Unclear and Present Danger - The Assignment

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched The Assignment, a 1997 political thriller directed by Christian Duguay and starring Aidan Quinn, Donald Sutherland and Ben Kingsley.In The Assignment, Aidan Quinn plays Annibal Ramirez, a U.S. naval officer recruited by CIA agent Jack Shaw — played by Sutherland — for a special operation to capture the elusive terrorist Carlos the Jackal. Shaw, with the help of Mossad agent Amos, played by Kingsley, trains Ramirez to impersonate the terrorist so convincingly that he can infiltrate Carlos’s network and destroy it from within. As Ramirez dives deeper into his double life, the lines between his identity and that of Carlos begin to blur, testing his sanity, loyalty, and sense of self. The tension escalates as the mission nears its climax, forcing Ramirez to confront not only Carlos but the cost of becoming the enemy in order to defeat him.The tagline for The Assignment was “You can find The Assignment to rent or stream on Apple TV and Amazon Prime.Episodes come out roughly every two weeks, and we will see you then with an episode on the 1997 made-for-TV submarine movie Hostile Waters, directed by David Drury and starring Rutger Hauer, Martin Sheen and Max von Sydow. And don’t forget our Patreon, where we cover the movies of the Cold War. Our most recent episode is on the Gene Hackman neo-noir Night Moves. For just $5 a month, you get two episodes a month, plus our Unclearpod community chat on Patreon. Come join us!

terrorism is regrettably in the growing industry. In the secret wars between nations, there are soldiers and heroes. There are martyrs at madmen. And there are the men in the shadows who lead them. Everyone fleeced! My name is Carlos. For 20 years, Carlos the Jackal led a reign of terror so brutal.

His capture was an international obsession. The Austria has won a positive ID. That's when your name came. Henry Fields, CIA. You recognize the terrorists as Carlos. We are both very well known in this business. Now. Lieutenant Commander Ramirez.

Holy cow. The resemblance is astonishing. One American officer is about to take on the ultimate challenge. You are the only one who can get the jackal. Who did you meet with? I created you. You don't think I'm going to let you just walk away. Down! Aidan Quinn, Donald Sutherland, Ben Kingsley.

Hello and welcome to unclear and present danger, the podcast about the political and military dealers of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. I'm John Gans. I write the substack newsletter on Popular Front. I write a column for the nation. And I'm the author of When the Clock Broke, Conmen, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up

in the early 1990s, or as it's known in the UK, where it's available as of today, June 12, when we're recording this, conmen, conspiracists, and the origins of Trumpism, just so British people will know what it's about. Yeah, so get it if you haven't yet. Now available in paperback, if I have that correct. Yep, yeah, with a new postscript. With a new post script, there you go. On this week's episode of Unclear and Present Danger, we watched the 1997 spy action

thriller film The Assignment, directed by Kristen Duguay, Duguay, written, by Dan Gordon, starring Aidan Quinn, Donald Sutherland, and Ben Kingsley. This is a virtually unknown movie. I had never heard of it. I'm not really even sure I know who Christian Du Guaiguay is. No. He's a looking him up right now. He's a Canadian film and television director, producer, screenwriter, and cinematographer. He has been nominated for three prime time Emmy Awards and is a two-time Gemini Award winner, the Gemini Award, being an award given by um in Canada up until 2011 uh he directed okay so some stuff i some of the stuff i he has directed i have seen uh those movies include scanners two the new order scanners three the takeover

scanners two and three being sequels to the kronenberg movie scanners and there's also scanner cop which is a separate offshoot uh the 2003 tv film which i know i've seen hitler the eyes of evil. And then some other things. A 1999 TV film called John of Arc, a 2000 film starring Wesley Snipes and

Michael Bean, also Donald Sutherland, called the title of the Art of War, which feels like we're going to watch it on this podcast, just reading the plot synopsis. And lots of other stuff. Human trafficking, 2005.

He worked with Donald Sutherland a lot. Every random movie I click on has Don Sutherland here. I mean, both Canadian and Sutherland did just work a lot. I mean, this is one of his great virtues. He just would be in anything. All right, so that's Christian Duguay. Quick plot synopsis. The assignment follow a CIA agent Jack Shaw,

played by Sutherland, who devises a covert plan to take down the elusive and deadly terrorist Carlos the jackal. The strategy hinges on the recruitment of Annabal Ramirez, played by noted Irishman, Aiden Quinn, a U.S. naval officer who bears an uncanny resemblance to Carlos. Shaw, with the help of Mossad agent Amos, played by Ben Kingsley, trains Ramirez to impersonate the terrorist so convincingly, that he can infiltrate Carlos' network and destroy it from within. As Ramirez dives deeper into his double life, the lines between his identity and that of Carlos begin to blur, attesting his sanity, loyalty, and sense of self. The tension escalates as the mission nears its climax,

forcing Ramirez to confront not only Carlos, but the cost of becoming Carlos in order to defeat him. You can find the assignment to rent on iTunes or Amazon Prime. It's also available to stream for free on Tube, It's box office was not good. I'm looking here. It just says $332,000. That's really bad.

That's a mega flop. Yeah, it's not an apartment in New York. No, it's not, I mean, it's not a home in Charlottesville. Yeah, yeah. Maybe in the 90s, but definitely not today. No, not today. definitely not today hashtag housing crisis

so and there's no note here about it's a budget so I assume that it cost a bit of money and did not make it up whatsoever it was released on September 26th 1997 so let's take let's check out the New York Times front page for that day

sure September 26 1997 did you say September 26 we've done this this page. Do you know that? I, I, what, what else came out this day? Because we, I've seen this photo of, of Little Rock Nine, Minnie Jean Brown, Tricky with Bill Clinton.

