Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Alex Jones is mad at Donald Trump for distancing himself from Project twenty twenty five. Don't worry, little buddy, He's going to do all of it. We have such a great show for you today. Kurt Anderson stops by to talk about the fun little pranks he played on Donald Trump and how the memory haunts him
to this day. Then we'll talk to author and scholar Ruth ben Guillatt about the bad week the far right is having across the globe. But first we have the host of the Origin Story podcast, our friend in the UK, Ian Dunt. It is with great pleasure, joy and honor that we have a reason to talk to one of my favorite people, Ian Dunt, and he's looking pretty smug right now because the UK has, for the first time in fourteen years, elected a government that doesn't want to destroy itself discuss let's go.
Congratulations Ian, Thank you very much. I think what I'm experiencing is joy. It's a strange feeling and it's been around for about four days now, and each day I wake up and be like, what the fuck is going on? Like, what is this strange feeling I have in my breast? And I think it is I think it's optimism, it's joy, It's a sense of happiness, boardline euphoria. I just don't know how much longer this can go on for, but I'm pretty sure I can do like another two or three months of this feeling.
So explain to our listeners what happened. I want the election blow by blow. Your polls understated the left, So I want you to start there and get going.
Oh, I don't know about that, to be honest.
I mean, we had some polls, especially.
Towards the end, these MRP polls, that were suggesting an even higher degree of decimation for the Conservative Party. So the end result came in in about kind of the middle zone of our polling. I think some of us had almost convinced ourselves that we wanted it to get even worse for the Conservatives. We were almost disappointed by the result. They ended up getting just over one hundred and twenty seats. We'd sort of dreamt, what if they
get less than one hundred. Maybe this is the final, you know, final stake through the heart of the vampire that is the Conservative Party. It isn't right. One hundred and twenty seats. That's the worst result that party has ever had. I mean, it hasn't performed worse than that since eighteen thirty two and we had the Great Reform Acts and started to introduce democracy. I mean, basically, that's
as bad as it gets. And not just that. Not only did Labor, the main opposition party and now the government, the center left party, have a very very very strong evening, by far the best electoral evening has ever had, but the Liberal Democrats, another center left party, also picked up seventy one seats. So what you're looking at now and Parliament has just sat for the first time since the election.
I've literally just switched it off to talk to now, is by far the most left wing parliament that this country has ever had. And to be honest, I haven't checked this, but I think you could start looking around Europe, you could start looking around the Western world, and I'm pretty sure it would be probably the most left wing parliament that's around right now in a democratic country. It is an absolute triumph for progressive forces in Britain.
Right, tell me what it was like that day because Labor has not been in power for fourteen years, so and it's been you know, the head of Lattice woman, the thin guy from California and the guy with the bad hair. I mean, it's been a string of some really bad prime ministers to discuss.
Yeah, I mean, that's definitely like the worst collection of human beings you could have running a country at any given time. And you know what, even like they were like this to the bitter end, to the bitter bitter end.
Even in the last week of the campaign, a scandal broke that the people around Richisunat the Prime minister had gone as soon as they found out when the election date was, but before the public knew, had just gone down to the local bookies to make a bet on when the election was like the most tawdry, low class, low grade form of corruption, like the kind of thing that if you were in like some tiny Latin American dictatorship and just be like, well, obviously I wouldn't do that.
That's just too cheap. But it were prepared to do it at the height of the Conservative Party. So they were committed to the role that they had to give
and they followed it through to the very end. But what's extraordinary about these years, right is you know what they're even doing in now, like swella Brotherman, one of the right wing figures in the Conservative Party is currently in the U of Bes at one of your batshit festivals of you know, the far right where they want to ban you know, I don't know, you know, embryos or whatever it is that they're up to at the moment, and she's currently talking about how one of the reasons
we lost is because I didn't fight hard enough against taking down the rainbow flag wherever I saw it. And what she's really extraordinary, brother a is It already seems like a bad dream to be governed by these people with such tiny moral and intellectual characters. But it's more than that that their fundamental confusion was just thinking a lot of voters like them kind of raised their eyebrow at things like that of the rainbow flag, you know,
political correctness or whatever. But they really don't want government ministers to just talk about that all the time rather than fixing immigration or healthcare or education. And yet that's the trap they fell into, just talking about this pub nonsense over and over and over again. Like someone's soul sifting itself slowly through a drain, and now finally it's done.
That sense of palpable anger against them has just fully expressed itself, and it's ended up with a situation where Labor are triumphant to an extraordinary degree, to the kind of degree that you would expect that they're almost certainly be in power for longer than ten years.
So can you explain to me? This is the aftermath of a number of really shitty governing decisions, but one of which I think is Braxit, and many people one of the favorite things that my European friends have liked to say to me. I think you may have even said this to me, is that you can undo Donald Trump, but you can't necessarily undo Brexit. So where are we with that?
