,

who came very close to winning the entire election in 2017, I believe. But we saw from leaked emails that members of his own party sabotaged him and worked against him. And then after that, we saw a coordinated effort to sabotage him with these fake allegations of anti-Semitism and cornering him on Brexit, which I think all of which was designed to undermine him because neoliberals, I think possibly hate progressives more than they hate the right wing because they have a lot more in common with the right wing than they do with progressives like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders. I mean, I would say to, just from a UK perspective, Jeremy Corbyn was not the best candidate. that too. He had some issues in terms of likeability with the general

public, but let's not get into that. Actually... He almost... Well, look, he came closer than any other labor leader that I can think of to winning the prime minister's office in 2017. It was a few thousand votes shy. He did. He did at that point, but his policy on Brexit completely

ruined his perception of him with the general public. Right, but what I'm arguing there, it's my understanding. Look, I haven't followed as closely maybe as you have, but it's my understanding that he was boxed in by the elite of his own party, which did not want to accept the result of Brexit. So Jeremy Corbyn tried to basically, and I think he made a mistake from my reading of it,

although, again, it's limited, and trying to appease both the results, trying to recognize both the result, but also appease the elite of his own party by saying that, you know, we're going to hold a new vote on whether to accept the terms of Brexit, right? That's how it went down, which I think was a mistake.

I think you should have said no, there was a vote, we accept the outcome. But he faced a huge amount of pressure from within his own party. And I think that pressure was consciously aimed at undermining him of putting him in an impossible position. And I think it did play a factor in him ultimately losing. Well, what I would say to you, Aaron, I think you're right in your analysis. What I would add is you were right earlier when you talked about the change in the Democratic Party in the United States. The same thing happened to the Labor Party where they ceased to be the representative of the working class in this country. And so the reason Jeremy Corbyn was so torn between supporting the vote that had happened, which, by the way, he probably voted to leave in and, you know, the other people in his party,

it was because the bulk of the party was now the middle-class sort of metropolitan elite. And so it wasn't so much those people undermining him as the fact that his party wasn't really the party that it used to be. Hey, Constantine, do you like success? Well, I'm working with you. so clearly not. There's this great new podcast called Secret Leaders, where they have honest conversations with fascinating people from the world of business.

Have they taken our strap line? Because if they have, I'm going to sue the fucking motherfuckers back to the... No, no, no. I wrote that bit. Ah, okay. Well, tell me about secret leaders then. It's brilliant.

They interview some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. My personal favourite was with Huell founder, Julian Hearn, who explains how to become a food and drink. millionaire. Yeah, you listened to that one because it's all about food, didn't you? Yeah, I knew it. Who else have the interview then? I don't know, I only listened to the food ones. Joking aside, though, they've talked to the founders of pioneering startups like BrewDog, Monzo and Joe Malone. My favorite episode actually was with Alex Stephanie, the CEO of Beam, who spoke about how business could solve huge societal problems like homelessness.

Oh wow, that sounds great. Where do I go to listen to secret leaders? Just download it right now from wherever you get your podcast. All you need to do is search for secret leaders. Easy. But anyway, let's not get stuck into that. If anything is worth pushing back on is probably the conversation about foreign policy with you. Because some people might argue, you know, I'm from Russia. I'm no fan of the Russian regime.

Some people might argue, well, the United States is the beacon of light in the world. It's the one place that's created democracy. Surely the United States has not only a right. but a duty to offer bulwark against, you know, Vladimir Putin's dictatorship, the Chinese Communist Party, etc. What would you say to that? Imperial states always believe that they have the right and the duty to impose their system on foreign countries. And it's always cloaked in beneficent language. Like, we're doing this for the good of the world.

