A Nazi on Wall Street Podcast
A Nazi on Wall Street Podcast
"Biden is a Socialist!" and the Long History of Rightwing Tropes
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Continuing the theme of exploring rightwing populism, Dr. Jay Weixelbaum and EJ Russo discuss the anti-socialism and anti-communism at the heart of this ideology with Austin Clements, a PhD candidate at Stanford University. What they discover is that fascists and the far right use some of the same rhetoric today to attack everything they don't like as they did generations ago. Join Jay, EJ, and Austin as they investigate the roots of these arguments and how they interplay with what's being said in the present.
My dog just barked on the floor. So
Speaker 2Man,
Speaker 1Uh, so I got to clean that up. Uh, let's take five.
Speaker 3[inaudible]
Speaker 2Welcome to a Nazi on wall street podcast because every time history repeats, the price goes up.
Speaker 1I am Jason Weichselbaum. I'm a filmmaker and historian, an expert in American companies doing business with Nazi Germany,
Speaker 2And then 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 current events and give them historical context. Jay, my friend, how are you doing today? I'm
Speaker 1Doing okay. Uh, it's been a very busy day.
Speaker 2Oh yes. It was, it was a very busy day for you.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah. I also wear a science communications hat, so I was doing some science communicating as it were, and it's getting more beautiful out trying to spend some time with my loved ones where I can, uh, everybody's busy is a busy time of year.
Speaker 2Yes. Yeah. It's it was like 90 degrees for the first time this year. And I felt every degree of that today as I was outside doing a whole bunch of chores and everything at work. So, uh, but Jay, I'm going to start off really light here today because I know that you you're, you're spent, you're exhausted. You're tired. So real light question real quick one. What is socialism?
Speaker 1Hey, I'm, I'm uh, I'm raring to go. I would never admit to feet even when perhaps they should. What is socialism? Oh, my goodness. A socialism is a system of government in which a state has power over the means of production, uh, rather than what is typical under capitalism is a private industry has control over the means reduction. So transferring those means over to the state.
Speaker 2And that's basically what that's all about. I mean, I couldn't really paraphrase it better than that. And first I really want to apologize to everyone who is listening to this. I am not an economist nor an historian. And so please take everything that I say with a very large Boulder of salt, but as, as far as I can tell, the only real true statement I can firmly make is that there are so many versions of socialism that even call someone a socialist is an almost impossible venture.
Speaker 1The problem is, I mean, other than that, our, you know, our, our political rhetoric is so polarized and we kind of play these games of telephone enhanced by social media. But like, I think a lot of people get confused between, um, social ism and like social programs that, you know, w could be defined as socialists, but can exist in a, in any system of government. For example, like you, you know, nor to countries that have like socialized healthcare programs in that case, you know, there it is. The state is controlling the means of production in this case, uh, production of, uh, healthcare services, uh, rather than say a private organization as it were in the United States, hospitals and insurance companies,
Speaker 2Right? And to really avoid making a nine hour episode discussing all aspects of socialism, I kind of want to defer to your definition of socialism. Basically the, the it's an economic system where each individual through a democratically elected government is given an equal share of the four factors of economic production, labor, entrepreneurship, capital goods, natural resources, that kind of thing. So socialism assumes that people generally want to cooperate, but can't because of the competitive nature of capital
Speaker 1Also worth noting, you know, in the United States, people kind of conflate communism and socialism. It's kind of the same thing. You know, when it's used as a pejorative and insult or whatever, and communism, uh, you know, the workers control that means production. It's not even the state it's like directly in control of workers that, you know, these Soviets groups of workers, you know, that, um, had a revolution in Russia and they came in Soviet union. That's one style of government as well. But I mean, to an average, Joe on Facebook might be more sympathetic to like a right wing point of view to them. It seems the way they speak of it. It's kind of, kind of the same thing, even though they really are two different types of government.
Speaker 2Yeah. Originally socialism was developed as a reaction to the economic and social changes brought on by the industrial revolution, mainly because of the struggles of the working class that developed and grew as a result of the economic inequality between the workers and the factory owners, Carl Marx and economist and philosopher. Co-wrote the communist manifesto with Friedrich angles, which laid the groundwork for socialism. And like you said, a lot of people, mainly opponents of socialism, but really your average Joe, on Facebook conflates the two socialism and communism together as an easy target simply to rile up the emotions of conservatives. So really what is the difference of socialism and communism? Well, to be honest, Mark's never differentiated the two, which is why there's probably a lot of confusion surrounding this topic to this day. The biggest difference that I found is that in communism, all property, all resources are collectively owned by a class free society rather than individual citizens. As you referred to the workers, share all ownership of everything, the central government controls all facets of production, the government distributes resources based on the needs of the people people share in the resources equally through the benefits of collective labor. A surprising fact is that if you break down communism to its real definition, there actually were never ever any communist nations in the history of the world. Technically, although both socialism and communism grew out from the opposition of unfair treatment of workers by wealthy businesses in the industrial revolution. And they both believe that all goods and services, as well as all the forces that govern supply and demand should be distributed by centralized government institutions. Communism is seen as a more extreme step up from socialism where socialism can still exist in a capitalist society. Communism does not. People can own property under socialism, not so under communism, all property is communally owned and is distributed to each person based on what they need. And the government controls all aspects of production as I stated earlier. But the most important difference is that socialism seeks change and reform through the democratic process in an existing political and social framework. Communism, however, is brought about only through a violent revolution where the workers or proletariat rise up against the wealthy classes or the bourgeoisie
Speaker 1Yeah. Marks and angles in their followers, or looking at this kind of, it's like always like a, kind of a step-by-step situation where it's like we have to get to this phase and then we get to this phase and then we get to the revolution and then a utopia. And of course, you know, uh, reality and history is much more messy. And oftentimes even when you get to a so-called communist, government is not very egalitarian, ultimately dictatorships kind of come in and, you know, in the United States, uh, you know, people reacting to that, it's like, oh, well this is obviously, you know, the opposite system and what we want. And you know, and people are equating it with, you know, violent labor strikes and so-called seditious, uh, words against the war and world war II. And, and it becomes like this kind of penthouse mirror bogeyman, uh, rather than, than actually any of, any of the stuff you just did.
Speaker 2What I love is I can just picture south park, like step one, the worker struggle. Step two, rise against the wealthy class. Step three, question mark question mark, question mark. Step four, utopia
Speaker 1Profit. Or in this case, none, no profits or anyone,
Speaker 2No profit, no profit step four. I actually wanted to find out a little bit more about what democratic socialism was cause I, I honestly, I, I didn't even know until fairly recently, which is very embarrassing that socialism and democratic socialism are one of the same. I mean, there are elements of socialism in democratic socialists, but democratic socialism supports that both society and economy should be run democratically and should be dedicated to meeting the needs of the people as a whole, rather than encouraging individual prosperity as you get with capitalism. But it also seeks government distribution of universally used services, such as utilities, mass transit, healthcare, things like that. But consumer goods should only be distributed by a capitalist free market. Okay. And this is where I kind of think that Joe Biden comes into the picture here, because I know that I have seen it, especially during the 2020 election, but even now people are trying to pigeonhole him and label him as a socialist to mixed results.
Speaker 1And there's a couple things to keep in mind, you know, first off is that these terms, socialism, democratic, socialism, very squishy, and they can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. First off, even America's experience with social programs and, you know, socialist experiments, you know, whether it's to create social security and employment, uh, things like that is unique to the United States and the way it's framed and, uh, discussed, uh, reflected on and experienced by Americans. So it's not to be labor the point, but you know what we're so much more used to is to hear these things as can have something, a word that somebody spits when they don't like something, you know, rather than anything that actually describes a system or a program. And so, yeah, so now here we are, Joe, Biden's a socialist to people who don't like him, but like, what does that even mean?