Yeah, it's hard, it's really really difficult to undo it. And before you were even thinking about any of the logistical problems of undoing it, you have to deal with the electoral problem, which is that Brexit split the Labor Party right down the middle right, and actually it split the Tory Party to a certain extent as well. Those liberal Democrat votes that I talked about earlier. There's seventy one lived MMPs. Those are mostly people that were in
typically conservative constituencies, but conservative remainance pro European conservatives. You're basically they're never going to vote for labor, but they will vote for a sort of center leftist, you know, top button done up liberal Democrat party, and that's what they did. But for labor, it just cut them through the heart because it was once you go into a cultural war territory for labor, it's just death. You've destroyed
its electoral coalition. And Labour's electoral coalition is progressive, very very liberal, highly educated white collar workers with much less progressive, much more socially conservative blue collar workers, you know, for meving like in class industrial baits. Once you start turning politics into something that's no longer about economics but is about culture, that electoral coalition falls apart. So Keir Starmer, the labor leader, his main mission throughout this period is
essentially kill the culture war. Just eradicate it, Do not allow it to take purchase. Do not get involved in conversations about you know, trans people in toilets or statues of you know, colonial figures that are being pulled down, or Brexit or any of these other key note issues that trigger cultural war conversations. Just kill that dead and focus on the meat and potatoes of what politics is, education, health care, public service delivery, taxation, the economy. Bring politics
back to a reasonable conversation. That's pretty much what he succeeded in doing.
So that is exactly the same thing that happened in France, right you see.
I think there's a bit of a difference right with mccron and Starmer in that regard, because mccron is quite proudly open. He would explicitly say I am the opposite of Donald Trump. I'm the opposite of Marine Leapen. You know, I represent the open world economy. Now, that's the kind of message that someone like me desperately wants to hear from the Keir Starmer. Starmer will never give that message hours He's not involved in I'm one side of the
open closed binary. He's involved in open closed is not a thing. We're going back to right and left. We have an electoral coalition that can win on right and left. That's the debate that we want. Open clothes can absolutely get fucked for Starmer. So's he's actually subtly different to mccron. Even though they're both called centrists, he's actually quite meaningfully distinct, right.
I think that's a really good point, and so interesting is that they just decided to sort of give up on the stuff that you and I both think are really important and just get power, which, again on the liberal side, you know, there's always a lot of like, why don't democrats do that? Or why don't liberals do more? Stuff like that is a sort of craven political calculus which might be needed to win elections, but doesn't win you France, right.
You know what, here's the thing, right like, and I get for Sarch to do with it too. I want obviously, what I want is for case time had to come out tomorrow dressed in a European flag going hah, fuck you guys, I lied the whole way through and now we're going back in. Right, of course, that is what I want. However, if he'd done that, he would not I don't think who would have won the election.
Well that's the calculus, right, right.
And then yesterday the Rwanda plan was killed. Rwanda was a scheme to take asylum seekers and send them to Rwanda, and it wasn't to process them in Rwan. It was to send them there, regardless of whether they were found to be a legitimate asylum seeker, a refugee or not, or.
Even if they were from Rwanda.
Right right, Well, you know what the fund of the irony is. We grant asylum to people from Rwanda when they asked for it in the UK, and yet here we are sending people to Rwanda, going, oh, it's perfectly say to send asilum teacause they obviously it isn't demonstrably not by virtue of your own judgment. Now that is just a moral corrosion. Rights, that's the soul of a
country just fucking disintegrating in front of your eyes. Now it's canceled, and you get it from the far left, the Corbyn left, which I don't want to say it's like the Sanders left in the US, because I think Bernie Sanders is a far superior, much more intellectual and moral unba.
Sanders is in the tent whereas Corbin is not.
Yeah exactly.
They are kind of allies and they clearly both admire each other.
But Sanders is crafting legislation whereas Corbin is.
Yes, exactly, but go on, yeah, so the Corbyn guys. The far left in Britain are by far the most upset. They're much more upset than the Conservatives, you know, because to see the center left come in is like their worst nightmare. They don't even really recognize that a right wing exists, you know. It's sort of their only real emotional and intellectual preoccupation is the battle within the left in Britain. It's the battle for the Labor Party rather than the battle for the country.
And they're terribly upset.
But you sort of think, look, can you honestly not realize now what there is to be gained by making compromises and yes, by being really pragmatic and practical and just thinking not about your ideals or your conscience. But
what does it take to win? Like, what does it take to get those guys, to get the Conservatives and just bury them in the fucking ground and try and undo some of the damage that has been done to this country and to his reputation and to his moral standing over the last fourteen years like purity, Political purity accomplishes nothing, but if you win, you can scrap the
Rowander scheme, which is what we finally see. And for that I have to say, I am just tremendously grateful, even though I accept that I myself am not hugely inspired by the kind of you know, political ideology that's been put forward by kit Start.
So he really is just a sort of very moderate centrist.
He's an odd guy.
You know.
He uses words which political people don't use.
Interesting.
