Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 138: Keeping The Faith (w/ special guest Asad Haider)

Episode Date: March 19, 2020

We take a look at what is quite possibly the most insane couple of days in the last 3 or 4 decades and ask a couple of questions, like: what do I do next? Will I get to shoot a harpoon out of a moving vehicle? Was Christian rapper Toby Mac right about everything? Then we talk with Viewpoint Magazine's Asad Haider (@generalityiii) about the task before us and about how to construct a radically new vision of society. Read Asad's work here: https://www.viewpointmag.com/2019/12/16/on-depoliticization/ https://www.viewpointmag.com/2020/03/16/what-is-political-power/ And of course you can support us on Patreon if you feel so inclined! www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

I just had to shave. I didn't look good. You shaved your face. I didn't look good. The last couple of days. I didn't. Well, what decisions brought you to that? Because I've considered shaving my face too,

but I kind of like the look of the rugged Mad Max out uh outlander you know what i mean like someone who's hoarding eight barrels of oil and who will blow your shit up with a harpoon yeah i could see that's i could see you going for that yeah i. I want to... Before this is all over, I would like to shoot a harpoon from a moving vehicle at another moving vehicle and get it lodged. Blow it up. Yeah. When I think of a harpoon, I always think of...

Well, it's not really a harpoon. Never mind. I had a Mandela effect thing about how Jaws gets killed. He didn't get killed by a harpoon. They stuck the gas tank in effect thing about how jaws gets killed he didn't get killed by a harpoon they stuck the gas tank in his mouth and shot and shot it yeah i know i i think that that um that's probably another dangerous fish movie that you're thinking of yeah there's probably there's movies where a dangerous fish gets harpooned i'm not sure which one maybe it's maybe it's jaws four with lewis gossett jr

you know where they bring the great whites to sea world and they start eating people i didn't i never saw that i, no. Is it? No, Jump the Shark, that phrase refers to happy days when Fonzie actually jumped a shark. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. TV was badass back in the day, man. I've been watching Cheers every night. Yeah? Yeah.

Dude, Cheers is a fascinating show. Why is that? Because the central characters, the characters around which the show revolves, even more than that, the relationship around which the show revolves is insufferable. I never really watched Cheers. I just know Woody Harrelson and Ted Danson were in it.

Yeah, it's better. Well, and Frasier, you know uh kelsey grammar yeah kelsey grammar yeah and then uh the best spinoff of all that was wings though wait wings was spun off of shears well it wasn't really spun off it wasn't really spun off chairs there's some i don't think it was at all like even well. There's overlap in the character universe because Frasier made appearances in episodes of Wings and so did Norm.

No shit. Yeah. There's no way. Yeah, I swear. Interesting. I'll take your word for it. I'm not going to gaslight you about Wings because I know that you really like the show Wings is the best sitcom

When we lived together I saw you watching a lot of Wings You knew all my depression shows Yeah I did Oh man Oh man oh man Well, welcome to the show. Welcome to the show, everybody. Welcome to the Trailbillies. We have a good show lined up for you today. We are interviewing our good buddy, Asad Hader. One half of the tag team duo the hater brothers the player haters brothers

the player hater brothers um but before we get to that before we get to our our sort of main feature we just need to do a little bit of catching up uh basically everything that's happened in the last few days of what will go down as in my opinion the most seminal days of the late republic when when you're not wrong like dude we are in truly like crisis of the third century declining rome phase of america we are in every time i've ever heard you know i i sometimes here's the thing about me is sometimes i get a little cavalier with talking about the end and the end of days and all that kind of stuff because you know in my mind i was like yeah it's probably pretty far down the road so it's easy to be cavalier about it now it's like that it's here

not so cavalier about it i've not seen the outside world in days well the cumulative effect of everything has created what can only be termed, like, future psychologists will have a term for the current psychosis we are experiencing, my friend, because it is a really bizarre kaleidoscopic effect. You are seeing systems melt down in front of you, and not just the stock market, but also just administrative systems. Everything from state to municipal government to the big one, the federal government. To the big leagues. I got to tell you something. You're talking about municipalities. I got to tell you something.

You're talking about municipalities. I don't want to say it on the air, but I have something really fucking crazy to tell you about our local government off the air. I'm sure that it's dark in all the ways that I'll be expecting. Oh, yeah. So, no, we are in the doom days, man. We are in the...

We're living in extreme days. But really this time. We living, we living, we living, we living. We are living in extreme days. Who would have known that Toby Mac brought us to this point? No, these are extreme days, man. I mean, like, this is the thing. Every hack who knows a little bit about politics and history

always says it's just like Rome, man. We're declining just the Rome. They were the biggest dogs in the game, man. Like, they were the biggest empire in the history of the world. Check this, man. you don't really know how fucking crazy how fucking vast the Roman Empire was man

but guess what guess what that shit fucking fell and guess what we're gonna fucking fall too the people who say that I don't know if they really understand like how true it actually is. It takes a long time.

Well, back in the day, traditionally, it took a long time. I think over time, it's contracted. It's gotten shorter and shorter, the amount of time it takes for civilizations and empires to fall. We're on the quick way down. You know, like when you're descending a mountain and you're coming down from a hike, you can either go to slow way or do that stilted, awkward thing that you go if you're trying to... Yeah, just keep going fast down. Yeah, but you can't quit going, though.

Yes, we're doing that, but it's like you can't quit going, though. Yes, we're doing that, but we haven't quite lost our balance yet. But we are about to eat shit. We're about to eat shit, yeah. We're about to eat big-time shit. Because here's the thing, man. Only figures like Biden and Trump arise in conditions of extreme, extreme decay. There's no other

conditions which such mediocre, not even mediocrity. Mediocrity is like Barack Obama. Mediocrity is Barack Obama. We've blown through that. Yeah, we've blown through that. We are at the grotesque again, there's nothing profound or

original about this observation but like every passing crisis just makes it more and more apparent to you like how grotesque it actually is it truly is it really is it's just it's just it's just, it's, yeah. Anyway, go ahead. No, so yeah, so to bring us up to speed, since the last time you heard from us, the economy is just, as I'm sure you can probably tell by the number of obscure think tank suited wearing TED talk addressing guys showing up in your timeline.

This is the benchmark. This is the best observation you've ever made. benchmark it's just the best observation you've ever made if a guy is on your tl and his name is like uh you know durango curtis maelstrom you know just like you know i had hippie parents that raised him on like back to the lander thing he wanted to cook a uh fucking brookings institute lanyard dick after he graduated from brown when those guys show up on the tl and their suits and ties and they're like little earpieces like you're saying from their fucking ted talks or whatever and they do threads they're the only guys still doing threads yeah i mean but their their threads go one of two ways. Either they make some completely unoriginal point that signals that better days are ahead, or it's total doomsaying. I saw this one going around.

Our buddy Alex Press sent me, and it was like, this guy's like, yeah, conservative estimates, we're probably talking seven holocausts worth of death from coronavirus. Dude, I saw that one. That's an open question. I saw that one. That's an open question. That's an open question. I'm going to say that's probably a bit overblown. But also, equally as dangerous is the people that say, oh, just let it pass through.

It's fine. You know, whatever. Right. So I don't know. Who knows? Who knows who knows i mean it may obliterate us we don't know it may be nothing we don't know we don't know i mean it's not nothing i shouldn't say that but you know what i'm saying uh but yeah this is just this is the kind of post these guys. Well, these are the guys like this is the sort of chorus of our times. You know what I mean? You these are the characters like the ghouls you see on the way out. Yeah, it really is like late last season Sopranos. Nobody's learned anything.

last season sopranos nobody's learned anything all of your old ghosts in and past uh sins keep resurfacing and tripping you up even more and then before you know it it's just fucking blackout you all just gone yeah yeah that's it man it's it's uh yeah well and the worst part about those guys too is like right before like everything's about to go to the toilet these guys get on here do their threads and it's usually the hawk they're like shitty ass book that they wrote in 2016 that nobody read about some sort of obscure economic phenomenon that we should be paying attention to still. Anyway. Murray Hogarth at the American Enterprise Institute or whatever. I want to see a hybridization of those guys.

