The Haunted Screen
The Haunted Screen is an antifascist project using film, history, and experimental storytelling to understand our authoritarian present. The first season—"From Caligari to Hitler"—investigates the chaotic, creative world of Weimar Germany. New episodes are tackling new topics.
The Haunted Screen
Today's (Still) Fascist. Tomorrow Doesn't Gotta Be: The Paxton Mixtape, Pt. II
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
The second and final installment of a series on why the country is indeed fascist, how we got that way, and what comes next. Listen to Part I first. (Or not. Whatever you want. Do I look like a fascist??)
See you at the Great Hague Tailgate of 2029.
Appearances from a truckload of future history-book villains, a 17-minute Minneapolis montage, and an extended shark metaphor. Time to pick up the harpoons, y'all.
Intro
SPEAKER_123Hey y'all. Welcome to part two of the Paxton mixtape. In part one, released late last summer, we introduced the scholar Robert Paxton's five-stage model of fascism and began applying it to the contemporary United States. Paxton, he is perhaps the authority on fascist history, and he, like me, believes that Donald Trump is a fascist leader and that MAGA is a fascist movement. The last episode, we walked through fascism's first three stages and outlined how our country has moved successively through each one over the past couple of decades. It's not strictly necessary to listen to part one to understand what's coming in part two, but I'd highly recommend it. This is Mint as one big project, and that episode lays the theoretical and historical groundwork for this one. Today though, we're diving into stage four. This is the stage that we're at now. And since this is our present, it's been kind of a moving target for me. Over the months that I've been working on this installment, new fascist things have just kept happening. And frankly, it's been tough for me to keep up. I have been in a state of constant revision. But ultimately, it's time to share what I've got. This episode was released in July 2026. And I've done my best to keep it current up to that point. But by the time you listen, the details, the events, the stories that I draw on, they may seem like old news to you. But the goal here is to show what's happening on a structural level. So the content here is, I think, I hope, evergreen. The great bulk of this episode is going to be a journey through fascism's fourth stage, the exercise of power, and how it operates in our present American context. At the end, we'll touch on where we could end up if we don't get it together. Stage 5. Radicalization. The future, it's not preordained. We can still beat back the fascist threat. But that requires a willingness to turn back from the abyss and a clear-eyed understanding of where we are and how we got here.
SPEAKER_126Stage 4.
SPEAKER_86Yes, the power is mine.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Democrats!
SPEAKER_123So the Trump administration blew through stage three at a pace that one might call Hitler esque. The speed was, of course, intentional. A ploy to grab as much power as possible before the opposition has had a chance to get organized. They made a bet that in the face of their political blitzkrieg, they'd find, as the cliche goes, Democrats in disarray. And the Democrats didn't disappoint them. Initially, but with exceptions, a kind of bewildered appeasement seemed to be the closest thing that the Dems had to a strategy. They've already confirmed some of Trump's cabinet picks. Even the especially shitty ones. Remember last fall? When they showed signs of life holding the caucus together to shut down the federal government for a record 43 days to protect healthcare subsidies?
SPEAKER_101Any deal must secure the extension of the ACA tax credits. This is about my party saying enough is enough.
SPEAKER_52Democrats will not back down.
SPEAKER_19Do not stop fighting. We're in this fight until we win this fight because we know we're on the right side of this fight. It's literally life or death.
SPEAKER_18So Democrats have three words for this. No way.
SPEAKER_123Polling show that the American people were with them.
SPEAKER_84For Republicans, in terms of taking the blame for this and paying a political price for this, I think it's clear they have over the last month or so.
SPEAKER_123November's off-year elections were an absolute rout.
SPEAKER_15A democratic sweep in high-profile elections nationwide.
SPEAKER_73Local races in Connecticut, uh, statewide races in Georgia, uh of county races in Pennsylvania. This was this was an epic blowout. This was a bloodbath for the Republicans.
SPEAKER_21Pretty much 100% across the border, or Hundo P, as my 18-year-old moments would say. This was like a Hundo P night for Democrats.
SPEAKER_123And just a week later, the Dems took that Hundo P momentum.
SPEAKER_91And now the Senate has passed a bill to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. The House is expected to vote on it as soon as tomorrow, but the deal is deepening the divide among Democrats after eight of their members broke ranks to pass the bill with Senate Republicans.
