2024 Election was the Oligarchic Elite vs. Corporate Elite (w/ Chris Hedges)

Summary

In this engaging conversation, Chris Hedges and Bad Faith podcast host Briana Joy Gray dissect the political landscape following the 2024 election, which they see as a showdown between oligarchic and corporate elites. They explore the failings of the Green Party and its disconnection from grassroots movements, while critiquing the Democratic Party’s shortcomings, particularly its abandonment of working-class America. The duo emphasizes the need for a political revolution rooted in class consciousness and grassroots mobilization, all amidst concerns of rising American authoritarianism.

Highlights

• Briana Joy Gray welcomes Chris Hedges to discuss the 2024 election aftermath. 🎙️
• Hedges criticizes the Green Party for lacking grassroots support and connection to labor movements. 🗳️
• Identifying a ‘Civil War’ within capitalism, between oligarchic and corporate elites, as a key aspect of the 2024 election. 💥
• The Democratic Party’s complicity in allowing Trump’s rise by failing working Americans is scrutinized. 🔍
• Reflections on the importance of class consciousness and the moral imperative to resist authoritarianism. 💪

Key Takeaways

• The 2024 election was seen as a battle between oligarchic and corporate elites, not a true democratic contest. 🤖
• Chris Hedges emphasizes the need for grassroots movements and stronger ties to the labor force to challenge corporate domination. 🌱
• Critiques of the Democratic Party's failure to support working-class Americans suggest it has become a right-wing entity. 🏛️
• The conversation points to a rising authoritarianism in America that requires immediate, organized resistance. 🚨
• Despite the bleak outlook, the importance of moral and ethical commitment to social justice remains central. ✊

Overview

In a post-2024 election analysis, journalist Chris Hedges joins Bad Faith podcast host Briana Joy Gray for a deep dive into what he describes as a showdown between oligarchic and corporate elites, overshadowing true democratic choice. Hedges shares his disappointment in the Green Party’s failure to galvanize substantial grassroots and labor support, stating a need for the party’s overhaul toward a more organic movement.

Chris Hedges argues that the Democratic Party has abandoned working-class Americans in favor of corporate interests, labeling it a right-wing entity. Throughout the discussion, both he and Briana express concerns over what they perceive as an emerging authoritarian threat in America, which necessitates strong grassroots resistance and a return to class-conscious politics.

Despite a seemingly bleak political outlook, the discussion highlights a moral and ethical call to action. Hedges and Gray emphasize the importance of maintaining a commitment to social justice, suggesting a moral framework is essential in battling the rise of authoritarianism and ensuring the preservation of democratic values.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction with Chris Hedges The chapter features an introduction to Chris Hedges, a renowned journalist and commentator known for his integrity and guidance on leftist political discourse. The discussion is set to explore the aftermath of the 2024 election, providing insights into current events and political dynamics. Chris Hedges is celebrated for his moral guidance and respected opinions, making his return to the "Bad Faith Podcast" a noteworthy occasion.
• 00:30 - 15:00: Discussion on the 2024 Election and Third Party Movements The chapter discusses the 2024 election with a focus on third-party movements, particularly the Green Party. It highlights a recent event at UC Santa Barbara where Green Party politics and the future of the left were central topics. The discussion centers on the potential for increased voter turnout for independent third-party candidates.
• 15:00 - 25:00: Class Conflict and Oligarchic vs. Corporate Elite The chapter discusses the conflict between class interests and the roles of different elite groups, namely the oligarchic elite and the corporate elite. It highlights the discontent and frustration among people, referencing Jill Stein and the political situation around the genocide in Gaza. The chapter further examines the performance of the left, particularly in the context of the Green Party, and suggests that both the left and the Democratic Party have soul-searching to do. While the Democratic Party is described as being tied to corporate interests, the Green Party is depicted as a large but dysfunctional entity.
• 25:00 - 35:00: Critique of the Democratic Party and Progressive Politics The chapter discusses the criticisms directed towards the Democratic Party, particularly its detachment from grassroots movements and labor. It highlights a pattern of the party producing candidates who lack a solid foundational support base. The discussion implies that this disconnect might lead to protest votes from the electorate. The speaker mentions voting for the Green Party as an alternative, reflecting dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party's approach.
• 35:00 - 45:00: Challenges in Building Authentic Progressive Movements The chapter discusses the challenges involved in establishing authentic progressive political movements. It features insights from a former speechwriter for Ralph Nader, who argues that the Green Party needs significant reform or a new party must emerge from grassroots movements such as unions and low-wage workers. The speaker suggests that the lack of support for the Green Party reflects broader discontent with the two-party system.
• 45:00 - 55:00: Future Resistance and Moral Responsibility The chapter discusses the challenges and dynamics within political parties, focusing on the Democratic and Green parties. It highlights a Green Party Congressional candidate's experiences in the Chicago area, who received significant local support but faced the challenge of voters prioritizing opposition to Donald Trump over party alignment.
• 55:00 - 65:00: The Role of Community and Spirituality in Progressive Politics The chapter discusses the challenges faced by an individual within the political landscape, particularly focusing on the necessity for deeper connections with the labor movement. There's a call for reform and an overhaul of the Green Party despite personal investment and support for its candidates, like Jill Stein. It questions the likelihood of such reformations and seeks advice for those who wish for the Green Party's success.
• 65:00 - 75:00: Media's Role in Shaping Public Opinion This chapter explores the influence of media on public opinion and decision-making, especially in political contexts. It discusses the phenomenon where individuals may express support for a candidate or cause publicly but change their decision when it comes to actual voting, often out of fear or the desire to prevent an undesirable outcome. Ralph Nader's campaigns are used as a case study to illustrate how media narratives can shape and sometimes alter public opinion and voting behavior, highlighting the complex relationship between media representation and electoral decisions.
• 75:00 - 80:00: Conclusion and Future Projects This chapter discusses political dynamics and voting behaviors, specifically focusing on the Green Party's historical impact and influence over the past 30 years. The text highlights that while the Green Party has been a potential alternative, it hasn't gained significant momentum or support over time. The commentary suggests that there may be a need for drastic changes in the party's structure or strategy to build support effectively. The chapter concludes with implications for the party's future direction, indicating that significant transformation is necessary for the Green Party to become a more influential political force.