One of these words is service, and the the other one is dignity, and it's odd, right, Like, as soon as someone in this country, I know it's slightly different in the US, but as soon as someone in this country uses the word class, we know who they are. They're are socialists. If they use the word liberty or freedom, we know that they're a liberal. If they use the word tradition, we know they're a conservative. His language is rhetoric,
doesn't really fit into any of the normal categories. So for a long time we all thought, you know what, he's just a kind of Hallmark's card nothingness. He's just
saying these kind of sort of harmless sort of banalities. Really, but it's not right, I don't think once you start reading about his life story, I mean, he was a human rights lawyer when he came out of university, and he was living with his friends above what was basically a brothel, was a sort of massage partner, and one of his friends came back and found out that he wouldn't and he really telling anyone. He'd just been offering this free legal advice to the women who worked in
that shop. When they were quite startled by it, he went, would these women just have to be treated with respect? Now? Take that and then think about the way that he talks about football. He was really into his football, but when he talked talks about local football teams. He doesn't really talk about the sport. What he says is that a local football team is the source of a town's pride,
sense of dignity. He has this constant focus, especially through people's work, especially when they're in manual labor, that they should be treated with respect, that they should live a dignified working life where they're paid enough to have a dignified life. In the way that they organize their family and their local community. So all of that it is kind of meaningful, you know, And I think it's it's a really from an American position I think would be
considered really quite on the left. I mean, he talks about himself as socialist, but it's always framed in these terms of dignity for the people and service from the government to the people. And that's the kind of language that he uses, and I think it sounds quite harmless, it can see. Always actually a pretty left wing agenda.
Hmmm, interesting a level left wing agenda, you do, I know, you do? Tell me what else is happening there, Nigel Farage, that fucking.
Guy go, Yes, the human dust spin with the smell of ash.
I mean, I don't know if Roger Stone more slightly more legitimate.
Yeah, it's as if you know, you're sat on the couch, as you say, and your fingers go down as you get bored and goes under anything. You just feel this really kind of wet, sticky, disgusting old substance somehow attached to your finger. And that's basically what Nigel Faraja's soul looks like. So he is the leader of the Reform Party.
It's a very very right wing party. Although to be honest, you know, the same thing has happened to the Conservatives parties that has happened to the Republicans, which is it has absorbed so much of the populous right that it really is quite hard to tell the difference between them. But he is further to the right than the Conservative Party and there is no meaningful liberal conservative tradition within him.
Right.
He managed to secure for the first time five seats in parliament. He's never been able to get into parliament before. He's got a foothold. We are much more like the US than we are like Europe in terms of our electoral system. You know, the proportional representation electoral system that you get in every other European country would allow a populist right party to have pretty hefty representation all the time.
We're not like that. We're first passed the post like you guys do, so they never really get a foothold. They have this time, and incidentally, so did the Green Party. The Green Party used to have one MP and that has four MPs. What you're seeing is just this desire to break away from the two party binary to basically a much more European idea. You know, a hard right party, a Green Party over here, and some smaller centrist parties
in the middle. That's happening. You can see the desire in the population, but the electoral system doesn't quite.
Let it out.
Really, it doesn't represent it in seats. He's got his foothold. He will use it to spread absolute fucking poison in the House of Commons chamber. But again I have to say, you know, the Conservative Party have been dealing in that kind of poison for years now, right, It's not.
A huge, huge stretch.
Right exactly.
I mean, you know, it's been nearly a decade since Theresa May, after the Brexit vote, said that if you're a citizen of the world, you're a citizen of nowhere, where you would almost sort of allude to this idea of oh, if your mixed race, if you've got mixed nationality, if you speak multiple languages, you're not really one of us, you know, not properly one of us. That hutred nativist rhetoric has been deeply embedded in the Conservative Party since Brexit.
Now Nigel Farage is its perfect embodiment, you know. I mean he even looks the part as well as sounding the part. But the actual proper distinction, the sense of there'll be a real sense of deterioration, isn't there. What you get is probably the most frightening thing for the Right in Britain, which is a formalized split on the right flank. Typically speaking, that always happens on the left.
The left, because of its internal battles, its need for purity, constantly cuts the vote up, just like it did it even in this election over Gaza. The right is always very unified. There's a monopoly there from the Conservative Party. The Conservative monopoly is now gone. It is split with Farage, and sure there might be a little bit more poison. I accept that, but at the same time it also suggests that the Conservatives are going to find it very very hard to get back into power right.
Because they're not as a line. So again, the one thing that I keep wanting to go back. You formed a coalition and you were able to win, and that happened in France, and that happened in the UK. Right, I mean there was to a certain extent coalition put together. Flea is just say yes. Even if I'm wrong to say yes.
I mean yes, as you know, I will just do what you ask of me. Really, we agree all to this stuff that I say before before we record. I'm just what is wrong? You are basically correct, and I think that there is something to be said there for being able to put aside the idealism your perfect outcome and just gunning for the best outcome you think can be achieved. I don't want to understate the amount of hostility between centrists and left wingers in Britain at the moment,
because it is big. There are a lot of left wingers who would frankly rather have the Tories in than Keir Starmer. But it's true that there is an electoral
coalition there and it worked. I mean, thinking about the US, the thing that concerns me is this is where I think the limit is of what can be learned from what's happening in Europe right now for the US, which is I just think it's very hard to kill the culture war in the US because it's grounded in centuries of ideas around religion and race, which just don't exist in the UK. You know, we don't have that history with race. We don't have any talk of religion at
all in our political life over here. And so Kia Starmer can kill the culture war, I mean, I think very clearly Biden has been trying to do the same thing in the US, but it's just much harder to do because the baseline, the pre populous basefline of how politics is conducted has much more cultural kind of wedges in it than we do in the UK, so it's not instantly obvious to me how you kind of map across what's happening over here in Europe to what could happen in the US.
