4/14/23: Krystal Reacts To Leaker Arrest, Jen Psaki Insists She's A Real Journalist, VA Teacher Shot By Student, Krystal and Kyle Interview Norman Finkelstein

just finished recording Crystal conference. Is why I have the stone in the background instead of the brick in the background. But there is a big piece of breaking news that we wanted to share with you as quickly as we possibly could if we could put this up on the screen. From the New York Times, they have named the alleged leaker of that trove of highly classified documents, many of which had to do with the US involvement in the Ukraine War. These were initially posted to a discord server

and then eventually leaked to the wider Internet. So what the New York Times says here and I'll just read directly from their report and then give you a little bit of my thoughts on the other side. Leader of online group where secret documents leaked is air National Guardsmen. Federal investigators are searching for the person who shared top secret documents that revealed government secrets about the Ukraine War.

The article reads, the leader of a small online gaming chat group where a trove of classified US intelligence documents leaked over the last few months is a twenty one year old member of the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts

Air National Guard. According to interviews and documents reviewed by The New York Times, the National guardsmen, whose name is Jack Techsara oversaw a private online group called Thugshaker Central, where about twenty to thirty people, mostly young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns, what they describe as racist online memes and video games. Two US officials confirmed that investigators want to talk to airman Techsera

about the leak of the government documents. One official said that he might have information relevant to the investigation, and of course, federal investigators have been searching for this individual who was named in the group. I think they called him the OG. The Washington Post had some reporting that we brought you on Breaking Points this morning, where they had interviewed one of the other members of this group, a teenager who had to get permission from his parents

to speak to the Post. That individual was kept anonymous, but he indicated that you know the person who leaked, who he referred to as og, that he was either in the military or worked on a military base. He talked about how his views, he would describe them as sort of generally anti government. He named checked Ruby Bridge and Waco as some sort of inspirations for his general right wing anti government views. According to that young man, young teenager, he wasn't didn't model himself as a sort

of whistleblower. He moore was posting these documents because he wanted to show to the group how important he was, I guess within the military and what he had access to. And then of course was sort of clumsy and some of the photographs that he took there were some stuff in the background that the Times, the Washington Posts and other outlets were able to use in part of their effort to find whoever this leaguer was. So listen, is it newsworthy who this person is? Sure? Is it interesting?

You know what their background is? How this all unfolded? Absolutely not denying that, but as we talked about this morning. It also is extraordinary that these news outlets, they seem to have focused most of their journalistic resources not in uncovering the many other documents and secrets that he posted that no news outlet to our knowledge has access to or even in digging to some of the stories that we were able to bring you exclusively on breaking points

simply because the mainstream press didn't cover them. But they seemed to have focused most of their journalistic recas sources on hunting down this individual and effectively doing the work of the US government. On MSNBC, you know, they immediately brought on David Ignatius, who used the cherry picked pieces that were reported in the mainstream press to call for

a more hawkish approach towards Ukraine. And they brought on their own in house security expert, who is a former former CIA to say that, you know, the top priority was to quote catch the trader, so Washington Post in New York Times assisting in finding this individual, at least apparently based on the information that The New York Times

was able to obtain. They said that, you know, some of the details that were in the background they were able to match to details of the interior of his childhood home that had been posted on social media and family photographs. Let me also give you a little bit of reaction. They were able to talk to his mother, who's named Don, speaking outside her home in Massachusetts on Thursday. They say she confirmed that her son was a member

of their National Guard. Said he had recently been working for night shifts at a base on Cape Cod and in the last few days he had changed his phone number, she said, probably a wise move. Again, federal investigators not confirming that they have identified this person as a leaker, but saying that they are interested in speaking with him.

And then the last piece of this report is there been questions about who exactly had access to these very sensitive materials, and according to The Times, not immediately clear if a young Air National guardsman in his position would have had direct access to such highly sensitive briefings. So still a question of how he obtained the documents. So basically that's what we know right now, guys, New York Times,

Washington Posts. They did the work of the federal government making sure they tracked down the leaker, and wish now they would spend some more time digging into the documents and the important implications thereof of more for you later, guys. MSNBC's Jensaki, formerly of the Biden Whitehouse, had an interesting new interview. She claimed she is not a state propaganda. She actually sees herself as a journalist. Let's take a listen to that. Do you consider yourself a journalist? I do,

because how do you define being a journalist? And I'm gonna ask you this question. I don't know. I mean I was once told it was an out of work newspaper man. But you know, well, here's how I think about it. I mean, first of all, journalism has changed dramatically. Semaphore is an example of that, right, And even when I was in the White House working in government, it really was already all on a spectrum. It wasn't just the New York Times, what Washington Post, ABC News and

then everything else wasn't considered part of journalism. It's all a big, broad scope of things. And so to me, journalism is providing information to the public, helping make things clear, explaining things, having conversations with people people want to learn more about. And so I think there is a broad expansion of what that is. That is a very selective definition, which is technical true, but also involves not having government

actors be involved in said process. I actually think Ken Vogel reacted to it, and he said, I look forward to Jensaki's expose's about any of her former colleagues and funding of democratic apparatus. That's what actual journalism looks like. Otherwise you're just a partisan hack who is regurgitating something in a media info system. Do not confuse yourself with

the other things. Well, she does something very clever there as the very effective propagandas that she actually is, which she seeks to like butter up Ben and the semaphore audience, not that I think he's buying, and the semaphore audience by being look at all of these platforms, of course, the whole range and spectrum. This is all journalism which exempts any scrutiny of the individual people who are conducting

the work at these platforms. And yeah, if you are only focused on your quote unquote journalism to serve one side, like one portion the stablishment wing of the Democratic Party, your former boss, your former colleagues, et cetera, that's not journalism. That's continuing to be a partisan operative, basically continuing the role that you had at the White House just now

on a supposed news outlet platform. Yeah. I mean, listen, the baseline of journalism you have to be willing to hold power to account, whether it's whatever party is in wherever you are looking. And she obviously fails that test, or at least has so far. So if Ken's hopes come true and we see the expose as from Jensaki exposing the corruption or whatever within the Biden administration, then we will change our tune here. It's bullshit, like it's just not going to happen. We all know it's not

going to happen because we know where our bread is better. Yes, this is not someone that you know, some people go from journalism into a White House back into the world of journalism. That's already incredibly suspect. But this is someone who was a political operative her whole career, Like she's you know, that is what she does. She is a political operative on palf of the Democratic Party. There is no reason to that she is not still filling that

key role over ATMSNBC. Now, absolutely correct, there's a horrific story. I don't know if you guys followed this out of Newport News Virginia, where a six year old brought a gun to school and shot his teacher. You know, my first thought was, like, I'm six years old, Like you

probably didn't really know what he was doing. But apparently this kid had a very history of violent, aggressive, threatening behavior at the school, to the point where he was actually required to have a parent with him every single day at school. But there was no parent at school that day. A variety of people had warned they thought that he had a gun with him on that day. The school said they searched his backpack, they didn't find it, and then they didn't take any further action and he

ends up shooting his teacher. Well, now we have an update in the case, which is the mother of that six year old child has now been indicted. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. Mother charge in case of Virginia six year old who shot teacher at school. She's been criminally charged in connection with the case. Deja Taylor, twenty five in Newport News is facing one count of felony child neglect and one misdemeanor count of recklessly leaving a firearm so as to endanger a child.