Do you remember this? I don't remember this at all. Yeah, and we talked about in Little Rock Clinton warns a racial split. You know, we, we did talk about this. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. What else came, what else was released on the exact same day? Yeah. I don't know. box office let's see what box office mojo has to say well i've found found something on page three that sounds that's interesting to me well go for it okay dispute in italy is conjuring up its

and is more relevant to the movie by the way dispute in italy is conjuring up its terrorist past on monday may 17th 1972 luigi calabrese the police commissioner of milan was shot dead on his way to work his slaying was a harbinger of the political violence that was to grip Italy for the next several years as terrorists on the right and the left waged a vicious war against one another and claimed hundreds of innocent victim. The years of lead, as Italians called the period, crested in 1978 with the kidnapping and killing of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro and were over by the mid-1980s. By then, many terrorists were behind bars, most serving sentences that have been increased by emergency anti-terrorism laws. Now Italy is debating

whether to close the books on the era by reducing the sentence of those terrorists were still in jail. and all of whom 191 were leftists and 33 were from the far right. But given the languid pace of Italian justice, many chapters stubbornly remain open. Just this year, a 54-year-old

professor, journalist, and former leftist leader, Adriano Sofrey, began serving a 22-year sentence in peace of central jail after Italy's high court upheld his conviction for ordering the Calabrese assassination a quarter of a century ago. The case against Mr. Sofer,

who maintains his innocence has reported, reopened old divisions in Italy. Yeah, I mean, we've talked many times and done movies that deal with the years have led an extremely interesting time of political struggle and conflict and terrorism in Italy. And, you know, like, I think we have a little bit of this in the United States with people who are former weathermen, but like, it's important to realize that, you know, unlike the way this movie kind of portrays it, a lot of terrorists are normal people like they were they were part of society or or um reintegrated into it or never were in the case of a lot of people on the far right were never really on the margins of it um and especially in italy they have this problem since the fascist era which is that you know like basically uh the civil

society is full of people who have history in the you know previous political regimes um and then the question is, you know, if you're trying to pursue some kind of turning of the page of the previous era and its violence and divisions, how much do you try to amnesty and just say, okay, everything got a little bit crazy, but now we need to like rebuild our society and how much do you, you know, actually make sure that justice is served and people who committed murders, tortures, assassinations, you know, are held to account. And it's a difficult question that's not easy to answer for a society. I think, you know, in general, I would fall down on the side of, you know, people should be prosecuted for crimes. But yeah, it's, as this article

points out, it was a tense debate in the society and people, people also had ambiguous connections to some of these groups. Like, they could be arguably in a conspiracy, but they were just part of a left wing group and other parts of that left wing group are engaged in violence how much did they know difficult to say so yeah i find this very fascinating um i want to read actually i know a little bit about the years of lead i'm getting more and more into italian politics so i would like to read more about that just to answer the question of the movie we did uh the peacemaker from a couple of episodes ago came out this weekend uh this this weekend on september um I'll show you what else came out this week.

And I just said that this is featured on Box Office Moja to let you just see what was released on any given weekend, which has led me to a movie I'm going to add to our list that I didn't catch beforehand. But so this was September 26th. It's when this came out, came out the same weekend at the same day as the peacemaker. This had a limited release. The Peacemaker had a wide release. Also coming out on the 26th, The Edge, an adventure drama starring Anthony Hopkins and Alecline. all would have never heard about it. Trojan War, a romantic comedy with Will Friedel and Jennifer Love Hewitt.

Never heard of it. The next day, we get the Ice Storm, which is a wonderful picture, starring Kevin Klein, Joan Allen, William Kane, and Sigourney Weaver. Yeah. Do you see anything else since we've already covered this newspaper? Anything else on the... I think we can just move. Okay.

The assignment. I, you know, I'm not, normally I ask if you've ever seen this, but I don't think, I don't think that's really necessary here. I remember, like, seeing posters or in the video store, even though it's really, like, it's somewhere in my memory, but I never had seen it. This feels like a blockbuster movie. Yeah, for sure. It feels like something, like an anonymous movie. I just watched a little YouTube documentary on the, the Rise and Fall of some studio, is it, Trimark Pictures. And they used to specialize in basically, in their early days, acquiring TV movies and then, like, providing them to rental stores.

And it feels like that kind of movie that you'd see in a rental store that's just totally anonymous. But it saw Donald Sutherland's a real star. Ben Kingsley's a real star. Aiden Quinn, not so much. But he's like a real actor. You know, not much. I mean, there were kind of cornynesses of it that I could enjoy, but it was very silly. The acting was not great. I mean, even though it's got some great actors, I mean, Ben Kingsley and Donald Sutherland are terrific. I just thought some of it was stiff. It seemed really dated. Unlike some of the movies that we've watched from this area, just seemed kind of timeless. It was. I mean, it had some great action sequences. It's kind of fun, trashy movie, but not in the, definitely not in the, obviously, neither critically nor commercially in the top tier of the thrillers from this era.

I also found, like, I like this, like learning about this kind of stuff. So, like, the Asaias movie, Carlos is actually one of my favorite movies. and there's a mini series really I think I know it's multi parts um so the representate and we've watched uh on the Patreon day of the jackal um I think we

has there another Carlos the Jackal movie that we've themed movie that we've done there's there's one that's coming up actually and it is called the Jackal okay yeah I mean Hollywood could just not get enough of him apparently so yeah I thought that it was as a treatment of him as character um and then it tried to pass off this story of his assassination as real in the end, which is not true. He was in hiding

and then he was eventually turned over by Sudan. So should I give the history of Carlos the Jackal? Yeah, let's talk. Let's talk about Carlos de Jocco for a sec. Because I feel like for people who are into knowledgeable about late 20th century history, he's like, he's like a figure, but he's not, he's like, he's interesting. He's not that well known anymore unless you are a bit of a nerd. But he was, he was like very famous for for decades yeah so i mean carlos the jackal was illich ramirez sanchise which is kind of interesting because the main character in this movie is named ramirez and he was a far left terrorist um supported by the dastasi and the kgb who um worked with a variety of groups including the pflp

the people's front for the liberation of palestine what you have to understand is that in the 1970s, a lot of these terrorist groups, whether they were working, kind of working in Europe or working in the Middle East or in Japan, as the case may have been, were these Marxist-Leninist groups, and they were part of a, I mean, depends who you ask. I mean, how closely they were coordinated by Stasi and the KGB.

These groups and people involved with them were at some point, usually armed, coordinated by some Eastern Bloc intelligence services. Not always. Sometimes it became too much of a big pain in the ass diplomatically for them, but they were used by them and also by Middle Eastern regimes. Now, Carl, the Jackal is kind of interesting because he bounced around between groups and allegiances. And he kind of went back and forth between being a, you know, highly, or,

or was somewhere in between being very ideological, you know, a true believer in the causes that he had, but also a bit of a mercenary, really. You know, he put his, his skills, if you will, to service for many different groups, usually mostly on the Eastern Blocker

in the non-aligned world. And he's famous for the OPEC, OPEC raid where they kidnapped the heads of OPEC, which is dramatized, you know, terrifically. Have you seen Carlos? I've not seen Carlos. Oh, my God. I think you would really love it.