Speaker 2Yeah. Republicans have used the socialist label to attack Democrats in their policies for decades, even including programs such as Medicare and social security that ultimately became popular on both sides of the aisle. Socialism has become a dirty word in many places in this country, like south Florida in particular, where many residents fled oppressive regimes in Cuba and Venezuela, and literally argue about the socialism and communism label in the streets of Miami during the 2020 election. The Trump campaign argued that Biden's proposal to expand healthcare, offer free college tuition to some students and promote clean energy are evidence of Biden being a quote socialist, however, Biden maintained throughout his election that he is and has always been a moderate Democrat.
Speaker 1I mean, he was on the primary stage with Bernie Sanders, who is the one who really claims that mantle of being a openly democratic socialist candidate and Biden had had to kind of differentiate himself by saying, no, you know, hi, I believe in the capitalist system, the United States, it's just that, you know, and couching, you know, the socialist programs is as you know, helping Americans rather than like attached to some ideology, do they need the definition of socialist programs, perhaps? You know, I mean, it is the state controlling the means of production, uh, you know, help reduce student debt or provide college, uh, to, uh, to low-income students. Again, there's so much distortion in the way we talk about this stuff.
Speaker 2As you said earlier, does simply having social institutions mean that you are a socialist society and I'm going to get to this in a bit, but even Joe Biden himself boasted, and he got some flack for this from the left, was that he boasted that he beat the socialist Biden's economic plan, emphasizes job creation and manufacturing and infrastructure and healthcare, but he has never called for the government to take over those industries. He's trying to get rid of Trump's tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. And he supports a$15 an hour national minimum wage as proven by his recent executive order for federal employees. But no matter what Fox news says, this doesn't amount in my mind to socialism either by didn't wants to approve the affordable care act rather than revamped the healthcare system, right. He supports allowing Americans the choice of a public option for government back to health insurance. In addition to the private insurance options, those eligible for Medicaid could enroll in the public option at reduced costs. Socialized medicine generally refers to a system in which the government pays all the bills owns the health facilities and employees, the health professionals who work there, but the ACA in contrast has a large market component allowing people to buy insurance on the marketplace from private insurance companies. That doesn't sound too socialist MEJ.
Speaker 1And it doesn't even make sense for Joe Biden to try to run, uh, by promoting this, the socialism in these programs, because, you know, I think Biden is well aware of as many successful politicians are of the political culture of the United States, which has a long history of being kind of antipathy to socialism and communism. We had a cold war for most of the last century, even when we have social programs that kind of couched in this idea of the spirit of American community with the support of free enterprise, right? That free enterprise is kind of a partner in helping all Americans achieve the dream of equality. And that's really kind of like where these socialist ideas can get framed, which is really very, very different way than it's framed in other places. It doesn't even, it doesn't even make sense to me, except, you know, in the kind of right-wing anger sphere that you would even call Joe Biden a socialist cause obviously he's not even going to, even when he's talking about social programs, they're not gonna frame it that way. He's going to frame it in the way that the U S political culture wants it to be framed, which is like, Hey, we're, we're kind of a Liberty and freedom loving culture that has free enterprise and wants it to serve Americans rather than oppress them
Speaker 2Biden. Hasn't embraced Medicare for all, which is like the socialist bell cow. And you know what, even if he did Medicare for all as proposed doesn't constitute socialism, either Carnegie Mellon university, professor of economics and public policy, Martin Gaynor said that quote Medicare for all is a proposal that would make us healthcare comparable to that in other countries with capitalist economies, with a primary role for government, with regard to social welfare, I wouldn't call that socialism end quote. Now don't get me wrong, but I didn't has shifted to the left on environmental issues, uh, health care and especially racial justice issues. But his economic platform is still far from being socialist. It is much more solidly in line with America's tradition of Kenzie in economics, where the government increases spending and keeps taxes low for all about the very rich in order to jumpstart the private sector, which is understood to be the best motor for growth innovation and job creation.
Speaker 1The theme of socialism in the United States is really like new deal ism, right. Which is just really, yeah, very much an American flavor does not hand over a whole means production to the state. It's, it's much more of a partnership between public and private enterprise. You know, it's not like businesses don't benefit from this massive infrastructure spending. They're one of the prime beneficiaries of such spending, uh, which is ironic again, that historically businesses support the right, I think Biden one of the keys to his political successes is he's always kind of placed himself kind of in the middle of the pack of the democratic party, which is the majority party in the United States and has been for a long time. I mean, Republicans have only won the national popular vote in two presidential elections in like 30 years. So like when he's moving left, which really seeing is that the whole country is kind of moving was considered left is now basically popular opinion that, you know, people like the affordable care act, they like more affordable healthcare surprise, surprise. You know that yes, people are appalled by police abuses of communities of color, that more and more people accept that climate change is, is a human generated. And I want to mitigate it. Those are really more mainstream opinions. Now,
Speaker 2Anthony Davies, a free market economist at Mackenzie university said Biden's proposals such as improving the ACA reinstating environmental protections and investing tax dollars into infrastructure with the American jobs plan are not strictly speaking, quote, unquote socialist. He said some of the policies are heavily regulatory and that they would have politicians and bureaucrats weigh in on what products Americans will have, but the policies do not call for the government to take ownership of housing or take ownership of infrastructure or to directly employ workers. He said the real problem lies in thinking in binary terms, socialism versus capitalism, there's no example of a pure socialist or a pure capitalist economy. All economies are located on a continuum somewhere between the two extremes. Many of Biden's policies do move the United States further toward the socialist end of the continuum. But some like his proposed environmental protections actually move the U S further away from the socialist end by reinforcing voluntary decision-making. And so, as a result of all of this, I think it's kind of been difficult to pin by been to this socialism fear word, you know, that the Republicans try to attach him to,
Speaker 1It seemed to work much better against the black president for I'm sure, completely unrelated reasons if the watch for anything, uh, the right and Republicans don't like his socialism, then whenever you hear them use the word, usually tells them a lot about what they don't like more than it does describe whether or not a program is socialist or not.
Speaker 2I remember when the Trump campaign kind of gave up on calling him a socialist and instead pointed to the support for Biden as being the communist handlers of a weak leader, but Biden got support from the chairman of the revolutionary communist party USA and the working families party, as well as support from Alexandra Ocasio, Cortez of New York eventually. And she's a member of the democratic socialists of America, but this is also not resulted in any real substantial striking point against Biden, because he was also endorsed by the Lincoln project, which is a group of anti-Trump Republicans, as well as some Republican national security officials. But Biden is no Republican.