2024 Election was the Oligarchic Elite vs. Corporate Elite (w/ Chris Hedges) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 I'm back with Chris Hedges who needs of course no introduction noted journalist commentator and perhaps the person who holds kind of the most esteem uh Integrity respect in terms of charting a course for the left and being a moral guidepost of sorts I'm so happy to be able to unpack what is going on after the 2024 election with you in particular welcome back to bad faith podcast thanks Briana
• 00:30 - 01:00 all right so I had the pleasure of seeing you recently in person in California we both attended an event uh but wear put on at uh uh UC Santa Barbara of course we were there talking a lot about Green Party politics um the future of the left and I do want to get your sense of what you think happened uh with the independent third party vote I think many of us hoped that there would be someone of a spike and turnout for
• 01:00 - 01:30 Jill Stein especially because of the enormous discontent frustration anger over the genocide in Gaza and we didn't obviously get to 5% of the vote what do you take from that I think the left has a lot of soul surging to do along of course with the Democratic party I don't think the Democratic party is going to do it it's corporate indentured at this point uh but the left itself and the green party is a large dysfunctional party it's a
• 01:30 - 02:00 top- Down Party it has doesn't have strong roots to labor um you know it tends to every election cycle cough up candidates without any real base they don't do the kind of Grassroots organization that needs to be done so uh I I think we saw that it was you know protest vote I I voted for the green party uh and as you know I've long been
• 02:00 - 02:30 supporter of third party movements worked for Ralph nater of course as a speech writer so um but I I think the green party has to be completely overhauled or we have to begin to look at a party that rises up out of uh the union movement low wage workers is more organic uh and and I suspect that the lack of support for the green party was an illustration not of deep dissatisfaction with the two- party
• 02:30 - 03:00 duopoly uh and in particular the Democratic party uh but uh the failings within the green party itself it's interesting I spoke recently to a uh Green Party candidate Congressional candidate from uh the Chicago area um and she was talking about how much support there was for her in her district and how supportive everybody was of her but that a lot of the folks that she spoke to ultimately wanted to vote against Donald Trump uh
• 03:00 - 03:30 and that was the real obstacle for her you mentioned the um how it would be preferable and ideal if there were to be deeper connections with the labor movement uh and that there needs to be a reform and overhaul of the green party despite your investment in it and your vote for Jill Stein what is the likelihood do you think of something like that happening and what would you say to people who want the green party to be successful uh
• 03:30 - 04:00 in terms of advice in making that happen well to address your first point which is an important one when I was working with Ralph nater he would pull far above what he would actually uh obtain And Ralph's Theory which I think is true and it again Echoes your point is that although he had the support when people got in the voting booth they voted out of fear they voted against Bush or whoever it was they were running he was running against
• 04:00 - 04:30 uh or they voted for Obama you know rather than uh the alternative so yes I think that that is true uh but I also think that the green party has I mean how how long what is it 30 years the green party's been in existence they just haven't moved I mean the they they should be building support uh they're not uh and I think that it needs an needs to be completely decapitated with
• 04:30 - 05:00 a new leadership obviously much younger uh and far in more inantly tied with the Grassroots and in particular labor movements for low-wage workers uh I think that's and you see shamas Salan trying to do this with workers strike back I think that that is the direction in which we have to move especially now I mean we we are on the cusp of a kind of an Americanized fascism uh which is something I've been writing about for
• 05:00 - 05:30 over two decades the the looming fascism because of the collapse of liberalism whether was my book death of the liberal class or Empire of Illusion the end of literacy and the Triumph of spectacle or America the farewell to or days of Destruction days of revolt and of course American fascist the Christian W in the war in America which unfortunately has become a very preent book if you want to find out what's coming next get it I guess why you still can I I
• 05:30 - 06:00 I take that point I I'm hopeful I don't know how you're feeling that um Butch wear is a certain kind of energy that perhaps the green party has been lacking and he has been adamant that he wants to continue his participation in the green party and in left politics Beyond this election and um run for uh what do you say governor of of California and I for one welcome that instinct and that energy and the way that he's able to talk to voters different than sometimes
• 06:00 - 06:30 green party candidates have been able to do in the past um that being said I'm interested in this point about the politics of fear you and I have talked about this on this podcast before and how it motivates people consistently to vote for the lesser of two evils in a way that I would argue hurries the approach of fascism how do you reframe this for voters because whatever party emerges is going to have to the difficult task of talking Democratic party voters out of vote blue
• 06:30 - 07:00 no matter who out of lesser of two evil isms how do you start to frame this as you're you're talking to folks how do you start to frame the idea that they should be fearful of what a vote for the lesser of two evils will ultimately bring just as they are fearful of what their vote um of not voting for the lesser of T evils in in in other words they're fearful of Donald Trump how do you make them also fearful of what their lesser to evil vote will ultimately bring down transom we have to speak in
• 07:00 - 07:30 the language of class War uh this is a class conflict and unfortunately they've won what we saw in this election was really a battle between or kind of Civil War within capitalism between the oligarchic elite and the corporate Elite the corporate Elite backing Harris the oligarchic elite backing Trump oligarchs want different things than corporatists corporatists want stability they want trade deals uh and they want those trade deals
• 07:30 - 08:00 uh cemented into place uh because corporatists will make investments and they won't get Returns on those Investments sometimes for years uh they want of course their manufacturing uh to continue in places like China Mexico Bangladesh Vietnam and everywhere else oligarchs want something else oligarchs want chaos they want as Bannon says the uh destruction of the administr State because they make their
• 08:00 - 08:30 money in a different way private Equity firms uh function to essentially Harvest and Destroy corporations KKR which just bought my publisher Simon and Schuster uh is famous for buying up a national chain of nursing homes then selling the physical property they call it harvesting and then forcing the administrators of those nursing homes to rent back those facilities at $40,000 a month well they made a killing and they
• 08:30 - 09:00 drove the nursing home uh chain into bankruptcy That's a classic way that private Equity firms hedge firms work that's oligarchic power and what we've seen is the Triumph of oligarchic power of course there's an irony in the sense that with the deregulation of uh uh that are the controls over corporate power uh with the slashing of the tax codes uh you create the the the corporate capitalist created
• 09:00 - 09:30 this oligarchic Elite uh figures like Elon Musk would be a kind of poster child for this and then they've turned on the corporatist themselves so that's how I Define this election the Civil War within capitalism and the oligarchs one they love Trump uh because oligarchies make their money by essentially putting up toll booths extracting fees for every service that we need whether it's our health care our water our electricity
• 09:30 - 10:00 whatever it is um they're they're parasitic in nature and they're different from corporate capitalists uh so that that was the battle that we saw um and that's the language we have to begin to speak uh unfortunately both within the left and the Democratic party it was all about demonizing Trump so these very complex social economic political issues this disfunction uh was reduced to
• 10:00 - 10:30 fear-mongering around the figure of trump not that I'm not you know I don't know terrified might be too strong a word not that I'm very worried about a trump Administration um but we just didn't speak the language uh which we should be speaking and therefore uh if you don't speak in that language you can't even begin to ask the right questions and we just weren't asking the right questions and the left was as guilty of this as the Democratic party and has been for some time you think that's true because I I can imagine a lot of listeners are thinking you know
• 10:30 - 11:00 we didn't indulge in the um sort of orangeman bad kind of hand ring or the focus on decorum and Norms that liberals engaged in we weren't especially consumed with focusing on um the various uh cases against Donald Trump um we weren't as focused on covering January 6 for better for worse but that our preoccupation was with those populist
• 11:00 - 11:30 interests that we share with the right in terms of foreign interventionism and in holding the Democratic party accountable well if that was true the green party would have gotten more than 04 per. wait a minute so so who who on the left and maybe we're maybe this is a definitional issue where we are thinking about different parties as we're talking about the left do you think was being overly F was was overly focused on Donald Trump and then what is the
