Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Donald Trump says he was the
Speaker 1: one who told Malania to threaten Hunter Biden with a
Speaker 1: one billion dollar lawsuit. We have such a great show
Speaker 1: for you today as the world churns Andy Leevey stops
Speaker 1: by to talk about the media's role in letting Trump
Speaker 1: subvert the law. Then we'll talk to author Jason Stanley
Speaker 1: about how to read Trump's play in the Fascist Playbook.
Speaker 2: But first the news.
Speaker 3: It's May the DC Attorney General is suing the Trump
Speaker 3: administration to stop the police takeover so they don't chase
Speaker 3: down people in West End who are throwing sandwiches.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's called sandwich Gate.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's the story of a man and a sandwich. No.
Speaker 1: So here's what's happened. We have a very Nightmari scenario
Speaker 1: in the District of Columbia, something that we all saw
Speaker 1: coming when DC was denied statehood. Right, Trump can do
Speaker 1: whatever he wants to DC. It has no protection. It's
Speaker 1: not a state. It's not protected. It's this weird sort
Speaker 1: of amorphous thing. So Donald Trump, when he can do
Speaker 1: what he wants. He is doing what he wants, and
Speaker 1: we are watching him do this authoritarian takeover of the
Speaker 1: district of Columbia. This is what it looks like. This
Speaker 1: is what authoritarianism looks like. So we knew this was coming.
Speaker 1: Thank you Kristin Cinema and Joe Manchin for making sure
Speaker 1: that Democrats couldn't use the filibuster because, by the way,
Speaker 1: that would have crushed norms and institutions. And so here we.
Speaker 3: Are sending Kristin a glass of wine across the bar
Speaker 3: at whatever wine tasting she's at today.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, speaking of other dystopian things coming out of Washington,
Speaker 3: the White House now has a loyalty rating for companies.
Speaker 3: Definitely doesn't feel fascy.
Speaker 2: Well, it doesn't feel fascy except it does.
Speaker 1: But it also is so deeply anti capitalist, right, Like,
Speaker 1: the whole idea of capitalism is that you have companies
Speaker 1: that do things, And here we have kubodies that are
Speaker 1: being rated on whether or not they're nice enough to Trump, right,
Speaker 1: the nice enough to the administration so that Trump will
Speaker 1: let them live.
Speaker 2: This is like crony capitalism. This is the worst of
Speaker 2: crony capitalism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're really seeing it as the way whether they're
Speaker 3: going to buy stock in Intel Chips, which is hilarious,
Speaker 3: that's a competitor to Apple, who just sucked up to Trump.
Speaker 1: All of these companies could have done something. They could
Speaker 1: have said we're not going to do this, we're not
Speaker 1: going to behave this way, and it would have been
Speaker 1: really great. It wouldn't have been great, but it would
Speaker 1: have made everything slow down.
Speaker 2: But what happened here is that all these companies kick
Speaker 2: themselves just to go along with Trump, and so now.
Speaker 1: There's a kind of competition to suck up to Trump,
Speaker 1: and that means that company is involved in this kind
Speaker 1: of authoritarian push and it's just incredibly dark. You know,
Speaker 1: it's exactly what we had all wanted to avoid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, speaking of avoiding things, it's kind of funny like
Speaker 3: you and I both know DC geography well as one
Speaker 3: of us has a lot of family there and another
Speaker 3: has visited a lot, and everybody's kind of noticing this
Speaker 3: thing that the presence of all the footage they're getting,
Speaker 3: it's like those are really not where the crime is
Speaker 3: in DC. And you're kind of like, hmmm, I wonder why.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's none of this is about fighting crime. All
Speaker 5: of this is about authoritarian show of force. Right, They're
Speaker 5: not going in neighborhoods where there's a lot of crime.
Speaker 5: They're putting up these stops on Fourteenth Street. My friend said,
Speaker 5: they have a checkpoint at the bottom of her street.
Speaker 5: You know, this is not about safety. This is all
Speaker 5: about intimidation, right, be in the nice neighborhood show fancy
Speaker 5: people that you have power over them. Have a guy
Speaker 5: who you can't see his face, stop your car.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is exactly that one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: It really is ridiculous because, like, we can't deny that
Speaker 3: there is areas of every single city that have crime
Speaker 3: because cities have poor populations, because that is how cities work,
Speaker 3: and poor populations do disproportionately commit crime. But yet walking
Speaker 3: the national ball where the crime map is invisible.
Speaker 2: Is not that Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 3: So this is a pretty interesting thing. Some of the
Speaker 3: people who can sense these type of things are saying
Speaker 3: that the doga seems a little nervous about all of
Speaker 3: Trump's tariff lawsuits and whether they're actually going to hold
Speaker 3: up and he's going to be able to keep doing
Speaker 3: these tariffs that are really going to doom his popularity,
Speaker 3: since my group chats are lighting up with people who
Speaker 3: are not happy about getting tariff bills in the mail
Speaker 3: these days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, this is such a crazy, crazy, stupid
Speaker 1: thing to do. There are people who are as powerful
Speaker 1: as Trump, like the Kochs, who are on this other
Speaker 1: side of this tariff thing, who have relationships with this
Speaker 1: incredibly corrupt Supreme Court, who desperately want to stop these tariffs,
Speaker 1: and who very well might be able to stop these tariffs.
