A Nazi on Wall Street Podcast
A Nazi on Wall Street Podcast
Rightwing Populism and the Poisonous Politics of Permanent Outrage
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Like Covid, populism cannot be reasoned with. It dresses itself in slogans. It's fixated on outrage. It won’t be won over by facts. It’s inherently suspicious of expertise. It wallows in conspiracy theories. And it's been with us for a long time.
Populism can present itself as both right- and leftwing varieties, but the most dangerous version is fascism, which is a key topic in the A Nazi on Wall Street story. We join Dr. Jay Weixelbaum and EJ Russo to discuss the corrosive politics of populism with expert Dr. David Walsh. Tune in!
First started recording. I'm actually barbecuing this afternoon. So I should probably check my chicken. Yes. For the chicken beet fascism anti-fascism to barbecue. That's the political one.
Speaker 2I love this care.[inaudible]
Speaker 3Welcome to a Nazi on wall street podcast because every time history repeats, the price goes up.
Speaker 2I am Dr. Jason Weichselbaum. I'm a filmmaker and historian and expert in us companies doing business with Nazi Germany,
Speaker 4And I'm EGA Russo. I'm just a regular guy who got freaked out by the last administration and is just trying to figure out what the heck is really happening. Jay and I created this podcast in part to help promote his project, a Nazi on wall street, but to also discuss troubling events and give them historical context. Jay, my friend, how are you doing today? We
Speaker 2Got to count our blessings every day, man. I have a roof over my head. I have food in my stomach access to healthcare, which not everybody has, even with all the chaos and crazy stuff swirling in the world. It's always good to remember the basic things that we have many people don't. So, uh, I, I hate to get sanctimonious, but you know, Diana, count your blessings. We're
Speaker 4Talking about things that we're grateful for. What is one pre pandemic thing or activity that you miss the most?
Speaker 2I love a project and of course this project itself came out of the pandemic and just needing to work on stuff. But I was actually in the middle of kicking off a project that had been gestating for a couple of years, right before the pandemic hit some rock and roll community theater. I was working on a rock opera. It was really getting cool after going through the competition, winning the competition, developing the idea and then spending almost a whole year, like developing the idea and then hiring all the leaders and then hiring the people and starting to write the music and sitting in on the sessions, it was getting really exciting. And then everything shut down to this very day. So I really, really miss that. I love working with
Speaker 4People. I mean, is there any chance that you can restart that or rekindle that after we're all able to get together and start other projects outside of a Nazi on wall street?
Speaker 2Yes. Yes. The project rock opera has not died. Our group, the Baltimore rock, opera society, big ups to them. That's still on the docket for when this all ends and it's going to be really, really cool. So I'm hoping, um, sometime in the spring of 20, 22, most likely it will hit the stage here in the charm city and knock everybody's socks off. So, uh, stay tuned for that.
Speaker 4What a blatant Baltimore rock, opera association plug. I know shill.
Speaker 2I didn't even mean to bring that up. I haven't brought up any of my non scholarly, non and Nazi and wall street lately. We,
Speaker 4We see you big rock opera.
Speaker 2Yeah, I know. I know just our lives.
Speaker 4Well, that's one thing I think we're missing in the world is we need more rock operas.
Speaker 2That's true. I joined Baltimore rock opera society after they'd been around for a while and it really established themselves and grateful to continue to be part of it. They're still doing stuff even through the pandemic, which is really cool. Go check them out. They're doing all kinds of cool stuff. Well,
Speaker 4You know, what could really use an interesting rock opera, Jay, the story behind the rise of modern right-wing populism, which is the topic of today's episode.
Speaker 2It's probably a rock opera in there somewhere.
Speaker 4Roger Waters probably already did one. Well, you know, we, we touch upon a number of singular events and cults of personality on this podcast. However, I am grabbing my broad stroke brush for today's episode because there seems to be one unifying thing that ties all of these topics together. And that is populism a concept that I was completely unfamiliar with before you and I actually started discussing it, Jay. So I'd like to dissect the apparent rise of modern right-wing populism that we have been experiencing over the past few decades. So before I get into the nitty-gritty, what exactly is pot Jay?
Speaker 2And this is where Jay gets himself into trouble. Maybe not, maybe not. I mean, there's because it's such a big, important concept. There's a lot of scholarly debates about this, but I'm going to give you a good workable definition for all kinds of listeners here. And I'll probably still get myself in trouble, but I'm gonna do it anyway. Populist movements, they say they're of the people, that's a common theme. They can be of all ideological varieties. They can be left wing right wing. But the key elements that are consistent among populous movements is that there's a lot of anger. It's about grievance and it's about expressing that grievance. And then everything else is kind of like the dressing up. You know, whether it's a left wing, populist like Huey long, who was a leader during the FDR era. And he had a program called the share, our wealth program had a lot of people angry, you know, about inequality. So there's one thing, but you know, most of the people were part of it. They were angry. There's a common theme or you can have right wing populism, you know, like say the Nazis. A lot of the Germans were mad about a bad economy in Germany, which many on the right blame socialists, they blame the west. They blamed punitive peace following world war one. So all these like excuses for anger, because it's a motive. It tends to rely not on facts and kind of rational discourse, planning, rhetoric, things like that kind of hallmarks of progressivism. But it's about conspiracy theory. Things that grab you emotionally, well obviously it's the bankers or the Jews or insert your group, rich coastal elites or neoliberals, cysts, hats, you name it. And it's funny because like typically there are actual legitimate complaints here, but that's not really the goal of populism in my view. Anyway, it's really about how do we keep the anger going and finding leaders. These movements tend to have leaders that personify that anger, the ones that are strongest.
