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 on the third day, Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: has lost more rounds of voting than there are days
Speaker 1: of the week. We have an excellent show for you today.
Speaker 1: Pulitzer Prise winning author Stacy Schiff stops by to talk
Speaker 1: to us about her latest biography, Samuel Adams The Revolutionary.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Barbara F Walter, author of How
Speaker 1: Civil Wars Start, who will tell us about what she
Speaker 1: sees as our democracy hangs by a thread. But first
Speaker 1: we have NBC News is national political reporter Jonathan Allen.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, John Allen, Molly John Fast, friend, countryman.
Speaker 1: You've been in Congress for two days now. How many
Speaker 1: times have you seen Kevin McCarthy lose the speakership. I
Speaker 1: think we're in eight now as we speak. I feel
Speaker 1: like it's an advertisement for what Nancy Pelosi did. I mean,
Speaker 1: I remember reading some reporting that said, you know, she
Speaker 1: would handle people for their votes. She would call them
Speaker 1: and email them, and she had someone that the grandmother
Speaker 1: called them. You know, she was very like on it.
Speaker 1: I think this is a case for that kind of whipping.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, it does show how effective and
Speaker 1: efficient Nancy Pelosi was. On the other hand, it shows
Speaker 1: that Kevin McCarthy is the first person in a hundred
Speaker 1: years to have to go to a second ballot, much
Speaker 1: less than eighth ballot or ninth ballot, or however many
Speaker 1: we might get to it. So, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi effective and efficient. On the other hand, Kevin
Speaker 1: McCarthy not just ineffective and inefficient in the moment, but
Speaker 1: at a historic level of the last century. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: he said on Monday, he said, you know, he explained
Speaker 1: to us in the viewing public his plan, which was
Speaker 1: just to make everyone vote until they voted for him,
Speaker 1: not an effective plan. Huh. Well, I mean it's possible
Speaker 1: that we could see some retraction, we could see some
Speaker 1: you know, we could see some erosion in the group
Speaker 1: of people who are opposed to him. But the problem
Speaker 1: with that is the people who are opposed to him
Speaker 1: are the more fanatical, the more extreme, so they are
Speaker 1: much more likely to take things to extremes, and the
Speaker 1: people who are behind Kevin McCarthy are much more likely
Speaker 1: to look around and say, like, maybe Kevin, if you
Speaker 1: can't do it, maybe we should look at somebody else
Speaker 1: and see if there's someone who can do it. I mean,
Speaker 1: what is it like on the floor. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is like, in my mind the dream of all backbench congressmen.
Speaker 1: I mean, you see congress people you haven't ever seen
Speaker 1: on television on television and they get their moment of
Speaker 1: fame where they get to stand up and talk about
Speaker 1: really quickly for the good of the republic, or you know,
Speaker 1: they shout out in Leroy Jenkins fashion a vote for
Speaker 1: speaker and then they go back away and you've never
Speaker 1: seen them until the next volte. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's true, and um, what's fascinating also right now? You know,
Speaker 1: I was in the House gallery on Tuesday when the
Speaker 1: voting started and for the first couple of votes, and
Speaker 1: you know, so when you're in the House gallery you
Speaker 1: can see what's going on the floor, but for the
Speaker 1: first time, viewers at home are really getting a feel
Speaker 1: of what's going on behind the scenes because there are
Speaker 1: no rules governing what c span and the cameras in
Speaker 1: the chamber can show. Will you explain that a little bit,
Speaker 1: because that's really interesting Right now? The House doesn't really exist.
Speaker 1: That is to say, because members are sworn in after
Speaker 1: a speaker has chosen, there are no members of Congress.
Speaker 1: There are no rules for this Congress. They are operating
Speaker 1: on sort of the history and precedent of how you
Speaker 1: have speaker votes, and really the only thing that they
Speaker 1: can do is either vote or adjourn until a certain
Speaker 1: time where they come back and vote, and until that happens,
Speaker 1: they won't have rules. And because they don't have rules
Speaker 1: governing what can happen in the chamber, cameras that are
Speaker 1: in the chamber, controlled by c SPAN, can basically zoom
Speaker 1: in on whatever they want. Usually when there are rules
Speaker 1: in the House, they are limited in what they can do.
Speaker 1: They're limited in what angles they can show and who
Speaker 1: they can show on the floor. So viewers at home
Speaker 1: we're getting a much more intimate story about what's actually
Speaker 1: going on in the house floor when you see Matt
Speaker 1: Gates and Alexandre Acasio Cortes conferring with each other. I
Speaker 1: asked her about that the other day, I said, what
Speaker 1: does she say? She said, I was fact checking Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 1: So McCarthy will tell Republicans, hey, if you don't do
Speaker 1: X then the Democrats are going to vote for me
Speaker 1: or whatever. And then you know, so Gates is checking
Speaker 1: with Casio Cortez to find out what it is the
Speaker 1: Democrats are really going to do or not do, and she's,
Speaker 1: you know, apparently according to her, giving him some information
Speaker 1: about that. Today you could see Kevin McCarthy, you know,
Speaker 1: sitting down with Andy Clyde, one of the Calcitran Republicans,
Speaker 1: for a very long period of time, you know, just
Speaker 1: chatting him up, looking like he was trying to win
Speaker 1: over a vote. You don't get to I mean, you
Speaker 1: get to see that if you are a reporter who
Speaker 1: sits in the gallery above the House Chamber in you know,
Speaker 1: important vote situations. Sometimes you see stuff like that. Viewers
Speaker 1: at home very seldom good to see it. So that's
Speaker 1: so fascinating about what's been going on this week. So
Speaker 1: it is this situation was c SPAN where c SPAN
Speaker 1: is not being ruled right now by the speaker, correct,
Speaker 1: Whereas it is typically limited by the rules of the House,
Speaker 1: which you know, the speaker puts forward a package of
Speaker 1: rules once there's a speaker, and then the and then
Speaker 1: the House votes on it, and you know, typically the
Speaker 1: majority party supports the rules and the minority party votes
Speaker 1: against them because the rules are designed to help the
Speaker 1: majority party and harm the minority party for the most party,
Speaker 1: and one of the rules that's you know you see
Speaker 1: every two years limits what media can be in the
Speaker 1: galleries and what those media can do. So let's talk
Speaker 1: for a minute about where this goes. Now we have
Speaker 1: this incredible fracas going was that the last vote where
Speaker 1: mad Gates nominated Donald Trump, that kids did vote for
Speaker 1: Donald Trump after saying yesterday that it was Gates's word,
Speaker 1: not mine. Sad that Donald Trump had come out so
Speaker 1: hard in favor of Kevin McCarthy. So, I mean, they're
Speaker 1: they're not dominating a lot of different people. They don't
Speaker 1: expect to win. What Lauren Bobert said she wanted was
Speaker 1: that she wanted a one person mandate for this rule
Speaker 1: to vacate the chair, so that would make it completely
Speaker 1: impossible to be speaker. I thought that McCarthy actually acquiesced
Speaker 1: to that though. Yeah, that that offers on the table
Speaker 1: now to go from five votes to one vote to
Speaker 1: make a motion to vacate the chair. The House would
Speaker 1: still have to have a full vote to the House,
Speaker 1: but you can imagine that if Lauren Bobert wanted to
Speaker 1: vacate the chair, wanted to get rid of the speaker,
Speaker 1: and brought that motion to the floor and there was
Speaker 1: a vote on it, that all of the Democrats would
Speaker 1: support her in that right, right, and then Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: would be just a couple of votes away from getting
Speaker 1: thrown over the side, right. And you know, if you
Speaker 1: have to continue to have those votes over and over again,
Speaker 1: even if you're winning them, it's deeply embarrassing and it
Speaker 1: you know, it's a tactic that could be very obstructionist
Speaker 1: in terms of trying to get legislation passed. If it
Speaker 1: had a sort of a privilege, meaning that I had
Speaker 1: to be brought to the floor within a certain time period.
