Pill Pod 210 - New York Times LIES about "Fascism Experts" fleeing Trump

The New York Times has claimed that three "fascism experts" are fleeing Trump and "going abroad". In truth, these are not (all) fascism experts, and they did not flee, in fact they have been in Canada for almost a year because they got jobs at the University of Toronto. We looked into their research, which is the same tired, lib, horseshoe theory bullshit that Nazism and Communism are the same thing.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Jordan Peterson left you of Tea because he said that
they were being fascist.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
But now these these three, the brave three, we'll call.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Them, they are fleeing fascism to come to you of Tea.
So I don't know what we are to believe, Are
we fascist or not so brave?

Speaker 3 (00:15):
But we must do, We must fail and run away.

Speaker 4 (00:18):
That's exactly the way a true of valiant intellectual rights
to the challenge.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Right, what makes her an expert on fascism? Well, you
may be surprised to learn this, but communism and fascism
they're really the same thing, actually the same thing.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Dear lord, I'm quitting a.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Just I think we had to kick off Diego for
a week so we could cover our Canadian politics. Now
we're kicking off Victor so we can talk about liberalism freely.

Speaker 5 (00:58):
Without his conctial tone.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Let's keep excluding people, let's keep cutting people out. I
like this trend.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yeah, all right, audience, Hey, how are you guys? We
were hoping today?

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Our plan was.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
To talk about the psychology of fascism, a book by
Wilhelm Reich, who has the most fascist sounding name ever,
but he was in fact that yeah, with a name
like that, but we found something better for you, I promise.
Instead of Wilhelm Reight the psychology of Fascism, we are
going to bring to you news of these brave, brave scholars.

(01:35):
They are fleeing fascism. They are fleeing the American Reich,
and they're coming to the safety of our little town here.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
Like Antonio Gramci and Walter Benjamin stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Ben you may never made it, but just like they're.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Just like him, just like him, exactly, just.

Speaker 5 (01:54):
Like him, with the university post waiting for him when
he gets there too.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
They are fleeing here to the University of Toronto, and
UH as Canadians, we pride ourselves on opening our doors
up to refugees, to those like these, these the three
who have escaped the atrocities that are being perpetrated upon

(02:18):
Ivy League professors.

Speaker 5 (02:20):
In this we have a lot of persecuted academics up here,
like we've already got Jordan Peterson and now we're adding
a few more. Doesn't matter whatever any side of the
political spectrum, you can refuge here. Jordan Peterson left you
of Tea because he said that they were being fascist
to him. But now these these three, the brave three

(02:42):
will call them they are fleeing fascism to come to you,
of TA. So I don't know what we are to believe.
Are we fascist or not? Are all three of them going.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
They're all going to uh, the you know what school,
the Freedmen, the Freedman School.

Speaker 5 (02:57):
The Freedman School of Global Affairs.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Anyway, this was too funny, I mean, not funny, serious
and terrifying. It was too terrifying to not cover. But
there's a giant hullabaloo. It was in Vanity Fair news week,
three articles, no less than three in the New York Times.
And you know that if it's in the New York
Times three times.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
It must be bullshit.

Speaker 5 (03:23):
And beetlejuice appears.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
Yeah, exactly, it must be bullshit. Smells like bullshit, looks
like bullshit, tastes like bullshit. Definitely bullshit.

Speaker 5 (03:32):
They say fairy tales always come in threes.

Speaker 6 (03:34):
So that's.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
Dear lords. What are the odds? What are the odds?

Speaker 1 (03:40):
The headline, in its various forms is experts on Fascism,
flee Trump's America or something like that.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
So brave, so brave, I mean, the exact field of
our expertise is turning out to material, concrete reality. But
we must do we must fail and run away.

Speaker 4 (03:59):
That's exactly a two valiant intellectual rights to the challenge.

Speaker 5 (04:04):
Right, it's truly patriotic.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
We have prepare for this moment all our academic life.
We must flee.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
This is yeah, well it's it's so it's so fucking
funny because the comparisons to nineteen thirty three, I mean,
they're just they're popping.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
They they think they are Jean Moulin.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
They think that we are going to be naming schools
after them for their their heroism and bravery moving from
Yale to the University of Toronto. But let's be honest.
He's like, if this is really the second.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
Exactly, yeah, let the milk meta floors flow.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
But like, speaking of terrible survival instincts, I mean, that's
not a Walter Bennyman joke.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
I would never make that joke.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah, that was if you're if your survival instinct is
leaving from Trump's fourth Reich to Toronto, this is like
fleeing Nazi Germany and like getting over the line to Denmark.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
And you're like, Okay, I'm safe.

Speaker 3 (05:05):
I didn't holm free.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
You can't come get me now, kiss the Actually, this
is this is my first bit of evidence that they
are like just completely full of shit, because if Trump
were actually like Hitler, you wouldn't be like, well, I'm
in Holland now, so I'm most I'm safe. They'll never
get me here.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
Yeah, most like to North Korea or Cuba or Venezuela
or something like that. You'll be like, hey, they're being prosecuted.
But moving to Canada is almost like moving to a
next next door neighborhood.

Speaker 5 (05:35):
It's like moving to France.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
Yeah, you're about to become the fifty first state. So like,
what's what's the point?

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Maybe Denmark's not the best example. It's more like su
Date in Land. You're just like, yeah, man, I'm in
sudaan Land.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
You're never gonna get me here.

Speaker 5 (05:47):
Terrace is safe. They'll never get They'll never get here.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
So we we have clearly established bravery. What's next.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
Well, we started we were talking guys, we wanted to
do like some fashion is it is it the spectacle
of fascism? And then you know, grabbing pro Palestine students
off of the street and putting them in bags and
taking them away from where they live. So we got,
we got like elements of some fascy stuff, and we

(06:15):
also have spectacle fascism, which is uh, what these people
are experts and what are they? What are their names again,
Jason Stanley, Tim Snyder, Marcy Shore And there is three
of them that say that they're leaving. Uh, but Marcy
Shore and Tim Snyder are married, So like does that

(06:35):
count as as.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
Yeah, well, if they worked in a company, yeah, you're cutting.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
Costs, they're not. They are still their own people. But
if they're if they're leaving together, do you still say
the three leading experts on fascism are fleeing Trump's America.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (06:51):
Well, maybe we don't want to separate families like they
are in the state's southern borders.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
So you know, these these are the immigrants coming from
the South that are stealing our jobs.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah, at least the job that Victor would watch.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
Yeah. Yeah, Victor is a victim of the American fascism.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
No, not the fascists, the immigrants. They're they're immigrants stealing
Victor's job.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
But their movement is a product of the American fascism.
So Victory is indirectly a victim.

Speaker 5 (07:18):
Yeah, I love how amidst the collapse of our post
secondary system, they can just pull ten youre jobs out
of the air. I don't know if they're getting ten
your jobs. They probably probably are. They would they can
find stuff for them, because this is hot stuff right now,
we have our critical theory credentials. At least it's in
the title, right. So we went back and looked at
what the critical theorists are saying in the after the

(07:40):
thirties about fascism. But this stuff that people are saying
now about it, and the current obviously like centrist liberal
understanding of fascism that touches on a little running horseshoe
theory thing, it is just too much. It's too good
to pass up, I think, as we have to say
some stuff before we get to critical theory anyway, about

(08:01):
what these these liberal democrats think fascism is. In fact,
one of them has said, there's no definition of fascism.
It doesn't even matter. It's just it's kind of like pornography, right,
you just know it when you see it.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
Well, let's uh, I've checked into their credentials, their anti
anti fascist credentials, or should I say, they're all heralded
as fascism experts. That's what the New York Times called them,
and they they themselves called them that in the video.
So why don't we see if they are if they
are fascism experts.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yeah, how do you establish that those credentials? I'm wondering.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
Well, I will tell you. Jason will start with Jason Stanley.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
My name is Jason Stanley.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
I'm the Jacob Yrorofsky Professor of Philosophy at the Yale University.
He has probably, I think the most claim to be
a fascism expert in that he wrote four books on fascism,
mostly on rhetoric. I think he's like a philosopher of
language or something like that. But he wrote four books.
I haven't read them. I don't know if they're any good.

