Flux Podcasts (Formerly Theory of Change)

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Donald Trump’s bet on non-voters is high-risk, high-reward Oct 12, 2024

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Episode SummaryJD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, is a newcomer on the political scene, and as such, a lot of people don’t know very much about his ideas. That’s concerning because Vance identifies with a reactionary far-right tradition that is explicitly and fundamentally at odds with American democracy. Donald Trump, by contrast, has no core ideology and no core beliefs. His main goal at all times and all places is to advance his own personal interests, and that is literally it. Vance isn’t like that. He comes from an authoritarian, reactionary tradition that explicitly rejects conservatism, liberalism, and democracy. Trump wants absolute power, and Vance wants him to have it to destroy what he believes to be a decadent and corrupt society.On today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about some of the core ideas of this very old tradition (which both predates and includes fascism) and what it has in store for the United States, regardless of the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.Our guest on today’s episode is Matt McManus, he is the author of a book called The Political Right and Equality: Turning Back The Tide of Egalitarian Modernity, and a lecturer in political science at the University of Michigan.The video of this discussion is available. The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.Flux is a community-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please stay in touch.Related Content▪ Arguing with hardcore Trumpers is impossible, because reactionaries do not actually believe in logic▪ Libertarian oligarchs are trying to take over San Francisco — and the country▪ The ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ and the long history of right-wing re-branding▪ How a little-known cable channel for Roman Catholics is radicalizing the faithful▪ Ronna McDaniel and the twilight of fictitious Republicans▪ Democrats became more conservative as Republican became reactionary authoritarians, will Kamala Harris reverse this?▪ ‘Post left’ content creators are getting massively wealthy by promoting far-right ideologiesAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction02:29 — Distinguishing between conservatism and reactionism06:34 — Why telling the difference between conservatism and reactionism can be difficult10:53 — How the Cold War kept reactionaries in check within the Republican party18:06 — How neoconservatives prepared Republicans for Trumpism22:40 — Opposing "decadence" unites right-of-center philosophies26:08 — Redefining "elite" is core to the reactionary project33:41 — Why epistemic nihilism collapses into totalitarianism40:17 — Anti-intellectualism and right-wing philosophy46:45 — The paradoxes of left- and right-wing intellectualism53:29 — JD Vance's deep connections to reactionary philosophers59:14 — Why there are atheist and Jewish Christian nationalists01:04:44 — As the right overtly embraces authoritarianism, the left can reclaim freedom01:12:50 — The rise of the Nietzchean rightAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So we have a lot to talk about here today. The political philosophy episodes are always one of my favorites, I have to confess, as my audience may already realize. But nonetheless, so JD Vance, we're kind of organizing the discussion here of reactionism and reactionary politics around him because I think he is very obviously the most prominent reactionary figure now in the United States.So, but most people don't know a lot about what he thinks because I mean, he's a poor public speaker and, he's mostly known for kind of his bizarre interactions with people and writing a book.That's kind of the framework that I want to put this in. And then we'll come back to Vance later.But the idea first I want to explore is that conservatism and reactionism are not the same political philosophies. They're very obviously adjacent and contiguous but they're very different from each other. And you have written quite a bit about reactionism and conservatism.So let's maybe start the discussion off with that. What, what are the fundamental differences between conservatism and reaction in your opinion?MATT McMANUS: Sure, well I think the important thing to note right from the get go, is that the political right broadly, is a vast and extremely diverse area of political ideologies. It includes everything from, fascists to moderate conservatives like Mitt Romney and arguably quite a few liberals would identify on the political right as well, people like F.A. Hayek, et cetera, et cetera. So at the core of being right wing, I think is Hayek's idea that you believe that there are recognizably superior persons within society and that those recognizably superior persons are entitled to more. Right? More wealth, more power, more status on generally aligned with.This is a kind of moral view that we have recognizably superior persons in positions of authority on positions of status. Everything will go better for everyone else because you want power and you want status and you want wealth to accrue in the hands of those who are best exercised, wielded. But Who happens to be a recognizably superior person, how you make these kind of determinations.That's where a lot of the enormous nuance and variation on the political right comes from. Now, one of the things that [00:04:00] distinguishes conservatives from reactionaries is generally speaking, conservatives tend to think that the traditional hierarchies and authority structures that have been present in society for a very long period of times are the ones that we should put our faith in.For a variety of different reasons, but let's just point to, like, the Burkean tradition, right? A good Burkean would say, and this is putting it a bit simply, the reason we should put our faith in authority structures and hierarchies that have endured over a long period of time is because if they've endured for a long period of time, then they seem to be working reasonably well.Right? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Now, that doesn't mean we can't tinker around the edges with things, but the main goal of a conservative is to change what must be changed in order to conserve what we can. And in the contemporary American scene right now, you still see a variety of different people on the right who hold this view.George Will comes to mind. He wrote a big book called The Conservative Sensibility, where He kind of fused Burkean and more classical liberal ideas to say, look, in the United States, we're fundamentally a classical liberal country. The founders were classical liberals. So the job of a kind of conservative in the America is to conserve and to advance classical liberal principles and institutions like those that the founders created.But that's not the outlook that many of America's reactionaries hold today. Many American reactionaries are fundamentally opposed to the liberal worldview for Again, a wide variety of different reasons, and this includes people like Vance, who's drank deep of the well of post liberal and anti liberal thought, and the goal of these figures is, in the words of Glenn Elmer's, to not conserve anything, right?Conservatism is no longer enough, as the title of one of Elmer's essays went, because fundamentally, liberalism has been a destructive force, it's wiped out everything that's of value in the United States, and so what we need to do If you're a reactionary, of course is to advance a much more militant and even revolutionary or counter revolutionary program to try to set things right.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, there, there are significant [00:06:00] differences and you've described them well that yeah, conservatives, a conservative in the American sense. And, broadly speaking, maybe the.Global sense at this point now is, is somebody who wants to conserve liberalism as it is, or maybe perhaps just recently was that's what a conservative is. And a reactionary is somebody who says, liberalism is wrong, and in many cases, democracy is wrong as well. And and we'll get further into that in the discussion here today. But so with with Vance he has a lot of connections to all of these emergent reactionaries.Why telling the difference between conservatism and reactionism can be difficultSHEFFIELD: And it's been kind of just both fascinating and dispiriting how a lot of political professionals, including people who are Democratic Party strategists and communicators and professional national journalists, they don't seem to understand this difference between conservatism and reactionism. Now, why, why, why do you think that is?McMANUS: Well, I think there are a number of different reasons, right? One is that the American right for a very long time has presented itself as fundamentally a conservative movement. Right. Committed to at least market liberalism a fair degree of individual freedom and certainly the promotion of democracy around the globe.Think back to the advent of Reaganism, right, where a lot of those kinds of tropes were put together. Now, if you're a critic of the American, right, that's more longstanding. Like myself, you might question the sincerity of a lot of those convictions, but that's at least the way that it's been presented.And this kind of overtly reactionary, anti-liberal kind of muscularly counter revolutionary outlook. Comes quite a shock to a variety of different pundits, including many right wing pundits, people like Jonah Goldberg who were surprised, by what seems to have come out of the Republican party.Now I would argue again, that if you look deeper into the history of American conservatism, people like Rick Perlstein would say All these kinds of ingredients for a counter revolutionary program were always [00:08:00] there, right? If you go back to something like Barry Goldwater's campaign in 1964, right?Goldwater probably lost that election in no small part, not just because he was soft on civil rights and even opposed to civil rights but because he said things like, radicalism in defense of liberty or extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, right? It's not really a very conservative attitude endorsing these kinds of extremist views.But, generally speaking this tended to be a rhetorically quiescent element of the right until comparatively recently, definitely it was less transparent before 2016 when Trump gave license to a lot of these people to become a lot more vocal.SHEFFIELD: Yeah well, and, and it was both rebranding exercise as well on the part of the people that were saying, well, we're in favor of liberalism. I mean, for instance, obviously William F. Buckley, he presented as, That being his brand of, well, I'm just trying to conserve what we have in this country.And but at the same time he was saying that he was also being in favor of segregation writing editorials saying that, well, actually segregation is good because black people are just not capable of governing themselves and, and being part of the economy. So this is for their own good.Sorry, guys, you just, you're just SJWs are wrong. You need to leave it as it is. And, and, and he wrote aMcMANUS: to give another example during the, at the height of the AIDS epidemic William F. Buckley recommended that homosexuals, his term be tattooed above the buttocks, right? With a big warning label, right? And that kind of humor, let's call it that wouldn't be out of place in something like the contemporary Trump movement with this kind of vulgarity and it's just rote and callous dismissal of human life.So again, I think if you look back, further and look more carefully at some of these figures we kind of view the past of American conservatism with rose colored glasses if we don't recognize that a lot of the seeds of Trumpism were very firmly planted well before he came onto the scenes.SHEFFIELD: yeah. [00:10:00] And, and then also the fact that, I mean, the, the entire movement, which began calling itself conservatism. I mean, they, they didn't call themselves conservative. Like, that's an important point, which, because most political professionals, journalistic professionals don't know anything about it.History they don't realize that Buckley and these other people, I mean, they were the point of what they were doing was to stop. The new deal was to roll back social security was to roll back, labor unions and minimum wage. Like that was always the goal, like, and they've never stopped having those goals.And so, Yeah, it's just, it's pretty disgraceful, frankly, that a lot of, of people who pretend to be experts and put themselves forward as experts don't know any of this stuff. Pretty disgraceful, I think.McMANUS: Yeah, absolutely, right?How the Cold War kept reactionaries in check within the Republican partyMcMANUS: So, once upon a time the American right, certainly the intellectual American right, used to be described as a three legged stool, right? So, One leg of that stool was militant anti communism which eventually transformed into this idea that America should have a kind of militant and muscular international relations policy in the 1990s and early 2000s when communism for the most part disappeared.The second leg of the stool was the, evangelical Christian movement which always had a very, very, very pronounced kind of white nationalist undercurrent to it with its opposition to things like civil rights alongside, of course, more conventional kinds of oppositions to things like abortion or gay marriage.And then the third leg of that stool were American libertarians, certainly right libertarians at the very least who, as you mentioned, were committed to rolling back the new deal or even going further than rolling back the new deal, going all the way back to invert something like The criticisms of the Lochner precedent from early in the 20th century, and as a lot of people have pointed out, the three legs of the stool were never exactly the same size, and the stool itself was always kind of shaky since it's not immediately clear.What economic libertarianism or economic liberalism [00:12:00] has to do with support for white evangelism let alone the idea that America should use its military and cultural might to try to impose its value system, whatever that happens to be around the globe. Again, what I would argue is that the Shared through line of all these doctrines or all these elements of the classical American right was this conviction that there are superior people and superior countries for that matter on their entitled to greater status, greater agency, and they were hostile to a liberalism, which suggested otherwise.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And I think that probably one of the other reasons that this distinction is harder for a lot of people to grasp is that these early branders and influencers for, for reactionism like Buckley they, they did explicitly market their ideas in the language of liberalism Because Nazism had so, overwhelmingly discredited fascism and authoritarianism as political philosophies in the recent memory of the people they were trying to convict.McMANUS: Absolutely. Right. So David Austin Walsh has written a very good book about this, so I'm going to draw pretty heavily from that. So arguably the kind of unifying philosophy that was characteristic of the National Review crowd for a long time was Frank Reier's fusionism, right? For those in your audience who aren't familiar with it fusionism refers to this idea that we should combine a commitment to classical liberal liberties certainly economic liberties with t…

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The mainstream media were ‘sanewashing’ Republicans long before Donald Trump Oct 09, 2024

