Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to ok F Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, recording from the Home Bunker. Folks,
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but things are becoming increasingly
Speaker 1: trying to discuss as Republicans are waging an all out
Speaker 1: war on democracy from Alabama to Tennessee to Florida to
Speaker 1: Texas to Wisconsin. They literally are doing what Steve Bannon
Speaker 1: had said right village by village, city by city, state
Speaker 1: by state, plucking people's rights and votes from them. And
Speaker 1: I get into a conversation today with our friend Jonathan
Speaker 1: Metzel about democratic messaging and what we are getting wrong
Speaker 1: because you know, this is where Jonathan and I disagree,
Speaker 1: which is that I am not for the handholding. I
Speaker 1: am not for the what ails you when it comes
Speaker 1: to Republicans, I don't give a fuck, right Like, I
Speaker 1: really just don't. I have zero, zero fucks to give.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, I am trying to understand
Speaker 1: what is it going to take to get people in
Speaker 1: this country activated? And when I say activated, I mean
Speaker 1: in the fucking streets. What is it going to take?
Speaker 1: Because if it isn't, what is happening in Alibi with
Speaker 1: denying women and people with uteruses the ability to travel
Speaker 1: freely out of state if it isn't what is happening
Speaker 1: in Texas, which is making it illegal to transport pregnant
Speaker 1: people on highways, which, by the way, just so you
Speaker 1: know that for those seeking an abortion around twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four weeks, you're not fucking showing. So what are these
Speaker 1: state troopers doing? Just pulling over women, you know, and
Speaker 1: people they perceive to be women, Like I don't you know,
Speaker 1: Like how long is it going to be until it
Speaker 1: is mandatory for people with uteruses in these states to
Speaker 1: have to enter in their menstrual cycle into a government database.
Speaker 1: And you all be like, oh my god, that'll never
Speaker 1: wake the fuck up, That will never happen. Days are
Speaker 1: well behind us. In the rear view fucking mirror. We
Speaker 1: can't even see that shit of what couldn't possibly happen anymore,
Speaker 1: because everything that we thought could not happen is happening,
Speaker 1: and it's happening at a pace that I find difficult
Speaker 1: to cover on a regular basis. So in today's conversation
Speaker 1: with our in house doctor, we talk about democratic messaging,
Speaker 1: what is going to break through, if anything, and Jonathan
Speaker 1: and I come from two different sides of the argument
Speaker 1: that want the same thing, democracy to not only hold on,
Speaker 1: but to expand. And I just think that nowadays the
Speaker 1: expansion is a pipe dream and if we're gonna be
Speaker 1: able to hold it, it may just be in blue
Speaker 1: states for right now. So I you know, folks, I'm
Speaker 1: not terribly optimist stick on today's show, but it's an
Speaker 1: important conversation that we need to have coming up next,
Speaker 1: my convo with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel. Folks,
Speaker 1: you know that whenever we have the opportunity to speak
Speaker 1: with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzl, I am
Speaker 1: always thrilled each and every week. And Jonathan, I want
Speaker 1: to start off with recent pushes by Elon Musk to
Speaker 1: just try and decimate the Anti Defamation League right and
Speaker 1: saying that the Anti Defamation League, which works to disrupt
Speaker 1: anti Semitism in various places including on social media, that
Speaker 1: by calling out anti Semitism, that they are somehow anti
Speaker 1: Semits and had an entire hashtag hashtown hashtag ban ADL
Speaker 1: trending worldwide because he pushed it out and then has
Speaker 1: recently also tweeted because I'm not gonna call it fucking
Speaker 1: X has also tweeted that woke is anti human And
Speaker 1: I just want to get your reactions to this unchecked
Speaker 1: multi billionaire who has claimed the public square, has destroyed
Speaker 1: it and still received sponsorship dollars not only from private
Speaker 1: companies but also subsidies from the US government. So I
Speaker 1: just want to get your initial reactions with his anti
Speaker 1: semit anti Semitic push.
Speaker 2: It's so acceptable to other people right now. I mean,
Speaker 2: think of all the things that you just I don't know.