The weapon the boy used in the incident belonged to the mother Taylor, authorities have said. They went on to say the Newport News Commonwealth's Attorney has asked a judge to and panel a special grand journey continue to investigate any security issues that might have contributed to the shooting, suggesting the conduct of administrators or others who allegedly failed to act after being warned the boy had a weapon

would be further scrutinized. In addition to this, the teacher who was gravely wounded just spoke down in a recent interview. She is also taking action against the school for failing to protect her, protect other students and deal appropriately with this situation. Let's take a listen to a little of what she had to say. Once the firearm went off and then I felt some say that shock itself that I had been shot. I knew you had been shot. Yeah, that was pretty shocking itself, But I just wanted to

get my babies out of there. What did the kids do? Say? They were screaming. I think they knew as well that they had to get out of there, but they were extremely frightened and screaming. The police chief said, after that, you had ensure that the kids got to a safe place, said your actions were heroic. Do you remember what were the next things that you did? That still kind of a blur got them out and I went to get

help for myself. I knew why didn't not at the time that my lung had collapsed, but I started not being able to breathe, very rasty breaths, and my visions started going out. I remember I went to the office and I just passed out. Zwerner's attorney, Diane Tuscano, filed a notice of intent to sue school administrators, arguing that the Richnick administration failed to take action after it was warned three separate times that the boy had a gun

with him the day that Zerner was shot. And it's not only that, let's put this Washington Post piece up on the screen. So on that day there seemed to have been failures to heed the warnings. It's in the Washing Posts they say how Rechnick Elementary failed to stop a six year old from shooting his teacher. They say, Abigail's Warner. That's the teacher was frustrated. It was January fourth, a six year old in her first grade class at rich Neck Elementary School had stolen her phone slammed it

to the floor, apparently upset over a schedule change. According to text messages That's Warner sent to a friend, administrator, she wrote were faulting her for the situation. The six year old took my phone and smashed it on the ground, as Werner wrote in a text message obtained by The

Washington Post, and the administration is blaming me. Two days later, the six year old told classmates at recon he was going to shoot Zwerner, show them a gun and its clip tucked into his jacket pocket, and threatened to kill them if they told anyone. According to an attorney for the family of a student who witnessed the threat, that afternoon, the six year old did as he promised, firing a bullet through Zerner's upraised hand and into her chest as

she was midway through teaching a lesson. In addition, there were previous incidents that have been reported where he strangled someone, Where a girl that fell on the playground or dress came up, he was touching her and appropriately using throwing furniture, using furniture to bar that. I mean, this kid was a menace. I mean, I don't know what was going on with him, and the parents were supposed to be there at school and no one was there on that. Well, look,

it's no six year old is born like that. You learn it from They don't get this behavior out of nowhere. Now, I don't doubt that the kid is disturbed as hell, maybe yeah, but you know, you also get disturbed a certain way, and almost certainly like a lot, especially when you hear about like really small children doing stuff that's really in a appropriate they almost always get it from home. So anyway, and that's based on long standing amounts of

research in terms of child behavioral patterns. Also, clearly I think it's exactly the right charge to go after the mother, Yeah, because they're going after for reckless endangerment, for recklessly not handling a weapon properly. Be is a six year old child. Like at the end of the day, it's like your responsibility to care for all any gun owner, it is driven into your head. It's like the safety of this firearm, everything that happens to it is your responsibility as owner

of this gun. And if you don't take responsibility for that, you will suffer the consequences. She deserves one hundred percent to suffer the consequences for what happened here and also the school. You're right, I mean, clearly they didn't take action in this way that they needed to, and they should have either had suspension or gone to great lengths to get in contact with the parents of the child to see why exactly this was happening. Refer for some

sort of behavioral therapy or something. So yeah, it's a mess all the way around. Yeah, I agree with you, though charges of the mother here are entirely I'm glad to see it. Yeah, she absolutely deserves me held accountable for what she did. All right, guys, we'll see you soon. Very excited to be joined by Norman Finkelstein. He has authored a new book called I'll Burn that Bridge When I get to it. Heretical thoughts on identity, politics, cancel culture,

and academic freedom. Let's get to it. Professer, welcome, great to have you. Thanks so much for having me. You were my you were my obsession during the burning campaign. Well that is easy there, fellow, very flattering intellectual and political obsession. I thought you were on the ball and you were the best during that period. It was very invigorating, energizing to watch your commentary during that period, and I

should give it the form recognition. Of course, when I first heard your name, I thought, okay, she's got to be a flake, Crystal. You judge me prematurely, sir, that's correct, That's correct. And I start to watch the program and I started to tell everybody, you really have to watch Crystal Bolk, She's just the best. Well, thank you. That's

unbelievably flattering. I really it means a lot to me coming from such an intellect as yourself, And the Bernie campaign is actually a good place to start with, Like, what do you make of his two successive campaigns? What do you make of the relative success of those campaigns given me, you know, utter decimation of the left in you know, most of my political lifetime. And what do you think are the particular rocks that it crashed into. Well,

that's actually a big question. I'm going to try to summarize it briefly, and then you can pursue any line that seems relevant to you. The most important thing, excuse me, the most important aspect of the Berni campaign, in my opinion, is that it brought to a surface of political possibility that rarely that with rare exceptions, anybody thought was really a plausible political campaign. When I say almost rarely, with

rare exceptions, that includes Bernie Sanders. When Bernie Sanders went out in twenty sixteen, his expectation was he was just going to do some stump speeches for his socialist agenda and then retire back into his home. And then he was totally shocked, as he said many times, that suddenly, like mushrooms after arranged, the huge numbers of people started

to show up. And so what Bernie Sanders campaign demonstrate was that there's this huge potential out there for building a class based or class struggle political campaign and agenda. Bernie did a lot of I should say firstly about Bernie himself, as many people said, Bernie for fifty years has been saying the same thing, and of course there was a lot of truth to them. The thing was, it's not that Bernie caught up with the times. It

was at the times caught up with Bernie Sanders. That is to say, in the nineteen seventies, the Bernie style politics had very relatively little resonance in the United States for the simple reason that the economy for most people, I would say for the overwhelming majority of people, the

economy was functioning. Functioning meant that each generation had a reasonable expectation that it would live a better life than the generation that preceded it, And so Bernie espoused a socialist aquasi socialist agenda, but the times were not yet ripe for it. And if you go back to my generation, even in the Marxist writings of the time, you'll be surprised. I know you majored in economics, but I don't know how much you know about the history of Marxism in

general or in US. In the United States, the main writings in the nineteen sixties about Marxism by the Mark just Left were about Marx's concept of alienation, meaning alienated from your job. The assumption was you would have a job. The assumption was you would have a nine to five job, five days a week, forty hours a week. You would get a pension, you would get vacation and self work. That was the assumption for our generation. The problem was

most people felt alienated from their job. Most people felt unfulfilled by their job. Most people who were looking for meaningful work. So at that point people turned back to what was called the young marks not. The contrast was between the young marks and the mature marks. The young marks talked about alienation, alienation, so it resonated. But the marks that talked about capitalist crises, the marks that talked about the polarization of wealth, that had very very little resonance.