Speaker 4I once read that populism asks all of the right questions, but comes up with none of the answers in many democratic nations around the world. Recently charismatic leaders, vilify political opponents, disparage institutions, and claim the mantle of the people. Some critics label, this approaches authoritarian or fascists, and many argue that these leaders are using emotions to manipulate and deceive voters. But whether or not this style of politics is ethical, it is actually without a doubt democratic. And it goes by the name of populism. The term populism has been around since ancient Rome and has its roots in the Latin word, populous meaning the people. But since then, populism has been used to describe dozens of political movements often with counterintuitive and sometimes contradictory goals. Populist movements have rebelled against monarchies, monopolies, and a wide variety of powerful institutions. Now to go through the entire history of populism, J would force us to make 10 Dan Carlin style three hour epic episodes, which would just defeat the idea of why we make this pod in the first place. And frankly, Nope, I don't have the time to do it, dude. Sorry. Don't even try to ask me. I got a two year old kid and one on the way I'm not doing this. I have no time or energy to work on such an endeavor. But so instead I want to focus on modern populism, specifically modern right-wing populism, and to understand how political theorists define this phenomenon. We need to explore what it is responding to. Is he in the aftermath of world war II, many countries wanted to move away from totalitarian ideologies. They sought a new political system that prioritized individual and social rights aimed at political consensus and respecting the rule of law as a result. Most Western nations adopted a longstanding form of government called liberal democracy. And I know that there's people out there that hear the word liberal and they get freaked out in this context. Liberal does not refer to any political party or ideology, but rather a type of democracy that has three central and essential components. First liberal democracy is except that society is full of many and often cross-cutting divisions that generate conflict. Second, it requires that societies, many factions seek common ground across those divisions. And last liberal democracies rely on the rule of law and the protection of minority rights as specified in constitutional and legal statutes. You take that altogether. These ideals propose that tolerance and institutions that protect us from intolerance are the bedrock of a functional and diverse democratic society. And over the last century, liberal democracies helped bring stability to the nations that adopted them, but like any system of government, they didn't solve everything among other issues and ever increasing wealth gap that we've seen led to underserved communities who grew more and more distrustful of both their wealthy neighbors and their political leaders. In some cases, political corruption, further damage, the public trust, growing suspicion and resentment around these politicians, prime to citizens to look for a new kind of leader who could challenge established institutions and put the needs of the people. First in many ways, this reaction highlights democracy in action. I mean, if the majority of a population feels their interests are underrepresented, they can elect leaders to change that using existing democratic systems. It's
Speaker 2Kind of always there in the societies you're describing perhaps all societies it's like anthrax and the soil. You know,
Speaker 4I heard it being referred to as herpes for capital. Yeah,
Speaker 2That's perfect. And it's always kind of there in the background and in a healthy system, it's going to be kind of kept in check and you know, America, for example, you know, it has this kind of tradition of this individual is rugged individualism, Liberty freedom as these greatest goods. And that's kind of the, in some ways the populism background radiation, right? But then if the system starts running into trouble and various sectors, either economic distress, political distress, cultural distress, usually they're all related in some way, shape or form. Then all of a sudden that populism can rise. And the reason I use background radiation is that I don't think populism is a good thing. I think that left, right? It's still pretty much about this anger and the anger being the purpose. And that's not good for society when that builds up. So that's where I stand.
Speaker 4That is where assertive, modern populist candidates can subvert democracy, modern populists identify themselves as embodying that will of the people. And they place those interests above the institutions that actually protect individual and social rights. Modern populists argued. These institutions are run by a self-serving ruling minority who seek to control the vast majority of us, virtuous common people. And so as a result, politics is no longer about seeking compromise and consensus through tolerant democratic institutions. But instead these leaders seek to overturn what they see as simply just a broken system.
Speaker 2Yeah. Not only is it anti-democratic, but then like even their solutions, if it's just an emotion, anger reaction, it's not even clear that they have a good solution. There are folks out there on the internet, it's like Medicare for all. It's like, great. But oftentimes what that's code for is abolish all private health insurance companies. And it's like, that's radical, fine. But then like, where's the plan to do? There's no plan. It's just like, I'm angry at private insurance. Great. But that's not a coherent political strategy. You can't elect people to do something if they don't know what they're doing, you know what I mean? That's where populace get themselves into trouble. It becomes power about power sake, which especially with right wing populism becoming fascism can be really dangerous. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 4Where a liberal democracy has the utmost respect for institutions like courtrooms and the free press and national constitutions, modern, populous disparage any establishment that disagrees with the so-called common will modern populist parties have arisen in many places, but the leaders of these movements are remarkably similar to one another. They are often charismatic individuals who, as I stated earlier, identified themselves as embodying that we'll have the people like you just said, Jay, they make all these promises to their supporters while casting their opponents as traders actively undermining the country, as opposed to fellow countrymen with just different ideas than them. But whether these politicians are sincere believers or just manipulative opportunists, the dynamics, Stan leash can be profoundly destabilizing for a liberal democracy.
Speaker 2What I really don't like to go back to like the healthcare argument, you know, it's like we want to improve the healthcare system. We want to get universal healthcare ready, a progressive argument. It might be let's make a broad plan and let's bring together a consensus to figure out that's progressivism. In my view, populism is let's make enemies. Let's brand everyone who does not share this particular emotional tenor of this particular rhetorical slogan with really nothing else. It's a slogan. If you even ask questions or you have some suggestions for plans, how you might achieve it, but aren't part of like the in group, you are labeled an enemy. One of the key factors here that I really want to emphasize here is that's all about us versus them. And it's really easy. Even if you're within the us crowd to then become of them and to be branded in enemy populism over the long-term over a long enough timeline. Everybody gets their turn being the enemy, because at some point it becomes so rigid because of the process of creating perfect allies and irredeemable enemies that eventually there's no room and people get cast out. That's something that you see if you're looking for it, you can see it in most populous movies.
Speaker 4Yeah. Slogans like make America great again, or build the wall or drill baby drill or got mint. A lot of,
Speaker 5A lot of slogans. Good one. Yeah.
Speaker 4And even when modern populous leaders don't follow through with their most extreme promises, their impact on political discourse, the rule of law and public trust can long outlast their time in office and around the world. Right now we are seeing a rise in a specific kind of modern populism. Right-wing populism. Right-wing populists are primarily known for their opposition to immigration, especially for the Islamic world. I mean, that is their common thread throughout the world right now. However, it's also associated with ideologies, such as anti environmental ism, Neo nationalism, anti-globalization nativism protectionism. These perspectives are fueled by feelings of disenfranchisement, of being left out of a global economic boom and of discomfort at seeing familiar social orders, appended, or as like you said earlier, they're.
Speaker 2It's the old adage they're afraid. Uh, lots of changes are usually happening when these populist movements come about. Fear leads to anger and anger, eventually metastasizes into hate that's, uh, that's how the dark side takes over. But yeah, right away, you saw the us versus them dynamic, right? It's like we are insert X country and them they're on the outside. Whether it's in the Muslim world or back in the day, it was Jews. They're not part of our national group. And thus, they are responsible for all the ills that we face
Speaker 4Right now in America. It's, whoever's not white. Whoever's not Christian. Whoever is not a Republican. They are not just people whom we disagree with or have different ideologies. They are now part of a Satanist cabal who drink the blood of children for their youth. I mean, it's just, it's, it's just ridiculous. The movements, these grievances generate have spurred anti-immigrant xenophobia and in places like Hungary and Greece, even horrifying episodes of political violence as underlying prejudices are exploited by opportunistic politicians. Since the great recession, right wing populism has seen a significant influx around the globe with the national rally party in France, the league in Italy, the party for freedom and the forum for democracy in the Netherlands, the Finns party, the Sweden Democrats, Danish people's party, the freedom party of Austria, the UK independence party, or the Brexit party, Ballston narrows, social Kristin party in Brazil, the people's party of Canada, the tea party, and Donald Trump in India with the BJP in Hungary with Victor Orban and the Fidesz party, the alternative for Germany party, Kim[inaudible] and the independent Greek party Poland's law and justice party. Spain's Vox party, early one in Turkey, but Duro in Venezuela, Ortega in Nicaragua, hadn't sent in Cambodia to where Tay in the Philippines. But I would be remiss if I were to discuss right-wing populism and not focus on the president of Russia himself. Vladimir. Yeah.
Speaker 2I mean, as we're recording this, there are massive protests gearing up. Once again, I sincerely hope Alexei Navalny is alive. By the time we air this episode, he's currently on a hunger strike because of how poorly he's been treated in prison. And that's populace do it empower you, go from creating enemies and talking about how terrible they are to actually using state power, to go after them and harm them and kill them. Unfortunately, that's truly scary stuff. And then the worst part is, and I think this is what we're going to end up talking about is that populace than help each other and spread the populous contagion around the world.