I was thinking about this earlier. Do you think this is anything like Volker Shock? You know how Dan Cook had that thing called the Shocker? Oh, God. You couldn't go anywhere without people throwing up the Shocker from 2005 to 2009. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Imagine that, but it's the Volker Shocker. Oh, my god. That's what these guys are doing.

Yeah, these guys are doing. When you start to see more and more of those people on your TL doing... The curve bros. The curve bros. You know that your economy is... The Laffer, the Volker, whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how you know your economy. That's how you know your economy is... The Laffer, the Volker, whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's how you know your economy... Pick your curve, man. Right, right. That's how you know your economy might be fucking broken. Yeah. Yeah, that's when things are bad. So we saw a lot of those guys running out of the woodwork like termites last week. And that's how we knew.

That was our signal to know that the economy was going down um and then uh you know it became more and more clear to us that the virus was spreading more and more um and so on then that brings us to sunday where we witnessed one of the most bizarre you know theater theatrical experiments of this election so far which was the audience-less debate in front of cnn wasn't it a cnn thing yes anderson cooper whoever tagged in for jorge ramos who's under quarantine not feeling well i think i heard that i'm not making a joke i think that's why i missed it and uh who else was it it's a cuomo's brother i forget if i i see this so i didn't watch it i didn't watch it because who cares who cares i didn't watch it because i was already going down or checked out i already checked out well i'll tell you this it's something you know something we were talking about earlier is something changed psychically man

yeah at that debate i don't and again i don't know if it was just that it was before you know an empty house and just a couple of reporters or something, and that just made the optics weirder. But there was something that changed in sort of my consciousness and the optimism. And what I was telling you earlier I think is true is it, for me, it mirrors the New York City comptrollers meeting in the 70s from hyper-normalization when they decided to deregulate the banks. There's just something like a key was turned and instantly we're into a new phase of history.

Of course, keep in mind I've not touched another human in six days, so I don't know. It's like the little purple box in Mulholland Drive. You unlock it and you go into the bad world. The fantasy world disappears and then the reality just sets itself in. Well, and there is the surreality of the whole thing. Yeah. Well, and there is the surreal reality of the whole thing. One of the moderators might be missing because of the disease that's spreading. Again, well, maybe Bernie's outreach just isn't working. Or maybe there's something with the American voter that's not clicking with him. And I myself was doing this last week.

Again, this tells you how quickly things have changed. But then that's when... Also, also... Or go ahead, sorry. Neither of those things are true. Exactly. I mean, it is hyper-normalization. I mean, I mean, I mean, it is hyper normalization. I mean, two plus two is still four. This guy's like packing out stadiums all around the country, throwing these massive rallies.

Oh, exactly. Struggling to fill up fucking middle school gyms. Exactly. Has raised more money than any other candidate. Like, there is no world. And we've even started to buy into this narrative ourselves. There's no world in which Bernie is not a popular politician still leading an insurgency. But Sunday was the moment when we realized that actually this whole thing has been a fraudulent fucking sham.

a fraudulent fucking sham we thought that if we played on their terms got people to the polls made our case well enough in the streets and on the airwaves and etc that people in through joe rogan and all these other things that people would become activated and some of them were but it wouldn't have mattered anyways it wouldn't have fucking mattered anyways because they are bound in a term because in the 70s and 80s we blew this fucking economy sky-high and Bernie was the only person who was even going to be able to salvage anything out of that but they didn't even want that they didn't even want to buy themselves a little more time they just wanted to go straight right to it to get right fucking to it and so that's why fast forward two days after that they hold a primary election during a pandemic

during a pandemic where and it's funny as we're talking about this earlier it's like these people that pride themselves on the sanctity of our institutions and whatever literally bucked the Centers for Disease Control's recommendations about not gathering in groups of 50 or more. Right. Which is an interesting hill turn for them. Exactly. In a lot of ways. And it shows their commitment to this project

oh you're exactly right well and so that was the thing I mentioned this to you earlier but it became so glaringly obvious to me by Tuesday night that like I mentioned this

to you earlier like I I remember after the 2016 election and how hollowed out you felt after that like obviously we didn't really care or want about Hillary Clinton you know what I mean it's just like whatever but it was like seeing Trump be victorious and seeing this like just completely odious, you know, form of politics, ideology or whatever, make itself become or, you know, put itself in power was this very dispiriting thing. Like I was just like, you felt nauseous. You felt physical revulsion. Yeah. Just darkness, really.

Again, it was the Lynchian darkness. You know what I mean? Like the bad lamenta, like ominous tones were behind you. really again it was that it was the lynchian darkness you know what i mean like the battle lament a like ominous tones were behind you and but then you know but then we sort of like buckled down and we're like all right we got another shot with this bernie thing man like fuck you let's make this thing work like we're gonna launch a nuke at these assholes um and uh but then sunday or tuesday really after they held that election was the realization that we're dealing with something far more comprehensive. It's so comprehensively evil.

It's alien to us. And I had the exact same sort of nauseous, dark, ominous tones, you know, behind me feeling that I had after 2016. I mean, it was disgusting like i'll never it was one of the most heinous political acts in modern politics like truly yeah like when you think about what they really did and we were talking about this earlier there are two levels to what they did there's the obvious first level just the genocidal mania of it There's the obvious first level, just the genocidal mania of it. Like putting not just us at risk and themselves at risk, but literally everybody at risk.

Everybody. Dude, I'm telling you, what have I been saying this whole fucking time about these people are ready to blow up post offices for Robert fucking Mueller. They're ready to kill people with the virus for Joe Biden. Dude, they really are. They really are. The pussy hat wearers are getting militant. Dude, they are fucking... They're engaging in germ warfare. Biohazard warfare.

Dude, they are... I'm telling you, we are five seconds away from seeing somebody in a fucking Mayor Pete shirt fucking bomb a post office. You're exactly right, dude. Dude, like, that was the realization. So, like, that was the first level of it. But the second level of it was that they wanted us to be complicit in it. They asked us.

They scolded us and browbeat us and smarmed us to be complicit in this fucking act. And that, like, that was completely, it was completely, like, that to me, like, when I woke up, again, on Wednesday, I woke up on Wednesday just with this sort of shell-shocked feeling about me. Which is, like, this realization that, like, we never stood a fucking chance, man. Like, they were willing to play by entirely different fucking rules because they made the rules, obviously. It's their fucking game.

But I think a lot of us still had faith in institutions and that we could use the system to our advantage. And I think that the takeaway, for me, the takeaway, and I don't want to get too premature and say Bernie should drop out, or that it's even over because it's not, but for me the takeaway is that I don't think we can work within our institutions.

I don't know what else conclusion to draw. That they're willing to go to those lengths, and I don't know. They obviously want very different things. There's no left liberal coalition here. There's no unity. None of that. No. It's full speed in this way. And then for the audacity of them to try to hang it around our necks that, oh, well, if Bernie would have dropped out, they wouldn't have done that.