Yes, yes, you're better off than we are. Look, I get it, I get it. I hear it, I hear it loud. Yes, I know.
I've been waiting years, you know, I mean I've had four years. If you would biteen while I suffer, and I've just needed this moment. You have to let me enjoy.
Smug a friend, Ian, you are my north star or something. Congratulations, Please enjoy it. You'll be something terrible will happen soon. Spring is here, and I bet you are trying to look fashionable, So why not pick up some fashionable all new Fast Politics merchandise. We just opened a news store with all new designs just for you. Get t shirts, hoodies, hats, and top bags. To grab some head to fastpolitics dot com.
Kurt Anderson is the author of Evil Geniuses and the co creator of command Z. Welcome back to Fast Politics. Kurt Anderson I usually don't introduce people in a very long winded and an annoying way, but I'm going to do it with you because I think of you as one of the people who saw.
This all coming, and by all you mean what You.
Were the person who coined the phrase short fingered vulgarian.
Ah that, yes, and you.
Were the person who cooked up the idea of sending Donald J. Trump checks for three cents.
Well, I and my partner and my theft did all those things. But yes we did.
Yes, So you knew somewhere that we were going to end up with this guy discuss.
I'm a prophet, Molly, and I'm compared to talk about my prophecies. No. He started the Climate magazine in nineteen eighty six. You know, Donald Trump right away at his inception, as a well known person at that moment, seemed like a perfect person to satirize and cover with ridicule as we did, and as a bully, as a liar, as a guy who is our first issue. We quote him saying I could solve the nuclear problem with Soviet you needed an hour and a half. Maybe I wouldn't even
need an hour and a half. So he's that guy now in nineteen eighty six, nineteen eighty seven, and back then when you know we were doing spot he was a ridiculous buffoon purely, of course, he used a little ridiculous buffoon and not.
The head of the Republican Party and not the.
He of the Republican Party. And of this you know what else? Can we call it? Proto fascist movement that is in our nation? Yeah, so we picked him and there he is here we are.
Yeah, talk about the checks for a minute. Just explain the check because that's an incredible little prank that ended up saying so much.
It was fun. We did all kinds of like serious journalism by serious journalists about Trump and other people, but we also did these fun things, and often they were kind of very very long cons essentially of nachs on whether Johnson newd New England go to work for Rob Reagan and George Bush. And we didn't go after Donald Trump specifically on this one, which made it so beautiful. But it worked out and it took us a year.
So anyway, we set up this fake thing called the National Refund Clearing House and got the addresses of all these rich people. Well done, rich people. It's fifty eight of them, I think, and sent them a letters saying we're very very sorry you have this refund of a couple of bucks rebucks coming. Here's the check. Or to eighty nine it was like an autumn ount, so okay, fine, and you know half of them maybe or more cashed it.
This was three bucks whatever. And then to the ones who did cash them, we said, okay, oh, a month later, here's another check for an additional refund, so we're very sorry we didn't get the soap. Only of them would cash that. And we went down and down and down until we got to thirteen cents, and uh keep saying, here's another check from the National Ferry winning National refund
and clearing House. And there were two out of the fifty eight people who endorsed and cashed these tiny thirteenth cent checks, one of who was a non Kushogi, the Saudi arms dealer, who was about to go bankrupt at that time, and the other one was Donald Trump, who also was about to go bankrupt, as it turns out, and then before he made his comeback and is who he is, but yes, the fact that he did, and then when it is one of his recent adjudicated cases.
The Swermy Daniels hush money case, the prosecutors actually used his ragging about that check cashing from thirty four years ago to show that he bragged about it in one of the books he published and didn't write, saying, look, this is one of micromanager. This is where a great manager, I know every dollar that comes and goes, and the spy made fun of me for it, but like, I'm proud of it. So there you go, and that was
part of the prosecution's case. It gives him like, yeah, he knew about the checks stormy obviously because he was bragging about it when he cashed the thirteenth cent check third years So yeah, it was a great It was a great, great full cot because again her hulks or prank or exposure because we weren't going after him specifically, he just won the contest.
You know, I think a really good point here, and also exactly what we're talking about is this idea that yeah, I mean, that moment that they used in the trial where they talked about him knowing every single thing that happened in the business, was actually very meaningful and useful because you know what they were saying was that he didn't know.
Yes, And when you say we were on this guy and we saw in the future and all that, that's not true. But we were clear out of it about this guy that the rest of most of the rest of the media at the time was just you know,
celebrating effectively and building up and raising up. So but it is extraordinary, like an impossible work of fiction, like so much of real life these days that you know, here we are thirty four years later, and this thing we did, part of our our cats making against him for years became an element in his prosecution and conviction as well as our You mentioned the short figured bulgarian, which is the main epithet we attached to him every time we mentioned it. Once we came up with it
and not an idiot. And then I practically spit out my coffee at the television when I was watching a debate in twenty fifteen or sixteen at which Marco Rubio brought that up in a presidential debate, and so I thought like, yeah, holy cow, I mean, what has God what these jokes we were making to get under his skin and successfully get under his skin decades earlier, were now part of the national discourse and thing and comments of consequence.