Speaker 2: A lot of us grew up right in the post
Speaker 2: World War two era of like Man, we saw the
Speaker 2: worst of humanity, and in the aftermath we read Man's
Speaker 2: Search for Meeting, and we crafted the United Nations and
Speaker 2: we had nuclear proliferation treaties. Like we grew up in
Speaker 2: a certain world order in which doing what's happening now
Speaker 2: was really unacceptable, which was just picking a stigmatized group,
Speaker 2: playing off of the stereotypes of that group, and then
Speaker 2: mobilizing white Christian, conservative nationalist anger. But really it's global
Speaker 2: right against that group. And when that happens, the groups
Speaker 2: that are targeted are so predictable. It's the you know,
Speaker 2: first they came for and then just fill in the blank, right,
Speaker 2: you know, queer people, transgender, people with disabilities, people of
Speaker 2: religious minority, ethnic minority. So in a way, it's just
Speaker 2: that we haven't seen this book in real time. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's always been kind of simmering there. But when you
Speaker 2: see it, it's weird because it's so predictable, like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, yeah, you're just doing that thing. But then
Speaker 2: you also see the power of it because the I
Speaker 2: mean Elon Musk, like, he's not Trump, right, he's not charismatic,
Speaker 2: he's not engaging. He's a loser, a with a social
Speaker 2: media platform. And the problem here, right, is that he's
Speaker 2: basically doing these tropes over the social media platform. But
Speaker 2: the problem is he's a guy with an awful lot
Speaker 2: of power in retrospect. Remember how much we were all
Speaker 2: pushing for him to buy the platform when he was
Speaker 2: trying to welch out of it and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: We should have been putting money together for us to
Speaker 2: buy the platform. So now he's kind of buying his popularity.
Speaker 2: But he's also the guy who owns starlink and dictates
Speaker 2: Russian troop positions and Ukrainian advances and things like that.
Speaker 2: And so it's just one person with an awful lot
Speaker 2: of power who's saying this stuff that filters down, And
Speaker 2: I don't know, it just feels like so on one hand, terrifying.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, like it's kind of like reading
Speaker 2: the book Fascism for Dummies, like really, like you know, right,
Speaker 2: Like it's just it's so obvious and so gratuitous and
Speaker 2: just so completely unimaginative in a certain kind of way.
Speaker 2: But I guess that's that's kind of how this stuff works.
Speaker 2: It's not like it's not like the most brilliant people
Speaker 2: are the ones who are creating the master narrative here, right,
Speaker 2: And so I don't know. I mean, my dad's a
Speaker 2: Holocaust survivor, and we grew up thinking like Nazis were
Speaker 2: they killed all over our relatives, but they were also
Speaker 2: like very predictable and like you know, what happened over
Speaker 2: there and all that kind of stuff, So just as
Speaker 2: seeing it happen, it just feels like watching a slow
Speaker 2: motion car wreck. And I guess the other part is,
Speaker 2: do you remember that when I gave my book Talk
Speaker 2: for Dying of Whiteness and the Nazis came, it was
Speaker 2: like twenty nineteen or something, and the ADL was really
Speaker 2: really helpful, right, I was getting a lot of targeted
Speaker 2: stuff and the ADL, Like, I don't know, that's the
Speaker 2: only time I've ever engaged with them, but I can
Speaker 2: just say on a personal level, like, if you're getting
Speaker 2: oppressed by hate groups, the ADL is the most useful thing.
Speaker 2: And it's not just anti Semitism, right, they are really
Speaker 2: at the front of the line for anti racist violence,
Speaker 2: anti trans violence, all these kind of things. So they
Speaker 2: basically help people who are being oppressed by the very
Speaker 2: thing that Twitter right now is promoting its whole business model.
Speaker 2: And so again it just seems like so obvious, like
Speaker 2: they're going after the watcher, the watchmen of the very
Speaker 2: thing that's being propagated by this hate thing. And the
Speaker 2: last thing I'll say, and I realized there's like nine
Speaker 2: million things to jump off of, is it's weird and
Speaker 2: scary and tragic and pathetic now. But I guess my
Speaker 2: main concern is, like, how is this leading up to
Speaker 2: the twenty four election And what's the implication going to
Speaker 2: be of all this kind of thing. I don't know,
Speaker 2: have you found this, Like my follower count has dropped
Speaker 2: pretty dramatically even in the past week you are quitting Twitter.
Speaker 1: It did at the beginning of threads, right like when
Speaker 1: there was like a mass exodus, all within one week.
Speaker 1: But then it's slowly climbed back up. But I don't
Speaker 1: you know, And again I because of Twitter having no
Speaker 1: real regulations, no real anything, I don't know if it
Speaker 1: went back up because of Box. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's real people. I absolutely have no idea. I want
Speaker 1: to go back to what you mentioned with regard to
Speaker 1: fascism for dummies and the fact that Elon is not
Speaker 1: as charismatic as Donald Trump, and I think I don't
Speaker 1: know if that matters Jonathan, that he's not as charismatic
Speaker 1: or that we know that he is a loser and
Speaker 1: he's insecure, because I kind of want to unpack the
Speaker 1: psychology with these people that is very similar. Right, So
Speaker 1: you have somehow these folks that are trying to whether
Speaker 1: it's Donald Trump or it's Elon Musk that there talk
Speaker 1: to me about the white toxic masculinity and like and
Speaker 1: also its connection to fragility, right, and what and what
Speaker 1: these people exhibit is very much textbook in terms of
Speaker 1: how authoritarians and strong men work.
