July 24, 2025 • 62 mins
Breaking news: The Soviet Union has collapsed! The Berlin Wall has crumbled! Communism has fallen! Capitalism wins! USA! USA!
But wait… what’s this? Russia has been overtaken by oligarchs and an authoritarian dictator. Oh no… Well, at least that could never happen in the United States. Right?
This is the climactic Part Three of our three-part series on the history of the left/right political spectrum.
After the youth protests of the 1960s failed to topple governments, left-wing radicalism shifted its focus—from revolution to championing social equality through pop culture. But as culture wars raged, neoliberalism—liberalism and capitalism’s love child—conquered the globe, fueling deregulation, rising corporate power, and deepening economic divides that hollowed out democracy itself.
Just three decades after the Cold War, the old adversaries—Russia and the U.S.—found themselves on eerily parallel paths, ushering in a new era of oligarchy and a return to right-wing rule—like the one the French Revolution fought against all those years ago.
Join us as we trace how the world drifted from dreams of liberation to authoritarian control—and how a new generation began planting the seeds of liberty and equality once again.
If you’d like to support Human Nature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever you enjoy your podcasts, leave us a review, and visit humannatureodyssey.com.
Join us on Patreon and get exclusive access to audio extras, writings, and notes.
CITATIONS
“Vietnam War.” Encyclopaedia Britannica.
“Vietnam War U.S. Military Fatal Casualty Statistics.” National Archives.
Thatcher, Margaret. Speech to the Conservative Women’s Conference. May 21, 1980.
Wong, Edward. “China’s Black Cat, White Cat Diplomacy.” Foreign Policy, July 10, 2009.
Reagan, Ronald. Speech at Reagan-Bush Rally in Warren, Michigan. October 10, 1984.
“Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. since 1989.” Federal Reserve.
Davidson, Amy. “Exploring Occupy Wall Street’s Adbusters Origins.” NPR, October 20, 2011.
“Youth Voting in 2016 Primaries and Caucuses.” CIRCLE, Tufts University.
Kestenbaum, David. “How Shock Therapy Created Russian Oligarchs and Paved the Path for Putin.” NPR, March 22, 2022.
Steele, Jonathan. “How Football Conquered Russia.” The Guardian, July 2, 2003.
Harding, Luke. “Roman Abramovich: The Billionaire Oligarch with a Backstory Shrouded in Secrecy.” The Guardian, March 21, 2022.
Keats, Jonathon. “Design of Dissent.” Forbes, October 28, 2019.
Birnbaum, Michael. “Occupy Wall Street Protests Go Global.” The Washington Post, October 15, 2011.
Jojo Rabbit. 2019. Directed by Taika Waititi.
Music: Celestial Soda Pop
By: Ray Lynch
From the album: Deep Breakfast
Courtesy Ray Lynch Productions © Ⓟ 1984/BMI
All rights reserved.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Hey, how's it going?
Welcome to France.
In the year 1789.
Everyone's got an opinion on the kingthese days.
You know the king. Louis the 16th.
Yeah, I know it's a lot of Louis,
but that'sbecause we've had a lot of kings.
And it's not just us.
There's been kings all over the worldfor thousands of years.
(00:23):
There's been peopleliving under one king or another.
One guy who more or less tellseveryone else what to do.
And hey, I know I'm just a baguette beggarliving off a modest income
in the suburbs of Paris, butit seems to me only natural to have a king
like, you know, like kings.
Well, it's easyto hate the idea of the being a king
(00:45):
when you hate the actual king.
But what if the kingwas a really great guy?
What if the king did everything?
Pretty much how you'd want him to look.
Exactly how you'd want him to.
What if the his top prioritieswere your top priorities,
and he was going to take care of themright away?
Doesn't sound so bad after all,
(01:08):
Nowadays,
peoplearound town are calling the king a tyrant.
But hey, what's so wrong with a tyrant?
It's like a stern father.
My pops always told methis house is not a democracy.
You know, I was a rambunctious little lad.
Always spoke my mind.
Papa would give me the old strapand get me back in line.
(01:30):
And I didn't turn out too shabby.
The king is like a disciplinary fatherfor the whole country.
And I don't see any problem with that.
Do you?
I see you're thinking.
But what if you're stuck with a kingyou don't like?
Well, just swap him out for a king.
You do like you know, performa little coup de.
(01:52):
A quick little royal overhaul,maybe a bit of poison here,
a minor beheading there.
And install the king.
You've always dreamed of.
It's a perfect system.
Well, unless someone else doesn'tlike the new king you picked.
And they performed their own royaloverhaul,
staged their ownlittle violent coup and boom.
Just like that, you're backto another king you don't like.
(02:14):
That does happen.
Guess you gottajust do another coup again.
No, I know I'm no dummy.This is ridiculous.
And it was violence.
Okay, okay, let's simplify things.
How about the next kingwill be this current king's son.
And the conversation will call it
a holy mandate from heaven.
(02:34):
And hey, I bet the king's soncertainly thinks that's a good idea.
Keep it in the family.
It's like a mom and pop family business.
Some families own a laundromat.
Some families owned a kingdom.
But geez, I
gotta say, some of these sonsend up being real duds.
Louis the 16th ain't nothing like Louisthe 14th.
(02:56):
Is it just me, or is Louis the 16th?
The current king of France?
Just not up to the task.
Oh, wow.
It is not just me.
Whoa! Did they just. Oh, Holy crap.
Did they just.
Did they just kill the old King Louis?
Oh, man. Oh, man.
(03:16):
It's been a while since we had a kingkilling.
Oh, jeez.
Back to the drawing board, I guess.
Who's going to king it up next?
Oh. All right,the calling a National Assembly.
Not sure what the heck that is, butmy landlord asked me to go in his place.
Sounds important.I should probably go to this thing.
(03:41):
This place is packed.
The clergy here? Yup.
Aristocracy. Hey, guys.
Oh, they even want other commoners in.
At least it's the wealthier ones.
Come on. There's barely any seats left.
Okay, I'll just sit on the leftside of the hall over here.
This is this chair.
Wobbly.
(04:01):
Hey, how's it going?
Bonjour, monsieur. Je m'appelle Jack.
Hey, Jack. Nice to meet you.
Oh, thanks. Yeah. Yeah,I've a swig of that.
So, who do you thinkthe next king should be? Who?
What?
No, I do not thinkthere should be a king at all.
I believe France should be a democracy.
(04:22):
A what?
Welcome to human nature, Odyssey.
In this three part series, we'reexploring the history of the left right
political spectrumand the 250 year struggle for democracy.
(04:44):
This is part three. I'm Alex Smith.
So this
is part three in our three part series
(05:07):
on the ideologiesthat shaped our modern world system.
If you haven't listened to part one orpart two, hey, that's fine, that's fine.
I'm not here to judge. How about this?
I'll give you a quick summary,and then we'll.
I'll be up to speed.
As you may recall,
at the onset of the French Revolutionin 1789,
(05:28):
a national assembly was assembled.
Those in favor of keeping the monarchy seton the literal right wing of the hall,
and those in favor of democracysat on the left wing.
And that's where we get the whole leftwing, right wing thing.
We often think of the political spectrumas a binary
between these two poles, the leftand the right.
(05:52):
But sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein,who we've discussed in previous episodes,
suggests politicssince the French Revolution
haven't been shaped just by two poles,
but three separate ideologies.
The right, the left.
And a third thing
(06:12):
a political triad rather than a binary.
First, let's talk about the right,
which since the early 1800shas also been known
as conservatism.
Generally speaking, rightwing conservatism believes
that traditional values, social hierarchy,
and strong authority bring prosperity,keep people
(06:35):
safe, and help society run smoothly.
Then there's the left, which originally
was also known as radicalism.
Now, in this historical context,as we've talked about
before, radicalism doesn't mean extremism.
Every ideology can be more extremeor more moderate.
(06:58):
Flexible or rigid.
The reason radicalismwas originally called radicalism
was because the word radical comes
from the Latin radix, which means root,
and the left wing radicals wanted rootlevel changes.
What kind of root level changes?
Well, leftwing radicalism also,generally speaking,
(07:22):
believes that social and economic equalityare the best way to bring prosperity,
keep people safe and help societyrun smoothly.
So that's the right wingand the left wing.
But there's another wing or,
thing ideology.
It's liberalism.
(07:44):
Liberalism is different from the rightwing or left wing.
Sometimes people call it the center,
but I think that actually just confusesthings.
Liberalism isn't just the middle groundbetween the right in the left.
It's its own ideologywith its own beliefs.
What beliefs?
Well, liberalism again, generallyspeaking, believes in individual freedom
(08:06):
laws that apply to everyone and a societybased on merit, not bloodlines.
The best way to accomplish that,most liberals agree,
is by letting the market decidewho contributes the most value to society,
and then let those people risethrough the ranks.
Therefore, capitalism,which also relies on the markets,
(08:28):
became Liberalism's best friend.
Individual freedom.
Universal laws and merit.
Liberalism believesthat's the best way to bring prosperity,
keep people safe andhelp society run smoothly.
Well,
you're tellingme that all three ideologies conservatism,
radicalism and liberalism want safety,prosperity and a well-functioning society?
(08:53):
Oh well, then today we should all gettogether and work on this sometime.
Maybe we could even get on.
But these three ideologies,three perspectives,
three strategies have been competingfor the last two and a half centuries
to implement their visionon creating a better society.
Now, if you're thinking to yourself,this guy's got it all wrong.
(09:15):
What? That? What the heck is he talkingabout? Three ideology.
These liberal, conservative and radicals.
That's not how I would explain it.
Well, that makes sense for somethingas widespread and personal as politics.
We all have our own associationsand definitions for these common terms.
I get it.
I'm proposing this political triadframework as one among many.
(09:38):
Not necessarily better,
but hopefully illuminating some thingsother frameworks can't.
And of course,
this framework is by necessity simplistic.
These ideologies are not monoliths.
Conservativescan disagree with conservatives.
Radicals can be at oddswith other radicals.
In fact, they often are.
(10:00):
Reality is always messierand more complicated.
This framework is just a map.
Really. A good map can help us navigate.
But it's not the real territory,just symbols.
And if you don't take your
eyes off the map from time to timeand look where you actually are,
you might fall down a manholeor drive into a lake.
(10:21):
That being said, it's easyto get lost without a map.
And if we're trying to tell the storyof the last 250 year long struggle
for democracy, this three ideology map
may illuminate some details and nuance.
Other maps can't.
Okay, so
we're two thirds of the waythrough our story.
(10:42):
In part one,we watched as the ideals of the French
Revolutionspread like wildfire across Europe.
In 1848, most countries in Europewere ablaze in revolution,
with liberals and radicals teaming upto overthrow the conservative monarchies.
But when liberals felt radicals were goingtoo far,
(11:02):
liberals joined with conservativesto reinstall the right wing monarchies
and the revolution's smolder liberalism,
which again, wasn't left or right, butits own ideology, found a few countries
where their ideal form of governmentcould take hold on its own.
The United States that up and comingnew nation across the ocean
(11:25):
demonstratedwhat a liberal democracy could look like,
even if only a segment of the populationwas initially allowed to participate.
And for much of American history,
the actual right wing, like the rightwing of the French National Assembly
and the actual left wing, what wesometimes may call like the far right
and the far left,were only marginally influential.
(11:49):
Most of American history is a history
of what we're calling liberals.