The Nazis said the same thing. But what's the evidence for it? the U.S. has repeatedly overthrown governments around the world, including democratically elected governments, for the crime of either standing in the way of U.S. hegemony or being a socialist government that wants to use your resources for your own people. So you can find a million examples. Iran in 1953 elected a nationalist government that wanted to use Iran's oil for its own people, while still actually sharing with the Western oil interests that were in Iran, but that wasn't enough for the U.S. and Britain who overthrew it.

And that set off, actually, the ongoing conflict between the U.S. and Iran that continues today, and has caused a lot of suffering for the people of Iran. You can go to Nicaragua in the 1980s where the U.S. waged a terror war to undermine the Sandinista movement, which tried to use the country's, you know, meager resources for its own people instead of the traditional elite. And you have that pattern repeated across Central America where the U.S. is consistently wage dirty wars to overthrow socialist governments and undermine socialist movements. It's still happening today in Venezuela, where you had a government that came in after years of rule by the country's, you know, light-skinned elite. Hugo Chavez in the late 1990s coming in presides over a massive increase. increase in quality of life for his people because for the first time Venezuela's oil reserves

are being spent on its population, not just going to a tiny sector of the elite. And the U.S., starting with a coup in 2002, has tried to repeatedly undermine that, continuing today under the Trump-Biden sanctions that are destroying Venezuela's economy. So for anyone who thinks that the U.S. is a beacon of light onto the world and has brought democracy to the world, I ask you to show me where. And in response, I can show you countless examples where they've done the exact opposite. I mean, the question with Venezuela

and hands up, I'm half Venezuelan, is slightly more complex than that with Chavez, with, you know, the rampant corruption, the suppression of human rights, his targeting of journalists, many of whom and my family have had to literally flee

for their lives. So I accept your point that whether the U.S. should be involved in that. But when it comes to Venezuela itself, it's slightly more complex than that. Would you not agree, Aaron? I refuse to discuss Venezuela without acknowledging the context of the U.S. waging a 20-year campaign to overthrow its government. And of course, I'm not denying that there is corruption in Venezuela or human rights abuses, but there is corruption in human rights abuses in every single country. The question is, what is the role of the U.S. as outside power, which has no business doing anything

in Venezuela without the permission of its sovereign government. What is the role of the U.S. in fomenting all this? And the role is actually pretty strong. It has funneled tens of millions of dollars into the Venezuelan opposition. It tried a coup in 2002, starting under Obama, continuing under Trump and now continuing under Biden. It's imposed murderous sanctions that are aimed specifically at starving the population so that there is enough unrest to overthrow the government.

to basically undermine support for the government. So I don't doubt for a second that there is corruption in Venezuela. People have been treated unfairly. But that to me is a Venezuelan issue. That's where Venezuelans to work out for themselves. If I see my government terrorizing Venezuela by literally trying to orchestrating a coup, this coup involving Juan Guaido would not have happened, if not for dedicated U.S. planning and support.

There's just no way. There's even documents that have come out showing how much. how instrumental the U.S. has been in funding Guido's operation. So that's what I'm concerned about. I'm concerned with what my country is doing to another country, where it has no business doing anything at all except leaving it alone. Aaron, actually, you know, obviously there's areas of agreement, errors disagreement, but on the principle, I agree with you.

I don't think the United States should be going around the world, throwing its weight around. My suppose the counter argument I'm trying to explore with you in my head is what should the United States do, if anything, about something like the Chinese Communist Party, China and let's say the Uyghurs? Should we just go, well, that's an internal Chinese problem, let them get on with putting people in concentration camps? Well, first of all, the question presumes is if we have some kind of moral authority and we have some right to act against another government. Now, notice how the question has never asked, what should the Chinese Communist Party do against the U.S., which is, supporting a genocide in Yemen. Without U.S. support, the Saudi-led genocide in Yemen would not be

happening. So the U.S. is supporting genocide in Yemen. It supported a dirty war in Syria that... Aaron, sorry to interrupt. Hold on. Those things aren't fair equivalence because that isn't happening in the United States. If the United States was imprisoning, I don't know, Latinos on mass and putting them in camps and re-educating them, then that would be a fair comparison. Do you see what I'm saying? The U.S. actually has the highest incarceration rate in the world. And the U.S. doesn't actually give health care to its own people. So there's even things internally that the U.S. is doing to its own people, which I think under the standards established...