Speaker 5: The administration knows they may be on the wrong side
Speaker 5: of things with the tariffs. Also, there were just these
Speaker 5: crazy numbers that were released that are super inflationary. The
Speaker 5: consumer sentiment number is terrible. That inflation number from yesterday
Speaker 5: I ticked up like three points. I mean, inflation is here.
Speaker 5: The tariffs are causing it. It's a straight line. And
Speaker 5: the other thing about inflation, which none of us totally
Speaker 5: know how to deal with this Once Trump says uncle,
Speaker 5: which eventually he will, I don't know how you get
Speaker 5: the prices back down.
Speaker 4: No, he probably don't.
Speaker 3: I've seen no one give a good answer to that.
Speaker 2: Andy Levy is the co host of As the World Churned.
Speaker 2: Andy Levy Wally jogfast. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: I don't know you were going to be here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what are the odds you and me?
Speaker 6: Yeah? I know, I thought I was just chatting for
Speaker 6: like twenty minutes, like monologuing.
Speaker 1: Listen to me, Andy Levy. Things are going great in
Speaker 1: the federal government. Oh yeah, just a cake walk. What
Speaker 1: is this thing that you're the most worried about?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 4: That is sort of the question, isn't it?
Speaker 6: But it's also almost impossible to answer it because it
Speaker 6: changes every day and sometimes multiple times a day.
Speaker 4: I mean, I guess right now it's.
Speaker 6: The government crackdowns, the federal takeover of DC and the
Speaker 6: threats of doing this to more cities. And you know,
Speaker 6: it's starting to look very much like like a playbook
Speaker 6: at this point, you know, like this is what they
Speaker 6: want to do. And you know, I was thinking, there's
Speaker 6: that's famous Obama phrase from I think when he was
Speaker 6: first running, when he said we're not blue states and
Speaker 6: red states.
Speaker 4: Where the United States?
Speaker 6: I think with this administration, they also they agree that
Speaker 6: we're not the blue states and the red states, and
Speaker 6: they're just in their mind we're just the red states
Speaker 6: and that's what they want. They want fifty red states,
Speaker 6: so they have absolutely no compunction. And you're seeing this
Speaker 6: from the you know, the conservative media sphere and whatever,
Speaker 6: who are sort of gleefully making lists of what city
Speaker 6: should be next, and surprise, surprise, it's San Francisco, it's
Speaker 6: New York, it's Los Angeles. You know, it's the big,
Speaker 6: it's the big, beautiful blue cities.
Speaker 4: So look, they really are.
Speaker 6: They're obviously doing the you know, throw as much shit
Speaker 6: against the wall as possible and see what sticks method.
Speaker 6: So it makes it hard to sort of identify which
Speaker 6: is the overall scariest.
Speaker 4: Thing they're doing or most dangerous thing they're doing.
Speaker 6: But this one right now seems like because it seems like,
Speaker 6: like I said, it seems a little bit like a
Speaker 6: playbook like that there's an end goal here of doing
Speaker 6: this in as many blue cities as they can get
Speaker 6: away with, and basically taking all the power away from
Speaker 6: those localities and from those Americans who live in those
Speaker 6: cities and who vote in those cities, and work in
Speaker 6: those cities, and in producer Jesse Cannon's case, drink in
Speaker 6: those cities.
Speaker 4: And they are trying.
Speaker 6: Desperately the places where they can't win at the ballot box.
Speaker 4: They're trying to win by other measures. Is I think
Speaker 4: what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So sato populism is this idea we just I just
Speaker 1: talked about it with Jason Stanley that part of the
Speaker 1: joy you find in populism is your syndistic desires to own.
Speaker 2: The libs, to make poor people suffer. Is that what
Speaker 2: we're working at right now?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 4: I mean, that's a really I had never heard that
Speaker 4: word before.
Speaker 6: I don't know if he coined it, but but it's
Speaker 6: it's a good word.
Speaker 4: And no, I think that's true.
Speaker 6: And you can look at you know, you look at
Speaker 6: the memes that are coming out of the White House
Speaker 6: and various governmental agencies, and they're all predicated on meanness.
Speaker 6: Seems it seems like an understatement. I mean, you look
Speaker 6: at it and you say to yourself, you know, well,
Speaker 6: that's just mean. But you realize as you're saying it
Speaker 6: that how much of an understatement that is. You know,
Speaker 6: this is not someone in the cafeteria making fun of
Speaker 6: your shirt. But you look at the mindset behind everything
Speaker 6: that they're doing, and you look at the white nationalist
Speaker 6: memes and the absolute glee at other people's misfortune, particularly
Speaker 6: if those people aren't white, or aren't straight, or aren't Christian,
Speaker 6: aren't male, and yeah, it's hard to come to any
Speaker 6: other conclusion.