• 11:30 - 12:00 connection you draw between that and the unwillingness of most voters who don't in fact tun into left media who are that they were consuming the news consuming mainstream Media or sometimes right Independent Media um how do you connect that with their unwillingness to vote for say Jill Stein well you have all sorts of critics and the and their critiques are correct Michael Moore Robert Reich I mean there are many others the critique is is not wrong but the problem is that and Bernie
• 12:00 - 12:30 Sanders would be of course on that list and then every time the election rolls around they throw their weight behind the Democratic party it's the Democratic party that made a trump possible it's the Democratic party that abandoned working men and women Bernie's statement I think after the election was completely correct uh but they're the ones who gave us this dysfunctional system and the origins of it go back to the Clinton administration
• 12:30 - 13:00 Administration Bill Clinton and of course Joe Biden they did corporate bidding and they got corporate money so that they had fundraising parody eventually with the Republican party and I think when Obama first bran he actually got more money so uh that that betrayal uh came out of of the democratic party and uh many of us or some of us have been warning uh that we have to begin to Ralph nater would be at the Forefront of that we have to begin to build pressure points against the Democratic Party or we will end up with
• 13:00 - 13:30 an Americanized fascism uh and that unfortunately uh is where we are that we we've morphed from this system of inverted totalitarianism that's a term that Sheldon Wen political philosopher uses where you have the facade it's kind of like the late Roman Republic where you have the facade of legislative systems and courts as well as the Press uh but internally corporations have seized all of levers of power so the facade Remains
• 13:30 - 14:00 the the iconography and the language Remains the Same well in in a more overt form of fascism this is he doesn't describe it as fascism he describes it maybe as corporate totalitarianism but that has changed now so we have a more classical form of totalitarianism with the cultish figure of Donald Trump a demagogue a you know a charismatic leader at least to his followers whose primary uh objective is loyalty you know Trump's or
• 14:00 - 14:30 or is more important than competence that that's that's a different system but it's the system that we're moving into so I think people have have out of fear or whatever or out of a belief that the Democratic party can reform itself not a belief that I share uh have often made the correct critique on the left or the mainstream left anyway uh but then every time the election cycle I mean gome Chomsky does it as well I would
• 14:30 - 15:00 worship gnome of course but gome Chomsky did it as well and I think that was a mistake yeah so it sounds like we just had a little bit different different definitions of who's the left I got a little defensive about it because I to me someone to the left immedate EOS system that I am in was very critical of Bernie's endorsements people who I who I do like and respect like Michael Moore throwing in with the Democratic party um but I do agree that there were these other figures that I I guess are sensibly left who who did do what you
• 15:00 - 15:30 describe you know to that point I guess I would I'm curious how you would respond to folks who do leverage the uh opinion of n Chomsky selectively every four years uh the choice of Angela Davis to throw in with Joe Biden uh as a rebuke to the left to say here are your kind of moral and intellectual leaders even they are saying we have to throw in with the Democratic party why aren't you deferring to their wisdom why do you think it was a mistake uh what would you
• 15:30 - 16:00 say to someone um if they were to ask you why is it a mistake for Chomsky to have endorsed uh Joe Biden now in two cycles because the Democratic party is a far-right party the Democratic party wasn't you know first of all it's complicit in genocide that alone should mean that there's no way we can support it I mean if you support a party that is uh a full partner in genocide I mean what moral uh kind of Standards do you have I don't
• 16:00 - 16:30 know I mean you can't this is the crime of crimes uh and and you shred your credibility by telling people especially the 30 million plus American workers who have lost their jobs in Mass layoffs since 1996 that's when records of mass layoffs were first being started being kept to vote Democrat um and and I think the left has eviscerated its credibility because it's not stood solidly behind behind the working class working men and
• 16:30 - 17:00 women uh and and denounce their betrayal by the Democratic party I mean once NAFTA was passed in 1994 those of us who care about the working class should have walked out of the democratic party Ralph nater did that's why I supported Ralph Ralph also argued I think correctly that the job wasn't to win he wasn't going to win he knew he wasn't going to win but if he could pull 5 10 15 million 20 million voters out away from the Democratic Party to put pressure on the
• 17:00 - 17:30 Democratic party we might be capable of instituting reforms those reforms would have been instituted out of fear that's why I didn't support gnomes and let's be clear n Chomsky is our greatest intellectual I mean I all of us or at least many of us certainly myself owe a tremendous debt to Nome Chomsky understanding liberalism the Fateful triangle on Israel you know manufacturing consent I mean this is an intellectual Titan without question um
• 17:30 - 18:00 but uh if you is gome would argue you're voting for a third party in a safe State you're not putting any pressure at all in Democrats they could care less so it is politics is a game of fear politics is a game of pressure uh that's why we need unions and that's why the oligarchs and the corporatists have worked so hard to destroy unionism in this country which is about 11% but many I think 6% of those unions are in the public sector and they're essentially prohibited from carrying out strikes as we saw with the
• 18:00 - 18:30 railroad Freight workers uh why because the only weapon we have to essentially uh block the Machinery of power is the strike and that's what we desperately need to rebuild so I think the left lost a lot of credibility certainly the liberal class lost all credibility by backing a party that sold out working men and women sold their soul to corporate power uh you know the famous line from Cornell
• 18:30 - 19:00 West about Barack Obama being a black mascot for Wall Street well Cornell was right is right um and uh and and and so by not standing up against these forces we essentially surrendered them to this kind of Proto fascist movement within the Christian right I mean the Christian right is really the issue Trump is just the caretaker has no ideology of his own it's an
• 19:00 - 19:30 ideological void but he fills it with these very frightening figures he did in his first Administration Betsy DeVos Bill bar Mike Pence but it's going to be far far worse now especially if you look at the 2025 document out of the Heritage Foundation you you mentioned uh Dr West and I think many of us were hopeful that because he is such a prominent public intellectual um with much more name
• 19:30 - 20:00 recognition than someone like Jill Stein um because of I'll just speak for myself his background as a theologian making him um persuasive and able to connect with many different kinds of people and engage in respective dialogue uh respectful dialogue with many different kinds of Americans uh was a real opportunity potential for the left and when he joined the green party in part with your encouragement with my encouragement there was a lot of
• 20:00 - 20:30 hopefulness about the potential that that particular Union held ultimately he decided for reasons that he spoke spoken about on this podcast and elsewhere to run independent of the green party and did not farewell faired even worse uh than Jill sign in the green party ticket I wondered if you could speak to that choice and if you have any other insight as to why that choice was made and what you make of candidates who choose to run out side of a a party structure an an
• 20:30 - 21:00 independent third party structure yes I was as you know pretty instrumental in getting him into the green party I was not in the country I was uh doing Grassroots work speaking in Europe for Julian Assange when that decision was made so I wasn't part of the decision I wasn't consulted about the decision to leave the green party I think it was a mistake uh it was a mistake because I know from my association with Ralph all
• 21:00 - 21:30 of the barriers primarily the Democrats in particular throw up to third parties on ballot access they make ballot access really really difficult on purpose they lock you out of the debates um and the green party gets on about 40 ballots I don't know the minutia of the dispute between Cornell and the green party um I'm sure that much of his critique probably is
• 21:30 - 22:00 correct um the green party has some serious internal problems uh however um I think he sacrificed his ability to be on on enough ballots it's not a decision I would have made but I wasn't part of that process I have to ask um many people allude to this idea there that there are these serious internal uh problems in the green party and I don't I don't dismiss that but I guess it's
• 22:00 - 22:30 difficult for me to understand what that really is what that looks like what the potential for reform is are there just a handful of folks in leadership that have views or strategic inclinations that are poorly thought out or just ineffective is it something deeper than that sometimes I do have the concern that alluding to these problems without more specificity might make people just want
• 22:30 - 23:00 to stay away from the party altogether in a way that precludes reform and if what should happen is reform and if reform is possible sometimes I think well if we were more specific it would chase people to work the green party to invest in it and fix it as opposed to wanting to flee a kind of a a burning ship well the it depends state by state the green party is different in every state and there may be states where it