By the end of the 1800s,the United Kingdom, France
and the Netherlands had adoptedversions of liberalism
as well.
Various forms of left wing radicalism
(12:11):
like communism, socialism and anarchism
were pushed underground,mostly organizing in secret.
That was until World War one.
In 1917, there was a revolution in Russia.
Well, actually there were two.
And by the end, Vladimir Lenin's left
wing radical Bolshevik Party seized power
(12:32):
and within a few yearsformed the Soviet Union.
Left wing radicalismin the form of Soviet style communism
finally had its own governmentto implement its ideals.
World War One ended in 1919,
and as a result,many conservative monarchies either
(12:53):
collapsed or had their powergreatly reduced.
But those who longed for a returnto the more traditional, strong, top down
authority of the monarchies rallied arounda new expression of right wing ideology
fascism.
Like we talked about in the last episode,
fascism is kind oflike first gen monarchy,
(13:16):
same dictatorial power, emphasis on
hierarchy and conservative social values.
Just without the long historyto back it up.
Then came World War two.
The liberal countriesallied with the radical Soviet Union,
and ultimately the allies, defeatedthe right wing regimes.
(13:37):
After the wars global devastation.
Two superpowers emerged.
The United States,where liberalism reigned,
and the Soviet Union,where left wing radicalism reigned.
Liberalism and radicalism.
Temporary allianceto fight right wing fascism was over.
(13:59):
Since a direct war between
the US and Soviet Union would riskglobal nuclear annihilation.
These two superpowers fought each otherindirectly, often
by supporting their ideological alliesin local civil wars like in Vietnam.
Before long, the Soviet Unionseemed to abandon its radical principles
(14:21):
and ended up looking an awful lotlike an authoritarian state.
And the United States, with its violentmeddling in other countries
democracies and crackdownsagainst its own social movements,
wasn't really living up to its idealsof freedom and democracy.
By the 1960s, a new generationprotested the hypocrisy of both liberal
(14:42):
and radical governments for abandoningthe principles of freedom, democracy,
or the equalitythey claim to be committed to.
And that's where we left off.
(15:11):
Have you ever seen a movie by TaikaWaititi?
His 2019 satirical film Jojo Rabbit?
Well, in that movie,we follow a boy named Jojo
who's a member of the HitlerYouth during World War two.
Jojo has been fully indoctrinatedinto the Nazi Party,
(15:31):
and he frequently talks with his imaginarybest friend,
who is a goofy version of Adolf Hitler.
Actually played by director Taika Waititi.
It's pretty ridiculous, butwhen Jojo finds a Jewish girl named Elsa
hiding in his attic, his entire worldviewis thrown into question.
(15:53):
He actually likes this Jewish girl,even though he's been
brought up to hate her,but she can't be friends with her.
He's a Nazi, but Elsa is a few yearsolder than Jojo and a lot wiser.
She tells him, quote,you're not a Nazi, Jojo.
You're a ten year old kidwho likes dressing up in a funny uniform
(16:14):
and wants to be part of a club.
People are not their ideology.
People are people.
People can wear ideologylike a funny uniform,
and they can change the clothes they wear.
So when wetalk about the three ideologies, liberals,
conservatives and radicalsknow that we're talking about people
(16:36):
whose opinions and perspectiveshave been shaped by the world around them.
No matter what we think of their ideology,we can learn a lot more
by always seeing their humanity.
If we want to curse or condemn anyone,
it's the ideological godswho are to blame the gods.
(16:57):
Oh don't worry,we'll hear from them again in a bit.
Okay,
so finally we can continue partthree of this story.
Where were we?
Oh, yeah.
1960s youth protests.
(17:19):
Got it.
The youth protests of the 1960s,
along with the social movementsof its time, could be considered
part of the left wing radical tradition,which originally called
for a total restructuring of societyaround
social and economic equality.
And by the 1960s.
(17:40):
The word radical was no longer really
used to referto the left wing ideology anymore.
It was religious meaning extremism.
So for the sake of clarity,I'm going to refer
to left wing radicalismas simply the left.
From here on out.
But in the 1960s, whilethe left didn't topple any governments,
(18:02):
it foundit could shift the system from within
through various social movementslike the anti-war protests,
civil rights movement,second wave feminism,
the gay rights movement,and in the United States,
the terms left wing and the liberal wereand are often used interchangeably.
(18:23):
But this isn't the casein many similar countries and borders.
An important distinction.
Remember, using our three ideology map,
we can see the left and liberalism
are separate ideologieswith their own goals and perspectives.
The left was focused on equality.
Liberalismbecame increasingly focused on capitalism,
(18:45):
and here's why that distinction matters.
After the 1960s, the left learnedit was much easier to win
fights for social equality,like civil rights or gay rights,
than it was to winfights for economic equality.
Social change could fit into capitalism.
Economic change cannot.
(19:08):
In the U.S., the left found that
if it couldn'thold economic or political power,
it could at least shape the culturerather than toppling governments.
Activistsfocused on changing people's minds
through art, education and pop culture.
This long, peaceful campaign
(19:29):
came to be called, ironically,the culture Wars.
Culture wars are not fought with bullets,but with cool.
And in many ways, this was a battle.
The left was actually winning.
Now this wasn't organized by some top downstrategy.
It unfoldedgradually through a decentralized
(19:50):
nonhierarchical movementover the course of decades,
and by the time I was growingup, in the 1990s and early 2000,
the classic left wing ideals of equalityand inclusion
were pretty much the cultural norm.
Posters on our classroomwalls promoted multiracial diversity.
(20:11):
You know, the ones with all the differentcolored hands reaching across the globe.
Star Wars, which had only become moreculturally influential since its release
in the 1970s, portrayedauthoritarian empire as the ultimate evil.
The once controversial leftwing radical Martin Luther
King Jr had become universally revered.
(20:32):
It seemed to me that outright sexismand racism, though of course
still prevalent, were not generally taughtas cool or to be admired.
But while the left
defined cultural corein the United States, liberalism
still dominated its government,the politicians and its policies.
Oh, and here's something crucialto remember
(20:55):
what Americanscall liberal and conservative.
The left and the right were essentiallyjust different shades of liberalism.
That means support for free markets,
individual freedoms,and a constitutional government.
Democrats and Republicans alikehave generally
upheld these core ideals of liberalism.
(21:16):
So if you're someonewho identifies as a conservative
because you support free marketsand individual
freedoms, well,I'm saying that within this framework,
we can consider that still a partof the ideology of liberalism.
Maybe we can call itconservative liberalism.
Liberalism and the left wing
(21:38):
started this interesting dance.
Liberalism continued to arguethat free market capitalism
was simply the most effectiveeconomic system.
So while advocating for the left's
economic equality,it was a no go for liberalism.
Liberalism could stomach the leftwing's cultural influence
(22:00):
if the left was willing to acceptcapitalism.
In fact, liberalismfound that plenty of the left
wing's cultural changesworked in capitalism's favor.
Like, for instance, you know what?
Diversity isn't so bad after all.
Yeah, we can sell all sorts of products
to the groupswe used to pretend didn't exist.
(22:21):
On Pride Month, our rainbow flagsales will be through the roof.
And it turned out
capitalism was totally fine with youcriticizing capitalism, too.
Yeah. Go ahead, protest me. It'll be fun.
I have some anti-capitalist shirtsyou can buy.
While authoritarianism resisted change,
(22:41):
capitalism co-opted it.
And compared to communism, by the late20th century,
capitalism was looking pretty dang good.
Rememberthe Vietnam War back in the 1960s?
The United States had spent over $1trillion
in today's moneyfighting communism in Vietnam.
(23:03):
Nearly 60,000 Americans
and over a million Vietnamese soldiersand civilians were killed.
But the United States,with all its military might,
could not defeat communism in Vietnam.
When the U.S.
withdrew in 1973, communistssoon took control
(23:24):
and named the countrythe Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
But by the 1980s,
Vietnam was strugglingwith serious economic challenges.
Decades of warand international isolation had left
Vietnam's economypainfully slow to recover.
The Vietnamese government system,essentially planned
(23:47):
economy modeled after Soviet communism,only made things harder,
eventually pushing Vietnam to embrace
private enterprise and foreign investment.
After all that, communism in Vietnam
wasn't defeated by military force,but by economic pressure.
In 1980,
(24:07):
British Prime Minister MargaretThatcher famously said of capitalism's
mix with liberalism, quote,there is no alternative.
And when the Soviet Union
finally fell in 1991
and the brand new Russian Federationembraced capitalism,
(24:27):
it seemed MargaretThatcher might be right.
So the Soviet Union fell.
(24:47):
And just like that, the Cold War
was over to many people around the world.
Capitalism appearedundeniably more efficient and stable,
promising greater prosperityfor more people
down shopping.
Leader of the Communist Partyin China had helped reform
China's economy to allow more freemarket policies.
(25:11):
Dong quoted an old Chinese proverbthat says, quote,
it doesn't matterwhether a cat is black or white.
If it catches mice, it is a good cat.
Capitalismseemed to work better than communism,
and that was good enough for China.
And in South Africa, Nelson Mandela'sAfrican
National Congress had longbeen closely aligned with communism.
(25:35):
But when Mandela was released from prison
and elected president in 1994,
he too found himself pressuredinto embracing capitalism.
With communism in decline around the world
and capitalismseen as the only functioning model.
Even leaders who once imagineddifferent futures faced enormous pressure
(25:57):
to stick to the dominantcapitalist system.
Remember those ideological godsfrom the last episode?
Well, at this point in history,we can imagine the God of liberalism
was feeling pretty dang good.
So, right wing conservatism.
You haven't really beena global superpower since World War two
(26:19):
and left wing radicalism.
Ever since the Soviet Union collapsed.
You lost your superpower as well.
Since, let's face it,your system didn't work.
Your people couldn't even get reliablecars, let alone enough food to eat.
Well, actually, this is radicalism.
Talking in Scandinavian countries.
They use a mix of capitalismand socialism.
(26:43):
And again, back to liberalism.
Shut up, shut up.
That's not radicalism.
Sure it is. Left wing economics.
Strong social safety net.
Doesn't sound so radical.
This is the god of conservatism.
That sounds pragmatic.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Radicalism doesn't mean extremism.
It means social and economic equality.
(27:04):
Haven't you been listening to the podcast?
Listen. Scandinavia.
Scandinavia.
That's just a model. Social experiments.
Looks like I'm the last one standing.
And you know how I did it.
You want to know howI kicked your guys asses?
I owe it all to capitalism.
Give me thatfree market and private enterprise.
(27:25):
I love you some capitalism.
In fact,I'd like to announce it right now.
Me and capitalism.
We're getting married.
Yep. And I'm changing my name.
I would like to nowbe known as neoliberalism.
Oh, great.
What a cool name. Shut up! Commie!
(27:46):
Why don't you go back to the Soviet Unionif you hate capitalism so much?
Oh, wait.
You can't.
The Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore.
And how's Communist China doing?
I hear they're becoming capitalisticthese days.
Man, would you let it go?
The Soviet Union and China don't have amonopoly on what it means to be left wing.
(28:07):
Oh, hey. Radicalism.
You know what neoliberalism is going to donext?
What?
Oh, I don't know the exactopposite of whatever the Soviet Union did.
The Soviet Uniontried to control its market,
suffocating itwith authoritarian policies.
But me, neo liberalismand the ideology of freedom, man.