Speaker 1It says more about kind of the popular front against, uh, you know, where the Republicans are today, which is so far right. You know, that you'd get AOC and the Lincoln project, both endorsing, uh, Biden to give listeners a sense of where we are. Um, today is the day. Um, actually I think it might be happening right now. Uh, Biden is giving, you know, what would typically be called the state of union address? Um, right now what's really interesting is that, that the response to the state of the union, which is typically like, uh, the opposing party and it usually given by a rising star while it tends to be kind of really bad for the career of whoever, whoever does it. I remember Marco Rubio having to drink of many glasses of water through one of his responses. But what's interesting today is the response is actually coming from the working families party. Uh, I think it's Jamaal Bowman. I'm the workings. Yeah. It's going to be responsible for working families party, which is much more of kind of a loyal opposition than kind of the Republicans in the right wing who are kind of off the map. Now, as far as, uh, a legitimate political party that actually wants to engage in the American democratic system, of course, you're going to have trouble pinning down by an, as a socialist, if literally what is historically the opposition response it's actually coming from more socialist spirits.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah. And the fact that he was getting support and criticism from both left and right wing organizations means that he was probably doing something right, but it also made it extremely difficult for the Trump campaign to use that against him. But they tried anyway. And what's funny is that Phillip J Williams, who's Dean of the college of liberal arts at California Polytechnic state university. He pointed out that quote, Trump recently received the endorsement of the Taliban. So does that make him a member of the Taliban and quote? I thought that was a really funny
Speaker 1Rhetorical games at this point, you've gotten so absurd. It's like if you were to use the same standard yeah. It's like, wait, it was Trump's on the side of Muslim fundamentalists now. I mean, perhaps there's something to be said about that, but this isn't the right episode,
Speaker 2You know, and when it comes to actually stopping socialism, what did do really? What did Trump do? He routinely praised socialists, dictators GGN ping, and Kim Jong boon. He even said openly that the us should act more like China. One of the largest socialist nations on earth. The fact of the matter is that Biden's historic 81 million vote. Victory is a mandate for change, but the idea that we are moving towards socialism as defined by the right belies, a basic understanding of the facts, yes, there are actual socialists in the far left fringes of the democratic party, but when they had their chance to elect actual socialists, they chose probably the least socialist democratic candidate possible. If the socialists aren't powerful enough to win their own primary election J then why would they be powerful enough to control the people who did? The only thing that we should expect from Biden are more center left policies as well as continued reversals of Trump's executive orders. And if that is socialism signed me up,
Speaker 1One of the keys to buy and success as a politician, not just recently, but throughout his career is that he's got a good idea of like where popular opinion is, you know, and, and popular opinion is moving more towards these programs. We're talking about, they are popular people like things they like support. They don't like to be left at the mercy of the excesses of capitalist system, not to derail too much because, you know, there is something to be said about, um, FDR and the new deal and, and kind of helping the capitalist system survive, uh, during that period. And so one could say that, you know, Biden is kind of doing something similar that you need at least a little socialism to actually legitimize the rest of the capitalist system and put a floor underneath people so that, you know, you don't have people dying in the streets that you're going to get an unemployment check if you qualify, or you're going to get a relief check directly from the government, just to add to the absurdity of Trump, you know, like he signed those checks that went right out to people like direct checks, direct money that's essential, instant.
Speaker 2Perfect. And then the, he signed the actually had a signature was on the checks. Yes, yep. What a,
Speaker 1This is a, this is our objective scholarly. Uh, we are here with special guests, Austin Clements, a PhD candidate at Stanford university. He is a historian studying, uh, uh, us politics and their relationship to religion in the 20th century. And, uh, he's here to join us in our, in our conversation about how, uh, uh, historically the right frames socialism as wedge issues and, uh, to help increase our understanding, uh, Austin, thanks so much for being with us.
Speaker 4Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, I'm excited to be here. I came to graduate studies with the idea of studying the far right in the United States. And I came to that and sort of a roundabout ways to my undergraduate work primary advisor, uh, I should say, uh, and my undergraduate, which I did at ASU worked in modern European history. Um, and I took a course of his, where he talked about the intellectual history of fascism and I found it absolutely fascinating. So, you know, as a young undergraduate, I go and I'm reading all these books about fascism and, you know, a lot of scholars will tell you, this is that there's like that one footnote that they come across. And that like, sort of defines what they're going to study. You know, some installer before them was like, just someone else can research this later. So in Stanley paints, a history of fascism, he had this little snarky footnote about fascism in the United States is, uh, you know, the scholarship that's been produced on it is inversely proportional to the relevance of the topic. And this was written in 1995. So it was like, aha, you say this, but like, I've never even heard of fascism in the United States. So maybe he has a point here, but this was 20 17, 20 18. So in the, in the media, right, the fascism word is getting used more and more, not just in relation to our country, uh, Donald Trump, but also, you know, the sort of right wing, uh, nationalist, populism, that's rising all across the world. And so I wanted to study more of that and it's actually gone into the archives to look at some of the groups that were mentioned in this footnote. So these 1930s, 1920s, American fascist groups say the silver shirts or the black Legion or the German American booned, or even father Coughlin, uh, the famous radio priest as I started researching more and more, I noticed that the one theme that they all came around to and then fell back on was communism. What made them want to join fascist legions or consider themselves fascist or in league with fascism across the Atlantic was communism and fighting communism and socialism. This isn't the 1920s and thirties in the United States. So I was like, wow, you know, you know, you don't usually hear about communism until the McCarthy era. I didn't really think of anti-communism being a major force in the twenties and thirties. And so, as I began reading more, it was very clear to me that there's something going on here, right? Because from what I knew in modern European studies with Mussolini Hitler and all fascist groups and in Europe is that they posit themselves as bulwarks against communism coming in from Moscow. Mussolini comes to power saying that he's going to fight Bolshevism and socialism that's degrading Italy and the squadron Riste black shirts that he has under his command. That's what they do. They go out and they have their street fights with socialists, Mussolini, posits himself. As this leader, that's going to save Italy from these degrading forces. And then later Hitler is doing the same thing in Germany. And so it was interesting to me to see this happening in the United States. So then my research became, what is the communist to Americans in the 1920s and thirties? What do they think this actually is? Do they see it as radicalism? Do they see it as atheism? Do they see it as sort of heterodox vision of the future? That's not in line with American values? What is it specifically and what is it that they fear? So I'm actually looking at anticommunist activity in the United States, in the 1920s and thirties, because what happens with, and I mentioned, father Coughlin already, this radio priest who raises the power in the, in the 1930s, making 36, it's like the height of his power. And he has an estimated 30 to 40 million listeners a week on the radio, which is insane. I mean, that's, you know, rush Limbaugh doesn't even come close to that. And my question is, is, you know, if you read history as a father, Coughlin eventually gets kicked off the air for his increasingly antisemitic views, the church hierarchy in 1942 eventually says, you know, you're either going to be a priest or you're going to be a public figure, but you're not going to be both. And he chooses his priesthood over his public prominence. And my question is, is where do those tens of millions of listeners go? They don't just disappear because father Coughlin disappeared. And if you read Gallup polls at the time, you know, something like 85% of his listeners claim to agree with his views, even when he was spouting this sort of anti-Semitic canards of the communist party in the United States or communists in the United States are mostly Jews, which ties into certainly Nazi Germany. But this is a conversation happening all over the world at the time. And so my question is, is where, where do these millions of listeners go? So a research paper I finished last year was basically looking at like, how does this anti-communism from the 1930s, which was actually really strong during the Spanish civil war, looking at all of the millions of Americans who supported Franco during the Spanish, civil war, not the other side, not the loyalist side, who they saw as communists, where do these all go? When the Spanish civil war ends, where did they go? When father Coughlin comes off the air and they become conservatives, a lot of them, and you have figures as prominent as William F. Buckley or his brother-in-law Oberon Bozel who are still saying the Spanish civil war Franco was the correct side. And having all these homages to Franco in national review. I mean, you even have Ronald Reagan in the 1980s say that the Americans who went over and died for the loyalist side were fighting for the wrong side, meaning Franco was the right side. So you still have this idea of Franco being a bulwark against communism, going all the way into the 1980s in the United States. And you could actually go on American conservative magazine today and find the same ideas. Fair. You know, the Franklin was the correct side. The sellers are in Portugal was the correct side, and we should be more like that here in the United States. So this never really goes away. And that's what I'm trying to work on now, now, because I also work in the subject of religion. Of course, this essay was looking mostly at American Catholics who see communism as actually an outgrowth of liberalism, which is to say it focuses instead of rather on God being Supreme hierarchy, or it focuses on the individual, um, or it focuses on the state. And rather than Christ-like or family like values, communism is a, is an atheist or godless ideology. You hear them saying godless communism. And so, especially when in the Spanish civil war, when communists are supposedly massacring priests, which they are doing, there are uprisings in Spain, the violence against the Catholic clergy is very real American Catholics jump on this. So then my question is, is in the 1920s and thirties, non-Catholic Americans Protestant using these same arguments. What do they see communism as? So my current research project is looking at a fundamentalist preacher from the 1920s and his views of communism. And he's a prominent anticommunist back then. So I'm just trying to find out what is it that communism means and why is it, why is it so effective as you were saying before, why is this such a good means of a catch all or a got you for the American, right. And why does that work so well? And why is it so effective that you can flip on the, I don't want to say flip on the TV because that's a little quaint and old fashioned, but you can get on your phone and onto social media and see these same arguments being regurgitated that you can find in the 1920s. And that's really my question that I'm trying to get at