Speaker 2: I mean for me, I'll tell you the first question
Speaker 2: of the pulps in my mind is like, what's the
Speaker 2: value of diagnosing it right? Does diagnosing it help us
Speaker 2: combat it? Does it help us fight back? Does it
Speaker 2: help us unify? You know? I used to when I
Speaker 2: wrote Dying of Whiteness, you know, I had this idea
Speaker 2: that the reason there was so much racial resentment. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's all these predictable you know, white men were facing
Speaker 2: competition in the labor market, and we talked about that
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks ago, and white men were feeling
Speaker 2: displaced because the census was showing that whites were going
Speaker 2: to be the demographic minority. And I think all those
Speaker 2: things are true, right, the world is changing really fast.
Speaker 2: The world is changing really fast. And I don't know
Speaker 2: how you can process things like the climate in a
Speaker 2: you know kind of man, this is catastrophic, what can
Speaker 2: we do about it? Or you can process it in
Speaker 2: a more primitive way, which is it's somebody else's fault.
Speaker 2: And I think everybody, you know, same thing with COVID,
Speaker 2: Like COVID, oh, you know, millions of people died. Is
Speaker 2: it like let's ban together? Or I want to I
Speaker 2: want somebody to blame, and we're in a moment now
Speaker 2: where this I need somebody to blame narrative is really powerful.
Speaker 2: People are not rational in the way that they've been
Speaker 2: rational for much of our lives. I don't think personally
Speaker 2: calling it fragility, I mean, that's a great diagnosis. I
Speaker 2: don't actually use that term personally. I just think that
Speaker 2: this sense of like the narrative that's working on people,
Speaker 2: which is needing somebody else to blame right now and
Speaker 2: then acting violently potentially on that is a is a
Speaker 2: pretty big phenomenon that has racial and religious majority groups
Speaker 2: acting with a kind of abandon without a kind of
Speaker 2: checks and balance that have been present for much of
Speaker 2: our lives. And so it's a scary moment. And I guess,
Speaker 2: I guess I'm just refaming your question, which is like,
Speaker 2: how do we fight it? Right now?
Speaker 1: Well, well, I want to before we go to the
Speaker 1: how how you fight it? I do want to ask,
Speaker 1: so why don't you use the term fragility? Is it
Speaker 1: because you're trying to bring more people in as opposed
Speaker 1: to do a dissecting and a diag gnostic Because in
Speaker 1: my opinion, I think that both and need to happen. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: I think that there does need to be not a
Speaker 1: diagnosis in the way that media has done it, which is,
Speaker 1: let me go around and hold the hands of like
Speaker 1: of racist white people to understand their racism. But I
Speaker 1: think that when we are entering this place of demagoguery,
Speaker 1: when we when when America, for you know, for over
Speaker 1: two hundred you know, close to two hundred and fifty years,
Speaker 1: has been able to stave off this strong man, I
Speaker 1: there is something that is very seductive about this moment
Speaker 1: and these people. And I think and the thing that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and an Elon musk have is that one
Speaker 1: Elon musk Is is the richest man in the world.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump lies about his wealth, but he's still wealthier
Speaker 1: than the average person. Right. So there is the wealth
Speaker 1: that is there that which goes with the class. There
Speaker 1: is the whiteness, there is the maleness, and then there
Speaker 1: is the ability to like you know, activate the media
Speaker 1: and it tension around you. And so for me, I
Speaker 1: do think that the importance that the importance is in
Speaker 1: both and the diagnosis and of how these people have
Speaker 1: risen Now when for two hundred in close to two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years, we've been able to make sure
Speaker 1: that that is not the case, That that is what
Speaker 1: in all honesty, if you're talking about unpacking American exceptionalism,
Speaker 1: it was never the white aspect of exceptionalism. It was
Speaker 1: the fact that as you were watching other countries fall
Speaker 1: to different two different dictators, different authoritarian regimes, that somehow
Speaker 1: America was able up until this moment to be able
Speaker 1: to stay that off.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm a structuralist, right, and so for me, the
Speaker 2: argument I make in my book That's coming out in January,
Speaker 2: because we used a similar move a little bit with
Speaker 2: gun violence, which is diagnosing the problem of toxic white whale,
Speaker 2: white male masculinity, which was so obvious with many mass shooters.