Speaker 4But I didn't, I don't think it was too far off when he called Putin a murderer. Like you said, the situation regarding the volunteer right now is just case in point in that I find a common thread when it comes to all the right wing populist regimes, sprouting up and LATAM your Putin. I needed to dig a little bit deeper to find out a little bit more. So with your permission, I want to change gears a little bit. Yeah. When the Berlin wall fell a 40 year old Putin was working as an undercover spy in east Germany for the KGB, the Soviet union dissolved into 15 new countries, including the new Russian Federation in Putin's eyes. Russia had just lost 2 million square miles of territory. He later called this a major geopolitical disaster of the century lamenting that tens of millions of his co Patriots found themselves outside Russian territory. The new government had to sell off nearly 45,000 public businesses like energy mining and communication companies that had been run by the communist regime. And it was just utter chaos. J the Russian economy was in a free fall and all these companies ended up in the hands of a few extremely wealthy oligarchs. At the same time, the new Russian state was having a real hard time establishing itself. Russia's first president Boris Yeltsin was wildly unpopular for cooperating with the west and to make matters worse. He was an alcoholic and many Russians thought he wasn't embarrassment in order to stay in power. He leaned on the support of those oligarchs surrendering an immense amount of political power to them. Putin had left the KGB in 91 and became the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. He used his position to give special treatment to friends and allies in the private sector. He helped them structure monopolies and regulated their competitors. He collaborated with cried bosses to regulate the gambling industry. Use city funds as loans to friends, facilitated money laundering and to legally assigned licenses and contracts to those loyal to him. He quickly became a favorite among the oligarchs. I mean, this guy was Tony soprano. If Tony Sabrina was ex KGB and a mayor of a major city before long Putin assembled a support network of oligarchs crime bosses and security officials, mostly fellow former KGB officers mind you with their help. He rapidly ascended to the upper echelons of the Russian state. And in 1999, president Boris Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin still relatively unknown in national to be the prime minister. This is
Speaker 2Another thing that I see, uh, another common theme that I see with the right wing populous. That's also extremely dangerous. Is that because populism is all about rabble-rousing right. What often happens when a populous leader gets really prominent? Is that wherever the ruling authorities are, especially if they're conservative, they usually put the populous leader in charge or in some like kind of second in command position. That's what happened with Adolf Hitler too. Also similarly with Mussolini, they just don't want to deal with the headache of all the angry followers, all the angry populous that there's like, give him a bone we can control him is always the famous last words. And so here you go, same situation with Putin people not knowing that later he would become this ditch. Essentially
Speaker 4Putin is a fierce nationalist and he feared Yeltsin was letting the U S dominate Russia. And that NATO, the Alliance that worked for decades to contain Soviet influence would expand into newly liberated countries and surround Russia. This was Putin's big fear. His goal then was to build a strong Russian state one that would be both stable at home and capable of exercising its influence over its neighbors. And he quickly got his chance during the chaos among the fledgling years of the Russian Federation, there was escalating violence in Chechnya, a region that had informally succeeded from Russia in the mid nineties, Chechen, warlords and terrorists were pushing into Russian territory and attacking the border. In August of 99. A series of deadly bombings killed more than 300 people in several Russian cities, including Moscow Putin. The new prime minister immediately blamed Chechen separatists for the attack. He regularly appeared in Russian TV claiming that he will have Russia and the people quickly rallied around him. Putin's ratings jumped from 2% before the bombings to 45% afterwards. And here's, what's interesting about this J journalists later uncovered evidence that suggested Russian security services were most likely complicit in the Moscow bombings, perhaps knowing they would spark support for a strong man like Putin, but a closed state investigation quickly quashed any dissenting theories.
Speaker 2And so there you go. There's a few common themes at play here. You have, um, the power of what we call negative partisanship, which is again, us versus them. It's really easy to rally people against things. It's actually easier. I think there's science backing this up, using the media to promote conspiracy theories that ultimately help create enemies to fight, right? Fascists unfortunately, are really good at kind of playing the media because what you do is you create the story. You can create a situation where an enemy did something that then, then you can rally the people against the classic example is the Reichstag fire where we never can conclusively prove for sure, but you know, the Nazis sent some to burn the German parliament building, and then they blamed it on socialists. So then that allowed the Nazis to go after all the socialists in the country who were their biggest political opponents. So there you go. There's Putin kind of using the same playbook, maybe consciously or unconsciously.
Speaker 4My suspicion is that it was pretty conscious. And then Russia used that to launch a popular and devastating war in Chechnya. The capital city of Graziani was leveled by Russian bombing and 80,000 people died. And in less than a year, Russia successfully brought Chechnya back under its control. Yeltsin suddenly resigned and made Putin the interim president. And then shortly after that Putin won the presidential election. He began immediately to shape the Russian state into his vision. Patronage and corruption remained one of his key tools, but he quickly suppressed the oligarchs under his rule. Those that supported Putin were rewarded. Those that didn't were eliminated either through trumped up embezzlement charges or by being killed with the oligarchy tamed Hooten moved his vision outside of Russian's borders. At the time relations with the U S were actually pretty, fairly good Putin, even vacation that George W. Bush his summer home, but things were about to change in August, 2008, Russia invaded Georgia, a former Soviet Republic. It was a display of aggression and strength on behalf of pro Russia separatists. There Russia drew condemnation from all over the world as a result. Interesting thing though, prudent actually wasn't the president during this invasion, the Russian constitution says that a president can only serve two consecutive terms, but it sets no limits on the total number of terms one can serve. So after his first two terms were up, hootin simply went back to being prime minister while his handpicked successor, Dimitri Medvedev served as president. And then when he grew discouraged about how Medvedev was running things, he simply ran again and won the 2012 presidential election suspiciously handedly. Hutan doubled down on his authoritarian governance style at home and his militaristic strategy abroad. He kept a tight leash on Russian television. Essentially all news outlets were state owned propaganda machine. So it was just a bunch of Fox news is all over the place. His regime decided which stories to air and how always depicting him as the strong Russian leader. In 2012, he cracked down on human rights and civil