(09:06):
But if you write four books on fascism, I think
there's there's a case to be made that you're a
fascism expert or someone who studies fascism. Right.

Speaker 5 (09:14):
Yeah, he's been writing on it for at least ten years.
It browsed through a little bit of one of his
books and he has kind of this like eight point
definition of fascism, so you know, he's got it all
worked out. He's been doing this for a long time. Sorry,
what were you going to say about him? Though?

Speaker 2 (09:35):
Oh, I don't know anything about him.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
I just if you say fascism expert, I would kind
of assume you know, four books close enough?

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Yeah, And I only have to qualify that he might.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
He's probably an expert because this criteria doesn't apply to
our other two refugees.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
He's doing what a post structure at least study on
the language, and like.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
It's not post structurals, it's like analytic. Pete talks about
Mussolini's rhetoric and Hitler rhetoric, so it's a it's pretty
close to fascism anyway. At the very least, he's cloud sharking.
He's like, I'm fleeing and bab so. But you know,
everyone cloud sharks a little bit. Well, at least Diego
knows about cloud sharking. I don't think Eric's ever cloud

(10:20):
sharked in his life.

Speaker 5 (10:21):
But if I have, I don't know it because I
don't know what it is.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
All right, all right, that's the first one. Now who
are the other two experts?

Speaker 2 (10:30):
They're married people. I'll start with Marci Shore.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
Marci Shore, doctor, Marcy Shore, they're moving. They're moving together
to Canada, fleeing fleeing Yale. The funny thing is they've
already lived in Canada since Joe Biden was president.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
Oh so they're just.

Speaker 5 (10:54):
I guess that's more like they're just quitting their job.

Speaker 6 (10:56):
The lesson of nineteen thirty three is you get out
sooner rather than later.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah, they're quitting the job that they used to have,
and then saying I think it might be because Jason
Stanley said at first he got a bunch of attention,
he got interviewed by Vanity Fair and they're like, oh,
well we're doing that too. Ah, so they already live here.
They already lived here, and they have since last summer.
So that's what straight from the horse's mouth. This isn't

(11:22):
like uncovering it. He just set it to the Yale
University paper.

Speaker 5 (11:26):
Kind of takes the wind out of the sales of
their argument, like, you know, get out early when you'd
see the signs of fascism coming up, like in the thirties,
you got to get out early, right, you got to
get out early.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
The New York Times doesn't mention that they are already here.
They're just except not running back to their jobs.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
I guess.

Speaker 3 (11:49):
So navigating navigating these New York Times articles is always
so confusing. So let's get a couple of things straight.
They're all from jail. They're all jail graduates.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yeah, they're all from Yale. One is in philosophy and
I think the other two are in history in.

Speaker 3 (12:02):
Hestree, Okay. And they were used to be basing the US,
but they were also basing Canada, and now they're coming
back to Canada.

Speaker 1 (12:10):
The other guy, I don't think has ever been to Canada,
Jason Stanley. The other two have been in Canada since
last summer and now are publishing like I'm fleeing the
United States, but they have been here since Joe Biden
was president.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
What So that's just.

Speaker 5 (12:25):
A performative fleeing, performative bravery.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
You can call it performative bravery, or just say that
they are lying.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
Yeah, my bravery compliment is like losing strength by the
minute and diego.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
They're all going to one school in UFT, which is
called the Monk School. This is the I don't know
what you'd call it, Eric, It's just it's a neoliberal
think tank. It's a freedman Highek think tank, and they
say that we're for freedom and democracy around the globe,
but mostly what they are is against Russia and against China.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
Okay, so they're like fascism ten years from now.

Speaker 5 (13:04):
Yeah. Like the way that a lot of the university
is just an extension of the national security state. I
think that's like the Monks School's main thing, because well,
the humanities and many other disciplines are being gutted. Apparently
the School for Global Policy is just expanding and absorbing
the detritis.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
And they study like surveillance, but it's only like Chinese
surveillance and Russian surveillance, never Israeli surveillance.

Speaker 5 (13:33):
For some reason, like when I read these people, I
got definite Fukayama vibes, like someone who's identifies as like
a democrat in the liberal or the like sort of
on the left or like stands in the middle, but
like sort of blows in the wind every once in
a while, and they get a bit of a leftward
lean going, and they are writing about national security issues

(13:58):
and philosophizing about security and making these big historical claims
that have like national security the center of them.

Speaker 3 (14:07):
I think before opening more questions, I need to fully like,
listen to their stories, so maybe I can empathize. Okay,
go ahead.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
What makes them experts on fascism, you may ask, Yeah, well,
Marci Shore, she writes, or she's written at least two
books on the Ukraine. How does that make you an
expert in fascism? The Nazis were in the Ukraine for
a little while. No, she studies Ukraine under communism actually,

(14:34):
oh my god, and Ukraine under Putin. So what makes
her an expert on fascism? Well, you may be surprised
to learn this, but communism and fascism they're really the
same thing, actually the same thing.

Speaker 3 (14:48):
Dear lord, I'm quitting.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
I read several articles her favorite proof of this, every
single article. She's well, I haven't read them all. Everyone
that I read. She brings up the Molotov ribbon, Trump pack.

Speaker 5 (15:01):
Oh, I was gonna guess the Hitler Stalin packed.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
Is that?

Speaker 2 (15:04):
That's that's the same thing.

Speaker 5 (15:06):
Another name for it, not the Chamberlaine Hitler packed, which
is euphonized.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
Please please, never.

Speaker 5 (15:14):
How you ever think that doesn't show anything?

Speaker 3 (15:19):
Or the fundraisers in New York for the Nazi Party. No, never,
how would you ever consider that.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
You guys are you guys are way ahead of me here.
Molotov ribbon shop is her favorite thing that has ever happened.
She literally phrased it like this, that the Germans were
supported by an alliance with the Soviet Union. Alliance was
the word in an academically published paper, which was, of
course a non aggression packed.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
No one's denying that. But who else?

Speaker 1 (15:48):
Who else had a non aggression packed either de facto
or degerie.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
With the Nazis?

Speaker 5 (15:55):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (15:55):
Which which capitalists? In which country? Propagandai is the public
against entering the war? Because they had hundreds of millions
of dollars invested in the German economy?

Speaker 5 (16:06):
Who thought that that very brave policy they called appeasement
of Hitler would do the trick? The bravery of the
liberal establishment comes out again in their appeasement strategy of Hitler.
Just give them that, Okay, just give him that. Okay,
he'll stop after.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
What is the worst that could happen? Yeah?

Speaker 5 (16:23):
I mean, oh but Hitler Instalin exchange words totalitarianism. Hannah
Rent leaps onto the scene.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
Let me tell you why none of that matters, because
authoritarianism is the same as fascism, which is also the
same as communism.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
Okay, so everything is the same. Well yeah, same limits
are gone, nothing matters. We're like modists now and language
is meaningless.

Speaker 5 (16:50):
It's not even. It's not spectrum, it's not horseshoe theory,
it's not fish hook theory.

Speaker 3 (16:55):
It's just so.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
She studies, Yeah, mainly Ukraine and the things that Stalin
did there.