And maybe we could do a Patreon episode about it because just as like a kind of backup to the Carlos movies. I mean, it's a great political thriller. It's an amazing character study, just really well made. And he was also kind of like probably a little bit of like a narcissist. He was very into his. image as a revolutionary and was kind of a hero to some dashing, but, you know, obviously an extremely dangerous man. Eventually, he was hiding in Sudan, which decided to turn him over to France. You know, you can't really count on these regimes. Syria kicked him out. Then he went

and hit in Sudan. He didn't keep a low enough profile there. He converted to Islam later and had this kind of he had this kind of synthesis of leftism and Islamism which sounds puzzling but there are some who have these politics and particularly kind of admire the Iranian Revolution now some of these people may find

something to admire in Hezbollah or Hamas So not a totally strange or unheard of tradition, but on paper, sometimes a little odd. I actually went to high school with a guy who became a Marxist Leninist and then moved to Tunisia and converted to Islam. So I know my own little Carlos the Jackal. So he, yeah, this is this figure in the middle of the 20th century was, you know, they were trying to catch him. he was notorious, who's involved in all kinds of terrorist attacks. So, you know, this film shows him as a, as this kind of master of disguise figure, which is not totally untrue, but it's a very cartoonish depiction of him,

which I, you know, I could get the fun in it, but I was like, as a person who favors realism, I sort of was bugged by that watching the movie or didn't have that much patience for it. And then the politics of the movie in so far as they exist are interesting to think about. I mean, it's kind of a psychological thriller. I mean, it's trying to have a – its psychological presence is kind of – premise is a little thin or cliched, which is, oh, well, he's become the enemy that he was tasked to destroy and what's. his real identity. And I mean, it is, it is cliched, but it's cliched for a reason because such things do happen.

But, but, yeah, I thought it was mid with, with moments of being, with being pretty fun and, like, trashy and, but I would say I was not convinced, I was not fully, I was not, like, sometimes you watch a movie and you're very much. drawn into the world and I could not I wasn't like I was watching this as it as like a contrived silly 90s movie that's aged badly I wasn't like I'm loving it love it love all the characters can't get enough like I wasn't watching Ronan you know what I mean right where I'm just like hell yeah this movie rocks you know so but you know it's not without its enjoyable moments um yeah so I think I would also

also say the movie is it's quite mid yeah i was immediately struck like the movie seems to want to be much more sophisticated across all levels and i think it might act than i think it actually is and so there's it begins with this um this the camera moving through i guess paris and it has all these sort of like crazy shots like these sort of just like a very dramatic kind of like you see the cityscape and then you're pulled back to a spider's web and then Carlos de jackal burns the spider I have to note that this movie gives you two instances of just like straight up full frontal nudity that I was not expecting yeah I was watching this I was watching a chunk of this at least while waiting for my car to get a state inspection and so I'm in the lobby or

watching this on my computer and I wanted to be full frontals after and I was like I really hope no one is looking at my screen thinking to themselves what sick oh yeah when you're like a man in your mid to late 30s and you're just like sitting somewhere on a screen and there's like full frontal everyone's going to be like what the who the fuck is this guy right it's not a good luck yeah but the but the the the the movie sort of like visual style is like like very flashy and and sort of like a lot of attempts to kind of like be you know crazy sweeping camera movement there's a lot of like CG based action happening here that's like very obvious and doesn't look particularly good probably to make it for the fact they didn't have quite

the budget they may have wanted for like proper stuntmen and um and like there is a sequence where the Ramirez character is hallucinating. It's during this training sequence he has with Sutherland and Kingsley's characters, which again feels like they wanted, they just wanted to have it be more flashy, is the word I keep coming to. But all of that, I don't know. It does not, like it feels like it's trying too hard.

Like the whole thing seems like it's trying too hard. and when we get to sort of the scenes, the part of the narrative where Ramirez returns home and it's like it's ruining his life that he did this mission he feels like, Aiden Quinn feels like he's trying too hard to sell the idea that this guy this guy is all messed up

after impersonating Carlis and Jackal. I mean, is he such a great actor? I don't know. I know very little about Aiden Quinn, so I can't really judge his acting career. Politics-wise, I, you know, I hesitate to say this movie really has any politics whatsoever. Like, it isn't really interested in the politics of Carlos the Jackal. You don't even really get the sense that the guy is ideological. Yeah.

He's just kind of evil. Right. He's sort of like a generic evil that exists in the world. The only time you even get some mention of it is when Sutherland's character is saying that, you know, if we get this right, then the KGB will think he's turned and they'll only go after him, which suggests, right, he's working with the KGB. G.B. Three must be aligned with the Soviet Union. But the idea that he, um, he's doing any of this for a point, um, has any aims, isn't really communicated in the film. And I mean, that, that to me might be the interesting thing, uh, politics wise, because Carlos O'Jack was depicted basically as a sadist. Yeah. Who's doing, who does destruction for destruction sake. And yeah, I'm going to watch,

I'm going to watch this, this, this, uh, this carlo, I just, like, found the criteria Blu-ray set. I'm going to buy it, um, and watch this Carlos, uh, movie, um, miniseries. Uh, and so I, I'm not going to say, I don't know enough about the guy to say whether or not he was genuinely ideologically motivated. But in the context of the film, the film presents him pretty much as just like the Joker. Right. Yeah. He doesn't do, he doesn't do this for any reason, other than he yeah to be wicked to see destruction see for its own say and so there's a there's the opening the other opening sequence um or actually after the opening sequence that carlos de jackal has a disguise on and he goes into he goes into this parisian cafe

and like drops a grenade right in the middle and there's no you get no sense that you know this was done to you know call the attention of the French government or whatever. Like, it's none of that. It's just like, it's just like he's, I mean, he's a joker. And he, he went in and he, like, he played a little game with Don Sutherland's character. And then did some destruction and is off to do more. Yeah. I think that there is kind of an implicit politics and its lack of politics.