Yeah, but this is the thing about Donald Trump. So you have now known this person as a public person, probably longer than any of us, and had a longer relationship with him. Here we are. She's sort of down but not out right. Right now, he is a prejumptive Republican nominee because the Convention hasn't happened yet. He has taken another whack at the presidency. The Supreme Court has given him everything he could ever want in a laundry list.
He's polling really well. You know, he has a chance to get back in there and punish all of us. You're going to get mo with me.
Well, I've been hoping we could share a bob.
I mean, listen, you know it's that's up to cash Patel. That's not my wheal husband. Yeah, I'm curious if you could tell us how you think you beat this guy.
He's amazing, I mean, you know, I mean really cool together with facts was what we did say. No, this guy is bankrupt, he's a failure. We were saying back back to Nadian on and ninety so that was a way then. Now it didn't beat him. We as I sometimes say we tried killing Hitler in the crib, but like, eh,
he went on, as did Trump. So it's hard. And as we found out with the media, the news media in starting in two five fifteen, where he was his whole act, which is in every in most possible respects, unlike any previous existing politician, is what got him a movement and support and did not do you dismiss him as people did. Obviously you know in the press he can't win, He's not going to win, He's going to lose,
and then what do you do? And and so it's he's playing by this whole set of other rules and always has Still it is, so it's hard. I don't think there's a master plan of this is how you beat him, although you can't do it normally. I mean I don't. For instance, in twenty seventeen, after he won and we were saying, oh, what's who's going to run in twenty twenty, I thought, oh, the person running a
great possible Irani gives a miss. Senator Al Franken, who as a former comedian and as a performer and as a very very smart, smart US senator, could have done a great job of he would be an effective taker on of the nonsense on his own terms. And you know, people say, oh, it's all our show. No, he failed one debate, but it shouldn't all be a show. Debates don't matter. True, true, true, it's all our show. That's terrible. But as I've been writing about for many, many years,
it has become more and more of a show. Oh, since television was invented, and since John F. Kennedy beat Nixon, and on and on through Reagan, Clinton, Trump. So you know, it is what it is. Don't complain about it, deal
with it. And I think one of the ways to deal with it is in addition to the conventional ways of talking about elements of Project twenty twenty five and all the things that you know need to be done to have you know, to have some versions of swinging wild than showmanship, but all those things that are part of what presidential politics has become. So you know, and of course what people including me, are worried, not worried, that President Biden simply can't pull off, is in addition
to that stuff. These days, the more conventional ways of performing a debate where your deranged, maronic, ignorance, lying opponent gives you five, ten, twenty giant opportunities to waive as many other Democratic candidates could have taken advantage of and this guy couldn't.
My question is more, what are the things you've seen in your experience with Trump that you think this Democratic Party coalition against fascism could use?
Yeah, I don't think there's anything magic. There isn't an al Franken esque character among the potential candidates who could do that.
But even like, as you're running against Trump, what does that look like? You know, like, what are the ways to get him?
I think it's not as hard now as it was actually in twenty sixteen or even twenty twenty. At this point we've seen every trick in his playbook. Back in twenty fifteen and sixteen, it was what what is this? This is not the way politicians act, this is this is unprecedented. Well, eight or nine years later, everything is precedented that he does. It's a familiar stick and a
familiar run of greatest hits. So I think in a certain way, if you have a skillful presenter of the case against the fascism and against making abortion and contraceptives and all pornography as a project twenty twenty five wants to do illegal. I think that's a decent messenger of that who's also appealing in all the ways that presidential candidates have to be appealing. It's not that hard of a thing. I mean, that was right. That has been
the strategy. The strategy of the Biden campaign is this guy is so horrible and so phenomenally horrible, and people don't like him except for his cult. You know, he needed it be Well, I think that's true if you have a you know, fully empowered. Yeah, but that's not what I so I'm not saying, what do you do? I mean, run a normal campaign against this crazy, dangerous, dislike person.
He won against Hillary Clinton, right, I mean he didn't win the popular vote, but he did win the electoral college, so he can win.
He can win. Yeah, yes, And I thought he could win when people were saying, oh, it's a slam dug. You know, it's only a twenty three percent chance according to the date Silver forecast in two those sixteen and I used to say, are seventeen percent or whatever? Of course he's going to lose. Well, I always said to myself at that time and to friends, well, you know, Russian roulette one and six chances, only a one and six chance you die. Well, you know it's a one
and six chance. So yes, he can win. And obviously from the polling data, and he has been president and the country did not fall. You know, there are all kinds of ways in which people who are inclined maybe kind of sort of to vote for him beyond the cult, which you know, he has many millions of people beyond the cult who have voted for him and will vote
for him again. Well, on the other hand, now on like twenty sixteen, everybody has had the experience of him as president and how the chaos and division and too much attention on his hyjaink so all the rest that produces most people don't like.
No, it's not popular. I mean, this is part of what's happening here is these are unpopular ideas. I mean. One of the parts of Project twenty twenty five which is shocking to me is the removal of no fault divorces. Right, A no fault divorce was a way for people to get out of a divorce without it being about you know, because of the way it worked was you had to have a reason to get divorced in those countries, so it would have to be abandonment or abuse or annulment.