SPEAKER_123Okay. Please tell me the Democrats got the main thing they were holding out for.
SPEAKER_91Democrats didn't get the main thing that they've been holding out for, an extension of Obamacare credits that would keep health insurance costs from soaring.
SPEAKER_123Okay. As frustrating as our opposition party can be sometimes, I do want to be fair. Some Democrats have punched back. After Trump enlisted state-level Republicans in Texas and elsewhere to gerrymander their way to victory in the midterms, Dems in places like California and Virginia retaliated in kind. And on the national stage, as the party out of power, the Democrats' ability to serve as a speed bump on the road to autocracy has been limited. And to be clear, the bulk of the blame for our current fascist state lies with the fascists. Not with those who oppose them. In stage four, the exercise of power. This is where things really go off the rails. Fascism ceases to be an idea, something that exists on the plane of rhetoric, and begins remaking the lived experience of society in real, material ways. This
Der Völkische Beobachter (Bari's Version)
SPEAKER_123is the point, for example, where fascists quit just shit-talking the media and set about bringing it to heel. The Nazis leveraged the power of the state to pressure owners of newspapers they saw as hostile. Just ask the Olstein family. At the dawn of the Third Reich, the Olsteins ran the biggest publishing concern in Europe, employing a staff of 10,000. A pair of their most valuable properties, the left-leaning Berliner-Morgan Post, and the Voiceage Zeitung, once Germany's paper of record, its New York Times, they had a way of getting under the Nazis' skin. Of course, it didn't help matters that the Olsteins were Jewish. Under the policy of Arianization, the regime forced the sale of the entire company, worth an estimated 60 million marks, for one-tenth of its value. Needless to say, the new ownership was a bit more comfortable with fascism. This, of course, wasn't some isolated case of press interference. Under the umbrella of Joseph Goebbels' propaganda ministry, the Reich Press Office tightly regulated the flow of news throughout the country. In addition to banning Jews and those married to them from working in the industry, the 1933 Editor's Law also forbade the publication of any material, quote, calculated to weaken the strength of the Reich abroad or at home. Before the Nazi takeover, Fritz Gerlich was the editor of The Straight Path, a weekly political magazine with a circulation of 40,000. His orientation toward fascism wasn't just scathing, it was mocking. Like when he wrote a piece called, Does Hitler Have Mongolian Blood? In it, Gerlich turned the Fuhrer's own so-called race science right back at him, claiming that the shape of Hitler's nose meant that he was, quote, a typical bastard who has mainly non-Nordic blood in his veins. Less than two weeks after the Reichstag fire, Gurlich was shipped to Dachau. In the following year, he was murdered there, on the night of the long knives. Now, Trump's feelings about the press are well known.
SPEAKER_12CNN is scum. MSDNC is scum. The New York Times is scum. They're bad people, they're sick.
SPEAKER_123And while he's yet to execute any journalists, he has openly fantasized about watching their violent deaths.
SPEAKER_12To get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don't mind that so much. I don't mind.
SPEAKER_123But even if they haven't pulled a full Jamal Kosogji, the Trump regime has been busy bending the news media to its will. And our media, the American media, they didn't even need to be legally compelled to capitulate. All that they've needed is an obsession with the bottom line and a few well-placed ideological allies. Now Trump arrived to his second stint in the White House with an extensive media apparatus already under his thrall. In the first installment of the Paxton mixtape, we looked at his capture of Fox News. How he went over the network's viewership, forcing its skeptical owner Rupert Murdoch into his orbit. And then there are the even more embarrassingly slavish propaganda stations, One American News, and News Nation. As well as the broader magosphere of podcasters, streamers, and social media posters. In stage four, though, the administration's influence has broken containment, spreading to media outlets with long traditions of relative independence from political power. Take, for example, the once storied CBS News. Home to Edward R. Murrow, when he challenged Senator Joe McCarthy's ideological witch hunts.
SPEAKER_36The line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the junior senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.
SPEAKER_123Home to Morley Safer, when he exposed U.S. Marines torching the civilian village of Kam Ne, earning him the wrath of President Lyndon Johnson.
SPEAKER_57There is little doubt that American firepower can win a military victory here. But to a Vietnamese peasant whose home is a means a lifetime of backbreaking labor, it will take more than presidential promises to convince him that we are on his side.
