All-Out War on Democracy

by state, plucking people's rights and votes from them. And I get into a conversation today with our friend Jonathan Metzel about democratic messaging and what we are getting wrong because you know, this is where Jonathan and I disagree, which is that I am not for the handholding. I am not for the what ails you when it comes to Republicans, I don't give a fuck, right Like, I really just don't. I have zero, zero fucks to give.

And at the same time, I am trying to understand what is it going to take to get people in this country activated? And when I say activated, I mean in the fucking streets. What is it going to take?

Because if it isn't, what is happening in Alibi with denying women and people with uteruses the ability to travel freely out of state if it isn't what is happening in Texas, which is making it illegal to transport pregnant people on highways, which, by the way, just so you know that for those seeking an abortion around twenty twenty four weeks, you're not fucking showing. So what are these

state troopers doing? Just pulling over women, you know, and people they perceive to be women, Like I don't you know, Like how long is it going to be until it is mandatory for people with uteruses in these states to have to enter in their menstrual cycle into a government database. And you all be like, oh my god, that'll never wake the fuck up, That will never happen. Days are

well behind us. In the rear view fucking mirror. We can't even see that shit of what couldn't possibly happen anymore, because everything that we thought could not happen is happening, and it's happening at a pace that I find difficult

to cover on a regular basis. So in today's conversation with our in house doctor, we talk about democratic messaging, what is going to break through, if anything, and Jonathan and I come from two different sides of the argument that want the same thing, democracy to not only hold on, but to expand. And I just think that nowadays the expansion is a pipe dream and if we're gonna be able to hold it, it may just be in blue

states for right now. So I you know, folks, I'm not terribly optimist stick on today's show, but it's an important conversation that we need to have coming up next, my convo with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel. Folks, you know that whenever we have the opportunity to speak with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzl, I am

always thrilled each and every week. And Jonathan, I want to start off with recent pushes by Elon Musk to just try and decimate the Anti Defamation League right and saying that the Anti Defamation League, which works to disrupt anti Semitism in various places including on social media, that by calling out anti Semitism, that they are somehow anti Semits and had an entire hashtag hashtown hashtag ban ADL trending worldwide because he pushed it out and then has

recently also tweeted because I'm not gonna call it fucking X has also tweeted that woke is anti human And I just want to get your reactions to this unchecked multi billionaire who has claimed the public square, has destroyed it and still received sponsorship dollars not only from private companies but also subsidies from the US government. So I just want to get your initial reactions with his anti semit anti Semitic push.

we had nuclear proliferation treaties. Like we grew up in a certain world order in which doing what's happening now was really unacceptable, which was just picking a stigmatized group, playing off of the stereotypes of that group, and then mobilizing white Christian, conservative nationalist anger. But really it's global right against that group. And when that happens, the groups

that are targeted are so predictable. It's the you know, first they came for and then just fill in the blank, right, you know, queer people, transgender, people with disabilities, people of religious minority, ethnic minority. So in a way, it's just that we haven't seen this book in real time. I mean, it's always been kind of simmering there. But when you see it, it's weird because it's so predictable, like, oh

my god, yeah, you're just doing that thing. But then you also see the power of it because the I mean Elon Musk, like, he's not Trump, right, he's not charismatic, he's not engaging. He's a loser, a with a social media platform. And the problem here, right, is that he's basically doing these tropes over the social media platform. But the problem is he's a guy with an awful lot

of power in retrospect. Remember how much we were all pushing for him to buy the platform when he was trying to welch out of it and stuff like that. We should have been putting money together for us to buy the platform. So now he's kind of buying his popularity. But he's also the guy who owns starlink and dictates Russian troop positions and Ukrainian advances and things like that.

And so it's just one person with an awful lot of power who's saying this stuff that filters down, And I don't know, it just feels like so on one hand, terrifying. On the other hand, like it's kind of like reading the book Fascism for Dummies, like really, like you know, right, Like it's just it's so obvious and so gratuitous and just so completely unimaginative in a certain kind of way. But I guess that's that's kind of how this stuff works.