You know, there were certain sort of faults and you would have a person would be at fault. And the idea with the no fault divorce was that you could get out of a divorce without blaming someone just because you didn't want to be married anymore. And this cut down domestic violence. People got divorced. It was really so good for the community and for America. It was signed into law by Republicans' favorite Ronald Reagan, and they want it gone well.
And who is leading that? Whose agenda is this? The guy is on his third wife and lord knows how many mistresses, which is you know, one more of those gobsmacking ironies that are there. And the thing is about let's get rid of no fault divorce. Oh, let's get rid of pornography. Once again, ironic at the very least about this. The Libertarian Party, the Freedom Party of Republicans wanting to use the law and the heavy hand of regulation make divorce heart. Don't have pornography all the rest
of it. Maybe do a lot of contraception, definitely, don't allow abortion, all those things. Which people sometimes for reasonable reasons, to disapprove of abortion. Well, can I get it why people do to disapprove of pornography, I totally get it. But all these things that are cultural problems, if you will,
or issues or the way culture has changed. These right winners want to use the heavy hand of the state to deal with which doesn't work, won't work, can't work, and you know has until the social conservatives arose and took over. The Herritage Foundation and the Republican Party to some degree were not part of their act. Really, I mean, it was rhetorical. But now the nuts are, you know,
more and more in charge that ever. You need to, you know, get past those to abiden to wobbly and demented or at Parkinson or whatever, and just focus on look at what these people want to do. You know, look at this Project twenty twenty five thing that half of whose authors of the nine hundred pages of very specific proposals are former Trump advisors and employees in his
previous administration. Like this is no joke. They'll go for this, and okay, yeah, he will understand that, Oh we don't want to, you know, have a national ban on abortion. That's bad politically or oh no, we don't want to outlaw pornography because my entire you know, male base are porn pants whatever it is. You know, he understands that. But that doesn't mean this new Trumpist maga deep state that he's going to try to install won't pursue all
those things. So the Dobbs decision to overthrow Roe v. Wade was a thing obviously that look, it really happened. They can really do this. They did this, and for the people who are affected and horrified and whose lives are changed, that is to say, women by this awful diminution of freedom. Okay, that did that, but it can happen to this thing that you care about, and this thing that you care about, and that's what you know. The case has to be made that this isn't just hysteria,
you know. And I'm somebody, as you know, Molly, who tries not to turn up my step panic dial to ten or eleven and to stay calm. Well and like, oh no, it may not be the end of the box. Well we have been before. And the metaphor I used is at the edge of the abyss. We here we are again, and here we are really are because as we has said, and it's true, there are many many more experienced, competent, prepared people in the pack of Christian nationalists and white supremacists and all the rest of his
crew who are ready to go. And there's all kinds of overheated hyperbole, But as President Biden often says, you know, it's not hyperbole, it's not hypherberlely often it's not anymore piperple about the threat face And you know, so I want the Darky Candy to be able to make that case clearly and without all the other stuff that, unfortunately President Biden will have to spend the next four months dealing with then and everybody worrying about. Is this the day, Kurt.
Anderson, We're at a time.
We love you though, all right, happy to talk as ever.
Ruth ben Gillatt is the author of Strong Men, Mussolini to the Present and publisher of the sub Stack Lucid Welcome back, Too Fast Politics, my friend, Ruth ben Gillat.
Hi, Ruth, Hello, delighted to be here.
I'm so happy to have you. I'm such a fan of yours and the moment we are in is a moment that I feel we need to talk about authoritarianism, and that is why I sent up the bad signal yesterday. I hope that's okay.
Absolutely, it's literally around the world. Of course, the life and death matter, and we see what could be coming our way too.
I want to first start with good news because I think a lot of Democrats are pretty stressed right now. I'm pretty freaked out, and so I think for the people who stopped me on the street and are really upset, that we should first talk about the humongous, shoemongous victory in France. Let's talk about that.
Yeah, it's not just France. I've been maintaining for a while that we the world is experiencing the start of an anti authoritarian wave. And I've been tracking the protests around the world, and you know, Chile, look what happened in Poland, in Iran, even in China there was the lockdown protests. Countries are having the biggest protests they've ever had in their histories, or the biggest their mass nonviolent protests, or the biggest protests they've had in like thirty years.
Israel too, right, Israel, exactly, people turning out, and so in Poland this was you know, recently they got rid of their far right government. They had a campaign based on optimism and hope and they exposed corruption and they had a mass rally that was the largest rally since nineteen eighty nine. That led to the largest voter turnout for thirty years. So what's happening in the UK where Labor had a historic victory. And now the French. It
was very important with the French. They did everything right. You have to have unity, and they also had a recall to a very emotional symbol, emotional movement, which was the Popular Front of the nineteen thirties, and they called their coalition the New Popular Front and this was like a winning recipe.
So tell us that, since you are a very smart historian, tell us the history of the Popular Front.
This was, you know, in the nineteen thirties when you had the Spanish Civil War going on, which was a kind of you know, it was a Franco the fascists versus the international left, and so Spain became a microcosm of this larger fight against fascism. And you had in France the Popular Front, which was a unity coalition, you
know that that was designed to beat off fascism. In France but also in Europe, and so I was very interested because we know that politics and authoritarians have been much better than democrats in using emotions, in using symbols, and so it was very interested and happy that in France they called the New Popular Front because that appropriated the whole anti fascist heritage which was already there and is very lively in France because they also had like
years of Nazi occupation in doing World War Two. So they did everything right and they had this victory. So it shows the world. It shows us that there are things that can be done, that there's a momentum in the world for anti authoritarianism. People don't want to live with their rights taken away, with plunderers, with abusers. So there's a lot to be hopeful about in the world if we could apply it here.