Now beginning in the nineteen eighties, over a very long term, but nonetheless beginning in the Reagan era, a stagnation in wages set in and simultaneously a polarization of wealth. And so come twenty twenty, when Bernie sets out on the campaign trail, suddenly those tendencies which began in the early nineteen eighties, those tendencies had reached a critical point, critical mess,

and people started resonating to the Bernie campaign. It took a while for those tendencies to unfold, but once they had, Bernie, as I said, his main importance, in my opinion, was he brought to the surface a class based agenda which now its time had come. I would say Bernie was quite sharp, acute in having clearly defined and these are

not easy things. When I've been reading a lot of the old Marxist literature from the beginning of the twentieth century and one thing that's very striking when you read the literature is the difficulty in defining a political slogan. Now, it may seem to you perfectly obvious what a political slogan should be at any particular moment, but in fact that's one of the most difficult things in politics, to define the right slogan for the right moment, which will advance.

Because and Bernie, it took him time, but he came up with the right slogans. It was very simple. Was Medicare for all, abolished student tuition, abolished student debt, a Green New Deal, and I think those for with the main There was one other, but it just slipped my mind, and so it was hugely successful. Now, I don't want to take up all your time, even though I said that question was brought. I want to just get to the second, the the second part, namely what went wrong.

And I think first of all, we ought not to forget. And you, Crystal, will know better than anybody else because I watched you religiously during the Bernie campaign. You know more than anyone else will know how close Bernie came. In twenty twenty, I think that's all completely forgotten. Yeah, up until South Carolina. Up until South Carolina, it looked like he was going to win. People like James Carville and Chris Matthews were, you know, they were decomposing on

screen in real time. They were becoming positively hysterical at the prospect of this Bernie victory. So were it not for South Carolina, now, I don't think South Carolina was inevitable, and I'm telling you things I know. You know, in the last week before that South Carolina primary, poles were showing that Bernie would win in South Carolina. It was at that point that the screws were turned on Jim Clyburn, who up to that point said he would sit out

recommending any endorsing anyone in the South Carolina primary. The screws were turned on him. He endorsed Biden, and at that point, the exit polls right after the primary show that sixty percent of Blacks were influenced by that Clyburn endorsement. And then, as you know, right afterwards, Obama entered the same turned the screws on Pete Budachig and probably also any Klobynshar and so to speak, the rest is history.

Had Bernie won in South Carolina, and as I said, it was kind of just the fluke that he lost. Had he one, then it was clear he would win Super Tuesday, and he had the nomination in his bag. And then you can go on to say, I think he probably would have destroyed Trump in the debates, and instead of between twenty sixteen and twenty twenty we sat through a Donald Trump presidency, it was pretty close that

we would have sat through a Bernie Sanders presidency. Now I recognize that the moment he got the nomination, the whole ruling elite would have coordinated collaborate to stop Bernie, and that would have been a very big hurdle to pass. Question, they were good, The prospects were quite good for the Bernie campaign. Now, let me just get to the last part. What went wrong? My opinion, the main thing that went wrong is Bernie did not follow through on what he promised.

Bernie was repeatedly asked during the campaign a simple question, mister Sanders, you possibly believe that you can get your agenda through Congress? And that was obviously a reasonable question, and Bernie always answered the same way. I thought his response was reasonable. He said, of course I can't get through it, get my agenda through Congress. The way Congress is currently structured, The only way I can get it through is I bring masses of people into the street.

That you have to organize, educate people, and bring them out into the street. Just like during the Civil rights movement. You know, you have to commit civil disobedience, you have to be willing to go to jail. I think there were the young people, those who turned up for those twenty five thousand person rallies in all the major cities. I think the young people would have done it. You know, their future is at stake. They were ready for that,

they were primed for that. But what happened once Bernie lost the campaign, He became what he had been for forty years. He became the gadfly in Congress again. He had to make a choice. The choice was very simple. It was the choice was if he wanted to have Biden's ear. If he wanted to have Biden's ear, he had to drop the idea of bringing young people into the streets, or people in general, but in particularly young people into the streets, because he knew Biden would then say,

what the hell are you doing? What's doing with your revolution? This is Congress, what are you talking about? And so he had to make a choice between trying to influence as much as possible Biden behind closed doors, or using his platform in Congress with a Biden presidency to bring masses of people into the street and try to push

through a radical agenda. He chose the first, and from there on in I think it was pretty much a disaster, and I think I'm deply disappointed in burning now, sometimes to the point of real visceral anger, the way he's conducted himself, say on the question of Ukraine, saying things like I trust Biden? Why would you trust Biden? Can you tell me something about his career in foreign policy that would cause you to trust him on foreign policy? What was he so great in the war in Vietnam?

Was he great in the war in the wreck? Is his judgment so good? Was he was he great on Blincoln? And the fact that now Biden, excuse me, Bernie dismisses anybody who criticizes and he says, quote, who's paying you? What you have to be paid to be critical of the war in Ukraine? You have to be paid for saying, hey, sending over a hundred billion dollars to Ukraine without no checks, no balances, no oversight. There might be a problem there. You have to be paid to say, you have to

be paid to think that. Well, maybe a lot of people who are quite conservative normally, like Johnniersheimer over at University of Chicago or Jeffrey Sachs. Okay, Jeffery sax is a liberal. But many people who are quite conservative say the United States provoked the war. Let me ask you this, let me hey, norm let me cut you off there, let me ask you this. Why couldn't Bernie have done

both of those things? So, for example, one of the arguments I made is that when push came to shove and it looked like Bernie was going to drop out, he sat down with Joe Biden and it looked like he did a hostage video where he was endorsing Joe and saying, Joe, do you support Medica? Do you support fifteen dollar minimum wage? And Biden was like, yeah, oh yeah. Bernie asked for fifteen dominimum wage. This seemed very contrived,

very fake. But why couldn't he have basically tried to have the ear of Joe Biden talked to him reasonably, say look here, my demands. If you want my endorsement, this is what you have to do. Here's like a list of executive orders or whatever, and give Joe Biden a chance, and then if he doesn't follow through, that's when you effectively call your people up to put some bodies in the streets. I feel like it's a little bit of a false choice to say he either could

choose one or choose the other. I think he could have done both. I think you could have effectively tried to navigate within the system, and then if you don't get the results by wheeling and dealing and talking to Joe and making agreements, if you can't get the result, then you put the bodies in the streets. Don't you view that third option as a real possibility. Depend Look, I'm not a mind reader. Unlet sure I read. I don't bring on body language readers to figure out what's

going on in people's heads. My assumption is that if that had been a real option for Bernie Sanders, and since he kept referring to our Revolution, and he titled his book on the campaign Our Revolution, and he raised young people in particular their expectations very high, I have to assume that unless he was a liar, which I find completely implausible. I have to assume that he weighed in his mind the possibility of bringing people into the street and how President Biden would react to that. And

President Biden, he's a man who works in Congress. He's a person who has a very conventional approach to politics. He has obviously his allegiances to elites. And I think Bernie reached the conclusion, but I can't prove it. I just say, based on what one appeared, can deduce from his track record that he was an honest guy, he was a decent guy, and he is an honest guy and a decent guy. But he didn't think there was

that third adoption. Otherwise, I can't, for the life of me, figure out why he didn't exercise that their adoption, especially since in the course of the campaign he kept saying, that's what I'm gonna do, you know, Arctic push through my agenda. I'm going to bring people into the streets. Now, you could say that was all rhetoric, that was all talk.