Well, two things. One, Bernie's not the head of the fucking dnc so he doesn't make those calls and two i don't know one bernie person that wasn't saying push the elections out postpone them exactly you know what i mean like nobody's saying that people can't vote what they're saying is that we need to push it out and a lot of it is too dude is that like like the just sort of the fashy undertone of that sentiment that oh bernie can't win and it's like okay yeah it doesn't look good for the home team but people should still be able to go vote for this guy that they put so much fucking into that they've invested in they've been part of this movement and you're trying to cut off still half of the country from going and voting for that guy yeah just based on what based on what fucking uh what's limp dick at 538 that

said that hillary clinton's got a 99 chance of winning nate silver yeah you know what i mean and look i mean i don't know maybe nate silver's bought off by the democrats maybe he's not i don't fucking know i and maybe his projections are usually good and the Trump thing was that. I don't fucking know. Don't fucking care. But the bottom line is that people should be able to go support whatever candidate. And this whole like dropping out in the name of unity is like

fuck you all. You all have hated us since day one and it's like you've hated us for no other reason. Smeared us as sexists and racists and everything else. And all because, all because Joe Biden. The most milquetoast, ineffectual, lowest imagined. I love what Felix, Felix says, like he's just got the lowest imagination for corruption because he's not in it for money or anything like that he's in it just so that like the boys at aig will give him

a windbreaker and pat him on the back you know what i mean right i don't know man it just seems it just seems like i don't understand what is in people that they'll go to their grave to lick boots and to be subordinate to this fucking class of people who are just so uninspiring and so transparently evil. The thing is they are completely dedicated to preserving the system. dedicated to preserving the system and and and they don't realize that the right is taking them for a fucking ride that's the thing yeah you're right you're right it's it's every every day i get on twitter and every liberal it's like oh well if you don't vote for joe biden you don't care about women you don't care about children under the border and all this kind of stuff and it's like one like nothing's good that's a lateral move at best but but when they even extract like even when they like extrapolate out and like say that well what about supreme court stuff they don't understand that fucking mitch mcconnell has padded out this judiciary for generations like they lost they've

lost the judiciary forever yeah in your lifetime in your children's lifetime in your children's children's lifetime it doesn't make a fuck if ruth bader ginsburg fucking dies tomorrow happy birthday rbg she's like she's like 117 today or something that doesn't matter no you know what i mean like let her die and replace her with merrick merrick fucking garland like you've had a fucking hard-on to do for nine goddamn years or whatever doesn't matter well the fact that they're this desperate to hold on to the system as it is again just shows you that they are unaware that all institutions have been creeping further and further to the right

for the past 20 fucking years and they And they won't do anything about it. But again, it just becomes more and more obvious that their function is to suppress the left. I mean, honestly, the most surreal fucking thing I saw yesterday was a statement from the head of the Ohio Democratic Party who was lambasting, who was whining about that Ohio health official who shut down the primary there. And he was saying that this is voter suppression. That is the line they're running with. run they have co-opted the very real phenomenon of voter suppression and have now grafted it on to um a totally rational and reasonable response to a public health crisis let's uh let's see how that plays in fucking uh and fucking uh the general when you're trying to fucking run against Donald Trump

and all he's got to say is folks, we had a crisis out here. The virus, it was out there. These folks, they wanted you to go vote. They wanted you to go vote. They wouldn't even push their primaries out. They screwed Bernie

and they screwed Bernie and then like it's going to incite the bernie people it's got i mean it's joe biden has a puncher's chance only because things are so goddamn bad and maybe people are actually pining for this return to normalcy because things are so fucked up i wouldn't count on it though yeah now i Now, none of us know what's going to happen, obviously. I wouldn't count on it either. I could see a scenario in which the Trump administration actually does enact some kind of welfare state and bailout policy. You know what I mean?

There's nothing that says they don't have to well it's like we were saying earlier that they they have the democrats have ceded because they're so goddamn stupid that they jumped off the dive and they let steve mnuchin and all of them lead them up to the dot lead them up to the edge say hey jump let's let's work they jump then those guys climb down they've jumped off the deep end with the means tested 250 dollars and they climb down they go well let's give them a couple grand or whatever it is you know and now all of a sudden now all of a sudden the democrats are the party of austerity and they've seeded they've seeded one of the last remaining perceptions of what they do for poor and working people to the most cravingven goddamn lunatics on the planet.

Yeah. Like, you couldn't get two better events that, like, illuminate that to you than them holding that primary on that day and, you're right, allowing themselves to basically be beaten to the punch of actually helping people through the coming crisis. Oh, just a classic maneuver. They just fucking took the bait off. Again, we could be taking the bait here. To be fair, to be fair, maybe the Trump administration really. I mean, like, OK, obviously they're not actually trying to help anybody. It's all rhetoric. They're just going to say. No, no, no. OK, let's let's let's get that out there right now. This whole idea that the Republicans are running to the left the left like don't buy that shit for oh yeah

no no steve mnuchin donald these guys aren't doing this out of the goodness of their heart i mean it's we're gonna get fucked on the back end of this they'll help no mistake they'll help the maga people who i mean they'll help the maga, boosh, like, you know, ski, water ski, small business owners. They'll help those people out. But that's all they need to fucking win. Because that's what, that's all this primary has shown us,

it's all elections show us in general, is that they are geared towards a specific class. Yeah. Oriented towards their demands and needs and responsive to them. Because we live in a bourgeois democracy. I feel like I'm on fucking crazy pills.

That's it, man. I fucking lose it. Did you see this Intercept article where the Illinois Democratic Party moved some of those polling locations to like these low-income disproportionately black nursing homes and stuff i did see that man it's just phenomenal what i've been on twitter saying dude the death cult jokes i mean that's not a joke like

these people are literally a death cult it's fucking phenomenal. And so this is the thing, man. This is the thing that's been fucking me up. And I think that this is the question that you have to ask yourself. Where the fuck do we go from here? Because me, personally, I feel so alienated from, like, that act. Their act of trying to implicate us in that fucked up thing that they did on Tuesday. Getting us to try to go out, scolding us not to do it and not to participate in all this. That like act has alienated me from this election to the extent that I,

I just don't even give a fuck anymore, man. Like I feel like we are in chaotic times. Me personally, I feel like we are in chaotic times and chaotic times demand bold, decisive action. And I don't think Bernie's going to get a better fucking moment. Opportunity.

Opportunity to denounce and split from this, because I just don't see what other options he's got left. He can stay in it and just kind of run the Democratic Party into the ground, but I don't even give a fuck about them anymore man because like we i think like something new has to be born we have to be able to create something new and beautiful and creative and that uses our imaginations and actually fucking steers mass anger and grief grief yeah no you're right no you're right man No, you're right, man. And to me, whether Bernie stays in or not is not important at this juncture. It's that he cannot kowtow to the Democrats and endorse Biden, because if that's the case, then he becomes culpable in this death cult thing. very heartbroken, but also very terrified. Because the unfortunate fact right now is that the left does not have a lot of leaders. We just don't have a lot of leaders. It's not a question of we don't have a lot of good or bad leaders. We just don't have a lot of leaders, period.

So it's like we need some sort of institutional structure that can create leaders and can create an alternative an alternative not just in political philosophy and vision but in literal institution and organization yeah so i mean i don't think he's going to get a better time than this i don't know what that looks like you know and all kinds of people, they ask you for specifics, and I don't... Like, in the old days, in the Mexican Revolution, they just went out to the countryside and convened in a congress or an assembly or something like that

and just called themselves the Congress for three years. El Congreso. Yeah, while Panchcho b and the guys are just like fucking fighting it out on the plane yeah yeah it's like well and you'll hear this go ahead oh i was gonna say and you'll hear this in the interview we got coming up for you but it's like also it's like i was telling you earlier asad said something in this interview and he's like you know uh back around marxist time and all this stuff you know if we were going to do something like this what would happen is you know me and you and 12 other people would go meet somewhere and you know and you know fucking belgium or something we go underground and the cops would come,

and they'd break it up, and we'd scatter. Then we'd say, all right, boys, we'll see you in six months in Spain or Italy or wherever it was going to be. Then some would make it back, some wouldn't. But out of those sort of crazy-ass conditions where you would just exchange correspondence and you wouldn't hear from your comrades for months or whatever revolutions were born right but like we have we have it so much better here we don't have to like write pamphlets under assumed names or any

of that kind of shit we like have it way better and we just got to figure out how to fortify what we got we got numbers you know we've That's the thing. And we've got technology and we have a lot of brilliant people on our side. Scientists, political thinkers, podcasters. All the important professions are represented in the light.