Speaker 1: You could see that being used to prevent the House
Speaker 1: from acting on things like ending bills or raising the
Speaker 1: death ceiling to you know, retain the full faith in
Speaker 1: credit with the United States. So we have these twenty
Speaker 1: and one has now started to it was nineteen and
Speaker 1: then you had one who was this abstaining who's now
Speaker 1: and these are sort of the crazies, And then you
Speaker 1: have Keem Jeffries who keeps winning, I mean not winning
Speaker 1: enough to win, but he does get Democrats continually vote
Speaker 1: for him. There's no world in which Republicans could like
Speaker 1: accidentally make Keem Jeffreys a speaker. It could conceivably happen,
Speaker 1: but they would immediately undo it. Okay, but it is
Speaker 1: like amazing, right, I mean, he does keep winning even
Speaker 1: though he's losing. It will not happen. Republicans would have
Speaker 1: to vote for Jeffreys for that to happen. That's not
Speaker 1: gonna happen. So I think one of the things that's
Speaker 1: really important to remember about the speaker vote, unlike a
Speaker 1: lot of elections, is it's not that you need a
Speaker 1: plurality of votes. If that was case, like Kim Jeffreys
Speaker 1: would already be the speaker. Only need the most votes
Speaker 1: out of the You need a majority of those who
Speaker 1: are present and voting to eight unless you lose some people,
Speaker 1: and then it goes down right right, meaning if there
Speaker 1: are people who vote for someone or something that is
Speaker 1: not an actual living human, those votes don't count. So
Speaker 1: if someone votes for Mickey Mouse or for Dwight Eisenhower,
Speaker 1: their vote doesn't count. Or if people vote present, those
Speaker 1: votes come out of the denominator or if people are
Speaker 1: simply absent, those votes come out of the dominator. So
Speaker 1: it would be possible if trying to do the math here,
Speaker 1: if you know, if roughly a dozen or so Republicans
Speaker 1: didn't come to the floor, it would be possible for
Speaker 1: Keevan Jeffries to when I think of his thirteen or
Speaker 1: fourteen Republicans you know basically didn't vote, it would be
Speaker 1: possible for Jefferies to win a majority of those voting.
Speaker 1: But it's inconceivable to me that that would actually happen,
Speaker 1: and if it did, it would be immediately corrected. I mean,
Speaker 1: the body is designed for the majority party to run it.
Speaker 1: We think that this is Steve Scolease's moment, and he,
Speaker 1: as he once referred to himself forever to live in infamy,
Speaker 1: David Duke without the baggage, so hardly a unity candidate.
Speaker 1: But do you think this is the moment in which
Speaker 1: this is his moment? Look, I mean, if you're Scholz,
Speaker 1: you're in a box, which is that if you were
Speaker 1: to go out there and start whipping against Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: and stand for nomination against Kevin McCarthy, like McCarthy will
Speaker 1: get more votes than you wrote, So if you're Scalize,
Speaker 1: you have the same deathlock that they're in. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: you have to wait until people get desperate for another candidate.
Speaker 1: You have to wait until McCarthy, you know, basically withdraws,
Speaker 1: at which point then you see if Steve Scalise has
Speaker 1: two both which he may or may not, but he
Speaker 1: has to be very careful because as long as he's
Speaker 1: not campaigning for this job, and he has seen to
Speaker 1: be loyal to McCarthy, then there's a possibility that McCarthy
Speaker 1: withdraws and McCarthy's people go to Schleize. If Scleaze is
Speaker 1: seen its screwing with McCarthy, then there may be some
Speaker 1: McCarthy people that decided to screw back with them, right,
Speaker 1: and that could end up in a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: four votes. Probably not, though, I mean eventually people are
Speaker 1: going to be like this is because right now it
Speaker 1: showed endures Congress. Right, it neither exists exists nor or
Speaker 1: doesn't exist, right, I mean, that's right there. It exists
Speaker 1: in the sense that there is certainly there's a Senate,
Speaker 1: although they're not meeting either right now. And then there's
Speaker 1: a house with a bunch of Congress people elect like
Speaker 1: they are not members of the Congress yet, and they
Speaker 1: don't have the rights of members of the Congress yet,
Speaker 1: And so you know, it is a body that is
Speaker 1: operating without really without any structural rules and sort of
Speaker 1: depending on everyone's civility to observe the sort of two
Speaker 1: basic rules that they've had, which is that you keep
Speaker 1: voting until you have a speaker, or you adjourned for
Speaker 1: a specific amount of fun. And even those votes are
Speaker 1: getting hard for McCarthy to win, to be able to
Speaker 1: adjourn for some hours, right, right, I saw that they
Speaker 1: were having some trouble getting the numbers last night, and
Speaker 1: now they're going to have to adjourn again today, right,
Speaker 1: At some point, you would expect that to happen. Although
Speaker 1: in theory they could just keep the House floor open
Speaker 1: in perpetuity and keep voting. Wouldn't that be just a
Speaker 1: nightmare for all parties involved. Well, it will exhaust people,
Speaker 1: which would mean that one level House Republicans who support
Speaker 1: McCarthy may get cranky with him earlier. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: and maybe that there are some Democrats at three o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning that decide they don't really want to
Speaker 1: show up you know, McCarthy can't count on that, so
Speaker 1: it has to be sensitive to the needs and desires
Speaker 1: of the people who support him, and some of them
Speaker 1: will want to go home at night. How do you
Speaker 1: see this going predict for may? I wish that I could.