Speaker 3 (17:04):
She must be an expert on the on the Palestinian genocide, right,
so she's.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
Not quite she's I think a liberal Zionist. She says,
she's kind of on both sides, like we should be,
we should weep for both sides.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
That's kind of ye to ignore the fact that Nintaaku
just acknowledged that they funded Hamas from Qatar. Those are
minor details. Now.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
The first guy, the first guy, Jason Stanley, He's like, uh,
he's not a Zionist. I don't I don't think he's
an anti Zionist. But he's not a Zionist and he's
spoken out against it. That The third guy, we're going
to look at mister the husband Snyder. Snyder has tweeted
hundreds of times about genocide in the last two years.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
Nice hundreds.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
So he's based against Natah.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Oh no, it wasn't not the not the guys and genocide.
It was the the Ukrainian genocide, the genocide of the Ukrainians.

Speaker 3 (18:03):
Because absolutely nobody calls that a genocide out.

Speaker 5 (18:06):
That oh that ICC court case, that is there what.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
No, no, no, there's there's not even one official claim
of considering Ukrainian genocide. I dare you to find one.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
Mister Snyder has not has not mentioned Gaza and genocide
a single time ever.

Speaker 3 (18:25):
My mark, maybe my mark because actually wait.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
Wait wait, I'm sorry he did.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
He mentioned that once when a certain expert came out
like basically a month after October seventh, and he said,
based on my research and the evidence, this is not
a genocide. One year later, that same scholar reversed position
and said, okay, yeah, now we have the evidence this
is a genocide. This guy Snyder retweeted the first one

(18:51):
that this is not a genocide, and did not retweet
the second one.

Speaker 5 (18:55):
Wait, after the second claim came out, he retweeted the
first claim.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Is that or no At the time, he retweeted the
one that said this is not a genocide.

Speaker 5 (19:03):
Then ignored the second one.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
Then when the same person said this is a genocide.
He did not retweet that one, but again, he's posted
hundreds of times about the genocide of u Ukrainians.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
This is what happens when you have no death penalty
to academia. This this, this is the minor details that
get under the cracks.

Speaker 5 (19:21):
Yeah, just just as fascism needs no definition because he
knows it when he sees it, genocide also there is
no definition because he just knows it when he sees it,
and it always happens to align with liberal ideology. It's
a trust me broke, amazing coincidence.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
So, Eric, when you say I know when I see it,
is that a quote from who is that from Tim
Snyder who said that?

Speaker 5 (19:43):
Or I was listening to a recent podcast that and
Snyder kind of said I didn't listen to the whole thing,
So I don't know if he expands or hedges or whatever,
But yeah, that was pretty clearly stated a couple time.
Yet the definition of fascism doesn't matter because the signs
are there. And if you look at Stanley's book, he

(20:05):
each chapter of his book on I think it was
in twenty ten, his book lists like eight signs of fascism.
So there's like unreality propaganda. There's a bunch of these
like each chapter gets it, like each one gets a
chapter long treatment. And it's kind of just like all
these things are in America too, like and this they're

(20:27):
there too obvious, but like fascism just sort of does
them all better. Like I don't understand it. It kind
of like, yeah, I don't. I don't understand. I have
to do a little more digging into that. But I
wanted a definition of fanism and I was told it's
not important.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Bye bye, Tim Snyder and Tim Snyder editor.

Speaker 5 (20:49):
I don't understand why it's not important. What do you
do in the ICC if you don't have a definition
of genocide? It's like, well, okay, we don't have a definition,
so guess you're off the hook.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Yeah, so, Tim Snyder, you're reciting Jason Stanley's book on
what is Fascism or something?

Speaker 2 (21:08):
How to Survive? It's twelve Rules of Life for fashion,
not the.

Speaker 5 (21:12):
Most recent one. I went a book back because I
didn't want to read a book that is like mixing
academics with current events. I wanted to go back and
see their pure statements of their positions.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
But he writes they're like eight, here's eight signs of fascism,
and it's like control of the press. Well, demands believe
that kind of shit, right, Yeah? So Tim Snyder also
wrote a Twelve Rules for Life of Fascism. It was
a best seller. And guess whose quote is on the
dust jacket, Hillary Clinton, who calls it a quote chilling

(21:47):
description of how authoritarian mindsets work.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Unquote?

Speaker 5 (21:51):
That is a New York Times bestseller jacket. Yes, this
is to read list.

Speaker 1 (21:59):
This is actually his second best seller. His first bestseller
is blood Lands Colon Europe between Hitler and Stalin.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
Now, yeah, and Eric, I want you.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
To listen carefully to this quotation, because you are gonna
just absolutely love this quote. We have some history of
Soviet terror, of the Holocaust, of the Ukrainian famine, of
the German reprisals against the civilians. So right, he just
listed four things. Soviet Soviet terror, Holocaust, you create, German reprisals.

(22:31):
But all of these crimes happened in the same place
in such a short time span. Why didn't we not
treat them as a single event and see if they
can be.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
Unified under a meaningful marity?

Speaker 5 (22:42):
Ah haha, Okay, I admit I have headed you off there.
I thought that was funny too, but I headed I
headed you off because I did look at a couple
reviews of his books, and the idea the Bloodlands concept
is actually like a conscious spatial history decision concept is

(23:06):
a sort of spatial history concept where you're using a
geographically bounded area to tell a story rather than like
a concept and then like jumping from place to place.
So the fact that Auschwitz was in Poland and like
all the Eastern you could just draw a circle around
Eastern Europe. You could then start your story in the

(23:27):
nineteen twenties with the big famine, and then you could
get to the and this even go back to the
Civil War, then the famine, then the purges, and then
you can say, okay, well what also happened here were
the death squads, the Nazi death squads, the Soviet death squads,
And then you can say, well, okay, Auschwitz was in
Poland a lot of so the Bloodlands is where like
seventeen million people were murdered between the Nazis and the Soviets.

Speaker 3 (23:54):
Yeah, let me take a job at it. That will
be like textbook definition of framing bias. Like it's high
school mistake, not even academic mistake. This is the textbook
definition of framing bias, Like you're choosing an arbitrary geographical definition,
an arbitrary timeframe. You're restraining variables so you can push
a narrative on a certain limits or cause relationship between

(24:17):
causes and consequences. This is like nobody will publish that
under their right mind, and nobody will allow something like
this to be published. This is beyond the arbitrary. This is,
of course a bias towards creating a narrative that is
useful too, towards pushing and a specific identity or ideology.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
This is like the peak middle of horseshoe theory, like
barbarians came at this land from either side, they were
exactly the same and did exactly the same thing where
they were in Ukraine.

Speaker 3 (24:48):
Yeah, this sounds like reactionary centrism that they're reframing back
from concepts, going to what they truly are, and they're
like establishing this metaphysical area in the middle of nowhere.
And this is exactly what she's doing by saying this,
She's creating a metaphysical area in the middle of nowhere.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
To this is Tim Snyder doing that.

Speaker 3 (25:05):
Sorry, but there are a couple so I don't know
exactly who created what. I just want to be nice.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
And also he's not even saying we're going to talk
about this geographical place. He says, these events are going
to be treated as one thing.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
There.

Speaker 5 (25:20):
Here's a quote from the review I was looking at.
This is a quote within a quote. This is quoting Snyder.
In the middle of Europe in the middle of the
twentieth century, writes Snyder. The Nazi quote again, the Nazi
and Soviet regimes murdered some fourteen million people. The place

(25:41):
where all of the victims died, the Bloodlands extends from
central Poland to Western Russia, through Ukraine, Belarus, and the
Baltic States. End quote. So this is the geographic area
he's decided to focus on for his history.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
He's selecting to support the ideology that he already wants
to present.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
He's not choosing a random place.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
This is like choosing it's framing us Massachusetts and saying, oh,
there was a bunch of people here, then suddenly no
one arrived from nowhere and they all died.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
If you're going to do some like real honest historiographical work.
You're also not starting from zero. I mean, there's a
theory of Riamland and the relationship with Motherland, and how
that area has been subject to conflict for centuries, you know,
like you don't like out of nowhere, call it the badlands,
and choose to create a narrative that is convenient because

(26:36):
of those events in that time. You have to consider
the fact that other historiographical work has been done before that,
and the Riemland theory and Motherland theory is widely accepted geopolitically.