Prolific weed smokers. Yeah, posters. Posters. But no, but really, honestly, like we have all of the means to do it. And I just hate to be cringe about it or, you know, you bring up a third party or something. And it is, I mean, it's kind of ultra in a way. I mean, it seems kind of unrealistic and it might be. And that's the thing. It might not have to be a party.

kind of unrealistic and it might be and that's the thing it might not have to be a party i just don't i just think for me it's the goal is not so much to win national elections immediately it's to batten down the hatches locally institutes like democratic structures and leadership uh channels and to steer mass grievance when this quarantine ends when we can finally emerge from our quarantine when this sham of a fucking election is concluded and while the economy is melting down yeah because i mean because i don't again it's like we're saying earlier i can't see trump actually bailing out the proletariat like he will bail out the parts of the economy that he needs like shore up his political support and that might mean job creation i guess it could if he's nationalizing parts of the economy but um but i i just can't i like that grievance is just still

going to be there and it's like going to be more widespread the contradictions are being resolved right in front of our eyes we must step up to the plate and meet history you know we can't i don't know we can't just like let it go away i don't know there's just yeah there's a lot of resources in this campaign and a lot of infrastructure and And I don't really see what much more good that could be served in the Democratic primary going forward, but it could be put to something else. I was thinking there's this famous anecdote from the Russian Revolution where this worker is jabbing linen in the chest

and he's like, take power, you cow jabbing Lennon in the chest, and he's like, he's like, take power, you cowards. Take power. You know what I mean? Like, he's, and, you know, and Lennon's hesitating. And it's like, that could not be more clear to me. It's like, you have...

You're doing that to Bernie? Yeah, like, you have the resources. God damn you. Didn't you see the video of him pretending to be a monster with his grandkid? Son of a bitch. I'll not have Didn't you see the video of him pretending to be a monster with his grandkid? Son of a bitch. I'll not have you poking Bernie in the chest.

I don't know what you mean. I don't know. Maybe not. A lot of people say he's been in the system too long to play by those rules. That's fundamentally not what he's about. It's like, again, I could be reading things into it um and uh that might not be really it's well it's really boils down to

bernie still got a little bolshevik left in him or has it or has it all been rinsed out or or are we going to get a little bit of uh 80s burlington go to hound and moon in the soviet union bernie you know what i mean yes we need one final heist bernie we need one final heist we did what exactly fucking bring him out of retirement like man i know you've been trying to play this social democratic game for the last 20 years but look the contradictions show like it's not gonna work man you have to harness the energy of the working class you have to go full fucking communist man and we just go and we just go cut off heads to the sweet sounds of fish playing in the background

oh my god i hope that this like i don't know i don't know man but like in all seriousness like this moment demands bold and decisive action nothing is real anymore for anybody everybody's precepts are going out the window like we must we must realize that like everybody's routines and normalcy and everything has been disrupted and it's going to be for a while i don't think people realize this it's a marathon it's not a sprint and and so like in this moment as people adjust to a new reality there is no better moment for something new to be born with a fucking soil is so ripe plant the it's so fertile it's like plant the fucking seed like i know it doesn't seem like stick your dick in the fertile soil and spill your seed in the soil so i'm saying but but but

really though seriously like this is the moment where all the illusions have dropped away. Like, how do people think the Republican Party got started? You know what I mean? Like all the contradictions had been removed by that point. They've been stripped away. And, you know, there's no other option left. Like we have to start something new. So I don't know. With that being said, we have a good interview for you this week.

Um, and it's from our good buddy Assad hater. I think I said that at the top of the show. I think that this is a good starting place. It's a good place for rebirth. We have to, again, we have to recreate ourselves out of this because this is not for us, man.

This is not. Well, do you remember after Charlottesville, we turned to, you know, we said, you know, what is to be done? Echoes of Lennon, right? Yeah. And this is kind of like a part two to that almost, but the stakes are somehow even higher. The stakes are as high as they have ever been in the last 30 or 40 years, really. Really, probably since the 1970s. Yeah.

We're living in an all-timer of a moment when it's an open question what's going to happen but but we have that we but we could do something here yeah we and you have to yes you have to keep bravery and courage look and we're not even at a total disadvantage like we usually are exactly exactly like they they have made us by making us feel, or me personally, I don't know if anybody else out there is like me, you kind of feel alienated from the election so you also feel alienated from the movement. But that is not the case.

There are still a lot of us out there. And like this is not the story that's emerging in this election that like the Bernie thing didn't work and that we're all, you know, the numbers aren't there and that it's not real that this thing isn't real it's very fucking real it has to be harnessed immediately we can't waste any fucking time um i don't know they like these are literally the moments that what you do will determine the course of history and so you have to meet it with courage but you also

have to meet it with an overwhelming desire that you will do anything to see a better world otherwise what are we even in this for you have to be able to envision something radically new and different it can't be because that that is up for grabs right now as we were saying earlier if the trump depending on how the trump administration reacts to this, if it is to the left of what is considered, if it's to the left of anything Obama did in 2008, then we have to distinguish ourselves from them. And so what does that look like? I mean, like, this is a repulsive society. Every aspect of it is repulsive and genocidal. And just macabre!

It's rotten from the inside. It's completely absurd. It has to fucking go. And so I guess that's all I have to say about it. On that note, let's turn it over to, well, let's turn it over

to me and you and Brother Asadi, the chairman. All right, we'll roll the tape and enjoy everybody. Also, you can check out our Patreon if you want. I know that these are trying times. If you want to hit us up, it's patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com slash tribblyworkersparty. All the goods are there. Yeah, if you don't have the cash, that's totally understandable. And if those Mnuchin checks come in,

you want to slide a five right away. Time, sir. Send all of the leftist media outlets your Mnuchin checks. That's right. That's right. Alrighty, well, we hope you enjoy. So, Asad, how are you doing?

I'm all right, hanging in there. Yeah. You know, we're recording this on perhaps one of the most ominous days of my life. I don't know if it's the same for you two, but it's certainly pretty ominous out there, my friends. Yeah, just trying and failing not to touch my face it's hard when you got a beard like that it's really hard i know because well you can't see it but i i have a beard not quite as impressive but it is irresistible it's a lost cause um so yeah so no we're recording this, like I said,

kind of on the day of a very interesting confluence of events. We have a plague ravaging the world. The stock market is crashing all around us. And to kind of make sense of various things that are happening in the world right now, we brought on Asad Haider, who writes for Viewpoint magazine, is also the author of the book Mistaken Identity, among various other things. Also, recently to Twitter. I'm so glad you're on Twitter now, Asad.