liberties, making clear there was no room for dissent in Russia. His Russia Putin also bolstered his aggressive foreign strategy. He used traditional military methods like sending weapons in fighter planes to help dictator Bashar al-Assad to fight a bloody civil war in Syria, but Putin also developed and fostered the most effective cyber army in the world and used it to wreak havoc in the west. These hackers have stolen classified us information, hacked politicians, email accounts, and even shut down Georgia's entire internet while Russian troops invaded. Obviously they tried to sabotage Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2016, but the recent solar winds hack could be potentially catastrophic. And we don't even know the severity of that yet. Russian hackers have also launched propaganda campaigns and supportive right-wing candidates in Europe. And with this Putin hopes to exploit and deepen the political divide in Western democracies in 2014, Putin targeted Ukraine, another former Soviet country Ukraine's president was opening up to the west and Putin feared. He would soon join NATO again, Putin's biggest fear. And honestly has been a major drive behind many of his actions. The fear of being surrounded by NATO, supporting countries is such a threat to Putin that he's willing to sacrifice not only his people, but the security of the world. So Russian hackers decided to launch a propaganda campaign against the president of Ukraine, stoking protests and the pro Russia Eastern part of that country. He then sent in disguised Russian troops and before long whoops violence erupts, and then in goes the Russian military and in early 2014, Putin annex, Crimea, and killed a whole bunch of people. The world, once again, erupts in protest, but Putin does not give in his aggressive foreign policy successfully weakens his neighbors while also rallying Russians around him. You
Speaker 2Know, as you're telling me this story, you know, I'm thinking about a particular historical character. Can you guess who I'm thinking of? I
Speaker 4Don't really know much about history, but what I'm guessing is that you're about to either bring up Franco or Mussolini, right? I was
Speaker 2Thinking a lot about Mussolini. There's some parallels. I'm sure I'm not the first person to bring it up. The history rhymes a lot. It's never things repeating exactly the same. You know, Mussolini started out a socialist, Marxist Putin was a in the communist regime, but then becomes this kind of hardcore nationalist authoritarian, just like Putin. He kind of builds up a military background and then eventually leads a movement and destabilizes the government. He's appointed to be prime minister because his movements to stabilizing things. And then he starts consolidating power a lot like Putin uses state power and violence, and then starts looking abroad, right? Just like Putin Mussolini goes into this historical colony of Italy, uh, in Libya, just across the Mediterranean starts a, basically a genocidal campaign down there. So there's some comparisons with Chechnya here killed a lot of people. Pretty horrible, also like Putin, then there's eyes on other military adventures. You have, you mentioned Franco the Spanish civil wars brewing because there's another fascist authoritarian leader. Uh, there's a military coup in Spain and one of the major military leaders there is Francisco Franco. There's people fighting there and Italy, one of the side Franco's on their biggest supporter. So he's out there fighting there as well. So yeah, seeing some parallels,
Speaker 4Francisco Franco, that's a James Franco's uncle,
Speaker 2His mom's side. No, I don't. I'm hoping they're not related these movements. And these leaders view of power is constantly expansive, right? So it starts with crushing dissent at home consolidating power and then starting to look outwards and, you know, exerting power elsewhere. So with Putin, it's Chechnya and Georgia with Mussolini it's Libya. And now
Speaker 4Jay, I'm no conspiracy theorist. In fact, I despise conspiracy theorists, but I kind of have a hunch that lot of your Putin is the man behind the curtain amongst most of this is he actually actively promoting and putting into power these heads of state everywhere. No, but I think that he is pretty psyched that this is happening and he's maybe sliding some cash under the table here, throwing his cyber war people over there to affect an election. I mean, look, what happened to the United States. Putin had his fingerprints all over the 2016 election, but then discussing and finding out a little bit more about populism in itself. I see common threads to fascism, but where fascism, I feel thrives in more of a totalitarian dictatorship. Populism is kind of like the capitalist version of fascism, a democratic version of it. Am I wrong for believing that populism is just a democratic version of fascism? Like
Speaker 2What is the difference between fascism and right wing populism? Right? Fascism uses capitalism to capitalism exists in social democracies that are much more progressive and liberals to the existence of capitalism. Honestly, I see these debates often play out where specifically people who want to make an anticapitalist argument and that's fine. I just want them to be explicit. That's what they're doing. But yeah, the differences between say a full-blown fascism and a right-wing populism, it's kind of hard to separate, you know, I mean, Hannah Arendt would argue that the totalizing effect of like a iron gripped fascist leader is a special place that you get to that's like beyond, it's not Nigel for Raj being a clown and being horrible in the UK versus a Vladimir Putin, which is obviously a few steps beyond, this is somebody who has power, who uses it uses state violence. I mean, yeah, I don't know if capitalism is necessarily, um, a defining factor, but definitely like fascism being an extreme version of right-wing populism, where total control is demanded on a political, economic, social level, cultural level. If that makes sense to me again, it's kind of a general working definition for this conversation. So Jay, then where
Speaker 4Do we go from here? You said yourself that the end result of fascism will be the destruction of fascism because ultimately fascist leaders will eat each other alive. So what happens when you have a planet that's filled with right wing populist?
Speaker 2Yeah. And that scares me because you know, the echoes to the 1930s, when you had Franco and Mussolini and then Hitler, and you had these right wing populous movements all over Europe, again, just in some ways, very similar it's disturbing because of course a big war came, the dynamics were so volatile, world war II start for a lot of reasons. How can we prevent that? Well, there's good news. This is what I was thinking of. And I'm glad you brought this point up right wing populists are not good at succession, nor are fascists, who was a spry guy at 40, when the wall fell. He's old now, man, he, he may try to put up a facade, but who's next. It's very hard to replace what people get attached because it's about emotion. People get attached to these leaders and then when they go, or when they're about to going, it's hard to keep a regime going, especially if it's oppressive. You know, there's a lot of built up anger and resentment. So whether it's Putin or the Republican party or any of these other places where there's a bowl scenario, it's going to be tough for whoever wants to see the party, not end because these guys are not good at picking new leaders because they're so vicious. And my ultimate friend is my enemy. They all turn on each other. So what, what Russia is like when Putin file leaves, the scene is going to be remarkable. It's just hope the volatility is not lead to war that we can do something more peaceful.
Speaker 4My recommendation is for people to not take the Sith philosophy when creating a political regime.