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Episode SummaryAs he nears the end of his third presidential campaign, Donald Trump is falling apart in public view. He’s holding far fewer public events than ever before where he constantly goes off on bizarre and irrelevant tangents and conspiracy theories about everything from sharks and hurricanes to Kamala Harris’s headphones.But most people don’t tune into his rallies. Instead, they hear about them from the mainstream media, which often delivers a highly sanitized version of Trump’s insane rants that makes them seem much more normal than they really are. My friend Parker Molloy calls this pattern of media behavior “sanewashing,” which I think is an accurate description to describe what mainstream journalists have been doing with Trump since he first began running for president in 2015. Whenever Trump retreats from verbatim interviews and focuses only on his rally speeches, his approval ratings go up.Kamala Harris alluded to this problem during the debate she had with Trump a few weeks ago when she urged the audience to attend a Trump campaign rally to hear the insane and incoherent things he says.Unfortunately, sanewashing isn’t something that began with Donald Trump, however. Using public relations strategies and playing upon people’s natural inclination to assume good-faith in others, reactionary Republicans figured out how to hack the liberal epistemology by lying. Long before Trump began conning America, far-right activists realized that there’s no limit to what you can accomplish once you realize you never have to tell the truth. As a result, the American press has been sanitizing Republican radicalism for many decades now: They cleaned up the image of the Tea Party. They refused to question George W. Bush’s Iraq War. They didn’t tell the full story of Newt Gingrich’s fanaticism. And they didn’t fully cover the radicalism of Ronald Reagan and his staff.One person who knows that story better than almost anyone else is Rick Perlstein, our guest on today’s episode. He’s a historian who’s the author of a series of best-selling books about the American right, including Reaganland: America’s Right Turn 1976-1980. And he’s got another one that’s in the works as well called “The Infernal Triangle: How America Got This Way.”The video of this discussion is available. The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.Flux is a community-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please stay in touch.Related ContentThe ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ and the long history of Republican re-brandingHow ‘fictitious Republicans’ like Ronna McDaniel and Hugh Hewitt cover up right-wing extremismAbortion is the first domestic issue where Republicans have actually had to reveal their full motivesRight-wing media is the glue that holds the Republican party togetherWhite nationalists and jihadists are starting to realize they have a lot in commonHow the Senate filibuster protected Republicans from electoral accountability and enabled their radicalizationWhy the Southern Strategy transformed Republicans more than it transformed the SouthAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction06:47 — Sanewashing is obsolete journalism for a Republican party that no longer exists10:51 — Flashback: How the mainstream media sanitized the Tea Party21:51 — How Republicans and Democrats handle unpopular policies differently25:47 — How Tea Party activists manipulated the media29:09 — William F. Buckley, inventor of sanewashing33:57 — Sanewashing as a hack of liberal epistemology43:23 — The one positive thing about sanewashing48:32 — A dual approach to combating the problems of sanewashingAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So the topic of today that we're going to be discussing here, as I said in the intro, is sanewashing. And friend of the pod, Parker Molloy, I believe, was the coiner of that term, and she defines it as basically that when Trump has his rallies, the mainstream media will sanitize them and not tell the public what he's actually saying, how incoherent and extreme that it is.I think it's a very valid critique, but on the other hand, this is part of a much bigger problem.RICK PERLSTEIN: Yes, I think it's a fantastic word. Maybe it'll become one of those kind of like, like the Miriam Webster or whatever comes up with [00:04:00] the. The word of the year, that would be a really good one. But it is yeah, I mean, if anything, eight years too late, possibly 80 years too late, right? But I think, eight years too late is eight and a half years.Let's say is a pretty good benchmark because, I, was doing political reporting in 2015 and 2016, and I went to New Hampshire. And I went to rallies by, all the candidates and, I kept on writing about Trump and my editor was like, why aren't you writing about someone who could win like Marco Rubio? And there'll be 20 people at the Marco Rubio event and like 2,000 people at the Donald Trump event.And one of the things I did because I take a very literary approach to journalism and wasn't kind of filing, 800 word, kind of dispatches on deadline. I was writing kind of Esquire style magazine articles like, Gary Wills did in the 1960s or Joan Didion or something like that. I transcribed enormous amounts of what Donald Trump was saying. And described enormous amounts of what I was seeing, like looking over the shoulder of someone who was reading the little, town newspaper in some New Hampshire town of 20,000 people and looking at the obituaries and seeing all the 30 year olds and realizing, this must be kind of a place that has a lot of oxy problems and things like that, this dying industrial town.And, he was just saying, insane things, by the way, there's kind of a maybe I should coin the phrase insane washing, which is kind of like the idea that somehow Donald Trump has kind of circled around the drain and is so off the rails in a way that he wasn't before, I think he's definitely suffered.cognitive decline, and his kind of, return to the womb kind of fascism rhetoric is purer than it was, but it was plenty like that in 2015 and 2016. So I would, I quoted at length, him saying, if anyone deserts and when I'm president, they'll get shot in the [00:06:00] battlefield.He told this elaborate story that he told all the time, which I saw covered nowhere, about how General Pershing supposedly solved the terrorism problem in, the Philippines in the 20s whatever, by corralling 50 terrorists shooting 49 of them with bullets soaked in pig's fat, right?Muslim terrorists and leaving one to tell the tale. And of course it's a utter urban legend and no one bothered to either quote that at any length, including the crazy, grammar and stuff. Or even bothered to look it up, which I did only recently and found out that was a common email chain after 9/11.Sanewashing is obsolete journalism for a Republican party that no longer existsPERLSTEIN: The problem is obviously just, no curiosity or any kind of digging into what's happening. There is a genre convention for how a presidential candidate is meant to be reported. And what I talk about just an enormous amount in my writing about this stuff as a historian and a journalist is that the frames are everything, the journalistic conventions are everything, and they're ironclad, and if you want, I can kind of go into my little theory about how this particular Convention came about I theorized with Richard Nixon in 1968, but basically a presidential candidate speech Is should be reducible to five or six take away soundbites about policy positions.And it doesn't matter if Donald Trump, pulls down his pants and poops on the stage. As long as he says something that can somehow be abstracted into five or six policy takeaways, that's how it will be reported in the New York Times, on CNN, and all the rest. And, I mean, you can't separate the dancer from the dance. Form and function. Form and content, I should say. [00:08:00] What is in the speeches is a function of the fact that he's doing this diuretic rant meant to terrify people and present himself as the savior who's going to prevent them from bodily disintegration. And that cannot, that story simply cannot be told and be recognizable as mainstream journalism.SHEFFIELD: Because yeah, you're telling a truth that cannot be said.PERLSTEIN: it just, it's almost like, it's, like duck speak. It just doesn't, it's like, it doesn't fit, duck speak from 1984. They come up with this language that's kind of meant to be descriptive and keep people from having, other thoughts.Duck speak just means like, party rhetoric. It's just a really, just kind of, like Mad Libs. Every article about a presidential speech is going to be Mad Libs. You can kind of fill it in. And therefore that which does not, kind of meet that format will not, it's, yes, it's unrepresentable.SHEFFIELD: Well, yeah. And it's also, and it's not newsy either. Trump says the same policy positions in his speeches, says the same jokes that, like that idiotic—PERLSTEIN: The snake. SHEFFIELD: Yeah. That was a cliché in the nineties like Hannibal Lecter.PERLSTEIN: Yeah. And no one says that when he says the Hannibal thing, he's actually kind of doing a dog whistle that migrants are cannibals.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think so. But, I mean, but the point being though, like when they talk about, and then he said he wants to build a wall and then he said he wants, tariffs or whatever, like those, that's not news at all that he said those things. He says those at every rally. So what you actually have to do if you're going to these rallies, you're going to cover them, is to cover this ambiance, is to cover the impromptus, is to cover the asides, and the insanities.PERLSTEIN: That's right. And the crowd too.SHEFFIELD: This other stuff is not [00:10:00] news.Thanks for reading Flux! This post is public so feel free to share it.SharePERLSTEIN: I mean, one of the things that, when I first started, like the first time I, started covering presidential campaign events in 2004, when I was writing for the village voice, I walk into my first rally in Claremont, New Hampshire, and I'm like, why are these guys all behind a iron?Great. It's like the journalists literally caged themselves. I was like, Why aren't they? Like, it's not that hard to go out into the crowd. you could tell these guys apart, they were the guys, with the, the press khakis, it was 2004. They had cell phones pressed their ear, which was pretty rare.And they only talked to each other . So they weren't actually, yes, they were not actually quote unquote covering the event. They were waiting for their little mad libs to, to, fill in. And that was 2004. Right. And John Kerry or whatever, but you know, it's so they're, covering Donald Trump just like they cover.John Kerry, even though, it's apples and oranges,Flashback: How the mainstream media sanitized the Tea PartySHEFFIELD: It is. It's, and we'll get into this further, but you're working on book right now. And, one of the big portions of the book which you shared with me is how the media did this exact same, washing practice with Glenn Beck and the Tea Party when they came along and and both before and after it kind of collapsed on itself. So, when they first got started, it was, Oh, wow. Look at all these independents. And they're just politically moderate people, look at them. They're just want something different. They're upset. And then, after it all kind of went completely, I mean, revealed itself undeniably for a far right movement, and then Glenn Beck, did his rehabilitation to her. So take us back there.PERLSTEIN: Yeah, it was truly grotesque, and a really important kind of way station to how we got here, right? Subtitle of the book I'm working on is how America got here, and really, I mean, I start with the 2020 South Carolina primary between John McCain and George W. Bush and, kind of, Go to the present, but the beginning of the book, I do this 2009 [00:12:00] to 2010 period, because it's so, it just exemplifies all the crises that, have become unmanageable right now.And the biggest one is, the press. So we get this new president. Barack Obama and some of your younger listeners may have heard telegram by talking about how unbelievably exciting it was. If you were anything other than, a conservative and that this, African American president, there was an enormous wave of progressive.Energy if you look at the polls, it's ridiculous polls, like, 75 percent of the country wanting to raise the minimum wage in 2007. and, like, and like 68 percent of small business owners wanted to raise the minimum wage. I mean, it was a truly a progressive movement.The sky, comes along and, we can kind of skip over, the complications of Obama himself, but it's really true that a lot of the, kind of big foots of the mainstream press, the agenda setting elite political journalists. I tried to find a good acronym for them, but I haven't, but I call them the agenda setting elite political journalists, which basically means, the people with titles like Washington correspondent or, chief, chief chief, capital.Columnist or whatever, the Bigfoots, we're very excited and his election was treated as ending a chapter in American life of racial division. I mean, it was quite astonishing, quite naive but for the purposes of our discussion, it was so over the top that I think the ideology of balance, Which, obviously is their religion, just kind of demanded a countervailing narrative.Right? So they were, they needed the Tea Party. Right? They needed the idea that there was this backlash against Barack Obama to kind of right the scales. Because, unless they do that, they're not, they don't see themselves as professional. They don't see themselves as doing their job. They had [00:14:00] a guilty conscience, right?So when the Tea Party came about, it's really quite extraordinary. One thing I really stress in my book is there was always amazing coverage, but it would come from alternative media. The same alternative media that was telling the truth about Iraq. When, the New York Times was running, White House propaganda at the front page, right?So in the case of the alternative media, it was really fascinating that, you remember the, first kind of clarion call? Of the Tea Party on CNBC. Do you remember that story? This Rick Santelli guy. Right? So how much, I mean, it's just basically, there was this business reporter named Rick Santelli, this kind of douchey kind of frat boy guy.and yeah, Chicago based and Barack Obama had just you know, fulfilled a campaign promise by putting together a very small program to to help people basically subsidized banks to help people get back into their houses when they were foreclosed. It was really kind of one of these win policy solutions, it was cost barely anything.The banks would get a really nice, flow of revenue at a time when they were, ready to go out of business. People would get to go back in their homes, neighborhoods that were kind of falling decrepit because of the subprime prices. And the government would earn their money back.And it was also, like, completely neoliberal. It was really hard to apply for. It was means tested, all that good stuff. It was very mild. And of course on the right it was, greeted as well, literally, in the case of Santelli, he said, this is, I've been to Cuba and this is what they did, so this clown, Santelli, gives up this kind of speech, political speech, on t…

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The science behind why Donald Trump loves the ‘poorly educated’ Oct 03, 2024