Speaker 2When I think of Nazi-ism. I think of, uh, uh, fascists after world war two was over the big enemy was the Russians or the Soviets in this case. And they were a communist regime during world war II. The Soviet union and Nazi Germany were mortal enemies. But according to the right wing in America, that I've grown up with over the last four decades, socialism and communism are the same thing. And Nazi-ism the Nazi party was built on national socialism. So for someone who doesn't know the difference between what national socialism and communism is, what is the difference and why is it incorrect to think that first off socialism and communism are the same thing and what was so different between what the Nazis did and what the Soviets did with how they ran each of their governments and why they were
Speaker 4No, that's a terrific question. And so you have to get to the difference between ideas or what socialists or communists purported themselves to be and what they actually were to get at your, your second question, but your first point about what's the difference. I mean, to put it bluntly socialism, you could say would be the state controlling the means of production communism, whereas is you could see as an outreach of socialism or an outgrowth and say that it's the workers owning the means of production. So not capitalism, not just in an unfettered free market, but actually regulated and controlled whether it's by the workers with communism or just by the state with socialism. That's why the Soviet Russia, and I'm not an expert in Soviet Russia by any means, but that's why it gets conflated, right? Because the workers certainly are in control and Soviet Russia. I mean, that might be a standard or an ideal, but really there is still a dictator, right? There's a Lennon or a stolen or a Khrushchev. So it's not perfect. That's why I wanted to say, there's the ideal national socialism. And this is interesting. This is like the Dinesh D'Souza like, gotcha. Because he, he likes to point out repeatedly that national socialism comes out of socialism, or he likes to point out that Benito Mussolini was a socialist. And then he becomes a fascist to say that, oh, actually fascism comes from the left. And actually recently the book, I mentioned, Stanley pains, the history of fascism Denish DeSousa this week had Stanley pain on his podcast and was sort of using Stanley pain as a way to legitimize this idea and Stanley pain. Isn't, you know, a right-winger by any means, but he's also not the type of scholar who's going to be correcting to Souza. So you can actually see now there's this push on the right to legitimize academically or scholarly. However you want to say it, this idea that national socialism comes from the left, what the national socialists are doing. And this is why scholars of fascism always want to point to world war one as the crucible in which fascism is formed is because during world war one, ultra nationalism skyrockets, every nation wants to be the best nation in every nation sort of turns inward. Whereas socialism is an international project. Socialism wants national borders to be gone, to have the human collective working together. So when you have socialists in the United States, for example, like you could say that IWW, for example, would be a socialist movement. You could imagine the United States, right? They're looking to have this international brotherhood in communists through the same way. Communism is this international movement of workers rising against the proletariat, rising against the bourgeoisie. National socialism is very different in the sense that socialism in the sense that the state controls everything, but it's the state within specific national borders. It doesn't just mean territory. That also means a certain race, especially with the Nazis. It means the purification of the German race and nation. So this is where you get the idea of area in this or the Volk. The idea that the German themselves are what need to be held above the rest, above the rest of the world, as the ideal human in Italy, it's called the new man, this idea of this reinvigorating, the Italian, you know, and it's always pointing back to this mythic national past. So with Italy, it's the Roman empire that they want to rejuvenate and reinvigorate and create the new fascist man within a state that is again controlled by this charismatic leader that they want to have at the top of this and that basically that everyone within the state lives and dies for the state and the state is Supreme. So in that way, you know, with socialism, as I mentioned, that's the state owning the means of production. So national socialism or Nazi-ism as it comes to be in Germany is like that on steroids. And that this is the important thing, is it circumscribed only within a certain nation. And it sees itself as enemies because it's fascism is very belligerent ideology. It sees itself at war with other nations.
Speaker 1I like thinking about a world war one, and it's kind of the backstory here. It's, I'm going to help folks who are not historians who are listening and understand how we get from, you know, world war two. Then you have father Coughlin on the radio and this like intense anti socialism anti-communism and the thirties to then of course, world war II. And then in the post media post-war era, um, the McCarthy era and he whack and, and, um, blacklisting and, and this really intense anti-communism this whole kind of 50 year period. Yeah. I mean, I remember before, when I was just considering going back to be a history undergrad, I remember hearing about this guy, Eugene Debs, he's a socialist and the U S government at that point is very anti-socialist. He goes to jail basically for speaking out against world war one, but he's a, he's a presidential candidate. And I think he gets almost a million votes from his prison cell. And I just also like to point out that Eugene Debs looks like a young Ian MCI a little bit from Fugazi. Am I the only one that sees this? I feel like I want everybody to not be able to unsee it now. So what you're saying is that the MCI is a socialist vampire. He's a time-traveling socialist vampire here to make America more socialist. This is all true.
Speaker 4You look at old photos of like minor threat, and then you look at them today. It's the same dude. Like there's like no change. I totally see that. Of course,
Speaker 1All joking aside this moment, kind of at the tail end of world war one, it seems really important in, in the U S as far as framing these arguments on the right about socialism and communism.
Speaker 4W why is there such animosity between fascism and socialism? That's really important to pull out because what nationalism sees as a threat from socialism, it depends on the nation. And this was, this is, what's so interesting about studying anti-communism and like a transnational context, because when you, when you study nationalism, each nation always reverts back to its own traditions and its own sort of colloquialisms its own vernacular its own history. To see what they see as the big threat from communism, because of the threat from communism at the most broadly is it's international Ames. That it's a foreign element and it's coming into your nation and it's going to degrade your nation with values that are not of your nation. That's the biggest thing. So whether you're in Italy, whether you're in Germany, whether you're in Spain, whether you're in the United States, whether you're even in Mexico, because this is happening all over the world, that's the threat of communism. And so when you get this animosity toward communism from Germany, for example, to go back to[inaudible] point, a lot of it is of course, this idea that Germany was just defeated in world war one, it's unstable. This illegitimate liberal Republic was sort of propped up. This is the Weimar Republic that comes out of the treaty of Versailles, which is the treaty that is sort of put on the Germans. So this idea that liberalism is also going to bring in communism is also important to understand, because this is a worldwide idea. You see this in the United States as well, but liberalism again, taking this, what was before in Germany in right, this Bismark and empire is then gone. And in its place, you have this sort of illegitimate government, as it's seen by, by conservatives in the right. And so they're worried then that socialism and communism are going to further degrade the germination. And so the problem then is that with all this violence between these, these nationalist groups and the socialist groups is then socialism is eventually like not seen as really much of a threat anymore. Especially once Hitler comes to power in the 1930s. And there's all these purges, you know, there's the night of the long knives, for example, where all of his political opponents are basically erased. And yet that language of socialism is still there and it has a racial cadence to it. It has radicalism comes from the Slavs, which are out east, which we need to eliminate for lebensraum, which means living space. The Nazis were all about expanding into the east and that sort of pushes the non-suit campaign eastward later in world war II. But then also this idea too, that communism is Jewish as well. It's a Jewish ideology. And you know, this is where you get the Judeo Vic myth. And there's, you know, library shelves like grown under the weight of books that have been written about this idea, because this is eventually also what sort of gets you toward the Holocaust, right? This idea that we have an internal enemy that is bringing socialism into our borders, um, it needs to be eradicated. So there's racial, religious, ethnic valence is all within this idea of communism that's happening in the United States as well. Now, the reason I wanted to point out about expanding eastward and this sort of ideology of Nazis that they need to eliminate the Slavs, because those are also there on the, on the racial hierarchy, is that in 1939, Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany forum and Alliance, the Molotov Ribbentrop pact, and this Alliance is basically Nazi Germany saying, we're not going to invade you, but we also want your help in invading Poland. And so Nazi Germany invaded Poland stolen, being stolen, takes a while to get there, but he eventually invades Poland from the east and Stalin thinks everything is okay, but this ideology that, you know, slobs are lesser than that they need to expand. Eastward is what eventually pushes Hitler to break that pact. And that's why when he starts operation Barbarosa and 1941 and invades the Soviet union, it catches stolen completely unawares, right? But it's also like invading the Soviet union has never worked for anybody. You know, whether it was the Russian empire in Napoleon a hundred and so years before it's insane, especially because Hitler is so caught up in fighting on the Western front because when he invades Poland, of course, that launches world war II. So Hillary was very busy and now suddenly he's out east fighting when he doesn't really need to be the Soviets. And that's because that ideology is so powerful that it pushes them to move out east
Speaker 2Does liberalism lead to socialism, does socialism lead to communism? I'm not clear on that.