Well, you know, I'm going to regret the decision. No, I'm personally very glad to see you there. Your commentary is very much needed and welcome. But no, so when we first reached out to you to come on the show a few months ago this kind of took a few permutations we first wanted to talk about Noel Ignative

and then the more we talked about it with you we thought it might make a little more sense to talk about this essay that you had written for Viewpoint called On Depoliticization I'm gonna fuck that word up multiple times depoliticization is what you're going for nice thanks tom much better at this than i am um so uh so yeah so i guess i want to kind of use that as i I don't know, maybe a guide for kind of understanding your current moment. So just maybe, Asad, if you could, I mean, there's a lot that's in this essay. It's pretty short,

but there's a lot that you're saying here. And I think that it, you know, when I first read it in December, when you first put it out, I was like, I was kind of having a hard time understanding it. But as the sort of electoral process started to unfold and as the campaigns started to progress, parts of it started to really click for me. really click for me. And so maybe just as a primer, you know, you start off your article saying that, you know, we're sort of in a global situation that's characterized by a, as you say, a politicization of social movements and a flood of young people towards politics. And so, you know, and as you write here, you said, I propose that our situation should be understood not only in terms of a resurgent radical politics, but also with the attention of, to the perniciousness of its opposite, the frame of depoliticization. So, um, I don't know, could you tell us a little bit about, you know, what you mean by that? What is your definition of it and how are you framing it here? So I was thinking about the piece recently, and I was thinking, damn, with Bernie surging, nobody's going to believe me. And so this was, you know, at that moment, it was like, actually, there's this major politicization happening in which people are kind of just at a level of everyday action, putting the existing system into question. And I think that's

really what drove the enthusiasm for Bernie. I don't think it could be restricted even just to a policy program as important as the policy goals are. I think that people were willing to rally behind Bernie because they saw that there's a social movement here which is saying that things can be different from how they are now. That's what politics really is. I mean, I think there's no other way to understand politics unless it's about saying that something can change and that the reality that we exist in isn't the way that things necessarily have to be. reality that we exist in isn't the way that things necessarily have to be. But then as things have progressed, we've seen why we have to also understand that there's an underlying problem with depoliticization, which is because when this struggle is waged within the institutions and apparatuses of the capitalist state, there's a constant threat of depoliticization in which that possibility of fundamental structural change

gets channeled into just adjustment within the existing order. And the way that elections work is such that elite maneuvering from the top, from the democratic establishment, the manipulation of reality by the media, all of these factors came in to interfere with the further growth of the movement and to try to channel people's energies into a politician who just represents more of the same, Joe Biden. And now what we're going to see is more and more so-called progressives encouraging us to line up behind Biden because we're supposed to be so scared of Trump the alternative. But we know the reality is if we get more of this same system, we're going to see a lot more. We're going to see a lot worse than Trump.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting as we record this and who knows what's going to happen next week. I mean, we are in one of these weird moments in history where things move very fast. And so who knows what will happen next week. But it is interesting because it kind of feels like the left. And I know that however you define that, it is a very vague thing, is at a sort of conjuncture, or at least at a point where we have a choice before us. And it seems like the choice would be

that we either sort of declare a sort of class independence, whether that's in the form of Bernie or Bust or even anything further to the left than that. Or, as you were saying, we let ourselves become, you know, assimilated back into the fold. And, you know, and I was thinking a lot about this today as I was reading, several people have written a lot about this, that the Sanders movement's big error was not being conciliatory enough to the sort of traditional Democratic Party base. And we sort of therefore isolated ourselves and went down this, you know, path of defeat or whatever. And so as a result,

a lot of people have, you know, there's the article on Jacobin saying, you know, we shouldn't take the road taken by the new left, which is like very, you know, and as a result, we should basically not lose access to the Democratic Party and its voters and basically fold back into that. understand that the new left's big error was that it eventually became disillusioned with radical politics and allowed itself to become assimilated back into the democratic party apparatus um is that a sort of example of what you're talking about i mean i know it's not exactly that but like how does it fit into the frame of what you're saying here well when people are talking about the new left today i have no idea what they're talking about. I mean, you have factors underlying the new left, which are like the various attempts to build socialist organizations that were, you know, independent of the official communist organizations

of previous history. So, I mean, there's a common lineage between the new left and the DSA today. And in fact, you know, the Port Huron statement was criticized by Michael Harrington because it wasn't anti-communist enough. So, you know, you already had with the new left a move towards something that appeared to be even more anti-capitalist, even more of a significant questioning of the system than was tolerable for some social Democrats. And so what did you get in the New Left? You had the emergence of a student movement, you had all these people who were politicized by the civil rights movement and the struggle against segregation participated in that movement, realized that the goals of that movement meant a really radical transformation of society. And they wanted to take that further.

And they wanted to fight against the war in Vietnam. They wanted to fight against American imperialism. And they traced that back to capitalism. They wanted to fight against the oppression of women. And at a certain point, they started to think about how to create more radical organizations. And those organizations became extremely sectarian. They isolated themselves. They ate each other alive and they disintegrated. And a lot of the people who came out of those organizations did, as you pointed out,

eventually just sort of just absorbed themselves into the Democratic Party. But, I mean, there was this whole lengthy process of people trying to figure out how you could have a political movement against capitalism in the context of American society with the specific conditions of American society and in the specific context of a world revolution in the 1960s. I mean, let's be realistic. I mean, there were successful wars against American imperialism. There were actual revolutions around the world. This was something that was happening in Europe, in Asia, in Latin America.

So it's absolutely bizarre to be glib about the new left in this way. It's like it's one thing that really is striking about a lot of this seemingly pragmatic socialist discussion today is how cut off it is from all of history, from the whole history of socialism, of revolutionary politics, and of the left. It's as though nothing had ever been achieved before until a few clever people now decided that, what bright idea, what a brilliant new idea that we should start running candidates within the Democratic Party. I mean, this is no breakthrough, and you're totally cutting yourself off from all of the actual achievements that have taken place throughout history on the left. One thing I saw you say on Twitter the other night, and I think it's sort of a central question to a lot of folks like me that are just sort of getting their feet wet in radical politics in the last couple of years with the rise of Bernie Sanders and whatever, even though I would say I came out of sort of a social Democrat sort of family, is this idea that you have to either choose between participating in electoral politics

or something more radical. And I was just wondering if you'd say something about why that's a false choice. Yeah, I mean, look, one thing that we know, and we have to have this common starting point or the discussion will go nowhere. So if we're socialists, if we're Marxists, we're going to have to agree on this. There is no way to legislate socialism into existence. You can't use the existing capitalist state to convert into some kind of other system because the state exists in order to reproduce this system. That's how it emerges and what its function is. So you're not going to legislate socialism into existence. Does this mean that you have to completely be a kind of beautiful soul who never is corrupted by any connection to the state or something like that, that would mean not actually achieving any change. It would mean not actually engaging with politics as it exists in people's everyday lives.

Even if you're totally antagonistic to the state, you're going to have to somehow refer to the state in order to win victories against it. You're going to have to at some point confront state officials and get them to change what they're doing. There will always be some level of contact with the state, even if it's antagonistic. And so one aspect of that contact with the state can be participating in elections and electoral politics as a means of reaching masses of people

for whom politics exists within elections. And that's the character of our society, because people are shut out from politics. People are shut out from governance and from control over their own lives. Control over our lives is transferred into this separate institution. And so the only way that we are invited to participate is by picking the representatives of the ruling class who are going to oppress us for the next four years. And so if you enter into that arena with a message that it's possible to go beyond this, and that's what I think is important about this idea of political revolution, which suggests that this electoral campaign is about changing those structures rather than just putting a good guy in there. And I think it's like if you get a cult of personality around Bernie, it totally

destroys that message. It's important. I mean, you know, symbolism matters. He's charismatic and principled figure, and that's good. But to have fantasies about what President Bernie will do is a bit of a distraction from understanding the meaning of that political revolution. So if you enter into elections, you can reach masses of people, because that's where politics is supposed to happen. But that's not sufficient, because if you're going to have a

political revolution, if you're going to change the way that this system works, you need to also have institutions of an alternative kind of democracy, of an alternative kind of way of doing politics that go beyond choosing representatives who are going to rule over you. And you need to have a set of alternative institutions that can make it possible for change to happen within the state. Because once you enter into the state, there are severe limitations on what politicians can do. When socialist politicians, and this has happened constantly throughout history, happened very recently in Greece, this is all the evidence indicates that once socialist politicians enter into the capitalist state, they have to manage the capitalist system and they have to compromise with capital because capital controls the resources. And when you have, for example, an economic crisis as we're entering into, capital can say, OK, we are the ones who control growth. We're the ones who provide jobs and you've

got to help us out here or it's going to suck for everyone. And within the capitalist state, politicians are always operating under those constraints. So unless you have a movement outside of the state, unless you have a movement which is a mass movement that challenges the, which is a mass movement that's challenging the very boundaries of what is possible, you're not even going to see reform. And this is a big problem. So when people get too invested in electoral politics and they cut themselves off from the grassroots movements, the whole goal of politicians becomes getting reelected, reproducing their position within the state. And once they're doing that, then they're cut off from the very movements that made it possible for them to pursue reforms, that provided the pressure from outside of the state that made it possible to pursue reforms.