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Episode Summary“I love the poorly educated,” Donald Trump famously boasted in early 2016 as he started racking up victories in the Republican primary election. It was an unintentionally hilarious thing to say, but it pointed to a truth that’s since became undeniable: People with less education are more likely to vote for Republicans.Trump has almost certainly never heard of the 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill, but the disgraced ex-president’s enthusiasm for the poorly educated echoes something that Mill said on the floor of the English parliament in 1866 that “stupid persons are generally conservative.”What if Mill was right? Since 2016, it’s become commonplace to think of having a bachelor’s degree as a sort of proxy for Trump voting among white Americans, but what if there’s something even deeper at work?Republicans don’t want to hear this, but there’s a pretty long-standing body of social science research that indicates people who have right-wing attitudes, particularly regarding religion and epistemology, appear to have lower cognitive capacity.Thinking about this topic can be uncomfortable, but it’s important because understanding that political movements are just as much about psychology as they are about ideology can help us understand the enduring appeal of someone like Trump who is flagrantly stupid, corrupt, and deceitful. I also feel like I can discuss this given my personal history as a former Mormon fundamentalist and Republican activist.Our guest in today’s episode to discuss is Darren Sherkat, he’s a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University where he focuses the relationships between ideology, cognition, and religious belief. He’s also the author of “Changing Faith: The Dynamics and Consequences of Americans' Shifting Religious Identities,” and another book which will be forthcoming on these topics.The video of this discussion is available. The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.Related Content* Have Trump Republicans lost their grip on reality, or are they just lying to pollsters to support him?* JD Vance and the reactionary mind* Far-right pundits aren’t trying to make arguments, they’re affirming the emotions of their fans* How Fox News and talk radio warped a man’s thinking, and what his daughter and wife did to save him* America’s political polarization isn’t about partisanship, it’s about epistemology* Reactionaries do not actually believe in logic, this is why you can’t argue with them* How congressional Republicans made the internet a safe space for disinformationAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction02:19 — Why discussing cognition in a political context is not unfair or deterministic08:51 — In the 1970s, Republicans were the party with higher verbal ability10:10 — How the "Southern Strategy" remade the Republican party cognitively13:01 — Why "poorly educated" is a better term than "uneducated" in this context14:56 — How religious fundamentalism inhibits sound thinking at individual and the communal levels20:02 — Cognitive capital and social capital23:44 — Theodor Adorno's "authoritarian personality" research included cognition30:46 — Why cognition is a better predictor of Trump support than education35:38 — Abductive reasoning versus empirical reasoning44:23 — Trump is an ideal candidate for less-intelligent people50:58 — Why Ron DeSantis, JD Vance, and intelligent reactionaries have trouble copying Trump54:53 — Public education as the cornerstone of democracy01:00:19 — Non-religious Americans need to start advocating for themselves01:03:00 — ConclusionAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So, these are some very sensitive topics to people that we're going to be discussing here today. It's no fun for people to discuss cognitive ability and political ideology if you are the group assessed to have lower cognition at least outputs. But before we get into that, though, I did want to ask you—and to clarify that because the brain is a highly plastic organ and cognition is a form of exercise, these are not necessarily judgments that are set in stone, if you will. And this research is still just beginning in a lot of ways, right?DARREN SHERKAT: [00:03:00] Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think that we've had kind of a disjuncture between the kind of genetic model of cognition and the more environmental model of cognition. And it's not been very sociologically informed about how do processes of politics and religion and other factors influence individuals. Instead, it's been individuated that it's an assumption that this is a product of the individual rather than their social origins and their social settings.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And people's environment and also their own behavior, it can modify what their cognitive outputs are.SHERKAT: Absolutely. I mean, we're seeing this mostly in our gerontological research about, kind of use it or lose it. That if you don't think about things in systematic ways, then your brain will not operate as it should in an ideal [00:04:00] way.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And also, I have to also say that, myself as a former fundamentalist Mormon and former Republican activist, this is me talking about my former self. And I can say, when I reflect back on my earlier life, when I had these belief systems, they did inhibit my ability to think clearly and to fully perceive the world accurately. That actually was something that, that did inhibit me.So, I did want to kind of mention that before we get further into it. But before we get into your research here, tell us about your background on these matters, your overall academic background,SHERKAT: Personal background or academic background?SHEFFIELD: Academic background.SHERKAT: I came to research American fundamentalism, American religion largely because we didn't really know much about it back in the eighties and [00:05:00] nineties when the second wave of the new Christian right came up we didn't even know how many. conservative Christians there were, and so I really came through it through religious demography and looking at how many of these people are there that are fomenting these political movements, and at the time they were still not identifying as Republicans.Back in the early 90s, many of them voted Republican, but they didn't identify as Republicans, and that's shifted over time. So gradually I came to do more political research that was more partisan in a sense that it paid attention to things like party politics. And that's where some of my research has been going in the last decade or so.And I'll be presenting a paper at the I'm going to be having a number of sociology of religion meetings here in the next few weeks that examines these kind of cognitive issues by party and how religion plays a role in that looking at the measures of [00:06:00] cognitive sophistications that I have available, which are related to verbal ability and vocabulary.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And then like, what's your so you were a sociologist by academic training. Yes,SHERKAT: yes. I had a PhD at Duke in the early nineties.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Before we get into, the specific findings of the studies that you're just referring to you were using a metric that people maybe may not be familiar with the idea of using verbal ability as a proxy for cognitive ability. So how, how does one measure verbal ability in the research that you're doing, that you're relying on?SHERKAT: In the General Social Survey, they followed a lot of educational research that uses a standard 10 question vocabulary examination. And it's widely used to measure vocabulary in the English language. And [00:07:00] there are variants of it for other languages that educational psychologists have also used.So it's a pretty standard measure that correlates about 0. 66. With measures of IQ using the kind of revised Stanford and stuff like that indicators. So it's, it's not exactly the same as the IQ type measures that some people use. And it's of course different from things like the armed forces qualifying tests, which is also been used as measures of intelligence.But it, it does measure something that's very specific where it's. Detached from any concept we might have of what whatever raw intelligence means, whatever psychologist or educational psychologist may be interested in but it has a pretty profound influence on people's lives on their ability to do things like read the New York Times or navigate a complex argument in a paper or something like that.SHEFFIELD: [00:08:00] Or understand how to fill out a form properly or things like that. You have to lower it andSHERKAT: it can be bad.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. So the GSS has done this and the variable for those who are into that sort of thing is called word sum. If anybody wants to look that up on your own. But so how, how long have they been asking that particular question?SHERKAT: They insert that in the second year of the general social survey in 1974. So some of my research in my book, I look at differences in party, lines along party lines, political party lines, and their scores on this verbal score since 1974. So for 50 years, we have data comparing Republicans and Democrats and independents on this measure of cognitive skill.In the 1970s, Republicans were the party with higher verbal abilitySHERKAT: And one of the things that my research shows is that Republicans, as we would expect, starting out as elites, had higher levels of verbal ability in the [00:09:00] 1970s, all the way up through the early 1990s, when the Democrats and Republicans kind of converged. Since the 1990s, the Democrats scores have gone up, and the Republicans scores have gone down.This is only focusing on white Americans, by the way. There's a different process and a different connection between politics and religion and cognition for African Americans, Black Americans, and Latinos. And we don't really have enough Asians to, you know analyze them separately, at least effectively except for in the 21st century.We've got enough in the later years of the General Social Survey, but not enough in the earlier year.SHEFFIELD: You're keeping the data consistent and also kind of filtering out any sort of racial or linguistic bias, which might be implicit in the test. By focusing only on, on white [00:10:00] voters or sorry, white respondents in the study.As you were saying, the, the, the scores for the parties kind of started to they crossed in the, in the nineties.How the "Southern Strategy" remade the Republican party cognitivelySHEFFIELD: But religion was the, was, appears to be the, the reason why it was. Cause the Republican party, as, as you said, was not principally a vehicle for Christian supremacism that it currently is today, but there was a process over time, right?SHERKAT: Especially identification. A lot of this has to do with the transformation and the reshuffling of party identifications that came after Nixon's southern strategy. The Southern strategy, which brought all these white Southerners into the Republican party, brought with it their fundamentalist religion, their adherence to mostly Baptist and Pentecostal denominations and lower tier Methodists, not high brow Methodists that you find in other types of [00:11:00] places.And because of that, that had an effect on their cognition. And the cognitive composition of the Republican party add to that also is we saw a transformation of education in the South that was a result of desegregation that many of white Southerners began abandoning public schools or influencing content of public schools more substantially in a way that hindered their adherence ability to Access new information.I mean, we all have to access new things to learn new things or even retain the things that we may have learned before. And this kind of implosion, a social implosion led to this kind of crossover. Between Democrats and Republicans, but what's interesting, this is something that I presenting I may not have told you about before because I haven't fully analyzed it until just this week is that [00:12:00] the Republican deficit remains even controlling for religion in the 21st century. And so if I just the last decade of the general social survey, look at this, yet there are profound differences by religion, as I showed papers, but the religious factors did not explain away. The Republican deficit, and that's kind of fast, and I'm still trying to grapple with what does this mean in the 21st century that they've, they've essentially, it's an additional burden cognitively, apparently to be a Republican even above and beyond the fact that many of them are sectarian Christians or biblical fundamentalists, and they tend not to be secular individuals or non identifiers.And so that, that was, is kind of still something I'm trying to grapple with as I finish off this [00:13:00] paper for the meetings.Why "poorly educated" is a better term than "uneducated" in this contextSHEFFIELD: Okay. Well, yeah, well, let's get into that. After we talk about the, your earlier research, definitely want to, for sure. So to preface further, I mean, Donald Trump himself did explicitly state, I love the poorly educated.And so, this is not you being a meanie this is you studying a thing that Donald Trump himself invited people to talk about, right?SHERKAT: Well, and Trump is right that it's not just the uneducated, but the poorly educated, what I show in my other papers is that this transcends education levels. And in fact, kind of extrapolated for other media sources. It's worse for the more educated. a more profound effect on verbal ability among people who graduated from college.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And there was a recent study that kind of did [00:14:00] show that with regard to fact checking, for instance. So like when, when Donald Trump voters were shown a label on tweets that he made while he was the president that were saying the, the statements are misleading or have been disputed or something like that, that people, as their political knowledge increased and they were Trump supporters, they were more likely to believe that his lies if they were labeled as lies rather than less. So it was a, it's a, it's a fascinating finding.So, but to go back to your, your earlier studies though.So let's go back to the first study that you did on this, that was a more politically oriented that you Looked at 2016 vote or preference of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and you had a number of different findings With regard to verbal facility.So talk about some of those findings that you had there.How religious fundamentalism inhibits sound thinking at individual and the communal levelsSHERKAT: Well, one of the things that that begins [00:15:00] to examine is first the effect of religion on Trump vote, which is pretty profound. And also though the effect of cognitive ability and cognitive ability as you move in into the equation in the initial baselines has a very strong Positive, negative, excuse me, relationship with voting for Donald Trump, even controlling for educational attainment, region of the country, rural, urban residency I focus on white voters in this paper also.But then when I add in religiosity and specifically biblical fundamentalism versus secularism. And. Identification with sectarian Protestant denominations, the effect of verbal ability goes away, suggesting that it's working through and with [00:16:00] sectarian identifications and fundamentalist beliefs to influ…

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How far-right Christian media brainwash evangelicals Sep 28, 2024