Speaker 2We are here with Dr. David Walsh, a post-doctoral fellow at the university of Virginia, Dr. Wallace studies, conservative and far-right politics in the United States in the 20th and 21st centuries. And the relationship between those forms of politics in America with broader global movements. David, thank you so much for being here today. My pleasure. Thank you for having me EGA. And I were talking a little bit earlier about the kind of troubling, um, modern version of this at both Sinero and Brazil or Modi in India. And so on, what we're trying to do now is contextualize that because there's a similar dynamic in the 1930s and forties in Europe. And of course these folks in America, these in right-wing populous in the U S as well,
Speaker 1We live in a moment of profound political turmoil. That's true in the United States. I think that's true, uh, around the globe and structurally it can seem very similar. It certainly rings a lot of resonance between the sort of global situation and 1920s, thirties, and forties, as there is today. I do want to emphasize that there's a lot of differences, you know, structural and otherwise between these two moments. And that it's really, really hard to sort of make predictions based on, you know, what happened a hundred years ago now almost as to sort of what's going to happen next today. But I do think that just understanding that we're in a sort of similar moment of broader global crisis, it doesn't look quite the same way because some of the specific issues are different. The sort of broader stakes of the political economy are different. I mean, in the 1920s and 1930s, you still had the extant European colonial empires. I mean, this was at the height of industrialization. I mean, Fordism, as a concept was really only just becoming a political ideology as well as a sort of economic one. And we live as so many of the postmodern theorists would note instead of a post-war to service sector economy, at least in the west and parts of east Asia, Japan, Taiwan, et cetera. So there's a lot of differences, but there's a lot of this sort of general sense of unrest and unease and a sense that, well, maybe certainly that the existing institutions which have dominated the globe for certainly our generation. So since the end of the cold war are failing, and I think that that's, what's contributing to this sort of sense of crisis today, but in the 1920s, 1930s in very different ways, but you had a sort of similar perception across the west because those institutions failed to prevent world war II. So there's that sort of analog as well. Could you describe
Speaker 4To our listeners what exactly you are referring to when you say Ford ism? So
Speaker 1It's, it's related to Henry Ford. So obviously the creator of the model T business tycoon, uh, noted extreme anti-Semite to propagated the international Jew, a viciously anti-Semitic propaganda tracked through his newspaper, the Dearborn independent, but he had a sort of cultural presence in the 1920s and into the 1930s, which I think is most analogous with Elon Musk today. So just this idea of here's a businessman who has unearthed this new and exciting form of technology, which is going to dramatically transform the planet and solve a lot of the problems that are, you know, associated with whatever phase of modernity we're in, in the 1920s and the 2000 twenties. And in Ford's case that modality was the assembly line and things like interchangeable parts. The story, I think, might be familiar to some of your listeners from high school text. I remember reading a little bit about Henry Ford in high school is like the Ford motor company paid higher wages than its competitors so that its own employees could buy its cars. Right? And so there's this idea that Fordism provides a blueprint for both mass production and mass consumption, and it really just captivated the world and the, in the twenties and thirties, this idea that Ford had this sort of secret sauce about how to organize society, you know, in brave new world from I believe 1932, it said, and I believe the 25th century in the future, the calendar in brave new world is set year zero begins with the introduction to the assembly line. So every year after that is after Ford, so huge cultural influence, a great grandson wrote a great book a little while ago, a called Fordlandia about four companies attempt to sort of create a utopian society or utopian company town in Brazil during the rubber boom. There that's Fordism in a nutshell, we started take for granted its dynamics today, but again, it had that similar sort of appeal to people as the wave of the future in the twenties, as I think Musk and some of the other big tech stuff does today, if you wouldn't mind
Speaker 2Setting the stage for us a little bit, what, what concerns me a lot? And I know there's a lot of differences, world war, one being one of the big ones in, you know, what was happening in Europe, in the twenties and thirties and what's happening now. And of course the similarity is being kind of a sense of institutions failing and so on. But what really concerns me is kind of this trading of influence, like forward is influenced by antisemites and other authoritarians, the corporate guys I studied, but if you go and do you do the tour of the Eastman Kodak house, there's a frame photo of Mussolini tucked away upstairs, but it's there signed photo. Of course, today we talk about, you know, Modi is taking cues from Trump or, you know, Assad is taking cues from Putin, these kind of right wing populous kind of sharing influence and spreading their influence. So I'm interested in those dynamics in the topic we're talking about back in the thirties and forties, like who is influencing glue. I was wondering what your view is on the broader picture during that period of time.
Speaker 1Yeah, no, I mean, there's been a lot of really interesting scholarship, uh, written on this over the past decade, I think, which is sort of upended a lot of the assumptions about, you know, where the sort of center of radical right wing politics is in, in the twenties and thirties. You know, James Whitman wrote a wonderful book called the Hitler's American model, which is all about how the Nazis looked at Jim Crow laws in the American south as sort of a blueprint on how to legally define race because America particularly in the American south, but not just in the south was sort of the world leader in defining and strictly categorizing race using legal codes. But I will say that in terms of just sort of the popular dynamics, like who was seen as the wave of the future in the 1920s and thirties, I mean, it was Mussolini, you know, you mentioned he was up on the shelf of Eastern Kodak exhibits. I did not know that, but I'm not surprised in the slightest fortune magazine in the mid 1930s has an entire issue dedicated to what can Italy teach the American businessman in terms of how to organize society? You know, the, the idea that you could sort of transcend class-based social conflict through some sort of broad conception of the national will was extremely influential. When you look at authoritarian right-wing regimes that come to power in Europe, in south America, in Asia, there's so much emphasis placed, even if they're not explicitly identifying themselves as fascist in the Mussolini tradition, but so much emphasis placed on using the nation, using the concept of the, you know, the national people as a way to paper over class conflict and be communism. But that is my understanding at least of the sort of basic idea behind this thought of Novo in Portugal, certainly Franco, uh, used a lot of that rhetoric in Spain, in the 1930s, along with obviously a heavy religious component to it. So did, um, the so-called Austria fascists and Austria fatherland front in the mid 1930s who were of course ironically later overthrown by the Nazis. So there is kind of that sort of general dynamic. I mean, in this country, there was a lot of speculation in the early twenties in newspapers. And even among some academics that the KU Klux Klan could be a sort of American fascist movement, at least if the leadership so desired it to be now, that's not actually what ended up happening. The clan had its own sort of weird and unique history. The second clan is basically a Ponzi scheme or a pyramid scheme because of the way in which it encouraged local recruiters to recruit people and whatnot. It wasn't really analogous in an organizational sense to a European style fascist party. But on the other hand, they had a very clear understanding and idea of what the national community was in the United States and who belonged and who didn't. And we can certainly put that on the spectrum. I mean, the irony is that the clan itself did not like the Italians. They did not like Catholics Mussolini was not exactly revered figure to Klansman, but there are these sort of broad similarities and, and just the understanding of the national community.
Speaker 4That's interesting that the certain fascist groups pop up and it's the same thing today where they have this underlying belief of this authoritarian, right wing populist belief, that their way is the right way and that they have to create this other to constantly attack. However, I feel like that way of thinking can only go so far in a global sense, simply because you start seeing everyone that even shares your own belief system as an enemy, like you said, the KU Klux Klan in the United States, they hate Catholics. They hate Jews. They hate people in Italy who are essentially creating another right wing populist, fascist regime there. The only thing that's really separating them as far as their beliefs are concerned to not totally get along. As far as my understanding is concerned is the fact that, you know, the KU Klux Klan hating Roman Catholicism and the Pope, otherwise they would probably get along. Or am I reading into that incorrect?
Speaker 1There's a couple of levels of irony here. Like Mussolini, for example, the leader of Italian fascism was himself a pretty noted atheist, but he basically signed a crown core Dodd with the Catholic church in the late 1920s. Legitimising his regime in the church's eyes, you know, as a political metric, but he did not become a member of the faith. I think the broader point here is that the way to understand those cleavages intentions. And I think the same is arguably the case today, although we haven't seen it play out in quite the same way, but the way to understand those cleavages intentions is you really have to understand the centrality of racism and racist assumptions in the development of certain broader global right-wing politics. You know, this is the time period. I mean, Madison Grant famously wrote his book, the passing of the great race in the 1910s repeatedly, a favorite of Al Hitler's later on in the decade grant himself was a friend in contemporary of theater Roosevelt. He was one of the sort of generation of progressive racial theorist and eugenesis and grant proposed that the, uh, you can divide the world into various different racial archetypes, you know, Europeans, Asians, Africans. He did not use those terms. Uh, he used terms that would be considered racial slurs today, but the way that grant understood history, and this is the case with more explicitly sort of biological racist, fascist regimes and organizations like the Nazis as a competition between races and nations. And so if you are subscribing to a racialist outlook on the world and like understanding the mechanism, I mean, one way to maybe frame this is to think about what is the driving mechanism of history in the 1920s. There were a number of different ways to sort of understand what the sort of driving mechanism of history was, right? So you have from the Marxist left and understanding of history is sort of materialistic is based on economic development and class conflict. I mean, I think that's broadly persuasive among various fascist groups or right wing far-right groups, um, or even conservative organizations. Um, at the time you have history, you have another understanding of history as, as about not just geopolitical conflict, but about sort of like racial conflict. Like, I mean, the reason why that European colonial empire is exist is because the Anglo-Saxon race or the Golic razor whomever, or the Alpine race has proven themselves to be the more evolved, more advanced. And therefore they have the right to, uh, you know, go out and, um, and control the world. But because even in this sort of broadly racialist framework, which is again, widely popular in the west, you have distinctions between, you know, the Nordics versus the Celts versus the Alpines. And so I think that that actually describes a lot of the tensions that you were alluding to. I mean, it's the reason why the Klan, uh, which is broadly believing in not just white supremacy, but specifically Anglo Saxon, Protestant supremacy, doesn't truck with Italian Catholics.