Speaker 1: You know, it's one of the rare times where you're
Speaker 1: watching a vote in Congress and it's unpredictable what will happen.
Speaker 1: And this, by the way, this is the one I
Speaker 1: was talking to somebody used to work from Nancy Pelosi
Speaker 1: today and they said, you know, she would never bring
Speaker 1: to you know, something like this the floor without having
Speaker 1: the votes already. And I was like, but this is
Speaker 1: the one vote where the leader doesn't have any control
Speaker 1: over when it up. I meaning the Constitution provides for
Speaker 1: the you know, for the House to meet at noon
Speaker 1: on January three, and the first thing that's for them
Speaker 1: to vote for speaker. So you know, if you're the leader,
Speaker 1: if you're the speaker of the House, most legislative issues
Speaker 1: you can choose, you know, when to bring it to
Speaker 1: the floor. You don't bring it to the four vote.
Speaker 1: In this case, McCarthy had really no choice, right He's
Speaker 1: been running for speakers since two I mean at least
Speaker 1: so he's had plenty of time, but just to that
Speaker 1: small point of like in this particular case, like there
Speaker 1: was a fixed it's very unusual fixed date and time
Speaker 1: for a vote, he was not ready by that deadline.
Speaker 1: Even as he tries to make up for having missed
Speaker 1: that deadline, he's not getting it. It's like it's like
Speaker 1: a student who misses a test, right or like you know,
Speaker 1: and then shows up they're like, all right, well I
Speaker 1: got all this extra homework. Teachers like yeah, that's not
Speaker 1: gonna do it, and come back with another set of homework.
Speaker 1: What about this Now that's not going to do it?
Speaker 1: Just keep coming back. I mean, where do you see
Speaker 1: this going? If you have to predict it? And by
Speaker 1: the way, I will make fun of you for this
Speaker 1: if it's not right, So go, yeah, that's why I'm
Speaker 1: not predicted. Well, I don't want to be the scorn
Speaker 1: and derision. Doesn't it seem that every passing day, Steve
Speaker 1: Scalise looks a little more likely or now, yes, it
Speaker 1: is more likely with each passing day that the people
Speaker 1: who support Kevin McCarthy work in another direction and Scalize
Speaker 1: makes the most sense because he's the person who's won
Speaker 1: the most votes in a leadership lestion before. Right, he's
Speaker 1: number two, correct, so he's the he's the most obvious choice.
Speaker 1: But if there was a very obvious choice, that person
Speaker 1: want to come forward already. If that happens, do you
Speaker 1: think that Kevin McCarthy will stay in Congress, you know,
Speaker 1: just to fill out his term and then leave. I
Speaker 1: mean that will be so traumatic for him. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think nobody will think about Kevin McCarthy. Ever, again, doesn't
Speaker 1: when the speakership, and I think he knows that, which
Speaker 1: is why he's continuing to have this fight. I mean,
Speaker 1: like like outside make money, you know, as an advisor
Speaker 1: to somebody or you know, like a pseudo lobbyist. You know,
Speaker 1: they will be hired as you know, somebody to give
Speaker 1: advice and counsel to some lobby infirm and so you
Speaker 1: won't actually have to register, but will make his zillions
Speaker 1: of dollars trying to influence his former colleagues. Right, makes sense, well,
Speaker 1: very moral and ethical. One last question here for you,
Speaker 1: my friend John Allen. These nineteen or twenty holdouts, a
Speaker 1: lot of them are Trump supporters. Lauren boeberd Andy Biggs,
Speaker 1: Matt Gates. Trump did make a full throttle and toursement
Speaker 1: of Kevin McCarthy. What happened? So this is amazing mine.
Speaker 1: So Trump has been working these guys for quite a
Speaker 1: while behind the scenes. He's that conference calls, that one
Speaker 1: on one and he's been trying to get them to
Speaker 1: vote from McCarthy. My colleague Garrett Hate from NBC called
Speaker 1: him on Tuesday and said, you know what's gonna have.
Speaker 1: McCarthy's gonna and Trump said, We'll see what happens, which
Speaker 1: was very very quickly got out of People are like,
Speaker 1: wait what, and McCarthy were like, wait what. And McCarthy
Speaker 1: had gone to Trump like a month after Trump had
Speaker 1: done the insurrection, you'll remember, Yeah, he had pretty much
Speaker 1: given up everything for Trump. He bent all the knees.
Speaker 1: And so there's this reaction to Trump's sort of weak
Speaker 1: sauce like we'll see what happens with McCarthy kind of response,
Speaker 1: and then Trump comes out Wednesday morning, He's like, full
Speaker 1: throated endorsement of Kevin McCarthy. Then all the people that
Speaker 1: were voting against McCarthy, as you point out, like all
Speaker 1: friends of Trump, all big allies of Trump, stayed against
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy. They were unmoved completely, like Donald Trump had
Speaker 1: no ability to influence them on the next vote or
Speaker 1: any of the subsequent ones that we've seen so far.
Speaker 1: I talked to Ralph Norman, a congressman from South Carolina
Speaker 1: about it yesterday. He said he was on a conference
Speaker 1: call a couple of weeks ago with Trump and like
Speaker 1: just doesn't see I I with him, and he said, basically,
Speaker 1: this isn't Trump's fight. I respect the guy, but like
Speaker 1: this is an internal house matter and I'm not listening
Speaker 1: to a lot it. You saw Lauren Bobert go esterday
Speaker 1: on the House floor and kind of shame Trump and say, look, look,
Speaker 1: we're your friends, You're my favorite president. We should be
Speaker 1: calling telling us to sit down and shut up, or
Speaker 1: to knock it off. You should be calling Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: and telling him to withdraw. So all these people. And
Speaker 1: the thing is Trump has to kind of walk this
Speaker 1: careful line because he needs this set of people in
Speaker 1: the House. He needs these allies to be out there
Speaker 1: for him as he seeks the presidency again. He can't
Speaker 1: afford to alienate the House. Freedom carcass Well, and I
Speaker 1: think he also sees that he's diminished. I mean it's
Speaker 1: obviously frustrating, con deeply he's had. You know, he's been
Speaker 1: out campaigning for president now, and I say campaigning for president.
