Changing Hearts, Changing Minds

Twitter accounts as I'm about to. But he wrote an incredibly poignant and thoughtful book called The Persuaders at the front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds and Democracy, and in it he interviews a past Woke F guest, not a Sario Schenker, who we did a two part show with to discuss messaging right and why Democrats continue to get messaging wrong, and in a nonced book, he really gets to the core of the core of why we need as Democrats to be persuaders and to not

be above this idea that we need to convince people. And in order to convince people to do anything, you actually need to understand people. You need to go where the people are instead of thinking that the people are going to come where you are. And for too long, the Democratic Party, the Democratic establishment has been immovable right with the same voices, the same people in the same place, talking about the same shit in the same way. Now, at the time of this recording, we have no idea

what the outcome of the election is. But regardless of the election and its results, a non provide such clear focus of where we need to go, why we need to continue to have hope and that the work begins the day after election day and every single day following. And so, folks, I hope not only that you go out and buy this book and buy it for yourselves, buy it as this holiday season begins to start, buy it for everybody that you know, right, because we all need to get on the same page to be a

part of the movement for freedom. Right And what does that mean. It means about learning people, understanding them, developing and flexing your emotional intelligence so that we can meet people where they are instead of thinking that they are going to come to us. So, coming up next, dear friends, my in depth conversation with Anon giridadas the author of The Persuaders at the front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds,

and Democracy. Folks, I am very excited to welcome to woke F I believe for the very first time, although we did have a meeting at one time when people still went into green rooms at MSNBC. I am welcoming to woke F Daily for the very first time. Anon garridadas the author of The Persuaders at the front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds and Democracy, and also the author of another book which I think was also brilliant, Winners Take All the elite charade of changing the world.

I'm super excited to talk to you as am. I. I remember meeting you in the green room at MSNBC. This is pre COVID, so at least sixty seven years ago. Yea, and my hair was black, you know, I want to see to you it was. It was largely black. A lot's happened since then, and you have been and continue to be an absolute force on Twitter just speaking truth to power about our democracy. And so I want to jump in with the first question, you know, with regard

to persuaders, is look for me. Forty three million people were persuaded to believe Donald Trump Trump is m and his lies. Seventy five million people voted for him. Thirty three percent of the country still believes that the election

in twenty twenty was stolen. What is it that you believe that the far right is able to persuade, use lies, disinformation in order to persuade their base to agree with some of the most cruel, oppressive, and disgusting policies that I think that we've ever seen in this country versus the Democrats inability to really to persuade anybody, except to continue to have in fighting in a way that we have seen has damaged our ability to really spread our message in the way that it needs to be. Yeah.

I love that question because you're getting at a very crucial truth, which is that on the democratic side, the political left general, you often hear this thing that like, people's minds can't be changed, people can't be persuaded, you know, And the right loves it when we say this, because they believe in persuasion. As you just very eloquently laid out, the right believes that people's minds can be moved. Did anybody know what QAnon was ten years ago? No, because

it didn't exist. Forty three million Americans have been persuaded into an entirely new belief system QAnon. You know in

the time that my hair has turned gray. You know, Donald Trump took the Republican Party from a free trade platform to an anti trade platform, from you know, a kind of like business first thing to a kind of like white nationalist first orientation in its rhetoric and messaging and strategy, like the right believes you can move people, you can summon people to a new different set of ideas.

And I think we on left often are just like, you know, this kind of like French philosophers cigarette shrug pose, just like, oh, they'll never change their minds and they'll never change their ways. And it is empirically false, ye,

empirically false. Witness for eg, the remarkable revolution, attitudes to gain lesbian people in our lifetime, right and you're my lifetime, Like Barack Obama was not for gay marriage when he ran for president, right, like the sea change that we have lived through on that issue and many other issues in our time, on the status of women, women see themselves, how men see themselves and men see women. Like, we're

not there on any of these things. We're not there yet to answer the kids in the backseat, but we are people change all the time, right, And often I think on the political left we've, in our sadness and despair what's gone on, we've gone too far in making this bogus claim that people are unchangeable, while the right

is all up in the grill of changing people. And second, it's just a self defeating attitude in addition to being false, that basically concedes that democracy isn't a thing that can work. I mean, if you don't believe that you can go into the arena and say certain things frame certain things offer a certain material benefit, it's the people, policies for people and move them. Then like, what are you engaged

