Know Your Enemy

Latest Episodes:

In Search of Anti-Semitism (w/ John Ganz) Oct 13, 2023

Show notes

In a 1991, William F. Buckley, Jr. dedicated almost an entire issue of National Review to an essay entitled "In Search of Anti-Semitism." In its pages, Buckley attempted to adjudicate a conflict that was then roiling America's right wing intelligentsia — over whether two of its leading lights, Pat Buchanan and Joseph Sobran, were guilty of antisemitism in their syndicated columns and speeches. (Never one to miss an opportunity to antagonize an enemy or blame the left, Buckley threw in Gore Vidal for good measure.) The article, despite its meandering prose and fuzzy-headed conclusions, sparked an enormous response from NR's readership, some of whom felt Buckley was too hard on Pat and Joe, others who thought he was not hard enough.

The following year, Buckley combined the essay, several of the responses, and a few new thoughts of his own... and sold it as a "book." And thirty-one years later, we read that book — carefully — and recorded a podcast about it with our friend John Ganz, author of the forthcoming book, When the Clock Broke, about the derangement of American politics in the 1990s. (You can pre-order it here. It's sure to be excellent).

Unfortunately for us all, In Search of Anti-Semitism is not a good book; it's hardly a book at all. But it is a fascinating artifact of a fleeting post-Cold War moment in which conservatives furtively faced their own demons — before turning right back around.

For those interested, here is the link mentioned in the episode's introduction for tickets to Dissent's 70th anniversary event later this month.

Sources:

William F. Buckley Jr., In Search of Anti-Semitism (1992)

John Ganz, "The Year the Clock Broke," The Baffler, Nov 2018

Joshua Muravchik, "Pat Buchanan and the Jews," Commentary, Jan 1991

Matthew Sitman, "There Will Be No Buckley Revival," Commonweal, July 2015

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House of Pain (w/ Eric Levitz) [Teaser] Oct 07, 2023

Show notes

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this premium episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Republican congressman Kevin McCarthy always wanted to make history—and he did when, earlier this week, he became the first Speaker of the House to be ousted from the job after eight Republicans joined Democrats to approve a motion to vacate the position. How does a motion to vacate work? What events led to McCarthy's fall from grace? How deranged is the Republican caucus in the House, and how did they get that way? Were Democrats right to not bail out McCarthy? In this episode, Matt and Sam are joined by New York's Eric Levitz to provides answers to all these question—and more.

Listen:

Todd Snider, "Conservative, Christian, Right Wing Republican, Straight, White, American Males" (2004)

Sources:

Robert Draper, Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind (Penguin, 2022)

Eric Levitz, "The GOP Is More Ungovernable Than Ever Before," New York, Jan 5, 2023

Ettingermentum, "The Art of Losing the Speaker's Gavel," Oct 3, 2023

Matthew Loh, "Mitch McConnell Says House Republicans Should Get Rid of the Motion to Vacate Because It 'Makes the Speaker's Job Impossible,'" Insider, Oct 5, 2023

The Debate, the Donald, and the Strike [Teaser] Sep 30, 2023

Show notes

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this premium episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Matt and Sam suffer through the second GOP debate—a pathetic display from a gaggle of generally uninteresting reactionaries with no chance of defeating Trump in the primary—and then turn to an extended conversation about the politics and possibilities of the UAW auto strike against the Big Three car manufacturers. President Biden walked the picket line, while Trump spoke to employees of a non-union auto parts company. Why did the mainstream media continually insist that Biden and Trump were both appealing to striking workers? Did Biden do enough in his brief visit to the picket line? What did Trump actually say about the strike? These questions and more get answered in this primary season special!

Sources:

Alex Press, "Trump Is Speaking Tonight in Michigan at a Nonunion Auto Shop, as a Guest of Its Boss," Jacobin, Sept 27, 2023

Craig Mauger, "Donald Trump: UAW Negotiations 'Don't Mean as Much as You Think,'" Detroit Free Press, Sept 27, 2023

Martin Pengelly, "Signs Touting ‘Auto Workers for Trump’ at Michigan Rally Found to be Fake – Report," The Guardian, Sept 28, 2023

Heather Carter, "UAW President Shawn Fain Is Reviving That Old-Time Religion: Christian Radicalism," Jacobin, Sept 29, 2023

Elon Musk, the Jews, and the ADL (w/ Mari Cohen, Alex Kane, & Peter Beinart) Sep 26, 2023

Show notes

A few weeks ago, the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, eagerly joined in a campaign, originating on the far right, to demonize the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a century-old Jewish civil rights organization whose leaders have criticized Musk for allowing anti-semitic and white supremacist hate speech to proliferate on Twitter/X. To many progressives, it could sound like a simple story of good vs. evil — the righteous vs. the hateful — especially for those who've experienced the palpable flourishing of Nazi and Nazi-adjacent sentiment on Twitter/X since Musk purchased the platform.