• 23:00 - 23:30 functions really well and there are other states where it's a club largely white and older people who every year go out and get enough or every election cycle go out and get enough signatures to run a fairly meaningless campaign for governor senate or something else and again then get almost no votes that's not a strategy that is working or has worked uh so I think it it is state byst state but my experience which is not extensive but my experience with the
• 23:30 - 24:00 green party is that it needs new leadership you mentioned Butch uh that may be it um it definitely needs younger leadership um it's too white um you know I'm not into woke ideology particularly um so that kind of you know people of color and different genders and all that kind of stuff has to come with a class Consciousness um uh it can't be woke for the sake of woke or you know uh marginalized people who are traditionally
• 24:00 - 24:30 marginalized within the society simply because they're marginalized because often times they're as willing to serve the power structure I mean look at KL Harris as any anyone else um but yeah I think that and I think that the green party has just not performed the way it should it's it's uh it's just not done very well and and I'm not part of the administration or the apparatus of the green party so I can't get you I'm giving you kind of
• 24:30 - 25:00 global uh or general Impressions I'm not a green I'm I vote green but I'm not part of the green party and I don't uh you know I don't know the specifics but yeah I mean just the elections election results themselves I think speak of a party that needs to do some very serious soul searching let me ask you about Bernie Sanders uh you mentioned that you agree with the statement that he's made uh following the election that the Democratic party has abandoned its base
• 25:00 - 25:30 uh abandoned working people A working class uh and poor people in particular what do you make of the choice to come out saying that now um what do you think motivates right he does it when it's safe I mean that doesn't help us I mean b Bernie he's uh you work for him you know him better than I do but he you know he's a kind of paradoxical figure because I think his commitment from to the working class and uh issues of of Justice I think all of that is real and and and you look
• 25:30 - 26:00 back at his own trajectory and he has always held that commitment the problem is that he's made a very fian bargain with the Democratic party which is that in the end he will support a party that has carried out this destruction against the working class he was campaigning on behalf of Clinton in 1996 two years after Napa I mean Bernie certainly understood the devastation that NAFTA visited on working men and women in this country de-industrialization and so the deal is
• 26:00 - 26:30 they uh don't go after him in Vermont they give him although he run he's technically is an independent they give him uh seniority within the Democratic party so he can get his committee chairmanship uh he talked about his political revolution when he ran against Clinton and then ended up uh uh essentially trying to turn people or turn his base into supporters of Clint
• 26:30 - 27:00 didn't work out really well um I you know I was outside the Democratic Convention the wells apply named Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia with Cornell West we had marched with unhoused people several thousand to the center and as you know many of the Bernie delegates walked out uh and Bernie didn't walk out with them and Cornell who's so pre turned to me and said Bernie Sanders just missed his historical moment that's right on the
• 27:00 - 27:30 other hand Bernie's not wrong in understanding that if he was to stand in opposition to the Democratic party for all the reasons you know he knows uh intimately they would mount a campaign to destroy him and that's not conjecture because I was at an event with Bernie and shamas salon and Bill McKibbon and Naomi Klein uh before the Bernie announced the first time and Sean in particular was pushing him to run as an
• 27:30 - 28:00 independent and Bernie's answer was to me was so revealing he said I don't want to end up like Ralph nater I don't want them to turn me into a pariah I don't want them to destroy me the way they destroyed Ralph well that's a career decision that's not a moral decision and that's the decision he's made yeah I mean it is frustrating um Bill McKibben is another person who went all in with Joe Biden despite science demon ating that the pace at which the Democratic party is willing to
• 28:00 - 28:30 incrementally address climate change puts us in a cataclysmic Society upending position with respect to the climate crisis it might be better than trump it is better than Trump but if it's not enough what are we doing here in and throwing our lot in Behind these people and with respect specifically to the Bernie point it's disappointing because at this stage in his career one does have to ask what the upside is necessarily of him even being in that
• 28:30 - 29:00 position how much longer is he even going to be in that position I could understand if you're younger like AOC I don't agree with it but I understand the logic of saying I have the time to play a long game or I want to have a certain amount of career stability etc etc again that's a personal choice and not one that I it's it's a personal incentive and not one that I agree with or respect but it's more understandable than looking at someone like Bernie Sanders who at this stage in his career one has to ask what are you reserving
• 29:00 - 29:30 political capital for well he just ran for re-election so right I mean he tends to be in the senate for you know another term that's what his for I mean I had this debate with a congressional staffer at a lefty event recently who was you know making this case for incrementalism um we were talking about Force the vote we were talking about progressives not willing to be adversarial to the party and take risks in order to use the limited power
• 29:30 - 30:00 that they have to get concessions uh we were talking about the failure to fight for 15 and whether or not progressives could have done more to try to uh threaten the American Rescue package in order to get a $15 minimum wage across the line and whenever we have these debates it always boils down to this argument that because progressives uh elected progressives can still do some good that it is irresponsible for them to give up their opportunity to be inside doing that incremental good on
• 30:00 - 30:30 the chance that taking a stand and being adversarial to the Democratic party would get them a much greater good my position my my instinct is that that's a kind of self- soothing balm that gets you into this incrementalist place where we have the ratchet effect that takes us more and more and more to the right but how would you argue with those people or would you argue with those people who basically have a lesser of evil approach or harm reduction rather approach to
• 30:30 - 31:00 working from the inside and who really do believe that there is an advantage to to Bernie Sanders being in the Senate that outweighs the advantage of having his world historical moment and and walking out with Cornell West and the delegates back in um uh 2016 simple answer is it doesn't work this is the hottest year on record so I mean is Biden worse than Trump I mean they're both pushing us uh to towards
• 31:00 - 31:30 Extinction um I was just in London doing a fundraiser for Roger H who serving a five-year prison sentence I always went also went and visited him in prison and Roger's right if we want to save the planet we have to carry out sustained acts of Civil Disobedience to disrupt the system they shut down the M25 Motorway for four days around London that uh disrupted Commerce disrupted London the city of London the financial
• 31:30 - 32:00 capital of London that's what we have to do if we want to save the planet if we want to stop the genocide I mean all of these absolutely vital existential issues it isn't going to come through incrementalism it doesn't work they have nothing to show for it and the fact is uh they've been completely domesticated how do they do it they do it through money so figures like Schumer or Pelosi their power comes primarily from the fact that they funnel the money from the donors to the anointed candidates and
• 32:00 - 32:30 they turn off the spigot when you don't play by their rules uh you saw APAC take out Jamal Bowman was it 13 million1 million I don't remember Corey Bush um so it's not just that you don't get the funds to run your campaign uh but these entities pour millions of dollars to destroy you politically uh and uh it the the system
• 32:30 - 33:00 doesn't work it doesn't they have zero to show for I mean what do they have to show for this quote unquote incrementalism nothing things are worse let me ask you this there unsurprisingly are a lot of bad takes about why Tom laare is lost uh Joanne Reed uh said that she want a ran a Flawless campaign and nothing that was true yesterday yesterday about how flawlessly this campaign was run is not
• 33:00 - 33:30 true now I mean this really was an historic flawlessly run campaign she had Queen Latifa never endorses anyone she came out and Endor you know I mean she had every prominent celebrity voice she had the she had the uh the Taylor Swifty she had the swifties she had the Beehive like you could not have run a better campaign in that short period of time and I think that's still true they're of course the useful the usual suspect to come forward making the case for moving
• 33:30 - 34:00 the party even farther to the right who say that the um uh adoption of phrases like uh defund the police and talking about trans people is what caused kamla to lose despite her doing neither of those things and frankly running the kind of Centrist campaign of establishment dreams um that being said I was a little surprised to see that some Centrist Democrats do see to be taking the right lesson from this for