in democracy for? And I think often what I perceive is that many of us on the political left who are making claims about the impossibility of persuasion are actually just narrating our own impotence. We're not talking like we think we're making a claim about these other people who can't be one. But what we're really telling you is

that we ain't that good at doing it. And if you're not that great doing it, step aside for people who are, because there are amazing organizers, activists, cognitive scientists, others. I studied for this book, who know how to persuade, who know how to move minds, who know how to do the kind of base building work for the long haul,

to build deeper, long term support from multiracial democracy. And I think we need kind of wholesale changes of leadership in communication on the democratic side, on organizing, on any number of things, certainly the fundraising emails. We need the movement to be led by people who know how to change minds, who are willing to do the work, and

who are showing success at doing so. There are those people, and I wrote the book to try to highlight them and elevate them and uplift them in the hope that they will be the dominant forces and voices on the kind of pro democracy, pro freedom side. Do you think? I mean, I you know I can impact so much in the answer that you just provided. And you know a not who you gave a chapter two She did a two part episode on will gay app as well as democracy? Ish Okay, I only get a one part.

We don't know yet it could go for two, We could go for do um. But you know she gave such I mean it was like nothing was earth shattering, And I'm like why do they make it seem so hard? What you're offering makes sense, right, But do we lead? Like are we too good? And that this is kind of what I'm distilling from what you said. Our Democrats too good to believe in persuasion, Like DoD They just want people to be born with the with the ideas

of what is right in their head. Like they believe that if I persuade you, then somehow I'm out here doing the devil's work, as opposed to I think you're again, like in your trademark, while you're hitting on like the very deep cores of this thing. So there's a couple very deep cores of this that you're absolutely right about.

I think one is I had it's interesting conversation about my book with Noam Chomsky a few weeks ago, right before the book came out, and he said, he said, you know, I have an interesting relationship paraphrasing, he's like an interesting relationship to your book because I want all the people in your book to win, and like they're

the people I think should win. But he's like, when you frame it as persuasion, he's like for him, Noam Chomsky, he's thinking of like advertising and propaganda, and like pr he's thinking of all the things that basically he hates and thinks undermine progress and undergird like capital, a manic kind of hyper capitalism. And so I think his book, my book was like complicated for him because he was like, wait, should Bernie Sanders be like telling more personal stories and

building a more human you know, appeal? Or is that like the Coca Cola isation of Bernie Sanders? Now? I so, So, I think that's one thing I think on the left, there is an aversion to a certain kind of persuasion that reads to people as like madmen or or or like you know, I personally say, I think that's misguided. Like I think it matters whether you're selling Coca Cola

or Bernie Sanders. Like I think if Bernie Sanders, if the advice, you know, for for example, that I would get is that Bernie Sanders should tell a lot more people that a crappy healthcare system killed his mom when he was eighteen or nine teen years old, and no one knows that, and it's his signature domestic issue. And

my mom didn't love Bernie Sanders. In the twenty sixteen or twenty twenty runs, But I can tell you she would have related a lot to Bernie Sanders telling you he spent the next fifty something years of his life avenging his mother's death by trying to make healthcare available for everybody. My mom might have listened to that part, right, even if she didn't like the policy, if that's you know, if that's cheap, like I don't, I don't want to be not cheap. You know, that to me is you know,

is politics. And so I think part of the interesting, like beautiful conversation I had with Chomsky about this gets at this notion of, you know, our Democrats and the left for generally too high minded in their view of who people are, you know, just like who we are, Like, how do we have a good grounded sense of how people are actually forming opinions? And I think if you have an excessively high minded view, you think of it

as a cerebral process. People are you know, you, Danielle, are like finishing this podcast and you're going sitting that couch picking up some of those books on the shelf, and you're formulating your view on you know, policies, and then you're going to like vote, you know, you already voted obviously from your sticker, And I just don't think that's how I don't think that's how it is for me and you, and we are highly educated, like engaged

people politically. It is definitely not how ninety percent of people who are maybe less engaged politically than us form opinions. Like one of the people in the book says to me, political opinion formation is primarily an emotional process. Now, I think not would agree with that. I think I agree with that. You sound like you agree with that. I don't think the establishment of the Democratic Party believes that.