Speaker 5 (26:47):
And I appreciate that it's a different way of doing history.
But then the content that they choose to fill it with.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
I byre fuck.

Speaker 5 (26:57):
I think it's very one sided. I think it ignores
you know, you know who else went to Yale, you
know who else studied these things. Michael fucking PARENTI. How
many how many citations does he get in their books?
I bet the I bet his bup kiss I bet
is the answer. So aeographical point.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
There's there's your review of the book.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
Someone who is actually an expert on fascism also reviewed
this book. We've had him on We've had him on
the podcast way back when Sir Richard Evans. He reviewed
the book saying, and his final sentence is, Snyder's book
is of no use.

Speaker 5 (27:33):
So, you know, one of the one of the people
I looked at, said, but he leaves out, you know,
the Russian Civil War. He decides to start after the
Russian Civil War. Uh. Here we also here's here's another
line from that. This is hilarious. Here we also here
we already encounter one of the major problems of this book.

(27:56):
And again we're talking about Actually I've jumped over to
talking about Snyder's book by focusing on Stalin's crimes, the
millions of people who died during the Russian Civil War
and especially the famine of twenty one to twenty two
get no attention at all. Snyder mentions these victims in passing,
but does not go into any depth, probably because they

(28:16):
fit neither his temporal nor his spatial framework which we
were just discussing. These people died in the quote unquote
blood Lands and in many other parts of the former
Czarist Empire for the violent policies of the Bolsheviks in general,
the Stalinist leadership in particular. The experience of the Civil
War was formative and the Ukraine famine of thirty two

(28:38):
thirty three also in many ways constituted a reliving of
the famine that had preceded it by ten years. So
not exactly saying it's worthless, but like, here's a big
faux pas. You know, the spatial and historical framework as
we've been mentioning, creates these omission problems. Well, let me say,

(28:59):
here's the blood lands.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
I I clipped that quote from Richard Evans's review of
the article. The full sentence says, what we need is
not to be told once again the facts about mass murder,
but to understand why it took place and how people
could carry out and carry it out. And in this task,
Snyder's book is of no use.

Speaker 5 (29:22):
That's the question. That's the question I kept asking, is
why did this happen? Why did this happen?

Speaker 3 (29:28):
Why?

Speaker 5 (29:29):
And it's not they're not interested in that. They they're
not even interested in saying anything new. They're giving a
synoptic view of scholarship that's already been done. And even
more than that, they're they're sort of selective rendering of
that scholarship in a way that you know, aligns with
their centrist, leftist kind of take right because there, you know,

(29:51):
we need a coalition government to stand up to fascism.
The center left in the center right need to come together.
Blah blah blah.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
We can tell you why. I know exactly why. It's
in the title. It's called Bloodlands Europe between Hitler and Stalin.

Speaker 3 (30:06):
Yeah, it's centrism.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
Well, the conclusion of the book is that Stalin killed
people in here. Hitler came in here and killed people.
Stalin came back and killed people. It's just random people
are randomly killing people and it's all the same. So yeah,
the point of this book is Stalin equals Hitler exactly.
I don't want to debate why that is because I
need to get to the next book, which is also

(30:29):
a best seller. That was a bestseller, his second best
seller on tyranny. This is the one that was reviewed
by Hillary Clinton. This one compares Hitler and Stalin.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
To Satan Trump.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
Oh my god, Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 (30:46):
These guys, they're sold.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
And among its speculations. Among its speculations is that page
thirty one, if you're following along, twenty sixteen will be
the last election in the United States.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
Oh my god, there's like drama.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
Queens profits this is why he had to flee because
he uh.

Speaker 3 (31:09):
Yeah, he was prosecuted, dear lord. And there's no society
of control anywhere near those analysis like.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
So so again, actual actual expert on fascism, Richard Evans
also reviewed this one, and he wrote, democracy dies in
many different ways, and to help us in defending our rights,
we need a more thoughtful book than this.

Speaker 5 (31:34):
Yeah. I often found that the problems they keep mentioning that,
you know, okay, fascism had these very extreme things about it,
and then they say, okay, this looks like what Trump
is doing. But then the things they say Trump is doing,
I'm like, those things have not been absent from America ever,
like they've always been done. Maybe Trump's doing them a

(31:58):
bit differently. He's doing minutes in his orange yeah, with
his orange tone and his extreme tea party kind of ship.
But whatever the uh, He's doing the same things that
president many many a president before him have done, just
in an unapologetic way, in a very different way esthetically,

(32:22):
but substantially no different.

Speaker 3 (32:24):
Yeah. I think like, for example, like this, this notion
of control, the position is getting so boring that they
need a pivot point in contrast to look scary to
justify centrism again, it's just like you know, it's it's
it's almost like spectacle. It's like I have to make
the bad guys look better. So my radical, lame, boring
centrism looks more repeating in contrast, because they have fucking

(32:47):
nothing to offer, you know, like like you said, in substance,
they're exactly the same, like in practice, you know, like
age expectancy is the same, like salaries are stagnant, people
cannot afford a home, like people are dosing healthcare, like
the OPOI, the epidemics are out of control. So the
only thing they can offer is to make the other
guy look more scary, and like they're going to keep comparing,

(33:08):
like the next book is going to be like Trump
is worse than Satan himself, you know, like he feeds
on baby and he baits them on blood. Please vote
for Democrats again, It's like, how many flavors are these
bullshit rainbow can you offer us? It's like this is
so dumb, it's so stupid.

Speaker 5 (33:25):
Like the one question I wish they would answer on
that topic of the wit. They don't go to the why,
They just go to the what, which actually is I
guess what history is supposed to do. They're not supposed
to be judge, judge, they're neutral, as if that's possible anyway,
The one question I wish they would because they'll say,

(33:45):
you know, in the thirties there was a kind of
you know, love of Hitler, right, there was a there
was a tolerance of Hitler. There was an encouragement of
Hitler in the thirties on the part of many of
the Western powers, as we know, as I've mentioned before
or on the podcast, even Henry Ford William lyon Mackenzie King,
big fan, right and chain for it.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
Yeah, yeah, like.

Speaker 5 (34:09):
Subsidizing opening factories there, because he was willing to protect
capitalist wealth. But there's never any mention of why why
were they tolerant of Hitler? Why did it have something
to do with communism? Why why is Trump now so
tolerant of the far right and completely will not countenance

(34:31):
anything to do with the left. Why is that?

Speaker 2 (34:33):
Why?

Speaker 5 (34:34):
Why is that is fascism perhaps capitalism's capitalism's final solution
to communism? I think it kind of is, is it not?
That's what it seems like. That's what Michael Parenti will argue,
a fellow Yale scholar that I'm sure they quote voluminously
not and then so they never answered that why question.

(34:58):
They never even try to. Maybe that's not a historian's job.
I don't know. I'm not a historian technically, but they should,
I think, especially in popular books, you can't just release
a popular book and not like try to give people
the why, because if you don't, then they're just going
to fill it in for themselves.

Speaker 3 (35:15):
Exactly, they have to recurrently, they have to recurrently paint
the right as fascists so that liberalism can be offered
as a solution. But what they don't recognize because of
historical analysis is that historically liberalism is the cause of fascism,
never the solution. Like this, This is the main counterpoint too,
to all these narratives. You can say it as many
times as you want. Historically we know that when faced

(35:37):
against the disjunction between communism and fascism, liberals side with
fascists every time.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
You know, it was it's spectacle spectacle fascism. And it's
hard to separate the two right because you get some
you get some fascist type behavior, and it's hard to
separate it because people like this are screaming fascism at
everything that happens.