SPEAKER_123And now, home to the news outfit's new editor-in-chief, Barry Weiss, who, like any number of gutless strivers, has renounced her earlier criticisms of Donald Trump.
SPEAKER_45The argument that the country would unravel and democracy would die in darkness and Trump would be this authoritarian Hitlerian power, it was impossible to make that argument in the run-up to this election only because Americans had lived through four years of him and things didn't fall apart.
SPEAKER_123And who, in return, has been welcomed into the bosom of Big Daddy Donald. Here's Trump praising Weiss in an unaired clip from his fall 2025 interview with 60 Minutes, CBS's premier news magazine.
SPEAKER_12You don't have to put this on because I don't want to embarrass you, and I'm sure you're not. Uh you have a great, I think you have a great new leader, frankly, because the young woman that's leading your whole enterprise is a great, from what I know, I don't know her, but I hear she's a great person.
SPEAKER_123So let's pull on this thread a little bit. The Trump administration has a strategy of throwing so much news at us that it's hard to follow the arc of any one story. But the trumpification of CBS news it's an excellent case study in how this regime exercises power. Immediately after praising Weiss in that unaired clip just now, literally the next words out of his mouth, Trump jumps into a rant about CBS's editing of a Kamala Harris interview from the previous year, October 2024.
SPEAKER_12But 60 Minutes was forced to pay me a lot of money because they took her answer out that was so bad it was election changing two nights before the election, and they put a new answer in. And they paid me a lot of money for that. You can't have fake news. You've got to have legit news.
SPEAKER_123In case you're not fluent, in the mythology of the MAGA cinematic universe, here's what he's talking about. A month before the 2024 election, not two nights before, a month before. But 60 minutes aired a conversation with Kamala Harris. The following clip ran as a teaser on Face the Nation, the network's Sunday morning public affairs show. In it, the journalist Bill Whitaker asks Harris about the Biden administration's complicity in Israel's slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. But it seems that uh Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening.
SPEAKER_24Well, Bill. The work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.
SPEAKER_123So that was effectively the first half of her answer. That same night, on 60 minutes, they aired only the second half.
SPEAKER_24We're not gonna stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.
SPEAKER_123No, neither of these answers are good. But yeah. The second one is better. A more articulate evasion. I do this kind of cutting here on the podcast. I make edits to clips, not to mislead you, but to highlight the relevant parts and to not bore your asses off with a bunch of unnecessary verbiage. This is standard journalistic practice. And Trump himself benefits from this all the time. Last summer, in the wake of Trump's um suspicious antics concerning his friendship with a certain child sex trafficker. Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?
SPEAKER_12That is unbelievable.
SPEAKER_123Footage from a pre-election Fox and Friends interview resurfaced. Here's one exchange as it aired.
SPEAKER_150Would you declassify JFK files?
SPEAKER_123Yeah. Would you I did I did a lot of it.
SPEAKER_150Would you declassify the Epstein files?
SPEAKER_123Yeah, yeah, I would.
SPEAKER_128Attorney General.
SPEAKER_123And the unedited version of the clip.
SPEAKER_150Would you declassify the Epstein files?
SPEAKER_12Yeah, yeah, I would. All right. I guess I would. I think that less so because, you know, you don't know. You don't want to affect people's lives if it's phony stuff in there, because it's a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. Uh but I think I would, or at least I do you think that would restore trust?
SPEAKER_150Help restore trust?
SPEAKER_12Yeah, I I don't know about Epstein so much as I do the others.
SPEAKER_123As of this recording, July 2026, the administration is still stonewalling transparency efforts. But in the files that have been released, Trump's name has been mentioned literally thousands of times. We know that he lied about having flown on Epstein's plane. The charmingly nicknamed Lolita Express. And we know that the FBI compiled and investigated related sexual assault allegations against our president. It's not enough to secure a conviction, but he's on the money list. There's a lot we don't know about Donald Trump's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. But I feel very comfortable in saying this. That if 60 minutes did a favor for Kamala, then Fox and Friends absolutely covered for Donald Trump. But Kamala's not the one who sued. Even if she did, she would almost certainly lose in court. Any media lawyer will tell you that these sorts of cuts fall within the bounds of normal, protected editorial discretion. The same, of course, applies to the 60 minutes cut of the Harris interview. The odds that Trump would have prevailed in court would have been close to zero. But CBS's owner, Paramount, it threw its journalist and America's tradition of a free and independent press under the bus, agreeing to a settlement that will send $16 million toward Trump's future presidential library. CNN's media critic, Brian Stelter.