He never intended to do it. Okay, that's a possibility, But assuming as I do, that he was speaking in good faith, my view was that he must have you know, got that. He used the expression I used earlier joining our pre pre conversation. He must have gotten that vibe. And he knows Biden. Biden's a personal family friend, as you know, he got that vibe. This is not going

to work with Biden, and so he did. You know, Bernie has quite impressive levels of energy, and I'm sure behind the scenes he's doing everything he can to sway Biden. But in my view, that's very limited. It's very limited what you can do. There's a see I mean, we've really seen how limited that has been. In you know,

you had build back Better. A lot of that was architect architected by Bernie to start with, and then there's like every week they would shoot some other critical piece of it in the in the head until Joe Manchin just says, no, we're going to kill the whole thing, and then everyone is delighted when you get anything through the Inflation Reduction Act. But I think we've seen very clearly the limits of the tactics that have been chosen

for whatever reason they've been chosen. I want to get to some of the core of your book here, and

you know, there's been this whole discussion. Lately. You mentioned you're on with Brionna Joy Gray partly sparked by a viral incident on her show where someone who was on the program to talk about how the left and their wokeism is destroying our children or families or something like that, and she was unable to define this term wokism, which has come to be the sort of umbrella term for the right wing to dispatch with anything that they don't like.

You know, they blamed the Silicon Valley Bank collapse on wokism because they had like a gay person on the board or something like that. So I wonder if you could contrast the right wing obsession and use of the word woke and their own critique of identity politics with the critique of identity politics that you have. Well, I watched that, or at least I watched the reruns of that incident with Rihanna Joy Gray. In my opinion, she

probably did act in good faith. Wasn't a gotcha moment, Oh no, she was just trying to define the term. I was a very very simple, straightforward question. You know, try to do that multiple times with multiple guests too, who people bring up wokeness. She's like, just tell me first what you mean by wokeness. That's totally sincere. Yeah. Oh, Brianna Joy Gray is a former corporate lawyer, so she goes defining terms. Is the first, you know, the first

aspect of conversation or briefs. You have to define the terms. Okay. When that incident happened, it did cause me to reflect because a lot of the book was written in a manner of self discovery. I can't say I came into the book with a big concept and I was going to lay out the argument that had already been pre formulated in my mind. I worked through the argument as I was writing the book, and so when that question came up, I had to ask myself what do I

mean by wokes Because I do use the term. Maybe the far right uses it also, But you'll remember, in my generation it was the left that coined the term political correctness or PC. It was a kind of self mockery. But then that PC was appropriated by the right. In this case, even if the right uses the term weocism, I'm perfectly at ease with it. But what do I mean by it? I would say wocism is basically three things.

Number one, Wocism is the attempt by the Democratic Party to create a new base with the mass defection exiting of the white working class. In my generation, the base of the Democratic Party were white workers. It was the trade unions which were the real core of the Democratic Party, and the white working class in general, which had prospered in administrations beginning with FDR the New Deal, and so they were quite loyal, very loyal, not quite loyal, very

loyal to the Democratic Party, even to the point. My brother tells a story that my father, who was a factory worker, my father once whispered into my brother, my elder brother's here, he said, always vote Democrat. Republicans off for rich people or Democrats for working people. That was the scene qua non of the Democratic Party, that the white working class bill. That changed, and a change actually

quite quickly. If you ever had the chance, you should sit down and go and google Mario Cuomo, the father of Andrew Romo. Mario Cuomo, nineteen eighty four Democratic Party Convention and Cuomo's feat which was very famous. It was actually elegantly delivered, elegantly written and elegantly delivered. Wasn't this whole pay in to the working class the white working class, and that the Republicans with a party of the rich

the leisure class. Well, that's obviously changed. There's been mass affections of the white working class from the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party had to create a new base. And the base that chose was the identity politics space. If you look at the I watched closely on YouTube the Democratic Party convention in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, and if you watch it, the working class is just

barely mentioned. The only one who mentions the burly working class is AOC I think the second day of the convention, and that was about it. It was all taken up with various identities, biological identities. Who was the core and saw With Biden, he chooses a black female vice PRESI mention candate defens is, I'm going to nominate a black female Supreme Court justice. Then he chooses a black female, lesbian press secretary. That's where they're going, though. Biden is

an interesting case. He's a more ambiguous case because clearly from the last State of the Union address, he's clearly trying to pitch his campaign, his next campaign to try to win some of that white working class. So the first aspect of wealth politics is the replacement of the white working class by the identity politics class or groups, not class groups. And number two, walth politics is the Democratic Party instrumentalizing identity politics in order to derail any

class struggle or class based campaign. That's not speculative, that's not theoretical, that's factual. So if you take the high priests and high priestesses of identity politics, there is Tannahisi Coats attacking Bernie Sanders to being quote weak on the black reparations question. Then you have Angela Davis saying that

Bernie is weak in conceptualizing racism. Then you have Kimberly Crenshaw telling The New York Times that the real action is not with these old white Jewish schmucks like Bernie Sanders. The real action is the corporations. It's Amazon, which now is honoring Black Lives Matter as honoring gay pride. That's where the revolutionary action now is, says Kimberly Crenshaw. And then you saw this very strange phenomenon, not strange, i

should say, but very indicative fuck phenomenon. The New York Times is now the most woke institution on God's Earth. The characteristics that most the saline characteristics of New York Times during those campaign years where number one hyper hyper woke and number two hyper hyper anti Bernie as you were call Crystal. With the first half of the second campaign, Bernie was whited out of the Times, and then when he gained too much momentum despite the whiting out, then

they start to go at him with a vengeance. Now that to me is a very telling fact. The most woke institution in the United States was also the most anti Bernie institution. Then you go to MSNBC, another hyper woke media outlet, which is also hyper anti Bernie, much more anti Bernie, incidentally than Fox News, which gave him a very warm kind reception. You had joy Read, as I mentioned earlier, bringing on a body language reader to prove that Bernie is a congenital liar. Then you have

hyper hyper woke the view. And who's the hyper hyper hyper presence on the view. It's Whoopy Goldberg. And what does Whoopy do? She snarls at Bernie? When are you getting out of this race? Already? That was the moment of truth. All of these super woke radicals, the moment of truth. They all joined the Democratic Party to stop the Bernie locomotives. And that's number two. The identity politics has been weaponized to stop dead in its tracks, a