Yes, and so let's talk about that, because when I watched that election go down, what I was struck by was the coalition that was put together to defeat the far right. So why don't you explain to us exactly sort of the minutia of the two election system.
So it's a two step election and other countries have this too, and you have the first round, they had a week in between and then you had the second round. And the advantage, of course, is that the first round everybody got very scared because indeed the National Rally Party of the pen and I call them Barbie and Ken, this twenty eight year old Jordan Bardella, who was immediately made the face at twenty six years old the leader of the National Rally Party very smart because fascism has
always been a movement of youth. So they did very well the first round and in the interim week that was what everything came together and people realized that this was real. So they had like a reality check and that's when they did this unity coalition. And it's very significant. And the lesson is that even people who don't get along normally can band together when there's the threat of fascism.
Because the French left is famously divisive, they don't there's many different parties and factions even within parties, and they don't get along. But they did. They acted strategically to beat off this larger, you know, evil that could come from this homophobic, pro putin racist party. And so this was this was something to watch and think about as it relates to us.
Can you just explain a little bit about Marie Lupin's relationship to fascism, because she said that the sort of Orbon and Putin were her jam Remember that she said it many times, but yes, if you could, yes.
Yes, okay. So Marie lepen is a very interesting figure who unites the past of the right and the way it's looking today because she became the head of the National Rally Party because her father, Jean Marie Leapin, was the founder of France's kind of official neo fascist party that went back, you know, many many decades. He was
vowedly neo Nazi. He was a supporter of Nazism, and so it's a very male environment and she was able to come up in the ranks and then become the head of this new National Rally Party because of this heritage.
And that's why I looked very suspiciously upon her very smart appointment of this totally unknown twenty six year old Jordan Bardella as the new face and the new leader of the National Rally Party because just like Maloney in Italy, these people who have a connection to fascism and are now in this day supporting Putin and supporting Orbon and people who are taking forth those authoritarian values and programs and actions. In the case of Putin and Ukraine, they're
trying to have it both ways. They're trying to be faithful allies of these authoritarian forces, but they're also trying to shake off slightly their fascist pass. So Bardella again, he was twenty six, now he's twenty eight. He's supposed to be the fresh face and clean hands of the French right. But this is where the left, in calling their movement the New Popular Front, got cut straight through that. So names matter, symbols matter, and so they didn't. They
didn't do as well as expected. They came in third, and so this is a very very important thing. And we're seeing this again. We're seeing this even in its own form with Putin, who obviously connects to communism, not fascism, but at some level authoritarianism in the world. They do the same things, whether the left or right wing. He's the new face of authoritarianism and he's now a right
wing leader, but he's rehabilitating Stalin. Alexi Navalni died in a prison that was the Polar Wolf prison in Siberia that was actually built by Stalin.
Yeah, I mean that is craziness. So the Popular Front was this idea that they would fight against Stalin and the Nazis.
Well, not again Stalin against Hitler. The original Popular Front was a coalition in the nineteen thirties to beat off fascism within France and also stand up during the Spanish Civil War when the whole of Europe was divided against Hitler, against Mussolini, against fascism.
Let's take that lesson here. What would that look like here?
It's difficult to have an analogy because we are.
We don't have a coalition government. No, I mean that would look like the center and the left coming together. We have more people in this country, just like in the world, who want democracy than fascism. Can you talk about that?
Yeah?
So the United States, as we all know, is a bipartisan system, and that's been a bit of a liability in this situation. If one party becomes an autocratic party and is a giant party, the people who within that party who don't no longer identify because they've become autocratic have nowhere to go. But that said, this is a huge country and it's very important that the left and the center, all the progressive forces right now band together under the banner of Democrats and have that unity and
get out the vote. And the Democrats also need to be far better about having an emotional appeal. And we know that, you know, just saying you have to fight fascism, you have to protect democracy, it's too abstract. And so that's why, and Maali, you've talked about this very convincingly, very well that reproductive rights is an issue that's concrete, it affects everyday life. And that's why even Republican women
are uncomfortable with the GOP's stance on this. But there's ways to center and emphasize that this is an existential fight against fascism in our country. I mean, they want to deport fifteen to twenty million people. I'd liked everyone to realize this is more than the population of Sweden, of Belgium, of Cuba, of Haiti, and it is ten times the size of Operation wetback in the nineteen fifties. This is a recipe just that alone, without all the
other things. They want to do a Project twenty twenty five to create an autocracy. This is a recipe for mass suffering, mass repression, mass chaos, do you really want that or do you want to stand up for our rights for freedom? And so there are many concrete issues that we can find to message this, but the key is unity of all progressive, all anti fascist forces in America.
One of the things I was hoping that we could talk about here was when you do a deportation squad like this, what that means is concentration camps. Can you talk about that?