SPEAKER_75The president's lawsuit was always legally dubious, with First Amendment attorneys that it was, quote, frivolous and ridiculous. But the lawsuit was taken seriously by the owners of CBS, because those owners have been rushing to complete a multi-billion dollar merger between Paramount and Skydance. The merger requires Trump administration approval.
SPEAKER_123$16 million might be chump change to a giant like Paramount. But by choosing to settle, the company handed Trump Kinling in his continuing efforts to burn down whatever remains of the public's faith in journalism. As a spokesperson for the president said, the settlement is a win for the American people over the fake news media. CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle. President Trump will always ensure that no one gets away with lying to the American people. Now you and I we can see right through that statement. But people who don't pay much attention to the news, to politics, the people who decide elections, in other words, why wouldn't they believe the thrust of Trump's argument here? It seems self-evident. If CBS did nothing wrong, then why aren't they sticking up for themselves? Needless to say, Paramount's appeasement of the Trump regime grated on a lot of people. One of them being the host of CBS's own late show, Stephen Colbert.
SPEAKER_144Now, I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles. It's Big Fat Bribe.
SPEAKER_123But as it turned out, he didn't even have to wait for the company to change hands before retribution came from his corporate overlords. Because just days after he called a bribe a bribe, this happened. CBS, Paramount, they insist that the decision was purely financial. And it is true that with the rise of streaming and social media platforms like TikTok, the late night network talk show format is going out of style. And the show was reportedly losing money. But the late show was number one in its time slot. And it's a marquee property with a storied history. If this were purely about money, cost cutting measures like reductions in staff, pay cuts, and even moving the show out of the Ed Sullivan Theater were possibilities. But there is no reporting that's just. That Paramount seriously considered these options. In the cancellation, it happened against a backdrop not only of Colbert putting Paramount on blast that same week, but also of increased corporate meddling overall into the content of CBS's programming. From April of last year, 2025.
SPEAKER_16In tonight's last minute, a note on Bill Owens, who until this past week was executive producer of 60 Minutes. He was our boss. Bill resigned Tuesday. It was hard on him and hard on us. But he did it for us and you. Stories we pursued for 57 years are often controversial. Lately, the Israel-Gaza war and the Trump administration. Bill made sure they were accurate and fair. He was tough that way. But our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires.
SPEAKER_123In fact, giving powerful people an unearned benefit of the doubt when it contradicts what looks obvious to the rest of us. That's part of how fascism secures its foothold. Fascists and those who abet them, they ask us to doubt our lying eyes and to see instead a world that they have concocted for their own purposes. And everything that's happened since has only confirmed that CBS is undergoing an ideological makeover. Just a week after announcing the end of the late show, the Trump administration approved Paramount's merger with Skydance, putting CBS under the control of David Ellison. David is the son of Oracle co-founder and one-time richest man on earth, Larry Ellison. A guy with a specific set of politics. From NPR's All Things Considered.
SPEAKER_106After November 2020, court record show Ellison was on a call with Trump supporters, sharing ideas about how to undermine the result of the election. From that point on, Ellison has gotten closer and closer with Trump.
SPEAKER_123In the role of Ombudsman, he installed Kenneth Weinstein. A guy so close to Trump that Donald nominated him to be ambassador to Japan during his first term. And then, of course, there's Barry. I'm not gonna do a deep dive into Barry Weiss here. Last week tonight with John Oliver in the podcast If Books Could Kill, they have both done the Lord's work of excavating her backstory. If you want to learn more. But before being handed the reins of CBS News, Weiss founded the Free Press. A successful Substack operation that positions itself as centrist and nonpartisan. And while it's not a MAGA outfit in the same way that, say, the Daily Caller is, it's primarily animated by a rabid hatred of the left and an unconditional fealty to Israel. It's the kind of publication that thinks woke college kids are the real threat to free speech, and that protesting genocide is more contemptible than genocide itself. In December, for example, she shelved a 60-minute story that put the Trump administration in a bad light.