Speaker 4You would have to read like you're Carl Schmidt, right? This a Nazi legal jurist who, who would argue that, that right. Liberalism leads to communism and his argument there is basically because liberalism allows all these different seats at the table, whether it's like parliamentary, liberalism or constitutional, this idea that everyone can join parliament. If they have enough votes and therefore you can get communism. And that that's actually how fascism comes into power, right? Is that it sort of gets enough votes in parliament and eventually is able to take out other parties. So does it actually lead to socialism? I don't think that that's fair to say, if you look at the history of the Soviet union, for example, you have, let's say the Russian empire right under are Nicholas. He gets overthrown. The there's like a very small window where there is a liberal regime. And then that gets overthrown by the Bolsheviks. I don't know. That's a really interesting question. I don't think it invites it. I think that liberalism doesn't like communism and socialism, but again, that's, you know, and I hate to say it, but like, I'm not a political scientist, but there's nothing intrinsically about liberalism, right? Because liberalism is really about individual rights and natural rights. It's about, you know, the right to own property. It's about the sort of natural freedoms, whether it's the freedom of conscience, freedom of religion. That's what liberalism really is. And so that's not really what socialism is, right? So with liberalism, you can get free market ideology, but you can also just get capitalism, for example, just to speak in very broad terms, you know, you can have individuals, whether they're private humans or private corporations or businesses owning the means of production, and that's very antithetical to communism. So I wouldn't say that it invites it, but that's certainly how the Nazis see it, or that's certainly how fascists yet they see because they see liberalism as weak. And so it's important to recognize that, you know, whether it's true or not, again, I'm not really an expert and I wouldn't want to say it's true or not, but I would say that it is the fear of the far right. And even the right even conservatives, but liberalism does lead to communism. The liberalism is especially new deal liberalism because in the United States is what I'm referring to the expansion of the federal government, the expansion of the welfare state, you know, w before welfare was handled by private charities or by specific ethnic communities or religious communities, churches, for example, and then with the great depression, suddenly it becomes the state's responsibility to take care of American citizens. That's sort of your new deal, liberal order. And that seen as, you know, a step towards socialism and communism,
Speaker 1But that's what makes this conversation so interesting to me. And I hope useful for other people to hear is that, is that so much of it is, is framing, right? And us is a good example of this. Like if the social program, if the socialism is coming from inside the house, and it can be framed in a way that it's like, it's part of the country that, you know, it's part of a, an internal response to the good of the country. Like obviously the new deal has many opponents, and we can talk a lot about that kind of movement that starts in the thirties, but like that it's becomes part of accepted us society. That the quote I always hear is, you know, get your government hands off. My social security. It becomes kind of embedded in a word for the Nazis to they're like, well, we'll market this as national socialism. That's how we'll build the Autobahn. So much of it is like kind of marketing, framing, this political rhetoric that, you know, socialism or communism, if it's not coming from outside and coming in, if it's coming from inside, if you can argue effectively, it's coming inside, you're going to get a public road or a public school. Then, then all of a sudden it's much harder for it to be painted in this way. And I feel like some of the CNM, U S exceptionalism stuff helps muddy, muddy the waters enough where we don't really understand how these framings are working.
Speaker 4Exceptionalism is funny. The thing I was mentioning earlier about nationalism is it's very different, you know, whatever your nation is essentially. So there's like how Americans, you know, whether it's the right, whether it's the left, like how do we make this sound more American and more appealing to Americans? It's going to be very different than how does, how do we make this appealing toward Germans? How do we make this appealing towards the Spanish people? And that's what they do. And that, it's funny, you mentioned that because I'm teaching a course right now on 20th century, United States history, and, you know, undergraduates were very into this, about how the new deal made itself sound so American, right. That it's this idea. It's like, oh, you're working for social security. So it's not charity. It's not a handout. Right. You're working for this. And then we'll just take it and hold it for you. And it's for the good of other hardworking Americans like yourself. It's like, yeah, we can get behind that, you know, hardworking Americans thrift, whereas maybe in another nation that wouldn't necessarily be the ideology that works, but it doesn't the United States as very important to think about. But it's also important to think about too, of why the appeal of conservatism as it would later be called. Although I should say capital C conservatism, that conservative coalition that comes out of the post-war order, but now is just, and the 1930s is really opposing the new deal order because you can see why they would very easily posit that as socialism, right? Oh, you're working for this money and now the state is taking it and holding it for you and the social security tax. That's terrible. That's just one step. Right? And that's always the, the rhetoric, uh, the slippery slope argument that the right uses. This is just one more step towards socialism. And we feel like we've been stepping toward that for a long time, if you would listen to the right. And so you can also see the appeal of that sentiment, right? This idea that the state, which before has been a very minimal role in the United States and citizens lives up until the 1930s called changes. You have president Roosevelt doing his fireside chat. His voice is literally in your living room coming through your radio. But also the federal government is now dipping its hands into things that it has never had to worry about before. And that expansion of the federal government becomes an argument for why socialism is coming to the United States, right? And as CJ was getting to earlier, there are differences between socialism and communism, but those words are used interchangeably when the United States rhetoric, there's no specific like, oh, when I talk about socialism, this is what I really mean. I mean, in, in certain circles, certainly, but when you're putting it on the, every man, the ordinary American, if there is such a thing they're not really getting the finery is between socialism and communism. And in fact, in the 1920s, when the Russian revolution first happens and you get what's called the first red scare in the United States, it's Bolshevism and Bolshevism becomes communism. And both of those are seen under this umbrella of socialism,
Speaker 1You know? Yeah. You don't have the proud boys standing in the corner being mad about Sweden. This is obviously some sort of device that it depends on, on what you don't like. What I think about the most from the post-war onward when you get to the civil rights act and the new deal state is helping on racial equity. And of course, this is the big issue now, right? Then all of a sudden than, than socialism and communism can really be the watch word for like, we don't like helping black people or women. The government in air quotes is the enemy because it's socialists and communists, but really socialists and communists and the government are all code for, we don't like that. Black people and women and people of color have equitable access to the social programs that white Americans actually like that are popular, like social security. Now it's metastasized. And that's where I'm seeing it being framed. Now
Speaker 2I I've actually seen reports on 5 38, where you have a very strong aversion amongst the American population toward programs that are deemed socialist. However, they have shown the, if a poll is worded differently to not use the word socialism or similar terms, the vast majority of the American public are very pro Obamacare or social institutions that are right now being pushed by the Biden administration that have been pushed by liberal Democrats for decades. They have a huge amount of support amongst Americans. However, it just seems that right-wing, pundants see a social program or a topic that they don't want people to support. And they simply just earmark it with the word socialism. And then all of a sudden it is seen as not only a bad idea, but evil,