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Episode SummaryAs everyone probably knows, White Christians with theologically conservative views are the backbone of the Republican Party, and they are Donald Trump's most loyal voters and followers and donors. But far-right Christians were not always the backbone of the Republican Party. They became that way through the work of reactionary Christian media who brainwashed them over decades to believe that Democrats are literally controlled by demons.The days of Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson are obviously behind us, but the people who have inherited the world of reactionary Christian media have drastically expanded their reach and power within the Republican party. Unlike Republican leaders of yore like Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, Donald Trump, his children, and the party’s vice presidential nominee JD Vance regularly interact with and support today’s Christian right.Although they have enormous audiences, are awash in hundreds of millions of dollars, and hob-nob with presidential candidates, for the most part the stars of Christian right television are rarely covered by the mainstream media. And so in today's episode, I wanted to shine a spotlight on some of these figures, including Lance Wallnau (who is hosting a town hall today with Vance), scammy televangelist Kenneth Copeland, and radical anti-abortion activist Janet Folger Porter.Our guide in this episode is Peter Montgomery. He is a senior fellow with the People for American Way, and he's also one of the writers over at Right Wing Watch, which is an essential website to keep tabs on the beliefs and opinions of the radical Christian right. The video of this discussion is available. The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.Flux is a community-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please stay in touch.Related Content* Where JD Vance’s hate-filled and misogynistic ideas came from* How EWTN became the media epicenter of reactionary Catholicism* Far-right ‘tradwives’ are using sex to sell religion on Instagram and TikTok * How Southern evangelicalism colonized and displaced other forms of conservative Christianity* Inside the bizarre and bigoted world of Jewish fascism* Faced with a shrinking demographic base, Republican elites are inventing another ‘Satanic panic’ to scare Americans into voting for them* The story of how gay Republicans helped drive their party toward extremismAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction02:59 — Kenneth Copeland and the Victory Channel07:47 — Lance Wallnau, Seven Mountains Dominionism, and Pentecostalism16:16 — The Christian right's new message: Democrats are controlled by demons22:12 — The theology behind Donald Trump's Big Lie25:09 — Millions of people are attending Christian right political rallies30:19 — National Conservatism, JD Vance, and Catholic "integralism"40:39 — How Donald Trump's rhetoric has become much more religious43:18 — Janet Folger Porter and Republican abortion bans46:18 — New poll shows how far removed Trump base is from reality50:23 — A new far-right Christian sitcom speaks to cultural fears56:25 — Laura Loomer and reactionary figures from unexpected identity groups Audio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So, this episode we're going to talk about some figures that I think it's going to be a mix of people that political junkies have heard of, I think, and then ones that they have not heard of. And I, that is kind of the overall sort of. way that the religious right works in general, right?That there's this mix of figureheads and then, the money people and all these other ones. Is that, would you agree with thatPETER MONTGOMERY: Sure. Yeah, there are people who, a few people maybe, who are more sort of household names among the general public, and then there is just a vast number of people who are celebrities in their subcultures or in their pieces of the religious right movement.Kenneth Copeland and the Victory ChannelSHEFFIELD: Yeah [00:03:00] and one Of the recent media properties that has emerged in the religious right has been this network of channels and shows that is called the Victory Channel, and their most successful show is called Flashpoint. So for people who haven't heard of this organization, why don't you give us an overview.MONTGOMERY: and it actually operates as a project of. Televangelist Kenneth Copeland's church and ministry. So it is set up as a nonprofit. They give their broadcast to free. So any cable channel or satellite provider can get this content totally for free. And then it's ever, they're not allowed to put advertising on it.So the ministry really subsidizes it in a, in a way. That helps them reach a big audience because people are looking for for content, [00:04:00] especially free content so that's so so the victorySHEFFIELD: well, who?MONTGOMERY: launched in 2019SHEFFIELD: Oh, and I'm sorry. Can you just describe who Kenneth Copeland is for people who don't know whoMONTGOMERY: is a televangelist a long time promoter of the prosperity gospel the idea that If you have wealth it is a sign of god's blessing And so kenneth copeland is sort of notorious for amassing great personal wealth and sort of being unashamed about it. But he continues to, to operate this ministry around the country and around the globe.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and he also became infamous during the COVID pandemic. He became a bit of a meme, actually, for saying that he was going to cast out the devil of the coronavirus and he would blow, blow it away with the breath ofKenneth Copeland Video: COVID-19 COVID-19.[00:05:00]I'm Glow the wind of God. The wind of God. On you. On you. You are destroyed forever. You are. You are destroyed forever. And you'll never be back. And you'll, and you'll never be back. Thank you, our God. Thank you Our.SHEFFIELD: breath ofKenneth Copeland Video: GodMONTGOMERY: Yeah. I said, and so, he doesn't ever put himself in a situation where someone to ask him, what happened to that? Did, did God not hear your prayer? Did God, because he clearly did not blow the virus away. You know, He's also, you know, infamous for, taking a image of himself reaching out toward his TV set and telling people that he can heal their COVID if, if they reach toward him and they praySHEFFIELD: the television. Yep.Kenneth Copeland Video: Put your hand on that television set. Yes. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Lord Jesus. He received your [00:06:00] healing. Yes. Now say it. I take it. I take it. I have it. I have it. It's mine. It's mine.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and he claims actually to be a billionaire. Now, nobody has verified whether that's true or not, but obviously he's got a lot of, he has his own private jumbo jet. So clearly he does have. A huge amount of cash. And and I think, to some degree, he seems to have realized that whether it's a combination of the fact that he's, quite old now and has become a bit infamous or notorious that, that may be part of why the Flashpoint and Victory Channel brand was launched to be kind of independent of him.He's not the star of it. He does appear on there sometimes. But he's certainly not a regular panelist and certainly not the host. So who else is involved with?MONTGOMERY: So the Flashpoint show itself launched on the Victory Channel in the [00:07:00] fall of 2020, leading up to the election, not coincidentally. And it immediately. It became a platform for all kinds of conspiracy theories for promoting Trump's claims about the election for spreading disinformation about January 6th attack on Congress.But it's funny, I just this week they celebrated the fourth anniversary of the launch of Flashpoint. And on the, they showed some clips from their very first show, and one of those, was Lance Wallnau describing Seven Mountains Dominionism to people in, in a brief description of this, political ideology that is, sort of, really rose to prominence during the Trump era.Lance Wallnau, Seven Mountains Dominionism, and PentecostalismSHEFFIELD: And what is the Seven Mountains Dominionism for people who don't know?MONTGOMERY: Sure. It's, it's a theology in Political ideology was sort of merged. They grew out of a wing of Pentecostal [00:08:00] Christianity that goes by the name of the New Apostolic Reformation. And the central point is that the reason the world is not as it should be is that the wrong kind of people are in charge.And Seven Mountains Dominionism says that the right kind of Christians, Christians who share their biblical worldview are meant to be in control of all the seven mountains, the seven spheres of influence in society. So that's education, government entertainment, media religion, family. So, so there are these, so they basically want to take over all these institutions.SHEFFIELD: And that they're entitled to do so,MONTGOMERY: That it's, that it's God's, that it's God's desire that the right kind of Christian control these. And that when that happens, then you will be able to. transform the society and that by doing that you can help bring about the return of Christ.SHEFFIELD: [00:09:00] Yeah, and so like they, and this is a different type of rapture theology from what had come before that, that, they literally believe that Jesus will not return to the earth until they take everything over,MONTGOMERY: Yeah, it's interesting. Some of them really, they view rapture theology with a little bit of contempt because they think that it makes Christians sort of lazy and apathetic because if, Christ is going to come back and rescue the church before things get too bad. So, so their message is The Christ will not come back for a defeated church, but for a triumphant one.And so the, the enticement they offer to people is that if you join us, if you help us take dominion and occupy which is their language of occupying until Jesus comes back, then you can actually help change the course of history by, by making that happen.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and it is an extremely powerful message because, it's, it's, [00:10:00] it's important to note that, the, the white evangelical demographic as a share of the population has declined. Decade over decade, but the share of the electorate of people voting in presidential elections who are white evangelical Protestants has remained the same. So basically they're wringing more and more blood from the stone,MONTGOMERY: Yeah. Yeah. And it's true. And it's one of the interesting things that's happened is that sort of the traditional fundamentalist religious right that does not necessarily buy this end times theology about from the Pentecostal wing, but they have adopted seven mountains rhetoric as a kind of lingua franca just because it is so, it's such an easy way to encourage conservative Christians to become more politically engaged.So you don't have to really get into the end times thing. You can just talk about, it's God's will that Christians be in charge. Christians be the head and not the tail, as Tony [00:11:00] Perkins says. And so that, that motivates people to get involved without having to, to dig into or necessarily agree with the theological underpinnings.SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. Yeah, and it's definitely succeeding monetarily for them. And and in a lot of ways they are kind of subsuming the the older religious right, the older Christian right, because not only are they more politically active and willing to be explicitly engaging in partisan politics.It's also that their, their doctrines are a lot simpler. They're, they don't really have doctrines per se. And that they, it's kind of a choose your own adventure type of religion that, they're always saying, well, I had a revelation of this and Jesus told me that. And like, if that's, if you can get away with that as a religion, you don't really have any sort of core message or beliefs.It's whatever the leader tells you to do.MONTGOMERY: Well, and you can see why that fits so well [00:12:00] with the MAGA movement under Donald Trump,right? That in some ways he sort of functions. like one of these televangelists. He doesn't really have anybody holding him accountable. He creates his own media. He says things that may not be true, that he might have just pulled out of his butt.But, he, he gets away with it. And it's the, this movement really came into political influence in a big way for the first time during his administration because they had really backed his. election in 2016. Paula White, who has been Trump's, friend and so called spiritual advisor for long before that, made sure that when Trump gave her job in the White House, she used that to keep a flow of, um, these folks coming through the Oval Office, telling Trump he was doing God's work, getting their picture taken in the White House, showing their followers that they had influence now.It was a real mutual benefit.SHEFFIELD: [00:13:00] It was. Yeah. And you mentioned Lance Wall now. I think he's another one of these people who is huge in this world that we're talking about, but general political audiences have never heard of him. So who, who is he?MONTGOMERY: Lance Wallow is a self promoter, a sort of motivational speaker coach, sort of all these different things who really came intoprominence in this wing of Christianity in 2013 when heco wrote a book on Seven Mountains Dominionism. With Bill Johnson, a pastor out of California, who's a major figurein Pentecostal Christianity.SHEFFIELD: can lookMONTGOMERY: And then well now really hit it big in 2015 whenhe decided and announcedthat Trump had been anointed by Godto be president.And he said that to anybody who would listen to him and, um, Charisma, which is a [00:14:00] major media platform, with a primarily Pentecostal audience gave him a platform to, to spread that message.He published a book shortly before the election called God's Chaos Candidate,explaining why he thought that Trump had been anointed by God.and,of course, after Trump won, he now had all this cred as a prophet, because he had prophesied Trump's victory, and he has parlayed that intoMore attention, more money.He got,has been treated by an insider by theTrump world. He was invited to the white house to get a preview briefing of the Jared Kushner Middle East peace initiative. He gets invited to Mar a Lago. So, his really vocal support for Trump made him, made him a MAGA insider.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, so he's a regular panelist on Flashpoint now, but who's the host of Flashpoint?MONTGOMERY: The host is a guy named Gene Bailey. [00:15:00] Who frankly don't know that much about what he was doing before he came to host that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, me neither. He just kind of came out of nowhere for that show, but I'm sure he was doing stuff.MONTGOMERY: yeah, it's funny. I think he was probably a Victory Channel guy, but, um, I just know him in that, in that role. And, he also has made the most of the fact that since Flashpoint has been such a promoter ofTrump and Trump conspiracy theories and this idea that Trump has a, is on a mission from God,that Trump has, has, rewarded him too.Bailey got invited to Mar a Lago last yearfor a one on one interview with Trump.At the RNC this year in MilwaukeeDonald Jr. stopped by to be interviewed by Bailey.So it's they're, they're very close to the truth. Trump team. And the other figures who are routinely on the broadcast include a lot of other, people who are [00:16:00] considered proph…

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Inside the reactionary ideology of JD Vance Sep 24, 2024

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Is politics holding back technological innovation? Sep 19, 2024