Speaker 5 (35:58):
Yeah, so Stanley's book. I thought it was funny. In
Stanley's book, it's called How Fascism Works The Politics of
Us in Them, where he kind of just frames fascism
as the politics of us in them, as if nobody
else does that. And one of the chapters is it
one of the things? Chapter eight? Okay, one of these principles. Sorry,

(36:21):
there are ten chapters in here, but I don't think
the last two are part of the principles. Sodom and
Gomorrah in chapter nine, I can't see it.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
Projections maybe projections sexual anxiety.

Speaker 5 (36:31):
We read Wilhelm Reich and he basically came out and said,
sexual repression is a major factor in limiting the effects
of you know, the revolutionary effects of poverty. You know,
when you're in dire straits, the thing to do would
be to not ally with the capitalists who are exploiting you.

(36:54):
But then sexual repression comes in and kind of inverts
that situation. And that explains why people who are being
exploited then sort of side with the exploiters and in
political elections, Uh, because they have a.

Speaker 1 (37:09):
They have like a penis envy, so they desire the.

Speaker 3 (37:13):
The worst Freudian takes, the worst Fraudian takes are non materialists.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
No, No.

Speaker 5 (37:18):
Sexual Repression explains how ideology becomes a material force. That
you have to understand how he makes that argument about
why ideology is a material force. Because we're not there yet,
let's let's let's hold down.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
Yeah, there's a great book I can recommend that. It's
called Why Women had Better Sex Life under Socialism? That
compares the amount of that compares the amount of orgasms
per capita in divided Germany, and that will break their
horseshoe theory exactly where they're trying to pin it down.

Speaker 1 (37:51):
Okay, well, we'll turn tune in next week for the
full psychoanalysis of a fascism and sexual There, I'll will
show you what gives me sexual anxiety. It's what is this?
What is this like a thrupple?

Speaker 3 (38:11):
What is this?

Speaker 1 (38:12):
Okay, even if you even if you're not watching with video,
this will give you the vibes of the the work
of art that these people have put together.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Two of them.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
Remember, have been in Canada already already for almost a year.

Speaker 2 (38:26):
Okay, brief, brief, Now, now I want you to watch this.
I want you to watch this.

Speaker 1 (38:32):
Try if you if you can separate what might be
real fashion fascism from New York Times spectacle fascism.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
Like, it's really hard to do this.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
Would we would have to go into like in depth
and pause frame by frame to see what's happening here.
But they mix it all together to make you afraid
of this one image.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
Here we go.

Speaker 6 (38:54):
Theales professors, I mean history and utilitarianism.

Speaker 7 (38:57):
I look at fascist rhetoric and thinking about the sources
of the worst kinds of history for a quarter of
a century.

Speaker 3 (39:05):
Experts say the constitutional crisis is here now. The Trump
administration deporting hundreds of men without.

Speaker 6 (39:11):
A trial, a massive purge at the FBI.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
To make people afraid of speaking out against him.

Speaker 6 (39:22):
I'm leaving to the University of Toronto because I want
to do my work without the fear that I will
be punished for my words.

Speaker 5 (39:30):
Who is next?

Speaker 6 (39:32):
Creates a state of paralysis in society.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
The tough student whose visa was removed because she co
authored an article in the top student newspaper.

Speaker 6 (39:45):
I thought, what would I do if guys in mass
try to grab my student? Would I scream? Would I
run away? Would I try to pull the mask off?
Would I try to videotape the scene? Would I try
to pull the guys off of her? Maybe I would
get scared and run away. The truth is I don't know.

Speaker 1 (40:04):
Okay, so she doesn't know what happened if a Palestinian
got black bagged, But we do know what she would
do regarding Mahmod Khalil getting black bagged and taken to Louisiana.
She tweeted this regarding Mahmood Khalil. I'll put the quote
on the screen just in case I misquote it. But
what she's afraid of is not Ma Mood Khalil being detained.

(40:28):
It's that quote. Jews might be scapegoaded for the violence
carried out by fascist administration.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
I mean, fuck the guy with the Muslim name.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
It's because me me me me me, I have to
go to Canada, where I already live, because me me
me me me me, me me me.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
So it can't be.

Speaker 5 (40:47):
Condemned on its own terms as to be like, you know,
the optics might be off if we condemned this again.
The word bravery just springs to mind again.

Speaker 3 (40:57):
No, but let's let's try to make the exercise that
you'll proposed like on what we saw, what is what
is fascism? And what is spectacle fascism? And in this
clip is weird because for example, they start with this
like mass deportation of immigrants to Salvador. That's that's pretty
much a business deal, like Trump did that because it's
less expensive to to process immigrants in Salvador and then

(41:18):
get them deported then to do it internally in the US.
So is that fascism, I don't know. I think is
closer to capitalism as we know it and love it,
disappearing dissident voices. I really don't know. I think I
think this this lady that was black back, it was
probably too well documented and too like out there in
the open to be real fascism. I would probably call

(41:40):
it closer to to spectacle fascism. But then again, what
are you gonna think.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
I don't know, like fascism the definition that like Italy
and Nazi Germany plus concentration camp if you want to
call the prison that, I like, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
This is not my area. I think Eric knows more
about this than I do.

Speaker 6 (41:58):
Well.

Speaker 5 (41:59):
I think one of the one of the things is,
you know, fascism is kind of equivalent to far right politics,
and ultranationalism is a word that came up a bunch,
So you have sort of far right ultranationalism being like
not not patriotism, by the way, not nationalism light not

(42:20):
what we all, We're all good patriots. It's just if
you go ultranationalists, then you're getting into fascist territory. Like
I don't know, and then.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
How does that?

Speaker 5 (42:30):
Then does that I guess the Bolsheviks were ultranationalists by
that standard, then it just seems like it's I get
the problems of defining fascism, especially if you want to
throw so many different eggs into that basket. Then how
are you going to have a definition that applies everywhere?

Speaker 2 (42:50):
You can't.

Speaker 5 (42:50):
We're gonna have to be more specific. Otherwise you just
have sort of the I know it when you see it,
when I see it definition. You know, we see the
signs and the signs. The New York Times video showed
us obviously have to have a true crime style music
playing in the background, like when you're gonna see a
conspiracy theory documentary. Don't don't, don't, don't, don't don't do.

Speaker 2 (43:13):
Like they thought they were safe.

Speaker 5 (43:15):
Yeah, like just this very dramatic music, like it's just
keying you to look at all this being like, oh
my god, what is going on?

Speaker 2 (43:22):
Like it's.

Speaker 5 (43:25):
I mean, I just I hate the way New York
Times has made that video. It's just so sensational, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
It's like it's difficult though, Like, is is sending migrants
to a let's call it a concentration camp? Just to
make the parallel clear, is this part of fascism specifically?
Or is it something like ethno nationalism as opposed to
fascism liken ethno nationalism is no is no better, but
it's kind of a different thing. And then there's a

(43:52):
line in there that's like Trump is purging the FBI?

Speaker 2 (43:57):
Is that is that anything?

Speaker 3 (43:59):
Is that?

Speaker 2 (43:59):
Is that fascism?

Speaker 3 (44:00):
Is that.

Speaker 5 (44:02):
An attack on democratic institutions like the news and the
universities and using the police force as like a personal
bodyguard or a personal military rather than a individual you know,
all those things whatever, Since it's America, all those things
are democratic institutions and they're by definition they're under threat

(44:23):
by Trump.

Speaker 3 (44:24):
There's no Yeah, it only seems to work when you
like make a caricature out of Hitler and fascism.

Speaker 5 (44:31):
And when you really clean up American history, so you
can just get that contrast between like how America. Of course,
the fascists have that sort of nostalgic return to the
nineteen thirties or whatever, a time when things were wider
and more masculine. But then the liberals also have their
kind of historical stacy that America used to be this

(44:53):
like democratic Wonder's Land and now it's a founding and ruined,
when really America has only ever as long as as
far as I've seen, it's worked very well. If you
have a lot of money, it's worked well if you
are at least in like the middle upper middle classes.
For everybody else, it kind of it works you.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
It doesn't.