Speaker 1: By that, I mean he's been in more alago campaigning
Speaker 1: for president for about six weeks now. You couldn't tell
Speaker 1: that he's campaigning for president. The most newsworthy thing he's
Speaker 1: done since the election was to have a meal with
Speaker 1: Kanye West and the white supremacist Nick Flente, which did him.
Speaker 1: I mean, everything has been going poorly for Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: you know, arguably since the election, but certainly over the
Speaker 1: last course of the last six weeks. And then you know,
Speaker 1: he goes to show how cluentially can be on behalf
Speaker 1: of McCarthy, just the opposite. So interesting, John Allen, thank you.
Speaker 1: Will you please come back? I will come back any
Speaker 1: time you wrest every time you w Yeah for New
Speaker 1: Year's Best. Stacy Schiff is the author of the Revolutionary
Speaker 1: Sam Adams Welcome Too Fast Politics. Stacy Chiff, thanks so much, mallam,
Speaker 1: delighted to join you. Well, I'm so happy to have you.
Speaker 1: And you know we don't have that many Pulitzer winners.
Speaker 1: You have a lot of people with some pretty lens
Speaker 1: or insights. However, right, but I wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: you about your new book, which is called The Revolutionary
Speaker 1: sam Adams. How did you get here and why did
Speaker 1: you write this? And tell us how you got involved
Speaker 1: with this. A couple of things came together. It was
Speaker 1: if any explanation is required, I would start searching for
Speaker 1: some kind of solid ground. I think, like many of us,
Speaker 1: I was thinking a lot about what democracy was and
Speaker 1: how we had got where we were. And in the
Speaker 1: course of that I had realized that Samuel Adams made
Speaker 1: a cameo in my Ben Franklin book, and I had
Speaker 1: never really given him much thought, and went back to
Speaker 1: read about him and was struck by how much his
Speaker 1: contemporaries call him out as the man of the hour,
Speaker 1: to a man may write him down as the most active,
Speaker 1: the earliest, the most persevering man of the revolution, the
Speaker 1: father of the revolution, and yet he has largely been
Speaker 1: lost to us. So it was a large part that
Speaker 1: sense of you know, how did we end up where
Speaker 1: we are? How instrumental with this man? And then topping
Speaker 1: that off was my was my sudden sort of realization
Speaker 1: of my own ignorance in that we all know that
Speaker 1: Paul Revere jumps on a horse in April of seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy five, but I anyway had never really thought about
Speaker 1: where he was going. And where he was going was
Speaker 1: to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock they were about
Speaker 1: that they were about to be arrested or assess snated
Speaker 1: by British forces. And so it was sort of an
Speaker 1: attempt to bail myself out of my own lack of
Speaker 1: understanding that I finally fell down the Samuel Adams rabbit hole,
Speaker 1: which is not an unhappy place to be during these years, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, what did you learn? Well, you know, what
Speaker 1: you learn very quickly is that he essentially writes what
Speaker 1: you could today call the Bible of civil resistance theory.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is ten years before the real shots
Speaker 1: are fired, the ten years that precede seventeen seventy six,
Speaker 1: or the twelve years, depending on how you count what
Speaker 1: John Adams would refer to as the revolution in hearts
Speaker 1: and minds. It's the revolution in thinking that precedes the
Speaker 1: revolution in fighting. And what's surprising is, first of all,
Speaker 1: the entire sea change that is affected in those years.
Speaker 1: How messy and nonlinear. Those years are it really is
Speaker 1: a protest movement. It precedes by fits and starts. And
Speaker 1: how essential one person, and in fact, one fairly flawed
Speaker 1: person can be in affecting that change of that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: Why was he flawed? Well? I think that you could
Speaker 1: say that the attributes that served him so well for
Speaker 1: those dozen years basically to some degree turn against him.
Speaker 1: He's undeviating, he's unwavering, his remarkably resolute, and proceeds with
Speaker 1: a kind of sort of serene confidence in the essential
Speaker 1: righteousness of his convictions. And that's all very true, and
Speaker 1: that serves him beautifully and serves country beautifully. But after
Speaker 1: the Revolution, when the country is being put back together,
Speaker 1: those same attributes I think fail him. I think that
Speaker 1: there is a rigidity, in a funny way in the
Speaker 1: thinking that came in very handy when it was time
Speaker 1: to upset the apple cart, and come in less handy
Speaker 1: when it's time to establish a government. I mean, why
Speaker 1: was he lost to history? He somewhat erases himself from
Speaker 1: the record, and part of that is simply protection of
Speaker 1: himself and his colleagues, given their seditious activities. John Adams
Speaker 1: leaves us this sort of horrible account of Samuel Adams
Speaker 1: sitting in Philadelphia in front of his fire, feeding his
Speaker 1: papers to the fire and Huntedham says to his cousin Samuel,
Speaker 1: you know, don't you think you're maybe overreacting a little bit?
Speaker 1: And Samuel Adams response that he doesn't want any of
Speaker 1: their friends to suffer for his negligence. So there's really
Speaker 1: enough tempt to make this, you know, the no fingerprints
Speaker 1: school this, you know, this is treason at this at
Speaker 1: this juncture, no name should be mentioned. It's very important
Speaker 1: that that everyone that does be a collective responsibility, and
Speaker 1: that and that no one particularly be able to be
Speaker 1: singled out. So some extent he erases the record. He's
Speaker 1: an extraordinarily modest man, and there is a sense that
Speaker 1: he prefers to be in the wings Throughout much of
Speaker 1: this history. He very much likes to promote people like
Speaker 1: John Hancock who prefer the spotlight. And in the end,
Speaker 1: as I said, he his popularity wanes, and he is
Speaker 1: somewhat tired by criticism of his former colleagues after the Revolution,
Speaker 1: and for those reasons as well as the fact that
Speaker 1: he stood for a somewhat set of antiquated principles. I mean,
Speaker 1: he really stands for a kind of purity and simplicity
Speaker 1: as opposed to the more commercial, more opulent nation that
Speaker 1: is kind of racing ahead of his somewhat antiquated ideals.