That's what I'm all about.
(28:27):
Private enterprisesgot to be free to do its thing.
The government'sgot to get out of the way.
And I know the United States, the world'shegemonic superpower.
My knight in shining armor.
They understand me. Right, guys?
In the 1980s, US President Ronald Reagan,
one of the patron saintsof neo liberalism, like to say, quote,
(28:51):
that government is best,which governs least.
And I really cannot do a Reaganimpression.
Basically, he was saying
there are all these regulations out therethat are just holding business back.
So Reagan set about cutting regulations.
And as a result, the stock market soared.
Some people made a lot of money.
(29:12):
But for most of the country, wagesstagnated and public services were cut.
But don't worry, Reagan said.
We gotta let businessesmake as much money as possible
so their wealth can trickle down.
I mean, who wouldn'twant to be trickled on?
Oh, and we need free trade.
We gotta make sure goods and services
(29:33):
can move freely across borders.
Democratic president Bill Clinton agreed.
And by the 1990s,both major US parties, Democrats
and Republicans, were fully on boardwith neo liberalism.
Different parties,same neo liberal ideology.
So in the 1990s, Clinton passedsome free trade agreements
(29:56):
with other countries, which sped upthe rise of multinational corporations.
Those corporationsrelocated their production to whatever
countries had the fewest regulationsand the cheapest labor.
This was great for CEOs and shareholders,
but it wasn't that great for workerswhose jobs got shipped overseas.
(30:17):
Then, in the 2000s, Republican PresidentGeorge
W Bush picked up neoliberalismwhere Reagan and Clinton left off.
All right, guys,just a few more trade agreements to sign.
Oh, gotta cut these taxesfor high income earners.
I'm sure that wealthwill start trickling down at a time now.
And what's this? Hey, guys.
(30:38):
I found some regulations you missed.
Don't worry,don't worry. I got it. Lesson.
Reagan, Clinton and Bush
were all true believers of neoliberalism.
Of course, it didn't hurt thattheir corporate donors and lobbyists
were fans of neoliberalism as well.
(30:58):
Man, these US presidents are geniuses.
This is so great.
Now companies can finally be freeto make as much money as humanly possible.
Liberalism.
Check out all these housing loansbanks are offering.
Liberalism.Do you see these interest rates?
The banks are gonna make a fortune.
Liberalism.
(31:18):
What?
In 2007,the housing bubble began to burst.
Which is such a fun, childlike metaphor
for a very serious adult disaster.
One of the largest investmentbanks went bankrupt.
With ripple effects around the world.
No, no, no.
(31:39):
My beautiful stock market.
People lost their jobs.
Families lost their homes.
The entire global capitalisteconomy went into what would be called
the Great Recession.
And in 2008,
Democratic President BarackObama was elected
and despite being called a leftistcommunist radical by his Republican
(32:03):
opponents, Obama's economic policies
were very similar to his predecessors.
Neoliberal is apple pie.
The Obama administrationimplemented the bailout
that the George W Bushadministration had proposed.
This wasn't a bailoutfor the average person.
It was a bailoutfor the same financial institution
(32:24):
that caused the recessionin the first place.
While this averted a more seriouseconomic collapse,
most Americans still felt the effectsof the recession for years,
even after Obama's stimulus packagefor the middle class
a year later, the recovery was slow.
By the 20 tens, the top
(32:45):
1% of the country's population
held over a third of the wealth.
Wow. Liberalism.
Are you happy now?
Wasn't free market capitalism supposedto make the world better for everyone?
(33:06):
All this wealth inequality reminds me alittle bit of France under Louis the 16th.
Pretty ironic.
What did you say? Liberalism.
In part one of this series.
We talked about how in 1848, in Palermo,Sicily, a radical prankster
put up fliers that said, tomorrowthere will be a revolution.
(33:29):
And that helped sparkthe revolutions of 1848.
Well, in the summer of 2011,
the radical magazine Adbustersput out a provocative flier
that read hashtag Occupy Wall Street,September 17th.
Bring ten.
Now, just a day before,if you asked almost anyone,
(33:52):
they would have dismissed thisas some sort of performance art.
But on September 17th, over
1000 people actually showed up to occupya public square near Wall Street,
the US financial capital in New York.
The movement was soon called OccupyWall Street.
(34:12):
There wasn't one leader, and peopleparticipated for a wide range of reasons,
but a major rallying crywas to protest wealth inequality.
Occupy took inspirationfrom the pro-democracy mass protests
of the short lived Arab Spring earlierthat year, when millions of people
across the Middle East and North Africaprotested their authoritarian governments.
(34:36):
Within a month, there were over900 occupy protests in over 80 countries.
I had just graduated high school
and was working on a conservation corpsin the Pacific Northwest.
We only got occasional news about it allwhen we'd head into town
once every other weekand catch a glimpse of the newspaper.
I remember being eager to seewhat it was all about when I got back home
(35:01):
to work
for. The.
But I read how protesters were met
with riot police and tear gas canisters.
Cities brought in bulldozersto clear the demonstrations.
By the time I returned from the woodsjust a few months later,
(35:22):
the occupations had mostly cometo a snuffed out end.
Occupy did not fix wealth inequalityor dismantle capitalism,
but it did bring the classiceconomic left wing
critiquesthat had been sidelined for so long.
Back from the politicalfringes into the mainstream.
(35:43):
So duringthe 2016 US presidential campaign
for the Democratic nomination,a grumpy old senator with unkempt
white hair named Bernie Sandersshocked the country with his overwhelming
popularity with young peopleamong 18 to 29 year olds.
He won 60 to 80% of the vote,depending on the state.
(36:05):
Bernie's politics, unlike almostevery other major presidential candidate
for over half a century,came from the actual left wing.
But rather than calling
for a completely new systemas traditional radicalism would,
he pushed for reforms from withinthrough peaceful and democratic means.
So does this make him a liberalor radical?
(36:28):
Well, somewhere in between.
While communism seeks collectiveor state control, the market
and neoliberalism promotesderegulation and privatization.
Bernie advocated for a kind of balance
encouraging a competitive free market.
But with strong regulations,higher taxes on the wealthy,
and expanding social programslike health care,
(36:51):
education,affordable housing, and social security.
He called this democratic socialism
in other countries.
This is usually called social democracy.
And versions of it have been in placesince the post-World War II era in
countrieslike Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany,
Canada, New Zealand and Uruguay.
(37:13):
These kinds of policieseven once had a home in the United States.
Spoil it or not.
Through Franklin Delano Roosevelt'sNew Deal, which significantly expanded
government programs to help Americansrecover from the Great Depression,
while many older Americans were usedto socialism being associated with Soviet
Union authoritarianism, a new generationwas free of that Cold War baggage.
(37:38):
And though Bernie Sanderslost in the Democratic primary,
it was the closestthe left wing had come to real power
in the United States for decades.
But Bernie Sanders neoliberal Democratic
opponent, Hillary Clinton,didn't win that election either.
Someone else did.
But before we get to that,let's check in on the US's old
(38:02):
Cold War rival, Russia,and see what they've been up to.
At one
time,Russia had been the last place in Europe
you'd have expecteda communist revolution.
And at the height of the Soviet Union,it was the last place
you'd have expected capitalism before us.
But Russia likes to surprise you.
(38:24):
By the late 1980s.
The Soviet Union'seconomy was seriously struggling.
So it began gradually allowing peopleto open small scale businesses
for the very first time.
You know,just a touch of private enterprise,
a little dash of the free market.
But when the Soviet Union collapsedin 1991, Russia's new leader,
(38:47):
Boris Yeltsin, decided what Russia needed
was some of its own neoliberalism.
He called it shock therapy.
Capitalist from the old Sovietrun industries
like manufacturing, mining, the media.
All of a sudden were soldto the highest bidder.
It was like Russia was having an estatesale for the now dead Soviet Union.
(39:11):
Russia even brought in Western advisersto help show them how to do capitalism.
Oh thank God
Russia is finally a capitalist country.
Nothing strengthens democracylike capitalism.
This is amazing.
Russia will finally be free.
Yah yah yah!
And now that Russia is capitalist,
(39:32):
it can finally have its own rags to richesstory.
And boy, did it.
Here's one of them.
Poor little Roman Abramovich,
born in 1966,orphaned at the age of three,
grew up in the howling coldof northern Russia.
(39:53):
By the time Abramovich was a young man,
the Soviet Union had started allowingpeople to open their own small businesses.
So he started selling rubberduckies out of his apartment.
It was an honest living.
This is a true story, by the way.
When communism collapsed.
Abramovich graduated from Ducky'sto bigger and better,
(40:14):
but less fun and whimsical thingslike oil, aluminum and airplanes.
And when Russia started auctioning offits old state run industries,
he bought them a lot of them.
He soon becameone of the wealthiest men in the country.
He bought his fair share of sportscars, a couple of super yachts,
(40:34):
the UK's Chelsea soccer team, a 15 bedroommansion and penthouse
suites around the world, and then spenthundreds of millions of dollars
worth of his own money to be electedgovernor of Russia's Chicago region.
But not every Russian was so fortunate.
Basic food pricessoared and many won hungry.
(40:55):
But this wasn't communism anymore.
This is the free market, babyyou want to eat.
You got to compete.
And Abramovichand his fellow extremely rich businessmen
were winning the competition.
They own the news.
They bribed, I mean, influencedpoliticians to pass the laws they wanted.
And like Abramovich,many became politicians themselves.
(41:17):
Soon, a lot of people argued that
Russia wasn't really a democracy,but an oligarchy.
A government run by the wealthy.
Let's check inhow liberalism is doing with all this.
Damn.
So does neoliberalisminevitably accumulate wealth
in fewer and fewer hands that controlmore and more of the government
(41:40):
until democracy is completely eroded.
Oh, that's such a bummer,because I always like to think of myself
as the ideal ideologyof democracy conservatism.
Whether you were monotheism or fascism,you were openly authoritarian.
So what? And radicalism.
I know you said you didn't
(42:01):
want to become authoritarian,but the Soviet Union certainly was.
Yeah.
But it turns out I can become authoritarian, too,
that capitalism without limits doesn'tlead to more democracy, but to oligarchy.
Man, I was so focused on the governmentnot being authoritarian
(42:21):
that I didn't realize that the wealthycould become authoritarian
through their wealthand end up buying the government.
I tried to warn you.
When a system prioritizesaccumulating more wealth for the wealthy,
eroding the social safety net, shippingjobs overseas,
or exploiting workers at home,the masses suffer.
And when populations become desperate,strong leaders become more popular.
(42:44):
When Boris
Yeltsin resigned, Russiansturned to this charming bald guy
named Vladimir Putin,an elected and president in 2000.
You know, I'm like this Putin guy
who stands up for traditional values,not all those radical ones.
What?
Have you seen that pic with himriding a horse without a shirt on?
Pretty manly.
Putin promised to restore Russia's economyand stand up to the oligarchy.
(43:08):
But in reality,he worked with it, punishing oligarchs
who opposed himand rewarding those who were loyal.
Initially, Putin was only allowed to bepresident for a maximum of eight years,
but with help from his trusty oligarchs,eight years
turned to 1414 turned to 25.
And just like that. Oops.
(43:30):
If Putin keeps this up,
he'll be in power as long as VladimirLenin and Joseph Stalin combined.