Speaker 5 (45:14):
It doesn't work for you death.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
You know, when I saw those I saw the guys
with their head shaved, and I was like, holy shit,
did New York Times put an Israeli prison in their video?

Speaker 2 (45:27):
Oh no, no, no, no, no, it's El Salvador.

Speaker 5 (45:30):
Yeah, this is the crypto president escapegoating the immigrants. Thing
was very interesting to sort of say, this is also
a sign of fascism because Trump is doing this and
I'm thinking well.

Speaker 3 (45:45):
Yeah, because the immigrants were doing grades under the Democrats.

Speaker 5 (45:48):
Is that unique. Maybe maybe it's unique in the sense
that the president is directly saying it, But I don't know.
It's been pretty permissive. America has been pretty permissive about
scapegoating as long as it's the right groups.

Speaker 1 (46:04):
I think the black bagging protesters this is probably up there,
that's number one, And of course the biggest victim of America,
Hassan Piker.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
You had to wait at the airport.

Speaker 3 (46:19):
Yeah, undergo, oh my god, you know, kind of.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
Kind of a sly there. But seriously, if there's only
one reason why he specifically detained at the airport, right,
black banging Palestinian protend protesters because of anti semitism, and
then you got the stuff that we talked about last
week or two weeks ago with the uh withholding federal
funds and then giving spurious, spurious reasons why. But I

(46:47):
think a video like this of here's all the things
that happened that are fascists. While it's all in the
family of fascism, it's this makes me more confused, right this.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Which part of this? Where how do we dissect these events?

Speaker 1 (47:02):
This seem I call it spectacle because it leaves me
more confused looking at their books, their articles. I don't
even know what I'm properly afraid of. And that's even
before they're lying about fleeing the United States.

Speaker 3 (47:16):
You're saying spectacle in the in like the Gideborean way,
like as in hiding the material reality behind it, right.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
Yeah, as a as a distraction. It's it's made to
create the illusion of conflict and an emotional reaction, and
it's meant to stir your feelings rather than then reveal
something true.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
It's like, exactly what this is.

Speaker 3 (47:39):
Yeah, I agree, Like it seems it seems like a
very Pevot strategy, as if like I want to make
my enemy look worse, so I'm a better option.

Speaker 1 (47:47):
In contrast, it's like crying wolf, Yeah, when there's actually
a wolf, but it's on the other side. It's coming
from the other side of the village, and you're crying
wolf on the south side of the village.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
So and in the end, I'm oh, my god, this
is the United States of America. Like both sides are
like they're so close to each other, Like calling each
other a fascist or like communists is so ridiculous. That's
that's why I like this notion of like radicalism is
becoming is creating reactionary centrism, because radicalism is radical because

(48:18):
it's radigy, it's based, you know, radicalism is based. Reactionary
centrism is spectacle bullshit. That's the way I see it
right now.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
And they're so non materialists because the way they describe
it is just people are randomly putting up a tent
and then it says fascism on the front, and just
randomly these idiots are all just going into it like
there's no there's no material conditions, there's no dissatisfaction, there's
nothing that the Democratic Party did, of course, there's just
random If you set up a fascism in tent, everybody

(48:48):
just runs into it. Why, that's what the problem with
having no material analysis.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
You know.

Speaker 5 (48:55):
What I also found very forced straight was how they
justify their support of the Democratic Party and then how
they respond to questions about why Democrats have done literally
nothing to stem the tide of Trump, to oppose Trump
to anything, and their answer is that it's you, the

(49:18):
population's job, to get out there and create a platform.
I think they might get into it a bit a
platform for your Democrats to then show up. So you
do a rally. You got to organize it because the
Democrats ain't gonna do fucking shit, you got it, and
you got to hope that they show up and get

(49:40):
some good photo ops there. And that's going to like
invigorate the Democratic Party because they're gonna so otherwise, like
the natural drift of the Democrats is just to become
fucking right wing capitalists unless you, the people hold them accountable,
you who elected them and gave them their fucking mandate
in the first place. They don't need to listen to

(50:01):
that at all unless you're constantly there making it so
that they can't ignore your voices, because otherwise they won't
do ship for you. And that's why we're proud Democrats,
I guess it is because they're so responsive to you
when you get out on the streets and do every
all the work for them.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
Yeah, let's uh, let's watch the thing that Eric's talking about.

Speaker 7 (50:23):
People say, oh, the Democrats should be doing more, they
should be fixing things. But if you want the Democrats
to do things, you have to create the platform for them.
You there to make the spectacle, the pageantry, the positive energy,
the physical place where they can come to.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
You counter spectacle voult harder volt harder is the conclusion
of these menositions are so predictable, like these guys like
they live in wonderland. It's it's insane. You have you have,
you have to cherry peak the events in the world
to a to a nanometric degree of precision in order
to believe these bullshit. It's insane. It's absolutely insan.

Speaker 5 (51:01):
I just love the tortured logic of being a democrat
but then claiming they're not gonna do shit for you
because thess these feckless, immoral, fucking moral, compass free buffoons
will not will not oppose fascism unless you get out
there and tell them to. And what when do people
get out on the streets and protest, Like how often

(51:23):
does that? Things get have to get pretty bad for
that to happen. There has to be like a clearly
racist murder that was caught on camera. There has to
be a horrible economic disaster, like things need to happen,
or genocide, a bunch of ENID a.

Speaker 3 (51:39):
Real, actual, materially concrete genocide.

Speaker 5 (51:41):
Yeah, like really terrible things need to happen before people
get out on the streets and create that fucking platform
that the Democrats so badly need before they'll get off
their asses and actually govern the fucking country.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
Dude, I'm with you this it feels like absolute wonderland.
He literally said that. Tim Snyder, this guy who Hillary
Clinton wrote on his book, he said, you have to
go out and build the platform so that your civil
servants can come to you and speak into the microphone, like,
are you kidding? This is their politics, is connected politics.

(52:16):
This is what happens when you go to Yale, and
now they're sending them over here close the border.

Speaker 5 (52:23):
I mean, I've been I've been thinking, you know, and
one of the things Willhelm like points out and I
think this is kind of just a truism now, is
that the one of the most dangerous, say, layers of
society is the lower middle class in fascist uprisings, because
they are the ones who are likely to go over

(52:44):
to the fascist side, Like the workers are at the
bottom of the pyramids holding the whole thing up. There's
a good chance that they will if they're not too
sexually repressed, of course, but the middle class has a
bit of freedom and comfort, so there's a little more
likelihood that and then so the word just PMC right,

(53:05):
professional middle class like these are professional middle class managers
who are trying to justify who are maybe angry about
the proletarianization of post secondary labor, and they have but
they have the resources and they're ensconsin at all that
they can move around and avoid that proletarianization, while those
of us who don't have those kinds of means or

(53:27):
are not established in those areas just get pushed the
fuck out and have to go find different lines of
work to support ourselves. So I can't say I feel
too much sympathy for their plights. You know, not everyone
has that opportunity to just flee the fucking country.

Speaker 3 (53:44):
You know.

Speaker 5 (53:44):
Oh, we should have learned from nineteen thirty three that
you can get.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
Out of there.

Speaker 5 (53:47):
Oh yeah, remember, oh yeah, just like Walter Benjamin tried
to get out of there, right, he was very successful
at escaping. No, he had no money, he had no contacts. Adorno,
I guess was trying to help him, trying to get
him a fucking pass, but he couldn't get out. And
that is what happens to people who try to flee,
is they cannot get out. They cannot get away unless

(54:07):
they have the resources to do it. I mean that's that.
This is another version of during that that We're all
in this together video that all the celebrities sent out
during fucking COVID.

Speaker 3 (54:19):
You know, this virus got me feeling a bit philosophical.
Doesn't matter who you are, where you're from, We're all
in this together, and the world will be is one.