Speaker 4What you just said there EGA about evil is very important because what I study is essentially religious history. And there are, you know, the intersection between religion and politics. There's this idea that communism, Bolshevism socialism is evil. That it's, it's the devil and you constantly get it referred to as such, not just in the United States, but Italy as well. It's the red devil coming from the east from Moscow. And that's what makes it so powerful. And that's, what's so interesting too, about the different valence is that it has in the United States among different groups. Because as I was mentioning, you know, my research before was looking at American Catholics and how they viewed communism. Now I'm looking at this pre-millennial dispensationalist fundamentalist, right? That's a lot of arrests, but essentially folks that think that the second coming of Christ is just around the corner that the world is damned and the rapture is going to come and suck us all up into heaven eventually. And there's a bunch of different ways you can think about what that means, but essentially this pre millennialism means that Christ is going to come before the millennium. And so therefore we don't need to worry about trying to make the world a better place because it's beyond saving, right. It's just a matter of time, but they become strong anti-communists in the 1920s. And the reason for that is, is because, you know, and this is, this goes into prophecy belief. You know, those folks who read the Bible and say, aha, you know, Ezekiel and Daniel and John from revelation had been talking about this for thousands of years. And when they talk about Gog and Magog coming from Raasch, for example, well, that's just Moscow in Russia and we're seeing this happen now. And so I'm looking at this fundamentalist preacher, who is essentially saying that, you know, this has all been foretold and communism are these hordes and they're the antichrist they're coming in from the east just has been prophesied. And so we need to worry in the United States about basically the turning away of souls toward this anti-Christ, it's going to come in and look very appealing. And so when you get to this idea of evil, it's important to point that out because you know, what are the stakes of anti-communism? I mean, it seems silly that a right-wing pundit can just go and say, oh, this program that's actually going to these private health insurance companies, for example, are really screwing the everyday person. I want to make it easier for people to have access to health care. So they don't get hit with a$2,000 bill, you know, when they go in for a scraped knee and if a right wing pundit, you know, that's in the pockets of these, these private insurance corporations can just go and say, well, that's socialism. Like they've won, they've won the battle. Why is that so effective? It's frustratingly. So, and it's because this idea that if we give control over to, or out of the private hands of corporations and put it into the state regulating who gets healthcare and whatnot, well, that's just a small tip step towards socialism and socialism, as we all know is evil. And it's evil because it takes freewill out of choice, which Christian eschatology and cosmology requires freewill the decision to make right and wrong. And that's a big problem of what communism is this idea that it takes away, your free will, you don't have choice anymore. And it does. So with this appealing, we'll do this to help you out in, in this life. And so that's where, so because, you know, it turns away souls from Christ, but also communism and communism is this communism is anti-religious, especially in Soviet Russia, right? There's these campaigns, the league of the militant godless or whatever that, that goes around and is making sure that the church has less power and giving a lot of, you know, in the Eastern Orthodox church. And the Catholic church do have a lot of power and Russia. And so it takes that and gives it to the state. And the realms of education for example, is a big one. And so there's that, that fear, right? That communism is godless. And you always hear that godless, communism or godless Marxism, and that works. And it's been working since the 1920s and you're using, you're seeing the same language and these pre-millennial dispensational lists, it just raises the stakes of politics to the point of this. Isn't just who you vote for is going to determine the success of our country or, or even just like your general comfort and wellbeing for maybe the next four years. It's literally this determines the fate of your soul for the rest of eternity. And that's a huge problem.
Speaker 2I feel that most of our podcast episodes end up reducing the prime cause of the issue being discussed as being Christian nationalism. I feel like that is been a very consistent common thread throughout most of our episodes. Why do you feel that
Speaker 4When you look at the history of the United States and especially the right, it's just so hard not to see the religious Christian valances. You can't miss it. I read a lot of history books on conservatism and whatnot, and the ones that try to like allied or like maybe bypass religion as being like, okay, well maybe that's there, but it's not that important. They're very strange to read because you, you don't get what's at stake for Americans. You don't get what the appeal is for anti-communism or for other things you've discussed, right? This move towards nationalism or antisemitism, which is very religious, right? That comes from a long history of Christian and Judaistic relationships. I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say, Christian nationalism is, it's kind of a problem term because there's so many people that are Christians that are not nationalists, or there are people that are nationalists that aren't Christians in the United States, but also those who are Christian nationalists that fall under that umbrella are very different groups and groups that are in a lot of ways, really don't like each other. And this is something that on the realm of politics, you might not see so easily, you might see a lot of right wing support for Amy Barrett, for example, getting the Supreme court not, but in conversations that you're not hearing, you know, it's, oh, she's a Catholic, this is a bad thing. Like among like fundamentalists, especially, or a lot of Christian Protestants, you know, when Mitt Romney runs in 2012, it's okay, good. Here's a good Republican candidate, but what, you're not hearing other conversations, oh, he's a Mormon, you know, that's very bad, but of course, Mormons, Protestants, Catholics, you know, those are your Christian nationalists, but they might be able to form a coalition on the right to a certain extent. And they might have a shared language that they can agree on, but they're all doing it for very different reasons. And they all have a different, as I mentioned earlier, a different eschatology, a different cosmology, a different theology. They see the world very differently to put it bluntly. And that can also create a lot of friction within these disparate religious groups.
Speaker 1You can't argue against evil. That's like an emotional argument. You say something's evil. We're not, you're not really in the realm of laying out some facts and framing, a battle of rationally created arguments against each other. Right. It's like, it's evil. And I feel like that's the common thread here, right? Is there are all these, these groups using religion and communism and socialism as a device it's evil. And then that's the end of the debate. And neither you buy it or you don't. And yeah, how religion is heart of American culture, I think is why this keeps coming up, right? Because like, there are a lot of Christians in the United States and not all of them are hardcore, right wing nationalists of these various disparate groups, oftentimes opposing each other, right. It's not a rational space, but it is a powerful political standpoint. And just trying to get our arms around that lineage, like where it comes from, how it's sustaining itself. And they can be signposts along the way, whether it's, you know, the first red scare, second post-war and so on is tough. It's challenging
Speaker 4Just to push back a little bit, because what I find in the reading, all of these sources from the 1920s and thirties of these anticommunist American Christians, I do want to say first off though, you're right. Absolutely. That I think that when you have Christian nationalism, right, the idea of America as a nation has such a religious message to it or an element to it. Right? So if you're going to have American nationalism, it's going to have that Christian side to it. There's just no escaping that because the idea of Americanism and, you know, the people that would see America in nationalist terms would have that Christian side to it. And the same way that in Italy, right? It has that Roman empire feel to it that you see with Mussolini. It just depends on the nation that you're in. Um, but I would push back against the irrationality part only because what these, as I mentioned, the fundamentalist author, I mentioned, but also so many of these, do you want to call them ideologues or, or religious folks as they are rationalizing it, it doesn't stop. It just evil. There's these long tracks of why specifically communism is evil and it all ties into their theology. So like with this fundamentalist, right? There's that prophecy belief idea that this has been talked about since he's EQL, which has its own rationality to it. But then it's actually funny because he's a fundamentalist in the 1920s, Darwinism comes up or teaching evolution in schools. So there's this idea too, that like Darwinism is being taught by Jews and by communists. And that is trying to get Christ out of our schools. And he has these long diatribes about why specifically this is so I wouldn't want to say it's irrational. In fact, it's almost the opposite. It's almost so rational. And this, this can kind of get us into talking about maybe why conspiracies are so powerful is because it's not that they're just sort of touching on emotions. I mean, that's certainly a part of it, but it's also that it's a way of explaining the world to leave nothing to chance it's like hyper rational[inaudible] events. So everything is happening for a reason. So your favorite candidate for presidency is going to be a shoe in, right. They're just going to, you know, they're going to win the nomination and then they're going to get elected and everything's going to be great. And then they lose that election. Well, how did this happen? Well, it's clearly not because he's an unfit candidate. We've already moved past that this should have happened. There must be a conspiracy. There must be some reason why this didn't happen. I was thinking of the 1920s, but this could easily be 2020 with the insurrection on the Capitol. This is this idea that, you know, it's not that, you know, I just think that everything around in the world is just like evil and therefore we just need to support this one candidate. It's not evil. It's that, oh, there's a, there's a very rational reason for why let's say Donald Trump didn't get the election. It's because of voter fraud. And then this starts making its way into policy and the legal battles. Right. But it's all that idea that you can hyper rationalize when things don't go a certain way. And that's what these fundamentalists are doing in the 1920s. It's that same idea that like, oh, evolution is coming into our schools and being taught, well, this isn't because it's a good doctrine or because it sounds science. I'm going to disapprove that it is, it must be because there's a conspiracy of Jewish administrators or of communists putting this in our schools. And that's why it's becoming appealing because it's obviously against the teachings of God. And so therefore
Speaker 2Connecting liberalism to communism has been a very successful tactic by the right wing. So how can, or how has liberal Democrats rebranded or maneuvered around this tactic from the right to escape being strongman, Intel to be successful politically, to enact policy, to not fall into a right-wing fascist theocracy.