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Episode SummaryIt’s tempting to look back on the technological progress we’ve seen in the past few years and marvel at how much things have changed, and they certainly have. But if you zoom out on the historical scale, it’s very arguable that the trends of today were set in motion by processes and ideas of the late 19th century.Brad DeLong, my guest on today’s episode argues just that in his book “Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century,” making the case that the world of today began through industrial, governmental, and scientific breakthroughs that began in 1870 but began stalling in the 2010s.Why did progress slow down drastically and how can we get back toward making things better at a faster pace? Some of it appears to be that ideological conservatism in the U.S. seems to have utterly lost its ability to incorporate new information, which has in turn left Republican administrations unable to form any kind of real and coherent policies, let alone good ones.But there are other reasons things have stalled, and we get into them in the discussion. I hope you’ll enjoy.The video of this discussion is available. The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.Related Content* Neoliberal economics doesn’t work anymore, will a ‘designer economy’ replace it?* Why electric vehicles are here to stay, no matter what problems some manufacturers may have* TESCREAL, the new tech pseudo-religion that’s devouring Republican politics* How hedge funds are destroying local journalism* Between the memes: JD Vance and the reactionary mindAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction04:43 — Modernity and the beginning of the end of scarcity07:33 — Bifurcations of liberalism14:17 — Conservatism regressed rather than keeping pace with technological innovation20:10 — Ronald Reagan versus Donald Trump26:53 — Republicans are experiencing significant “brain drain”36:56 — Technological change and societal uncertainty42:21 — Differences between wealthy Americans and those elsewhere49:09 — Neoliberalism and its impact01:01:20 — The blogosphere and media integrationAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So, let's maybe start with—could you give us a brief overview of your book here and what it's about. It's a very grand scope.BRAD DELONG: It's a very grand book, right? It starts with the bet that the best way to [00:02:00] think about world history is that 1870 is the hinge, on which at which point in time nearly everything changes. That is, before 1870. Poverty and patriarchy. Yeah, the fact that technological progress was slow.Human fecundity is great. And in a pre-industrial world, given infant and child mortality, there's kind of one chance in three that if a woman survives until middle age, she will not have a surviving son. And in a patriarchal world that puts you in a very bad position. So that before 1870, whenever any extra resources showed up.People pretty much decided to use them about let's try to have another kid, to reduce those one in three chances of not having a son to carry on the lineage and help us at our old age to diminish those chances. And what that meant was that there was no possibility of [00:03:00] humanity ever being born.baking a large enough economic pie for everyone to have enough. So if you wanted to have enough well you could try to become extraordinarily productive, but that would only make you a soft target for the people pursuing the other strategy, which would be to join a gang. To become one of the thugs with spears or later gunpowder weapons, or ideally one of the bosses of the thugs with spears, or maybe one of their tame accountants, propagandists, and bureaucrats and so become part of the gang that demanded the peasants and craftsmen give them one third of everything they produce just because that world of societies of domination is very much what human history was before 1870.And in 1870, things change, we get modern economic growth. All of a sudden, technology is not advancing slowly, but instead, humanity's technological prowess is doubling every generation, which means that, [00:04:00] As humans are population can't keep up and after a while society gets rich enough and complex enough that people say, hey, wait a minute, infant mortality has fallen a lot.The average woman really does not need to try to have seven, bring seven pregnancies to live birth over the course of her lifetime. We go through the demographic transition. Now we're approaching zero population growth. Admittedly, with eight and a half billion people, rather than the 1. 3 billion people we had in 1870, but we can see the light at the end of that tunnel.And with population growth slowing while technological progress continues, the resource scarcity relative to technology that kept humanity so poor for so long, ebbs away.Modernity and the beginning of the end of scarcityDELONG: And we look forward for the first time to a world where it will be possible to bake a sufficiently large economic pie So that everyone can have enough that leaves us the problems of slicing the pie Of distributing it fairly or quote [00:05:00] fairly unquote And of properly tasting it of utilizing it Our wealth immense by the standards of any other previous human society of utilizing our wealth so that people feel safe and secure and are healthy and happy, and to build institutions economic, cultural, sociological, political, and so forth to actually manage.Our technology, our economy, and then our sociology and our polity so we can do, the production, distribution and utilization tasks and there were pretty much flummoxed, because every generation technologies advanced and advanced unequally. So you need an entirely different set of tools. of institutions to keep things in balance, and that struggle, our attempt to find good enough institutions to keep the system from crashing completely along with occasional complete crashes, that's the way we should look at the world from 1870 to [00:06:00] Well, to today, and you over that time in the most technologically advanced parts of the world, we have gone from, commercial mercantile to call it pseudo classical semi liberal to applied science to mass production to new deal, social democratic to neoliberal to global value chain.And now we're heading into the attention, info, biotech society and economy, whatever that is. And we've had quite a rough ride. We're here now with no great sense of what would be good institutions for the next 25 years with immense societal wealth and technologically power, still badly distributed and also unsatisfactorily utilized.And that's where we are.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And then we also have the additional problem that as science and technology advanced, many of the people in the [00:07:00] population did not never had access to them either because of, so I'm talking about not just material goods, but intellectual goods. And, so now, as we're trying to do, do make a society Has never in circumstances that have never existed is not people who say that, well, we need to take advice from, bronze age go for bronze ageDELONG: perverts.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly!DELONG: Yes.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So, well, and, so there,Bifurcations of liberalismSHEFFIELD: but there also was kind of a and, you mentioned neoliberalism that, there was also, there were multiple bifurcations of liberalism throughout its existence. And let's, maybe talk about some of those. I mean, like, obviously this is earlier than in your book starts, but you know, there were some in the beginning, let's say the 19th century with the idea that the the controversial idea that slavery should not exist and that [00:08:00] women should have the right to vote.These were controversies and bifurcations of liberalism.DELONG: I think they still are. I think Peter Thiel once wrote down that it was the greatest political catastrophe for America when women got the ballot And he is the principal patron of our republican vice presidential candidates right now As well as being a big fundraiser for trump at various pointsSHEFFIELD: Yeah.Well, and it's interesting also, though, that there, there, there were multiple bifurcations as this continued and like, I think the, legal professor professoriate is probably the best example of kind of this abandoned liberalism, if you will, these people that they actually think that they're liberal and they say that they're liberal, but in fact, everything that they do is right wing.DELONG: Although [00:09:00] it's not at all clear what right wing is.SHEFFIELD: Oh, that's fair.DELONG: That say, if you start back in the Bad old days of societies of domination.It's very clear. Things are hierarchical and patriarchal. And, you're not supposed to be upwardly mobile and you're not supposed to think of yourself as an individual with rights. Instead, you're per your person whom God has slotted into a particular social role, with obligations and maybe a very few privileges.And maybe not. And you have this society at the time, you're distributing the surplus among itself, using various procedures. More or less brutal, more or less civilized with some sense, sometimes, right, that say, in societies springing from, the Germanic strain, [00:10:00] that there are big men and the big men have rights vis a vis the king or the war leader, the Drayton that they cannot simply be ignored.And from the Greco Roman tradition, the idea that the, at least the aristocrats, of the city state and then the empire, have the right to be protected in the Roman Republic by their tribunes against unlawful exertions of force by people in authority, right? That is, imperium is only to be wielded by those who've been properly elected in the campus martius by the Roman people and then follow prescribed.Channels, i. e. Saint Paul saying I am a roman citizen. You centurions are not simply allowed to quit me Just because you feel like it If I weren't a Roman citizen, I, they could, of course, but yeah, and those two things come together with the transformation from a hierarchical to a commercial society to a [00:11:00] society where you aren't really slotted into where your parents were, but instead you have property of your own and you have to find something to do and some network of counterparties and so on social.Connections in order to produce, consume, exist, live, marry, raise up your children, marry them off and so forth. And these two ancestral traditions, kind of, of Greco Roman liberty of the individual, or at least the aristocrat, against arbitrary whippings and killings, and the German big men in society need to have some say and cannot be arbitrarily executed that those combined with the ideas that you need that what's really key to you are your the rights you have as an ability to maneuver in this growing commercial society, your right to life, liberty and to control of enough of your property that their property is yours [00:12:00] and not theirs in the sense that you can use it to pursue your happiness something that's ascribed to all men.Although not to all people, even in the breach, which is the very much earthspring of liberalism. And then it starts from that nugget which, Roman historian, Brett Devereux points out is comes to the fore as commercial society rises, just as the bureaucratic power of the modern state emerges as something that might oppress you not personally, but institutionally.And so the philosophical doctrines of liberalism become a way of attempting to vindicate yourself as an agent, as an independent, autonomous person in this commercial society with this state growing around you. And then we are off and running as what your rights are, who has rights, who properly is a full citizen, who deserves to have rights, grows and grows over the century, and we attempt to establish, [00:13:00] the liberal societies that are the most successful societies so far humanity has ever seen.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, well, and basically, this is really kind of a debate, it's an intra-liberal debate in a lot of ways that the United States sort of, was engaged in, but still the, older tradition of authority and hierarchy that never went away. And like that in a lot of ways was diminished, right?DELONG: My great grandmother, when she chained herself to the Missouri State House fence for, votes for women all that happened was that she was then expelled from the veiled debutante profits from the veiled profit debutante society in St. Louis and a bunch of people cut her at parties.And, when her mother invited African American ambassador, Ralph bunch to dinner in the [00:14:00] 1920s at the house. They did get lots of nasty looks from neighbors and maybe eggs thrown at their windows a couple of but a hundred years before the social consequences would have been much, much greater much, much more negative.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah.Conservatism regressed rather than keeping pace with technological innovationSHEFFIELD: And that's what I mean in that, the, these older traditions, like, I think that is kind of the. The real tension that we have is that, society has, created the created all of these fantastic technological innovations. But the political and sort of the political ecology has not been kept up.So in other words, it's still in a lot of ways,DELONG: still in strange ways, marked by the legacy of societies of domination. Yeah. And I was going to say, Their purpose before 1900.SHEFFIELD: Exactly. And, in a lot of ways, the kind of the cold war and the conflicts of socialism, communism, [00:15:00] fascism, they were not resolved on an intellectual level.They were only resolved on militarily level,DELONG: which is why, Frank Fukuyama's belief in 1991, that the other, two big options, Fascism and communism were now off the table, communism because of its defeat in the battle for production and fascism in the ruins of Berlin in 1945, but you know, you look around the world today and it's definitely fascism does not appear to be so dead.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and nowDELONG: was it Brian Butler this morning who was talking about how the old Republican party rested on, what was it? Patriarchy oriented family conservatism, Ayn Rand libertarian economic fantasies, and the anti communist Cold [00:16:00] War internationalism.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.DELONG: And then they.So what's happened over the past 40 years has been they've swapped out the anticommunist internationalism for neoconservative internationalism. They've swapped that out for, I don't know what to call it, some strange kind of ethno place based anti-immigrants of all kinds. Rich and poor, Hispanic and Jewish.Of all kinds. And that complex, an Ayn Rand style libertarian fantasies with its exaltation of the plutocrat and the kleptocrat the patriarchal view that, women should not be allowed to get divorces and the enormous fear of immigrants who bring bad think of one sort or another, that in itself was enough to push the Republican party over from being an.A very uneasy coalition of groups that [00:17:00] really had next to nothing in common into something that has an attitude toward The way the world should be organized that you can only pull it that politely we call neo fascist And it's very hard to think of a different word for it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think it is it's hard to yeah, it's well and one thing that I thought about though is that kind of You There was also a, displacement within the hierarchy of the Republican party in terms of who was allowed to run things.So, let's say under the Reagan, i…

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Despite the right’s complaints, there really isn’t a liberal media, why not? Sep 12, 2024

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Episode SummaryAfter she became the Democratic Party's standard bearer, Kamala Harris didn't make sweeping changes to the campaign infrastructure that she inherited from Joe Biden. But there is one critical difference between the two campaigns, and that is that Harris’s team, and possibly the candidate herself, seems to have realized that the mainstream media is not her ally, and that news organizations that refuse to state the obvious truth that Donald Trump is a moronic authoritarian who has stage managed to By people who hate American democracy, are themselves not interested in protecting the country from him. The lesson that Harris appears to have learned has been one that Democrats should have learned decades ago. The Republican party is not interested in serving the public, and its policies are about enriching the billionaire oligarchs who control its policymaking apparatus. But there is one group on the political left that learned this lesson a long time ago, the podcasters and writers who came on the scene in the mid 2000s as the liberal blogosphere. And my guest on today’s episode, who goes by the pseudonym Driftglass, was one of the earliest liberal bloggers and is the co-host of the Professional Left Podcast. I personally was there in the beginning of right wing blogging as well, so I thought it would be fun for us to compare notes about how things went back then and how both the left and the right have responded to blogging since that time.The video of this discussion is available. The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.Related Content* The ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ and the long history of right-wing re-branding* How Never Trump Republicans got everything they wanted in him, while denying it all the while* The GOP embrace of violence should be too important for mainstream media outlets to ignore* Ronna McDaniel and the twilight of fictitious Republicans* The New York Times publisher thinks fighting for democracy and a free press is important—in other countriesAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction03:04 — The rise of political blogging07:39 — The legacy media's resistance to change10:36 — When it came to blogs and new voices, the American right was much less conservative than Democrats were15:54 — The "both sides" do it framework benefits the status quo in media and among Democrats32:25 — How the migration of ousted Republicans into the Democratic party made it more conservative34:33 — Democrats' struggle with messaging37:25 — Challenges in enacting progressive policies40:26 — Has Kamala Harris learned from past Democratic mistakes?42:03 — The importance of liberal media infrastructure45:44 — Why policy is not as important as political junkies often think54:28 — Russian influence in right-wing media01:02:46 — ConclusionAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.SHEFFIELD: So both you and I started in the blog world in its very earliest days, and it still exists now, and but things are different in terms of how the left and the right. And so in my case, I started in 2000 running RatherBiased.com criticizing Dan Rather as a right wing blogger.And after that happened, after he basically refused to acknowledge that his documents that he used were fake and everyone knew they were fake. And it was obvious he lost his career at CBS because of that. And everybody on the right, I think, eventually realized, Oh, wow, there's a lot we can do with this stuff. Right wing organizations. And I had an entire pretty big business built off of helping them do that.Whereas on the [00:04:00] left, that is not how things kind of worked with the blogosphere. And you were there, so—DRIFTGLASS: I was. I was, not there at the creation. I was, there at day six of the creation, not day one of the creation. So I was a newbie, and I, still think of myself as a, junior varsity blogger, even though all the varsity members have gone on to greater and better things. Yeah, no I got involved in blogging.My wife started blogging in 2004 because 2004 was, the D-Day. For most of us, it was the, oh my God, George Bush just got reelected. How the hell did this happen? And I started commenting in 2004 and then eventually. I, was a regular over at Steve Jilliard's blog, who was the first front page blogger that Daily Kos ever started featuring on Daily Kos.So he left to do his thing, I visited his place, he basically told me, you have to get out of the comments section, I'm sick of pulling your stuff up and posting it, go get your own goddamn blog, and we'll link to you. So I did that. And that's how we got started. And it was it were heady days, because it really, for a while, looked like We were gonna bend the curve on the legacy media because there was like Ned Lamont. Ned Lamont was the blogosphere candidate that beat Joe Lieberman in a democratic primary. And that looked like, holy crap. The, first Netroots Nation I went to was the one just prior to the 2008 election. And every democratic candidate save one was there. I'm courting the bloggers and there were 200 something international press in attendance and so forth.So it looked petty. It looked like this was the direction we were going because the media was so clearly broken and so clearly unable to cope with what was happening during the Bush administration and the collapse of the economy. And, Katrina comes along and the only people talking in plain, simple blunt [00:06:00] language with details, some of whom were really excellent writers were the bloggers.So. But the reaction to Ned Lamont winning the democratic primary against Joe Lieberman was a hysterical column in the New York times by David Brooks calling us the Tom delays of the left. And we were just the Sunni and the Shia. It was Tom delay, corrupt monster on the right and the net roots on the left.And we were a threat. And I have up on my tab up here somewhere, just because I was doing research today earlier, he was on the hardball show. With Chris Matthews talking about how, yeah, you have the crazies on the right and you have the Netroots crazies on the left. And the Netroots crazies are crazier. And they're all laughing and joking about how nuts the liberals are for saying things that turned out two years later to be absolutely true. And the thing that, that shocked us the most was all of the people who were the, shut those people down, shut them up. They're crazy, they're crackpots, they're nuts. All those people still have their jobs and nothing ever happened to them. There was no market correction. There was no, gee, we really screwed up the Iraq war badly, we're we're sorry. I caught Mr. Brooks's act. I think I mentioned this the last time we talked at the Hammerschmidt Auditorium in Evanston or Elmhurst, Illinois in 2010 and a nice lady in the audience stood up and asked him about all the terrible columns he'd written about liberals and how monstrous we were and how he bashed us and he just stood up there in the pulpit and said, never said that. never, don't remember ever saying anything like that. And he just went gliding around on paths. And he is still the premier conservative writer at the New York effing times.The legacy media's resistance to changeDRIFTGLASS: So the thing we underestimated was how hard the legacy media would work to protect itself from reform and how much effort they would put into legitimizing the right, because it was very important once you lost the, left are all crazy. Doctrine, you had to find a new one [00:08:00] because clearly the George Bush administration was a catastrophe. There's no getting around that. So what's the next move? Well, the next movie as well, both sides are crazy. Both sides are bad. And it became this fetish, which became the state religion of the legacy media. And they're still doing it to this very day. You can watch the New York times, barbering what Donald Trump says, this incoherent gibberish coming out of his mouth, that if you were there, you'd go, the guy's a lunatic. But if you read it in the times, it's like, well, he has a policy proposal for childcare. And so there's this straight line where we just underestimated how tenaciously the legacy media would dig in and just refuse to reform itself. And that's where it all sort of fell apart. That's where it broke into pieces because that's what we, well, we lost, it did remind me a little bit of the hippie movement in the sixties, which I did not go through.But once. It turned out that, like, they were willing to shoot people on campus. And the Chicago cops were willing to crack heads in the streets. And they weren't going to reform, and they weren't going to change. And the Pentagon was not going to be lifted up by love. The movement fell apart. Because there was no plan B. And, so a lot of legacy bloggers are still out there. But, we're still doing what we were doing. But we're watching this circle come all the way around. Which is kind of interesting and exciting and depressing all at once. We'llSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, we'll I definitely want to talk about, the present moment later on. one factor also I think that happened was the rise to prominence and power of Howard Dean. But then after he. Got out as the DNC chair. I think that also probably was a impact guys as well.DRIFTGLASS: It absolutely was. he, screamed that one time that his candidacy was over and although there, there—SHEFFIELD: Yeah, but his DNC can candidacy was after thatDRIFTGLASS: Oh yeah.SHEFFIELD: He still had some juice after that.DRIFTGLASS: There was a lot of a lot of hope for the OFA Obama for America, Obama for America. [00:10:00] that transition would take place and there'd be this sort of infrastructure for And that just sort of, fizzled out and went away as accommodations were trying to be made.And I, think I have lots of thoughts about Barack Obama. He announced his presidency about two miles from where I'm sitting or his, run for office in here in Springfield and I supported him twice, but God damn, that guy just never learned. He just, he kept trying to pretend the Republican party was something other than it really was. And it cost him dearly because he wasn't ready for what they were going to do to him. And he. Was on his back foot almost from day one.When it came to blogs and new voices, the American right was much less conservative than Democrats wereSHEFFIELD: Yeah, he was. And then beyond the sort of the party apparatus, It is interesting to look at the way that the, let's say, the larger media organizations exist on the left and the right, after bloggingwas, became a thing that pretty much now if you go to any right wing website that's of any size, their articles are basically blogs.DRIFTGLASS: Oh, yeah. Yeah,SHEFFIELD: that's, what they are. Whereas number one, there isn't hardly any actual left wing media. And, committedly. I mean, like there's just as an example. So like, you've got the daily wire, you've got daily caller, you've got a heritage foundation, daily signal, you've got of course, Fox news has a bunch of different properties.And then you've got all these other,DRIFTGLASS: Free beacon.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, the free weekend, another one. And but then all these video platforms as well, like real America's voice, Newsmax they've just started another one called the first and then of course you've got the, Christian nationalists over at Salem Media with their town hall and red state and twitchy and hot air.And it is, and then by comparison, there's what? Talking points memo Mother Jones.DRIFTGLASS: [00:12:00] Well, I got a plug crooks and liars because my wife is an editor for crooks and liars And they had the distinctionof being the first video place on the web before anybody had embeddable video They were doing video. SoSHEFFIELD: before YouTube, yeah. Yeah, and what's different though is that all these places that I mentioned, or Washington Monthly was another early blogging site, is that all of these were independently financed. And, to the extent that there were other things that were maybe somewhat lefty sensibility, they were corporate owned.So Daily Beast or Vanity Fair, um, things like that, that, their, goal isn't to be progressive. Their goal is to um, and that's, like that there's a paradox because I think that the left media ecosystem is more capitalistic and more dog eat dog than the right wing media ecosystem, which operates, hugely outside of, and I can say this, having, been inside the right wing ecosystem.I was there, like, these guys are not capitalists. Like, your average right wing commentator, like Ben Shapiro or any of these other They don't know anything about history, they don't know anything about policy, they don't know anything about campaigning. They don't really know much of anything about anything.And, but, what they do is they repeat the talkingDRIFTGLASS: yes, they do.SHEFFIELD: And that's enough, and that's enough for them. Whereas on the left I think that people who can, have the money on the left are like, They think that the general public just kind of will figure things out by themselves. They don't need to be exto behave everything broken down for them and drilled the message into it. They don't think that.DRIFTGLASS: That is a common lament. I don't think that they talk to the public very much. The people who have money don't seem to understand. This was the the reaction to let's dump Joe Biden. There were a [00:14:00] lot of people on the left who got columns all of a sudden in the New York times, freaking out and just demanding that Joe Biden stepped down immediately. Aaron Sorkin got himself a column, and then George Clooney got himself a column, and they were just like hysterical. And I don't think they're coming from a bad place, but they weren't listening to the base who were like, he's our leader, he's the president, he will make up his mind, quit screaming, and calm the f**k down. And then it was, well, we should do a, like a speed dating thing or a convention thing. Like, no, it's Kamala Harris. That's the vice president. That's the person. And so there's all this,SHEFFIELD: people actually votedDRIFTGLASS: who people actually voted for and liked. And, the people who were, getting themselves in the paper or getting themselves op eds or getting themselves on television because they're celebrities or they're well known. I think Aaron Sorkin suggested that Mitt Romney be the vice presidential candidate or something like that. I mean, he was just, he was writing a West Wing, script in the New York Times. And we were laughing at him because the base didn't want any of that. And there's, there is this weird parallel between the two sides in that the Republican Party lost itself because it didn't know what the base was.You get all these conservative elites now who are like never Trumpers and run the bulwark who all swear to God they never had any idea how bad the base really was. And we knew, we were telling you, we were telling you for 20 years, but they didn't want to hear it. They didn't want to listen. And there's still this fantasy that somewhere there's a pony that if we just keep digging through the crap, there'll be a diamond there somewhere.There's a hidden Republican party way over there. And once Trump's gone, we'll recapture it. No.SHEFFIELD: The fever will break.I'm so…