Also, isn't it a weird coincidencethat his critics and political opponents
keep dying a poison fallingout of windows, or being sent to prison?
Neoliberal oligarchy, as it turned out,
was actually the perfect breeding groundfor right wing authoritarianism,
(43:55):
mirroringthe relationship between the monarchs
and aristocraticnobility of old liberalism.
You're okay then?
Then that means, oh, God,we got to tell the United States.
Those guys love neo liberalism.
(44:16):
In the United States.
By the late 20 tens and early 2020s, whilethe left wing was gaining
some modest political momentumin its critique of capitalism,
the real right wing, the kindthat would have sat on the right wing
of the old French National Assembly,started gaining traction
with an almost similar critiqueto left wing radicalism.
(44:37):
But using different wordsinstead of railing against the 1%,
the right wingresurgence blamed coastal elites.
Instead of saying they opposed free trade,
they said they were for economicnationalism.
Instead of denouncing neoliberalism,
the right wing denounced globalism,while the left shared memes like eat
(45:00):
the Rich, the right chanteddrain the Swamp, calling out a corrupt,
self-serving establishmentthat had betrayed the country.
Kind of sounds like the leftwing view doesn't.
But this wasn'tjust a difference in rhetoric.
You say tomato, I say tomato.
This was a crucial ideologicaldifference in priorities.
(45:31):
In the right's view.
The real problem with societywasn't economic injustice.
It was the left wing's cultural influence.
You know, multicultural ism, feminism,
all that LGBT and Black Lives Matterstuff.
Christianitybeing less culturally dominant.
These things weren'tsigns of social progress,
(45:51):
but symptoms of a countrylosing the identity.
The right wing believes is best.
Those drawn to right wing conservatismdidn't want to dismantle hierarchy.
They wanted to reshape it.
To them,the problem wasn't inequality itself,
but who was on top?
(46:12):
Putin reshaped
Russia's oligarchy to serve his rule.
But the American right wingfound a shortcut.
Instead of reshaping the oligarchy,they elected one of its members,
a billionaire who campaigned on fightingthe elites and to help fight those elites.
The American billionairefilled his new administration
(46:34):
with some of the wealthiestpeople on the planet.
Now to the left wing.
This might seem like a contradiction.
But to the right wing,this makes perfect sense.
Of course, the richestand most powerful men should rule.
Who else could stand up to the otherrich and powerful men?
And this new billionaire candidatewasn't just any rich and powerful man.
(46:55):
He spoke on behalf of right wingconservatism,
cultural values as well.
And you know what?
I like to think I'm an open minded guy.
Maybe a billionaire presidentand a handful of oligarchs
are the best peopleto represent the common folk.
King Louis the 16th and Czar Nicholasthe Second thought
they were the best guysfor the job as well.
(47:21):
The reemergence of the right wingis a global pattern
seen in many countries,from the United States to Russia, China,
India, the Philippines, Brazil,Hungary, Saudi Arabia, Israel.
Right wing leaders and movementshave gained increasing political power,
often challenging democratic checksand balances and individual freedom.
(47:45):
Capitalism has rapidly industrializedmuch of the world,
destabilizing local economies,
increasing migration of populations,
bringing cultural change,not to mention climate change.
Many people feel anxiousabout these changes.
They want safety, securityand what's familiar.
(48:06):
A right wing conservatism answersthese concerns.
Many people are fed up with governmentsthat don't seem to work
for the average person.
So in response, rather than blaming
money and politicsfor corruption dysfunction,
the right wing views democracy'schecks and balances
(48:26):
as obstacles to efficiency, barriersthat need to be dismantled.
And as people feel more desperate,
many grow wary of newcomers and minorities
to address worriesthat there's not enough to go around.
The right wing promises to prioritizethe people who
they believe belongand push out those who don't.
(48:49):
And in responseto all the social change of recent years,
the right wing promisesa return to more traditional values.
It's a vision of a familiarand more secure world.
It's clear that these
are very real,tangible fears and anxieties.
(49:09):
But do these proposed fixes
actually address the underlying problems?
Another commonthread of the return of the right wing
is nationalism and ideologyin and of itself.
That couldand should be a whole other episode.
But a key part of nationalismis the belief that a country
(49:30):
should act only for its own interest.
That's why you hear sloganslike America First,
screw this whole global villagecooperation thing.
I'm going to only care about my country.
Essentially, it's individualismfor countries.
And, you know, I think individualismcan be a beautiful thing.
(49:52):
Thinking for yourself.
Marching to the beat of your own drummer.
It's an important wayto resist authoritarianism.
And the individualistic impulse iswhat makes humanity so diverse.
And I think there's wisdomin prioritizing yourself.
That's why the
airplane pilot reminds youto put your oxygen mask on first.
(50:12):
How else will you then help someone else
to breathe as freely as you do?
Nationalism.
Often tells us we need to choosebetween protecting ourselves
and protecting our neighbor.
But it seems to me my family is much saferwhen my neighbor is
well fed and taking care ofwhen people are desperate.
(50:34):
They're the most dangerous in that sense.
Equality isn't just about being moral.
It's about being pragmatic.
During the 2024
US presidential campaign, the right wingbillionaire and now former president
ran for reelection four yearsafter losing his bid for a second term.
(50:57):
During that campaign, conservativecommentator Tucker Carlson
spoke at a rally about the dangersof unruly left wing radicalism
and how he believed a properleader should deal with it.
I'll let Tucker
speak for himselfif you allow people to get away
with things that are completelyover the top and outrageous.
(51:20):
If you allow your two year old to smear
the contents of his diaperson the wall of your living room,
and you do nothing about it,if you allow your 14 year
old to lie to join at the breakfast table.
If you allow your hormone addled 15 yearold daughter to, like,
slam the door of her bedroomand give you the finger,
you're going to get more of it.
And those kidsare going to wind up in rehab.
(51:41):
It's not good for you,and it's not good for them. No,
there has to be a pointat which dad comes home.
Yeah.
That's right.
Dad comes home.
(52:04):
And he's passed.
Dad is pissed.
He's not vengeful.
He loves his children, disobedientas they may be.
He loves thembecause they're his children.
They live in his house,
but he's very disappointedin their behavior.
And he's going to have to let them know.
(52:26):
He's goingto have to get to your room right now
and think about what you did.
And when dad gets home,you know what he says.
You've been a bad girl.
You've been a bad little girl, and you'regetting a vigorous spanking right now.
And no, it's not going to hurt memore than it hurts you.
No. It's not. I'm not going to lie.
(52:48):
It's going to hurt youa lot more than it hurts me.
And you earned this.
You're getting a
vigorous spankingbecause you've been a bad girl.
And it has to be this way.
It has to be this way because it's true.
And you're only going to get better whenyou take responsibility for what you did.
(53:08):
That's not set in the spirit of hate.
It's not set in the spirit of vengeanceor bigotry.
Far from it.
It's set in the spirit of justice,which is the purest and best thing
there is.
And without it, things fall apart.
(53:46):
Oh, man.
Anyone else get goosebumps?
This guy should have spokenat the National Assembly.
Exactly.
He's so right.
That's the kind of leader society needs.
Not someone bound by checks and balances,restrained by laws
that commoners have to follow.
But a strongman, a dictator, a king.
(54:06):
Right wing conservatism is back, baby.
And now
here we are, right in the present moment.
If you listen closely,you can still hear those gods going at it
up in the ideological heavens.
But I think we've listened to those godsenough.
(54:29):
We now have the vantage point
of 250 years of history.
The future is still foggy,
but hopefully the pastis a little more clear.
Here's what I see from where I'm looking.
(54:52):
Now. After all this,you might be tempted to say, screw it.
Let's just forget all these ideologies.
I don't want to have any ideology.
I get that ideology.
Ideologies come with a lot of limitationsand historical baggage.
But it's important to try and understand
the historical entanglement we're in.
(55:13):
If we're going to try and untangle it.
The ideologies,though, are just one map to go by.
People don't fallneatly into one category,
no matter what flags they race or uniformsthey wear.
Reality is complex.
We can't get so stuck on our side
that we can't recognize the fearand pain and values of others.
(55:38):
Maybe the best
way to chart a path is to be guided
not by ideology, but values.
And if we're really driven by our values,we won't just follow a group
because it claims to representour ideology.
We've got to be wary of groupsthat tell us we've got to be a card
(55:59):
carrying member,or if you disagree with them on one
or 2 or 3 points,then you're against the ideology.
No one persona group can speak for a whole ideology.
The truth is far more interestingthan that.
We have to remember the lessonin Jojo Rabbit.
(56:19):
People are not their ideology.
People are people.
And if that's true, how do we actlike we're all in this together?
Because if we're all in this together,seems to me it makes the most sense.
If everyone has a say,you know, like a democracy.
(56:40):
Democracycan't be about good guys and bad guys.
But how do we create a systemthat works for all people?
Because here's the thing.
Authoritarianism is often describedas the most effective,
because you can just go in one directionand not care what other people think.
But when power is concentratedin one person or even one party,
(57:03):
leaders tend to favor loyalty over merit.
Surround themselves with peoplewho only tell them what they want to hear
and end up with a pretty limited viewof the country they're supposed to govern.
But real effectiveness
effectiveness that lasts and works foreverybody comes from a system
(57:23):
that doesn't viewdissent as an inherent threat,
but actually welcomes feedback,
because that's the only wayyou can self-correct for making errors.
It's not just that freedom of speechis just a nice thing to do.
It's how a system adapts and evolvesbecause any system
(57:43):
is going to have criticism.
Being criticized isn't a bad thing.
It's how you respond to it.
Do you want to spend your
time and energy imprisoning peopleyou disagree with, or find ways
to address people's grievances and needs?
A well-functioning democracyallows for the greatest perspectives,
(58:03):
results, political conflictspeacefully, and
is more adaptable and dynamic.
And in that sense, I would argue
democracy is more effectivethan in the authoritarian system
focused on silencing criticsand staying in power.
And how I see it.
The reason neoliberal democraciesbecame so corrupt and ineffective
(58:27):
wasn't a flaw in democracy itself,
but the result of money's corruption
of the democratic process.
And while the term democracycomes from the ancient Greeks,
the democratic phenomenon itselfstarted long before them.
And existed all over the world, many
(58:48):
indigenous culturesor who Daniel Quinn would call leavers.
In his book Ishmael The Book, the firsteight episodes of this podcast are about
the way those
indigenous levered cultures have oftengoverned, is
based on representative councils,
direct assemblies and consensus building.
Just some versionsof what we might call democracy.
(59:12):
And there are countless waysto do democracy.
Some we've barely begun to imagine.
After all this time,the over two centuries of history
since the French Revolution,it seems like in a way,
we're coming back around.
Some of the most powerful peoplein the world are embracing
(59:33):
authoritarianismas a more effective form of government.
Some, like the increasingly prominentright wing thinker
CurtisIrvin, are openly calling for monarchy.
The kings are back or trying to be.
It's like we've completedsome sort of strange cycle.
But we don't need to be stuck in it.
(59:55):
We can learn from what's happened here.
We maybe even can create a more equal,more free society that works for everyone.
It seems
we've reached a fork in the road,not unlike the one
they debated all the way backduring the French revolutions.
National Assembly.
(01:00:15):
Either we dip back into authoritarianism
or create more resilientforms of democracy.
But what happens next?
That's up to us.
History is a relay race,
and the baton is in our hands now.
We're the ones who will haveto find a better path.