Because as a depiction of terrorism as has no real political point, it's sort of being like, these people are just meaninglessly evil, where the force. of order and let's not let's not look too closely on what actual political content their actions have or what reasons they're giving good you know whether or not we believe those reasons they're giving or you know terrorism is always trying to bring attention to a cause and by you know even labeling terrorism and just calling it some sort of this is just chaotic violence with no um strategic or political intent that's a political movement. move, right? It's a way to

denude it of its political content and to try to frame it. The terrorists are trying to frame the situation in a certain way, and the counter terrorists are trying to frame the situation in a certain way, and it's certainly a part of counterterrorism to say,

you know, these people are just kind of looney tunes throwing bombs at people. It's interesting to me that listed as a producer for this movie, if you'll give me one moment, is a gentleman by the name of Sabi H. Shabtai. And I looked up Sabi H. Shopthi, and he's an internationally recognized authority on terrorism and has served as consultant and lecture to numerous corporations, police department, SWAT teams, and the U.S. Army and Navy. Born in Israel, he served in the intelligence branch of the Israeli defense forces. so now I think we can kind of get a little bit of a sense of what the anti-politics of this movie are

this is the way for a very long time the West and Israel successfully framed terrorism which was as kind of a meaningless violence right and and you know the fact that it's that terrorism was so successfully framed that way says that maybe perhaps the people who preserved who pursued terrorism were not pursuing a smart political strategy but that was a successful containment strategy of it and you know the memory the political memory unless you watch something

a little more sophisticated even though a Sias movie gives more of his political background it doesn't have a very favorable picture of Carlos but I would say these films which portray terrorism in this very as you say, the Joker, this cartoonish way, do have political effects because they make it very, you know, they make terrorist actions something that people are not inclined to sympathize with and not inclined

to understand what the context or background is. Now, that's not to say, I think you should treat people as adults, and I think you should, you know, say there is, here's the politics of this group, judge it as you will, and you can say, I, understand they have a political point, but I think that their use of violence in this case is not justified or not justifiable. But I would say, maybe another thing that annoyed me about the movie was it's slightly cartoonish depiction of terror and counter terror. And in this day and age, I would say, you know, there was a time of Israel, the unimpeachable hero, especially as portrayed in Hollywood movies. And I don't mean anything by that. And also I'm Jewish, so I can say that.

But the, let me just, just to add some context to what you're saying, people inclined to freak out. We've talked about this on the podcast before, if you, especially in the 60s and 70s around the 67 war and the, what's the six day war? You have like in American popular, in American kind of political and culture, Israel is like unquestionably the hero of those two wars. and that kind of carries over into Hollywood in which Israelis are regularly depicted as basically being Americans with an accent. Yeah, very affectionately depicted as like our closest friends,

our best friends, they have a cute accent, they're charming, they're funny, but they're also very effective at their job, which is being, you know, beating, killing terrorists. The movie we cover that has some of this is um what's it what's the one with uh john void um the odessa file yeah yeah uh in a film that that i watched recently that we didn't have him covered on the podcast is john frankenheimer's

black sunday which also very much has this but it was like almost a trope yeah and that is what john is referring to yeah and i think that basically it's a trope for sure and and in munich although that movie has its problems. It does complicate it in certain ways. But it did have a pretty affectionate picture of Israeli Mossad. Mossad had this reputation in the U.S. consciousness as kind of like, they're the most badass intelligence service in the world. And they will do anything to protect their people.

And they were like, oh, it's like, if only we could be like Mossad, because they know how to take care of these people. And they show that in the movie. He's like, now you're in Israeli hands and we don't fuck around, you know? So I think that basically it does have a little bit of that. I mean, it's got a little bit of pro-Israel politics. And, you know, Carlos de Jockel was a anti-Zionist. The PFLP obviously was his main grouping, although he was kicked out of the PFLP

for engaging in actions that pissed off the leadership. but I think we have to be fair in both accounts here. I've called out the rank pro-Israelism of this movie. And Carlos' is anti-Zionism, as did some of the new left, frankly, tipped over into anti-Semitism. Not all of it, but Carlos, you know, from South America, there's lots of prejudices there against Jews, and he kind of fused that with his anti-Sionism, and there's just no way around it. So, you know, there's no purity here, right? Like, there's not, it's not like, it's very easy to be like, well, Israel are the good guys,

and then the anti-Zionists or freedom fighters or, you know, vice versa. It's just like, no, Carlos Sejaco was, you know, lent himself to some causes that people might have legitimate sympathy with, but he was a real son of a bitch. and yeah so i think it's just important to give that full context but i guess those are the those are the complete politics the movies insofar as they have them and then it has this kind of gender politics almost about like men what are men supposed to do and and this guy's job is to go out there and to defend the world from um from threats From threats.

The world is dark and full of terrors. It's violent and terrible. And like the job of the man is to defend you from that. Yeah. And that justifies him being a little bit of an asshole at home, too, because he's stressed out. Right, right. Yeah. I was going to, yeah, the, the, I was going to build a little bit on the point about the movie

is sort of depicting terrorism as not really having any politics as being. as being just irrational, you know, this is, this movie's 97, or late in the 90s, we're coming in on kind of, I would say, at the beginning of the age of terror for Americans. I believe the USS coal bombing is the following year. Right. Let me look that up real quick. No, sorry, that was later.

I was in 2000. But it's in a couple years, right? There's the embassy bombings. in the first World Trade Center bombing was four years prior to this but Americans are beginning to should have encountered terrorism in this period

in a more regular sense and the notion that it has no that it's fundamentally irrational that terrorists have no particular aim and that they're just out to do violence is something that does become kind of part of the general currency of American discourse around politics post-9-11.

It's basically sort of like, that's the line that it's all just irrational violence. And as such, you know, we are, we are blameless victims who are justified in doing whatever we want in response. because the people who are responsible are no better than animals. And it's not, I mean, to recapitulate some post-9-11 political discourse, it's not justifying anything, right, to say, well, no, people have political grievances. This is why they do these things. They want to affect certain kind of outcomes, and so they do these things. And it's worth understanding what they want to affect, what they want to do, what they hope to achieve, if nothing else than to have an effective response for yourself.