But for our guests — Mari Cohen, Alex Kane, and Peter Beinart of Jewish Currents — the story is more complicated. Over the past five years, Jewish Currents has been perhaps the only outlet on the left aggressively reporting on the ADL, exposing its complicity with the Trump presidency, its attacks on pro-Palestinian activism, and its fraying relationships with Muslim and black-led civil rights groups. In this episode, we explore the central tension animating the ADL's erratic politics: can an organization officially dedicated to securing "justice and fair treatment to all" simultaneously forbid criticism of a state — the state of Israel — whose ethnonationalist social order is an inspiration to right-wing movements the world over? And if that contradiction can't be reconciled, how should we respond to Musk's attacks on the organization? Is the ADL salvageable? And does it deserve to be saved? Listen to find out!

Further Reading

Emmaia Gelman, "The Anti-Democratic Origins of the ADL and AJC," Jewish Currents, March 12, 2021

Peter Beinart, "Has the Fight Against Antisemitism Lost Its Way?" New York Times, Aug 26, 2022

Mari Cohen, The ADL's Antisemitism Findings, Explained, Jewish Currents, April 4, 2023

Mari Cohen & Isaac Scher, "The ADL Doubles Down on Opposing the Anti-Zionist Left," Jewish Currents, May 1, 2022

Alex Kane & Jacob Hutt, "How the ADL’s Israel Advocacy Undermines Its Civil Rights Work," February 8, 2021

Noah Kulwin, "The Unbearable Ignorance of the ADL," Jewish Currents, Dec 9, 2022

Mari Cohen & Alex Kane, "ADL Staffers Dissented After CEO Compared Palestinian Rights Groups to Right-Wing Extremists, Leaked Audio Reveals," Jewish Currents, Mar 8, 2023

Alex Kane & Sam Levin, "Internal ADL Memo Recommended Ending Police Delegations to Israel Amid Backlash," Jewish Currents, Mar 17, 2022

Eric Alterman, "What Does the ADL Stand for Today?" The New Republic, Aug 21, 2023

James Traub, "Does Abe Foxman Have an Anti-Anti-Semite Problem?" New York Times, Jan 14, 2007

Find our intrepid producer Jesse Brenneman's new record "Modern Life" on Bandcamp, Spotify, or YouTube.

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Reading the Trump Indictments [Teaser] Sep 19, 2023

Show notes

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this premium episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Former president Donald Trump is currently facing 91 criminal charges in four different jurisdictions — Georgia, Florida, New York, and the District of Columbia. Two of these indictments — Special Prosecutor Jack Smith's in D.C. and District Attorney Fani Willis's Fulton County, Georgia — take up Trump's and his co-conspirators efforts to steal the 2020 election, efforts that culminated with the insurrection on January 6. In this episode, Matt and Sam try to make sense of them and weigh the possible risks and rewards of "breaking the seal" and criminally charging a former president. In particular, they give closes readings to the two January 6-related indictments and discuss what they reveal about the deranged efforts Trump and his team made to overturn the election and a Republican Party that seemed to mostly go along with it, along with some of the problems with the RICO statute Trump and others are being charged under in Georgia. And of course, these indictments came down just as we're entering presidential election season — how will Trump's legal problems effect the 2024 race?

Sources:

Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman, "The Trump Jan. 6 Indictment, Annotated," NYT, Aug 1, 2023

Alan Feuer, et al, "The Trump Georgia Indictment, Annotated," NYT, Aug 15, 2023

Charlie Savage, "The Four Trump Criminal Cases: Strengths and Weaknesses," NYT, Aug 28, 2023

James Risen, "In Trump’s Georgia Indictment, a Tale of Two Election Workers," The Intercept, Aug 17, 2023

Rick Rojas and Sean Keenan, "Dozens of ‘Cop City’ Activists Are Indicted on Racketeering Charges," NYT, Sept 5, 2023

Laurence Tribe, "Anatomy of a Fraud," Just Security, Aug 8, 2023

Matthew Sitman, "Will Be Wild," Dissent, Spring 2023

Damon Linker, "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Trump?" Notes from the Middleground, July 18, 2022

What the Cold War Did to Liberalism (w/ Samuel Moyn) Sep 05, 2023

Show notes

In his provocative new book, Liberalism Against Itself, historian Samuel Moyn revisits the work of five key Cold War thinkers—Judith Shklar, Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper, Gertrude Himmelfarb, and Lionel Trilling—to explain the deformation of liberalism in the middle of the twentieth century, a time when, in his telling, liberals abandoned their commitment to progress, the Enlightenment, and grand dreams of emancipation and instead embraced fatalism, pessimism, and a narrow conception of freedom. For Moyn, the liberalism that emerged from the Cold War is, lamentably, still with us—a culprit in the rise of Donald Trump, and a barrier to offering a compelling alternative to him.