class based politics. And number three three wokeness is a very convenient way for rich white liberals to have their cake and eat it. That is to say, to show how radical they are, to show how cutting edge they are without having to sacrifice any privilege, without having to pay any price. So everybody at Matha's vineyard, they all want Angela Davis to speak there so they can show how down with the hood they are. They're rubbing shoulders

with Angela Davis. If you go to the web, you see a lecture that Angela Davis gave at the University of South Carolina. I was curious because Angela Davis was a real inspiration for me in my youth, so I tuned it in. What she's saying. Now, she's introduced by this southern bell with this beautiful shock of blonde hair, who is the second richest billionaire in South Carolina and the second richest billionaire only half jokingly gives a talk

about how she and Angela have so much in common. Well, that's true, how she and Angela have so much in common. That's these woke people who get to pretend to be so radical and cutting edge without having to make any sacrifice. Now you will not remember unless you have a memory reaching back to before conception. In the most literal sense. There was a famous incident in the nineteen sixties when

the Black Panthers were being hounded by the government. Leonard Bernstein, who was a kind of Martha's Vineyard liberal, invites the Black Panthers to his home, and all the famous people on the left, what we called back then the radical Sheikh, attended this sore at Bernstein's home, and then along came

this journalist named Tom wolf He attended the event. Wolfe was on the right end of the spectrum, and he wrote this absolutely scathing send up of that soiree, and it really was so humiliating to those who attended, not least mister Bernstein, and I personally have to say, when you read Tom Wolfe's book, it's to use a word from your generation, it's really cringe powerful. Leonard Bernstein giving

the high fire to the Panthers. But you could say, in defense of Bernstein, that was an unpopular thing to do, getting him in trouble. But now when they're rich and the famous in Martha's vineyard, they hang out with Angela. Is there any price paid? Is there any sacrifice? Now? You might say to me, okay, norm we're not martyrs. We on the left. We don't, you know, have any kind of desire to be nailed to the cross. So I don't accept your standard, to which I say, I

don't agree. I think part of being on the left has always been, until recently, it's always been willingness to make a sacrifice. I was just reading last night Rose of Luxembourg's letters. So Rose of Luxemburg, who was a Titanic personality, probably the most impressive personality and the whole history of mar to socialism. She spent many times in jail, and actually she spent almost the whole of World War

One in jail. And at one point she's given the jail sentence and she's out on her own recognizance, and some people say, you know, maybe, Rosa, you should jump out and get the hell out of there, you know, because you've been in jail enough. And she was a physically very frail woman. And she replied to one correspondent, if you allow me to just read it's just one paragraph that there are comrades who can assume I would

flee Germany because of the prison sentence. I could be quite amused by that if it were not at the same time rather saddening. Dear young friend, she's talking to a young man or correspondent. Dear young friend, I assure you that I would not flee even if I were threatened by the gallows. And that is so for the simple reason that I consider it absolutely necessary to accustom our party to the idea that sacrifices are part of a socialist work in life, that they are simply a

matter of course. You are right, long live the struggle that was the inspiration from my generation. And then when I see, on the one hand, all of these you know, phony identity politics radicals, Judith Butler announces in twenty twenty, as if it were the Paris Commune, as if it were the Bolshevik Revolution, as if it were the Chinese Revolution, as though it were the civil rights movement. She announces, I am here with changing my pronouns to they them.

You know, I was talking about the difference between how leftists have a critique of identity politics or wocism versus the right wing critique. And oftentimes, you know, the way I see it is very similar to how you see it. You won't be surprised to learn, which is that this is sort of like a roadblock thrown up in the way of any sort of more fundamental or class based change. The right portrays it as actually, in and of itself, this very radical transformation, and they like to claim that

this is a next evolution of Marxism. They'll explicitly tie it in with Marxist thought. And I wonder what your view of that is. Well, the most obvious reason it's not. Actually, it's just the reverse of Marxist thought. I don't want to make a fetish of Marxist thought. To be perfectly candid, and I see no reason why not to be perfectly candid. I've read very little of marx in the last thirty years. I read voraciously as a young man, but I passed that stage for bever or or for worse, and I've

read very little of it. But one thing you could say for certain a marx analysis always began, or essential aspect of it was class. Now, Marxism was never indifferent or unaware of non class issues. When you read the literature from back then, I'm talking about the late nineteenth to the mid part of the twentieth century, there was a rich debate about what was called the woman question, what was called the Negro question, what was called the

Jewish question. Within the Marxist movement or Socialist movement. Forget about Marxim now Socialist movement, there was always a recognition that there were certain questions women, Blacks, Jews that was not reducible to class, that they had aspects it had, they had aspects which were in over that went past class,

overflowed class, over flowed class. However, if you considered yourself a person of the left, there was a recognition that class was the fundamental political issue, not the only one, but the fundamental issue. Now you look at the identity politics. What identity politics did was it appropriated the questions, the women question, the Negro question, the Jewish question. It appropriated the questions and the locked off the class. If you read Abram x. Kendy, there are a couple of passing phrases,

a couple of passing phrases referring to class. If you read Robin DeAngelo, a couple of stray fragments pertaining to class. Class has been locked off except in one critical sense, and probably for the exponents of identity politics the most or close to their heart sense. They want to be part of, to use the language of, to use the language of the one percent. They want that one percent to include a proportional representation of, for example, women of

African Americans. They want to have their seat at the ruling class table. That's the aspect of class which they're very cognizant of. And so and now to tell you something, Crystal and Kyle, it's actually a realistic expectation. You know, because of this huge chasm that's opened up between the so called ninety nine percent and the one percent in terms of income, it's very possible for the ruling elites to bring in, absorb some numbers of these identities and

basically pay them off in huge sums. I mean, we're talking about lots of money. Jeff Bezos, as you recall, he gave Obama one hundred million dollars. He gave Van Jones one hundred million dollars. Jack Dorsey gave Ebram x Kendy ten million dollars. That's not small change. You know, in my day, there used to be a programmer, a drama and drama series on TV was called The Millionaire.

And the conceit of this weekly drama was there's this very very rich philanthropist as they're called, we called them, you know, capitalist pigs, but okay, philanthropists. And each week he would give out to some do gooding, nondescript person

a million dollars. There's this guy, Mark Anthony in the film, his name was in the series, and he had this white envelope and the last scene in each of the weekly dramas of this weekly drama series, he would take out the white envelope from the folder and give it to this recipient, this very decent recipient. And we watched that series in our hearts left a million dollars. A million dollars. A million dollars was like going to Pluto

and back. It was an uninconceivable skill, an inconceivable sum. Now, I admit for inflation, as I said, I know you've got your degree in economics, so I'll admit for inflation, but one hundred million dollars is something altogether different, correct, But they can hand out that money now because of this fantastic polarization of wealth in our society. They can hand out one hundred million here, ten million here, and then they just bring all these people on board. Does

it rock the boat? Well, nobody or very few people bite the hand that feeds them. Why is Pizos giving out that money? You know why? It's called a life insurance policy? Because Bezos is smart enough to know at some point there's going to be a national option by Amazon workers. It may not be this week, it may not be next week, it may not be next month, but it seems pretty much inevitable. And so I'll ask you to guests, on which side will Obama be when