And so they become obsolete. They become irrelevant. When socialist politicians aren't even advocating for socialism anymore and are just saying, we're going to run the capitalist state for you, why would you bother? Capital is going to just throw all its weight behind a candidate who is actually vehemently advocating for capitalism, perhaps in the most ugly and authoritarian way. authoritarian way. Yeah. You know, and another thing that you point out in this essay that I think that kind of fits into this is that we've even kind of lost transmission of like what you call, well, you know, you didn't coin the term. One of the reasons I had you on the show is that you could actually tell me how to pronounce certain philosophers' names. tell me how to pronounce certain philosophers' names. Badu. Badu, yes.

So you know where I'm going with this. So you're talking about the communist hypothesis. And so, you know, you have this paragraph in here that's really, really great. So you define the communist hypothesis as basically the idea that the state and the market are not necessary for human life. Is that correct? Yeah. And so you say, within the historical frame of depoliticization, the communist hypothesis has dropped out of view even among socialists. Many contemporary socialists believe that this world is necessary.

A powerful contemporary socialist opinion declares that the state and the market are necessary and human life cannot be conceived beyond them. This is the most serious question for socialists today. It is not a debate around reformism, which under our political constraints is very difficult to define. It is a position on the necessity of the existing reality. And I think that that's kind of what you're getting at here, right? Like if we're not, if we don't uphold that sort of very basic hypothesis, then it can lead us into these sort of traps of depoliticization, or, as you even say here, adjustment. And that, you know, I'm skipping ahead in your essay, but I just wanted to hear if, like, you could sort of articulate the connection there. to hear if like you could sort of articulate the connection there yeah i mean by jews argument about the communist hypothesis this world is not necessary uh the and this hypothesis is not an

intellectual one which says okay we could imagine a different world it's one which has been put on the table repeatedly throughout history by movements which have broken with the existing order of things and demonstrated that this world is not necessary, demonstrated that at an absolutely material and practical level, that everything about this society can be put into question. And you know it would be different from the other slogan that's common, another world is possible, which is not a terrible slogan but it's putting things at a different level because actually we don't know yet whether another world is possible because we don't have the practical powers that could achieve that. And that's a very serious question, which can't just be skipped over.

What are the actual foundations for a politics that could create a different kind of world? We're not there yet. But the point is that this world is not necessary, and we know that because of every major revolutionary event that has happened in the past and this truth that they put on the table. And one problem that I see now among certain socialists, even people who call themselves Marxists, I mean, look, I keep saying this. You don't have to be a Marxist if you don't want to be. If you want to be a socialist who's not a Marxist, okay. But if you believe in the perpetual existence of the state and the market, it's meaningless to call yourself a Marxist. Just say you're some other kind of socialist because these are absolutely basic and fundamental tenets of Marxist theory. and fundamental tenets of Marxist theory. And so we find today people saying, okay,

we're a socialist, so that means that we want to take over the state and use it for the benefit of the working class. Well, that's certainly an initial measure that we could imagine being very useful for improving people's lives and perhaps building a longer revolutionary process. But the idea that was put forward by Marxism, which is so meaningful, was that it's possible to overcome the idea that there has to be a separate coercive apparatus, the idea that there has to be a separate coercive apparatus, something that's separate from people's lives and that reproduces its role through violence, we can move past that and have a world in which our powers are no longer separated from us but reabsorbed back into the human community. And that doesn't mean not having institutions, that doesn't mean not having processes of decision making or something like that. It's a very specific claim about overcoming this separate coercive power, which is the state. Then the market, I mean, you find people talking about market socialism, you find people talking about socialism in terms of the nationalization of a certain set of industries,

perhaps a little bit of markets here and there. But the idea that is there in Marxism and the idea of the communist hypothesis is that it's possible to have a world in which people do not depend on the market for survival, in which we don't have this very new and extremely strange system in which a minority of people own have they have a monopoly of wealth and their entire goal is directed towards the accumulation of abstract wealth value meaning not the accumulation of stuff but the accumulation of money of literally numbers mean, to insane proportions,

and that the reproduction of the whole society, my ability to get the things that I need, is determined by the extent to which that minority of people are accumulating more numbers. I mean, that's what's happening right now. Why are these ridiculous numbers trillions and so on why do they have any bearing when they're being bounced back and forth in the stock market why do they have any bearing on whether i get to eat today that's an insane society it it really is i was thinking about too. And it's like our whole like dignity in retirement is predicated on this idea of us loaning wages we earned to the most craven people who already are exorbitantly wealthy and basically loaning them our money for decades in advance. And they're going to give us a small return for the favor.

And that's how everybody retires in this country. I mean, yeah, yeah. So the goal, I mean, it doesn't really make much sense to have the long term goal being that we all get a higher wage. I mean, yeah, let's get higher wages. Now let's do everything it takes to increase our wages. But the idea that our whole lives should depend on working for wages, it's crazy. We have to get past that. Well, and so, you know, in your essay, you point out something that is, I think, very useful, which is that, like, let's say we're in this moment and whether it's the Labour Party in the UK or the Sanders movement here in the US does fail on electoral grounds,

at least in the short term. You know, you could respond to that by sort of calling for what you say, a greater radicalism. You know, you could even use the word communist and call yourself that. But you could still kind of have, you know, as you call it, a sort of affective investment in the existing world. I'm kind of, I mean, you don't have to go into the particulars of that unless you want to. You're totally welcome to. But regardless, I think that that kind of can create a disconnect. And so what winds up happening is that you, as you say, the remaining available position is adjustment. And so I kind of just wanted you to talk about that because it feels so relevant to a lot of our sort of debates online and, you know, all of the way we like discuss politics with one another.

with one another? Well, I mean, look, this is, it's always been a huge problem on the left. Sectarianism, the personalization of political disputes, practice of denunciation. I would say, you know, there's all kinds of talk back and forth now about identity politics. People talk about it in different ways.

People write entire books about it. I made that mistake myself. Something like communist becomes an identity. Social Democrat becomes an identity. People are performing these identities online or in whatever other political disputes they may have in a or practical expression of that that goes beyond what anybody else might do. entities, and the way that those become extremely vitriolic, hostile kinds of ways of interacting with each other, that's like inversely proportional to how much people are able to actually act in a meaningful way. And so that's the remark that I make about reformism. I mean, like, what actually can you do that goes beyond what you might identify as reformist today? I mean, I don't know of any, you know, you can't go to the mountains and join a guerrilla army, unless you guys know about one

over in the mountains there that I don't know about, Right. So, I mean, you can, if you want to say I'm a communist, Bernie Sanders campaign is reformist. Okay. Like what does that mean practically? So, uh, I mean, but I don't want to, you know, pick on one side because it works from the other side too. I mean, you see this denunciation of people as ultra leftist or whatever who raise any skeptical questions about elections right now. I mean, that's also just a pure performance because the reality is if the only practical activity you can suggest is at the level of elections, right now it looks like you're going to be working for Joe Biden. So what do you got to propose?