Speaker 1: He's also not a federalist, so he really falls out
Speaker 1: with um with much of the popular with much of
Speaker 1: the popular feeling post revolution. But he is related to
Speaker 1: two of the presidents, correct. He is actually the person
Speaker 1: who will recruit John Adams, who's a little over a
Speaker 1: decade younger than he, and in fact, John Adams is
Speaker 1: first accounts of him. John Adams really leaves us some
Speaker 1: of the best descriptions of Samuel Adams, and John is
Speaker 1: utterly starstruck by his cousin. He goes on about his
Speaker 1: and in a way that defies I think our standard
Speaker 1: sense and so far as we have one of Samuel
Speaker 1: Adams as this kind of hot headed, rabble rouser, John
Speaker 1: is very clear about the fact that he's a man
Speaker 1: of great affability, very decorous, very charming, much air udition,
Speaker 1: as he puts it, exquisite humanity. He's a very prudent
Speaker 1: thinker and a very calculated, shrewd tactician, but he's also
Speaker 1: just an immensely sort of sweet and charming man. Like
Speaker 1: are the people remembered by history the blowhards. I think
Speaker 1: there's no question that history belongs not so much to
Speaker 1: the blowhards as to the eloquent. Certainly, John Adams survives
Speaker 1: as well as he does. I mean, obviously he's a
Speaker 1: bit of immense accomplishment, right, but he's not a blowhard.
Speaker 1: A lot a blowhard, right, but wrote the best letters.
Speaker 1: And I think those of us who worked a lot
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century possibly overstate John Adams is roles
Speaker 1: and things, rolling things because he's so eloquent. But yes,
Speaker 1: I mean a really great way to go down in
Speaker 1: history would be to grab the microphone. That won't surprise
Speaker 1: any of us, right, yeah, I mean it's just interesting
Speaker 1: because you think of the Adams is their their own
Speaker 1: sort of weird self loathing. I always think of that family.
Speaker 1: You know, there's that real sort of purit and modesty,
Speaker 1: which doesn't come in handy when you want to be
Speaker 1: remembered by history. I mean I should add also that
Speaker 1: much of Adams's work is work that he publishes under pseudonyms,
Speaker 1: and you know he's a master of propaganda in the press,
Speaker 1: and he's writing under at least thirty, if not more, pseudonyms,
Speaker 1: So that too, I think, contributes to it's difficult to
Speaker 1: connect him sometimes to his work because pseudonymous writing was
Speaker 1: the nature of editorial writing or political writing in the day.
Speaker 1: It's very hard, therefore, to credit him with all of
Speaker 1: his accomplishments. Interesting, so you think that there are things
Speaker 1: we don't know. If you add up the pseudonyms that
Speaker 1: other people have identified and ones that I've newly brought
Speaker 1: to the table, you come to about thirty or thirty one.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that we're missing quite a few means. It's
Speaker 1: difficult because he's often credited with pieces other people wrote,
Speaker 1: incorrectly credited, and then other pieces are credited to to
Speaker 1: other writers which may well have been his. You know,
Speaker 1: I suspect if you really wanted to, you could feed
Speaker 1: all of the Boston gazettes of those years through some
Speaker 1: sort of a I and you could figure out where
Speaker 1: we've we've lost him. But you know, you can see
Speaker 1: points where he cribs from his own letters in pieces.
Speaker 1: We know those articles are his. We know from other
Speaker 1: people's notations in their in their copies of newspapers that
Speaker 1: those articles are his, but I'm sure that there are
Speaker 1: pieces that have alluded us. Still very interesting, what are
Speaker 1: the lessons that we can learn from this? I think
Speaker 1: the greatest run is how essential communication is. This is
Speaker 1: someone who was able to really just clarify these very
Speaker 1: large principles and somehow funnel them into this very convincing
Speaker 1: editorial writing that he does. So there really is just
Speaker 1: the sense of being able to sort of pull an
Speaker 1: ambient concept out of the air and articulated in a
Speaker 1: way that makes it that makes it almost irresistible. He's
Speaker 1: able to do something which has a lot of residence today,
Speaker 1: which is that he unites the elite, unites the well educated.
Speaker 1: He holds two degrees from Harvard, but is as comfortable
Speaker 1: in the streets with a bricklayer or or someone who
Speaker 1: works on the wharves to unite the top and the bottom.
Speaker 1: And that sense that the government was unresponsive, that government
Speaker 1: was in the hands of a very tight oligarchy, is
Speaker 1: something that he peddles and gets an enormous amount of
Speaker 1: mileage on and uses as a demonstration close at hand
Speaker 1: of the tyranny abroad. I guess what I'm saying here
Speaker 1: is that that sense of inequality and explosive inequality can
Speaker 1: be is something that obviously we should be paying attention.
Speaker 1: It's dangerous when inequality doesn't have its limits. He's really
Speaker 1: reacting against a sort of feeling of disenfranchisement, a feeling
Speaker 1: that government is unresponsive because it is in the hand
Speaker 1: of these political dynasties. And I think that feels very
Speaker 1: relevant today. It does. How should we sort of think
Speaker 1: of him in this pantheon. I suppose that he's the
Speaker 1: master communicator in the sense that he translates these concepts
Speaker 1: more ably to the page and to a wider readership
Speaker 1: than anyone else had done in years where questions of
Speaker 1: independence were really nowhere on the radar, and is able
Speaker 1: to capture the sense of resentment that people had. John
Speaker 1: Adams tells us that when he and Samuel Adams meet
Speaker 1: for the first time, which would have been in the
Speaker 1: early seventeen sixties before the Stamp act Um, they're both
Speaker 1: agreed that Thomas Hutchinson, then the Lieutenant Governor, poses a
Speaker 1: greater threat to American liberties than any other man in existence.
Speaker 1: So that sense that there is this elite who have
Speaker 1: too much power in their hands, and that the government
Speaker 1: has to be redistributed in some way is something with
Speaker 1: which Adams is deeply dedicated. That's quite interesting. What are
Speaker 1: you working out next? I have been unable to separate
Speaker 1: myself from Samuel Adams, so I'm working another up ed
Speaker 1: about him, and another aspect of the book that I
Speaker 1: feel like I'd either like to go back and rewrite
Speaker 1: or I'd like to expand upon. And since it's easier
Speaker 1: to expand upon it than it is to go back
Speaker 1: and rewrite it, That's what I'm working on for now.
Speaker 1: How fantastic? Can I add one more answer to your question? Please?