Speaker 2Yeah. And in, in, in the broad strokes, you know, both to develop this earlier question I had on connections, but also kind of like what is driving all this there's instability. And then people kind of lean on nationalism and populism. It's comforting. It's a way to distract from problems. It's built to find enemies and attack them. And then there's sometimes these, um, kinship or conflict between, uh, different groups or maybe they just don't like each other. So I'm thinking of like, right-wing populace in America. I, I, we talked about this the other day, but like Charles Coughlin and Charles Lindbergh, they were looking abroad to who do they see as role models and, you know, what was their hope for America?
Speaker 1The question, what I will say is this, I mean, Lindbergh, infamously has a reputation and it's a deserved one as a Nazi sympathizer at the very beginning of the war as the second world war in 1939, Lindbergh writes, um, an article or magazine basically claiming that the are arguing that the white race is about to commit suicide by engaging in another sort of European civil war. And this is a very, very common argument even well before world war two during and after world war one, that Europe specifically in the global white race generally was going to lose its position as the dominant race on the planet, because the best and brightest of the white race were killed in world war one in the trenches. Now, I mean, obviously this is ludicrous for all sorts of different reasons and normatively offensive to us in 21st century, but it was a widely held belief at the time. This is one of the reasons why there was an interest in eugenics and quote unquote racial science. Well before world war one, I don't think that historians have necessarily fully appreciated, although that's beginning to change. And I certainly don't think that in so far as like the general public really is concerned about the politics of a hundred years ago, but there is sort of this general assumption that, you know, you can sort of trace the origins of scientific racism and whatnot to the late 19th century. And that, I mean, that's true, but there's an upsurge of interest in this, in the twenties because of the anxieties triggered by one. I mean, I, in the great Gatsby, Tom Buchanan, who is the sort of antagonist in a sentence in the novel is openly quoting Lothrop Stoddard Madison Grant in citing their work approvingly as, as evidence of like, oh, you know, this is, this is where we have to worry about racial suicide. There were never conferences in the 1920s put together by eugenesis about, well, what do we do now? Because so many people, so many, you know, European men had been killed in world war one. We've got to, you know, come up with strategies to sort of prevent the decline of our race. There were other people who were very concerned about the mass bloodletting had improved that having shown weakness on the part of Europeans to their colonial subjects. There's a guy who I write about in my dissertation guy named Charles Willoughby. Now, Charles Willoughby, who was born in Prussia immigrated to the United States, became an army officer served on the Mexican punitive campaign in the 1910s in the mid 1920s. He writes an article for the Army's academic journal in which he basically makes the argument that well, you know, we have to be very concerned now because the white man has been shown to not be invincible because of one. And so therefore, you know, what is necessary both in the United States and other European powers is to adopt a, an incredibly violent stance towards conquered populations and the advocates just like gassing and bombing, rest of villages and, and whatnot. And he approvingly sites because he was an army, a observer in Morocco during the riff war between Arab nationalists and the berberine national such and say, and, uh, the Spanish and French governments in the 1920s. And, uh, he was attached to he and, and, uh, uh, cited. Approvingly the conduct of an officer in the Spanish army in Morocco, who was noted for his brutality towards the Moroccan population, uh, Francisco Franco, you know, all of these sort of sorts of anxieties about global white supremacy are sort of being expressed in a variety of different ways in the aftermath of world war one. I mean, you know, getting back to what we were talking about at the beginning of the section, and I think that is definitely a core commonality, you know, especially in this country where you have so much rhetoric around so much anxieties about the rise of China and, you know, America's relatively, uh, we can position geopolitically, you know, and you see that expressed in a variety of different ways to both in sort of more mainstream politics with, you know, anti-Chinese stances, uh, down to the far right's obsession with the great replacement, which of course indicts people of color around the world for coming to this country for Jews, for sort of organizing this conspiracy. You know, there are, there are more extreme versions of it, and there were more sort of coded versions of it. Tucker Carlson was endorsing a, uh, relatively coated version of it the other day. So that's a sort of core commonality that I think tends to get underrated, the sort of global anxiety about the eclipse of white supremacy. At least in the west, we did a little
Speaker 2Bit of research for the national academy of sciences. And a lot of, a lot of my research was focused on, um, the creation of the national research council, which instrumental figure was this guy, Robert[inaudible] who essentially invented standardized testing using the army as this kind of Guinea pig. And of course these racial ideas were very much, uh, and it's, I'd like to think his views evolved over time. National academy of sciences don't kill me for this or bringing it up in a podcast about right wing populism. Can't wait for our book to come out. Uh, at the time you can go into their archives. You can look at these samples of tea, he's working with people we're measuring people's heads sizes and all of that. And of course, I have to wonder if these individuals knew each other, all things considered, I should
Speaker 1Mention by the way, uh, Charles Willoughby, who later became Douglas MacArthur's chief of intelligence during world war two. So he was, uh, he was not a, a minor figure in power structure. And now
Speaker 2Go back to the archives and look and see if we'll be pops up in your cause is prodigious communications. I wanted to go back a little bit. There's a lot to digest here. And what is so visceral is when you brought it to Tucker Carlson replacement theory. And I think about the guys with the Tiki torches saying, you'll not replace us. And it's such a clear capsulation of all of this. And there are guys wearing t-shirts with an icon of somebody pushing somebody out of a helicopter, you know, right wing death squads, like referencing Pinochet. Again, there are these kinds of connections and kinship between some groups. And that is what troubles me the most is when I hear that Putin is helping groups in other places, or that there's influence in America from different fascist groups abroad. I was shocked to learn that there was a fascist regime or at least, you know, right wing populist regime in Brazil, back in the day to back in the spirit. I didn't know that until today kind of doing some reading that is what's troubling to me, I guess, I don't know where I'm going with this except to say, like, how do we stop it?