• 34:00 - 34:30 once for one the Pod sa America Bros seem to have embraced the idea that economic anxiety um economic precarity is motivating votes we're not having the same wall of um opinion that we had in 2016 which insisted that it could not be any economic Factor it was purely racism that was motivating uh people to vote for Trump even these Obama to Trump voters and uh recently Chris Murphy did a long Twitter threat which has gotten a lot of positive feedback where he basically says I agree with Bernie I'll
• 34:30 - 35:00 read just a little bit of it he writes does racism explain part of the attraction of the rights nativism of course but Mass deportation is a terrible response to Americans real sense that they are helpless in the face of global forces like increased migration the left largely ignores this pain he's referring to liberals not the actual left uh he goes on to say we don't listen enough we tell people what's good for them and when progressives Like Bernie aggressively go after the elites that hold people down they are shunned as dangerous populists why maybe because true economic populism
• 35:00 - 35:30 is bad for our high income base oh calling out the the big dollar doors and the Democratic party okay he goes on to say meanwhile men tumble into different a different type of identity crisis as the patriarchy society's primary organizing Paradigm for centuries rightly crashes the right pushes an alluring dial back the left says get over it again a refusal to listen or offer responsible Solutions we cannot be afraid of fight especially with the economic Elites who have profited off neoliberalism the right regularly dep picks fights with Elites Hollywood
• 35:30 - 36:00 higher education Etc Democrats EG the Harris campaign are are tepid in our fights with billionaires in corporation real economic populism should be our tent pole were you surprised that about by this reaction from Chris Coons and some other kind of establishment actors who seem to be so frustrated by this LW that they're willing to hear what Bernie has to say I'm not surprised because it's a self-evident reality so that's a reality-based
• 36:00 - 36:30 analysis but they're not calling for anyone to walk out on the Democratic party and the next election cycle will all be trying to sh sheep dog everybody back into the voting booth for the Democrats that's my frustration my frustration is with people who offer the appropriate critique and then hold up the Democratic party as a solution or a partial solution or a better solution that's that's the failure I mean Devil's Advocate it when we were supporting Bernie's 2016 and
• 36:30 - 37:00 2020 runs we were supporting a kind of Democratic party reform right I think many of us now believe that because of how they treated Bernie that reform isn't possible but I could imagine a world I'm not again I'm not optimistic about this but I certainly could could imagine a world where instead of being so oppositional to Bernie standers at least some Democrats in the interest of winning like Coons are saying okay fine let's do Bernie style politics it's not going to be revolutionary but it is
• 37:00 - 37:30 going to be an more than an incremental Improvement on the norm are you optimistic at all about what it means for establishment actors like Coons in the postive America podcasters to have made what feels like a pretty significant admission after all of these years of resisting the bird the Bernie Theory no because if they were serious about confront running corporate power or oligarchic power they'd be
• 37:30 - 38:00 destroyed I never thought that the Democratic party would allow Bernie Sanders to be the nominee uh because the Democratic party is owned and Lloyd blank fine the former CEO of Goldman Sachs made it very clear that if he was the nominee they would vote for Trump and you'd end up with a 1972 situation where the Democratic party and the donors walked out on George McGovern and threw their weight behind Nixon no the the it's not a reformable party uh and
• 38:00 - 38:30 if they were serious about confronting these oligarchic and corporate forces that have reconfigured the United States into a form of Neo feudalism uh they would be crushed within the party because these moneyed interests own the party I mean they they're the people who gave Kam Harris a billion dollars and they're the people who pulled them and the reason Biden withdrew is because the donors pull the plug they said we're not funding you anymore that that was there was no
• 38:30 - 39:00 struggle with moral conscience or all the garbage they tried to feed us afterwards yeah I mean there's one version of this sort of cynical read that I agree with which is that now that Republicans are in power you're going to see a lot of folks saying a lot of Lefty sounding things uh because there's no ability for them to actually put them into effect and it's good for brand building that we can anticipate that the progressives and the house are going to start talking about Medicare for all again all because it doesn't put any
• 39:00 - 39:30 pressure on the Democratic party to actually execute because they aren't actually in power so I I substantively agree with that that being said I'm curious what you see as coming down the transom in terms of left uh an anti-war push back against a trump Administration what that's going to look like both over the next couple of months of lame duck Biden period and also what the resistance to the war in Gaza and the continued fight for Progressive domestic
• 39:30 - 40:00 policies is going to look like under a trump Administration well we've we know what it's looked like because the Biden Administration has always started it and you look at campuses around the country over the summer uh campus administrators presidents uh worked in a coordinated effort to essentially make any kind of the most tepid protest against the genocide in Gaza untenable uh so and there a uniformity to the bands now on these campuses not only can you not have
• 40:00 - 40:30 encampments you can't do flying you can't have invents tables The Outlaw groups like Jewish voice for peace students Justice students for justice in Palestine it's uh that's all been done under the Biden Administration uh the Trump Administration will certainly continue it uh I think one of the things that shocked many of us when I was in London for Roger he was he and four other just stop oil activists were not
• 40:30 - 41:00 actually in the shutdown of the M25 they were in the they were captured on a zoom meeting uh planning it um but the the sentences for nonviolent Civil Disobedience five years in prison the other four activists got four years that's what we're seeing that the uh oligarchic corporate Global lead has no intention of reforming or responding to public opinion remember 70 was it 72% of
• 41:00 - 41:30 democratic voters wanted want an arms embargo against Israel I think it's 62% or maybe it's 77% and 62% of Independence uh and so they're not responding to the Bas but of course the Democratic party look at this last convention I mean at least when Bernie was there there was real debate uh there was a semblance of a democratic process by this convention where kamalo never
• 41:30 - 42:00 even ran never got a primary vote she was anointed uh by the corporate Elite that owns the Democratic party uh it was I mean Jimmy D kind of called it out correctly I think he called it the Stepford wise convention it was kind of frightening I mean with figures getting up saying I'm a real billionaire I mean this was just right it showed the complete bankruptcy of of the democratic party um so no everything's in place I mean the the building of the National
• 42:00 - 42:30 Security State will SES surveillance the Patriot Act which Biden helped author um all of this stuff has created a mechanism by the flick of a switch we can be a totalitarian state that was put into place by uh largely an executive branch under uh both Republican and Democratic administrations I would argue that Obama's assault on civil liberties was probably even worse than es you know I sued Obama in federal court over
• 42:30 - 43:00 section 1021 of the National Defense authorization act which uh greenlighted or empowered uh the Armed Forces to act as a domestic police force over turning the 1878 posi comatus act we actually won uh in the southern district court of New York and then the appell at court denied my standing we filed assert to the Supreme Court also denied my standing so it's law that was done by Obama um the Snowden Revelations came out under Obama
• 43:00 - 43:30 uh they remain completely uh un unexamined unchallenged uh so all of these mechanisms are bipartisan and in the hands of a trump Administration uh they have the capacity to really shut down any kind of any kind of descent at all um that's the gift we've given them yeah I mean that's is very Bleak um Dr Hedges
• 43:30 - 44:00 it I know I'm accus of being Bleak but it doesn't help us accusation we have to acknowledge reality if we're going to resist we can't pretend it it it isn't what it is effective resistance requires bre it's not a criticism or an accusation but it does lead me into the followup question because I don't want listeners to be demoralized uh because they are overwhelmed by how how dark things seem and I think that what helps people not get demoralized is to have
• 44:00 - 44:30 some sense of what that resistance will look like what the cost of it are but what the upsides of it might be if they continue to push and to commit to those acts of resistance so for example when you raise the lengthy sentences that these stop oil protesters have gotten and we look at domestically the ratcheting up of criminal penalties for this kind of uh nonviolent uh environmental protest when you look at the creation of the cop cities and the environmental activist who was killed by the uh police down in
• 44:30 - 45:00 Atlanta there it's going to have a chilling effect so I do I do wonder if you've given any thought to what folks will be required to do in light of the states anticipation of us ratcheting up these kinds of protests and making it more and more costly for individuals to ratchet up uh those kinds of Acts of resistance well as Roger said when I visited prison we're going to have to anticipate that we're going to go to