I just watched, say, it's a 12th, I just watched a couple days ago, a Netflix documentary on the hunt for bin Laden that had some new stuff in it, actually, that hadn't, I don't think it was widely known. But towards the final segment of it, there is a CIA analyst who says that what she wished the U.S. had done in response to 9-11 was like basically nothing, right, to not engage in a war on terror to continue with its intelligence and law enforcement-based approach and not sort of like give them what they wanted, which was a large and disproportionate response. And it's, I mean, you know, it's interesting to think about this too. in terms of Israel's war in Gaza as sort of a similar situation of a nation reacting

to an attack as if everything they could do is justified because they're facing you know an existential peril. People who want Yeah. Right. Right.

Anyway, I think that I think obviously the movie isn't like so much engaged at this stuff But like you're you're getting you're getting like a hints of the kind of language that that's going to pop up in a couple years Right once the United States experiences like its first major terrorist tech I the interesting thing though as I as I say this Is that you know two years two years before 97 it's 95 and that's the Oklahoma City bombing and there is this in the case of Oklahoma City the initial reaction was like oh this must be you know an Islamic terrorist

right no and I need to look I would need to go look at media reporting at the time but my hunch would be that there is that language of both this is just senseless was probably being beginning to creep in right and then it becomes clear that it's not

not a Muslim not a brown person but Arab, but a corn fed guy named Timothy McVeigh. And is there, is there, like, I don't recall

is there any serious examination of his grievances? Or is it, no, I think it's just washed away. It's like, it's like, this is just irrational violence because there is this, there is this effort to kind of to present McVeigh as, like a lone. Yeah, as a loony, as a lone wolf.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good, it's an interesting question. I would want to research it more because I'm going on memory, which as a historian, you ought not to do. Right, right. Um, I think basically from what I can remember and also from what I think little kind of historiography or critical journalism has been done on the time is that yes, there was, um, an effort to kind of portray him as a kind of psycho killer. But some, there was still, I mean, I became aware, I remember coming from a liberal family, being freaked out at the time about militias, the far right. There was a discourse about it. And congressional Democrats definitely tried to make hay with it, you know, not to say it was all

political. And it became really partisan. You know, like, I remember watching hearings on Waco, and these don't necessarily reflect all that well on the Democratic Congress people because Waco was a kind of disaster and abusive power and a government fuckup that killed a lot of people. But they were really intent on using those hearings to raise the salience of right-wing terror. and, you know, I think they were probably right to do that. And the Republicans were very much trying to turn it into a Second Amendment, you know, the government overreach issue. And there's echoes of that in the efforts to kind of fight domestic terror in the United States post-January 6th or stuff like that. You know, like it becomes very partisan, which is sort of what the terrorists want. know, they have, they kind of have a implicit political organization behind them.

I mean, if you want to, if you want to believe the John Gans school of, of, of interpreting the right, it's basically like they have a disavowed militia and terrorist wing that they kind of will do political work for, but if they go too far, then sometimes it's a pain in the ass for them. But, you know, that's basically, and again, I don't think this is true, but this is the right-wing critique of protests, and we're seeing that right now, which is that protests are a mob mobilized on behalf of the Democrats, and they won't condemn them. And there's also an effort by both sides, this is just politics, is to say, you want to tie your opponent to this extreme violent moment or something that looks very frightening.

So obviously, if I'm a Democratic politician and I'm going to look for every possible way I can tie Republicans to Timothy McVeigh, right, because it's going to make them look bad. And vice versa, I'm going to try to tie Democrats to rioters, Black Lives Matter. But I think where this backfires, and we're talking about this a little bit before the show, is that terrorism and rioting, which I don't think are the same thing. protest, but let's just talk about them in the abstract as different political phenomenon that are supposed to raise issues, move power around. You know, it's a more ambiguous phenomenon than we understand. So it's framed as being, oh, this is a super unpopular act. But look at, you know, let's say that January 6th is something in the continuum of the right-wing

terrorist imaginary that goes through Waco, Ruby, Ridge, something like that. Now, that's an ambiguous result, and it's a politically contested result, because on the one hand, the Democrats try to say, look at these people, they are entirely, you know, terrorist insurrection, and so and so forth, and the right-wing counter response to it is to minimize, deflect, turn it around, and, you know, it's somewhat successful and it somewhat also rallies people to sympathize with the cause of the people doing the violence. So the idea that violence is always counterproductive in politics is not quite true. It can be. You know, the results of protests are very ambiguous too because black lives

matter, as you've noted many times, happens in the George Floyd protests. It kind of helps defeat Trump on two different fronts, right? Some people sympathize with it, and also he looks like he's presiding over disorder. Right. Likewise, the L.A. riots, it doesn't, everyone expects a law and order backlash. It doesn't materialize. People blame the police. People blame the police.

They said, this is a situation that they created. So I think, as you said before they started, people have a slightly more sophisticated understanding of the politics of both, and excuse me, I don't even to upset people. I'm speaking purely as a, in the abstract and without. any moral judgments of terrorism, protests that tip into violence, all these things, then pundits often get them credit for, which is your point. And their actual political effects, depending on what's going on, is not decided. It's not that it's one way or the other.

Like all political action, right? All political action, someone gives a speech, right? No one knows what the result of that speech is going to be. That speech can be, you know, go nowhere or could start a big movement. And a terrorist action or a protest, putting them on some kind of continuum of political actions, it's an unpredictable. It begins a new process. So the idea, I think the problem with pundits, present company excluded, is that, is that, you know, we tend to believe, that politics has an extremely set kind of pattern that's determined by experience, previous

experience, and history, and in some cases, by some kind of almost scientific or sociological understanding of what will unfold, and that's not really what happens. The interesting thing about politics is that every political action kind of creates a new logic with it and unfolds a new thing. So it's too, that's like the famous, it's too early to tell about, which wasn't really about the French Revolution, but it's too good to check kind of quote. It's too early to tell. I think about almost every political action, you can say it's too early to tell, like exactly

what the results of that is. Everyone's sort of trying to shape, define, create a new moment from a political action. and any pundit who tells you this is going to backfire or this is going to be successful, I don't think it's doing a good job. I think the job of a political commentator is to explain the logics that could possibly unfold. That's right.