It's not like it's not like the most brilliant people are the ones who are creating the master narrative here, right, And so I don't know. I mean, my dad's a Holocaust survivor, and we grew up thinking like Nazis were they killed all over our relatives, but they were also like very predictable and like you know, what happened over there and all that kind of stuff, So just as seeing it happen, it just feels like watching a slow

motion car wreck. And I guess the other part is, do you remember that when I gave my book Talk for Dying of Whiteness and the Nazis came, it was like twenty nineteen or something, and the ADL was really really helpful, right, I was getting a lot of targeted stuff and the ADL, Like, I don't know, that's the only time I've ever engaged with them, but I can just say on a personal level, like, if you're getting oppressed by hate groups, the ADL is the most useful thing.

And it's not just anti Semitism, right, they are really at the front of the line for anti racist violence, anti trans violence, all these kind of things. So they basically help people who are being oppressed by the very thing that Twitter right now is promoting its whole business model. And so again it just seems like so obvious, like they're going after the watcher, the watchmen of the very

thing that's being propagated by this hate thing. And the last thing I'll say, and I realized there's like nine million things to jump off of, is it's weird and scary and tragic and pathetic now. But I guess my main concern is, like, how is this leading up to the twenty four election And what's the implication going to be of all this kind of thing. I don't know, have you found this, Like my follower count has dropped pretty dramatically even in the past week you are quitting Twitter.

it's real people. I absolutely have no idea. I want to go back to what you mentioned with regard to fascism for dummies and the fact that Elon is not as charismatic as Donald Trump, and I think I don't know if that matters Jonathan, that he's not as charismatic or that we know that he is a loser and he's insecure, because I kind of want to unpack the

psychology with these people that is very similar. Right, So you have somehow these folks that are trying to whether it's Donald Trump or it's Elon Musk that there talk to me about the white toxic masculinity and like and also its connection to fragility, right, and what and what these people exhibit is very much textbook in terms of how authoritarians and strong men work.

that the reason there was so much racial resentment. I mean, there's all these predictable you know, white men were facing competition in the labor market, and we talked about that a couple of weeks ago, and white men were feeling displaced because the census was showing that whites were going to be the demographic minority. And I think all those things are true, right, the world is changing really fast.

The world is changing really fast. And I don't know how you can process things like the climate in a you know kind of man, this is catastrophic, what can we do about it? Or you can process it in a more primitive way, which is it's somebody else's fault. And I think everybody, you know, same thing with COVID, Like COVID, oh, you know, millions of people died. Is

it like let's ban together? Or I want to I want somebody to blame, and we're in a moment now where this I need somebody to blame narrative is really powerful. People are not rational in the way that they've been rational for much of our lives. I don't think personally calling it fragility, I mean, that's a great diagnosis. I

don't actually use that term personally. I just think that this sense of like the narrative that's working on people, which is needing somebody else to blame right now and then acting violently potentially on that is a is a pretty big phenomenon that has racial and religious majority groups acting with a kind of abandon without a kind of checks and balance that have been present for much of

our lives. And so it's a scary moment. And I guess, I guess I'm just refaming your question, which is like, how do we fight it? Right now?

of racist white people to understand their racism. But I think that when we are entering this place of demagoguery, when we when when America, for you know, for over two hundred you know, close to two hundred and fifty years, has been able to stave off this strong man, I there is something that is very seductive about this moment and these people. And I think and the thing that Donald Trump and an Elon musk have is that one Elon musk Is is the richest man in the world.

Donald Trump lies about his wealth, but he's still wealthier than the average person. Right. So there is the wealth that is there that which goes with the class. There is the whiteness, there is the maleness, and then there is the ability to like you know, activate the media

and it tension around you. And so for me, I do think that the importance that the importance is in both and the diagnosis and of how these people have risen Now when for two hundred in close to two hundred and fifty years, we've been able to make sure that that is not the case, That that is what in all honesty, if you're talking about unpacking American exceptionalism,

it was never the white aspect of exceptionalism. It was the fact that as you were watching other countries fall to different two different dictators, different authoritarian regimes, that somehow America was able up until this moment to be able to stay that off.

And I say, on one hand, that's probably true, Like that's true to what's probably what's happening, But the framework of like diagnosing the majority group in a way, it just leads you farther from like what I'm arguing in my book that's coming out in January is we need to build structures that make those points of view like that force people to be cooperative, to make their views irrelevant.