• 45:00 - 45:30 prison um it doesn't make it's not helpful to be naive about the forces AR raid against us it's not helpful to embrace false hopes uh we have to be very cleare eyed and I think that comes out of the 20 years I spent covering War uh people had a very polanish view of the world around them didn't live very long you had to make a very cold assessment of what those weapon systems were and the capacity they had to to
• 45:30 - 46:00 cause harm um and we're not going to be able to resist unless we make a very clear-headed and cold assessment of the forces raid against us I think we have to begin to accept the fact that we do not live in a de democracy it's the facade of democracy but the democracy's finished um and uh but there are heroic figures all throughout history that have stood up to horrific forms of total arianism uh Alexander saniton read the
• 46:00 - 46:30 gulag archipelago uh you know people who defied uh fascism um you know many of them paid with their lives uh but that is the radical evil and I think that that is a shift as you know I'm a Divinity School graduate it's a shift away from the political into the moral uh and that we are called you don't have to come out of organized religion of course Camu understood this he was an atheist but it it is about that uh imperative of defying what Hannah Aaron
• 46:30 - 47:00 calls radical evil uh but if you defy radical evil the great Theologian James con this was something he understood very well his great books the cross the lynching Trey and others um if you truly defy radical evil uh radical evil is uh going to at at the very least marginalize you if not extinguish you um and we in America have a habit of killing our prophets Martin Luther King Malcolm X which I just want to add as a
• 47:00 - 47:30 caveat both of those men were deeply religious um that they they looked at the world both Martin and Malcolm uh from the Viewpoint of what was right uh even accepting and in both cases at the end of their lives they knew what the cost was going to be it wasn't hidden to them but they did what was right anyway uh and I think we have to begin to think in those terms yeah part of what was so sort of restor restorative and beautiful and
• 47:30 - 48:00 humbling about the event we both attended in California recently in Santa Barbara was I think the Embrace of moral arguments I've been thinking about something that uh was said in the context of the berning 2020 campaign that I had forgotten about until I think Nina Turner recently tweeted it out again which is this question are you willing to fight for someone you don't know are you willing to to extend yourself for interests beyond your own
• 48:00 - 48:30 and into your community and I've been thinking a lot about how when Bernie came onto the scene in 2016 as a presidential candidate talking about Universal rights and adopting a more moral framework instead of just this kind of uh faf pragmatism of the corporate Democratic party it did feel like something more than just a political argument it felt like there was a collective release from a population who been made to feel like all of the ways in which they had been suffering were due to their own kind of personal failure and what the weight of
• 48:30 - 49:00 that means for a community and how powerful it is to have these moral arguments that UNT you from that weight similarly I've been thinking about this in the context of a recent protest of uh historically about black college students in Atlanta standing up in a Rafael waru sermon um in protest uh of the genocide in Gaza and walking out of that sermon and how unlike the tradition that you describe the historical tradition of kind of radical
• 49:00 - 49:30 transformation so often happening within the context of the church and organized religion today what's going on with those kind of faith-based Institutions and do you have any perspective on the potential of continuing to work in a religious context toward these Progressive goals um are there substantive changes within these institutions that you think makes it more difficult if not impossible as compared to how they were 50 years ago
• 49:30 - 50:00 or so I mean what's your read well first of all institutional traditional liberal institutions like the Presbyterian Church which I come out of are dying and they're dying because they're irrelevant uh but let's not romanticize what it was like 50 years ago I remember I was a boy my father was involved in the Civil Rights Movement the anti war movement and the gay rights movement for which the church threw him out finally um those figures like my dad received tremendous pressure people walked out of their sermons the
• 50:00 - 50:30 institutional church was uh not particularly embracing of those positions so there was a war within the institution itself however I think your point is correct there were more people more figures who because of their religious orientation and their commitment to social justice were willing to stand up uh people that were these you know very these giants like Rabbi Abraham hesel for instance uh who marched with king and you know even if
• 50:30 - 51:00 you go into Jewish Theological Seminary in New York today they have pictures of all the noted rabbis on the wall you won't find his so even the hostility lingers decades later famous story of uh Rabbi Hessel marching with king and the other rabbis criticizing him because it was the Sabbath and Hessel said I March I pray with my feet um so yes th those figures we don't have the barag Daniel Baran Phil baragan uh concerned clergy and Ley which my
• 51:00 - 51:30 father was a member of uh uh those those figures are we don't we don't have them we don't have them and uh the institution itself is dying and anemic and essentially replicated the narcissism of The Wider culture so they Embrace this kind of faux spirituality which is you know how is it with me which is just a form of narcissism um so you have the Decay within traditional religious structures
• 51:30 - 52:00 both in terms of reformed Judaism and uh protestantism and the Catholic church I mean there's uh these churches are are literally disappearing every week uh because there's no attendance and those within the church look at it as a kind of social these aging congregations look at it as a kind of Social Club so uh we're in a very different position uh than we were 50 years ago unfortunately and that Legacy of the
• 52:00 - 52:30 radical religious left that came out of rashan bush and the social gospel and of course the abolitionists remember that was a a christian-based movement uh we don't have them anymore but that that again mirrors what's happened to the the secular left to to unions to uh all of it has has been hollowed out eviscerated not it it's not all their own fault and my book death of liberal class deals
• 52:30 - 53:00 with this in in 200 and some pages but it it it is you had a liberal class a cold warrior liberal class that essentially sold out uh and uh and posited itself as the kind of moral Arbiter of society and they were used as a kind of bludgeon to take out the radical left or the real left people like ch would be a good example um and
• 53:00 - 53:30 we've seen uh an evisceration of those militant movements and that took place in the 30s it took place in the 50s with McCarthyism uh the 1947 Taft Harley act which makes it extremely uh difficult for workers to organize uh probably the greatest portrayal of the working class until NAFTA um so there's at once been and then you have the Powell memo of 19 71 which actually uh prints Ralph
• 53:30 - 54:00 nater's name I me he's named in that vemo and calls for corporate money to take over institutions and Destroy Grassroots movements so you've had a failing on the part of the left but you've also had a war against the left and now when we stand on the cusp of a kind of christianized fascism we who care about civil liberties and inclusiveness and tolerance and uh economic Justice are really at a severe disadvantage yeah I don't know if it is
• 54:00 - 54:30 the sort of overwhelming task at hand or it is the kind of relatively recent example of how I've personally felt motivated and inspired by sort of Faith adjacent language um but I do find myself increasingly thinking about spirituality as a resource in this political context and how much I as someone who is not religious at all wasn't raised religiously do find myself
• 54:30 - 55:00 thinking about my politics in more spiritual terms and also having a desire for interpersonal connection and Community um the more I feel like the Trad the spaces that are traditionally supposed to be advocating for my interest are are captured and I you know read the commentary on how we had fewer and fewer these so-called third spaces uh today than we used to have people
• 55:00 - 55:30 aren't in Bowling leagues as you mentioned there's less religious attendance as you mentioned Union density is low all of these things you can draw a line between all of these things and both lament the decline of these spaces but also potentially see the possibility of tapping into people's I think desire for that connection to build build different kinds of spaces there's been a lot of chatter uh postel ction about whether the left needs a Joe Rogan of its own uh
• 55:30 - 56:00 but whether it's kind of in a social media sort of environment or in person I would reframe that as uh a need to build a sort of community that's willing to prioritize our value for each other and our shared interests um and the way that that Bernie slogan sort of captured over C just have a having a popular figure who says the things that we like to say and I I do wonder if you think if you've thought at all about the opportunity to
• 56:00 - 56:30 build new and different kinds of third spaces or if you think that there's still significant power in religious institutions themselves no I don't I I think Paul till the Theologian said every institution including the church is demonic um no I don't think the institutions they weren't particularly effective in the 1960s uh during the rise of the anti movement um groups like concerned clergy and Ley were outside the church