SPEAKER_149This segment on the inhumane conditions at a maximum security prison in El Salvador, where the U.S. government deported some undocumented immigrants, was supposed to air Sunday night, but Weiss told show leadership to pull the segment late Saturday, in part because there was no interview with the Trump administration. Angry with the decision, correspondent Sharon Alphonse emailed her fellow 60 Minutes colleagues. Alphonse writing in part, the segment is factually correct. The veteran 60 Minutes correspondent says the story was cleared by editors after multiple screenings, and the Trump administration declined requests for an interview, adding in her email to colleagues, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship.
SPEAKER_45Good evening. I'm Barry Weiss, editor-in-chief of CBS News, and I want to thank you so much for joining us tonight.
SPEAKER_123Ready for some sanctimony?
SPEAKER_45Let me tell you why we're here. If you're watching this or you're sitting here in this room with me, you know what I know, which is that we live in a very divided country. And one of the goals of the new CBS News is to change that. And this town hall is just the beginning. This is going to be the first of many conversations and debates on CBS News about the things that matter most, which are often the hardest to talk about.
SPEAKER_123All right. Let's talk about some hard things.
SPEAKER_45One of the things that has happened over the three months since Charlie was murdered is that people have gone through the thousands, maybe tens of thousands of hours of words he produced. And I want to read a few that have captured the most attention, especially on the political left. Okay.
SPEAKER_59Yeah.
SPEAKER_45Some gun deaths were, quote, unfortunately worth it to preserve the Second Amendment, he said. Acknowledging that he wishes he didn't feel this way, he said, I'm sorry, if I see a black pilot, I'm going to be like, boy, I hope he's qualified. He said the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a mistake.
SPEAKER_47I I would love for everyone to be able to watch the full and entire clip of what he said.
SPEAKER_123Now I did. I made an entire podcast episode about Kirk shortly after his death. I got the context. And the guy was a fascist and a bigot. Shouldn't have been murdered. But to give you a taste of what kind of guy he was, the Democrat Party supports everything that God hates.
SPEAKER_139The Democrat Party is espousing the death of the unborn, the mutilation of our teenage kids, open borders, the destruction of our sovereignty, the elimination of our currency status. I believe there is a spiritual battle happening around all of us, but don't expect a spiritual spiritual victory if our own pastors do not engage. Right now, this state is a Christian state. I want to see that to continue. But we need the faithful, we need those of you that have influence over your congregation to put pressure on your pastors and those. If you're a pastor watching this right now, I hope this touches you. I hope you, and I'm looking right in the camera right now. I hope you give a Sunday sermon and you talk about how the Democrat Party believes everything that God hates.
SPEAKER_123Civil discourse, baby. In all its glorious context. But Barry's follow-up.
SPEAKER_45Does it bother you that people are picking out those statements and drawing an entire picture of who he was?
SPEAKER_123So on Barry Weiss's CBS News, celebrity fascists get coddled. But everyday Americans standing up to a fascist occupation of their hometown. Well, here's Scott Pelley. Formulae of 60 minutes. Discussing Weiss's attempt to meddle with coverage of the ICE invasion of Minneapolis.
SPEAKER_16About four hours after our deadline, Barry Weiss sends an email to my boss, Tanya Simon. Two of the things in the email include, can we make the protesters look more violent? And the other thing was Renee Good's car. You need to describe her as driving toward the officer. This uh is not what you see on the video. You clearly see Miss Good's wheels turned completely as far as they will go, away from the officer. Uh, but he shoots her uh in the head, kills her. There was a thumb on the scale for the president's version of events that I felt was a level of political influence that I had never seen in 37 years at CBS News.
SPEAKER_123Sounds like Pelley was on a collision course for an exchange with management, maybe even a tense one.
SPEAKER_149The tense exchange came during a staff meeting with the brand new 60 Minutes executive producer, technology journalist and documentary maker Nick Bilton, who was tapped by Weiss last week, despite never having worked in traditional broadcast news. At Monday's meeting, Builton warned staff that broadcast is an ice cube that is melting, and the show must adapt. But added that Weiss loved 60 Minutes, according to the recording. At that, Pelle interrupted, saying firmly, she does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she's been doing exactly that. Adding, she has no qualifications for her job, and telling his new boss directly, you have slender qualifications for this job.