So where do we go from here?
(01:00:40):
Thanks for listening.
This was part three of a three partseries, but the fun doesn't stop here.
Stay tuned for the next episode of HumanNature Odyssey,
where we'll take the lessonsof this political history
and integrate it with the deepercivilizational questions
about our speciesrelationship to the natural world.
(01:01:03):
Until next time,
I hope you'll considerwhat values are most important to you.
How can we work towards a systemeven imagine a system
that holds those valuesand others as well?
What lessons can be learned from thepolitical history of the last 250 years?
And how might the future be different
(01:01:25):
if you enjoy human nature, Odyssey.
Please share it with a friend, leavea friendly review
and come say hion the Human Nature Odyssey Patreon.
There you'll have access to bonusepisodes.
Additional thoughtsand writings, and audiobook readings.
And I just want to thank all the folksthat are reaching out on the Patreon,
adding their thoughts and comments orsuggestions on what I should explore next.
(01:01:48):
It means a lot and your supportmakes this podcast possible.
Thank you to Brian, Nori, Mark,
Hanin, Maggie, Nina, Joe, Jesse,Stephen, Scheer, Michael, Charlie,
Nick and a share for your inputand feedback on this episode.
This series was made in associationwith the Post Carbon Institute.
(01:02:09):
You can learn more@resilience.org.
And as always, our theme music isCelestial Soda Pop by Ray Lynch.
You can find thelink in our show notes to.
Hey, how's it going?
Welcome to France.
In the year 1789.
Everyone's got an opinion on the kingthese days.
You know the king. Louis the 16th.
Yeah, I know it's a lot of Louis,
but that'sbecause we've had a lot of kings.
And it's not just us.
There's been kings all over the worldfor thousands of years.
(00:23):
There's been peopleliving under one king or another.
One guy who more or less tellseveryone else what to do.
And hey, I know I'm just a baguette beggarliving off a modest income
in the suburbs of Paris, butit seems to me only natural to have a king
like, you know, like kings.
Well, it's easyto hate the idea of the being a king
(00:45):
when you hate the actual king.
But what if the kingwas a really great guy?
What if the king did everything?
Pretty much how you'd want him to look.
Exactly how you'd want him to.
What if the his top prioritieswere your top priorities,
and he was going to take care of themright away?
Doesn't sound so bad after all,
(01:08):
Nowadays,
peoplearound town are calling the king a tyrant.
But hey, what's so wrong with a tyrant?
It's like a stern father.
My pops always told methis house is not a democracy.
You know, I was a rambunctious little lad.
Always spoke my mind.
Papa would give me the old strapand get me back in line.
(01:30):
And I didn't turn out too shabby.
The king is like a disciplinary fatherfor the whole country.
And I don't see any problem with that.
Do you?
I see you're thinking.
But what if you're stuck with a kingyou don't like?
Well, just swap him out for a king.
You do like you know, performa little coup de.
(01:52):
A quick little royal overhaul,maybe a bit of poison here,
a minor beheading there.
And install the king.
You've always dreamed of.
It's a perfect system.
Well, unless someone else doesn'tlike the new king you picked.
And they performed their own royaloverhaul,
staged their ownlittle violent coup and boom.
Just like that, you're backto another king you don't like.
(02:14):
That does happen.
Guess you gottajust do another coup again.
No, I know I'm no dummy.This is ridiculous.
And it was violence.
Okay, okay, let's simplify things.
How about the next kingwill be this current king's son.
And the conversation will call it
a holy mandate from heaven.
(02:34):
And hey, I bet the king's soncertainly thinks that's a good idea.
Keep it in the family.
It's like a mom and pop family business.
Some families own a laundromat.
Some families owned a kingdom.
But geez, I
gotta say, some of these sonsend up being real duds.
Louis the 16th ain't nothing like Louisthe 14th.
(02:56):
Is it just me, or is Louis the 16th?
The current king of France?
Just not up to the task.
Oh, wow.
It is not just me.
Whoa! Did they just. Oh, Holy crap.
Did they just.
Did they just kill the old King Louis?
Oh, man. Oh, man.
(03:16):
It's been a while since we had a kingkilling.
Oh, jeez.
Back to the drawing board, I guess.
Who's going to king it up next?
Oh. All right,the calling a National Assembly.
Not sure what the heck that is, butmy landlord asked me to go in his place.
Sounds important.I should probably go to this thing.
(03:41):
This place is packed.
The clergy here? Yup.
Aristocracy. Hey, guys.
Oh, they even want other commoners in.
At least it's the wealthier ones.
Come on. There's barely any seats left.
Okay, I'll just sit on the leftside of the hall over here.
This is this chair.
Wobbly.
(04:01):
Hey, how's it going?
Bonjour, monsieur. Je m'appelle Jack.
Hey, Jack. Nice to meet you.
Oh, thanks. Yeah. Yeah,I've a swig of that.
So, who do you thinkthe next king should be? Who?
What?
No, I do not thinkthere should be a king at all.
I believe France should be a democracy.
(04:22):
A what?
Welcome to human nature, Odyssey.
In this three part series, we'reexploring the history of the left right
political spectrumand the 250 year struggle for democracy.
(04:44):
This is part three. I'm Alex Smith.
So this
is part three in our three part series
(05:07):
on the ideologiesthat shaped our modern world system.
If you haven't listened to part one orpart two, hey, that's fine, that's fine.
I'm not here to judge. How about this?
I'll give you a quick summary,and then we'll.
I'll be up to speed.
As you may recall,
at the onset of the French Revolutionin 1789,
(05:28):
a national assembly was assembled.
Those in favor of keeping the monarchy seton the literal right wing of the hall,
and those in favor of democracysat on the left wing.
And that's where we get the whole leftwing, right wing thing.
We often think of the political spectrumas a binary
between these two poles, the leftand the right.
(05:52):
But sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein,who we've discussed in previous episodes,
suggests politicssince the French Revolution
haven't been shaped just by two poles,
but three separate ideologies.
The right, the left.
And a third thing
(06:12):
a political triad rather than a binary.
First, let's talk about the right,
which since the early 1800shas also been known
as conservatism.
Generally speaking, rightwing conservatism believes
that traditional values, social hierarchy,
and strong authority bring prosperity,keep people
(06:35):
safe, and help society run smoothly.
Then there's the left, which originally
was also known as radicalism.
Now, in this historical context,as we've talked about
before, radicalism doesn't mean extremism.
Every ideology can be more extremeor more moderate.
(06:58):
Flexible or rigid.
The reason radicalismwas originally called radicalism
was because the word radical comes
from the Latin radix, which means root,
and the left wing radicals wanted rootlevel changes.
What kind of root level changes?
Well, leftwing radicalism also,generally speaking,
(07:22):
believes that social and economic equalityare the best way to bring prosperity,
keep people safe and help societyrun smoothly.
So that's the right wingand the left wing.
But there's another wing or,
thing ideology.
It's liberalism.
(07:44):
Liberalism is different from the rightwing or left wing.
Sometimes people call it the center,
but I think that actually just confusesthings.
Liberalism isn't just the middle groundbetween the right in the left.
It's its own ideologywith its own beliefs.
What beliefs?
Well, liberalism again, generallyspeaking, believes in individual freedom
(08:06):
laws that apply to everyone and a societybased on merit, not bloodlines.
The best way to accomplish that,most liberals agree,
is by letting the market decidewho contributes the most value to society,
and then let those people risethrough the ranks.
Therefore, capitalism,which also relies on the markets,
(08:28):
became Liberalism's best friend.
Individual freedom.
Universal laws and merit.
Liberalism believesthat's the best way to bring prosperity,
keep people safe andhelp society run smoothly.
Well,
you're tellingme that all three ideologies conservatism,
radicalism and liberalism want safety,prosperity and a well-functioning society?
(08:53):
Oh well, then today we should all gettogether and work on this sometime.
Maybe we could even get on.
But these three ideologies,three perspectives,
three strategies have been competingfor the last two and a half centuries
to implement their visionon creating a better society.
Now, if you're thinking to yourself,this guy's got it all wrong.
(09:15):
What? That? What the heck is he talkingabout? Three ideology.
These liberal, conservative and radicals.
That's not how I would explain it.
Well, that makes sense for somethingas widespread and personal as politics.
We all have our own associationsand definitions for these common terms.
I get it.
I'm proposing this political triadframework as one among many.
(09:38):
Not necessarily better,
but hopefully illuminating some thingsother frameworks can't.
And of course,
this framework is by necessity simplistic.
These ideologies are not monoliths.
Conservativescan disagree with conservatives.
Radicals can be at oddswith other radicals.
In fact, they often are.
(10:00):
Reality is always messierand more complicated.
This framework is just a map.
Really. A good map can help us navigate.
But it's not the real territory,just symbols.
And if you don't take your
eyes off the map from time to timeand look where you actually are,
you might fall down a manholeor drive into a lake.
(10:21):
That being said, it's easyto get lost without a map.
And if we're trying to tell the storyof the last 250 year long struggle
for democracy, this three ideology map
may illuminate some details and nuance.
Other maps can't.
Okay, so
we're two thirds of the waythrough our story.
(10:42):
In part one,we watched as the ideals of the French
Revolutionspread like wildfire across Europe.
In 1848, most countries in Europewere ablaze in revolution,
with liberals and radicals teaming upto overthrow the conservative monarchies.
But when liberals felt radicals were goingtoo far,
(11:02):
liberals joined with conservativesto reinstall the right wing monarchies
and the revolution's smolder liberalism,
which again, wasn't left or right, butits own ideology, found a few countries
where their ideal form of governmentcould take hold on its own.
The United States that up and comingnew nation across the ocean
(11:25):
demonstratedwhat a liberal democracy could look like,
even if only a segment of the populationwas initially allowed to participate.
And for much of American history,
the actual right wing, like the rightwing of the French National Assembly
and the actual left wing, what wesometimes may call like the far right
and the far left,were only marginally influential.
(11:49):
Most of American history is a history
of what we're calling liberals.
By the end of the 1800s,the United Kingdom, France
and the Netherlands had adoptedversions of liberalism
as well.
Various forms of left wing radicalism
(12:11):
like communism, socialism and anarchism
were pushed underground,mostly organizing in secret.
That was until World War one.
In 1917, there was a revolution in Russia.
Well, actually there were two.
And by the end, Vladimir Lenin's left
wing radical Bolshevik Party seized power
(12:32):
and within a few yearsformed the Soviet Union.
Left wing radicalismin the form of Soviet style communism
finally had its own governmentto implement its ideals.
World War One ended in 1919,
and as a result,many conservative monarchies either
(12:53):
collapsed or had their powergreatly reduced.
But those who longed for a returnto the more traditional, strong, top down
authority of the monarchies rallied arounda new expression of right wing ideology
fascism.
Like we talked about in the last episode,
fascism is kind oflike first gen monarchy,
(13:16):
same dictatorial power, emphasis on
hierarchy and conservative social values.
Just without the long historyto back it up.
Then came World War two.
The liberal countriesallied with the radical Soviet Union,
and ultimately the allies, defeatedthe right wing regimes.
(13:37):
After the wars global devastation.
Two superpowers emerged.
The United States,where liberalism reigned,
and the Soviet Union,where left wing radicalism reigned.
Liberalism and radicalism.
Temporary allianceto fight right wing fascism was over.