Speaker 1Yeah, no, I mean, that's, that's sort of the, uh, that's sort of the big question, isn't it? What was the answer to the question? How do we stop fascism in the 1930s? And there were a lot of different answers. There are a lot of were a lot of different people propose different answers, right? So you have a particular diagnosis of what fascism is, where it comes from and how to fight it from, I mean, broadly speaking the left, but I mean, you know, we're talking about all sorts of different groups and subgroups, the communist party, the Soviet union Stalin had their own idea about that, which turned out to be wrong. The idea that fascism where the first part of the idea, it was not necessarily completely wrong, is that the idea that fascism is ultimately at root a crisis of capitalism, the crisis of global and local capitalism. And so, you know, it's sort of the, the last ditch attempt by capital in a rapidly evolving, in some sense, democratizing society to retain control over capital in the labor force. There is a strong case to be made even today about that being one of the major characteristics of fascism in Europe, in the twenties and thirties, at least the conditions that allow for it to flourish, but the communist stretchy, uh, which they clung to until about 1934 was instead of attacking fascist parties and opposing them at all costs, uh, was actually directing the animus of their energies towards opposing the social Democrats in various countries. So the social democratic party in Germany, for example, was sort of seen as the prime enemy by the German communist party. And again, to be fair, there were reasons that go back to the beginning of the Weimar Republic for this, right? Like the communist and social Democrats were fighting each other in the streets in 1918 and 1919, but this whole sort of broader line that a social democracy was in fact, social fascism. That's the term that the communist party used turned out to not be the way to stop the Nazis from coming to power. And so, you know, they shift to what's called the popular front strategy, which we can, we can maybe get to in a moment. Um, but that, that was one strategy for fighting fascism because Leon Trotsky, who obviously represented a different sort of brand of communism in the, uh, in the 1930s, had his own sort of broadly similar, but with some important differences, understanding of what fascism was and how to find it, Jamelle Bouie wrote a colony of the day and it was based in the New York times. It was based heavily on the work of Derek Rockaway, who just wrote a wonderful new book about the new deal. It was a common sort of argument about the new deal in the 20th century. It really up until about maybe the 1960s or seventies, eighties at a stretch that the new deal represented a kind of broadly anti-fascist force in American life. Like this idea that in some meaningful way, FDR and the new deal reestablish the credibility of democracy, liberal democracy was saved by the Roosevelt administration. And I think that's a very powerful argument. I think that it needs to be heavily nuanced, both because of the nature of American state, uh, in the 1930s, the actual intentions of the Roosevelt ministers. There there's all sorts of asterixis we can place on this, but I think at the, at the global level, you know, there was this perception that democracy, liberal democracy, or some form of even social democracy was basically obsolete by about 1930, very famously William Randolph. Hearst is reputed to have run an editorial in one of his newspapers of the day of Roosevelt's inauguration for dictatorship, if necessary, just absolutely bizarre, but equally fascinating movie from the time period called Gabriel over the white house. And this was released in 1933. The plot was that Calvin Coolidge like president, like kind of, or Harding, actually like a corrupt backslap or whatever has either a stroke or is somehow like possessed by the Archangel Gabriel or, or something. And, you know, instead of being just like this good old boy, he's all of a sudden becomes a sort of a zealous reformer. But the thing is, is that the movie basically portrays him as building a fascist dictatorship, right? Like he federalized as the U S police is summarily executes, like the Al Capone stand in. He threatens to with the American Navy to attack the rest of the world so that they pay their war debts. And then disarm, I think you can dissolve Congress at one point or threatens to all of this in the context of the movie is portrayed positively. It's a remarkable document that, that just sort of shows how ready some people were for some sort of new order in the early 1930s and, you know, Roosevelt's elected and something different happens. And I think that's the argument that the new deal by having the opportunity to become something much darker and more malignant in politics and society, and it went a very different direction. This is where
Speaker 2I think we can draw some parallels today. I think the Biden administration is taking a lot of cues from FDR and especially after the literal attack on our democracy on January 6th and restoring the soul of America, both in their rhetoric and in their actions, you know, these, these big, bold, uh, infrastructure proposals, uh, the American rescue plan that that's really the antidote to fascism is, is to, uh, give people things, opportunities, relieve some of the anxiety that might be fueling. We just want to tie myself in knots about this, you know, because I, this incredible frustration about, um, economic anxiety in finger quotes is being used as, uh, an excuse for the racism of, of right-wing populism groups, to the point where it's becoming kind of meme, right. But then at the same time, like we can see both in these examples from the past that you've given us so much great detail on, and the present that that anxiety is feeling in some ways, these movements, even if it's, you know, not necessarily justified in our
Speaker 4Conversations regarding right-wing populism over the last few episodes that we've touched upon this subject. It seems to me that that there's a common thread that right wing populism fascism seems to have this tendency to try to divide and conquer. They need to constantly be fighting someone if they're not fighting someone they're essentially dying. And in order to do that, one of the tools in their tool belt is to increasing anxiety. And what you just referred to David was an antidote to this anxiety, which was in part the new deal. So I guess that leads me to a question, what is fascism's end goal with this? What are they trying to accomplish? Obviously power is the catch all answer, but really what are they trying to accomplish by increasing anxiety, increasing people's worries and dividing and conquering like this?
Speaker 1I'm going to have to give a kind of roundabout answer, because I think that's a big question and there's a lot on the table here because I saw, I said that the new deal, you know, broadly defined or it's some sort of commitment to broader social democracy is, is really one of the best ways to fight far-right populism fascism. Of course, the paradox is that the reality of the new deal was for people on the right very difficult political pill to swallow. And it just fueled all of this sort of tremendous anger and anxiety and real low thing among right. Weighers, you know, the American Liberty league, for example, which was active in the mid 1930s during Roosevelt's, uh, the run up to Roosevelt's reelection in 1936 publicly and privately called, you know, suggested that the new deal was a socialist or communist plot to destroy capitalism in America. And that, you know, Roosevelt was taking cues from Moscow. You know, you have other sort of affiliated groups like the New York state economic council under mural K Hart, which I write about extensively in my, um, dissertation. Now book project, you know, is saying that Roosevelt is not only controlled secretly from Moscow, but also by a sort of secret Cod Ray of Jewish advisers and led by Felix Frankfurter. You know, there's, there's so much of this I would argue and you can sort of, again, this is sort of the broader structural similarity to it. Fascism and other countries is over the gains made by organized labor, uh, during the 1930s. So the idea, I mean, in, in no-win Hart's case is sort of big stick in his craw was the national labor relations act, or the idea that the government was going to, uh, force companies to recognize workers' rights to collectively bargain. It was funny because, um, so Hart was, uh, from upstate New York, he sort of identified with the mid-level business sort of faction of the Republican party in, in state politics there, he loved initially the national industrial recovery act, which has passed, uh, in the a hundred days in 1933. The reason was that it allowed for industrial cartel ization. So the idea that you could actually coordinate with your competitors to set prices and, you know, it allowed for the relaxation of antitrust laws, this is great, but what was totally unacceptable was section 7:00 AM Nira, which got struck down by the Supreme court, which legalized the, uh, right to collectively bargain, essentially, you know, and, and then when the Wagner act was passed, I mean, it's just like, oh, this is, this is terrible. Roosevelt's a dictator. And then of course, Hart, um, during the Spanish civil war goes to Spain and writes glowingly