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The Christian right has made sex political, along with everything else Sep 05, 2024

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Episode SummaryEverywhere you look, the radical Christian right is on the march trying to ban abortion, birth control, pornography, and books that they think are insufficiently pure, or insufficiently deferential to their beliefs. Obviously, trying to force everyone to live according to their religion is a huge motivating factor for far-right Christians. But it isn’t the only reason that they’re doing this. It’s also about trying to stop people from experiencing other ways of thinking, and other ways of feeling. Because if people are allowed to choose, they won’t choose the Christian right’s oppressive beliefs. My guest on today’s episode knows a lot about all of that. Her name is Sinn Sage, and she is an adult film actress who has been in the industry for a number of years. And she has a lot to say about this topic and many others— which makes sense since she’s also the host of the podcast “Sage Advice With Sinn Sage,” which focuses on adult entertainment and also relationships and sex.As you might expect, this episode of Theory of Change is “not safe for work.”The video of this discussion is available. The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.Related Content* Trump’s macho personality is making his fans turn MAGA into a fetish* Why the “oldest profession” is a pretty good description of the central role sex work played in ancient societies* How former porn star Nyomi Banks is helping straight men understand intimacy and themselves* 1950s housewife books are the latest trend among far-right women* Why becoming a sexual subject can help women overcome objectification* Personal insecurity and right-wing extremism often go togetherAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction02:00 — Are adult entertainers finally realizing that the far-right wants to criminalize their business?19:11 — Flashback: MAGA porn star Brandi Love expelled from a Charlie Kirk conference24:11 — Why informed and empowered sexuality is dangerous to religious authoritarians28:42 — Repressed male bisexuality and right-wing authoritarianism31:56 — Low-grade podcasters are ruining the lives of their audiences with their awful advice38:03 — Sex work and the human need for intimacy43:56 — Sinn’s journey out of religion01:06:44 — Why seeing others’ humanity makes it so much harder to hate them01:12:55 — Answering the radical feminist critique of pornography01:17:02 — Why intimacy and attraction are essential01:27:42 — Artificial intelligence and the future of adult mediaAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: One of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you is that you are so political and you know so much about where your industry is positioned in society as a whole.Do you ever feel like you feel that you're kind of alone in that regard, or you wish people knew more or were more active in trying to preserve and advocate for themselves? Is that something you've thought about, is that part of why you started your podcast? I don't know. That's a lot of questions there. So you can answer what you want.SINN SAGE: No, You're good. No. I will say that's, that is not part of why I started my podcast to activate people or people in my own industry. Not so much to activate society at large to be like, see, I felt strongly. There are lots of times I think as a performer, you come up with a platform.Once you realize you have a platform, right? Once you realize I've got this many people following me on these many different social media platforms, paying attention to what I say, You have to come, you have to decide for yourself. And how am I going to use that? And I don't, I'm not going to judge anyone for making the choice to use their platform just to make an income.Like that is your f*****g choice and you do not have to be engaged with this stuff. That's a big thing. A lot of us sex workers say in general is like, “get your bag.” Like, I'm not mad at you for it.So I don't feel like the sense of like, wow, why can't I pull more of you into this? It's I'm just like, I can only speak for myself. But when I looked around and I saw the size of my platform and I saw how passionately I feel, especially about queer issues and as years have gone on, how Like the fight is here and I need to be engaged with it.Like I need to be a part of it because [00:04:00] my goal is queer people and sex worker, total liberation. I don't. Want any of this hate. I don't think we deserve it, but so that was a conscious choice that I made. And there have even been times where I'm just like, Oh, maybe I should just like pull back on this a little bit.And, maybe then like I'd make a little more money and I'd be a little more stable or something. Especially. In 2016, that was really rough, and my Twitter account was at over $300,000. And ever since 20 $16, 300,000 followers, sorry. And ever since 2016, I've dropped down to like 2 98 or something, and I've never gone back up over 300.So that's something that made me be like, does this. Is this something when I want to do like I, and I, Oh, I also received a few emails from people who were like I want to order a custom video where you wear a Trump hat and then s**t gets dumped on your head and, stuff like this, because, there's just so loving over there on that side of things, but,Real Christlike, but I saw some of that, like direct backlash.I also got caught up, f*****g no doubt, like I was definitely caught up. I deleted my Facebook account in 2018 because it was like people that I grew up with, being friends with we're on Facebook and just like fighting and saying these really horrible things about each other. And Yeah, I was like, you know what?And a number of things. It's just the way I saw certain people using Facebook and I just think it's a terrible,SHEFFIELD: Well, it's just filled with so much trash. Like I hate Facebook.SAGE: It's like it's awful. So I got rid of that account.SHEFFIELD: A cesspool.SAGE: Yes, cesspool. But so is Twitter, but the difference is, I figured this out kind of recently, is that like on Facebook, it's all your friends and family on Twitter and [00:06:00] Instagram and all these places, it's a lot.It's mainly strangers and so.SHEFFIELD: And a lot of them like you,SAGE: Oh yeah. And so doing it on, and so having these opinions and a lot of people agree with me when a lot of people think differently from me, but they still appreciate hearing the things that I say. And I've even had, I've even had people say, I used to think this way.I listened to everything you were saying. I saw how much sense it made. And I sort of. Change the way I think about things. And I was like, Jesus, crap, I'm doing it. It's happening. But like that. So when I think about what, one of the aspects that really motivated me to make my podcast, it was more about hope.Using that, using my platform in the ways to uplift these people, these specific people, sex workers, especially. So sex workers and queer people is huge in my podcast because I want to normalize and humanize, I want to normalize conversations around sex and sex work and queerness, and I want to humanize sex workers and queer people.And I think that like the format that I use of my podcast is it lends itself to that. I think a lot of that is going on and I think like if people just stumble across it and find it and maybe their mind is flexible enough to hear some of the things that we talk about and recognize the issues on a societal aspect.The other thing about the question that you had asked me is that like, in my community of sex workers. Um, they are pretty activated, not all of them. And like I said, that's fine. But a lot of them, and that's probably why, like, I am friends with them.SHEFFIELD: You like them because they agree with you (laughs). But they should, but they should!SAGE: But it’s not just that they agree with me, but that they are also activated in the same way that they are also advocates for these things.And like someone that I met in Vegas. Summer Hart, like [00:08:00] she's just so smart. So she's like, she is the, like a body I would sculpt out of clay. I mean, she's just got like, she's got, she's totally natural. And she's got huge titties and a big round ass and the small little waist. And I mean, she's just like, And she's just beautiful and she's stunning to look at and very successful, but she's also so f*****g smart that like, honestly, there's so many times that I'm like, I can say all of these things, but then I start firing up my limbic part of my brain and I get like real confused because I'm just too passionate about it.I'm like, go talk to summer because she is just so f*****g well spoken and she's such a good activist about these things and she is actually like gone to the f*****g state legislators and had meetings and tried to like, get them to understand what sex trafficking really is. And. Like what the policy should be when sex workers are arrested on the streets of Vegas and stuff and that it shouldn't, we want to do harm reduction, not put them in a worse place.She's actually got, gotten to have seats at the table in these things. Places. And so, she runs SWAID, which is Sex Worker Mutual Aid and people can apply for micro grants through SWAID, sex workers can. And this is a nationwide program. She's got plan B, she's got Narcan test kits, and all of these various things, and she's just like passionate about getting it out to people and just, man, such a good activist. And so, so yeah, people like that. I tend to be more, I guess, drawn to it. We have a personal friendship, beyond, work.So, so I do see a lot of that.SHEFFIELD: Well, that's good. Yeah. Did you catch that little incident that was involving Brandi Love and that right wing conference, a couple of years ago, did you see that?SAGE: Oh so I, [00:10:00] did not see that, but if I find out that a performer is MAGA, like they are on my list. I won't follow them and I don't want to have anything to do with them. So I did, I was aware of that. I had people say, I want to put you in a scene with this person. And I was like, ‘Nope, I'm doing okay on my own. I don't need to be in a scene and I will not work with that person.’Because there's just so much self delusion going on there. Mainly with the fact that they don’t care that Republicans are trying to stop porn. They have let the evangelicals take over that party a hundred percent. And their number one goal is to take away rights from women over their own bodies.They want abortion ban over the whole country. Does not care how many children get raped.SHEFFIELD: They do not.SAGE: want queer people to get married. And it's like, especially what really makes me f*****g almost the most angry is like, these women perform in girl-girl scenes, you're performing lesbian acts on camera for money.So you're totally cool to exploit that aspect of it for your own personal gain. But when it comes to like the rights of these people in this country, you could give a f**k. You do not care at all. And so like, That part of it blows my mind. And then the part of it where it's like, you think, that you're going to be the special one that like gets to go ahead and keep making porn and keep living the lifestyle that you live.No, they will throw you in a f*****g camp too. Like they will throw you in jail when they implement their Project 2025 b******t, when they make porn illegal, you read it right there in black and f*****g white. Exactly what they want to do. They want to criminalize porn. They want to jail pornographers. And you're out there waving your MAGA flag!Like just the cognitive dissonance is, it's it's staggering, the levels [00:12:00] there. And those are the same people that will just say, they'll be like, Oh, that's not going to happen. Like, do you know how many people said that about Roe versus Wade? Like, Everyone was saying that.No, they'll never do that. It'll be fine. And now we live in a world where f*****g 10 year olds get impregnated by their dad and can't get abortions. Like, and you're f*****g okay with this. I'm sorry. AndSHEFFIELD: you're going for that party. Yeah.SAGE: And you want that. You are going to go in that voting booth and vote for that motherfucker.Like, Oh, man, it just,SHEFFIELD: I trySAGE: to like, not like in these situations, I'm down if I'm like, let's f*****g talk about it. Let's do it. But I have to really try hard to live my life with peace. So I, and I feel, and I, feel like I'm very constantly always walking this tight rope where it's like on one side, I'm so f*****g outraged by all of this stuff.And I feel like such a passionate drive towards activism and and then on the other side of this tightrope, it's like, man, I just want to live, be happy. I just want to live in peace. And I, and the media and the, like, my goddamn phone is constantly trying to, like, get me. Enraged and get me like responding and boosting the algorithm and stuff.And it's like, it's, very difficult to find a place to, to find that place of peace to, sort of detach from reality and remember that, like what's real, like, not, I'll be dead and none of this will have mattered, but I'm here now and it f*****g matters.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, it makes sense. And Steve [00:14:00] Bannon, when he first came in as Trump's chief of staff or I guess White House advisor he said that their goal was to “flood the media zone with s**t.” And for a very good reason, because like they want people who are normal and affirming and progressive, they want you to see all this s**t and be so disgusted by it that you're just like, Oh, I cannot deal with this awful s**t anymore.I'm turning, I'm tuning out, I'm dropping out and and that's how they win. Because like. Americans, they don't want this s**t. They don't criminalize abortion. They don't want to criminalize birth control. They don't want to have mandatory prayer in school. They don't want any, they want their porn, like they want their marijuana.Like, this is what most people want and, but the goal, but they can, but the right wing can only do this by getting people to just be so disgusted and turning out and just like, oh, it's, just too awful. I can't handle it. I can't handle it. Yeah.SAGE: Yeah. And I do. Figuring out how to do that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So figuring out, how to be like, well, this is awful. But I exist in my own space and it is a positive space where I am around me. That's, I think, I feel like that's the ticket. And as much as you can cutting out personal drama and people who create problems for you in your life. Because yeah, you don't need to deal with that s**t. If you have a relative that won't leave you alone or a neighbor, that just pisses you off all the time. Don't talk to them.SAGE: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: It's totally okay.SAGE: It's beyond okay. Like, yeah, you don't, I don't think I a lot of times I really don't think that like engaging in arguments with people who are on the other side of the Your political beliefs. [00:16:00] I don't, I think we've reached this stage politically as a nation where I don't think that is productive even.I think it's like, you are just you're just talking to, yeah, you're, talking to a bric…