• 56:30 - 57:00 structures and church structures were often very hostile to them so the institutions aren't going to help us uh I think you you raise a very good point about space Ralph raises this point a lot that they've taken away communal space they've taken away public space on purpose uh everything has become privatized and I I spent a lot of time in zotti park and and then of course it was shut down a coordinated effort by Barack Obama um but it was interesting
• 57:00 - 57:30 that afterwards there was a real mourning on the part of people who spent a lot of time there for that sense of community um they people didn't feel lonely and and one of the things they mourned the most which I found very poignant was the people's Library had about five six thousand books and it was staffed by these retired New York City school librarians it was my favorite place to just sit in so I think you raised a very good point that that especially as things get Bleak we need
• 57:30 - 58:00 that Community that's what sustains us what sustains me personally is are those uh events where uh Iraqi veterans against the war which I've been arrested with and these kinds of stuff that's my community and that's my church uh and I get my sustenance from it um all of these protests which I would just go and stand in the back whether it was Columbia or Princeton I didn't speak I wasn't part of it but I I it was so uh important for
• 58:00 - 58:30 me um to just stand with those students who are our nation's conscience um and see their courage and because they have they you know they're sacrificing a lot their academic careers and uh the hunger strike there was Hunger Strike at Princeton they occupied the hall Princeton up the street for me so I was there a lot too that's was really important for me just to be in that
• 58:30 - 59:00 space and and uh I got far more from it I spoke sometimes but um so yeah I think he raised a really good point on the issue of Joe Rogan no we don't need a Joe Rogan air America tried it and it didn't work uh because the corporate Elites are not going to fund people on the left Amer air America filled failed um uh so I don't think that's a good use of our energy uh Rogan is completely in
• 59:00 - 59:30 sync with the corporate State that's why he pulls in the money that he pulls in and if we are really going to challenge these Powers um they're never going to give us that platform and we're never going to pull in that kind of money that's why air America went Belly Up do you think that that's true of Rogan that I think generally speaking I agree with that sort of analysis that many of the right media institutions are able to succeed and Thrive and be very um profitable um because they are in sync
• 59:30 - 60:00 with various conservative aligned corporate interests that fund them directly and promote them and that doesn't exist for the left media but Rogan does seem to be this anomalous Cas as I understand it where he was a guy who chatted with friends on a podcast and just had crazy organic success with basically a YouTube show and of course later his show got bought by Spotify and was enormously po uh um benefited by that and financially benefited by that but that there did seem to be something
• 60:00 - 60:30 organic about the interest in Rogan and then that he is someone who For Better or For Worse s softed endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2020 something that now all of these liberal pundits are saying it's a good thing to go on Joe Rogan to get his approval but of course back in 2020 were castigating Sanders for um AOC reportedly distanced herself from Bernie Sanders over that endorsement Etc ETA ETA so you know sometimes people say this thing about Joe Rogan I
• 60:30 - 61:00 think you know we do have lots of Lefty Independent Media there's an argument that someone like Jimmy dor is is the closest thing that we have to The Joe Rogan of the left but the real difference is that liberal media uh sorry liberal political figures won't go on left Independent Media shows because they're going to get push back and they they basically do not countenance having any kind of push back well I don't listen to Rogan very much
• 61:00 - 61:30 so I can hardly offer an astute critique of Joe Rogan um these people are entertainers Brian they're not journalists the few times I've heard Rogan I think he's a good competent or more than a competent I think he's a very good interviewer in the sense that he listens um I don't you know I hear that and it's probably true that his curiosity is genuine but you have to so I'm not saying that he's disingenuous or anything like that but Chomsky makes
• 61:30 - 62:00 this point he was having a conversation with Tony Lewis who used to be a liberal columnist for the New York Times and uh Chomsky of course very critical with Ed Herman and his book manufacturing consent of news organizations has he correctly like the times and uh Tony Lewis said well nobody tells me what to write and Chomsky said yes of course nobody tells you what to write um but that's why you're in the position that you're in uh because they know what
• 62:00 - 62:30 you're going to write this is what I don't get because it suggests that I mean I'm a j people like me are self censoring no not self-censoring uh you're there's a filtering system that starts in kindergarden goes all the way through uh and it it's not doesn't work 100% but it pretty effective uh it selects for obedience and subordination uh and especially I think that so stroppy people won't make it to positions of influence behavior problems
• 62:30 - 63:00 or if you read applications to a graduate school you see that people will tell you he's not doesn't get along too well with his colleagues you know how to interpret those things I I I'm just interesting this because I was brought up like a lot of people um probably post a Watergate film and so on to believe that journalism was a crusading uh craft and that there were a lot of um disputatious stroppy difficult people in journalism and I have to say I think I know some of them well I know some of the best and best known investigative
• 63:00 - 63:30 reporters in the United States I won't mention names because I whose attitude toward the media is much more cynical than mine in fact they regard the media as a sham and they know and they consciously talk about how they try to play it like a violin if they see a little opening they'll try to squeeze something in that ordinarily wouldn't make it through uh and it's perfectly true that the major I'm I'm sure you're speaking for the majority of journalists who are trained have it driven into
• 63:30 - 64:00 their heads that this is a crusading a profession adversarial we stand up against Power very self-serving view uh on the other hand in my opinion I hate to make a value judgment but the better journalists and in fact the ones who are often regarded as the best journalists have quite a different picture and I think a very realistic one how how can you how can you know that I'm self-censoring how can you know that sensoring I'm sure you believe everything you're saying but what I'm saying is if you believe something different you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting um so I don't I don't
• 64:00 - 64:30 want to talk very much about Rogan because I listen very little to him I don't know him um I uh I but but I think that we have to be clear number one that he's primarily an Entertainer all of these figures and not just him but the people on the left MSNBC Rachel M these people are entertainers that's why how much does Rachel M make a year I don't know $10 million a year trust me having been a newspaper journalist for a long time journalists
• 64:30 - 65:00 do not earn $10 million a year um so yeah they they're part of the entertainment landscape and it's a faux kind of news uh so I'm not picking on Rogan they're all like that whether they're on CNN or anywhere else they're not journalists they pretend to be journalists yeah I think that that's true I guess I wonder and I'm just wanding out loud I'm not making any claims here you know to what extent there is a sense
• 65:00 - 65:30 of community among Rogan's audience and the sort of network of of right shows that kind of share guests and the like by virtue of how many people listen to Rogan by virtue of it being a three-hour format show where conversations are allowed to take their course in the way that's very different than corporate media I think this is another Chism that the format of the mainstream news in these seven minute segments is good for the status quo and bad for people who are trying to develop
• 65:30 - 66:00 ideas and change minds and there is something too I think podcast format generally speaking and Joe Rogan show in particular that lends itself to a certain kind of a generosity to desense um to differences of opinion and attracts people who feel instinctively that something is wrong
• 66:00 - 66:30 with the world but who are mostly told by mainstream corporate media that it's all their in their imagination and that it's all their fault and I remember um meeting a cousin of mine uh at a family funeral a couple years ago that I hadn't met before but who I found out listened to my show and knew me from like the internet but didn't know we were related and he uh is a truck driver and also talked about listening to Rogan and what it meant to be on the Long Haul
• 66:30 - 67:00 and have the constant presence of that podcast in his ear and I would I think caution liberals who might be listening and who might have mixed feelings about the role that Joe Rogan is playing whether or not we need our own to reflect on the kinds of people that are being tied together in a community a virtual community under a kind of a Joe Rogan listenership and that these are millions and millions and millions of people many of whom are working class and have the kinds of jobs where you can listen to the radio for a prolong period of time whether you're a You Know da
• 67:00 - 67:30 labor construction worker truck driver and things like that and what it means to build that kind of um maybe not intellectual Community is a strong word but a kind of um a political Community rhetorical Community it's in the context Community they're still exactly where the corporate State wants them which is alone in their room you know listening to a podcast well Jordan does it matter if they don't feel that way does it matter if they don't feel alone because they are they are part of that's like