Sources:

Samuel Moyn, Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times (2023)

Judith Shklar, After Utopia: The Decline of Political Faith (1957)

Lionel Trilling, The Middle of the Journey (1947)

Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (1950)

Matthew Sitman, "How to Read Reinhold Niebuhr, After 9-11," Society, Spring 2012

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

The First 2024 GOP Presidential Debate [TEASER] Aug 24, 2023

Show notes

Matt and Sam stayed up late to record just minutes after the first GOP presidential debate ended on Wednesday night; we did this for you, our beloved subscribers, because we care. This episode (full of blistering insights) is the result of that decision. "Enjoy."

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

The Hochman Affair Aug 21, 2023

Show notes

Three weeks ago, one-time Know Your Enemy guest and “frenemy” of the show Nate Hochman was fired from Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign for his role in producing a campaign video featuring a Nazi “sonnenrad” symbol. (You may have read about it!) Unsurprisingly, the Hochman affair inspired some soul-searching on the part of your podcast hosts: had we inadvertently exposed our audience to a neo-nazi? Was our original December 2021 interview insufficiently combative — or too credulous (as many of our most vigilant listeners have suggested)? Were we naive about the value of welcoming young conservatives on the show? And, perhaps most illuminatingly, what can Hochman’s trajectory (from Never-Trump conservative and Michael Oakeshott fan to disgraced DeSantis speechwriter) tell us about the young right today?

After all, Hochman was not alone. A few weeks before the Hochman affair, DeSantis influencer and Chronicles magazine editor Pedro Gonzalez was exposed for expressing virulent anti-Semitic sentiments in private group chats in 2019. And most recently, Huffington Post reported that Richard Hanania, another young conservative — a darling of Silicon Valley reactionaries and a frequent interlocutor with centrist pundits on Twitter — had lived a previous life as an alt-right white supremacist and misogynist.

In this episode, we ask (not for the first time): what exactly is going on with young conservatives? Has the wall between mainstream conservatism and unacceptably hard-right sentiments completely broken down? Was it ever there? Or has it only become more porous in the age of Twitter, Telegram, and online anonymity? Did the alt-right of 2016, with its Pepe memes and winking fascist apologia, ever go away? Or did it merely merge, seamlessly, with today’s young right, turning an entire generation of GOP operatives into half-ironic racists, neofascists, and violent homophobes?

Further Reading:

Michelle Goldberg, “The Radicalization of the Young Right,” NYTimes, July 31, 2023.

“Young, Radical, and on the Right, with Nate Hochman,” KYE, Dec 16, 2021.

"How Euphemisms Muddy Our Political Conversations," On the Media (WNYC), Jan 21, 2022

David Weigel and Shelby Talcott, “‘This belongs in the Smithsonian’: Inside the meme video operation that swallowed Ron DeSantis’ campaign,” Aug 1, 2023.

Sam Adler-Bell, “The Radical Young Intellectuals Who Want to Take Over the American Right,” The New Republic, Dec 2, 2021.

Michael Oakeshott, “On Being Conservative,” from Rationalism in politics and other essays, 1962.

John Ganz, “They’re All Like That,” Unpopular Front, Aug 6, 2023.

Jordan Nixon-Hamilton, “‘F**k This President’: More Messages Show Pro-DeSantis Influencer Pedro Gonzalez Turned on Trump in 2019,” Breitbart, Aug 1, 2023.

Christopher Mathias, “Richard Hanania, Rising Right-Wing Star, Wrote For White Supremacist Sites Under Pseudonym,” Huffington Post, Aug 4, 2023.

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Grateful Dead Conservatives (w/ Sophie Haigney) [TEASER] Aug 11, 2023

Show notes

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

The Grateful Dead Conservative (w/ Sophie Haigney)

Another fun summer-y episode for you, our beloved subscribers: This time, we talked to writer, Paris Review editor, and Grateful Dead super-fan Sophie Haigney about a topic we've long pondered: the phenomenon of the "Grateful Dead conservative."