Speaker 1: Please please, when you ask about a modern parallel, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the other piece to which we not paid
Speaker 1: enough attention is that what there is this explosion of
Speaker 1: media at the time, and Adams. Adams capitalizes on that
Speaker 1: in a really almost unfathomably brilliant way. Suddenly there's this
Speaker 1: explosion of newspapers. It will leave the crown officers in
Speaker 1: Boston writhing. You know, how can you govern a town
Speaker 1: with five newspapers, one of them says, And the fact
Speaker 1: that you suddenly have papers which are being passed hand
Speaker 1: to hand read by often nine tenths of the town
Speaker 1: is which you can write in Boston and publish in Boston,
Speaker 1: in New York and Philadelphia. A connection among the colonies
Speaker 1: on which Adams is very intent from the beginning. You
Speaker 1: suddenly have this ability to communicate from town to town
Speaker 1: and from colony to colony. And it's really that effort
Speaker 1: in which Adams is is hugely instrumental that makes the
Speaker 1: revolution take off with the speed that it that it
Speaker 1: finally takes off after the Boston tea party. That's really interesting.
Speaker 1: You've written so many important biographies. I'm curious if you
Speaker 1: look back, who are the characters that sort of stick
Speaker 1: with you the most. I mean, which one is my
Speaker 1: favorite child? Wow? Yeah, I wasn't gonna ask that, but
Speaker 1: you know, the ones they'd come back to you, or
Speaker 1: like pieces of their lives come back to you. I
Speaker 1: think that Ben Franklin gets the award for the subject
Speaker 1: with which you cannot finish because he's so protean and
Speaker 1: so much a modern man. And even even in writing
Speaker 1: this book, I always sort of had Franklin at the
Speaker 1: back of my mind because in many ways he's the
Speaker 1: counter example to Samuel Adams. He's abroad for all of
Speaker 1: these years, and in fact, in Samuel Adams's mind, Ben
Speaker 1: Franklin is insufficient revolutionary during these years, because Franklin is
Speaker 1: still intent on holding together with the British Empire. But
Speaker 1: I think the answer would probably be Franklin. Technologically speaking,
Speaker 1: he's so much a man of the future, and he
Speaker 1: anticipates so much of the modern world and is a
Speaker 1: master psychologist in much the way that Adams is, but
Speaker 1: in a way that in the back of your mind,
Speaker 1: you're watching something happen at the dinner table and you're thinking,
Speaker 1: oh my god, Franklin, you know, had had an epigraph
Speaker 1: about this, you know, years ago. So I think it's
Speaker 1: Franklin probably carry around with me more tightly than anyone else. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. This was really interesting. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us. It was a great delight. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much. I know you, our dear listeners are very
Speaker 1: busy and you don't have time to sort through the
Speaker 1: hundreds of pieces of punitentry tweak, And this is why
Speaker 1: every week I put together a newsletter of my five
Speaker 1: favorite articles on politics. If you enjoy the podcast, you
Speaker 1: will love having this in your inbox every Friday. So
Speaker 1: sign up at Fast Politics pod dot com and cut
Speaker 1: the tab to join our mailing list. That's Fast Politics
Speaker 1: pod dot com. Barbara F. Walter is the author of
Speaker 1: How Civil Wars Start and How To Stop Them. Welcome too,
Speaker 1: Fast Politics, Barbara F. Walter. Thank you very much. It's
Speaker 1: great to be here. We're so thrilled to have you.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about the book How
Speaker 1: Civil Wars Start, and I think a very important little
Speaker 1: ending on this and how to Stop them. So how
Speaker 1: do civil wars start? They generally actually start quite slowly.
Speaker 1: Um usually it's started by a handful of people. They're
Speaker 1: they're almost always extremists. They're operating on the fringe of society.
Speaker 1: It takes some years to get off the ground. And
Speaker 1: while they're doing this, the rest of the country is
Speaker 1: going about their business. They're not thinking about it, they're
Speaker 1: not concentrating on it. And then it's usually a series
Speaker 1: of events that allows these tiny movements to grow. One
Speaker 1: of them can be if it's in a in a
Speaker 1: democracy or kind of a partial democracy, it could be
Speaker 1: the loss of a series of elections. So you start
Speaker 1: to get people who had been sort of more moderate
Speaker 1: becoming more dissatisfied, and then these radicals start to they
Speaker 1: start to listen to these radicals. Another way these movements
Speaker 1: tend to grow is if there's some events. It's usually
Speaker 1: a protest, and the police or the government goes in
Speaker 1: and overreacts and reacts to the protesters really harshly. This
Speaker 1: could have happened on January six. You know, people talk
Speaker 1: about the Capitol police and how they didn't do anything
Speaker 1: on January six, and they and they talk about this
Speaker 1: as a criticism. But for somebody who studies how these
Speaker 1: movements grow, I actually think that was a gift to
Speaker 1: the American people because had they responded, and especially if
Speaker 1: they had responded harshly, all of those insurrectionists with their
Speaker 1: camera would have caught this on tape. They would have
Speaker 1: crafted a narrative around how the federal government is overreaching,
Speaker 1: how they're how they they hate patriots, and and it's
Speaker 1: those situations that also allow these movements to grow. That's
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting idea, right there. I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you about that. So you think it's sort of
Speaker 1: like the Archduke fer Nan, right, is that the kind
Speaker 1: of way that happens. Well, that was the trigger for
Speaker 1: World War one. Nobody's ever asked me that quick. Sorry,
Speaker 1: does it like the archduke Curtain? And that's a little
Speaker 1: bit of a stretch, But you know, the idea that
Speaker 1: there's violence that then creates a kind of it's interesting,
Speaker 1: So is that sort of the is that really you
Speaker 1: feel like largely the catalyst for civil wars. Here's the
Speaker 1: challenge that these extremists, these radicals on the fringe have
Speaker 1: in the early parts of a movement. They are more
Speaker 1: radical than most people in a country. In fact, they're
Speaker 1: more radical even amongst their own population. Every country has
Speaker 1: people who are, you know, more passionate about an issue
Speaker 1: or they're willing to fight for something, and people kind
Speaker 1: of look at them and nod their heads and they say,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, they're kind of crazy. We're going to
Speaker 1: ignore them. But these extremists are constantly talking to the moderates,
Speaker 1: telling the moderates listen, the government's really bad. You need
Speaker 1: to pay attention, we need to do something about this.
Speaker 1: The country is going in the wrong direction. And again,
Speaker 1: moderates tend to ignore them. So extremists, if they're going
Speaker 1: to grow the movement, and that's really hard if they
Speaker 1: want to, if they want to become something more than
Speaker 1: just a handful of these guys. They have to somehow
Speaker 1: convince the moderates that what they're saying is true. And
Speaker 1: and one of the things that they do is they
Speaker 1: try to provoke a really strong government reaction to something.