SPEAKER_123Basically, it was a Peabody Award winner's version of that scene from Half Baked. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. The outcome was predictable.
SPEAKER_118CBS News has fired longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelly after a contentious all-staff meeting.
SPEAKER_123Pelly left with his soul intact, even as his former employer continues to rot from the inside out. This pattern of appeasement, of course, it's not contained to CBS or to Paramount. During an exchange with Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace on his show this week in March of 2024, ABC's George Stephanopoulos said this.
SPEAKER_12I'm asking you a question about why you endorse someone who's been found liable for rape.
SPEAKER_123Now, George was a little sloppy with his wording there. In truth, Donald had merely been found liable for sexual abuse. Abuse that the judge himself said most people would characterize as rape, even if it did not meet the technical definition. But still, Trump filed a suit that, in all likelihood, would have fallen apart in court.
SPEAKER_07Wayne Denison is a prominent libel lawyer.
SPEAKER_93It's going to be a very difficult case for Donald Trump to win.
SPEAKER_123But even though ABC had the law on their side. So why do this? Why hang your journalist out to dry and surrender before the fight has even started?
SPEAKER_130Obviously, ABC News wants access to the Trump administration as it comes back to power. And its parent company Disney has a heck of a lot of business interests. Yes, they've got deep pockets and a lot of lawyers, but they're going to have a lot of things that are under review from officials in the Trump administration the years ahead.
SPEAKER_123Cool. And newspapers, the print press. They haven't exactly been covering themselves in glory either. Under the ownership of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post has also preemptively bent the knee, narrowing the scope of the opinion section's coverage, blocking a planned endorsement of Harris before November's election, spiking a cartoon that mocked Bezos' fealty to the new regime, and causing writers to quit, 400 staffers to sign a letter expressing dismay at the direction of the paper, and hundreds of thousands of readers to unsubscribe.
SPEAKER_89To put it bluntly, the drama at the Washington Post is just unrelenting.
SPEAKER_123Almost as though corporate ownership of news media is bad for democracy. When deep-pocketed outlets like CBS, ABC, and the Post fold under the slightest bit of pressure, it sets a precedent. And Donald knows this. How could we expect small and mid-sized publications to put up a fight? Let alone independent journalists. The President, like all authoritarians, wants to control the flow of information, to warp the citizenry's view of reality, our view of reality. The Nazis changed laws, ransacked the offices of unfriendly papers, and murdered reporters to get that job done. It's impossible to know how far Donald Trump will go before this is all over. But for now, he just needs lawyers.
Academy Faint Song
SPEAKER_123Now, this innovation, turning the tools of liberal democracy, like the courts, into weapons against liberal democratic values. We also see it in the Trumping attacks on higher education. Fascists have always been hostile toward the university. It's not hard to see why. Like the press, universities function as an arbiter of knowledge, and therefore of reality itself. Through both teaching and research, and through the protection of those who pursue them with tools like tenure. Academia works to interpret the world in ways that are frequently at odds with fascism's preferred narratives, and it disseminates its conclusions through classrooms, books, and relationships with the popular press. Not unrelatedly, it has historically served as a bastion of resistance against authoritarian regimes. From the White Rose Resistance Cell at the University of Munich, to the student uprisings against Francoism in Spain in 1965 and 1969, and on to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, which exploded from the campus of Peking University. Students and professors have disproportionately manned the front lines against tyranny, whatever the specific flavor. In 1931, Mussolini's government forced faculty members to take a loyalty oath, swearing, quote, fidelity to the king, to his royal successors, and to the fascist regime. They also had to swear that they would fulfill their duty to turn their students into, quote, industrious and righteous citizens, patriotic and loyal to the fascist regime. Only twelve of Italy's 1,200 university professors refused and were fired. Up in Germany, 1933's law for the restoration of the professional civil service purged the faculty roles of communists and non-Aryans, especially Jews, including Albert Einstein. Other German luminaries proved eager to collaborate. Take, for instance, the philosopher Martin Heidegger, the godfather of existentialism and author of Being and Time. From the BBC documentary series Human All Too Human.