(13:59):
Since a direct war between
the US and Soviet Union would riskglobal nuclear annihilation.
These two superpowers fought each otherindirectly, often
by supporting their ideological alliesin local civil wars like in Vietnam.
Before long, the Soviet Unionseemed to abandon its radical principles
(14:21):
and ended up looking an awful lotlike an authoritarian state.
And the United States, with its violentmeddling in other countries
democracies and crackdownsagainst its own social movements,
wasn't really living up to its idealsof freedom and democracy.
By the 1960s, a new generationprotested the hypocrisy of both liberal
(14:42):
and radical governments for abandoningthe principles of freedom, democracy,
or the equalitythey claim to be committed to.
And that's where we left off.
(15:11):
Have you ever seen a movie by TaikaWaititi?
His 2019 satirical film Jojo Rabbit?
Well, in that movie,we follow a boy named Jojo
who's a member of the HitlerYouth during World War two.
Jojo has been fully indoctrinatedinto the Nazi Party,
(15:31):
and he frequently talks with his imaginarybest friend,
who is a goofy version of Adolf Hitler.
Actually played by director Taika Waititi.
It's pretty ridiculous, butwhen Jojo finds a Jewish girl named Elsa
hiding in his attic, his entire worldviewis thrown into question.
(15:53):
He actually likes this Jewish girl,even though he's been
brought up to hate her,but she can't be friends with her.
He's a Nazi, but Elsa is a few yearsolder than Jojo and a lot wiser.
She tells him, quote,you're not a Nazi, Jojo.
You're a ten year old kidwho likes dressing up in a funny uniform
(16:14):
and wants to be part of a club.
People are not their ideology.
People are people.
People can wear ideologylike a funny uniform,
and they can change the clothes they wear.
So when wetalk about the three ideologies, liberals,
conservatives and radicalsknow that we're talking about people
(16:36):
whose opinions and perspectiveshave been shaped by the world around them.
No matter what we think of their ideology,we can learn a lot more
by always seeing their humanity.
If we want to curse or condemn anyone,
it's the ideological godswho are to blame the gods.
(16:57):
Oh don't worry,we'll hear from them again in a bit.
Okay,
so finally we can continue partthree of this story.
Where were we?
Oh, yeah.
1960s youth protests.
(17:19):
Got it.
The youth protests of the 1960s,
along with the social movementsof its time, could be considered
part of the left wing radical tradition,which originally called
for a total restructuring of societyaround
social and economic equality.
And by the 1960s.
(17:40):
The word radical was no longer really
used to referto the left wing ideology anymore.
It was religious meaning extremism.
So for the sake of clarity,I'm going to refer
to left wing radicalismas simply the left.
From here on out.
But in the 1960s, whilethe left didn't topple any governments,
(18:02):
it foundit could shift the system from within
through various social movementslike the anti-war protests,
civil rights movement,second wave feminism,
the gay rights movement,and in the United States,
the terms left wing and the liberal wereand are often used interchangeably.
(18:23):
But this isn't the casein many similar countries and borders.
An important distinction.
Remember, using our three ideology map,
we can see the left and liberalism
are separate ideologieswith their own goals and perspectives.
The left was focused on equality.
Liberalismbecame increasingly focused on capitalism,
(18:45):
and here's why that distinction matters.
After the 1960s, the left learnedit was much easier to win
fights for social equality,like civil rights or gay rights,
than it was to winfights for economic equality.
Social change could fit into capitalism.
Economic change cannot.
(19:08):
In the U.S., the left found that
if it couldn'thold economic or political power,
it could at least shape the culturerather than toppling governments.
Activistsfocused on changing people's minds
through art, education and pop culture.
This long, peaceful campaign
(19:29):
came to be called, ironically,the culture Wars.
Culture wars are not fought with bullets,but with cool.
And in many ways, this was a battle.
The left was actually winning.
Now this wasn't organized by some top downstrategy.
It unfoldedgradually through a decentralized
(19:50):
nonhierarchical movementover the course of decades,
and by the time I was growingup, in the 1990s and early 2000,
the classic left wing ideals of equalityand inclusion
were pretty much the cultural norm.
Posters on our classroomwalls promoted multiracial diversity.
(20:11):
You know, the ones with all the differentcolored hands reaching across the globe.
Star Wars, which had only become moreculturally influential since its release
in the 1970s, portrayedauthoritarian empire as the ultimate evil.
The once controversial leftwing radical Martin Luther
King Jr had become universally revered.
(20:32):
It seemed to me that outright sexismand racism, though of course
still prevalent, were not generally taughtas cool or to be admired.
But while the left
defined cultural corein the United States, liberalism
still dominated its government,the politicians and its policies.
Oh, and here's something crucialto remember
(20:55):
what Americanscall liberal and conservative.
The left and the right were essentiallyjust different shades of liberalism.
That means support for free markets,
individual freedoms,and a constitutional government.
Democrats and Republicans alikehave generally
upheld these core ideals of liberalism.
(21:16):
So if you're someonewho identifies as a conservative
because you support free marketsand individual
freedoms, well,I'm saying that within this framework,
we can consider that still a partof the ideology of liberalism.
Maybe we can call itconservative liberalism.
Liberalism and the left wing
(21:38):
started this interesting dance.
Liberalism continued to arguethat free market capitalism
was simply the most effectiveeconomic system.
So while advocating for the left's
economic equality,it was a no go for liberalism.
Liberalism could stomach the leftwing's cultural influence
(22:00):
if the left was willing to acceptcapitalism.
In fact, liberalismfound that plenty of the left
wing's cultural changesworked in capitalism's favor.
Like, for instance, you know what?
Diversity isn't so bad after all.
Yeah, we can sell all sorts of products
to the groupswe used to pretend didn't exist.
(22:21):
On Pride Month, our rainbow flagsales will be through the roof.
And it turned out
capitalism was totally fine with youcriticizing capitalism, too.
Yeah. Go ahead, protest me. It'll be fun.
I have some anti-capitalist shirtsyou can buy.
While authoritarianism resisted change,
(22:41):
capitalism co-opted it.
And compared to communism, by the late20th century,
capitalism was looking pretty dang good.
Rememberthe Vietnam War back in the 1960s?
The United States had spent over $1trillion
in today's moneyfighting communism in Vietnam.
(23:03):
Nearly 60,000 Americans
and over a million Vietnamese soldiersand civilians were killed.
But the United States,with all its military might,
could not defeat communism in Vietnam.
When the U.S.
withdrew in 1973, communistssoon took control
(23:24):
and named the countrythe Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
But by the 1980s,
Vietnam was strugglingwith serious economic challenges.
Decades of warand international isolation had left
Vietnam's economypainfully slow to recover.
The Vietnamese government system,essentially planned
(23:47):
economy modeled after Soviet communism,only made things harder,
eventually pushing Vietnam to embrace
private enterprise and foreign investment.
After all that, communism in Vietnam
wasn't defeated by military force,but by economic pressure.
In 1980,
(24:07):
British Prime Minister MargaretThatcher famously said of capitalism's
mix with liberalism, quote,there is no alternative.
And when the Soviet Union
finally fell in 1991
and the brand new Russian Federationembraced capitalism,
(24:27):
it seemed MargaretThatcher might be right.
So the Soviet Union fell.
(24:47):
And just like that, the Cold War
was over to many people around the world.
Capitalism appearedundeniably more efficient and stable,
promising greater prosperityfor more people
down shopping.
Leader of the Communist Partyin China had helped reform
China's economy to allow more freemarket policies.
(25:11):
Dong quoted an old Chinese proverbthat says, quote,
it doesn't matterwhether a cat is black or white.
If it catches mice, it is a good cat.
Capitalismseemed to work better than communism,
and that was good enough for China.
And in South Africa, Nelson Mandela'sAfrican
National Congress had longbeen closely aligned with communism.
(25:35):
But when Mandela was released from prison
and elected president in 1994,
he too found himself pressuredinto embracing capitalism.
With communism in decline around the world
and capitalismseen as the only functioning model.
Even leaders who once imagineddifferent futures faced enormous pressure
(25:57):
to stick to the dominantcapitalist system.
Remember those ideological godsfrom the last episode?
Well, at this point in history,we can imagine the God of liberalism
was feeling pretty dang good.
So, right wing conservatism.
You haven't really beena global superpower since World War two
(26:19):
and left wing radicalism.
Ever since the Soviet Union collapsed.
You lost your superpower as well.
Since, let's face it,your system didn't work.
Your people couldn't even get reliablecars, let alone enough food to eat.
Well, actually, this is radicalism.
Talking in Scandinavian countries.
They use a mix of capitalismand socialism.
(26:43):
And again, back to liberalism.
Shut up, shut up.
That's not radicalism.
Sure it is. Left wing economics.
Strong social safety net.
Doesn't sound so radical.
This is the god of conservatism.
That sounds pragmatic.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Radicalism doesn't mean extremism.
It means social and economic equality.
(27:04):
Haven't you been listening to the podcast?
Listen. Scandinavia.
Scandinavia.
That's just a model. Social experiments.
Looks like I'm the last one standing.
And you know how I did it.
You want to know howI kicked your guys asses?
I owe it all to capitalism.
Give me thatfree market and private enterprise.
(27:25):
I love you some capitalism.
In fact,I'd like to announce it right now.
Me and capitalism.
We're getting married.
Yep. And I'm changing my name.
I would like to nowbe known as neoliberalism.
Oh, great.
What a cool name. Shut up! Commie!
(27:46):
Why don't you go back to the Soviet Unionif you hate capitalism so much?
Oh, wait.
You can't.
The Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore.
And how's Communist China doing?
I hear they're becoming capitalisticthese days.
Man, would you let it go?
The Soviet Union and China don't have amonopoly on what it means to be left wing.
(28:07):
Oh, hey. Radicalism.
You know what neoliberalism is going to donext?
What?
Oh, I don't know the exactopposite of whatever the Soviet Union did.
The Soviet Uniontried to control its market,
suffocating itwith authoritarian policies.
But me, neo liberalismand the ideology of freedom, man.
That's what I'm all about.
(28:27):
Private enterprisesgot to be free to do its thing.
The government'sgot to get out of the way.
And I know the United States, the world'shegemonic superpower.
My knight in shining armor.
They understand me. Right, guys?
In the 1980s, US President Ronald Reagan,
one of the patron saintsof neo liberalism, like to say, quote,
(28:51):
that government is best,which governs least.
And I really cannot do a Reaganimpression.
Basically, he was saying
there are all these regulations out therethat are just holding business back.
So Reagan set about cutting regulations.
And as a result, the stock market soared.
Some people made a lot of money.
(29:12):
But for most of the country, wagesstagnated and public services were cut.
But don't worry, Reagan said.
We gotta let businessesmake as much money as possible
so their wealth can trickle down.
I mean, who wouldn'twant to be trickled on?
Oh, and we need free trade.
We gotta make sure goods and services
(29:33):
can move freely across borders.
Democratic president Bill Clinton agreed.
And by the 1990s,both major US parties, Democrats
and Republicans, were fully on boardwith neo liberalism.
Different parties,same neo liberal ideology.
So in the 1990s, Clinton passedsome free trade agreements
(29:56):
with other countries, which sped upthe rise of multinational corporations.
Those corporationsrelocated their production to whatever
countries had the fewest regulationsand the cheapest labor.
This was great for CEOs and shareholders,
but it wasn't that great for workerswhose jobs got shipped overseas.