Speaker 1: And if the government comes into their neighborhoods or the
Speaker 1: government starts bashing heads, then this, in some respects provides
Speaker 1: this evidence to moderate it's that what the extremists have
Speaker 1: been saying is true. Now, let me give you an example.
Speaker 1: The Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland had been unhappy with
Speaker 1: being under British rule forever, since the nineteen twenties. They
Speaker 1: peacefully protested in the twenties, the peacefully in the thirties, forties,
Speaker 1: the fifties, the sixties. They weren't getting anywhere, and yet
Speaker 1: they continued to sort of try to work within the
Speaker 1: existing regime. The IRA had been around for most of
Speaker 1: that time, and they kept telling Irish Catholics peaceful protests
Speaker 1: is going to get you nowhere. We need to shift
Speaker 1: to a violent strategy. And Irish Catholics just wouldn't do it.
Speaker 1: You know. The IRA was saying, the British government really
Speaker 1: was never gonna let them be treated well. They were
Speaker 1: always going to allow Protestants in Northern Ireland to run
Speaker 1: the show um and and that's just the way it
Speaker 1: was going to be, and the Irish Catholics didn't believe it.
Speaker 1: So when Protestants started to get more aggressive about protesters,
Speaker 1: wh they started going into their neighborhoods and started hitting
Speaker 1: innocent civilians with their batons, the British government did send
Speaker 1: British soldiers to Northern Ireland, and the Irish Catholics were thrilled.
Speaker 1: They're like, finally, finally the government's paying attention. They can
Speaker 1: see how undemocratic this is, they can see how poorly
Speaker 1: treated we are. They're coming here to help us. And
Speaker 1: there was this enormous hope that things were going to
Speaker 1: change and that they were going to be proven right
Speaker 1: and the IRA was going to be proven wrong. And instead,
Speaker 1: the British soldiers came in and they started to use
Speaker 1: um counterinsurgency tactics against the Irish Catholics, going door to door,
Speaker 1: house to house, dragging men out of their homes and
Speaker 1: throwing them into prison without trial. And suddenly this radicalized
Speaker 1: the population. Suddenly they saw that in fact, what the
Speaker 1: more radical elements of their of their population were staying
Speaker 1: was true. The IRA now suddenly had the evidence that
Speaker 1: the IRA was was saying was true. And you saw
Speaker 1: a certain portion of just average Irish Catholics support the
Speaker 1: IRA and and that's when you started to see violence expand. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's really really interesting. So tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about how one stops a civil war, because that, I
Speaker 1: think is an anxiety that many of us have. Though
Speaker 1: I think some of us feel a little better after
Speaker 1: these mid terms, and by some of us, I mean me.
Speaker 1: So we actually know the two conditions that really are
Speaker 1: are very predictive of a country experiencing a civil war.
Speaker 1: The first is whether it's an innocracy, and that's just
Speaker 1: a fancy term for a partial democracy. It turns out
Speaker 1: that full, healthy democracies, places like Denmark and Switzerland and
Speaker 1: Canada almost never experienced civil wars. It also turns out
Speaker 1: that full autie prossees the North Korea's, the Saudi Arabia's,
Speaker 1: the bar Rains of the world, um, they also rarely
Speaker 1: experienced civil war. The violence tends to happen in this
Speaker 1: middle zone, where democratic institutions are weak. They're often in transition,
Speaker 1: you have lots of instability. These are the times when
Speaker 1: individuals and groups who want to try to grab power,
Speaker 1: they take advantage of those times, and you know, oftentimes
Speaker 1: they'll they'll use violence to try to gain control. Where
Speaker 1: we are as a country as the most dangerous. Where
Speaker 1: we were in December of right, Yeah, when Trump was leader.
Speaker 1: It since improved, and there are lots of people who
Speaker 1: had a big sigh of relief when when Trump left office.
Speaker 1: There were lots of us who were really happy with
Speaker 1: the mid terms and we kind of feel like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're on more stable ground and in some respects we are. Yes,
Speaker 1: Trump left office, that's a really good thing. January six failed,
Speaker 1: that's a really good thing. Lots mores, especially young voters,
Speaker 1: went out to vote and and and all of these
Speaker 1: election deniers who tried to gain office, many of them
Speaker 1: were unsuccessful. But the reality is that our institutions are
Speaker 1: democratic institutions that have been weakening since nothing has changed there.
Speaker 1: The Democrats have been trying to initiate certain reforms, but
Speaker 1: they don't have the votes for it, and Republicans have
Speaker 1: no interest in reform because as long as they continue
Speaker 1: to play to a predominantly aging white evangelical Christian base,
Speaker 1: which is a demographic that's declining faster than any other
Speaker 1: demographic here in the United States. As long as they
Speaker 1: continue to play to that base, they can't win elections.
Speaker 1: If we are truly a full and equal democracy, that's
Speaker 1: really quite interesting. So anyway, so go back to what
Speaker 1: we can do to get out of it. If an
Speaker 1: ocracy partial democracy and oh and I didn't I didn't
Speaker 1: talk about the secon In fact, for the second factor
Speaker 1: that is a big risk factor for civil war is
Speaker 1: whether a country is a partial democracy and its political
Speaker 1: parties are based on identity, if it's political parties are
Speaker 1: predominantly based on race, religion, or ethnicity as opposed to
Speaker 1: political ideology. So if you think about Yugoslavia after the
Speaker 1: fall of the Soviet Union, when Yugoslavia attempted to democratize rapidly, um,
Speaker 1: one of the things that that these ethnic entrepreneurs within
Speaker 1: the Serb and the crow Up community did is they
Speaker 1: quickly started to build political parties, not over any issue
Speaker 1: like are you a conservative or a liberal, or communist
Speaker 1: or a capitalist, but whether you were ethnically Serb or
Speaker 1: ethnically crow Up. When you have countries that start to
Speaker 1: do this, those are also the countries that that tend
Speaker 1: to have a much higher risk of civil war. So
Speaker 1: if these are the two conditions inn ocracy and and
Speaker 1: these ethnically based parties, then you know that gives us
Speaker 1: two things that we can do. If we strengthen America's democracy.
Speaker 1: If we get rid of these undemocratic features like the
Speaker 1: filibuster and jerrymandering, if we reform perhaps the Senate, if
Speaker 1: we create an independent election commission to run our elections
Speaker 1: instead of putting it in the hands of party leaders.
Speaker 1: All of these things would make our democracy stronger. And again,
Speaker 1: stronger democracies don't experience civil war. And if we if
Speaker 1: our political parties, both of them, both Republicans and the Democrats,
Speaker 1: were willing to reach across racial, ethnic and religious lines,
Speaker 1: that would go a long way. The problem is is
Speaker 1: that we're not seeing really either of those patterns happening.