So I just don't know where we get I don't know what we get by we're diagnosing white fragility as like being sensitive to always needing to be on top, or like that Joiner book, Lonely on Top or something like that, like people don't have the skills and whether they're challenged, they react violently. Like that's a great diagnosis, which is what academics do a lot. But I feel like sometimes, like when you're diagnosing the majority culture, it

just it's true, it gives a diagnosis. Maybe it's unifying or something like that. But I guess what I'm seeing in guns is it leads it. It leads it farther from an answer a counter strategy. And so in the gun book, I'm showing how, for example, the you know, diagnose using the public health frame to diagnose gun culture, which is incredibly white, racialized, incredibly historical, you know, Second Amendment on down guns were used to empower certain groups

and disempower certain groups. But just calling it out and saying it's name and all these things. Number one, it's true about what happened, but it wasn't a model for like, how can we win elections and seat judges and build structures that actually promote community safety across neighborhoods, like you actually need to have a model that's like how can

we actually take power, not just critique power. So it kind of taps into what's on my mind right now, which is like our model is a protest model, but the other side's working with like a power model, and so just critiquing them it just leads us to more critique.

That's what I'm going to argue my book. I'm sure that'll be controversial for some people, but I'm like, we're critiquing them, well, they're actually they have The other side has a model for power which is like take over the judiciaries, reat the Supreme Court, here's what you do with taxes, here's do you do the corporation. We don't have any of that. Our model is critiquing them, and so I don't know, I realize I'm going to get in a lot of discussions.

Because it can't just be protesting against the consolidation of power by the right, there has to be a mode of we're moving from a reactionary place to a proactive place, right, And so I get what you're saying, and I do think that to some extent, we have allowed ourselves to be stuck in some ways in the diagnosis in the protest and not wholly in the problem solving right, right.

As progressive, you can it's great on social media, it's terrible if you're trying to win an election and see judges and allocate resources, it's not you don't have enough of you don't have a big enough population of people.

And so how to broaden the coalition? I think, how to imagine the endpoint of like what would it to win not to critique the other side, but actually to win, because that's I've studied conservatives forever, that's how they think they're not I mean, obviously they're critiquing liberals with all these stupid things, but it's also tied into a model of like how do we gain power in this situation? And I just I guess I that's kind of where I want to go, is like what's our version of that?

And so again, I like labor unions in the South would be one place to really look right now to see because they're actually trying to broaden the coalition and upend the traditional power structures and stuff like that. And I just don't think. I don't think like if the labor unions were using the white fragility framework or the frameworks, they're going to get there. But the goal isn't to

critique white whiteness. It's to gain power, win elections, seed judges, allocate resources by Twitter, you know that kind of thing. And so I just think, you know, I think we're getting there slowly. And again, I wrote a book Dying of Whiteness, and white racial resentment is like a framework I use. I'm not backing away from that but I would also say that critique is not enough right now. It really isn't given what we're facing.

what does this mean? What is this foreshadowing look like in twenty twenty four and what we know right And I think that there was just a release of a European commission on what happened prior to the war of aggression against the Ukrainians by Russia is that the misinformation campaign that Russia was waging went wild on Twitter before the war actually happened, right before there was an initial strike.

And so I think to your point, it's like, I think that the question that we all have to be asking ourselves, who are avid users of social media to push out sacs and rightful information and to engage the public, is that we're still I don't know, I feel like we're still very much behind the eight ball in terms of we didn't right we didn't rightfully address and prosecute

and deal with what happened in twenty sixteen. More that happened in twenty twenty and now we're on the verge of an entirely AI crisis with the mimicking of voices and faces and video and all of these things leading up to twenty twenty four.

in Nashville right now about political mobilizing. Obviously, the white power structure in Nashville is pretty obvious, but we're doing a lot of political action here to try to change

that narrative. I don't know, I have a feeling that in my last book, I problematized the South, but I feel like a lot of the solutions are going to come from the South, because there's just a lot happening down here that I think we'll talk about it next time, but I think there's a lot happening down here that's actually tied to real world politics, labor politics, infrastructure, urban stuff that I think lens itself like usually our answers come from New York and LA And I think what's

going to happen going forward is the South is going to create much more of the framework for what democratic politics look like in a way because of what happened, the pandemic and other kinds of things. So it'll be interesting to see how this I'll just say TVD as a teaser for there going to be having because I know we're short on time here. No.

of rolling in authoritarianism. But we will leave it there today, Jonathan, you already tease what we're talking about next week, so we don't even have to think about it. As always, my friend, we appreciate your analysis and your time.