there's a general strike of Amazon workers? On which side? On which side will Van Jones be? On which side will Abram X can they be? I think that's pretty obvious. Yeah. To sum your point up, you need organizational and structural change. You don't want to like welcome a diverse flow of people into the top one percent. The point is to take power away from the top one percent. And when

you were talking, it reminded me of MSNBC. I remember them celebrating the diversification of the military industrial complex, where they were bragging that like this new CEO of Raythian or whatever was a woman, and it was like all female leaders for the terry industrial coll and they're celebrating that fact is if that's anything to celebrate, It's like, we don't care about the faces you put on the death machine makers. We just don't want you to use

the death machines to kill like you many babies. But to get back to one of the main points you were talking about there, I feel like we're having two separate conversations. On the one hand, there's the conversation about define woke, what is woke, what's a right wing critique of wocism versus a left wing critique of wokeism. And then a lot of our conversation thus far has been focused on identity politics, which I view as a slightly

different thing. My definition of wokeism is authoritarianism in service of perceived social justice. So, for example, you got some conservative speaker going to give you a speech out on a college campus, Ben Shapiro, whoever it might be, and then you have a bunch of people who protest and say, you know, you're not going to give your speech here because you're a fascist or whatever. You sort of deplatform somebody.

When I think of wokeness, that's what I think. I think of things along along those lines, authoritarianism in service of perceived social justice. But how do we I feel like in today's day and age, as you know, and I'm a very strong critic of wokeness myself, But at the same time I want to sort of balance that with the fact that the right does call everything they don't like woke and they wage a war against it.

And then also you do have a massive increase in recent years, led by Ron de Santis in Florida and in you know, many other red states across the country, this massive rise hundreds of like anti trans bills, for example, the bird not burning excuse me, the banning of books. There's been eight hundred books that have been banned in Texas, six hundred books that have been banned in Florida. And so what you see there is I would categorize it

as like a right wing version of wokeness. It's like right wing authoritarianism where they're doing authoritarianism in service of their perceived social justice needs. Right like, they think it's social justice to get rid of the books they don't like.

You know what I'm saying. So how do we balance number one, doing a genuine left wing critique of wokeness to say, hey, guys, we should focus on class consciousness first and foremost, like do that while also not feed into the framework of the right and like accidentally assist them in their totally disingenuous crusade against wokeness by which they define it as everything they don't like. Well, you know what, Kyle, that's an excellent question, and I don't

think there's an easy answer to it. Obviously, morality evolves, social morase evolves, and that there's going to inevitably be a resistance to what, in retrospect was clearly a necessary evolution and transformation in social values and morals in general. I'm old enough to remember when, up until nineteen seventy three, almost sexuality was defined by the American Psychological as Association as a mental disorder. I'm old enough to remember that a woman who aspired to a large number of jobs.

These are all memories which you know, maybe for you they sound strange, but they're vivid for me. In the employment sections of the newspapers. In the employment sections of the newspapers, the headings were women men. There was no consciousness of that being odd or aberrant, let alone retrograde. There were specific jobs allotted for on the employment page

to women and to men. And I'm not going to bore you by going through the ten thousand ways in which our society has evolved, and I think through what consensus is, with marginal exceptions, it has evolved for the better. So to the extent that what you quote right wing wocism or the right wing right wing denunciation of wocism is acting as an impediment to the positive transformation of our society, I of course agree it has to be resisted and foot the problem as I see it is

twofold number one. A lot of these questions that have come up are not clear cut. In my opinion that if you examine, for example, if you examine closely as I have, and I write about it some length in the book, if you examine the abortion question, I do not believe that the question of abortion is as clear cut as liberals woke people the New York Times Matha's

Vineyar type would make it out to be. And I do not believe it's correct to write off anybody who might have qualms on that question as being some right winged yahoo, religious fanatic or bigot. Well, certainly, just to cut you off for a sec there, certainly there's some gray area, but there are some things that go way too far correct, like Mike Pence talking about a national abortion ban, you know, or some states they just tried to ban the abortion pill, which would even hurt women

who get miscarriages for example. I agree with you that there's some gray area, but some positions are far too extreme right, like overturning Roe versus Wad for example. Listen, I totally agree, but I wish that your opinion could be articulate in the form that acknowledges the gray areas and not writing everybody who disagrees with you as being some sort of antidiluvian in the So. Yeah, but I

didn't do I didn't call them Similarly. I think there are legitimate questions about the the trans issue I'm gonna speak about in very broad terms. Now, let me be clear. Let me be clear. I am with Chairman Mau Sudung who famously said in his report on the uprising in Hunan Province, which I'm shocked that you don't know that chairman wrote, no investigation, no right to speak, that is to say, to translate into current language, which I hope

you can err in this program. If you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, then shut the fuck up. So I admit I'm not knowledgeable because I think it requires a deep knowledge of science, biology, and medicine to speak on these subjects like the trans phenomenon. But I find it deeply troubling when people who have no medical knowledge whatsoever, no scientific knowledge whatsoever at most took high

school biology speak. It's such authority on these subjects, as if anybody who disagrees has to be some sort of redneck or Yahoo. But those are the people trying to ban it right. Those are the ones who are making claims that they have no idea what they're talking about.

I think when I hear people speak authoritatively about gender fluidity about there aren't two sexes, or to listen to Amy Goodman speak about people who get pregnant, or listen to AOC say people who menstruweight, well, I think reasonable people can say that says a ridiculous statement, as saying there hasn't been climate change. It falls into the same lunatic but who's actually legislating, who's legislating this stuff. You have people trying to ban of treatment up till age

twenty six. That seems like it's an overstep. Some people might use some goofy language, but at least they're not trying to legislate, you know, trans people out of existence, whereas you do see that from the right. I will, for the moment, I'm not talking about the legislation, legislative issue, I'm talking that's what matters well, But I'm talking about the public conversation, which dismisses. You refer to the authoritarian tendency among woke people the real I'm I'm saying the

liberal left book, okay, not the right wing vote. You refer to authoritarian tendencies, and I think one of those authoritarian tendencies is to pretenden is if these questions are black and white, transparent, if you don't agree with us, and you're some sort of yahoo or redneck, I don't think that's true. Now, I fell admit because I lived through it. I lived through it. I fully admit that many beliefs which we took for granted when I was growing up, of which I illustrate just a couple of

moments ago, those beliefs were completely overturned. I recognize that. Remember in my generation, I mean this literally literally L T E R A L Y. Literally, you couldn't imagine gay marriage. It was not a concept that could even be conceived, let alone legislating. It was a concept that was not You couldn't process an idea like that. So I recognize that many ideas which are controversial today may

turn out to be uncontroversial in the future. However, I would enter this stipulation since you talked about the issue of legislating in the nineteen twenties, a century ago, all progressives and radicals, among all progressives and radicals really bar none. You know, it was all the rage. All the rage was eugenics. Eugenics the scientific application to human breeding. And listen to this. Do you know who was the only one who opposed this idea of eugenics, the only one?