I mean, so instead of like radicalizing these different identity positions, I think we have to have a discussion which cuts across these labels and is actually about what we can practically do that's better than what we've been doing. Yeah. Well, you know, also this kind of plays out on an organizational level, too. And, you know, you touch on it in the essay. And so I was wondering if you could maybe speak a little bit about it.

I mean, I'm currently not in any kind of leftist organization. The only leftist organization I have, unfortunately, is not a guerrilla, you know, army in the mountains. It's this podcast. But, you know, if you talk about how it kind of plays out on a sort of organizational level, I don't know. Because I kind of want to pivot here in this interview to kind of maybe, and maybe this is above our pay grade, but maybe pivoting to, I hesitate to use the word solutions because that's not at all what we're doing here.

But maybe pivoting to something that allows us to analyze our situation a little easier or a little clearer or coherently does that make any sense i'm not sure how to put it i just i hesitate for people to listen to this and say like well well then what's the point of anything you know what i mean does that make sense well um you know first of all, I would say we don't want to be too fast in overcoming that impulse because we do have to, I think, if we get optimistic and we, you know, sort of are rallying ourselves and saying history is on our side we get complacent we have to understand all of the barriers that exist and the difficulty of the struggle that lies ahead and you have to be honest about that at the same time and once again

this is at the level that we're talking right now, you already hinted at this. We can't formulate a solution, the three of us talking right now. It's obvious. No organization currently exists which can claim that it presents a solution. I mean, you know, certainly TSA has grown a lot, remains to be seen what its future trajectory is. Unfortunately, we don't have the option of deciding whether to join an organization that has the whole weight of the Russian Revolution and the defeat of fascism behind it. I mean, imagine making that choice of whether to join a communist party

which had this legacy. And if you decided actually the communist party is too reformist and it's too absorbed in the state right now, what a great decision to make. What a great way. I mean, that's a great thing to be able to reject. We don't have that luxury. Right. I mean, that's a great thing to be able to reject. We don't have that luxury. But what we know is that this has happened. This has happened throughout history in the most unfavorable of conditions, in conditions in which it seemed impossible for something to change, in conditions in which, you know, we're speaking freely here.

You're going to put this online. We say these things on social media. But a century ago, people like us, they had to use fake names, publish illegal newspapers, and spend all of their time bouncing from country to country. I mean, like, literally, you have people assembling for a meeting in one country in Europe, all these Russians who are living all around the world, they gather in one country in Europe to have a meeting, someone says the police are coming, and they just pack up and say, Okay, see you in a few months in Belgium. So we don't have those conditions but in conditions like that revolutions happened and uh this is a point that is made by bad you which i think is um one that

uh it really becomes clear to you when you study the history and you think about the position that we're in which is that you have to recognize what these events represented, which is that they represented the possibility of something totally changing. And they represented the idea that we can act in a way that is for the benefit of all and not just for some. And we have to be faithful to that. And the decision that we make is, are we going to be faithful to that possibility or are we going to betray it? And it's not an easy thing to do to maintain that faith and to persevere. But I think that that is the greatest thing that we are capable of as human beings. And I think that that's a decision that we should make.

And if you don't, if you cut yourself off from that history, if you make glib comments about the new left, if you think that you're the first person to figure out the solution, you don't have that faith. And I think that should be our source of hope. Source of hope shouldn't be like, well, we think Bernie's going to win this. Source of hope is we can maintain our faith in what these events brought about. And okay, so that was a very high level. No.

Down to a practical level, organizational level. I think there are – it's not impossible to find ways of acting right now because, well, we do have to make one extra adjustment, which is we have to figure out how to do politics when more than three people can't meet together in one room. I don't know how we're going to do that. So that's like a new problem to solve. That's a new problem. that i mean we we have a an electoral campaign that's introduced ideas radical change to a huge portion of the population and has unprecedented has had unprecedented success and we don't know

what's going to happen i mean you know this is like one of the most unpredictable periods that we've had for many years. And we don't know what's going to happen. And good things could happen. We could get more good news out of that campaign. And we also know that the best other thing that we can do is start to build alternative institutions that are outside the state and outside electoral politics, both so that they can provide the external pressure so that beneficial policy reforms could be implemented, and also so that they can begin to produce new institutions that can go beyond the state and the market. And that's something that I think, unfortunately, has been sort of neglected. And organizations right now, left organizations, have to start thinking about that.

Right. So to kind of go back to what we started talking about when we opened this, and to kind of dial it back out to the sort of historical the level of historical development um you know another thing you write about and i think that this probably derives from and i hope i don't butcher this one but is it althusser is that how you say it so you know as you're saying i've been wondering how to say forever just afraid to ask

um so but you know as you write politics exists in particular sequences they have a beginning and an end when they end um or they end when the existing procedures and aims of politics have been exhausted and and i think that you're saying that in this moment is when you have the dangers of depoliticization. And you list two. And I think that these are very important because I think this is something we talk a lot about on this show. This has been the main theme over the past year and a half, which is like, how do you adjust, you know, I don't want to use that word because we already used it one way earlier in this but how do you prepare yourself or whatever mentally philosophically but also organizationally or whatever once that sequence has run its course you know you say that there's there's two things

that can happen it's either um well as you write here the end of a political sequence is understood to be an indication of the futility and corruption of the whole project of emancipation, which could mean, you know, various forms of betrayal, denunciation, etc., as we talked about. The second would be if there is an insistence on continuing the mode of politics that are specific to a historical situation that no longer exists, which then reduces that politics to, as you say, pure nostalgia and wish fulfillment. So I guess, I guess, could you talk a little bit about what you mean by these political sequences and how they can result in these phenomena? Yeah. So that actually comes from Sylvain Lazarus, rather than Althusser. Oh, okay. It's a common instance.

He's Badiou's friend. He's even more impenetrable than Badiou. I wrote about him in an article called Socialist Think. Oh, right. For Viewpoint. Yes. Yes. So the idea of political sequences is that, first of all, politics isn't something that's always there. It's not just like our institutions of decision making and so on. Politics is this moment in which the existing order is challenged and something new is brought about. And that, to have a real politics the emancipatory politics that means the idea

of a politics which is for all rather than for some and that doesn't happen so often so lazarus says politics is rare and sequential it happens every once in a while and when it happens it begins and it ends and in that period in between the beginning and the ending, you have a specific mode of politics. That is, you have a specific set of practices and goals and forms of organization. And when we look back throughout the history of the left, there have been different modes of politics. And one kind of mistake would be to imagine that, so one of the mistakes would be to say, okay, this way of doing politics was just doomed to failure, you know, and so we can't learn anything from that. And the other would be to say, okay, well, we just progressively over time figured out what the best way of doing politics is. And we can just take this model from this other period and just stick with it. No, we have to understand how they emerged within specific historical circumstances. They responded to those circumstances and changed them and then they came to an end and

the next sequence uh can build on that can transform that but that next sequence is responding to its own historical circumstances so i mean this is a way of at a certain level this is a pre technical discussion of trying to understand the complexities of the history of revolutionary organization, which is like, okay, we had the model of the vanguard party emerge at a certain period in the early 20th century, and it had all of these failings, but at the same time, it also responded to a specific set of problems that was in that society. So how do you understand that? Do you understand it as something that was always flawed? Do you understand it's something that is, you know, that we can't learn from at all? So