Yeah, yeah. That's right. No, that's exactly right. It's to leverage, I mean, in my view, it's to leverage history and social science and other disciplines to be able to say, well, this is what's happening. This is how people have responded to this kind of thing.

thing. Here are the conditions we are facing. Here is how these things interact and the things they might produce. Right. So in the case of protests, there are all kinds of dynamics that happen when it comes to protests, especially against the state. And how the public responds to them kind of just, it just varies. It depends. Yeah. And you can make some general claims, right? Like in general, the public tends not to like violence at protest. But you have to be narrow about that too. So in general, that's the case. But that actually doesn't tell you about what the political consequences might be. Because as you noted, people might not like the violence, but they may be able to understand why it's there.

And that shapes their response in one way, one way as well. Like, there's just a lot going on. And this is true of terrorism as well. And this is beyond the fact that like terror, you know, I feel like terrorism works, folks. That's what we're saying here on the podcast. I was, you know, I was trying to talk around it. But, no, I mean, you'd be hard-pressed to make the case that terrorism doesn't work. Like, it very clearly can be extraordinarily effective.

Yeah. Because, because, A, as you say, as you're saying, John, the, what, you know, the political effects of it are unpredictable. Yeah. And so you can't quite say, this is definitely going to happen. It kind of depends on how, you know, very. actors, political entrepreneurs, the public respond to it. And there are, you know, I can think of what I have in mind is abortion, right? Like abortion politics where terroristic acts, outright terrorism aimed at abortion providers,

far from making the anti-abortion movement chasing in it, chasing it, or making it, you know, or moderating it or putting it up for scrutiny, what it, what it ends up doing is sort of a convincing people of their righteousness, right? That, like, this was someone so committed to life that they're willing to kill that that sends a signal to members of the movement. That kind of actually invigorates them. And affiliated politicians, they may kind of condemn the violence, but it doesn't shift, it doesn't shift them away from their own political goals.

And I think you can make a case, right, that should be anti-abortion terrorism and actually cowing abortion providers, making them afraid and not having any meaningful political backlash ends up working. It ends up being quite successful. And that's, I feel like, I do think Americans do not like, ironically, Americans do not like this idea that political violence works, that it can be successful, even though American history on all sides, on all questions. is filled with examples of people, of groups who accomplish things through either organized or disorganized

political violence. So the American Revolution organized political violence. Bleeding Kansas organized political violence. I think it's worth it's, I recommend people reading Frederick Douglass on John Brown. Yeah. Because the most effective terrorist attack in the history of mankind. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe.

maybe and at the time it was very unpopular right and everybody was shocked by it but it it started a process it started incredible he's doing incredible things more more more being recognized um it started an incredible process you know and it changed the world uh for for for good and john but at the time the way john brown was framed in the newspapers and an american consciousness was like this guy's going way too far and this was a setback for abolitionism not really not really not not not not not really at all. It shook the conscience of the country and people were like, you know, frightened by it, but and tried to repress it. But it was also just, it was also just the way things were going, you know, like the country was on the path to civil war. And this was a

symptom of that, but it also kind of was like, okay, the slavery thing is not going to work. And it's going to lead, it is a violent regime that's going to lead to violence. And, that, you know, a lot of people said, well, I'm, you know, I'm anti-slavery, but John Brown really went too far. And vice versa. What was that famous quote about sometimes repression? What was a quote? I think it was about the fugitive slave law.

Somebody recently, we went to bed like old conservative wigs. We went to bed old union wigs and woke up stark raving mad abolitionists. Yeah. And it's in reference to the Fugitive Slave Act. Yeah. And I think that oppression and that. that's something to keep in mind for our enemies on the right, is that oppression can have the opposite effect that you think it is. And that's not to say, you know, again, this goes back to

cliches about politics. It's like, look, sometimes oppression works. I'm not going to, I'm not going to use this, this sentimental cliche that repression, that repressive violence doesn't accomplish its aims. Uh, Jim, Jim Crow lashes for 80 years. Yeah. So it, it can work, but it can also event, it can also backfire. It can also. It can also. create resistances. I guess the point is just like very much unlike this film where terror has an equal and opposite reaction and there's a physics of terrorism. That's like what what Israel tried and failed to create and the United States also during the war on terror, which was to make the terrorism a physical system, which is you hit us, we're going to

you back twice as hard. But it's not a physical system in that way. It's not a Newtonian system, right? It's like this guy, or it is in some level, but it's a chaotic one. This guy like hits you a little bit and then you way overreact and you whack this guy really hard. And then it kind of creates an unstable situation. So trying to, the effort Israel has done for many years to be like, well, if we get hit, we're going to assassinate all the guys who did it. Like trying all these different techniques to make it a purely physical conflict and to remove the political dimension from it is bound to fail. The United States is not exactly in the war on terror tried to turn it into a purely political thing. There was also diplomacy, spy work. These

things are also happening. And, you know, obviously Israel is trying to reconfigure the Middle East to kind of avoid the Palestinian issue altogether. Trump has sort of gone along with that or even been an author of that. So I think like the politics, there's a tendency, I think the terrorism concept is a way to try to remove the political dimension of violence and understand it in its, you know, in its totality. and just be like, this is a physical problem. This guy, you know, he shot us, shot us, and we're going to shoot him. And a lot of movies and TV represent terrorism and those things as physical problems, but it's unwise.

I think things that understand the political dynamics a little better are more intelligent. That's not to say, I mean, you can end conflicts that are riven with terrorism. I mean, they ended the conflict in Northern Ireland. They made peace. you know and that didn't that wasn't by hunting down every single IRA guy it really wasn't they gave up their arms voluntarily um so now do I think we should pursue peace with white supremacist domestic terror groups and get them to voluntarily lay down their arms no but like but you know in in things are looking things are looking a little a little

scary out there these days, Jamel. So if there's an American Civil War, at some point, would I want to say, hey, guys, let's stop fighting? Sure. Right. Right. I mean, that's, we should wrap up, we should wrap up soon. But this, I mean, this does get to what is difficult about any kind of any post-civil conflict society and why you should want to avoid white scale civil conflict as much as possible. Something beyond like, you know, the violence and the killing is Like, people, people do have to reintegrate. I mean, this is, if you mentioned anything about reconstruction on, like, social media where, like, liberals or left-wingers congregate, you'll have people say, well, we should

have hung all the Confederates. And I very much understand that view and that impulse, and I emotionally agree with it. But if you're thinking practically, you can't actually do that, right? Like, there's a balance, right? There's, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's, you can't be totally lenient because that empowers that empowers the the uh in the cases of war the confederates yeah um but if you're too punitive that also convinces people that there's no point in trying to reintegrate so it might as well fight it out um and that's that's that's that's always the trick of of trying to

reconcile after a period of civil violence where where exactly do you fit this i mean this is is kind of the great innovation of the South African Peace and Reconciliation. Truth and reconciliation, yeah. Truth and reconciliation, right, hearings. Not that they necessarily came to some great catharsis. There was lots of very interesting criticism of the truth and reconciliation process. But basically it existed to allow the society to reintegrate into itself people who had been, who had participated in some really awful stuff. Yeah.