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How Republicans became the party of misogynist trolls Aug 15, 2024

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Episode SummaryIf Samuel Johnson was right that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, surely trolling is the last refuge of people who cannot win an argument. In the modern political landscape, the far-right movement that dominates Republican politics has increasingly turned to trolling as a strategy to compensate for the intellectual bankruptcy of its core beliefs. Incapable of engaging in genuine debate, Republicans under the tutelage of Donald Trump have become the troll party—using harassment, misinformation, and online provocations to discredit opponents and manipulate public discourse.Even if Trump had never come along, however, it was almost inevitable that the online trolling culture that began emerging in the early 2000s on websites like 4chan would eventually merge in with the Christian far right, not necessarily because they agree on their worldviews, but because their personal extremism and misogyny overlap perfectly. Online communities such as incels, “groypers,” and other extremist factions within the far-right have embraced trolling as a tool to spread their misogynistic ideologies. These groups, often sidelined in mainstream society, find empowerment in digital spaces where they can attack women and feminists without facing real-world consequences.Rather than attempting to persuade through reasoned argument, the far-right focuses on destabilizing public discourse, making it harder for truth and reason to prevail. This strategy not only poisons political debate but also reinforces the toxic elements within the far-right itself, as it encourages a cycle of hostility, extremism, and intellectual stagnation.In this episode, I’m joined by Robyn Pennacchia, a writer at Wonkette.com who has been covering the online misogyny space for more than a decade.The video of this discussion is available. The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.This episode aired previously on July 22, 2021.Audio Chapters00:00 — Introduction10:42 — Turning Point USA versus Nick Fuentes and the "groypers"20:54 — Debate culture and conservative hypocrisy23:32 — The evolution of online misogynistic groups after Elliot Rodger29:19 — "Gamergate" as the crossover moment between trolls and Republicans34:03 — January 6th and the alt-right's media attention37:43 — Mainstream journalism still hasn't figured out how to cover right-wing trolls44:52 — Non-troll Republicans still haven't realized that it's not their party53:20 — The old-guard Republican oligarchs still draw the line at pro-public economicsAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Robyn has been looking at online misogyny for quite some time. And I figured she would be one of the best people I could talk to about all this. She used to write a column for Wonkette that was called “The Week in Garbage Men,” and I love the term on that, because certainly there are a lot of garbage right wing men on the internet, but Robyn, you, had been covering that subject, for a lot longer than your time at one cat. I understand since about, 2012, can you tell, tell us a little bit about. What got you interested in this subject?ROBYN PENNACCHIA: I'm actually not sure where I first came upon, um, the PUA hate site. It was a long time ago. I think mostly like we, a bunch of feminists at the time, like feminist bloggers had found a lot of these sites, that were just directed. Towards straight up misogyny. And one of them was PUA hate, which is, where all of the incel stuff first started for the most part.I mean, there were non [00:02:00] misogynistic incels at that point. but this like that whole, aesthetic, I guess, really like just stated and was born at PUA hate. com, which no longer exists and was taken a member of that group, Elliot Roger, went and murdered a bunch of people in 2014.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And I mean, and that was, he really kind of inspired a lot of these people afterward, like they refer to him as a St. Elliot, and make memes glorifying him, just as if he was a, A Christian saint or, or whatever, I mean, it's really disturbing and a lot of people, even now I feel like are not aware that this stuff exists. Would you say that?PENNACCHIA: I mean, it was a huge, huge, huge thing for a while to the point where, like, it's been a storyline on several different television shows, most recently “Evil,” the show where they're like, exorcizing demons and whatnot had a whole incel storyline last season. where not spoiler alert, this guy who is evil and like a demon of some kind. and also the guy from lost, I don't, really understand what his deal is, but he convinced this one guy to go and join an incel group and try and murder a bunch of people, but.It didn't work out. SoSHEFFIELD: yeah. yeah, well, and, but at the same time though, I think while people may be aware of it, it exists more than before. They, I, there's, I, I found that there's kind of a similar, thought pattern about, the religious right, the Christian right in general, also that people are like, yeah, they're out there, but no, they're just not relevant.[00:04:00]to anything. No one cares what they do. They're just dumb. Like, everyone knows they're dumb. is that, is that something you, you encounter from people?PENNACCHIA: To some degree, although I do think that, the amount of people that they've actually murdered, has resulted in people taking them pretty seriously.SHEFFIELD: As somebody who writes about the Christian far right a lot, when tweets about it, a lot of times I will. Encounter. And this is especially true from like centrist media outlets. They'll be like, ah, no one cares about what these people say. They're irrelevant. and like, they're just a joke and like, why write about them?Is, have you ever had, has anybody said something like that?PENNACCHIA: Well, I think everyone collects like very few people. are trying to justify them unless they're, Jordan Peterson, who is a very big fan of justifying them. But they have had an influence, I would say, on the larger, right wing anti feminist bent more so than probably, Any other, group thing other than Christianity.So they have like a lot of the same anger towards the sexual revolution, a lot of the same anger towards, women being able to do whatever they want. And a lot of the, there's been a lot of, mingling, I would say, even if everyone says, Oh, these guys are losers who cares about them.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.Yeah. Oh no, that's no, you're right. That that's exactly how they fit in. and there's a, there's an interesting, book out there, that I would recommend people if you're interested in, in how sort of a lot of this stuff correlates, it's called the long Southern strategy. and [00:06:00] it's by Angie Maxwell and Todd shields.they're Professors at the University of Arkansas and, it kind of shows how misogyny is really interconnected with a lot of other things that you wouldn't necessarily think. So, such as racism or such as, Christian supremacy. and what's, if you look at right wing politics over time, cause it started mostly in the 1940s, 1950s, in the United States as a formal conservative movement, quote, unquote, and in the beginning, a lot of the popularity that they had was racially based.So opposition to segregation, that was how the religious right originally got engaged in politics, because the. Government was closing down the, segregation academies that they had created after Brown versus Board of Education, or it was going to tax them. And that got them interested in supporting Ronald Reagan.And then after that, kind of the Christian supremacism is very strong, for a lot of, boomer and older people. And then among younger people, let's say young Gen X and younger, Anti feminism seems a very strong, component in what they do. Like, they hate like real, they're obsessed with you guys.PENNACCHIA: Somewhat. Yeah. Well, I think what they're really upset about is that, feminism generally won, like they're outside of like trad wives and like very specific, genre groups generally speaking, like women work. women, Have no problems speaking their mind. And most of all, women are not just like getting married to the first dude who comes along and.[00:08:00]staying with him forever because she has no, because she has no other choice, which frankly, you know, considering Betty Broderick and whatnot, you would think would be good for them. ButSHEFFIELD: yeah. Well, why don't you explain that reference there?PENNACCHIA: Betty Broderick was a 1980s who killed her husband. after he left her, but she had put him through college.She had supported him the whole time. And when he left her, she had nothing and wasn't able to, or, earn a living or really do anything because she had just been a housewife for so long. And, she had never been able to, achieve her dreams. And as a result, when they got divorced, she was screwed.And this had happened to a lot of other women. But a lot of these men really like this idea of women being trapped in this way because they don't, they're angry about no fault divorce. They're angry about, a lot of these things that It's like permit women to leave. they're mad at things that permit women to, wait a long time before getting married and having kids, anything like that, because they have just, these ideas of how things would be better for them if that were the case.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and, and, and so a lot of that kind of intersects with, of course, the Christian rights view of how women should be, that their place is in the home and, and you should obey your husband. And so, and, and what's been kind of interesting though, is that, so you do have this sort of intersection of cultures where people who, are, may not necessarily be religious, but they are anti feminist and they're, or they, [00:10:00] are anti Muslim.and so you're, you're seeing an influx kind of into Republican politics of non white Christians in recent years. So like for instance, Donald Trump in 2020 improved his, his voting performance among Hispanics, among African Americans, and among white women. compared to 2016 and actually why he lost was that he had, he had, actually lost quite a bit of white men in his vote, because they were like, holy s**t, this dude is crazy.Like my friends had told me that he was crazy. Maybe they were right. And it was educated white men who basically left. and that's why he ended up losing.Turning Point USA versus Nick Fuentes and the "groypers"SHEFFIELD: Um, so, but you know, and, and one of the, we've, we had an incident recently with One of these new conservatives who has come in, her name is, she's a, a porn actress and her name is Brandy Love.There's a picture of her on the screen there. She's got her Trump shirt, and doing a selfie for everybody. and, She is a, very famous in the industry. I would say, she's kind of like the, the Jason kid of porn, if you will. and, so very well known and she tried to go to the, a convention run by the Turning Point USA.group, which is, this group that basically functions as a propaganda organization for young people and to try to propagandize them with basically Christian nationalist Republican, talking points and brainwash them. And it's an interesting group because unfortunately for them and people, they don't get a lot of attention from the mass media, but one thing they did become known for was.They had a guy, they had some college students wear diapers and baby clothes [00:12:00] to protest what they said was childish censorship on the part of liberals, because liberals couldn't handle disagreement and so they were just like babies, according to Turning Point. And so, and of course, needless to say, everybody thought that was absolutely hilarious that they were going to own the libs by dressing in diapers.And they became national news after that. And, but more recently, though, they have kind of been under attack by this alt right Christian supremacist group, who collectively refer to themselves as Gropers. can you talk a little bit about that group and what they've been trying to do to turn any point, Robyn?PENNACCHIA: Okay, so they, have mostly coalesced around, this, white nationalist, Nick Fuentes. Like, they are all fans of his, and there's been a lot of drama between Turning Point and the Groypers going back to, probably about 2017, like a few years actually. this one member of Turning Point was photographed hanging out with, Fuentes and a bunch of the other, white nationalists, but in trouble.Right wing watch, showed. Charlie Kirk, the pictures of them hanging out and he denounced white nationalists and, they, she got severed from the organization and everything. So they've basically been like bickering since then. And they didn't get along too well before then either, but that's been like the main, issue like that started everything.And ever since then, the gripers have been going and, to various TPUSA events and trying to cause trouble. at this particular event, So Nick Fuentes has been banned for, from the TPUSA convention for years, but several of his followers [00:14:00] went. And one of the ones who went actually saw Brandy Love and started, putting it out on Telegram.Oh, they won't take Fuentes into the TPUSA, but they'll let this porn star in. And so there was a whole bunch of drama. She gets kicked out by email. She ends up posting about it online and. All of these conservative people are like, no, we don't like porn stars. We don't like what you do. That's actually not okay with us at all.as it turns out, we are really sex negative, except oddly for Ben Domenic. I think that's how you pronounce his last name, but Meghan McCain's feller. he came out and defense of her saying that the GOP should be a big tent party, but she's also written for the Federalists, so.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and it's important also to note here that, so I'm going to just put on the screen, this is a picture that, that Brandy Love took, When she was, had arrived there at the, at the convention of the turning point, this is a student action summit, as they called it.So it's geared toward high school and college students. and she obviously was dressed appropriately. And she was an attendee. she's got her regular, she, she paid for a VIP, backstage pass, or like granted access to some rooms, but she wasn't a speaker. She was just literally showing up there to watch these awful people speak.And like, that was too much for Turning Point because, and, and I, I think, the something that people don't realize about this feud and is that, Fuentes, his a huge part of his mojo is basically taking the Christian Nationalist stuff and turning it up [00:16:00] to not just 11, like 15 and being like, well, look, you say that you're a Christian conservative.Well, what have you conserved? Look at all these women out here who have jobs. Look at all these Porn stars who are, at our conservative events look at all these things here. And, and, and by the way, the Bible says that there's nothing wrong with racism. so no, and of course he's right.the Bible says slavery is okay. and that slaves need to obey their masters, as a matter of fact, in that in Romans 13. It literally says it's a sin to, oppose the government leaders. so, but apparently that doesn't apply to Joe Biden.PENNACCHIA: No, it literally only applies to Republicans. That…