Speaker 4: Then this is a big part of the game.
Speaker 6: And this is Look, this has always been a big
Speaker 6: part of fascism. I think we're way beyond the point
Speaker 6: of debating whether it's okay to call.
Speaker 4: What's going on fascist.
Speaker 6: It just very clearly is, and it very clearly is
Speaker 6: the mindset. And again you see it in the memes,
Speaker 6: you see it in the messaging that they are trying
Speaker 6: to put out, which is that you know, you are
Speaker 6: not welcome here if you are not like us, and
Speaker 6: you know, removing things from museums that ill PRESIDENTE doesn't
Speaker 6: like or doesn't comport with his view of America as
Speaker 6: this literally a perfect union and you can't come to
Speaker 6: any other conclusion. And it's been like this for a while.
Speaker 6: But there are always people who said, well, you know,
Speaker 6: I don't know if it's okay to use the F word,
Speaker 6: to say fascism. We are so far behind that, and
Speaker 6: I cannot imagine in August of the year of Our
Speaker 6: Lord twenty twenty five looking around and thinking, well, I'm
Speaker 6: still not sold that this is fascist.
Speaker 4: It's pure, uncut fascist.
Speaker 2: So what do you think.
Speaker 1: About like the smart people who are on the right
Speaker 1: who are going along with this, because you know a
Speaker 1: lot of those people, Like do you think that they
Speaker 1: are like, yes, it's fascism, or do you think that
Speaker 1: they're just having fun.
Speaker 6: I think it's a case by case basis. And you know,
Speaker 6: this is similar to a sort of thing. I don't
Speaker 6: do it so much anymore because ultimately it doesn't matter.
Speaker 6: But you know, I used to play this game. I
Speaker 6: used to play it with other people that I was
Speaker 6: friendly with, who knew the personnel, and try to figure
Speaker 6: out who what Fox News really believed what they were saying,
Speaker 6: and who just wanted the paycheck and the adoration and
Speaker 6: you know, the fame. And I think you really do
Speaker 6: have to take it on a case by case basis
Speaker 6: because I think there are the true believers on the right,
Speaker 6: smart or otherwise, who have absolutely no problems with fascism,
Speaker 6: and maybe they never did, or maybe they have.
Speaker 4: Just come around to it.
Speaker 6: And then you have the ones who you know, maybe
Speaker 6: deep in their heart they're not fascist and they don't
Speaker 6: necessarily love everything that's going on, but they're going along
Speaker 6: with it and promoting it to advance their own careers.
Speaker 6: It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, and it never mattered.
Speaker 6: You are what you're doing in a case like this,
Speaker 6: and whether you're promoting this shit because you believe it
Speaker 6: in your soul or because you somehow think it's good
Speaker 6: for your career, it ultimately doesn't matter. And I'm never
Speaker 6: sure what the answer to this is. Are the true
Speaker 6: fascists worse than the ones who are costplaying fascism just.
Speaker 4: To get ahead? Like, because you can sit there and say, well,
Speaker 4: the true fascists.
Speaker 6: At least they honestly believe this, whereas the other ones
Speaker 6: it's like, really, you'll go along with this because it
Speaker 6: gets you some money and keeps your face on TV.
Speaker 6: But then the flip side of that is, obviously you
Speaker 6: know the true fascist what they believe, Like, it doesn't
Speaker 6: matter that they're sincere in their beliefs. Their beliefs are abhorring,
Speaker 6: Their beliefs are awful, their beliefs are straight up evil.
Speaker 6: So I don't know the answer the overall answer your question, Molly,
Speaker 6: other than to say I do think it's a case
Speaker 6: by case basis. I don't think you can paint a
Speaker 6: broad brush and say, oh, they're all doing this because X.
Speaker 6: I think there's really two different groups and you have
Speaker 6: to name and then you can say, oh, that person
Speaker 6: is a true believer or oh that person is absolutely cost.
Speaker 4: Playing and they don't really believe this shit?
Speaker 2: How do you sell it to yourself?
Speaker 4: Then I don't know. I will never understand that.
Speaker 6: I don't understand the you know, I've been saying this
Speaker 6: a lot lately, like beyond, I don't know how a
Speaker 6: lot of these people sleep at night, Like how do
Speaker 6: you look in the mirror? And I always think when
Speaker 6: you were a kid, it's just what you dreamed of
Speaker 6: growing When I grow up, I want to be someone
Speaker 6: who lies on TV for money. Maybe there are people
Speaker 6: who are so you know, sociopathic that the answer is yes.
Speaker 4: But for a lot of these people, I don't think
Speaker 4: the answer was yes.