And that's just kind of a necessity. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with you. And it is, it is a necessity now. But again, all of these things, again, just to go back to our point about political processes being unpredictable, was the kind of papering over that happened in Italy or like, or it's funny, we've come back to the beginning article that we're talking about almost. Yeah. Happened Italy after World War II and in Germany after World War II. And then a later generation has to reckon. with it and there are still elements of the previous of really bad actors still in the previous regime you know that can be that's a that's it's it's a kind of as all things in politics are a judgment call the occupation forces were like look we need some of these guys the alternative thing is we've seen an example where debathification which was an attempt to completely dismantle a previous regime which was totally disastrous because it got rid of

everybody who could do everything so obviously like the effort of denotification there's an incredible scholarship on it about how um what worked what didn't how effective it was uh in some ways very effective in some ways not effective yeah so these processes of like what as a as a victor you do to the vanquished um and how generous you are and how obviously also there's a famous which this is a little bit of a dubious historical cliche but the versailles examples if you're too onerous of a of a of a of a victor um you will allow the conquer to build resentmentic so so forth so be generous as a victor there's there's there's there's there's pros and cons to all of these things but i think these are all just like as we've been saying political questions and

there are so much attention given to negative political consequences and political failures that i don't think we're even very good at judging political successes like there are you know like what like a settlement that works like that's kind of incredible considering how much chaos there is in the world like to understand I mean people try to understand coalitions and understand but like I think that's an old classic of political science going back to like Machiavelli is like what institutions work you know what really works I mean it's not perfect but like for the most part there's social peace you know there are things that that work you know and what leads to breakdowns.

And I basically think, you know, what leads to breakdowns is, I don't know. I can't opine on that in the time we have left. But all that is to say, it's interesting that this totally apolitical movie generated, I think, between us, one of the most interesting political discussions we've had on this podcast. Yeah. Which is, I guess, the whole point. But that's the aim. That's the goal.

No, just to just to add a little to point, then we'll switch to wrap up. What works, I mean, this is, we're coming up on the 250th of the American Revolution. And sort of one of my takeaways from basically kind of like being engaged and kind of like a long running, you know, study of kind of kind of. kind of early, the history of the early Republic is how remarkable it is that what came out of the year 1776 to 1789, how remarkable was it that lasted as long as it did, last about 80 years, given the sheer level of, given the diversity of the society, the sheer amount of like genuine internal strife and civic conflict that existed during the revolution.

I mean, we've, we've, we've completely erased from our national historical memory. The fact the American Revolution was like a low-key civil war. There's a great book by, I believe they started my Jossinoff called Liberty's Exiles about loyalists who left the country, but it begins with this amazing anecdote of a tarring and feathering, which is like horrific. It's like it's absolutely horrific. If someone were tarred and feathered today, it would be like a felony. It would be like felony attempted murder, right?

A really horrific incident. But it's just remarkable that like out of that came some sort of like sustainable settlement and that ability to craft something that works. It's funny you mentioned Machiavelli because I was like just flipping through discourses before he started. And in Machiavelli sort of, it's a chapter on whether a prince or people are like more trustworthy or wise or whatnot. But there's part in this discussion, Machiavelli is sort of like, I think the next chapter is Machiavelli saying, you know, like, well, republics, they aren't perfect, right? They have their problems. But like, they can, if structured well, they can work.

They can do what we want, we want governments to do. And I think that we've, I think we've honestly, like, lost some appreciation for just, like, a system basically working, like, not being perfect, not, not solving all problems, like, creating the space for politics to happen. And what's, what's frightening about the current period is, you know, we have political leadership that is that is against politics on a basic level. like wants to shrink the space for politics to happen and when you can't do politics anymore violence is kind of the only answer yeah that's that's that's how it goes yeah um all right the assignment a movie that has nothing to do with these things but kind of inspires does yeah kind of does in a negative way in a negative way yeah um you you pretty much got a recommendation it's mid i mean if you wanted to put it on while you were like

folding laundry not a bad choice I put a lot of bad stuff on while I'm folding laundry but otherwise I wouldn't bother trying to check this one out that is our show thank you for listening as always

if you do not subscribe to the podcast if you're new to the podcast if you like this sort of wide ranging discussion of U.S. politics and history and all these things then subscribe to the podcast hit that subscribe button and joining us basically twice a month when we have these short discussions.

You can find the podcast wherever podcasts are served, Apple, Google, Spotify, we're everywhere, easy to find. You can leave us feedback, of course. You can leave a rating and review on the show page on Apple Podcasts, or you can drop us a line and unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. For this week on feedback, we have an email from Michael titled, quote, the rules when people on the left speak out. Hi, Jamel and John. I'm a longtime listener and Patreon supporter.

Thank you. And fan of Jamel's working in Times and John Substack. And now that the paperback is out, I'm planning to buy when the clock broke and read it on the train. You couldn't buy the hardcover, so I'll get more money. No, I appreciate very much your decision to do that. Thank you. I was listening to the episode on executive power and found John's discussion of the many reasons

there was no left Joe Rogan thought-provoking especially a discussion of Hassan Piker's border stop by DHS. I suggest that in the rightest climate of Trumpism and perhaps in the entire recent history of the United States all left commentators are potential victims of violence to a degree that rightist commentators simply never experienced. Perhaps this threat of violence is a limitation on any agitating left commentator growing to any

prominence. There's, of course, a historical example, Alan Berg. He was a leftist, abrasive, aggressive talk radio host in Denver, who in 1984 was murdered by members of the white supremacist group, The Order. Although no longer of considerable interest to the wider nation by the 90s, I grew up in Denver and is brutal murder by white supremacists but discussed frequently in our media until at least the early 2000s. I wonder if the apolitical baby boomer TV producers who gave us the pseudo-journalistic shock of schlock of inside edition, considered the risk of murder at the hands of Reagan voting racist, decided to get onside and promote profitable right as commentators.