Speaker 4I was sort of getting to that earlier when talking about how the new deal branded itself, right? It's not that it's socialism and I, and it would not have seen itself as socialist. Although, you know, there's certainly people in Roosevelt's brain trust who might've had inclination towards socialism, but they wouldn't have thought of themselves as socialists. And I think that's, that's an important thing to get at too, which is when you're studying this in the United States with exceptions like Debs, no one really thinks of themselves as a socialist. And there's a communist party. There's a socialist party. Those are very minor. Even Bernie Sanders today, he operates within a capitalist system. Like he's no Len he's not even really a Debs, right? He's very much about like, well, how do we mitigate the worst effects of capitalism? So socialism is not something that Americans, and certainly the liberal Democrats, as you mentioned, are going to be using to brand themselves. And I think that that's important when they do sort of get around this right wing ideas of, oh, you're social. So your liberals is no, we're not. We're very American. This is an America for all Americans. That's an important way that the new deal coalition gets so strong in the 1930s is it takes these groups who are disproportionately affected by the worst effects of the great depression, minorities, whether they're religious minorities, whether it's African-Americans recent immigrants and gets them behind the new deal. And you see African-American switch from the party of Lincoln to the democratic party at this time. And that's what they're doing right as this is an American ideal work, fulfilling the promises of the founders to give a quality for all. So if you want to say like how to liberal Democrat to get around it, it, a quality is going to be, I would say the number one word or idea, and this falling back to the promises of all men are created equal. The less noble side to it is to position yourselves as Americans against right-wing fascism or Nazi-ism. You can always do that. Biden in is not calling anyone like a fascist, although AOC certainly is, you know, there's all the Bama, you know, his opponents clinging to their guns and Bibles or something like that. Right? So you can see they straw, man, although nowhere near the way the right does it, but there's this also idea that you can sort of straw man, your opponents to be ignorant zealots gun nuts, especially ignorance is a good one that works too. When the Democrats want to get policies pushed, right. This idea that if we're going to position ourselves against it, well, that's because you're either dupes of private corporations and they're using religion as a veneer and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2I don't feel like that works at all actually because the right wing just comes back and accuses the liberal Democrats of being elitist. Like, look, they think that they're stupid. I feel like coming back with, oh, you're you guys are just being ignorant and stupid and uneducated that no longer works because frankly, people take pride in being willfully ignorant more than Americans have ever really done in the past, unless I'm mistaken.
Speaker 4You know, there's a book I could recommend to your, to your readers, Richard Hofstadter's in 1964, I think one of the Pulitzer anti-intellectualism in American life. And it sort of gives us broad idea of precisely that anti-intellectualism from the Puritan times to present. And it's absolutely fascinating because you're right. There's totally that populistic notion that there's these elites and you're right. That's why it doesn't really work. In fact, when you see like Democrats sort of using that, it's more of just a way of pumping themselves up rather than trying to get anyone to switch sides. Right. And that sort of a sides, you know, a sad side effect of our hyperpolarized political culture right now, because it doesn't work. You're just basically just seeing two sides, like knocking heads and talking past each other. Yeah. I mean, it's a huge problem, which is why I think this notion of equality, again, the more idealized way that Democrats can get around sort of these ideas of, but then you see a quality not working very well as you were mentioning earlier, like this idea that like, oh, equality. Well, that just means a quality for back in the 1960s, as we were talking about civil rights for quality for women or for African-Americans or for now for homosexuals and trans, you know, like the right doesn't want to quality the record doesn't want to call it, you know, and that's what makes them the right, right. This idea of natural hierarchies, they don't want to quality for immigrants or for Muslims or for, you know, whatever their enemy is. Right. And that's another reason why you just see our hyper politicized culture. So we'll be talking about to death, but it's true is just butting heads with itself. How do you make that appeal to a bunch of Americans who don't want it, who don't want equality for all,
Speaker 1Really appreciate the Hofstetter, shout out the paranoid style in American politics. It's kind of been my guiding light. We've spent a lot of time talking about populism in this show in rationalizing is such a great way of, uh, it's funny. Cause yeah, I think about it as irrational, but the process of rationalization is really that key mechanism there, right? If you can rationalize something as evil and communism is evil and includes Jewish people and includes all the things you don't like. And then, uh, the rationalizing, this is a key process to convincing other people to go along with whatever the right wing program is.
Speaker 4But it is important too, that when you're talking about American Christians in the 1920s and 1930s, is that, that idea of a Jewish conspiracy sort of being the guiding hand over which communism is making its way into the United States is very important because you cannot just aggregate the two. The 1920s is when you see Henry Ford's, the international Jew come out, which is this republication of the protocols of the elders of Zion, which is this anti-Semitic track that comes from the bizarrest police of Russia. And it comes into the United States. And so, you know, you go to buy a car at a Ford dealership and there there's the international Jew there on the table that you can pick up and take home with you and read all about this anti-Semitic conspiracy, right. Which is crazy to think of. And then also coming out of this in the same time. And the 1920s is the revitalized KU Klux Klan, which is also using their anticommunist they're anti-Jewish and they're hyper nationalism also sees Catholicism as a problem famously of course, but again, you cannot separate this idea of international jewelry, uh, as they call it from communism because they see communism as a Jewish ideology. And that's the words that they keep using. And you see that of course, in Nazi Germany, which is what we would traditionally think of, but is doing this in the 1930s, right. He's using the same rhetoric and same idea. And it's interesting because in the 19 teens, actually, when the Bolshevik revolution breaks out the United States, this is like a precursor to the, to the AJC. It's called the Overman committee. And they round up a bunch of people that, you know, experts and they're like, okay, Bolshevism is in the United States. We can see it among the, these radical populations who is bringing Bolshevism into the United States. And they get this one witness who's talking about, oh, it's east side Jews, east side of New York, uh, there's this conversation that breaks out and they're like, oh, but he refers to them as a POS state Jews. And so one of the committee members is like apostate Jews. Oh, so they're Christians. And he's like, no, they're apostate Jews. They don't have any religion they're of Jewish origin. So you have like that racialized, but they don't actually practice the faith of their fathers anymore. And like, that's the moment you see like the whole committee be like godless communists, right. Oh my God. And that helps push toward in the United States mind like this idea of Jews as a race rather than as a religion. Although those two are never fully separate from another, but that's just undergirding this anti-communism of the 1920s and thirties. And you can't really take that rhetoric out, which is something that I come across in my pamphlets and all the stuff that I've read, you know, during this era is, you know, that's always there. This Bolshevism always has that valence of, oh, this is an international Jewish conspiracy to it.