(30:17):
Then, in the 2000s, Republican PresidentGeorge
W Bush picked up neoliberalismwhere Reagan and Clinton left off.
All right, guys,just a few more trade agreements to sign.
Oh, gotta cut these taxesfor high income earners.
I'm sure that wealthwill start trickling down at a time now.
And what's this? Hey, guys.
(30:38):
I found some regulations you missed.
Don't worry,don't worry. I got it. Lesson.
Reagan, Clinton and Bush
were all true believers of neoliberalism.
Of course, it didn't hurt thattheir corporate donors and lobbyists
were fans of neoliberalism as well.
(30:58):
Man, these US presidents are geniuses.
This is so great.
Now companies can finally be freeto make as much money as humanly possible.
Liberalism.
Check out all these housing loansbanks are offering.
Liberalism.Do you see these interest rates?
The banks are gonna make a fortune.
Liberalism.
(31:18):
What?
In 2007,the housing bubble began to burst.
Which is such a fun, childlike metaphor
for a very serious adult disaster.
One of the largest investmentbanks went bankrupt.
With ripple effects around the world.
No, no, no.
(31:39):
My beautiful stock market.
People lost their jobs.
Families lost their homes.
The entire global capitalisteconomy went into what would be called
the Great Recession.
And in 2008,
Democratic President BarackObama was elected
and despite being called a leftistcommunist radical by his Republican
(32:03):
opponents, Obama's economic policies
were very similar to his predecessors.
Neoliberal is apple pie.
The Obama administrationimplemented the bailout
that the George W Bushadministration had proposed.
This wasn't a bailoutfor the average person.
It was a bailoutfor the same financial institution
(32:24):
that caused the recessionin the first place.
While this averted a more seriouseconomic collapse,
most Americans still felt the effectsof the recession for years,
even after Obama's stimulus packagefor the middle class
a year later, the recovery was slow.
By the 20 tens, the top
(32:45):
1% of the country's population
held over a third of the wealth.
Wow. Liberalism.
Are you happy now?
Wasn't free market capitalism supposedto make the world better for everyone?
(33:06):
All this wealth inequality reminds me alittle bit of France under Louis the 16th.
Pretty ironic.
What did you say? Liberalism.
In part one of this series.
We talked about how in 1848, in Palermo,Sicily, a radical prankster
put up fliers that said, tomorrowthere will be a revolution.
(33:29):
And that helped sparkthe revolutions of 1848.
Well, in the summer of 2011,
the radical magazine Adbustersput out a provocative flier
that read hashtag Occupy Wall Street,September 17th.
Bring ten.
Now, just a day before,if you asked almost anyone,
(33:52):
they would have dismissed thisas some sort of performance art.
But on September 17th, over
1000 people actually showed up to occupya public square near Wall Street,
the US financial capital in New York.
The movement was soon called OccupyWall Street.
(34:12):
There wasn't one leader, and peopleparticipated for a wide range of reasons,
but a major rallying crywas to protest wealth inequality.
Occupy took inspirationfrom the pro-democracy mass protests
of the short lived Arab Spring earlierthat year, when millions of people
across the Middle East and North Africaprotested their authoritarian governments.
(34:36):
Within a month, there were over900 occupy protests in over 80 countries.
I had just graduated high school
and was working on a conservation corpsin the Pacific Northwest.
We only got occasional news about it allwhen we'd head into town
once every other weekand catch a glimpse of the newspaper.
I remember being eager to seewhat it was all about when I got back home
(35:01):
to work
for. The.
But I read how protesters were met
with riot police and tear gas canisters.
Cities brought in bulldozersto clear the demonstrations.
By the time I returned from the woodsjust a few months later,
(35:22):
the occupations had mostly cometo a snuffed out end.
Occupy did not fix wealth inequalityor dismantle capitalism,
but it did bring the classiceconomic left wing
critiquesthat had been sidelined for so long.
Back from the politicalfringes into the mainstream.
(35:43):
So duringthe 2016 US presidential campaign
for the Democratic nomination,a grumpy old senator with unkempt
white hair named Bernie Sandersshocked the country with his overwhelming
popularity with young peopleamong 18 to 29 year olds.
He won 60 to 80% of the vote,depending on the state.
(36:05):
Bernie's politics, unlike almostevery other major presidential candidate
for over half a century,came from the actual left wing.
But rather than calling
for a completely new systemas traditional radicalism would,
he pushed for reforms from withinthrough peaceful and democratic means.
So does this make him a liberalor radical?
(36:28):
Well, somewhere in between.
While communism seeks collectiveor state control, the market
and neoliberalism promotesderegulation and privatization.
Bernie advocated for a kind of balance
encouraging a competitive free market.
But with strong regulations,higher taxes on the wealthy,
and expanding social programslike health care,
(36:51):
education,affordable housing, and social security.
He called this democratic socialism
in other countries.
This is usually called social democracy.
And versions of it have been in placesince the post-World War II era in
countrieslike Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany,
Canada, New Zealand and Uruguay.
(37:13):
These kinds of policieseven once had a home in the United States.
Spoil it or not.
Through Franklin Delano Roosevelt'sNew Deal, which significantly expanded
government programs to help Americansrecover from the Great Depression,
while many older Americans were usedto socialism being associated with Soviet
Union authoritarianism, a new generationwas free of that Cold War baggage.
(37:38):
And though Bernie Sanderslost in the Democratic primary,
it was the closestthe left wing had come to real power
in the United States for decades.
But Bernie Sanders neoliberal Democratic
opponent, Hillary Clinton,didn't win that election either.
Someone else did.
But before we get to that,let's check in on the US's old
(38:02):
Cold War rival, Russia,and see what they've been up to.
At one
time,Russia had been the last place in Europe
you'd have expecteda communist revolution.
And at the height of the Soviet Union,it was the last place
you'd have expected capitalism before us.
But Russia likes to surprise you.
(38:24):
By the late 1980s.
The Soviet Union'seconomy was seriously struggling.
So it began gradually allowing peopleto open small scale businesses
for the very first time.
You know,just a touch of private enterprise,
a little dash of the free market.
But when the Soviet Union collapsedin 1991, Russia's new leader,
(38:47):
Boris Yeltsin, decided what Russia needed
was some of its own neoliberalism.
He called it shock therapy.
Capitalist from the old Sovietrun industries
like manufacturing, mining, the media.
All of a sudden were soldto the highest bidder.
It was like Russia was having an estatesale for the now dead Soviet Union.
(39:11):
Russia even brought in Western advisersto help show them how to do capitalism.
Oh thank God
Russia is finally a capitalist country.
Nothing strengthens democracylike capitalism.
This is amazing.
Russia will finally be free.
Yah yah yah!
And now that Russia is capitalist,
(39:32):
it can finally have its own rags to richesstory.
And boy, did it.
Here's one of them.
Poor little Roman Abramovich,
born in 1966,orphaned at the age of three,
grew up in the howling coldof northern Russia.
(39:53):
By the time Abramovich was a young man,
the Soviet Union had started allowingpeople to open their own small businesses.
So he started selling rubberduckies out of his apartment.
It was an honest living.
This is a true story, by the way.
When communism collapsed.
Abramovich graduated from Ducky'sto bigger and better,
(40:14):
but less fun and whimsical thingslike oil, aluminum and airplanes.
And when Russia started auctioning offits old state run industries,
he bought them a lot of them.
He soon becameone of the wealthiest men in the country.
He bought his fair share of sportscars, a couple of super yachts,
(40:34):
the UK's Chelsea soccer team, a 15 bedroommansion and penthouse
suites around the world, and then spenthundreds of millions of dollars
worth of his own money to be electedgovernor of Russia's Chicago region.
But not every Russian was so fortunate.
Basic food pricessoared and many won hungry.
(40:55):
But this wasn't communism anymore.
This is the free market, babyyou want to eat.
You got to compete.
And Abramovichand his fellow extremely rich businessmen
were winning the competition.
They own the news.
They bribed, I mean, influencedpoliticians to pass the laws they wanted.
And like Abramovich,many became politicians themselves.
(41:17):
Soon, a lot of people argued that
Russia wasn't really a democracy,but an oligarchy.
A government run by the wealthy.
Let's check inhow liberalism is doing with all this.
Damn.
So does neoliberalisminevitably accumulate wealth
in fewer and fewer hands that controlmore and more of the government
(41:40):
until democracy is completely eroded.
Oh, that's such a bummer,because I always like to think of myself
as the ideal ideologyof democracy conservatism.
Whether you were monotheism or fascism,you were openly authoritarian.
So what? And radicalism.
I know you said you didn't
(42:01):
want to become authoritarian,but the Soviet Union certainly was.
Yeah.
But it turns out I can become authoritarian, too,
that capitalism without limits doesn'tlead to more democracy, but to oligarchy.
Man, I was so focused on the governmentnot being authoritarian
(42:21):
that I didn't realize that the wealthycould become authoritarian
through their wealthand end up buying the government.
I tried to warn you.
When a system prioritizesaccumulating more wealth for the wealthy,
eroding the social safety net, shippingjobs overseas,
or exploiting workers at home,the masses suffer.
And when populations become desperate,strong leaders become more popular.
(42:44):
When Boris
Yeltsin resigned, Russiansturned to this charming bald guy
named Vladimir Putin,an elected and president in 2000.
You know, I'm like this Putin guy
who stands up for traditional values,not all those radical ones.
What?
Have you seen that pic with himriding a horse without a shirt on?
Pretty manly.
Putin promised to restore Russia's economyand stand up to the oligarchy.
(43:08):
But in reality,he worked with it, punishing oligarchs
who opposed himand rewarding those who were loyal.
Initially, Putin was only allowed to bepresident for a maximum of eight years,
but with help from his trusty oligarchs,eight years
turned to 1414 turned to 25.
And just like that. Oops.
(43:30):
If Putin keeps this up,
he'll be in power as long as VladimirLenin and Joseph Stalin combined.
Also, isn't it a weird coincidencethat his critics and political opponents
keep dying a poison fallingout of windows, or being sent to prison?
Neoliberal oligarchy, as it turned out,
was actually the perfect breeding groundfor right wing authoritarianism,
(43:55):
mirroringthe relationship between the monarchs
and aristocraticnobility of old liberalism.
You're okay then?
Then that means, oh, God,we got to tell the United States.
Those guys love neo liberalism.
(44:16):
In the United States.
By the late 20 tens and early 2020s, whilethe left wing was gaining
some modest political momentumin its critique of capitalism,
the real right wing, the kindthat would have sat on the right wing
of the old French National Assembly,started gaining traction
with an almost similar critiqueto left wing radicalism.
(44:37):
But using different wordsinstead of railing against the 1%,
the right wingresurgence blamed coastal elites.
Instead of saying they opposed free trade,
they said they were for economicnationalism.
Instead of denouncing neoliberalism,
the right wing denounced globalism,while the left shared memes like eat
(45:00):
the Rich, the right chanteddrain the Swamp, calling out a corrupt,
self-serving establishmentthat had betrayed the country.
Kind of sounds like the leftwing view doesn't.
But this wasn'tjust a difference in rhetoric.
You say tomato, I say tomato.
This was a crucial ideologicaldifference in priorities.
(45:31):
In the right's view.
The real problem with societywasn't economic injustice.
It was the left wing's cultural influence.
You know, multicultural ism, feminism,
all that LGBT and Black Lives Matterstuff.