And if they did, they're either engaging in like woeful malpractice or they just you know, have no idea what they're doing. If you start to say, okay, let me not start with like policies or bullet point plans or whatever. Let me start with like what are people like, what is going on with people? What in general? How do people form opinions? Also, what's going on to people now?

What are people afraid of now? Right? And then let me let me try to like back my policies into where people are now, yes, right, human center, like anyone selling anything like people people don't take this diet coke and again like this is going to that like commercial place, which is I think what freaks some people out on the left. But like people are not like you know, like this tastes like caramel mix with people are like what do people want? People want to like have fun

with their friends, People want to feel young again. People right, and then they somehow like hook diet coke into rude understanding of like what you want, where you are, and where you want to go. Now, if I were to take Medicare for all, I don't I think it's cheap or tacky to say, don't just say healthcare as a human right. That that's like centering the thing. It's not centering you, right, Like here's here's a different way to talk about Medicare for all, which is you and me.

And you know, half the people in this country have a business idea that is like kicking around our head or that we like bend our friend's ears about at the bar, right and for like I would say ninety percent of Americans I've ever talked to at a business idea, there is number one reason they can't go pursue it is they can't leave their current employer based healthcare right to go to the business idea. If you have kids or you have a spouse, you'd literally be like jeopardizing

your child. Ninety percent of Americans would have to jeopardize their child's life to start a business idea. Okay, so is that capitalism? Is that called capitalism when you can't? Nine percent of business ideas just are never activated because you'd be endangering your child's life to quit your job and do the business idea, even if you have a plan and a potential investors. So what would it look

like to advocate for medicare for all? Starting with that kind of understanding of that aspiration that so many millions of Americans have, You might you might be able to tap into all kinds of people who are not drawn to a healthcare as a human right argument or a moral frame, or who don't know what medicare is and not sure why you want to now make it for all,

but you know, you might call it freedom care. You might explain how it ties into the real, lived desire for liberation that people have without you having to explain it to them. And so that's just one example I think of what it would look like for the Democratic Party and the left generally to have a kind of user centered politics. Start with who people are, what's going on with them? Yeah, and proceed from there. One hundred

percent agree. And I have often said that I believe that Democrats think that people are better than they are, and I believe that Republicans actually know who people are, right,

which is that people are easily persuadable. If you give them the same talking point over and over again, from Fox to qan on to Newsmax to wherever that they'll go, it becomes that that earworm right, And then all of a sudden, it's now popping up in all of their social media feeds because our phones and our computers and everything listens to everything that we're doing, so everything becomes reinforced.

And it's this idea that we think that people have more time and are better than they are, right, that Democrats are just like, no, no, no, We're going to take the high road. I had a great issue. I love Michelle Obama. I think that Michelle Obama is literally the salt of the earth. But when she said that when they go low, we go high, I said, no, no, because you can't fight a seward game on horseback. Right, like you have to actually be down in the mud.

And so I think that democrats do believe that they are better than and they want people to And that's where the elitist attitude comes from, that the right places on top of us is that, oh, you're just elitist. And it's just like, no, I fundamentally know that I'm a better person than somebody who believes that gay people, Muslims, you know, trans people and what have you don't deserve

space and place in this universe. Like, I definitely know I'm better than those people, But if I'm actually trying to get them to recognize to your point that yeah, I shouldn't have to be tied to my job like some indentured servant because I need health insurance. Like if this country is built on everyone pulling themselves up from their bootstraps, then shouldn't I be able to become the next egomaniac billionaire? Right, Like, shouldn't that right be afforded

to me? So I wonder, like, what do you I kind of just pause you on that it was such a great like what you just said, right, what Like why haven't we reframed the current healthcare system as indentured servitude. Right,

that's exactly like you just came up with that. Yeah, like talking right, they spend millions of dollars in markets they'd never come up with that, you know, like maybe they could hire you, but like that's exactly and so what what you when you when you said that, suddenly the issue in my mind, I just like felt my own brain go like, oh, it's not like I'm trying to like sell people in some crazy new healthcare idea like our current things indentured servitude are Are you for that?