of Francisco Franco and saying, this man knows how to organize, uh, and resolve the labor problems. So it's not as if the new deal solves everything. And in fact, it sets the stage for, I would argue that the subsequent 50 years in American politics, part of that is about attempts by the right I'm talking about both the far right, and sort of more mainstream conservative, right. To roll back or dismantle as much of the new deal state as possible. And that's a broadly successful political project. I mean, that contributes to the instability that we're seeing today. It's not so much that there is a, an actual organized socialist or communist political party out there. That's actually trying to threaten to take power. It's the specter of any sort of change from the sort of racial economic hierarchies in the United States that is automatically coded as socialists or communists. I mean, it's one of the reasons why, and Jay, you were mentioning earlier those godawful, a helicopter rides for communists t-shirts and stuff like that, the Pinochet stuff they're in a sense creating their own antithesis. I mean, you know, Antifa and BLM and other sorts of social movements, which are loosely organized and don't, don't necessarily conform to what Riley called sort of civic association realism occupied the same space in the political imagination of the American, right? So that's an example of this sort of creating the enemy as for what they want. That's the interesting thing, isn't it? I mean, it's, it's often hard to say exactly what it is that the sort of populist right wants or the far right, or the fascist right. Mons, because there is a sort of incoherence in a lot of these politics, I'm increasingly convinced that the word incoherence offers nothing of analytical value, because it's just, it's just a way for historians in particular. Cause it'd be people used to write about the incoherence of the new deal and whatnot. And like it's a way for his stories in particular to say, well, we don't know, like some of this stuff makes sense. Some of it doesn't because the political program of the far right in America today is not aspirational, but I guess defensive, it is hard to say exactly what the sort of ideal state looks like. But I do think that there are some important clues. You know, I was reading a yesterday about Archer retailer greens, aborted attempt to create an America first caucus in the house. And she had to backpedal. I mean, you know, that the timing of it made it seem like she was basically responding to internet bullying from lefties like me. But when you actually read the now defunct, uh, sort of caucus document that they put together, I mean, you know, they have a section on election fraud, they have a section on sovereignty. So it reads very much like the John Birchers in the sixties saying, you know, get out of the UN, they have a section against big tech. They have a, they have, uh, an entire page on immigration and how, you know, the Anglo-Saxon nature of the country needs to be respected, et cetera, et cetera. They've got a section again, very similar to what far-right groups in the fifties and sixties were saying about the UN a section on foreign aid saying, quote, sending taxpayer money outside of the nation is generally an unwise undertaking. You know, a lot of it is what you would expect there, but you know, some of it is, is a break from at least a conservative, Orthodox or dominant conservative orthodoxy of the past 20, 30 years. They, I mean, basically are calling for an end to America's Imperial wars, which, I mean the paleo conservatives in this country. So people like pat Buchanan have been making similar arguments for decades, but it's interesting that this is now not a dominant by any stretch of imagination, but an important policy plank and a wing of the Republican party. They have a, uh, a section on protecting the value of American savings. Basically it's an, it's an anti inflation thing. We must promote the rights of Americans to best position themselves for a changing economy, by among other things, defending the rights of Americans to hold private stores of wealth, including gold, silver. Okay. This all sounds familiar. Here's where it gets interesting. And other blockchain based currencies like Bitcoin, they've got an entire section on the Chinese communist party and how it's a malignant force in the world that must be opposed at all costs. They even say that the Xi era has been one defined by the dangerous resurrection of Neo Maoist thinking if that's the case, then it's the Mao that was friends with Nixon. Maybe not, maybe not like young Mau. There was also a section on America, first education. And this, you can just see the cultural anxiety argument in explicitly what the goal here is, is the, not just the preservation of a particular way of understanding American history, which in some respects, even more extreme than the Russian type is taught in textbooks in the fifties. But I desire to erase alternatives to that, including what most historians would say today about American history from the public sphere altogether. It's the cultural dominance I think is, is sort of the end goal.
Speaker 4So how does evangelical and really, really love this?
Speaker 1Now that's a big question too. Well, there was a famous quote, which is not from Sinclair Lewis. It's unclear who actually coined this originally, but it attributed to Sinclair Lewis that if fascism ever comes to America will be wrapped in the flag and holding a cross that I think is broadly true. You know, there's always been this sort of tangled web between evangelicals are fundamentalists as they were called in the twenties and thirties and sort of American fascism. There's a bit that I was never able to include in my dissertation or the book, because it's just, it's a little bit too in the weeds, but actually, I mean, it's relevant in the context of the current events today. I mean, I was, I was saying before we began recording that I'm from Minneapolis, obviously paying close attention to what's going on there. Now Minneapolis in the 1930s was also the center. Uh, I mean, uh, I have a different kind of social and political conflict. There was a massive, very violent, uh, strike organized by a Teamsters local, which was actually a controlled by a Trotskyist's, um, in 1934, uh, which, you know, ended up the national guard, did it of getting deployed to Minneapolis. And a number of people were killed. One of the, uh, local voices who was sort of most opposed to the strike was a, um, a local fundamentalist. Uh, again, evangelical, we call it the day they had William Bell Riley. Now he came to national attention in the 1920s because he was one of the most stalwart defenders of William Jennings, Bryan during the scopes monkey trial, right. He hated evolution on the teaching of evolution in schools. He made a national reputation on that point, exposed him to widespread ridicule. I should add in Minnesota, the Carleton college liberal arts college, about 45 minutes south of the twin cities, Southeast of the twin cities. They named their, uh, a monkey mascot after him in the twenties, just to kind of tweak him a little bit, uh, as the co is college students can do Riley. It would be a stretch to say he was one of the most important evangelicals in the United States, in the twenties and thirties. He was not, but he was up there and he sort of set up a network of schools and academies to train, uh, ministers and clergy and other people just want to Baptist education in the upper Midwest, the university of Northwestern, which is just outside of St. Paul. I used to be Northwestern college before that it was Northwestern Bible college Riley was the founder of that school and was the president for many years. He was also an early mentor to Billy Graham who succeeded him for a time. And as the president of this school in the forties, but in 1934, Riley is noted as one of the, sort of most outspoken opponents of the strike. And also the admire about all Fiddler. He praises Hitler from the pulpit repeatedly throughout the decade. His church in Minneapolis was noted to be the, uh, sort of the hub of organizing by a fascist group called the silver Legion of America or the silver shirts in the S in the twin cities, you know, in Riley. I mean, again, he's not the most influential evangelical figure of the 20th century by any stretch of imagination, but he's not a nobody either. You know, he has this influence over Billy Graham. And so there, there is this sort of political lineage there. I, I do think that evangelicalism today is in general authoritarian in general, it is totalizing. It's a sense of identity, which is, which is sort of fundamental to how one sees the world. And I do think that that's an important component in, especially in the United States and sort of how some people are primed for deference to authoritarianism because it's practiced in other aspects of their lives. And that any sort of challenge to this philosophy is, is treated as existential.
Speaker 2That is a good summation of a lot of fascism and right-wing populism is that it's the will to dominate you can't fill an emotional hole that continually exists. If there's, what is the cure for grievance? Well, maybe it's an infrastructure project. If you consume fascism outside of Italy in the 1920s, is it merely sparkling right wing populism? You be the judge
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