Under these standards established by the U.S. would actually legitimate foreign intervention. But I don't accept the principle of foreign intervention. First of all, I start with the premise that everybody's equal. The U.S. is not some enlightened higher society. that's a Nazi way of thinking. I don't accept that. We're not better than China or anybody else. We're exactly the same.

And in some ways, we're actually a lot more backward and that we have foreign military occupations going on around the world and bases around the world and sanctions around the world that nobody else is doing. So I don't accept the premise that we have some duty or some right to act that we don't grant to other states. But isn't that the argument that would say we had no reason the United States shouldn't have intervened in World War II, for example.

Well, that's different because that's when you have a Nazi army that is invading foreign states and overseeing extermination. And other states that are being attacked by the Nazis have asked the U.S. to come to their defense. So the U.S. was asked for help. But that's different than, say, Vietnam, where nobody asked the U.S. to come into Vietnam. No sovereign government said, please come in to Vietnam or, you know, the Nicaragua, the, no, no sovereign Nicaraguan said, please come in and destroy our country. And the same, it's, and you can repeat that everywhere. Yemenis didn't say, please give Saudi Arabia, please arm Saudi Arabia and give them intelligence so you can bomb our countries, bomb our weddings, bomb our water plants.

So World War II is a unique case, I think. And the only, you know, if the U.S. did anything wrong there, it did it came in way too late. Nazis actually take far too much territory and cause far too much death before it finally came in. And look, and by the way, on the issue of the Uyghurs, that's worth addressing because, you know, it's interesting. We've only seen rhetoric around the Uyghurs come up in recent years. When meanwhile, the conflict there has been going on for a long time. There is undoubtedly repression in Xinjiang.

I think that's that that's undoubtable. And there's a massive surveillance state inside of China. But we've only seen talk about a genocide happen in recent years. And I think it's important to look at why. In recent years, China has become more of a target of the bipartisan U.S. establishment because it's a rising economic power. It's economic success threatened U.S. hegemony. And that's why I think China is now in the U.S. crosshairs.

And that's why I think we're hearing more accusations against China of genocide, which, by the way, is a very strong term. which I do not use when it comes to to the Uyghurs. Genocide means mass extermination. There is repression there. I haven't been there, but I would bet strongly that all the allegations of repression are true. But genocide means mass extermination. And anybody who wants to argue that U.Gers in China are treated worse than, say,

Palestinians in Gaza who are being occupied with U.S. support is wrong. It's just a falsehood. So there's, I think, a very familiar playbook of weaponizing humanitarian rhetoric to actually justify the real aims of basically demonizing China and waging a cold war against it, which I do not support. Hey, Francis, do you like Martians? Well, I work with one, don't I? Would you like to have an immersive experience with a Martian?

Are you going to get me drunk on the vodka? I hear my fucking fuck the last time. You wish. No, there's this. this great new immersive experience in London based on Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds. I've heard about this. The audience reviews have been incredible. It was rated one of the top 20 things to do in London at night and 98% of guests recommend it. The experience features a cast of 17 characters, 12 live actors plus a mix of holograms, projections and VR of West End stars.

You feel all your senses fired as you crawl, slide and weave your way through. through 22,000 feet of immersive action, including 24 extraordinary scenes and having to escape 300-foot Martian machines and the evacuation of London. It is fully compliant with COVID regulations and they're offering up to £10 off standard weekday tickets without promo code, which is, of course, trigger.