Speaker 6: I don't think it was a lifelong dream to get
Speaker 6: on the TV or to get on the internet, and
Speaker 6: why for a living? And I don't know how you
Speaker 6: live with yourself doing that. I couldn't do it. And
Speaker 6: I don't think that makes me a great person. I
Speaker 6: think that makes me a person, you know, So I
Speaker 6: don't understand this and and this sort of piggyback to
Speaker 6: a thought I've been having lately with regard to like
Speaker 6: cable news in any place that has a lot of
Speaker 6: these people on as guests, whether they're maga politicians or
Speaker 6: maga commentators, you know, these people are lying to you,
Speaker 6: and you can say while you're lying, but I don't
Speaker 6: understand how you interview these people and you don't sit
Speaker 6: there and say to them.
Speaker 4: Well, you don't believe that, because that's what it comes
Speaker 4: out to.
Speaker 6: You hear these people saying things, and they'll say something
Speaker 6: about how, you know, I'm afraid to walk down the
Speaker 6: streets of New York in broad daylight.
Speaker 4: These interviewers, instead of letting that go, they need to say, no,
Speaker 4: you're not.
Speaker 6: You don't believe that, Like, they need to be called
Speaker 6: out on this shit, because they are straight up lying
Speaker 6: or making shit up. And we're pretending to have these
Speaker 6: serious discussions about you know, is New York safe to
Speaker 6: walk down the street in the middle of the day.
Speaker 4: Maybe on the left will tell you it is, but here,
Speaker 4: our guest today will tell you it's not. And it's like, no,
Speaker 4: fuck off.
Speaker 6: Start calling these people out for their bullshit and start
Speaker 6: calling them out for the fact that it's not just
Speaker 6: that they're wrong, it's that they don't believe what they
Speaker 6: themselves are saying, and call them on it and say
Speaker 6: you don't believe.
Speaker 2: That right and you thing happens.
Speaker 6: Then I don't know. I don't know if maybe they
Speaker 6: stop coming on or what, but I think it needs
Speaker 6: to be done. We have to stop in the media
Speaker 6: bears so much responsibility for this, for normalizing all this
Speaker 6: shit and for taking it seriously, and for pretending to
Speaker 6: have debates about stuff that should not be debated because
Speaker 6: it's not debatable and one side is just making stuff up.
Speaker 4: And this goes for everything.
Speaker 6: This goes for whether it's vaccines or you know, DEI
Speaker 6: or whatever. Stop letting the right make shit up and
Speaker 6: stop people on the left. Stop having these quote unquote
Speaker 6: intellectual conversations with people who are making things up. Stop
Speaker 6: presenting the other side, because it's not the other side,
Speaker 6: it's the truth. And you don't need to sit there
Speaker 6: with someone who tells you that vaccines are killing people,
Speaker 6: because all you're doing by having that debate is elevating
Speaker 6: it to both sides have equal standing thing, and instead
Speaker 6: of that, you need to start telling people. You don't
Speaker 6: believe that. You are saying that to get on TV.
Speaker 6: You are saying that to advance your career, You are
Speaker 6: saying that to please Donald Trump. But you know that's
Speaker 6: not true. You don't believe that, And see what happens.
Speaker 6: There's a reason I'm not a cable news host because
Speaker 6: that show would follow me be off the air at
Speaker 6: five minutes. Yeah, So let me ask you.
Speaker 1: You have this sort of unforgivable stuff going on, right
Speaker 1: You have people being run around by I say, gents,
Speaker 1: you have checkpoints, I mean, just shocking stuff. Do you
Speaker 1: think that it feels like the only way that any
Speaker 1: of this stops is if people like people are clearly
Speaker 1: not happy.
Speaker 2: The polling is terrible on this. But I don't know
Speaker 2: what that leads to.
Speaker 4: I don't know what it leads to either.
Speaker 6: I mean, I don't know if it means more beautiful
Speaker 6: sandwiches being wasted, you know, in the sense that you're
Speaker 6: not being eaten, but because they've become a symbol of resistance,
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know the answer.
Speaker 6: And I don't know how far they can push before
Speaker 6: the pushback becomes more than it is. And I do
Speaker 6: know that if and when this is all over, I
Speaker 6: don't want to see any truth and reconciliation bullshit, and
Speaker 6: I don't want to see any you know. Well, we
Speaker 6: need to move forward, and we need to forget that
Speaker 6: all this stuff just happened. I know, I want people
Speaker 6: in prison. I'd be happy if we brought back exile
Speaker 6: and just sent them all to an island with no
Speaker 6: gear and no food and they can fight for their
Speaker 6: own survival because they think they're the alphas. Let them
Speaker 6: go prove it somewhere outside of America. But I don't
Speaker 6: want to hear shit. And I think Joe Biden, you know,
Speaker 6: really screwed this up. And I don't think his intentions
Speaker 6: were bad, not just Joe Biden, the Democratic establishment in general,
Speaker 6: sort of giving a pass to a lot of the
Speaker 6: January sixth stuff and just letting this stuff fester and
Speaker 6: trying to pretend that we could just move past what happened.
Speaker 6: And a lot of that is how we got where
Speaker 6: we are now, and that shouldn't be forgotten, and nothing
Speaker 6: they're doing.
Speaker 4: Now should be forgotten.