We think alike. I've been worrying about this because my book Strong Men is about the history of authoritarianism. There's a chapter on violence, so I had to become very familiar with the history of concentration camps in their various forms. One of the lessons is that regimes can start by targeting one group or talking mainly about one group, and then that justifies their building of this depressive infrastructure, the camps. But be assured that once those spaces are ready, other
types of people go in there. So with the Nazis, we talk about, oh, of course the Jews. But Dakau was built in nineteen thirty three because they had no more room in prisons. They were warehousing people all over the place while they built Dhaco. And why was that there were hard you know, Jews were infantesmally small part of the population. It's because they were targeting all the liberals,
all the left, gays, Jehovah's witnesses. And so the lesson is they may be talking in America about deporting and thus sweeping up and detaining undocumented immigrants, but once those spaces are ready, and they'll capitalize on the US already being the largest jailer the private prison system, other types of people will be there because they're talking about that openly too. They're talking about investigations and trials, Liz Cheney having a televised trial. Guess who does that. This says
on my book Kadelphi. Kadelphi had televised trials. So other types of people will end up in those spaces. And so if you think that you don't have to get out the vote and vote yourself and unify with the Democrats because you're not an undocumented worker, or you're not a gay person or transgender, that is incorrect. Historically, many many more people will be affected, and with fifteen to twenty million people on the move swept up, the US will become like a police state. Yeah.
Oh, and you know who's going to end up in there? You and me, baby, like we're you know, we may be white women, but we will end up there just like everyone, you know what I mean, like enemies of the state. Go on, Yeah, totally. In fact, Trump's a thuggish spokesperson. Stephen Chung really doesn't like it when you call out.
These references to and similar hilarities to Hitler into Mussolini. And so when Trump made that speech talking about people as vermin and by the way, there he was talking about lots of different people. He said Marxists and liberals and fascists and all kinds of people like Stephen Chung. And I was interviewed and I said, this is the
language that Mussolini and Hitler used. And Stephen Chung was the Washington Post went to him for a comment, and he said, those who make those references will find their entire existence crushed when Trump returns to the White House. And crushed means rounded up or sued. Yes, this is the modern autocrats method of psychologically exhausting people as you sue them.
Yes.
So there's many ways that many, many types of people will feel the heavy hand of the Trump administration if we do not band together and vote for the Democrats.
Yeah, that's right, And I want to pause for a minute and talk about that for a second. So Stephen Chung, who is Trump's spokesman, heard that you said that this was the language of Mussolini, and then he threatened you with the language of Mussolini. Am I right?
Yes.
I was interviewed by the Washington Post along with my colleague Tim Naughtily and I love him, yes, and we both pointed out that this is exactly how Hitler and Mussolini spoke, and the Washington Post went to him for a comment for the same article, and typically he did not mention us by name. He just said those who make these assertions, but it's obviously was us.
Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, that is just a pretty scary thing when you're accusing someone of having these autocratic impulses and then they respond not by saying, of course, we wouldn't do that, that's not true, instead by saying, in fact, we're going after you.
Yes, and the purpose of it. And I always step back even if it's about me, because I've also been mentioned very right before Bannon went to jail, I was mentioned on his War room show I step back and look at you know why these people do this, because they've done this throughout history, and it's not only designed to get me and my colleague tim to be quiet. It's designed to make everybody think twice before speaking out.
And it's the same reason that the Turning Point USA has Professor watch List, which you know has individual I'm on their individual pages congratulations with unflattering photos. They've made my hand look like a claw, and so all of this is designed to make you self censor because that's what regimes wants you to do. You're doing their job for them if you just stay quiet and look the other way.
Right, stay quiet and look the other way, which reminds me of Timothy Snyder. What was it?
Don't o bay in advance? And I think of that too, because we're seeing so many sectors of society line up for Trump and the same sectors that lined up in the nineteen twenties and thirties for the original fascists, as in the big business elites, financial elites, like when the CEO of Blackstone, Steve Schwartzman said a vote for Trump
is a vote for change. I thought, really, it's January sixth the kind of change that is going to be good for the business community, because authoritarianism is bad for business. It creates situations where businesses can be plundered. Right now, they're all excited because Project twenty twenty five and the Supreme Court are acting to take away regulations so that you can plunder the food supply, the water, you can do anything without regulations. That's why they want to reform
beyond all. Compare the Department of Commerce. But that's not going to be good for business. So these are people who are lining up to get on the good side in the same way that's always happened. And it's a depressing spectacle.
Oh, depressing spectacle. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Ruth Bendia.
It's always a pleasure, no moment O.
Jesse Cannon my junk fast. I know we're not supposed to speak yell of the dead, but God, let's just listen to this clip the Primar audience for what we're going to say afterwards.
Of national attention and in case we have forgotten, because we keep hearing that twenty fourteen has been the warmest year on record. I asked the chair, you know what this is. It's a snowball. And that's just from outside here, so it's very very code, very unseasonal. So here, mister president, catch this.
One of the dumbest things to ever be done on the sudit for and that's a fucking high bar.
So he had a snowball, which was supposed to prove the climate change wasn't real. Well, he died on a day that it's eighty nine degrees and ten thousand degrees humidity in yet another of one of the hottest years on record. So you know, we don't ever want to say anything bad about people who die, but I think we should all agree that you know, this guy did more harm than good and he is our moment of ouck ray. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
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