Speaker 5 (54:35):
We're all in this together. Fascism affects us all. We
all have to come together and fight the fascist No,
none of that, kumbai all fucking shit, real historical analysis.
I don't want the counter spectacle to the spectacle of fascism.
I want the real opposition to real fascism, the victim

(54:56):
mentality of all the atrocities that are being perpetrated upon
Yale professors.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
This is an interview with Jason Stanley, the first guy.
The interviewer asks do you fear persecution down the line,
and he says, no, I welcome persecution.

Speaker 3 (55:15):
I want to move to Canada.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
Yeah, I welcome persecution.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
I would love to be arrested and for my grandkids
to say my granddad got arrested for fighting fascism.

Speaker 3 (55:25):
There you go.

Speaker 5 (55:26):
I want to get arrested too. I'm sure it's working
wonders for Piker's views. That the fact that they often
leave out these why questions, which makes these books kind of,
in that reviewer's word, sort of useless because they don't
try to answer the why of fascism. They just try
to go for the what and then like see the

(55:48):
signs and get rid of the get rid of them
when they come or or flee the country. But if
you really thought, okay, well, fascism adopted a lot of
the rhetoric that the socialist socialists are very successful. Germany
had had a huge socialist party, as did France going
well into the twentieth century until the Stalinist atrocities and

(56:09):
things like that started dividing things. But you know, the
rise of communism in the left today we say the
left is dead. We say, well, judging by the standards
of what the Democrats are doing, and the left is
fucking dead. But the resurgence of interest in Marx, even
the Maga communism, which was insane to me, but like

(56:32):
it's got that word in the title, Bernie Sanders, kind
of making socialism not a bad word anymore. The rise
of lots of YouTube channels and groups. I think of
things even just like David Harvey's lectures, or the even
the emergence of the More, I mean, the increasing bravery

(56:52):
of the more like Stalinist and maw not apologetics, but
like you know, they're willing to actually have a critical
look at what they did and not outright dismissed them.
People who are around the monthly review magazine. There's that
that's one orbit of those sorts of politics. I mean,
those things to me do seem to be on the rise,

(57:13):
and Marx is coming back into vogue, and so what
that says to me is that, Okay, there's going to
be a fascist counter reaction, because that's what it is, right,
It's it's reactionary ideology. It's reactionary in the sense that
you know, our our view, our worldviews, our ideologies are

(57:34):
actually kind of lagging behind the state of things.

Speaker 3 (57:38):
Right.

Speaker 5 (57:38):
We evaluate things like AI according to older moral frameworks
that we inherited from the earlier twentieth century or inherited
from our parents and things like that. It's there's there's
inherently there's there's a lag there. And so if you
go but the point is, if you go to this
why question, you might start to see that the sort

(57:58):
of new acceptability of far left politics in many corners
is and and obviously they saw critical race theory and
all that, all their rhetoric points to a rise of
cultural whatever woke cultural Marxism and stuff. And then the
part they don't say, which it's a global Jewish conspiracy.

(58:21):
That's the part they leave quiet now because they're obsessed
with Israel. But you know, it says to me, if
you go to that why and you see the newfound
acceptability of Marxist ideas, you then naturally get the political
reactionaries coming forward, of which Trump is a perfect representative,

(58:44):
or at least he's a great vehicle for right wing
rhetoric and fascist politics. Even if he himself is not
a fascists, he's certainly an enabler.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
Well, they're they're they're deploying the comfort of language, and
I mean kind of the opposite of comfort. It's calling
it fascism means that we know what it is, so
even if we're scared of it, then we can prop
it up, use it to sell books, get cred for
moving to a country that we already moved to. And uh, yeah,

(59:16):
then we get to be the biggest victims when we
all know Hassan Piker is the biggest victim of all this.

Speaker 3 (59:24):
I got, I got to a very nice conclusion. I agree,
Hassan Piker is the biggest victim.

Speaker 1 (59:29):
I mean about the rest of the world once when
you go after Okay, just like strategically, if they're trying
to what what is it called chilling like chill chilling effect,
that is like the worst. He's like the most famous
among the leftist kids that there is, right, yep, that's
a strategically awful decision.

Speaker 3 (59:49):
They could go after show Speed next, like if they're
actually going to an anti China, anti Russia think tank,
like I show Speed became a comrade last time he
went to China.

Speaker 2 (59:59):
So the guy who jumps over cars, Yeah exactly. Oh
that guy's that guy's boss.

Speaker 3 (01:00:06):
He's sick.

Speaker 1 (01:00:07):
Yeah, so you're so China's trying to get him over
there so they can indoctrinate him and send him back.

Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
Oh he already went. He did a live stream with
like forty eight million people connected live like he tore
down five year worth of propaganda with one live stream.

Speaker 5 (01:00:22):
You know the fact that we're we're a Critical Theory
in Philosophy podcast, and we're all we.

Speaker 3 (01:00:27):
Are an orientalist materialist podcast. Eric, please please sure we.

Speaker 5 (01:00:32):
All have we all have both feet at least in
those in those areas. Anyway, what's the training of these
people that would bring them to these conclusions? It's it's interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
I don't know, maybe we talk about that for a
bit too, just a couple of minutes, because I.

Speaker 5 (01:00:49):
Don't know their backgrounds, like I keep bringing them up
this episode, but I just wonder, how how is it?
Michael Parenti was a political scientist at Yale, and he
came to the conclude usions that he did about you know,
of course there were Stalin was an atrocious leader. But
also the outright dismissal of everything that happened there is

(01:01:11):
also not helpful. It is not helpful to say that,
you know, capitalism has all these problems, but when we're
talking about capitalism and communism, then capitalism is like the
golden child. There's nothing wrong with it. We can't like
you see how the discourse shifts. You can talk about
capitalism good and bad, talk about communism, capitalism everything good.

(01:01:36):
Outright dismissal of anything, I.

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
Mean, we can't there's a there's definitely some.

Speaker 5 (01:01:41):
Sort of less realism, Mark Fisher, whatever however you want
to put it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
There's a critical theory.

Speaker 5 (01:01:45):
They're clearly not into critical theory.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
No, no, no, there's so he's an analytic philosopher, Sasan Stanley,
at least just looking at his pages says contributions to
philosophy of language and epistemology. Whenever you do the those
two things at the same time, it's analytic philosophy. But
I mean the bubble, the bubble phenomenon here that New
York Times readers, that New York Times, these big vanity

(01:02:11):
fair that you're so if they're getting super excited about
something which and this is one of them, you can.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
Bet that that has the material that originates the.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
The impulse is going to be opposite to the outcome
that they're they're calling for the fascism. But the I
don't know, it's just this is this is why I'm
going to call it spect the spectacular fascism?

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
Is it because it's just on this loop.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
It's a loop from New York Times to the New
York Times readers to this kind of academic I I
don't know if I have ever heard someone, Oh, I
guess Harold Bloom is from Yale.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
It just seems like the IVY League Ivy League academ
are disproportionately idiotic in their in their the framing of
what they're going to analyze, because all these three they're analyzing,
their analysis starts out with or at least, sorry, the
two of them. Their analysis starts out with, I need

(01:03:17):
to make Stalin and Hitler the same because I don't
like them both. Yeah, because then, yeah, that's how the
analysis works.

Speaker 3 (01:03:24):
Yeah, the democratic fundamentalism comes up as the only option,
and then we can keep glorifying democratic fundamentalism forever. The
issue is that older metaphysical presuppositions are illustrated. Liberal essentially
is logocentric, Like it's always the same crap that has
been perpetuated in academia since, like since we have hegemonica

(01:03:45):
capitalism dominating the narrative. Like to do critical theory, you
actually need to go into causes consequences, a theory of
history and even being critical of Renaissance and modernity. But
they're not like they're modern.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
That's well, this is exactly the same thing has happened
in the Canadian Parliament when they said, this is a
Ukrainian soldier who fought against the Russians. When when were
when were Ukrainian soldiers fighting against the Russians? And then
they gave him a standing ovation. Oh he's like a
fucking Waffen Access member.