All you need to do to take advantage of this fantastic offer is go to the War of the World's immersive.com. That's the War of the World's Immersive.com and experience a world where we're being invaded by Martians, which is still better than being in lockdown. Follow the link in the description and I'll see you there. And do you not worry what will happen, Aaron, if, as you wish, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the US retreats from the world stage, that it just focuses on its own problems and health can, whatever it is.

what will happen to the world stage if countries like China and Russia are allowed free reign? That to me is like asking what, you know, in Star Wars, if the Death Star was dismantled, what would that mean for the world? The U.S. is a global empire. Show me another country that has bases in hundreds of countries around the world that is waging simultaneous military occupations that is imposing a sanctions regime that, cuts off massive countries from the west of the world and denies their civilians food and medicine. That's the case in every single major target of U.S. regime change. There's just no parallel.

All these governments are corrupt. They repressed their own people. And I'm not a fan of pretty much any government. But I don't believe that the system of this one global hegemon that is constantly invading other countries, destroying other countries, blockading other countries, is. better than a system where there's not this one empire. I think there would be a wonderful thing if there was not this one hegemon and controlling everything because it would mean that we have no more,

or at least it would reduce the chances of this one bully invading and blockading every country that it doesn't like. Do you think that's really true, though, Aaron? I mean, the system with no one power is inherently unstable, I would argue, and what you'd probably end up with is Russia or China becoming that superpower instead. Would that be a better world? For Russia and China to become a superpower on the level of the U.S., that would require them building up bases around the world, invading other countries. I don't see that happening.

And when you talk about being less stable, well, what is stable about the current situation where you have countries like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Syria, you can go down the list, starving under U.S. sanctions and you have this U.S. government that, you know, pretty much with every administration, invades somebody else. You know, look at the last 20 years. The U.S. invaded Iraq, destroyed Iraq. Look at the impact of Iraq, what that's done, not just to Iraq, but to the whole region. ISIS then goes into Syria, takes over a large part of Syria. Look at Afghanistan, the invasion of Afghanistan. Back then, al-Qaeda was concentrated to a very small part of Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. Look where they are now. Now they're around the world. They're everywhere. They're in Syria. They're in Somalia. They're in Yemen. That's a result of U.S. policy of the invasion of Afghanistan and also of Iraq. Then look at Libya, the destruction of Libya. Slavery returning there. The dirty war in Syria. Hundreds of thousands of people killed millions displaced, the country destroyed. Now it can't even rebuild because of U.S. sanctions. Iran. People, you know, there was just an article that came out in foreign affairs. talking about how millions of Iranians have been plunged from the middle class to below the poverty line because of U.S. sanctions.

You can look everywhere around the world. So what is stable about that? For these tens of millions of people, there's nothing stable about living under the threat of war, the impact of the U.S. invading, and now being surrounded by extremist militias like ISIS, and living under medieval sanctions that prevent them from importing their basic goods like food and medicine. Well, look, on Afghanistan, Iraq and all that stuff, we're completely with you and Libya and to a large extent Syria. I mean, some of the points you're making are hard to disagree with no matter how much I'd like to. But Aaron, I was going to ask you something, a topic that we cover on this show quite a bit is, you know, Francis is a very much old school lefty. I'm some, I used to be on the left.

I'm very much sort of in the center now, I think. But one of the things we talk about a lot and maybe it's our background is, medians who are concerned about increasing restrictions around speech, people being, you know, canceled for the wrong comment or whatever, that sort of thing, which does happen quite a lot in our experience. As someone who's on the left and cares about foreign policy, cares about economics, what do you make of what they sort of call woke stuff, woke culture, woke politics. Do you feel that's useful or is a distraction from the main issues the left should focus on? What do you make of it? To the extent, woke refers to how I see its original intention,

which is just to expand consciousness about the world, be conscious of subconscious biases that we inherent as a result of living in an unequal racist system. I think that is good, you know, and I'm on board with it. Of course, like everything, it's been exploited to distract us from the important issues like the ones I've been talking about and to sort of silo politics into this very narrow thing where it's no longer about improving people's material well-being, meeting their basic needs, opposing things like imperialism and war, but instead very much focused solely on solely on identity at the exclusion of everything else. There's nothing wrong, I think, with recognizing the role of identity in our biases and trying