• 67:30 - 68:00 watching that's like watching the Today's Show and thinking they're your friends I mean that's an illusion that's an illusion and and and it's a dangerous illusion I mean that's where you begin to get into the very corrosive effect of celebrity culture as if we know them we don't really know them it's all about we don't know Rogan it's all about self-presentation that's that's my book Empire of Illusion the end literacy and the Triumph of spectacle uh Jordan Peterson also has a massive following
• 68:00 - 68:30 look I don't want to talk a lot about Rogan because I have not spent much time listening to him but my sense is that it's a very hyper masculine culture and Hyper masculinity is the Bedrock of fascism uh it's the Bedrock of the Christian right that hyper masculine culture is very very toxic uh and very dangerous and it's something that Jordan Peterson who I think Rogan Embraces has pedal uh with his pseudo intellectualism and it's something Rogan
• 68:30 - 69:00 pedals I I don't want to believe the point and I'll let you go but I I do just want you to I would love you to address what do you make of Rogan then endorsing Bernie well he didn't endorse Bernie he didn't come right out on if he was gonna vote then he'd vote for Bernie Sanders I'll pull up the exact quot while because the the refreshing thing thing about Bernie is that he suddenly spoke about reality unlike the rest of the
• 69:00 - 69:30 Democratic and Republican candidates and I hesitate to you use the word refreshing but the uh the Trump campaign or Donald Trump also spoke I mean remember the debate with Jeb Bush and he called the Iraq War big fat mistake or something I can't remember the exact words Trump speaks to the reality that's you know he's of course a con artist um but he speaks to that
• 69:30 - 70:00 disenfranchise men and those loss of jobs and Bernie did that and that was Bernie spoke you know for the first time in a in a in recent memory in a major political campaign he spoke about what was real um and so that was the attraction of Bernie and I can see why Rogan who speaks about what's real as far as I know in the same way that Trump does I can see that attraction but I don't see how someone who has any
• 70:00 - 70:30 political sophistication or consistency can Embrace Bernie and then turn around and embrace Trump that said when I was doing my book America the farewell tour I was in Anderson Indiana that is where the GM trucks were made after NAFTA uh those plants were literally packed up and moved to Monterey Mexico where Mexican uh workers earn $3 an hour instead of the unionized
• 70:30 - 71:00 jobs in Anderson and I was talking to the old UAW leadership and they said that in the primary these former UAW workers supported Bernie but in the general election they supported Trump um so it is I think the one of the fundamental faes of the liberal class and the Democratic party is they they don't even rhetorically acknowledge the reality of the working class and in his
• 71:00 - 71:30 own Twisted way Trump does and Bernie does and that was why Bernie was uh such an important political figure Bernie spoke in the language of occupy which really we have to go back to its source the 1% and all of that came out of the Occupy Movement um and the and the Occupy Movement knew who had the centers of power they didn't set up they didn't seek to occupy the area around the White House they sought to Occupy Wall Street
• 71:30 - 72:00 so um but unfortunately that faux populism of a trump that faux fascism it does acknowledge the reality um but its solution is really toxic and really dangerous because of course we're we're the undocumented are about to get it but we're all about to get it um so that is the power of all fascist movements you know whether it was Bonito musolini in Italy or even the Nazis in Germany they
• 72:00 - 72:30 acknowledge the reality but the solutions that they propose are um dismantle and Destroy civil society and democracy yeah I I guess I I do agree that the kind of ideological inconsistency of some of these people is baffling and I think it has to do with them not having a real theory of politics and theory of the case that being said it does seem more
• 72:30 - 73:00 than superficial when Bernie is able to make his case on Joe Rogan and you have Joe Rogan agreeing with the concept of a Universal Health Care system in a way that you could never get a mainstream you know you can never get Dana Bash to agree to um and then follow up with this this was the exact language of the like soft endorsement he said I think I'll probably vote for Bernie him as a human being when I was hanging out with him I in him I like him I like him a lot so I'll leave I'll leave the Joe
• 73:00 - 73:30 Rogan discourse there unless you wanted to respond go back Panna these people are they're entertainers Donna bash they're all entertainers that's what they are and we got to break free from celebrity culture which didn't work particularly well for Harris uh you know one of my fears is that and not just my fear but Richard Wolf's fear Cornell West fear is that we've severed ourselves from the past we've severed ourselves from the great
• 73:30 - 74:00 political thinkers of the past including Carl Marx I'm not a Marxist by the way but his critique is right um you know Antonio gry I mean on and web de Boyce I mean I know you know these figures but we have to go back to uh remain rooted in uh revolutionary political and economic theory which you're never going to get off screen you're not uh and that gets into the issue of essentially a
• 74:00 - 74:30 post literate culture where we live in a kind of Eternal present and that's very dangerous uh it seems to me there's something a little a little inconsistent about recognizing um uh a Poss of of third spaces the decline of unions the decline of the church as an attack on public education decline in kind of generalized literacy the reality that so many people are clud in and listening to a podcast
• 74:30 - 75:00 like Joe Rogan even if it's for worse as opposed to for better and to sort of resist the access that a platform like that gives you to promote ideas uh from Karl Marx or gr or any of these other figures well I can pretty much guarantee you he probably doesn't even know who gram she is he would if you went on and talk to him about it which I think is a real possibility right that he would have someone like you as a GU to go I would go be pretty probably be pretty boring
• 75:00 - 75:30 three hours but I would do it hardly I think people would be urcl by your appearance I I again I don't I don't like talking about Rogan because I'm probably not even being fair I've I kind imagine I've listened to more than an hour of Rogan and just Snippets here and there um but I will go back to the fact that all of these big media figures are primarily about entertainment and and not just Rogan but the entire Jake
• 75:30 - 76:00 Tapper all of them uh MSNBC all of them they're entertainers they're not journalists and they're not intellectuals um and we need intellectuals like Cornell West gome Chomsky we need those figures we um because they see things that we don't I mean even myself I mean no I think because he's a linguist often gives me
• 76:00 - 76:30 the words and vocabulary to describe reality and that's what a great intellectual does and Cornell too uh you know they give you the words to describe the reality and without those words you can't understand it Professor Hedges I'm always so grateful for you to come and spend this time with us is there anything you want to say to the audience about upcoming projects books and where they can find you on the internet and Beyond so everything comes out on Chris edges. substack do.com so that's my weekly show
• 76:30 - 77:00 which is probably 70 or 80% of it are about interviewing authors on books as well as the columns that I write and the next project is a book on Gaza which I'm doing with a cartoonist Joe Sako who wrote the masterpieces Palestine and footnotes in Gaza which you don't have you should get um and that's I've spent a lot of time in the Middle East in the LA in the last year and uh much of the summer in Jordan bringing back my
• 77:00 - 77:30 Arabic which was very Rusty um but that's the next project yeah all right and out of curiosity your your opening address uh at the Santa Barber event was so compelling uh I was hoping to be able to maybe have it somewhere both written and to watch the video is that available to any folks who might also be interested well they put the video up I don't think the audio was so great but is up um I haven't published the I haven't put out the written
• 77:30 - 78:00 text um although I probably should yeah I would strongly encourage you to do so obviously you're a very busy man um but I really thought it was one of the best if not the best sort of summation of this moment um both politically and with respect to Gaza and what the stakes are that I have ever read it was the kind of thing that I really wanted to would want to share uh to anybody who's on the fence or needs to better understand where the left uh and where the anti-war movement is coming from so thank you for that um I hope people are able to access
• 78:00 - 78:30 it and listen to it uh if not read it at some point um and thank you for being with us here today thank you Brian to the audience as always thank you for tuning in and for listening if you want an additional episode of bad faith podcast you can get one every week on Mondays at patreon.com bfaith podcast as always take care of yourselves and keep the faith hey YouTube thanks for watching just a reminder that this is a podcast you can catch an extra premium episode every Monday for $5 a month at
• 78:30 - 79:00 patreon.com podcast that's patreon.com podcast for $5 a month an extra episode every week additionally please do consider liking this video subscribing to this channel it helps us out it helps Independent Media beat the algorithm we appreciate you and as always keep the faith [Music]