Speaker 1: And so you know, usually people ask me, Okay, if
Speaker 1: those are hard to do, if those solutions are not
Speaker 1: likely to be implemented in the near term, what can
Speaker 1: we do now? And and my answer is is actually
Speaker 1: that the simplest thing that we can do now the
Speaker 1: biggest bang for our buck will come from a regulating
Speaker 1: social media. The five biggest tech companies in the world
Speaker 1: are all US companies, and one of the things that
Speaker 1: we're beginning to find out is that the algorithms that
Speaker 1: they've developed to keep people engaged with content are disproportionately
Speaker 1: pushing out the most incendiary material, information that tends to
Speaker 1: make people feel threatened and scared and insecure and angry.
Speaker 1: They're selecting out the more extreme material and they're pushing
Speaker 1: it out there. One of the effects that's having is
Speaker 1: not only to increasingly polarize the population, but to increasingly
Speaker 1: fomen ethnic nationalism, ethnic hatred. And again, if here we
Speaker 1: have an industry and a media outlet, the only media
Speaker 1: outlets that are not regulated, we are increasingly seeing that
Speaker 1: they have all sorts of negative societal effects, and to
Speaker 1: date we've done nothing about it. I want to talk
Speaker 1: for a minute about Elon Musk, because right now as
Speaker 1: we tape this, we have Richard Spencer, the Nazis whole
Speaker 1: is hosting a space on Twitter. What do you think
Speaker 1: the consequences of this kind of free speech absolutism. This
Speaker 1: is the most generous way to describe what he's doing
Speaker 1: probably too generous. Explain to us what you think the
Speaker 1: problem here is. I'm going to say something provocative, which
Speaker 1: is I'm less concerned about a neo Nazi going on
Speaker 1: Twitter and writing things are being interviewed, then I am
Speaker 1: about the algorithms that are going to take those interviews
Speaker 1: or take those tweets and push it out to tens
Speaker 1: of millions of Twitter followers. And I think this is
Speaker 1: something that most people don't understand. The tech companies that
Speaker 1: run these social media platforms, their business model is to
Speaker 1: maximize profits, and they maximize profits by keeping people engaged
Speaker 1: on their platforms as long as possible. And they've brought
Speaker 1: in all sorts of social psychologists, They've run all sorts
Speaker 1: of experiments on groups of people to try to figure
Speaker 1: out what keeps people on their devices the longest. And
Speaker 1: and they have discovered that we human beings, because we
Speaker 1: have these sort of you know, old limb big brains
Speaker 1: that have allowed us to survive this long. Those limbig
Speaker 1: brains are very very attuned to anything that could possibly
Speaker 1: be a threat to us. And so when we're in
Speaker 1: you know, a sea of information, our brains will select
Speaker 1: out the more negative material, the material that that makes
Speaker 1: us feel like we we might have to trigger our
Speaker 1: fight or flight response. And it's not the rainbows and butterflies.
Speaker 1: It's not the positive messages, it's not the calming messages.
Speaker 1: And so if if you're Elon Musk or if you're
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg and you basically want people on their phones
Speaker 1: or on their laptops as long as possible, you're going
Speaker 1: to design your algorithms to pick out this type of material,
Speaker 1: whether it's true or not, and in fact, whether it
Speaker 1: has really bad implications for anxiety and depression and teenage
Speaker 1: girls or political violence. And that's exactly what's happening now,
Speaker 1: and it's allowed to happen because there's absolutely no regulation.
Speaker 1: So you know, have this guy Spencer on Twitter, I
Speaker 1: don't care. If algorithms didn't exist, you would actually have
Speaker 1: to search to find him. It would be work to
Speaker 1: find him, right, all right, that's a good point instead
Speaker 1: of just going to your Twitter feed and boom, seeing
Speaker 1: it right there on top and then scrolling down and
Speaker 1: if it's a really popular interview, then seeing it again
Speaker 1: and again and again. Right, that's a good point. And
Speaker 1: you're doing absolutely nothing to find that it's being pushed
Speaker 1: to you. You know, it's the same thing. You know, Amazon,
Speaker 1: you know they've been tweaking this. But but the bible
Speaker 1: of the far right is this book called the Turner Diaries.
Speaker 1: It's a fictitious account of a civil war in the
Speaker 1: United States, essentially a race based war by white supremacists
Speaker 1: to take over the federal government. But it's really a
Speaker 1: primer on and how you would launch a war against
Speaker 1: a powerful government like the United States. Tynothy McVeigh at
Speaker 1: pages of the Turner Diaries in in his pickup truck
Speaker 1: when he bombed the Federal Building Oklahoma City. And if
Speaker 1: you look at videos of January six, one of the
Speaker 1: Proud Boys was was holding up the book when he
Speaker 1: was being interviewed by a journalist and saying, you need
Speaker 1: to read this book. The book talks about how you
Speaker 1: would attack FBI headquarters. It talks about how you would
Speaker 1: attack the US capital. It talks about how you would
Speaker 1: put up a gallows outside the capital so that when
Speaker 1: you arrest quote unquote arrest traitorous government officials, you could
Speaker 1: put them on trial for treason and then hang them
Speaker 1: up on a gallows. It's all there. So in December.
Speaker 1: I went to Amazon to to purchase The Turner Diaries,
Speaker 1: and when I purchased it, it'll you know how Amazon recommends,
Speaker 1: if you like this book, you'll like all these other books. Well,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a who's who of white supremacy mysterial.
Speaker 1: You could buy mind comp by Hitler. You could buy
Speaker 1: deeply anti semitic books. You could buy I mean, the
Speaker 1: whole cornucopia of awful material. Now, Amazon, to its credit,
Speaker 1: right after January six, took The Turner Diaries off its website.
Speaker 1: You want to purchase it there. I wasn't looking for
Speaker 1: ten additional books to tell me how how to wage,
Speaker 1: you know, white supremacy here in the United States. It
Speaker 1: was pushed into my feed and that's the danger of algorithm. Jesus, Barbara,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. I hope he'll come back. I
Speaker 1: would love to Molly and thank you for being interested,
Speaker 1: and thank you for everything you're doing. That that's it
Speaker 1: for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday,
Speaker 1: Wednesday and Friday to your the best minds in politics
Speaker 1: makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what
Speaker 1: you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep
Speaker 1: the conversation going, and again thanks for listening.