Speaker 2: And I say, on one hand, that's probably true, Like
Speaker 2: that's true to what's probably what's happening, But the framework
Speaker 2: of like diagnosing the majority group in a way, it
Speaker 2: just leads you farther from like what I'm arguing in
Speaker 2: my book that's coming out in January is we need
Speaker 2: to build structures that make those points of view like
Speaker 2: that force people to be cooperative, to make their views irrelevant.
Speaker 2: So I just don't know where we get I don't
Speaker 2: know what we get by we're diagnosing white fragility as
Speaker 2: like being sensitive to always needing to be on top,
Speaker 2: or like that Joiner book, Lonely on Top or something
Speaker 2: like that, like people don't have the skills and whether
Speaker 2: they're challenged, they react violently. Like that's a great diagnosis,
Speaker 2: which is what academics do a lot. But I feel
Speaker 2: like sometimes, like when you're diagnosing the majority culture, it
Speaker 2: just it's true, it gives a diagnosis. Maybe it's unifying
Speaker 2: or something like that. But I guess what I'm seeing
Speaker 2: in guns is it leads it. It leads it farther
Speaker 2: from an answer a counter strategy. And so in the
Speaker 2: gun book, I'm showing how, for example, the you know,
Speaker 2: diagnose using the public health frame to diagnose gun culture,
Speaker 2: which is incredibly white, racialized, incredibly historical, you know, Second
Speaker 2: Amendment on down guns were used to empower certain groups
Speaker 2: and disempower certain groups. But just calling it out and
Speaker 2: saying it's name and all these things. Number one, it's
Speaker 2: true about what happened, but it wasn't a model for like,
Speaker 2: how can we win elections and seat judges and build
Speaker 2: structures that actually promote community safety across neighborhoods, like you
Speaker 2: actually need to have a model that's like how can
Speaker 2: we actually take power, not just critique power. So it
Speaker 2: kind of taps into what's on my mind right now,
Speaker 2: which is like our model is a protest model, but
Speaker 2: the other side's working with like a power model, and
Speaker 2: so just critiquing them it just leads us to more critique.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm going to argue my book. I'm sure
Speaker 2: that'll be controversial for some people, but I'm like, we're
Speaker 2: critiquing them, well, they're actually they have The other side
Speaker 2: has a model for power which is like take over
Speaker 2: the judiciaries, reat the Supreme Court, here's what you do
Speaker 2: with taxes, here's do you do the corporation. We don't
Speaker 2: have any of that. Our model is critiquing them, and
Speaker 2: so I don't know, I realize I'm going to get
Speaker 2: in a lot of discussions.
Speaker 1: Like that, well because I know, but I but I think,
Speaker 1: but I agree with you, right, Like I agree with
Speaker 1: you in terms of the question then that you would
Speaker 1: be posing. The counter question is, well, then what is
Speaker 1: the what is the progressives model for taking power? Right?
Speaker 1: Because it can't just be protesting against the consolidation of
Speaker 1: power by the right, there has to be a mode
Speaker 1: of we're moving from a reactionary place to a proactive place, right,
Speaker 1: And so I get what you're saying, and I do
Speaker 1: think that to some extent, we have allowed ourselves to
Speaker 1: be stuck in some ways in the diagnosis in the
Speaker 1: protest and not wholly in the problem solving right, right.
Speaker 2: And like there are great examples now, like I labor
Speaker 2: unions are finally finally reaching out to working class white
Speaker 2: populations across the South, Like you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 2: I think we're trying to think, like, oh, what does
Speaker 2: it mean to get some power? Well, it means like
Speaker 2: having larger you know, we just need a bigger coalition
Speaker 2: than we have right now. Like progressivism is a great example.
Speaker 2: I think only seven percent of Americans identify as progressive.
Speaker 2: As progressive, you can it's great on social media, it's
Speaker 2: terrible if you're trying to win an election and see
Speaker 2: judges and allocate resources, it's not you don't have enough
Speaker 2: of you don't have a big enough population of people.
Speaker 2: And so how to broaden the coalition? I think, how
Speaker 2: to imagine the endpoint of like what would it to
Speaker 2: win not to critique the other side, but actually to win,
Speaker 2: because that's I've studied conservatives forever, that's how they think
Speaker 2: they're not I mean, obviously they're critiquing liberals with all
Speaker 2: these stupid things, but it's also tied into a model
Speaker 2: of like how do we gain power in this situation?