Speaker 6: The elimination of due process, the unlawful taking over of cities,
Speaker 6: kidnapping people on the streets, and sending them to foreign countries.
Speaker 4: Who should not have that being done to them. I
Speaker 4: don't know.
Speaker 6: It goes on and on, the removal of stuff from museums.
Speaker 6: Every single one of these things should not be forgotten
Speaker 6: and should not be glossed over again. If and when
Speaker 6: we get through this, there has to be a reckoning.
Speaker 6: There doesn't have to be reconciliation, and there should not
Speaker 6: be reconciliation.
Speaker 1: Andy Levy, I think you're right, But I also I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that Democrats have the stomach for that, if
Speaker 1: it even happens.
Speaker 2: So who is the big villain here? If on the
Speaker 2: Democratic side, Merrick.
Speaker 6: Garland, god, I guess to quote top Gun, the list
Speaker 6: is long but distinguished. I can make you a list
Speaker 6: of people who definitely didn't help, and Merk Garland would
Speaker 6: be high on that list. Think Joe Biden helped, But
Speaker 6: I say that with a lot of caveats. I think
Speaker 6: on this particular front, Joe Biden didn't help. Joe Biden's
Speaker 6: sort of twentieth century for lack of a better way
Speaker 6: to call it, twentieth century political mind reach across the aisle.
Speaker 4: It's just very.
Speaker 6: Clear to everyone who is not a Democratic politician or
Speaker 6: consultant that that shit is over look. Democratic leadership has
Speaker 6: been god awful, the Democratic consultant class. I was going
Speaker 6: to say something that I probably shouldn't say. Yeah, not great.
Speaker 6: I don't need to hear from James Carville ever again.
Speaker 6: I don't need to hear from Bill Clinton ever again. Honestly,
Speaker 6: I don't need to hear from Hillary Clinton like the Clinton's.
Speaker 6: You know, go enjoy your life. I'm not saying I
Speaker 6: wish Hillary Clinton ill. I'm just saying, go enjoy your life.
Speaker 6: James Carvill, go enjoy your life like go go, go
Speaker 6: sit on a porch and sip whiskey. God bless, but
Speaker 6: stop writing eds with horrible, horrible advice.
Speaker 4: I'm using him. It's not just him.
Speaker 6: I'm using him as sort of an avatar of the
Speaker 6: Democratic political class.
Speaker 4: And they are not up for this.
Speaker 6: And they don't understand the world in which we live
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty five. They understand the world in which
Speaker 6: we lived in nineteen ninety five. But that world is dead,
Speaker 6: and I'm not saying it won't ever come back. There
Speaker 6: may be a time again in America's future where we
Speaker 6: all can just get along, but right now is not
Speaker 6: that time, and that is not what we need from
Speaker 6: our democratic minority leaders in the House and Senate. It's
Speaker 6: not what we need from democratic governors, and it's not
Speaker 6: what we need from democratic consultants.
Speaker 2: Andy Levy, I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 6: I will come back, Molly, maybe to talk about something
Speaker 6: more fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Jason Stanley is a professor at the Monks School of
Speaker 1: Global Affairs and Public Policy, as well as the author
Speaker 1: of Racing History, How Fascist We write the Past to
Speaker 1: control the future. Welcome to Fast Politics, Jason Stanley.
Speaker 2: I'm Mollie. I know you feel bad for me, all right,
Speaker 2: full disclosure.
Speaker 1: I am in Los Angeles going to do Bill Maher,
Speaker 1: likely going to ruin my life by being yelled at
Speaker 1: by all of whatever. We're putting the fun in fascism here.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about we got streets filled with people from
Speaker 1: enforcement agencies, some of which are ICE, some of which
Speaker 1: are whatever.
Speaker 2: They're unmarked.
Speaker 1: I mean, talk me through what the sort of its
Speaker 1: Oraitorian healthscape we're looking.
Speaker 2: At here is.
Speaker 7: I'm in DC now not to meet with any politicians,
Speaker 7: but to go to my nephew's bar mitzpah. You know
Speaker 7: it reminds me a little bit about what they said
Speaker 7: about the military parades. It's kind of joky, but it
Speaker 7: is a show of power. It's showing that Trump is
Speaker 7: repeatedly showing that he can do whatever he wants, and
Speaker 7: that's the he can impose martial law.
Speaker 4: He can do whatever he wants. It's all haphazard here.
Speaker 7: I'm not sure there's really any organization in DC, but
Speaker 7: as we've seen from Los Angeles, they can crack down
Speaker 7: hard when they want to. And I think the thing
Speaker 7: that I'm thinking about most right now is Ice. It
Speaker 7: is the new Ice recruitment because historically speaking, it looks
Speaker 7: a lot like the storm up time in the Essay
Speaker 7: when the Nazis were like, hey, street goat goons, We're
Speaker 7: going to pay you and give you uniforms to do
Speaker 7: what you're doing anyway. So it looks historically that sort
Speaker 7: of recruitment of Trump's own personal security force looks very
Speaker 7: bad when you put it in that historical context.