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How gay Republicans helped build a political party that hates LGBT people Aug 10, 2024

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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit plus.flux.communityEpisode SummaryIn public opinion surveys, people who are gay and lesbian tend to overwhelmingly back the Democratic party. According to Gallup, 83 percent of both groups identify or lean toward Democrats. This seems like such an obvious preference given the Republican alternative, but the extremely lopsided support that Democrats get from gays and lesbians is actually a relatively recent development.Although the contemporary Republican Party is known as an identity group for straight White Christians, long before Stonewall, more than a few gay politicos thought that shrinking government generally was a way to keep it out of the bedroom as well.That viewpoint very clearly does not belong in today’s Republican party of Donald Trump and JD Vance with its hateful obsessions over imaginary pedophiles and trans athletes, but it’s still important to learn about the gay Republican experience, not just because it gives us a fuller picture of the past, but also because it may give some guidance as to where the far-right is headed in the future.I’ll be talking about all of this with my guest in today’s episode, his name is Neil J. Young, and he’s written a very interesting book called Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right, which is now available.The video of this discussion is available. The transcript of audio is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.Flux is a community-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please stay in touch.Related ContentHow an oversharing Christian blogger unintentionally created doubts about his sexualityWhy far-right Christians are using sex to sell religionHow a silly video of women dancing to a rap song caused a nationwide Republican freak-outJewish gay fascists and Christian incels are battling for the future of the American rightHow social movements can be exploitative and empowering simultaneouslyHow MAGA is becoming a sexual fetishThe ‘world’s oldest profession’ is attaining new relevance in the internet ageAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction03:20 — The closet was a bipartisan thing in the beginning05:51 — Libertarianism and gay Republicans09:51 — Anti-communism and the closet14:23 — Marvin Liebman and William Rusher's hopes for limited government27:10 — Ronald Reagan's more libertarian term as California governor34:15 — Terry Dolan and the gay DC Republican subcultureThe chapters below are for paid subscribers only. Please support the show and get full access!41:02 — How concerns about a possible “gay gene” motivated some activists against abortion rights43:38 — Arthur Finkelstein, influential gay Republican activist and fundraiser46:21 — How mainstream media became the only real place for gay conservatives52:01 — LGBTQ media's response to the Christian Right takeover of the Republican party56:26 — The bipartisan spirit of early LGBTQ political organizations58:54 — Did bipartisanship make same-sex marriage and nondiscrimination laws easier and more secure?01:04:07 — The precarious position of right-wing drag queens01:10:54 — Today's gay Republicans are much more extreme than their predecessors01:15:00 — How hyper-masculine gay reactionaries are reaching out to fundamentalists and incels01:32:20 — Conclusion and further resourcesAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So this is a book that I think is long overdue because gay and lesbian people in the Republican party have always been some of the highest and most influential operatives and activists.And yet most people are not aware of that. Like if you live in DC and you work in politics there, you know that, but most people outside of that very limited world are not aware of any of these stories or any of these people. Or at least the, their personal lives, we'll say they, they might know them from their professional achievement, shall we say?But your book starts off with the concept of the double life, which would seem inevitable, for somebody working in a reactionary political movement who is not heterosexual.NEIL J. YOUNG: Yeah. I mean, I think one of the big themes of this book is the ongoing presence of the closet. And I think people who follow the news probably can think of some recent examples of that. I mean, it's a, it's a fairly, I think regular feature of political news in this country that, Republicans get outed as gay where it's Larry Craig or Aaron Schock after the fact, or there's some sort of more recent ones.But I was impressed to discover how much that was the case, even more so than I expected. And one of the things I realized if the history of the closet was going to be such a huge [00:04:00] part of this story, that it actually made sense to begin in the era of the closet and sort of mid century America.Where everyone was closeted for the most part, and that being closeted wasn't a condition of one's politics as much as it was just the state of life at the time in the 1950s and 60s. So, I thought this book was going to begin in the late 70s, and that's in fact where my book proposal started, but as I really delved more into the history, And realized again, the importance of the closet as this ongoing aspect.I want to just start in the air of the closet when one, no matter if you're a Republican or if you're a Democrat your life is really closeted because I think there's just this conception people have that like Republicans. Not gay, anti gay, and therefore anyone who's associated with it had to be closeted, and there's a very different history for the Democratic Party.And so I wanted to start in a period of time in which that, that difference wasn't the case and what does it mean for Republican men? in the 1950s to have been homosexuals.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And and it's true. I mean, in, in essence, in a lot of ways, this was the same starting point for both left wing and right wing gays, basically.That's right. Exactly.Libertarianism and gay RepublicansSHEFFIELD: Um, and, and, and in some sense because in, in some sense, because the in the mid 20th century, there was, the development of, of libertarianism as, kind of a, a right wing form of liberalism. And that some of the earliest the earliest libertarians were in fact atheists.And so in some sense, like there. For some people, they may actually have started, had a little bit easier freedom of movement to be gay, if not, to the public, at least have it be known, within the movement that they operated in. Do you, would you agree with that?YOUNG: [00:06:00] Yeah, I think a lot of gay men in the fifties and the sixties who are sort of right of center, they found libertarianism particularly.Useful for sort of, I think, understanding their life and as a sort of model for what they hope the nation would pursue politically, because their sort of sense of, especially at the time, the 1950s, I mean, this is the Cold War era, right? So huge federal, governmental repression and criminalization of gay people.And of course this was happening in a bipartisan effort. Democrats and Republicans alike were joined in creating, what historians have called the lavender scare this cold war repressive state that sought to, especially in DC and in, in the, in the in the, within the federal government to root out and find homosexuals and to fire them from their jobs and really to ruin their lives.But that wasn't just the case in D. C. It was the case all across the country. I mean, law enforcement everywhere was targeting homosexuals. And so you have a good number of people who I was really surprised to discover how many there were of gay men who said, okay, the path to freedom here is through Curtailing government power through restricting the powers of the government and that sort of libertarian vision of how the government should operate was one in which they imagined freedom for the, for themselves which is, of course, different than the sort of rights based civil rights connected.Notion of freedom and equality that's developing on the left for gay persons.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that's right. And and this, this moment in time, also the, the mid 20th century was kind of when there was the, the bifurcation of liberalism into progressivism and Libertarianism, right? And and it's, it's interesting because I think even today, a lot of people who [00:08:00] identify well, who, who very obviously have right wing libertarian views like Joe Rogan people in his orbit, they actually think that they're, On the left, it's kind of incredible, but, but, but you can see the starting point, like, for instance, in the, the whole in the hippie movement and some of these, kind of, I mean, like the phrase, if it feels good, do it.That was both that was a ended up being more about. Personal liberation in the views of some people and less about political liberation,YOUNG: right? Right, right. Yeah. These different sort of notions of freedom that could operate in this period that aren't necessarily tied to one partisan position or another, but like serve as sort of an imaginative, an imaginative theory of the world.And also as a really I think useful discourse but like tweaked in different directions depending on sort of the larger political commitments.Anti-communism and the closetSHEFFIELD: so obviously on the right, while there was this kind of burgeoning libertarian tradition, there was Joe McCarthy, who was really the biggest perpetrator of the lavender scare. And, among other things, he made it very clear that he, not only was he trying to root out. Supposed communist in the government.He was also going after homosexual men. And so, and then of course he had a gay man on his own staff. Let's maybe talk about Roy Cohn in that context. We'll have, we'll come back to him later. I don't want to talk all the way about it yet. But he's certainly an interesting character and very emblematic to this story.YOUNG: Yeah. And I don't really write about Conan the book because he's been covered so much. But he's obviously relevant to this history here. And I actually focus on some. Some characters who are less well known to most readers but the, who do have connections to McCarthy some of them directly, some of them just are sort of aligned with him politically.And it took me a really long time to even figure out what [00:10:00] is this about? Because I think. You have someone like Cone, who's like a complicated psychological figure, right? Like, there's, and, and, a lot of people have sort of wrestled with him and his psychology and what that means for his period of history.But for some of these other folks who, are not as well known and who I didn't necessarily have access to, their personal papers as much as to really delve into like, what is their inner psychology of this? But I wanted to make sense of like, why would they be aligned with someone like McCarthy?Why would they, why are they not also libertarians? Like, why do they have what is seen as more of sort of hard edge conservatism in this period? And one of the things that I, I sort of discovered and and that I make an argument of this section of the book is that a lot of these guys. found that sort of fierce anti communism as a way that they actually maintain the closet for themselves.And so in some ways that seems a little bit contradictory. You would think, why would you want to be aligned or close to a person like this? Because wouldn't you be worried that you would be exposed, right? But I found that a lot of these figures their way of sort of maintaining their position and even their idea of how they might gain power and in Washington, D.C. was to assist this anti communist fervor, even as it had a sort of anti homosexual focus, at the forefront. as a way that they themselves passed. And I think, does that make them hypocrites? Does that make them sellouts? Like, yes, probably. But I don't think that's necessarily even the most interesting thing that we can understand about these folks.Although it's certainly relevant, but I think sort of understanding how. In a period of heavy repression and heavy fear that some, a lot of folks actually used this anti communist fervor and sort of the ugly [00:12:00] dimensions of this politics as their own way of building as their way of building their particular closets.SHEFFIELD: Well, and also I think to some extent. It seems like they also thought that they could steer things in a more, as you were saying earlier that a more limited government direction. So, because like, I mean, originally, for instance, when you look at William F. Buckley's, God and Man.At Yale book, that book is extremely, right wing Christian, social conservative book including it calling out, people for, if I forget how many people specifically he called out as gay, but there were a couple that he did and said that that was nefarious. But, like, and then he wanted people to be fired for saying Jesus didn't rise from the dead and various things like that.So, but, but eventually he, he fell in with William Rusher, who is one of the, one of these people that you're talking about as kind of a post McCarthy figure him and along with Marvin Liebman.Marvin Liebman and William Rusher's hopes for limited governmentSHEFFIELD: Um, so, For these, both of these guys are not very widely known now. So why don't you tell us a little, for those, for tell us who they are and what they, what they did.YOUNG: Yeah, so Marvin Liebman is a huge character of my book. He's a really important figure. He was born in Brooklyn. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland, from Eastern Europe, who'd come to the U. S. in the early 20th century. And he grew up in Brooklyn, and in a very sort of immigrant area of Italians and Poles and a large Jewish community.And he As many people in his community did in this period of time in the 1920s and 30s, he became very active in the Communist Party, USA, first through an organization and his high school, and then ultimately he was very active in the Manhattan chapter of the Communist Party, USA, and he went off to war.He served in World War Two. He [00:14:00] was outed and discharged because one of his commanding officers read some letters that he was writing to another day soldier. And he came back home and in the 1940s he was involved in fundraising efforts on the left, but he slowly moved to the right. And especially as, and I think a lot of, as, as most people who know this history know, a lot of people broke with the communist party.USA in the late 1940s because of the stuff they were learning about the atrocities of Stalin and Stalinism that were coming out of the Soviet Union in the time. And so by the late 1940s, he's sort of moved to a right of center position and becomes increasingly anti communist in the 1950s. And through that development of his politics, he becomes connected to William F.Buckley and Buckley, he meets with Buckley when Buckley has this idea to launch the National Review and Liebman doesn't think that the National Review is going to work because it's You know, he thinks there's not really a conservative movement in the country and this at the time, and like, who would read this magazine but he's, he's committed to helping Buckley, and so he provides a lot of the early fundraising that keeps the National Review afloat in those early years, and, a lot of people have said that if it hadn't been for Liebman's fundraising prowess the National Review would have never made it thro…

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