Speaker 2: And I just I guess I that's kind of where
Speaker 2: I want to go, is like what's our version of that?
Speaker 2: And so again, I like labor unions in the South
Speaker 2: would be one place to really look right now to
Speaker 2: see because they're actually trying to broaden the coalition and
Speaker 2: upend the traditional power structures and stuff like that. And
Speaker 2: I just don't think. I don't think like if the
Speaker 2: labor unions were using the white fragility framework or the frameworks,
Speaker 2: they're going to get there. But the goal isn't to
Speaker 2: critique white whiteness. It's to gain power, win elections, seed judges,
Speaker 2: allocate resources by Twitter, you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: And so I just think, you know, I think we're
Speaker 2: getting there slowly. And again, I wrote a book Dying
Speaker 2: of Whiteness, and white racial resentment is like a framework
Speaker 2: I use. I'm not backing away from that but I
Speaker 2: would also say that critique is not enough right now.
Speaker 2: It really isn't given what we're facing.
Speaker 1: As we look at twenty twenty four. Right in just
Speaker 1: a couple of months, we're going to be a year
Speaker 1: out from the election. And the question that you had
Speaker 1: asked with regard to Elon Musk and his platform is
Speaker 1: what does this mean? What is this foreshadowing look like
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four and what we know right And
Speaker 1: I think that there was just a release of a
Speaker 1: European commission on what happened prior to the war of
Speaker 1: aggression against the Ukrainians by Russia is that the misinformation
Speaker 1: campaign that Russia was waging went wild on Twitter before
Speaker 1: the war actually happened, right before there was an initial strike.
Speaker 1: And so I think to your point, it's like, I
Speaker 1: think that the question that we all have to be
Speaker 1: asking ourselves, who are avid users of social media to
Speaker 1: push out sacs and rightful information and to engage the public,
Speaker 1: is that we're still I don't know, I feel like
Speaker 1: we're still very much behind the eight ball in terms
Speaker 1: of we didn't right we didn't rightfully address and prosecute
Speaker 1: and deal with what happened in twenty sixteen. More that
Speaker 1: happened in twenty twenty and now we're on the verge
Speaker 1: of an entirely AI crisis with the mimicking of voices
Speaker 1: and faces and video and all of these things leading
Speaker 1: up to twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's it's it's scary, and I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: it's easy to see, and I mean it's it's a
Speaker 2: scary moment, right, So it's really like, Okay, here's the
Speaker 2: here's the shit we're facing. What what are we going
Speaker 2: to do here? I h yeah, there's a lot writing.
Speaker 2: I mean, I will tell you when we can talk
Speaker 2: about next time. But a lot of good stuff's happening
Speaker 2: in Nashville right now about political mobilizing. Obviously, the white
Speaker 2: power structure in Nashville is pretty obvious, but we're doing
Speaker 2: a lot of political action here to try to change
Speaker 2: that narrative. I don't know, I have a feeling that
Speaker 2: in my last book, I problematized the South, but I
Speaker 2: feel like a lot of the solutions are going to
Speaker 2: come from the South, because there's just a lot happening
Speaker 2: down here that I think we'll talk about it next time,
Speaker 2: but I think there's a lot happening down here that's
Speaker 2: actually tied to real world politics, labor politics, infrastructure, urban
Speaker 2: stuff that I think lens itself like usually our answers
Speaker 2: come from New York and LA And I think what's
Speaker 2: going to happen going forward is the South is going
Speaker 2: to create much more of the framework for what democratic
Speaker 2: politics look like in a way because of what happened,
Speaker 2: the pandemic and other kinds of things. So it'll be
Speaker 2: interesting to see how this I'll just say TVD as
Speaker 2: a teaser for there going to be having because I
Speaker 2: know we're short on time here. No.
Speaker 1: I love it, and I think that that's right, and
Speaker 1: I you know, frankly, the right has been using the
Speaker 1: South and the Midwest as their petri dishes to workshop
Speaker 1: their authoritarian policies, and I think that it only would
Speaker 1: make sense then that the solution to the policies that
Speaker 1: are rolling out left and right across those states would
Speaker 1: come from the very states that are at the forefront
Speaker 1: of rolling in authoritarianism. But we will leave it there today, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: you already tease what we're talking about next week, so
Speaker 1: we don't even have to think about it. As always,
Speaker 1: my friend, we appreciate your analysis and your time.
Speaker 2: Hang in there, everybody, and eat lots of carbohydrates.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today. Dear friends on Woke
Speaker 1: ap AS always, power to the people and to all
Speaker 1: the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.