It was deeply religious Catholics and Christians who believed that every child was born in God's image and that we should be equally loving and caring of all of God's children. So eugenics was the cause of progressives and radicals even on the Supreme Court. As you might know, the famous case was Buck v. What was the Buck case but v. Company the bookcase where a woman was she heard they said her mother was mentally defective, and they said her

children were mentally defective. And there was the issue of tying her tubes, not allowing her to have any more children in the name of eugenics. On our Supreme Court, every judge, every judge, justice, every justice except one, every justice voted for uh tying her tubes. The famous verdict delivered by Oliver It was Buck Buckley Bell, Buckley Bell. The famous verdict delivered by Oliver Wendell Holmes, which I suspect you have heard, you're aware of, was three generations

of imbeciles are enough. Three generations of imbeciles are enough. That verdict was endorsed by the most liberal member of the court, Lewis Brandeis. Yeah, scientific race was used by the right and the left. It was the common perspective at the time, and it was dead wrong. And by the way that eugenics and scientific racism, it wasn't scientific

at all, that helped birth the Nazi movement. So I take your point, but hold on my point is the right does that cock sureness too on these social issues like trans things or whatever, and they legislate against whole groups of people, whereas on the left, Yeah, they might have some goofy language sometimes, but at least they're saying live and let live, and they're not trying to pass legislation banning transphobes, for example, or banning you know, outdated language.

I don't see a parody here. I see the right actually cracking down legislatively on whole groups of people, and I see the left sometimes being a little silly, dyeing their hair purple and using some silly language. I can quite agree with you, the ar Kyle. Look, well, where am I wrong? Okay, I'm going to get to that, and I'm gonna say I'm speaking good faith because I could see you quite obviously are speaking in good faith.

So I want to have a amicable exchange of opinions and we can also end up agreeing to disagree on college campuses, which have become strong calls of this wocism. There is a lot of taboos now on what you can and can say. There are a lot of taboos about uses of pronouns. There are a lot of taboos about what can now that's legislated. Admittedly it's legislate at a college level and not at a federal or state level. But there is a lot of stifling, suffocating speech discourse

on college campuses right now. I, for one, I'll be honest with you, I will not call a person. They then I will not. I refuse. You want to call you by your name? Fine, but they then that's a bridge too far from me. I'm not going there now. I'm sure Crystal's thinking, well, you know, no, I mean you're around in another hundred years, which obviously you won't be. Everybody might be referred to as Day. Then yeah, that's a possibility, And I say, I have to be open

to that possibility, but I'm not doing it. And there are a lot of things. There is a very serious, a very seriously stifling atmosphere on university and college campuses now, and I think it's disingenuous. And I'm not saying you're being disingenuous because you limited yourself to legislation, but I think it is very disingenuous. Allow me, allow me one last year, during the Katanji Brown Jackson hearing, at one point Ted Cruz who's a kind of you know, psycho

pervert head. Cruise picks up. He starts denouncing Ibrahim X Candy's book Anti Racism, you know how to raise an anti racist baby? And I'll tell you I've gone through Abrahm x Candy in my current book. You'll know I devote a hundred pages to his books. They're really comics. But let's go in books. I go through it line by line. I'm with Ted Kruz there, he's a complete idiot, He's an embecile. I don't think that should be taught in college. I don't think that you be taught in

grade school, high school, college. No, that to me, That to me is a complete corruption. It's a corruption of language, it's a corruption of thought. And I'm old fashioned enough to believe in brace yourself standards because I respect my students. You know what respect my students means. I want them to be able to compete on the level playing field out in the real world. I want them to have

a chance in life. Close this garbage on them. You are diminishing their chances to compete out there in the real world. So it is it's not my view that I'll just speak for myself, it's not my view that you know, the woke vein on the left liberal side has been inconsequential or you know, irrelevant. I think it's been incredibly I think it has stifled descent. I think

everything you're speaking to there is real. But what I do get concerned about, especially recently, is that when there's only a discussion of the authoritarian tendencies on the left, it sort of masks some of the even more aggressive legislative authoritarian tactics on the right. And so that was the piece that I was interested in teasing out here because you know, when you have And the other thing I would say is liberal tendencies dominate university spaces and

a lot of news organization. I don't think there's any doubt about that. But I think there are similar codes of conduct and things you're allowed to say or not say, and sort of you know, authoritary crackdowns and speech in conservative environments as well in right wing environments where they're you know, for example, you can't acknowledge that Joe Biden won the election of some basic facts of you know,

things about COVID might be off limits. So I'm not sure that that it's a phenomenon that's exclusively on the left either. It's just that the liberal liberal control of universities is almost universal. Look, I agree with both of you. I don't want there to be any misconstrued at the end of this interview that you're not raising real issues and you're not making coaching solid points. I agree with the both of you. Let me just then read. Let me then just state I wrote the book for the left.

I wrote the book because I wanted to make a statement to the new generations about what's you know, which way to go forward? Yeah, and I have enough experience from the nineteen sixties where I did a lot of very stupid things. Well, that's actually I want to ask you about that piece. Just want to say, Yeah, I didn't write the book about the right, and I don't even claim I was making a comprehensive picture. I was

writing the book as a person of the left. Yeah, who starting concern about certain tendencies which King rolls to the surface in a very striking way during the two Bernie Sanders campaigns, where I saw a lot of hope, a lot of promise, and I saw a lot of sabotage, and I saw a lot of sabotage and the book is about the sabotage. Well, yeah, the last thing I wanted to get from you, and Kyle can close with

whatever he wants, is are you actually hopeful? Because you do teach young people and interact with them all the time, and you know, wanted to write the book for to sort of lay on some of the pitfalls that you see ahead. Are you hopeful that the zoomers may actually take up the mandle mantle of class politics because they're

economic opportunities been really stifled. You see, you know, you see pronouns, and you see plenty of woke stuff in gen Z as well, but you also see the Starbucks labor movement, and you also see the Amazon labor union, and you see support for candidates like Bernie Sanders. So what direction do you see that generation going in right now? Look, there's a lot of grounds for hope. I was in the nineteen sixties and I passed through the Bernie campaign.

I took the bus rides, as I said, every six months, we went to Washington, joined the war anti war movement. Well, part of joining the Bernie campaign was I went on the buses out of state to knock on doors and try to recruit people to vote for Bernie. You know what struck me. What struck me was this new generation was much more serious than my own. First of all, on the buses. In my generation, everybody's passing around the joints and there was it was a highly sexualized atmosphere

on the bus. Not this time. People were so sober. You know, those burning recruiters, half of whom were women. Actually probably at sixty percent were women. That's why the comment by Glorious Stein, it was so disgusting. She's a sack of shit, she always was. But to say that the women only went to the demonstrations for the boys, I mean, you have to be a real you have to be you know, in the old world, you have to be a real airhead to make a comment like that,

she's an airhead. And so there was a lot of seriousness during the George Floyd demonstrations. I went. I was the only one over thirty, literally literally the only one. Why because it was in the middle of COVID, so older people were afraid to go and join the crowds. I didn't give it them. I went. I joined the crowd. I went every day to the point where some of the young people would say, yeah, you don't hear again, and I said, I'm here every night. I was usually

seven o'clock at Barkley Center in Brooklyn. We went in any case. What struck me was the naturalness, the authenticity of the relations between the white and black people who were between white and black demonstras. In my day, if you were white and you went to a demonstration and sport of the Black Panthers or something like that, it was always tinged with the nobless oblige because we really

were privileged, we were white. It was a good era to live financially economically, or was the radical chic you know, these white young women saying my brothers and sisters. You know, it was all just so crap. It was like at Robin DeAngelo, you know. But nowadays, because there has been a relative homogenization of the working class, relative homogenization, well, whites are doing White young people, if they're coming out of the public university system, they're doing one notch better

than blacks economically. They're living together. That was unthinkable my day. You know. Nowadays I talk to young people their roommates, one roommate, if it's a white person, one roommate is black, one roommate to lesbian. One room is this that or the other. You know, they're because housing is you know, it's difficult to find housing, so beggars can't be choosers.