If correct, it was in effect the kind of chilling effect that Trump is hoping for today. I wonder if anyone in TV production in the 1980s wrote about the effect of Berg's murder on their decision making, and he has two postscripts, the first, during the Patreon episode an army of shadows. I was struck when John referred to the profanation and appropriation of a once sacred gallous mythos by the Le Pen Nazi collaborations far right in France. This reminds me of

Trump raising a fist and salute throughout his campaign's administrations, profaning the communist salute used in our recent history by the Marxist's Black Panther Party. His use is both profane and racist. It is nauseating you see him to file the symbol of resistance. PPS, also in the Army of

Shadows, the quote from I'm sorry, you'll see why I'm laughing in just a second. The quote from Thomas Chatterton Williams convinced me that dude is really, really dumb. I wish we live in a world where Assad Hater, who wrote the brilliant and world research Marxist critique in history of identity politics

mistaken, identity, race, and class and the age of Trump could be on WBUR, WBUR and right for the Atlantic. But we live in this world and coining gibberish like right wing wokeness makes you a senior fellow at the Hannah Orent Institute of Bard. Putting a socially acceptable veneer on rightus

wasp elitism is a great way to fail up, I guess. Maybe call it unlearning race. That's very funny, and I appreciate that as a hater of that guy. Hater in like the colloquial said, I don't actually hate the guy. That's a really strong emotion to have for someone who's a stranger, but I think his work is bad. Thank you for the email, Mike. One thing, I wanted to mention two things, and really just mentioned two movies, since you brought up the Allenberg example. The first is Oliver Stone's talk radio, which is a really interesting film, kind of based on the murder of Allenberg. And I think it's really well put together. I think it's great. And I recommend it. And the second is,

and that's from the 80s. And the second is a more recent film, called The Order, Dramatizing the Order. And I thought it was great. I thought it was like an excellent little political thriller. that basically got like very little you know mention or play but I thought was terrific yeah so I would highly recommend that as well yeah I mean it's a it's a very I think the direct effects that they're postulated here are probably it's a little more subtle and complicated than that but it would probably take a incredibly sophisticated political scientist or historian to judge and and this is sort of something that I've tried to do with with mixed success, with my own work, which is understand and the effects of kind of micro events

in politics, like, you know, my book, which talks about the bird killing and the far right of that era, is trying to understand what marginal groups, how, what marginal groups mean in politics, are they kind of, am I working hypothesis? is that the like the spatial plane of politics is like things on the margin or sometimes the future basically the time and space kind of mixes up in a certain way that's not 100% true some things just disappear so like anything there's there's contingent factors um i do think you know again to go back to our point on terrorism like those those shocking bellwether moments which to some people seem like they would like for okay perfect example is in the

history of Weimar Republic, you know, the murder of Walter Ratanow, who was a highly respected businessman and statesmen, you know, horrified the country to the point where even though he was a capitalist, the communists kind of rallied to his side. And it looked like, hey, this might be kind of defeat for the, for the far right. But then the very conservative judiciary was very lenient on the murders of Rathnau, and that created different political dynamics. Who won in that situation? Well, the terrorists, the people who were committing far-right terrorism in Italy and Germany, even when they committed outrages that were highly upsetting to the public, they also desensitized

the public to it, or, you know, appealed to sympathetic figures in the establishment who said, well, they did it for patriotic motives. I think we're going to see a lot more of that. soon. I'm sorry to say. Um, and that could go both ways. I mean, I'm not, I'm not only, I think there you could, I could totally imagine a right wing outrage of an assassination of some right wing person. And then in some blue state, they kind of get let, let off the hook. And they're like, this is a political outrage. I can see it going both ways. I mean, you, you have to understand that the trials are political processes and the sympathies of the juries will matter. Um,

So I think one worrying thing about political terrorism is when it starts to politicize the judiciary and the way justice is applied, say if there was a jury nullification in the Luigi trial, right? Now, that would be really remarkable development on a political level. And there you have a sign where you have an assassination where, you know, a lot of the country was really outraged by it. But a lot of the country wasn't, which was a little scary. And then, you know, if he gets acquitted or a mitigation of some kind, then you're like, hell, this is like a, that's a political sign that can't be ignored. That's a very important development. Has to be analyzed.

Has to be thought about. So, yeah, I think it's very difficult in these instances to judge the importance or the direct effects of a single political action. And it takes a lot of work and analysis to tease that out. But I think the thoughts in that are really interesting. and worth developing. Yeah. Thank you so much for the email, Mike.

Episodes of this podcast come out basically every two weeks. And so our next episode is, let me check it out. I just had it up here. The next episode of the podcast is on the 1997 television movie, Hostile Waters, Hostile Waters, directed by David Drury, Drury. And it's a submarine movie. Based on true events, an American submarine collides into a Soviet sub off the coast of, off the coast of the United States. And an ensuing standoff occurs that could lead to total annihilation.

It's a TV movie for the HBO and BBC. It has a pretty decent cast. Wow. Rutger Hauer, Martin Sheen, Max von Seid. How damn. Who knows if it's good, but that's, I feel like this should be a good time. it's available to it seems to rent on Apple TV

and Amazon but I'm sure you can find it on YouTube or TV or what have you TV movies tend to be pretty easy to find that way so that's our next main feed episode will be on Hostile Waters our next Patreon episode is going to be on Danton

I can't say his name correctly Dantan. Thank you I'm the hillbilly of the podcast next patron will be on de Teton, the 1984 film about the French Revolutionary. It's a great movie. It's like one of my personal favorites.

And it'll be discussing on the Patreon, which you can find at patreon.com slash unclear pod, $5 a month, two episodes a month on kind of movies in the Cold War period. And we cover a wide number, wide range of movies. And they're all almost uniformly pretty good. Yeah. We mentioned. We're chosen by a logic of actually picking good movies. Usually than this one, it's just like what was out.

Yeah. I think in just looking ahead, I think we should do the Carlos miniseries on the Patreon as well. I think you're right. I think it would be a good thing to do. So watch out for that as well sometime in the future. That is it. We're done. Our producer is Connor Lynch.

Our artwork is by Rachel Eck. For John Gans, I'm Jamel Bowie. This is unclear and present danger. We'll see you next time. I don't know.