Speaker 2I mean, not to give credibility to this belief, but first where there are a lot of Jews in communist Russia, and two as a result was the red scare both in the 1920s and in the 1950s anti-Semitic or based on antisemitic beliefs
Speaker 4To answer your first question. And this is, this is something that there's a, there's a scholar at Wisconsin, Tony Michaels talks about this. He has this article called Jews and taboos and communist history, right. Which is this problem that actually in the United States, just proportionately American Jews were more likely to be communists or socialists. And it's this idea to them that socialism did promise a quality. And it also promised. And so this is, this is important to think of why like Christian groups, don't like this idea because the United States is such a Christian nation in ways that we might not even think of not having businesses open on Sunday, for example, but having them open on Saturday, right? It's this idea that like, okay, well, you know, if you're Jewish obviously, and you practice your religion, you're going to want your business open on Sunday, maybe and closed on Saturday. So this idea that then socialism promises like a further removal of church and state beyond the wildest dreams of liberalism is there's an appeal to that. And there's appeal again to that sort of equality. And so there, there is an appeal to it, but does that mean that there's a conspiracy of powerful Jews to get this run in the United States? Right? Of course not. But that leap has already made in the minds of, you know, this idea of a Jewish conspiracy goes back before communism, right? It goes back to you, you could call it to the deicide of Christ. You know, this idea that's in the, in the new Testament, that Jews are the ones who, who crucified Christ. But then it also goes to like medieval, like blood liberal legends, uh, this idea that, you know, Jews were, would come in and take Christian children and sacrifice them. But then in the 17 hundreds and 18 hundreds, there becomes with, uh, the rise of the Rothschild family, this idea that Jews are these wealthy bankers. This goes back to medieval ideas too, right? When, when usury was, was condemned in Christian societies. So Jews were typically beggars or were in the realm of finance. And so with, uh, the rise of Rothschild and that family, then there starts to get this idea that Rothschild is loaning money to the British empire. And therefore he's the one that's promoting all these wars. And so like, then that sort of expands into this idea of this international Jewish conspiracy. So that ideology is already there. And you can see in an American populism, it becomes like very heightened, uh, in the late 18 hundreds. So by the time that communism comes around and they see in these, you know, these immigrant ethnic Jewish communities, this socialism, or which they see as, you know, devaluing American society and values that could be then tied to this already existing idea of this international conspiracy. So they take a kernel of truth, and this is what conspiracies do. They can take a kernel of truth and they can use an expansion of an existing scaffolding or framework of this is how the world is and tie it and say, aha, this proves this international scheme of bankers is really trying to, and this is where the, the protocols of the elders of Zion comes in because that's this idea of this international scheme of Jews to destroy Western civilization. And so they say, oh, aha, this is the Rothschilds funding, the Bolshevik revolution to come into the United States and rot the core of American ideals and Christianity. So in the 1920s, especially to get at your second question, UJ antisemitism is, is there, it's there in these official sub-committees of the Senate that are happening. As I mentioned, the, the Overman committee it's in this Henry Ford ideology, it's in the revitalization of the KU Klux Klan. It's every pamphleteer and Christian author. That's writing about communism that sees it as this viral thing, whether it's a fundamentalist preacher, whether it's a Mormon Bishop, whether it's a Catholic theologian, it's going to have those valence inces of Judaism to it. But then something happens. I'm glad you brought this up. Whereas in the 1950s, when we have the second red scare, the Jewish valence is, is not present, but everything else is there. The idea that it's like an international conspiracy that it's meant to destroy American and Christian values is there, but the Jewish aspect is gone. And I've likened this before too. It's like a, it's like a papier-mache balloon. You know, you blow up the balloon, let's say that antisemitism, you cover it. And papier-mache and hardens that's anti-communism you pop the balloon anti-Semitism is gone, but you still have the form of antisemitism in this international Jewish conspiracy. It's just the actual anti-Jewish aspects are no longer there. The most apparent reason for this would be because after world war two and after the defeat of Nazi-ism, especially and witnessing the full horrors of the Holocaust, the final solution people really are like, oh wow, we didn't actually mean, you know, the elimination of the entire Jewish race in the United States. It might've been more rhetorical, but it's not to that extreme. And so there's like, oh, we need to, you know, we need to draw that back. But the idea that Jews are behind, it might not go away. Right? We don't want to be saying this anymore because we're not Nazis. We don't want to exterminate an entire race of people, but you know, there is still an international conspiracy and there is still that link in American minds between Russia and Russia Jews. Although you start to see that go down. But when you look at like far right writings of the McCarthy era, not McCarthy himself necessarily, although him coming from again, that very conservative Catholic tradition, he would have grown up in sort of this meal you of, okay. You know, this is an international Jewish conspiracy. Even if he removed that from his language, you still see on the far, right. They're more open to, you know, the Elizabeth dealings, for example, there's another character I follow. We'd still very adamantly say, right? Oh, it's still totally a Jewish conspiracy, you know, and it's a shame that Hitler didn't get them. All right. And that becomes a big part of like really far right ideology or what also comes out of that as Holocaust denialism, which then becomes internationally a big part of like Neo fascism, this idea that, oh, that didn't actually really happen. That's also part of this Jewish conspiracy along with communism. And that becomes really widespread as well. So it depends again on, on how far to the rate you really want to go because in the more mainstream McCarthy type, right. You're not going to see that rhetoric. Although, and as I argued that scaffolding is
Speaker 1What I find troubling in the common themes here is that yeah, there's some of the post-war stuff in the U S is an anomaly where there's, the antisemitism is more submerged, but then you have like a character like Donald Trump whose father was arrested at a Klan rally in the twenties, when you know this hotbed of all these things you're describing Austin. And then of course, somebody like Trump probably grows up with a lot of, uh, you know, you and communists and socialists interchangeable words and the Trump family. Right. Well, who knows, but you can easily see the public manifestation of their rhetoric is all there, right? So it's you get to get back to the classic anti-communism anti socialism with Jewish valence in the 20 early 21st century with Trump. I know we can talk about this forever. One of the things that's on my mind going forward is that, uh, in the past, there's this, uh, Alliance between business conservatives and kind of the more right-wing ideologues because the business conservatives don't necessarily like social programs either because higher taxes, right. Even though, you know, obviously there's, there's some contradictions there, like in the fifties, when there's a lot of social, we built a highway system, right. And taxes are very high, much higher than they are now. But now we're kind of seeing this very public breakup between the business community and the Republican party right now kind of unfolding as we record this episode, I'm sure other historians, but also, you know, Americans in general are wondering, you know, where this is going to go because in episodes past, uh, wasn't necessarily the case, the business conservatives were fine to just go along and support this anticommunist program.
Speaker 4Yeah. You don't even have to dig very deep. Think about Marjorie Taylor green and the, you know, the Jewish space laser thing. Right. You could just mention the Rothschilds funding something and like it connects with so many people already, again, that scaffolding is I've mentioned is there that foundation, they just needs to be tapped into, you know, and it can be done with certain great effects. But to your point, I mean, it's hard as a historian. I always say that historians should not predict the future. Right. That's like going to a mortician to get medical advice. We're bad at that. That's not what we're trying to do. I would say too, that I think it goes to show just how fragile some of the coalitions that we take for granted really are. I mean, there is this break between the business conservatives and this more religious, you know, that points to as well, like why that sort of populist right. Is sort of gaining resurgence as an idea as a great fear because it's a break from that sort of more elite conservatism that has always struggled to find its populous pudding. How do we sell that? There should be billionaires running everything to your like everyday working man. That's always a struggle. And I, I think it points to, again, just how weak that coalition is. And so then, you know, just as a historian, but also just as an American citizen, I feel like all we can do is we can read about it in the past, but with things like this, you know, you can just sort of watch it, you know, see how it unfolds, what I take lessons from the past. It's not necessarily with a means of predicting the future so much as it is. It's like putting a puzzle together and just seeing where all the pieces fit to try and get this bigger picture more so than it is to say like, what next? Because you never know what's going to happen next, but it certainly is something to watch for.
Speaker 1Well, this has been, uh, an excellent piece of the puzzle. Thank you so much to Austin Clements and best of luck in continuing your work and your research at Stanford. I guess that leaves me only with one question is where will a vampire socialists IE MCI appear next
Speaker 3[inaudible],
Speaker 5Uh, Nazi on wall street. It's brought to you by elusive films maker of the, uh, Nazi on wall streets, film and television series. It was recorded and edited by DJ Russo. Original music was written and performed by Joseph Mulholland. We can't bring these stories to life on screen without your support. So please consider donating to our crowdfunding campaign@elusive-films.com. That's elusive hyphen films.com for chasing Wexel bound. I'm EGA Russo. Thank you. And we will see you next episode.