Speaker 1: And the Homeland secure stuff, like the art that the
Speaker 1: Homeland Security people are posting. Talk to me about these
Speaker 1: homeland security posts.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 7: So, there was an interesting article today in Mother Jones.
Speaker 7: I was interviewed for it. About exactly the Homeland security posts.
Speaker 7: The author pointed out that the daily stormer of the
Speaker 7: far right neo nazi rag Online Rags said in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 7: make sure people don't know whether or.
Speaker 4: Not you're kidding.
Speaker 7: So we're seeing a lot of that happening, like, oh,
Speaker 7: we're just kidding, but in fact we're really not kidding.
Speaker 7: But the idea is to have fun with horror. Timothy
Speaker 7: Snyder has this concept sato populism, like taking pleasure and
Speaker 7: the pain of others, and that's what this regime is selling.
Speaker 7: They're selling sato populism. They're selling owning the Libs and
Speaker 7: with cruelty towards people that the lib roles supposedly are
Speaker 7: empathetic with. So you're supposed to get joy that they're
Speaker 7: really bashing heads, splitting apart families, sending people, destroying thousands
Speaker 7: of people's lives by erecting concentration camps, and it's all
Speaker 7: a funny joke. And the real joke is watching the liberals,
Speaker 7: who care about these people becomes so outraged and scream
Speaker 7: and complain.
Speaker 4: That's the fuel. Owning the Libs is the fuel of
Speaker 4: the global fascist search right.
Speaker 1: But in Germany, there was this record high unemployment. So
Speaker 1: Hitler came to power on all of these people who
Speaker 1: had fought in the First World War now being homeless,
Speaker 1: having nothing to do, having no purpose, seeing your government
Speaker 1: fail them.
Speaker 2: That's not exactly the same scenario here, is it.
Speaker 7: No, So that was long an objection to the use
Speaker 7: of the term fascism, that the material conditions of fascism
Speaker 7: weren't not that we weren't facing some sort of dramatic
Speaker 7: we weren't emerging out of the ashes of the financial
Speaker 7: crisis with huge unemployment, we weren't emerging from World War
Speaker 7: War one situation, so therefore it couldn't be fascism, you know.
Speaker 7: I think what we can say is that the material
Speaker 7: conditions for this kind of politics, you know, can can
Speaker 7: come out of resentment, you know. We we can speculate
Speaker 7: on why this politics is exactly as successful as it
Speaker 7: was in the early thirties German.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, but that's not what I mean. I'm not
Speaker 2: making a case against not calling fascism. What I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Is right, I know, but you have these people, like
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why Hitler was successful was because
Speaker 1: you had all these people who had nothing to do, right,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like you had record low unemployment. It was
Speaker 1: like you had So it's more of just a pragmatic question,
Speaker 1: not an ideological question.
Speaker 7: Yeah, no, I took it as such. I mean, the
Speaker 7: ice bonuses are crazy. Fifty thousand dollars signing bonus, sixty
Speaker 7: thousand dollars off your student loans, which is a little ironic.
Speaker 7: Yeah right, It's it's like these are We're talking life
Speaker 7: changing amounts of money for many people. I mean, fifty
Speaker 7: thousand dollars signing bonus would be a life changing amount
Speaker 7: of money for me, and I'm well off. So you know,
Speaker 7: we're going to see and God knows what their salaries
Speaker 7: are going to be. So these are essentially bribes. I
Speaker 7: mean we see this with a Russian army, right as
Speaker 7: well that the Russian Army. Now they're paying people enormous
Speaker 7: amounts of money to join.
Speaker 4: So I think even in you know, this is a.
Speaker 7: Creating a violent governmental force ungoverned by laws, that is
Speaker 7: highly that is highly compensated, and so I'm not sure
Speaker 7: you need you know, I mean, we have record low unemployment,
Speaker 7: but we also have extreme wealth and equality, and you know,
Speaker 7: fifty thousand dollars signing bonus is a lot for a
Speaker 7: lot of people.
Speaker 1: Yes, but if you get that, you still need to
Speaker 1: be able to have people be willing to do the
Speaker 1: things that they're unwilling to do.
Speaker 7: Usually how does that work exactly? So this is interesting.
Speaker 7: It's a piece I'm writing now. The moral injury involved
Speaker 7: in being an ice agent will be something you will
Speaker 7: have to live with for the rest of your life.
Speaker 7: We know that those sort of actions that they're encouraging
Speaker 7: people that you would have to do as an ice agent,
Speaker 7: you know, arresting a parent in an immigration court as
Speaker 7: their kids or partners screams and cries while you drag
Speaker 7: them away to be sent to a concentration camp and
Speaker 7: then to the Sudan or something, you know, where their
Speaker 7: life is over. These are things that will affect people
Speaker 7: for the rest of their lives. So you need some
Speaker 7: kind of governing ideology. You need payments, but then you
Speaker 7: also need a going ideology. And here we can also
Speaker 7: look to history like Himmler's posing speeches. So I'm writing
Speaker 7: a piece on this now where he's speaking to the
Speaker 7: ass and saying, you know that, you know it's terrible
Speaker 7: the job you do and you are the best of humans,
Speaker 7: so you feel terribly when you do this job. However,
Speaker 7: since you are uba mentioned you're superhumans, you know that
Speaker 7: it's necessary. You can overcome the first order feeling of
Speaker 7: pain at killing people and brutalizing them because you know
Speaker 7: that it's for this higher purpose preventing the poisoning of
Speaker 7: the blood of our people.