Or who's for indentured servitude healthcare? Right? It's just reflipping it, like and and the fact that we hear so little of that ever done those kind of reframings, whereas the right is doing that every damn day with partial birth, abortion and death tax and they're just right death panels like it's it. It's literally the case that our healthcare system creates indentured servitude. Yes, and we have never been

able to frame it in those kinds of ways. I mean when you say to me, I can't I have a great idea, I have a great aspiration, and I can't leave my job and go ahead and forge this idea of the American dream because I'm shackled to a job. What else would you call that? Correct? And I would have once you opened that then by like Bernie had a problem in communities of color in particular, right and with older voters, and you know there was that he had.

He was pushing up against certain limits in the coalition, right, could you imagine and these, by the way, the most marginalized communities of the communities were the aspiration to build a business is strong because you may not be able to get that job at that big company that is still discriminatory whatever, but the idea of creating your own

thing is is a big aspiration. By the way, I think it's why Republicans are winning a bunch of black and Hispanic men because there's a lay bage of aspiration and commercial like you know that they feel put off

by Democratic Party. That's a whole other conversation. Imagine if Bernie had done events in communities of color asking everybody to come up and share their business idea, like fucking Bernie Shark Tank, come up and share your business idea, but also talk about your current healthcare thing situation, talk about how you actually can't do that, and then Bernie would like explain to you how you could like right, like, I think a lot of you know, some of the

more diehard socialist elements in his campaign Britain, like why would you do an event around people's business aspirations? Right? But just like that, to me is the kind of politics that I'm interested in. The optics and the substance of Bernie Sanders sitting with a bunch of like black and Hispanic and Asian American entrepreneurs with dreams saying we're the party of aspiration. Also, we want you to go from your one store to five stores and queens or whatever.

And here's why having health care for all is going to make that happen for you, right it. Just imagine the amount of reframe there, Imagine the additional scope of people who might be interested with that kind of pitch, and I think you can go issue by issue and think about persuasion in that way. And it's funny because for me, I will tell you that the tagline blah blah blah for all is problematic. And why do I think that it's problematic? Because White America works from a

scarcity model. It is not an abundant place America does not have enough for you over there that I don't know, and I don't like. I don't like how you pray, I don't like how you love. I don't like how you look. So all of a sudden, when you start talking about blah blah blah for all, what they hear is that I have to give something up. I have to give something up in order for all to be able to have it. And it's so easy for the

right to reframe. And so when you just look at these things and you say, okay, well, instead of it being for all, even though that's what we want, that's our value as democrats. But how I'm going to frame it is about freedom. How I'm going to frame it is about what you are owed because of the work that you have put in, and you make it about

them instead of everybody. That's the problem that democrats, I believe, have is that they want they want to believe that people have this you know, lofty idea of wanting to be empaths and give to everyone around them, which I'm like, what the Republicans have proved is that yeah, capitalism and inflation and all of these things have made us greedy as fuck right, so like there isn't more than enough.

Obama was the last one that had us believe that, oh my god, the wealth of this nation can provide for all. And we believed in because the message was that, you know, uh, just combative, combative to that rhetoric on the right. And I wonder like, is it the two on top of having the right messenger and the right message?

Is it wrong for us on the left to continue chasing certain candidates and personalities rather than what the right has done, which is like, no, you all just need to get on board with white supremacy because then you'll remain on top. Right, Like they're not just chasing a

person now, they're chasing like this broader idea. Well, I actually think I was thinking about this today when I voted, and I'm fascinated in particular by you know, by the time people listen to this, like they'll know the results. But there's this dead heat for the governorship of New

York that should not exist, I know. And the thing is like, tell me if my assumption here is wrong, Like I don't think you or I know a single person who feels anything in their heart for the current democratic governor of New York, Kathy Hochel or like like a young person in this state who feels motivated about her or anything, And then you have this like improbable thing of a Republican doing surprisingly well. But is it that improbable if you don't even like this is New

York State. This is the most interesting collection of human beings ever assembled under the sun anywhere on planet Earth, Like the greatest collection, like you and I live because a great like there's no lack of interesting people who are smart, politically engaged. So we considered everyone, and Kathy Hochel is someone who excites nobody. Is our idea of someone who should be the number one, the chief executive of this state with the greatest collection of people in

human history. Well, I don't know why we're surprised when we lose. We're not trying to excite people, we're not trying to inspire, but we're not trying to build a movement. I mean, like it is it is playing with fire when you're fighting fascism. So like, think of the gall to knowingly run people who literally make no one feel anything. What is your assessment of the situation? The right again, like the right understands feelings as you say, the right

inside people as they are right. So, like, is your assessment really that it does not matter that the gubernatorial candidate on the Democratic side for New York is the view of the Democratic Party that it doesn't matter that she makes no one feel anything. M is that their assessment, Like, I would love for someone to put that in writing. I would marvel at that. If that is your assessment.