to correct that. But when you do that at the expense and, in fact, in opposition to everything else, I think it's a very real problem. And the attempts to cancel people for saying the wrong things is, I think, a part of this where it's this, like, effort to push us further and further away from focusing on the things that matter that impact people's lives. and instead on these semantic narrow concerns that I just don't really resonate with the vast majority of people. And that's certainly an issue on the left that I think is worrying that, you know, I'm all for focusing on identity issues and, you know, for calling people by the right pronouns.

I think we have to respect however someone wants to be, you know, describe, we have to respect it. But the problem is when people try to make these things the sole issue at the exclusion and in opposition to everything else, that's a problem. And you see that especially now with the Democratic Party leadership, the DNC. They love this talk because instead of talking about, you know, the working class, the minimum wage or the impact of sanctioning and bombing foreign countries, they can brag about how diverse the cabinet of officials is that is carrying out these same awful policies. So sometimes this becomes a smokescreen to continue the very same policies, the very same racist policies of old. So that's where I stand on that. And I'm certainly not comfortable with the incredible amount of suppression of free speech that's gone on recently. And we saw that here in the U.S. before the election where there was this article on the New York Post about Joe Biden and his son Hunter and his hunter's corrupt business dealings abroad.

And literally, when you wanted to share that on Twitter, you couldn't. Twitter blocked people from sharing that. And that is a manifestation of this increased policing and censorship of speech. And in the case of this Hunter Biden story, one way in which they justified it is they said that this might be Russian disinformation. And that's another way all this has happened. Is that anything that offends U.S. elites gets labeled Russian disinformation, and that way we can bury it. So, you know, all this I think is is concerning. And Aaron, don't you see that when it comes to leftist parties, this identitarian politics is slowly tearing it apart because it's making them less and less electable and less relevant to working class people who they're meant to be serving?

I think there is truth to that. Yes, I do. I do. I do. Now, that doesn't mean that I think leftists shouldn't talk about identity and prioritize addressing racism and any other form of discrimination. But when it's done at the exclusion of everything else, and again, in opposition to improving people's material interests, that's when I think it's a problem. And unfortunately, I think that trend of solely focusing on identity while still advancing policies that, in fact, hurt people. people of color hurt marginalized communities, like, you know, for example, not being able to fight for a $15 minimum wage as the Democratic Party just showed us. I think that is a real problem and it will cost the Democrats and other liberals around the world votes because when things are rough, you know, when there's no economic alternative and there's no party offering

you any hope and any sort of means to improve your economic condition, it becomes much easier to scapegoat other people. So whether it's people of color or immigrants, those things become a lot, people become a lot more susceptible to demagogues like Trump blaming immigrants for their problems instead of being willing to look at U.S. elites, U.S. corporations that are causing the problems. And Democrats that refuse to call out those corporations and instead try to pretend that they're awoke simply because they have, you know, a diverse group of people in their cabinet or they use the right pronouns. It's not. going to work. Right. And the thing as well is if you target your efforts at working class people,

you will inevitably disproportionately help people who are from ethnic from other minorities, because they tend to be overrepresented in that group. Anyway, Aaron, I'm just wary that we have to let you go because you've got another thing to run to. So I just want to say, thank you very much for appearing on the show. It's been a pleasure chatting with you. We had a nice bit of back and forth. And we've got one more question for you. Which is always what's the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be? Well, politically, to me, I think the dirty war on Syria has not gotten nearly enough attention. And the way it's been described in the Western media, especially in the British media and the US media, is a scandal.