Speaker 4: So that's going to be what they need to do.
Speaker 4: They need to instill.
Speaker 7: This idea that this is for a greater purpose, and
Speaker 7: you understand this greater purpose and that makes you smarter
Speaker 7: and better. Now Here, we're really bumping into dark places
Speaker 7: and human and human psyche that we've tried to figure
Speaker 7: out for many, many decades, how people can do atrocities,
Speaker 7: how people can revel in these atrocities. I don't think
Speaker 7: we solve these problems, but I think we know that
Speaker 7: people that the ice agents that will be hired, that
Speaker 7: come in, the ice agents that now serve you know,
Speaker 7: they're going to undergrow tremendous moral injury like soldiers do.
Speaker 7: They also will have to know that their grandkids will
Speaker 7: not be proud of them, will be ashamed of them.
Speaker 7: And so Granddaddy interned Japanese people in tournment caps. You know,
Speaker 7: that's not something that you find grandkids bragging about. Now,
Speaker 7: So you'll have the moral injury. They'll need to treat
Speaker 7: the moral injury with humor, with you know, the kind
Speaker 7: of over cruelty. And then the question is how much
Speaker 7: will Americans go for that? How much will Americans go
Speaker 7: for this combination of you know, the ideology high mind,
Speaker 7: we have to save America from the poisoning of its
Speaker 7: blood by immigrants on the one side, and the other
Speaker 7: this kind of laughing cruelty that it's like, you know,
Speaker 7: get into it.
Speaker 2: It's fun, it's torture and cruelty. I see it as
Speaker 2: a moral.
Speaker 7: And an ethical and psychological disaster coming because I've lived
Speaker 7: in countries like Germany for years, so I know it's
Speaker 7: very difficult.
Speaker 4: You know, it does wear on you for life.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be overly optimistic here, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like you have quite the right combination of
Speaker 1: factors to go full not to We.
Speaker 7: Have to remember the final solution doesn't start till nineteen
Speaker 7: forty one, when they're like, okay, we can't send to
Speaker 7: choose away.
Speaker 4: We need to get rid of them completely.
Speaker 7: What we're having now is we're having concentration coumts, zones
Speaker 7: of lawlessness where people don't really have access through lawyers.
Speaker 4: There's no real rule of law. Inside Alligator Alcatraz.
Speaker 7: We have congress people getting arrested for trying to look
Speaker 7: into these zones of lawlessness. So we're at the beginning here.
Speaker 7: And I think, as we can see also from our
Speaker 7: prison system, which is notoriously brutal, that things get bad
Speaker 7: really quickly when people aren't looking and when people can't walk.
Speaker 7: They're exhibiting this incredible power over the law. We can
Speaker 7: stup you into unmarked bounds, we can put you in
Speaker 7: places where you don't have accessed the lawyers, you don't
Speaker 7: have accessed the courts, journalists can't see you. We're going
Speaker 7: to brag about how bad these conditions are. So yeah,
Speaker 7: that is far far from auschite, but it's pretty bad.
Speaker 7: I don't know if we should be saying to ourselves, well,
Speaker 7: we're not doing gas chambers, so hold on, So it's
Speaker 7: not that bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, no, I mean that's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I'm just sort of trying to game out how it
Speaker 1: goes and what it looks like and that I think
Speaker 1: is a real question.
Speaker 2: So what would you say would be the way to
Speaker 2: push back on all of this?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, you know, the model is always the
Speaker 7: civil rights movement fight against jen Crow right to try
Speaker 7: to spur empathy. Empathy is being attacked and ridiculed, right,
Speaker 7: that's like what these means and what these it's meant
Speaker 7: to show? It's weak and like you're a liberal if
Speaker 7: you care about this, and isn't it more fun to
Speaker 7: torture people and.
Speaker 2: Laugh about it?
Speaker 7: And you know, So the question is can we draw
Speaker 7: on those resources that Martin Luther King drew on in
Speaker 7: the Civil rights movement when people were brutalized in front
Speaker 7: of cameras and Americans, white Americans were horrified? So can
Speaker 7: we do that with this xenophobic push Can we get
Speaker 7: Americans who were are not from an immigration background to
Speaker 7: be horrified at what is happening and what's going to
Speaker 7: be happening even more to our immigrant neighbors. So I
Speaker 7: also think you're going to get a lot of pushback
Speaker 7: from immigrants because a lot of these people are very tough,
Speaker 7: you know, I mean my parents were immigrants.
Speaker 2: They were tough, but you know.