Christianitybeing less culturally dominant.
These things weren'tsigns of social progress,
(45:51):
but symptoms of a countrylosing the identity.
The right wing believes is best.
Those drawn to right wing conservatismdidn't want to dismantle hierarchy.
They wanted to reshape it.
To them,the problem wasn't inequality itself,
but who was on top?
(46:12):
Putin reshaped
Russia's oligarchy to serve his rule.
But the American right wingfound a shortcut.
Instead of reshaping the oligarchy,they elected one of its members,
a billionaire who campaigned on fightingthe elites and to help fight those elites.
The American billionairefilled his new administration
(46:34):
with some of the wealthiestpeople on the planet.
Now to the left wing.
This might seem like a contradiction.
But to the right wing,this makes perfect sense.
Of course, the richestand most powerful men should rule.
Who else could stand up to the otherrich and powerful men?
And this new billionaire candidatewasn't just any rich and powerful man.
(46:55):
He spoke on behalf of right wingconservatism,
cultural values as well.
And you know what?
I like to think I'm an open minded guy.
Maybe a billionaire presidentand a handful of oligarchs
are the best peopleto represent the common folk.
King Louis the 16th and Czar Nicholasthe Second thought
they were the best guysfor the job as well.
(47:21):
The reemergence of the right wingis a global pattern
seen in many countries,from the United States to Russia, China,
India, the Philippines, Brazil,Hungary, Saudi Arabia, Israel.
Right wing leaders and movementshave gained increasing political power,
often challenging democratic checksand balances and individual freedom.
(47:45):
Capitalism has rapidly industrializedmuch of the world,
destabilizing local economies,
increasing migration of populations,
bringing cultural change,not to mention climate change.
Many people feel anxiousabout these changes.
They want safety, securityand what's familiar.
(48:06):
A right wing conservatism answersthese concerns.
Many people are fed up with governmentsthat don't seem to work
for the average person.
So in response, rather than blaming
money and politicsfor corruption dysfunction,
the right wing views democracy'schecks and balances
(48:26):
as obstacles to efficiency, barriersthat need to be dismantled.
And as people feel more desperate,
many grow wary of newcomers and minorities
to address worriesthat there's not enough to go around.
The right wing promises to prioritizethe people who
they believe belongand push out those who don't.
(48:49):
And in responseto all the social change of recent years,
the right wing promisesa return to more traditional values.
It's a vision of a familiarand more secure world.
It's clear that these
are very real,tangible fears and anxieties.
(49:09):
But do these proposed fixes
actually address the underlying problems?
Another commonthread of the return of the right wing
is nationalism and ideologyin and of itself.
That couldand should be a whole other episode.
But a key part of nationalismis the belief that a country
(49:30):
should act only for its own interest.
That's why you hear sloganslike America First,
screw this whole global villagecooperation thing.
I'm going to only care about my country.
Essentially, it's individualismfor countries.
And, you know, I think individualismcan be a beautiful thing.
(49:52):
Thinking for yourself.
Marching to the beat of your own drummer.
It's an important wayto resist authoritarianism.
And the individualistic impulse iswhat makes humanity so diverse.
And I think there's wisdomin prioritizing yourself.
That's why the
airplane pilot reminds youto put your oxygen mask on first.
(50:12):
How else will you then help someone else
to breathe as freely as you do?
Nationalism.
Often tells us we need to choosebetween protecting ourselves
and protecting our neighbor.
But it seems to me my family is much saferwhen my neighbor is
well fed and taking care ofwhen people are desperate.
(50:34):
They're the most dangerous in that sense.
Equality isn't just about being moral.
It's about being pragmatic.
During the 2024
US presidential campaign, the right wingbillionaire and now former president
ran for reelection four yearsafter losing his bid for a second term.
(50:57):
During that campaign, conservativecommentator Tucker Carlson
spoke at a rally about the dangersof unruly left wing radicalism
and how he believed a properleader should deal with it.
I'll let Tucker
speak for himselfif you allow people to get away
with things that are completelyover the top and outrageous.
(51:20):
If you allow your two year old to smear
the contents of his diaperson the wall of your living room,
and you do nothing about it,if you allow your 14 year
old to lie to join at the breakfast table.
If you allow your hormone addled 15 yearold daughter to, like,
slam the door of her bedroomand give you the finger,
you're going to get more of it.
And those kidsare going to wind up in rehab.
(51:41):
It's not good for you,and it's not good for them. No,
there has to be a pointat which dad comes home.
Yeah.
That's right.
Dad comes home.
(52:04):
And he's passed.
Dad is pissed.
He's not vengeful.
He loves his children, disobedientas they may be.
He loves thembecause they're his children.
They live in his house,
but he's very disappointedin their behavior.
And he's going to have to let them know.
(52:26):
He's goingto have to get to your room right now
and think about what you did.
And when dad gets home,you know what he says.
You've been a bad girl.
You've been a bad little girl, and you'regetting a vigorous spanking right now.
And no, it's not going to hurt memore than it hurts you.
No. It's not. I'm not going to lie.
(52:48):
It's going to hurt youa lot more than it hurts me.
And you earned this.
You're getting a
vigorous spankingbecause you've been a bad girl.
And it has to be this way.
It has to be this way because it's true.
And you're only going to get better whenyou take responsibility for what you did.
(53:08):
That's not set in the spirit of hate.
It's not set in the spirit of vengeanceor bigotry.
Far from it.
It's set in the spirit of justice,which is the purest and best thing
there is.
And without it, things fall apart.
(53:46):
Oh, man.
Anyone else get goosebumps?
This guy should have spokenat the National Assembly.
Exactly.
He's so right.
That's the kind of leader society needs.
Not someone bound by checks and balances,restrained by laws
that commoners have to follow.
But a strongman, a dictator, a king.
(54:06):
Right wing conservatism is back, baby.
And now
here we are, right in the present moment.
If you listen closely,you can still hear those gods going at it
up in the ideological heavens.
But I think we've listened to those godsenough.
(54:29):
We now have the vantage point
of 250 years of history.
The future is still foggy,
but hopefully the pastis a little more clear.
Here's what I see from where I'm looking.
(54:52):
Now. After all this,you might be tempted to say, screw it.
Let's just forget all these ideologies.
I don't want to have any ideology.
I get that ideology.
Ideologies come with a lot of limitationsand historical baggage.
But it's important to try and understand
the historical entanglement we're in.
(55:13):
If we're going to try and untangle it.
The ideologies,though, are just one map to go by.
People don't fallneatly into one category,
no matter what flags they race or uniformsthey wear.
Reality is complex.
We can't get so stuck on our side
that we can't recognize the fearand pain and values of others.
(55:38):
Maybe the best
way to chart a path is to be guided
not by ideology, but values.
And if we're really driven by our values,we won't just follow a group
because it claims to representour ideology.
We've got to be wary of groupsthat tell us we've got to be a card
(55:59):
carrying member,or if you disagree with them on one
or 2 or 3 points,then you're against the ideology.
No one persona group can speak for a whole ideology.
The truth is far more interestingthan that.
We have to remember the lessonin Jojo Rabbit.
(56:19):
People are not their ideology.
People are people.
And if that's true, how do we actlike we're all in this together?
Because if we're all in this together,seems to me it makes the most sense.
If everyone has a say,you know, like a democracy.
(56:40):
Democracycan't be about good guys and bad guys.
But how do we create a systemthat works for all people?
Because here's the thing.
Authoritarianism is often describedas the most effective,
because you can just go in one directionand not care what other people think.
But when power is concentratedin one person or even one party,
(57:03):
leaders tend to favor loyalty over merit.
Surround themselves with peoplewho only tell them what they want to hear
and end up with a pretty limited viewof the country they're supposed to govern.
But real effectiveness
effectiveness that lasts and works foreverybody comes from a system
(57:23):
that doesn't viewdissent as an inherent threat,
but actually welcomes feedback,
because that's the only wayyou can self-correct for making errors.
It's not just that freedom of speechis just a nice thing to do.
It's how a system adapts and evolvesbecause any system
(57:43):
is going to have criticism.
Being criticized isn't a bad thing.
It's how you respond to it.
Do you want to spend your
time and energy imprisoning peopleyou disagree with, or find ways
to address people's grievances and needs?
A well-functioning democracyallows for the greatest perspectives,
(58:03):
results, political conflictspeacefully, and
is more adaptable and dynamic.
And in that sense, I would argue
democracy is more effectivethan in the authoritarian system
focused on silencing criticsand staying in power.
And how I see it.
The reason neoliberal democraciesbecame so corrupt and ineffective
(58:27):
wasn't a flaw in democracy itself,
but the result of money's corruption
of the democratic process.
And while the term democracycomes from the ancient Greeks,
the democratic phenomenon itselfstarted long before them.
And existed all over the world, many
(58:48):
indigenous culturesor who Daniel Quinn would call leavers.
In his book Ishmael The Book, the firsteight episodes of this podcast are about
the way those
indigenous levered cultures have oftengoverned, is
based on representative councils,
direct assemblies and consensus building.
Just some versionsof what we might call democracy.
(59:12):
And there are countless waysto do democracy.
Some we've barely begun to imagine.
After all this time,the over two centuries of history
since the French Revolution,it seems like in a way,
we're coming back around.
Some of the most powerful peoplein the world are embracing
(59:33):
authoritarianismas a more effective form of government.
Some, like the increasingly prominentright wing thinker
CurtisIrvin, are openly calling for monarchy.
The kings are back or trying to be.
It's like we've completedsome sort of strange cycle.
But we don't need to be stuck in it.
(59:55):
We can learn from what's happened here.
We maybe even can create a more equal,more free society that works for everyone.
It seems
we've reached a fork in the road,not unlike the one
they debated all the way backduring the French revolutions.
National Assembly.
(01:00:15):
Either we dip back into authoritarianism
or create more resilientforms of democracy.
But what happens next?
That's up to us.
History is a relay race,
and the baton is in our hands now.
We're the ones who will haveto find a better path.
So where do we go from here?
(01:00:40):
Thanks for listening.
This was part three of a three partseries, but the fun doesn't stop here.
Stay tuned for the next episode of HumanNature Odyssey,
where we'll take the lessonsof this political history
and integrate it with the deepercivilizational questions
about our speciesrelationship to the natural world.
(01:01:03):
Until next time,
I hope you'll considerwhat values are most important to you.
How can we work towards a systemeven imagine a system
that holds those valuesand others as well?
What lessons can be learned from thepolitical history of the last 250 years?
And how might the future be different
(01:01:25):
if you enjoy human nature, Odyssey.
Please share it with a friend, leavea friendly review
and come say hion the Human Nature Odyssey Patreon.
There you'll have access to bonusepisodes.
Additional thoughtsand writings, and audiobook readings.
And I just want to thank all the folksthat are reaching out on the Patreon,
adding their thoughts and comments orsuggestions on what I should explore next.
(01:01:48):
It means a lot and your supportmakes this podcast possible.
Thank you to Brian, Nori, Mark,
Hanin, Maggie, Nina, Joe, Jesse,Stephen, Scheer, Michael, Charlie,
Nick and a share for your inputand feedback on this episode.
This series was made in associationwith the Post Carbon Institute.
(01:02:09):
You can learn more@resilience.org.
And as always, our theme music isCelestial Soda Pop by Ray Lynch.
You can find thelink in our show notes to.
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