The US and its allies spent billions of dollars on a dirty war in Syria, which, in the words of Joe Biden, ultimately benefited Al-Qaeda and ISIS. He blurted this out in a comment in 2014, which you later had to apologize for. But he was telling the truth. And the picture we got in the Western media was just not accurate as to what was actually going on. We really helped destroy the country. And now Syrians cannot rebuild their country because the U.S. is overseeing what's called the Caesar sanctions, which explicitly targets Syria's reconstruction. The U.S. openly brags that it's destroying Syria's economy through these sanctions and preventing it from rebuilding.

And meanwhile, this is in parallel with the U.S. occupying still militarily a third of Syria, which also does not get very much attention. So I think the U.S. efforts to destroy Syria along with its allies, including the U.K., should get far more attention. And at minimum, we should be lifting these murderous sanctions that are preventing a country that we help destroy from rebuilding. And I hope people give that much more attention, along with a scandal that I've been covering very closely at the Gray Zone and the Nation magazine, which is that, as a part of this dirty war, to impose sanctions on Syria and to justify foreign aggression against it. Syria has been accused of carrying out this chemical weapons attacks. And you can go through every incident and there's sketchy evidence in all the big cases. But the most glaring one is the case of Duma in 2018, April 2018, where Syria was accused of chemical weapons attack, the U.S.

Britain and France, bomb Syria. But then there's been this scandal in the... the OPCW, the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons, which actually went to Duma to Syria to investigate this. And a whole series of leaks show that internally the inspectors who went to Duma did not find evidence of a chemical weapons attack. But their evidence was suppressed. Their initial report was doctored. And the OPCW put out a report that was completely misleading and contradicted what its own inspectors had found. And this coincided with the U.S. effort to pressure the OPCW to come to a conclusion that happened to match the U.S. narrative that Syria was guilty of a chlorine attack.

So that is a global scandal where basically similar to what we saw before the Iraq war, the U.S. is compromising the OPCW to basically doctor claims that justify U.S. war mongering, that justify a bombing of Syria and now justify sanctions. And there are whistleblowers inside the OPCW who have challenged this, who deserve our support and certainly our attention because try to find a reference to this in the U.S. or UK media. And it's very, very hard to find. A few people have covered it. Peter Hitchens of the Daily Mail has covered it. I've covered it at the Gray Zone. Jonathan Steele, the veteran British correspondent, has covered it. But aside from that, it does not get very much attention.

And there was finally, there was just a new development where there was an open letter just published. It's available at the Courage Foundation, Couragefound.org. And it's a statement by a whole bunch of signatories, including Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as the chief of staff to Colin Powell, Tulsi Gabbard, as well as five former OPCW officials voicing support for the whistleblowers and urging the OPCW to stop silencing them and to let them air the suppressed scientific. findings from their own investigation. So I hope people pay attention to that story. And if they're interested, there's a lot more they can find about it at thegrayzone.com. Fantastic. Aaron, thank you so much for coming on the show. We absolutely loved it. If people want to find you, where is the best place to do that? Thegrayzone.com. The grayzone.com. Thank you very very much. You already told you, mate. Come on. Pay attention. Yeah, well, you can get in a second time. You can get it in a second time.

Aaron, listen, it's been great. It's a really valuable perspective to add. You are, as I said, at the beginning, you're a voice. It's very different. There'll be plenty of things for people to agree and disagree on, but that's what we love. And, you know, it's great for us who really love speaking to people who are on the left, because that's kind of where we've come from. It's so increasingly rare now to get people on who actually believe in having conversations and disagreeing and free speech. So, you know, all props to you for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. All the best. And we encourage everyone to. check out your work, particularly the story you mentioned about Syria. Thank you everyone for watching. We'll see you at 7pm with another interview or live stream. Take care. And they always go out at 7pm, UK time. I just said that again. Well done.

It doesn't matter. This is a level of professionalism you get on the show. This is what happens when you involve comedians in anything. All right. Thanks, thanks. USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day, like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%

tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usa a dot com slash bundle restrictions apply