Speaker 7: These people have done a lot to come to the
Speaker 7: United States and being deported back to who knows where
Speaker 7: with no resources and no, I mean, that's like the
Speaker 7: end of their lives. So I expect there's going to
Speaker 7: be organized resistance from immigrants and their allies, and then
Speaker 7: we have to see how Americans will react to what
Speaker 7: might become pitched battles on our streets. MM.
Speaker 1: That doesn't sound good. I want you to say more
Speaker 1: about this empathy idea.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So the civil rights movement explicitly, King explicitly looked
Speaker 8: for a tough shareff who would crack the heads of
Speaker 8: nonviolent protesters, so to get that on camel so that
Speaker 8: people would be horrified.
Speaker 7: That was a strategy you didn't have at the time,
Speaker 7: Jim Crow sheriffs broadcasting the horrors that they were doing.
Speaker 7: Of course, there had been public lynchings and things like this,
Speaker 7: which is a little bit in the direction of you know,
Speaker 7: the public cruelty aspect is where we're where we are
Speaker 7: at right now. But the empathy was a call to
Speaker 7: our better natures, to saying, you know, we Americans are
Speaker 7: not about this cracking the heads of people trying to
Speaker 7: devote So you know what this admit this regime is
Speaker 7: doing is it's trying to say we Americans are about
Speaker 7: tearing kids away from their families. We Americans are We're
Speaker 7: about blood and soil. We're about as JD. Vance said,
Speaker 7: We're about the people who are buried in our graveyards
Speaker 7: one hundred years ago, not about.
Speaker 2: An idea or an ideal.
Speaker 7: So the empathy would be reaching to America as a
Speaker 7: set of ideals. What a state is is it's not
Speaker 7: just a collection of people. It's not just a collection
Speaker 7: of families who are related. It's an ideal, it's something.
Speaker 7: It's a vision of a common good that binds people together.
Speaker 7: And what we need is a movement that speaks to
Speaker 7: that vision of America, that speaks to that vision of
Speaker 7: a common good and refuses to reduce us to a
Speaker 7: bunch of people who are related by blood and soil
Speaker 7: to those who came before us.
Speaker 4: We need that.
Speaker 7: What we're starting to see this regime do is give
Speaker 7: us a blood and soil vision, give us a Nazi vision.
Speaker 2: Of who we are.
Speaker 7: We're not a democracy, we're not a tolerant nation. We're
Speaker 7: not a nation of immigrants. We're not a beacon of freedom.
Speaker 7: We are fundamentally decendenced by blood of people who lived
Speaker 7: on this soil for generations, and that's the vision we
Speaker 7: have to fight against.
Speaker 2: So it sounds like a sort of Obama is the
Speaker 2: answer to this.
Speaker 7: Right, someone charismatic. I mean, you know, another central value
Speaker 7: is equality. I mean, I think you're right. We need
Speaker 7: someone who can speak against these horrors or change the topic,
Speaker 7: switch the topic to justice, to equality to material things.
Speaker 7: Often democracies are healthiest when someone can say, Okay, let's
Speaker 7: stop talking about integration, let's stop talking about trans people,
Speaker 7: let's talk about the rents, let's talk about affordability, you know,
Speaker 7: and then that changes the topic from cruelty. We need
Speaker 7: to change the topic from cruelty. We need to change
Speaker 7: the topic from this blood and soil vision of who
Speaker 7: we are.
Speaker 4: And there are various ways to change that topic.
Speaker 7: One way, as you say, is a charismatic call to
Speaker 7: a nation where people come to be free, rather than
Speaker 7: come to have their speech rights taken away from them,
Speaker 7: as we're seeing now, where if you come to America,
Speaker 7: you're not a citizen.
Speaker 4: You can't speak at all.
Speaker 7: So we need that, or we need a change of
Speaker 7: subjects where people are like why are you vilifying immigrants?
Speaker 2: I need cheap groceries, Jason Stanley. I hope you'll come
Speaker 2: back always, Mollie, thank you for the work you do.
Speaker 1: Oh moment perfectly Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 3: So, Molly. As we know, courts aren't going to save us.
Speaker 3: Federal Appeals Court has allowed the CFPB dismantling to proceed.
Speaker 3: You know, I love when Trump pretends he's for the
Speaker 3: American people and the little guy and says, you know,
Speaker 3: a consumer protection board that keeps people from being predatory
Speaker 3: towards you, that's me protecting you.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Trump ran on populism, right. He said he was going
Speaker 1: to make things less expensive. Now here we are, and
Speaker 1: every moment that Trump said the opportunity to do something
Speaker 1: like that, to make things less expensive, to protect the
Speaker 1: little guy, to work on inflation, every moment he's done
Speaker 1: just the opposite.
Speaker 2: It is exactly how we thought it would go.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: It doesn't care about the little guy. He just was lying.
Speaker 3: Yep. So when you see these bank fees and your
Speaker 3: credit card fees and interest rates go up, we can
Speaker 3: put a nice little I did that sticker of Trump
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 2: That's right, Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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