Why is it that right-wing figures including Tucker Carlson, Ann Coulter, and Paul Ryan count the Grateful Dead among their favorite bands? Isn't there something odd about these social conservative luminaries loving the Dead, such avatars of 1960s psychedelia, libertinism, and hippie counterculture? Or else, have we misunderstood something essential about the band — their Americana roots, their individualist ethos, their reverence for transcendent experiences — which makes them particularly suitable to conservative sensibilities?

And also why do we all love them so much — this band that tests our patience, produces largely forgettable studio records, and often sounds, in concert, as if they're playing their own songs for the first time? The mind reels...

Strap in for a long, strange, improvisational trip to the heart of these bewildering matters.

Further Reading:

Sophie Haigney, "Those of Us Who Love the Dead," Gawker, Dec 3, 2021.

— "The Final Dead Shows: Part One," The Paris Review, Jul 17, 2023.

— "The Final Dead Shows: Part Two," The Paris Review, July 18, 2023.

— "The Final Dead Shows: Part Three," The Paris Review, Jul 19, 2023.

Ann Coulter, "I’m A Grateful Dead Fan For Life," Billboard, Jun 24, 2016.

Noah Eckstein, "'Wave That Flag': Meet the Deadheads Who Stump for Trump," Variety, Nov 2, 2020.

Zachary D. Carter and Arthur Delaney, "Why Do Conservatives Love The Grateful Dead? We Ask Tucker Carlson," Huffington Post, Jul 15, 2015.

Dean Budnick, "Behind The Scene: Jake Sherman on Phish, the Grateful Dead and Covering 535 Class Presidents at Punchbowl News," Relix, May 12, 2021.

Martin Longman, "Why Do Republicans Love the Grateful Dead?" Washington Monthly, July 3, 2015

Nick Paumgarten, "Dead Head," The New Yorker, Nov 18, 2012.

Hunter Schwartz, "Grateful Dead fans: Surprisingly Republican," Washington Post, Jul 1, 2015.

Marc Tracy, "Saying Goodbye to the Dead. (Again.)" NYTimes, Jul 14, 2023.

Andy Kroll, "Jon Huntsman: We Need a 'Grateful Dead Tour' to Save America," Mother Jones, Jan 8, 2012.

Midge Decter: Anti-Feminist Cold Warrior (w/ Moira Donegan & Adrian Daub) Jul 27, 2023

Show notes

In this episode, Matt and Sam join Moira Donegan and Adrian Daub — co-hosts of the new podcast “In Bed With The Right" — for an in-depth look at the life, times, and work of the late Midge Decter, who died in 2022. Decter was inspired by a distinctly conservative, mid-century American reading of Freudian psychology, mobilized in defense of traditional family hierarchies, which made her an important link between neoconservatives and the religious right — unsurprisingly, she helped found or served on the boards of numerous conservative organizations, including the Heritage Foundation, Committee for the Free World, and the Independent Women's Forum, among others. Her essays, books, and memoirs represent an anguished counter-revolt against the sexual liberation movements of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, and her trajectory from (ostensible) New Deal liberal to anti-feminist Cold Warrior proves a perfect subject for Know Your Enemy. Decter also was married to Norman Podhoretz (another subject of KYE lore) and the mother of John Podhoretz, current editor of Commentary magazine. A quarrelsome, Jewish conservative with a lively writing style and a fascinating, emblematic life story: what could be better?

Further Reading:

Midge Decter, An Old Wife’s Tale: My Seven Decades in Love and War (2002)

—The New Chastity and Other Arguments Against Women's Liberation (1972)

— Always Right: Selected Writings of Midge Decter (2002)

— Liberal Parents, Radical Children (1975)

— Rumsfeld: A Personal Portrait (2003)

— “The Boys on the Beach,” Commentary, Sept 1980.

— “Socialism & Its Irresponsibilities: The Case of Irving Howe,” Commentary, Dec 1982.

— “Documentation: Sex Education on Trial—What They’re Teaching Our Children,” Crisis Magazine, Dec 1, 1998.

John Podhoretz, A Son’s Eulogy for Midge Decter (1927-2022), Commentary, May 12, 2022.

R. R. Reno, “My Memories of Midge Decter,” First Things, May 11, 2022.

Jeet Heer, “Farewell to Midge Decter, the Bigot on the Beach,” The Nation, May 13, 2022.

Ronnie Grinberg, “An overlooked conservative writer helps explain Trump’s enduring appeal,” Washington Post, May 20, 2022.

Douglas Martin, “Midge Decter, an Architect of Neoconservatism, Dies at 94,” NYTimes, May 9, 2022.

Adrienne Rich, “The Anti-Feminist Woman,” NYRB, Nov 30, 1972.

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

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