And if you have three people and you need a fourth to make that month's rent, you're gonna take anybody who comes along, So they know each other personally, and that's real warmth. As I said, one of the wonderful things about teaching now in Cuny. The classes consist of all working class kids and first gener generation immigrant kids in the Cuney system. So it is really it's the rainbow coalition in that class, you know, and the warmth, the solidarity, and it's natural. It's not like I'm putting

on the show. Look at me, Look how liberal I am, which is my generation. It's authentic, it's real, it's real, it's deeply moving, and you see the progress. You know. The progress, of course came at the expense of the polarization of wealth in our society and the homogenization of the working class. But it's real. So there's every ground to be hopeful. And as I said, I think the young people were prepared for real sacrifices. Had Bernie tell them time to get arrested, time to you know, not

just talk the talk, but walk the walk. I think people were ready for it. I saw them board those buses to go out of town, which wasn't easy, you know. And if your young person nowadays, you're so shortened time because you have two jobs and they have to take care of your parents, and you know, the whole thing. So on that ground, as beyond and joy Gray told me, and I kept the line. When I was interviewed by her a few weeks ago, she said with a certain

amount of pride, and the pride was deserved. She said, you know, Bernie won every demographic under thirty, that is to say, male, female, Latino, black, every demographic on the ferry. That's the future. If you want to know what the future is, look at that one stark fact. Bernie Bernie the most uncharismatic candidate in history, a septutioninarian Jew from Brooklyn. He managed to gavin eyes all these young people on the class struggle platform and wins every demographic. So there's

every reason to be hopeful and optimistic. But any movement needs two things. It needs leadership and the needs organization. The Black Lives Matter turned into a disaster, a catastrophe a because it couldn't come up with the right slogan and to fill the void the most quote unquote radical which means critically irrelevant slogan defund the police. It filled the void, which was a disaster. It became clear over time what a catastrophe it was. And second of all,

the ruling class did what it always does. It bought off these leaders like you know, Patrice Coolers and that type, gave them lots of money, and of course they helped themselves to a lot of money. And these leaders were so crooked, so corrupt, these alleged leaders, these ruling class appointed leaders, were so crooked and so corrupt that it makes young people who are hopeful, h and willing to put their you know, put themselves on the line, make

the sacrifices that a Rosa Luxembourg talked about. It makes them sin about politics, that's true. I think those are all right points, all right, nor I had a couple more questions when we've run out of time, norm So thank you so much for joining us. Tell everybody where they can follow you, and tell everybody where they can get your book. Uh, you can get my book from sublation s U B l A t ioland don't ask me what that means. I don't know separation dot Com

or from Amazon, and you just google my name. I have a I have a presence, and you'll figure it out if you can. At the end of the show, I'll send you a link for the access to book. Otherwise, I want to say I totally enjoyed it, and I'm glad that both of you, but Kyle in particular, the certain point you know, articulate your real differences with me, and I hope even if I didn't convince you that I convey the fact I recognize those are real problems.

I recognize you know the issues you raise are real. And I also recognize that a lot of my beliefs now may at some point prove to be behind the curve. I recognize that. On the other hand, I think we have to have a certain amount of humility, a certain amount of recognition that nobody has monopoly untruth, and that we shouldn't go around carrying on as if these questions have been resolved once and for all. And if you disagree, then you're some sort of you know, backward religious fanatic

or whatever. I don't agree. That's how I was as a young man. And I realize it's not that I grew up or I grew conservative. I realize I maintain, I preserve my radical convictions and presumably will go to my grade with them. But I realized I was roomed. I made errors, And I know, you know what Muhammad Ali said the boxer. He said, if you think the same thing as four at forty that you think at twenty, then you've wasted twenty years in your life. And there's

something to be said about that. That life experience should at some point influence you in some ways. Otherwise, what's the point of life experience? But I never gave up my core beliefs. I remained exactly who I in terms of my core beliefs, on the side of the oppressed, on the side of the victims, on the side of the heart down and out, on the side of the victims. That's why I was at sixteen, and that's why I'll be, you know, til my dying, till my last breath. I

didn't pay the sacrifices. I didn't make the sacrifices that Rosa did when she got out of jail the last time during World War One. When she was released, she was already an older woman. She was forty seven. By our standards, that would be like fifty seven or even more. She had in the years in jail. She had a thick shock of hair. It all turned white. People were shocked when they saw her when she emerged from jail. She went right from the jail without missing a breath,

without the missing a beat. She went right into the revolution. There was a worker's uprising. People said, Rose would be careful their you down. They're gonna hunt you down. They're gonna hunt you down. She said. They said you need bodyguard. She said, I go where I tell other people to go. And of course she was hunted down. She was tortured, Her skull was smashed. She was then thrown into the RC.

Her body was washed up three months ago. Those are the inspirations for me, and I didn't pay that kind of price. I didn't come close to paying that kind of price. But I think I could say, without fear of being contradicted or accused of self pity, I did pay a price for my beliefs. And I remained true to those beliefs that animated me as a youth. But with the caveat, I learned something from life. Didn't turn me into a reactionary. But I made errors. I was

the type. I mean, it's not as if it's some foggy memory. I deplatformed any people on the right in college. We blocked the doors. We blocked the doors because in my day we claim that we knew the science. The science was Marxism Leninism, and the science was the truth. And anyone who disagreed is, you know, some sort of bourgeois or petty bourgeois. I was part of that. I wasn't even a small part of that. It's a big part of that. I was a maoist that was wrong.

I made errors, and a large part of the book is trying to make sense of what I did right in my life. And also, you know, I have a page in the book just has the people who inspired me, and like Paul Robeson Rose of Luxembourg, and the number of others, and also a page to a picture. These are pictures of Non Chomsky and his wife, who were very close to me for about forty years. I would say Yeah, it was about no thirty years, thirty five years.

So a large part of the book is trying to convey what was good from my life's involvement in politics, and what was problematic and what was dead wrong, and to say, try to avoid making the mistakes I make. There's certainly a lot that we can get from the book, and we are incredibly grateful for your willingness to talk to us and also for the debate. So thank you so much, sir, have a great day. Okay, thank you both so much.