Speaker 3 (01:04:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
Yeah, And and this is to say like, oh, look
at this poor this poor land that the blood lands
here twenty like twenty what is it, twenty five million
Russians guide fighting Nazism. And then after this pile of bodies,
then you're like, well they're kind of.

Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
They're the same. Yeah, yeah, they were fighting each other
brother pretty much the same ideology.

Speaker 1 (01:04:45):
Meanwhile, Henry Henry Ford's son is like working is employed
on the board of like ig Farbins American brand like
GM and Ford are suing the American government for bombing
their factories in Germany that were making armored cars in
World War Two?

Speaker 2 (01:05:04):
Like who's the bat? Are we the batties?

Speaker 5 (01:05:07):
And then on top of that, pills. Didn't you find
an interesting tweet that said something about Jason Stanley going
to the Ukraine and also giving a props to someone
who turned out to be a neo Nazi.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
Oh yeah, this is uh, this is a journalist Max
Blumenthal says Yale's self styled fascism expert Jason Stanley, went
on a midn propaganda tour in Kiev, met with the
US UK funded info shop Stop Oh sorry, info Op
Stop Fake, which was staffed by open supporters of neo

(01:05:41):
Nazi groups, and came back defending I don't know how
to pronounce this. Andrea Perubi, the founder of two actual
fascist parties.

Speaker 5 (01:05:52):
So just like that, that just shows you that they're
blinded by their ideology, at least in the way they're
so desperate to make Russia look evil in the Ukraine,
to look pure and good and the victim of all
of this, that they're willing to ignore the neo Nazi
elements that are clearly there. And I'm not saying Russia's

(01:06:15):
justification then is correct, for no, not at fucking all.
There's no denazification. That's not the purpose at all of
what's going on. But that also just shows you that
there are Nazi elements in quote unquote democratic capitalist countries,
that there are Nazi elements deep in those places, and

(01:06:36):
that if you let your ideology, let your biases, let
your feelings about things, blind you to what's actually there,
and you know, you're stridently trying to make the Ukraine
look like the victim and all this with the goal,
of course, of sending them more weapons. Like that's the goal,
not stopping the conflict, but just convincing everybody to allow

(01:07:01):
us to take a big chunk of your tax money,
spend it on weapons and ship it over to sea.
That's like, they are as useful as fucking fireworks, except
they kill people, right, That's what they're trying to convince
people to be on board with, especially when Biden was
doing it. Now when Trump is doing it, it's not okay.
Maybe it's not okay anymore, but still like fucking hell, man,

(01:07:24):
like stop bringing neo Nazis from the Ukraine to our
parliaments and into our fucking news feeds and trying.

Speaker 2 (01:07:32):
To you know, and then be like, oh didn't sorry,
I didn't know that was a Nazi, Like.

Speaker 5 (01:07:38):
All those Afrikanner former colonialists that they're bringing over from
fucking South South Africa now because they tried to reprogram
GROK to tell everyone there's white genocide in South Africa.
Like Jesus fucking Christ, get your shit together, center.

Speaker 2 (01:07:55):
Remember that, Remember that tweet?

Speaker 1 (01:07:57):
NATO tweeted, is Ukraine is Harry Potter and William Wallace
and Hans Solo and they're they're trying to blow up
the Death Star.

Speaker 3 (01:08:10):
No, I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:08:13):
NATO tweeted this about Ukraine, saying, do you have to
defend Harry Potter and William Wallace because we're fighting, We're
fighting good versus evil here.

Speaker 3 (01:08:21):
Like covering covering international geopolitics all week and then coming
back to the United States politics, it's insane. It's truly insane.
Like you see the whole world is getting based in
terms of how they do geopolitics, and then you turn
into the US and it's like, what the fuck are
you guys doing? Like this is like fucking Wonderland and
then mixed with Star Wars and like crazy narratives, like

(01:08:44):
it makes no sense, Like no wonder nobody takes them
seriously anymore. Like when you go to geopolitical meetings, the
way people talk about politics in the US, it's almost
like with PT now it's like, yeah, they're like they're
doing their like monkey dances and like distracting people while
there the economy is trembling and they have no productive forces.
Let's focus on building a silk road around the world.

(01:09:04):
Let's get to the real stuff that matters. You know,
it's it's insane.

Speaker 5 (01:09:07):
You could learn more about what's happening in the world
from binging and Or season two than watching fucking a
month of news.

Speaker 3 (01:09:15):
I agree, God, I agree.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
And our season two that was about Ukraine fighting Russia,
right and and there.

Speaker 3 (01:09:21):
Is pretty good, by the way, and their season two
it's gold and gold and golden Television.

Speaker 5 (01:09:27):
I think the gorm, whether whether consciously or not, because.

Speaker 3 (01:09:31):
Palestine, I agree on the gorm is Palestinians. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:09:35):
Yeah, And I want to make that claim not because
I believe it's true, but just because I want right
wingers to hate Star Wars.

Speaker 3 (01:09:44):
I mean, even George Lucas said it was based on
the reason that was based on viet Cong So like
you cannot get more like to the race, to the root,
to the radici of the of the of the work.

Speaker 6 (01:09:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:09:56):
See Star Wars has its roots in centrist position to
Vietnam War.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
Awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:10:03):
I mean I truly hate Star Wars. But and Or,
like the and Or and then the the movie that
came out before, like one prequel.

Speaker 2 (01:10:14):
Yeah that one.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
Get rid of these fucking Jedies get rid of the
weird areas well. We just we just made fun of
NATO for saying that Ukraine is Harry Potter and Russia's Baltimore.
And then we're like, oh, I have but this TV,
this is actually good.

Speaker 5 (01:10:29):
A kotor is getting pretty deep. I'm showing my age
by knowing what.

Speaker 2 (01:10:33):
The fuck that is.

Speaker 3 (01:10:34):
Kultur is amazing. I don't mind. I'm forty two and
I'm proud.

Speaker 1 (01:10:37):
I know that came out, that came out on Xbox,
but I didn't get a chance to rent it from
the movie store.

Speaker 5 (01:10:45):
Got them on Steam Baby.

Speaker 2 (01:10:48):
All right, why don't we wrap it there? Guys?

Speaker 3 (01:10:49):
Yeah, we're done.

Speaker 1 (01:10:52):
Next week the psychopathology of fascism and how they are
all just horny and if they just let them, just
let them fuck their moms the it would have been fine.

Speaker 5 (01:11:06):
Possibly next next week, because we may have something a
little different for our subscribers when we do one of
those episodes.

Speaker 2 (01:11:12):
Next Oh true, true. We're gonna have to decide.

Speaker 3 (01:11:15):
We may.

Speaker 5 (01:11:16):
It's up in the air.

Speaker 3 (01:11:19):
Vote vote.

Speaker 2 (01:11:21):
Yeah. If you are not building faith.

Speaker 3 (01:11:25):
Podiums, podiums for your politicians, you're to blame.

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
If you're not standing and holding democratic politicians on your
shoulder like an ancient emperor and holding them up so
they can stand use your failing fascism is your fault.

Speaker 3 (01:11:40):
Total.

Speaker 6 (01:11:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:11:41):
Take a page at A. Greta Tunberg's book. Right, go
go protest Fridays, Fridays for Fascism or something.

Speaker 1 (01:11:49):
Right. If you're not carrying democratic politicians around in those
little Japanese boxes that they carried the royal women around in,
then you are a fascist.

Speaker 5 (01:12:00):
Us.

Speaker 3 (01:12:01):
Take care, guys, always good talking to you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:04):
Lease the machine with your blood, yeah, mhm