Maybe I'm wrong, Maybe I don't understand politics. It seems quite daring to base an entire candidacy on the view that it doesn't matter if people feel like anything for a candidate. It doesn't matter if she has any kind of movement or not. It doesn't matter if like no one I have seen in New York City has worn any of her merch. It doesn't matter. None of these things matter. Apparently they clearly don't matter. Just all that matters is like just telling your voters that shit's dangerous.

Please give them five dollars and vote for the people they're telling you too. I mean, it is such a as you said, just unrealistic view of people that it's not to me bad political stretches. Like I think what we're you and I are talking about it is like actually really core and we don't talk about enough, which is like prior to politics. Like I think we're dealing with a bunch of people in the Democratic Party establishment leadership and around it that like are not that smart

about people. Yeah, not great EQ, just not like really good at spreadsheets, right, like really good ass and data analysis, you see it, right, Just like, but there's just like other people in all of our lives who are just like really smart about people. They just like get people. I'm not sure those people are in charge right now.

They don't seem to be. You know what, It's funny because I'm so glad that you brought up emotional intelligence and EQ because I have to tell you that this is a thing that has been completely and totally absent. That's it is that Republicans, for as horrible as they are, have their finger on the pulse of their people. They know how to move them, they know how to sway them, They know how to make them angry, they know how to make them sad. They know how to make them

cheer at the very idea of violence. Right, they cheered for a hammer going into the head of an eighty two year old man right. Ten years ago, five years ago, those people would look at themselves and they would say not in this country, right, because we hold up other nations and say, oh, that's what they do. And so here they are cheering about the very idea of violence

because the Republicans have their finger on the pulse. And I think again, Democrats are more concerned with focus groups and poles rather than the people behind them, rather than really going where the people are. I was told the other day that I needed to, like a couple of months ago, Danielle, you should be on TikTok, and I said, I don't want to do dumb dances. I get on Twitter and I get on Instagram and I rage against the machine. How does how does that work with TikTok?

And they're like, because that's where the people are. You. If your goal is to change people, to shift people, to move them, then you have to go where they are. And so I think that it's it's interesting to me that Democrats stay put. Essentially, Democrats stay put and think that the people are going to come to them. So like with the final minutes that we have just you know, because your book is also hopeful, right, and we are at a time that it is in a loss for hope.

I tell people all the time I am ye of little faith, but clearly I do because I have multiple fucking podcasts trying to wake people up. If I didn't have faith, then I would just shut the fuck up. So what is it that gives you hope? And what do you believe that people should be holding onto again? By the time that they listen to this, will know the results. But should the results in and of themselves matter?

What should move people? Whether tonight Tuesday of election day is a blowout for Democrats, a mediocre result, a surprising, you know, surprisingly good night for Democrats, regard hardless of that outcome. An enormous project of rebuilding begins Wednesday morning. It has to. And there's no scenario tonight that wouldn't you know, that would not necessitate a major project of rebuilding. Here's the bottom line for me, amid a fascist up

swell in this country. We do not currently possess a pro freedom protomocracy movement capable of burying it and beating it durably and consistently. We have a movement that can like eke out fifty one forty nine victories sometimes and lose you know, minor victories other times, or big, you know, lose a big contest other times. But we don't have a protomocracy movement that can consistently win in a way that is going to keep you and me and our

you know, like community safe, or anyone frankly safe. So we need to build that. We need to build a new and improved freedom movement in this country of the likes of which we've never seen. I mean, I don't. I think that the task right now, the organizing challenge right now is immense. And here's what gives me hope.