SPEAKER_02Towards the end of April, after the rector of Freiburg University had resigned in protest, Heidegger astonished almost everyone who knew him by allowing his name to be put forward in the ballot to elect a successor. He was duly elected by an almost unanimous vote of the university's governing body. Although thirteen of the professors who would normally have been entitled to vote were forbidden to do so because they were Jews. A week later, Heidegger delivered his inaugural address as rector to a capacity audience in the university's main hall, specially bedecked for the occasion with swastika flags. Then on May 1st, a symbolic date in the Nazi calendar, he officially joined the party, thereby winning the gratitude of all those who wished to see Hitler succeed.
SPEAKER_123The Nazi regime actively courted academic relationships between German and American students, faculty, and administrators, organizing trips to the Carl Schurtz Society every year between 1934 and 1939. They even put out a documentary for recruitment purposes. Here, we see the first batch of attendees happily riding a boat festooned with swastikas.
SPEAKER_30Strangers to one another not so many days ago, we now draw together and make friends.
SPEAKER_123they weren't especially successful. Most foreign observers rightly saw that the once elite German educational system was buckling under the weight of rigid ideology and faculty brain drain, with the renowned journal Nature writing, quote, science has been abolished in German universities and its spirit abdicated from the Reich. The MAGA movement, though, it has looked abroad for inspiration on how to deal with higher ed, namely to Viktor Orban's Hungry. Now, there are debates as to whether Orban and his movement are properly fascist, or are better described as some other variety of right-wing authoritarianism. It's not necessary for us to litigate that question here. But whatever you want to label the Orban regime, it certainly shares fascism's interest in conquering the university system.
SPEAKER_82In these brand new buildings, the Central European University welcomes some 1,500 students from over a hundred countries. The private institution is considered one of the best in the country. It has taught and trained top leaders, and yet it has to close. For students who have been mobilized for weeks now, the future looks dark.
SPEAKER_121This will seriously undermine any any kind of respect for this country to become part of uh an integrated Europe.
SPEAKER_26Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has increased his government's influence over higher education. A new law passed Tuesday will set up foundations led by government appointees to take over the administration of universities and cultural institutions. The move has been slammed by the opposition, and a former minister who served under Orban in the 1990s, he called the move part of a quote, ideological war declared by the Prime Minister.
SPEAKER_123This new governance structure is designed to stamp out liberal and leftist ideas in the university, to turn it into an incubator for a more patriotic generation of young intellectuals, to purge it of its so-called diversity obsession, and to rid it of gender ideology. To this end, Hungary has banned all gender studies programs. As an Orban spokesman put it, the government's standpoint is that people are born either male or female, and we do not consider it acceptable for us to talk about socially constructed genders rather than biological sexes. You're probably starting to notice why Hungary might have a big fan base on the American right. At least until Orban was defeated in April's elections. But more on that later. Suffice it to say, old Victor even has a stand in the White House.
SPEAKER_12Hungary, strong country, run by very powerful, tough leaders, tough guy. Press doesn't like him because he's tough. Victor Orban, one of the most respected men, they call him a strong man. He's a he's a tough person. Smart. Thank you very much. It's a great honor to have with us the Prime Minister of Hungary. And uh Victor Orban has uh done a tremendous job in so many different ways, highly respected, respected all over Europe. Probably, like me, a little bit controversial, but that's okay. That's okay. You've done a good job.
SPEAKER_123And where you or I might look at Orban's treatment of higher ed and see a cautionary tale. Others see a roadmap. J.D. Vance on Face the Nation.
SPEAKER_58I want to ask you about some of the things you've said about American universities. I know you've been very critical of them. You gave an interview in February, you said the closest conservatives have ever gotten to successfully dealing with the left-wing domination of universities is Viktor Orban's approach in Hungary. I think his way has to be the model for us, not to eliminate universities, but to give the choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching. He seized control of state universities and put them in foundations that were then run by his allies. Is that what you're advocating be done in the United States?
SPEAKER_142Well, Margaret, what you're seeing in the United States actually is that universities are controlled by left-wing foundations. They're not controlled by the American taxpayer, and yet the American taxpayer is sending hundreds of billions of dollars to these universities every single year.
SPEAKER_58I don't want taxpayers controlling education necessarily. Is that what you're advocating for?