that's like the technical set of problems of historical interpretation that this theory is about. But then at the more practical and immediate level, it's that we are going to have a new historical sequence when emancipatory politics really happens again. And it's going to begin and it's going to end. But in between, there's going to be a unique historical mode of politics. It's going to be something which responds to the existing historical circumstances and there are going to be specific aims and specific forms. And we can't just import the mode of politics that came from a previous period in history and just drop it down into our present. And so that

means that we have to be very open to seeing what ways there are of acting right now that are appropriate for our moment and for the historical sequence that's going to come. And we can't close ourself off to the possibility that there are going to be unexpected ways of organizing, unexpected ways of acting. If we want to see politics happen now, we have to be open to that. ways of acting. If we want to see politics happen now, we have to be open to that. Yeah, you know, and I think that this, again, is something that we've talked a lot about on the show, which is, you know, as you're saying, you know, don't wedge yourself to any one particular way. It's just that, you know, history can move fast in an unpredictable ways and you have to be kind of agile and ready to, you know, react to those. then it can lead you down some very weird roads, which, you know, us in this particular moment,

in this sort of like pre-formation left, I mean, because again, there's not really a left in the sense that there was 60, 70 years ago. You know, right now we are sort of, you know, we're gathering all of our forces and resources for another big sort of battle. But, you know, it's, it's just, again, it's important to keep, like, as you said, the faith, but, you know, the, the hype, the communist hypothesis in mind. And not only that, but to, to transmit it, to make sure that it's not fallen by the wayside and forgotten. So, and I don't know, Tom, if you had anything you wanted to add to that or...

No, no, I'm good. That was inspiring. Well, so I think that about covers it. I know it's kind of a shorter interview asad but um but you know if there's anything else you wanted to add to that uh again i i kind of went through this and i wanted to kind of get straight to the heart of it um but if there's anything else you wanted to add or or um say or we can even talk, you know, what the fuck's happening in the world right now. What are your thoughts on the election or on, you know? The plague, the election, the plague and the election.

I mean, you know, it's you alluded to this before, like there's this discussion now of whether a more conciliatory kind of approach to the Democratic establishment would make Bernie more successful. A lot of people are making that argument, but it's a completely speculative, counterfactual argument. I mean, there's no way you could prove or disprove it. It's like it's a kind of an imaginary scenario. And I think it's a very self-defeating scenario, because the more you compromise and roll back, the more you make yourself irrelevant i mean centrists are the best at being centrists um uh socialists are not good at uh advancing themselves as the best people to run the capitalist state uh the the people who go on television and say yeah we're capitalists we believe in capitalism those those are the ones who are going to win when you make that the uh contest so uh this is i mean i'm not saying that i know that this wouldn't work this strategy wouldn't work but uh it's um it's hard

to swallow um and i think it's self-defeating. And one thing that we're seeing now with this crisis, this health crisis, economic crisis, and so on, is that the positions of the center that we're supposed to compromise with or accept as a lesser evil are totally insane positions because right now if you don't believe in the idea that health care should be universal and free i mean uh you're just not not living on this planet yeah i mean that is just an outrageous position to have and that's obvious now um and so you know a lot of liberals will say look you can't say you're not going to vote for biden in the general election makes you seem crazy makes you seem like you don't care about trump winning again and we've got to prevent Trump from, we've got to avoid four more years of Trump, so we're going to have to line up behind him eventually. Well, if you do that, how do you expect to get anything out of it if you already

promise your vote? This is the time when everybody should be saying, there is no way we will vote for this motherfucker if he doesn't get behind a rational program to deal with this crisis. I mean, that's just, that should be obvious. You know, it's really, when you put it in those terms, it really is sort of preposterous. It's like, for the first time in my life, in a lot of our lives, we are in a position, we can actually wield some sort of leverage against them. And the idea that we would even concede that on any grounds is absolutely preposterous and it makes us look weak. But even more than that, the idea that we would do that in this current historical moment is insane. Because you're exactly right like all

crises this is starting to reveal how absolutely artificial everything is um and whether that's you know health care and how they restrict it or whether it's in uh the market itself and how it functions and how all of it is underwritten on debt and how it can just go into shock like this moments like this show how artificial everything is and and the idea that we would back off even slightly is just insane i mean again i i don't know where these people get ideas like this i guess it's maybe just from you know decades of sort of neoliberal prostration. But it's just also that social pressure too of, oh, you must not care about women. You must not care about people at the border or children in cages and that kind of – those sort of like – those things. They always pull on you when you pull the Bernie or Bust thing.

Right. burning your bus thing right yeah well you know now we're in a situation in which it's like it's absolutely obvious why you would make certain demands like nobody should go to work nobody should pay their rent uh nobody should be in jail all of these are like absolutely basic health measures that um will save lives and should be implemented immediately. Now, of course, people like us believe that should happen all the time. I mean, people should always not go to work and not pay their rent, right? But now everyone has to agree with this. Right, right.

So now is a time in which if you actually decide to actively disagree with that, you're calling for mass death. I mean, it's a point where, like, it makes no sense to compromise right now. It makes no sense to be practical in the sense of conceding the neoliberal politics and going along with the centrist agenda. conceding the neoliberal politics and going along with the centrist agenda this is a point at which you can say we were right all along because if you disagree with us you're advocating killing your parents it's absolutely true that's absolutely right well and again it's just i mean i just can't well and again it's just i mean i just can't even fathom that like i mean we live in this moment where again i mean everything just seems so artificial and not only that we have an opportunity to wage disruption and so it's like i have to ask people who advocate for a conciliatory for um concessions like that like what are your politics exactly like i don't understand that like is the point not to change

the world like i don't i don't know uh you couldn't ask for a better i mean like history is kind of serving this on this to us on a platter it's very scary and terrifying i'm not for a minute going to pretend like it's um preferable or great but at the same time it's i don't understand how you could just turn your back from that yeah i mean i think this is this is a point that we can make at the end here which is that if you want things to get a little bit better even if all you want or if all you believe is possible is for things to get a little bit better or for for us to avert catastrophe for us to avoid a total disaster you have to to avoid a total disaster, you have to believe in totally changing the world. You have to believe that it's possible to totally transform the world. And you

have to be faithful to that legacy, which said that it was possible to do so. Because if you don't do that, you're not even going to get a little bit of change. And why is it that people who are on the left right now don't believe that you can change the world and still believe in the state and the market? That's a very complicated question, which I think maybe would take the analyst's couch to figure out. But I think that that is a minority position and i think that for most people the immediate position is that we don't have the power to change the world that's for most people it's not it's not the idea that this world is necessary it's that we don't have the power to make it any different and if you can begin to build that power i think that most people will come to the view that it's possible to change the world and i think that we'll see that in

practice and so i think you know you can poll people right now, whatever you want. Some of the polls are inspiring and so on. And I think it indicates the fact that people are starting to see the possibility. They're starting to think that we do have that power and they believe that we can change the world. And I think that once that power increases, people are going to leave this pragmatic position far behind. Well, I think that's a really good way to put it aside, and it's a really good note to go out on. Do you have anything you want to plug before we leave? Oh, no. Read Viewpoint. That's probably the best thing that I can say yeah viewpoint's great

it's contributed a lot to how I view the world and a lot of my friends as well and so thank you for all your work there so go check that out Asad Hayter thanks so much for being on the show and we'd love to have you back

this has been one of my favorite episodes yeah thanks Asad. It's always good when you can sort of chill at the cut and sort of learn things. Yeah. I appreciate you stopping by. Thanks to both of you for having me on. All right, Asad. We'll catch you later, and stay safe out there.

Okay, bye. See you. © transcript Emily Beynon