I think what we sometimes fail to do is properly tell the story of why this is happening and the trajectory right to me these I want to be very clear Trumpism, Ronda Santis, that this whole movement that is increasingly a fascistic right wing movement, they live in my world, in your world. You and I don't live in their world. You and I are not reactionaries to their brilliant, interesting ideas for the future. You and I are living in a future that is quite different from what this country

was thirty fifty seventy years ago. You and I are living in it and through our voices trying to push it even further in the direction that it's been going in. And they're living in reaction to us. They are reactionaries to us. And I think it's very important to just distinguish between whether you and I are living in their world or they're living in ours. And one test of this is you and I would still be advocating for

the things we believe in whether or not they existed. Yeah, if Donald Trump disappeared, there's you and I would still be. The kind of healthcare policies you would want, I think would be the same as what you want right now. The kind of schools you'd want, what I think be the same as what the schools you want right now. The kind of foreign policy right could you say the same about them? Their entire agenda is to stop people like you and me from being you know, full citizens

of this country. It's to stop it. It is purely parasitic, their agenda, their cause on the thing we are trying to do. There is no them without us, but there isn't us without of them. That is what it means to be a reactionary. So they are, as I always say, they're barnacles on our progress. They can't exist without the progress that has been happening. And so let's actually take a moment. Because they know about the progress we've been making, that's how they exist. We often don't talk about the

progress we've made. It is really different to be any number of groups in this country than it was fifty or one hundred years ago. Right, we get caught up in the moment to moment and all the unfinished business. We don't pat ourselves on the back for real shifts we have made. Right Like my children are in a world of children, where the levels of awareness of the different experiences of being a human being, the different types of people in their midst that need to be seen

and recognized and treated properly. It puts all of our ancestors to shame. I mean, we treat it all of our ancestors lovely, as they may have been treated a vast swath of the human species terribly for all kinds of reasons. Too bad, you're a woman, you're of the darker persuasion, your trans You're right if you add it all up, we weren't good to most people, right, Like, we're not there yet, But it's really different now than

it was before. You go to campuses, I'm sure you have this experience, Like the way these young people just like intuitively live in an egalitarian world, the way they think about their roles and their relationship, it's just really really different than anything else in the history of the world. Like we're doing a lot. We've done a lot, We've

built a lot of progress. And there's something in progressives that makes us, i think, unwilling to just like say that out loud, because the orientation is toward all that's not done, and the psyche is about like losing in some ways, and like it's worth saying, like we've changed a ton a ton of stuff. We have redefined the way we live in so many ways. And this progress has inspired as it did after Reconstruction, as it has so many times in American history, It's inspired a backlash.

It's inspired these barnacles, and like we got to deal with it, and after Reconstruction it was a long, long, long period of backlash. Those backlashes can be years, they can be decades, they can be short, they can be long. That's what's at stake. Now. There's no question to me that this is a backlash, and that we will beat it the way we beat the same type of people being, you know, against the abolition of slavery and against labor reform and against the New Deal and against integration and

against gay rights. Like they lose every time. In the end, the question is how long does their backlash get to be and how influential does it get to be, and how painful does it get to be for everyone? And I think I have hope because i know what we're trying to do, and I'm very focused on the in a way awesome project of trying to build a multiracial democracy. That is the cause of a lot of our pain right now. We are in pain because we're trying to

These are birth pangs. We are trying to do a great thing, and we so seldom remind ourselves that we're trying to do a great thing that we depress ourselves. So I would say the hope comes from the noble goal, the awesome goal, the worthy goal, and then remembering that these smallhearted, cynical people have always lost in the long run, and they will lose again, and freedom will win again, and if we want it to happen fast, we better buck up, shake off the despair and change our ways.

You are a delight and I am so absolutely grateful for the time that you have spent on wok af today and on and just what you were putting out into the world, into the universe. And I really hope, folks, that you are listening to this and that it holds you and you create space for it, because this is the journey that we're on. And Anon, I just I appreciate you so very much. Folks. The book is the persuaders at the front lines of the fight for hearts, minds and our democracy. Get it now. Get it as

a gift. It is the time of Thanksgiving and holidays and all of that jazz. Get it for people, and get it for yourselves. I hope that you come back again. I will come back anytime I want to. I want to do a three part series to beat a NATS record. Yes, I love that is it for me today, dear friends, on Woke a f as always. Power to the people and to all the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.