SPEAKER_142Margaret, what I'm advocating for is for taxpayers to have a say in how their money is spent. Universities are part of a social contract in this country. They educate our children, they produce important intellectual property, they get a lot of money because of it. But if they're not educating our children well and they're layering the next generation down in mountains of student debt, then they're not meeting their end of the bargain. I think it's totally reasonable to say there needs to be a political solution to that problem.
SPEAKER_123Totally reasonable. Now, Vance is on CBS there. Speaking to a general viewership. So, slippery fuck that he is, he's wearing his reasonable mask to the interview. Give taxpayers a say. Student debt is bad. It all sounds sensible enough. But put Vance in front of a friendly audience and watch the mask come off. Here he is at the National Conservatism Conference in 2021.
SPEAKER_142I'm not gonna offer you an inspirational quote tonight. I'm gonna offer you a true quote because there is a season for everything in this country. And I think in this movement of national conservatism, what we need more than inspiration is we need wisdom. And there is a wisdom in what Richard Nixon said approximately 40, 50 years ago. He said, and I quote, the professors are the enemy.
SPEAKER_123Okay. I'm gonna set aside the fact that he is literally talking about me right there, and that Vance himself is an alumnus of Yale Law School, and that he was the protege of Professor Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, if you remember that little pay in to child abuse. Vance and his future wife Usha. They socialize with Chua. Chua encouraged him to write Hillbilly Elegy, the book that made his entire career possible. And when his manuscript was ready, JD wasn't too contemptuous of his professor to use her connections to get it published. Here he is talking to Chua on stage in 2018. If only we all had enemies like that. But yeah, let's set aside Vance's self-serving hypocrisy, because ultimately, it's way less important than what the administration that he's a part of is doing to American higher ed. So I mentioned earlier that Trump and Co. have innovated on earlier fascist strategies for kneecapping universities. The Nazis approach, it was predicated on anti-Semitism. The dismissal of Jewish faculty, burning books by Jewish intellectuals like Freud, Benjamin, Zwieg, Einstein. The Italian fascists, they were more concerned with ideological conformity than with anti-Semitism. But by 1938, under pressure from Hitler, Mussolini instituted a set of racial laws that pushed Jews out of universities. In Orban's obsessive animosity towards George Soros, the Hungarian-born philanthropist and founder of Central European University, it has more than a little to do with the billionaire's status as one of the chosen people. But here's the Trumpian innovation. Rather than go in for full bore, old school, eliminationist anti-Semitism, they've jujitsued one liberal value, the protection of ethnic and religious minorities, and used it as a pretext to tear down another. Academic freedom. So just to get this out of the way, I know Trump might say this.
SPEAKER_12I am the least anti-Semitic person that you've ever seen in your entire life. But he's also said this. And Schumer is a Palestinian as far as I'm concerned. You know, he's become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He's not Jewish anymore. He's a Palestinian. It used to be that Israel had absolute power over Congress, and today I think it's the exact opposite. Think of that. No death tax, no estate tax, no going to the banks and borrowing some from, in some cases, a fine banker, and in some cases Shylocks and bad people.
SPEAKER_123So I'm not going to speak for everyone, but I'm going to go ahead and guess that most of us have met at least a few people who are less anti-Semitic than Donald Trump. And yet. As it so often does, time has proven the students right. At this point, it is clear that Israel's treatment of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza at the bare minimum it qualifies as ethnic cleansing. It's my opinion that Israel's gone even further. This is genocide. Here are a few groups that agree with my assessment. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, Genocide Watch, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Care International, Save the Children International, and an Independent Commission of the United Nations. The list goes on. Israel's defenders now occupy the fringe position, not its critics. It is untenable to insist that the United States campus protests in support of Gaza were driven by anti-Semitism. And not say the ongoing murder of kids enabled by US-made weapons, sponsored by US aid packages, and protected internationally by US political cover. The question is why? Why is the Trump administration so invested in painting college campuses as hotbeds of Jew hatred? What's actually at stake here? The answer is that for MAGA, anti-Semitism is not the target of the campus crackdown. It's the pretext. As I mentioned earlier, fascists and authoritarians always go after universities. Universities produce and transmit knowledge that frequently contradicts fascist narratives and undermines fascist authority. Social movements that resist fascism frequently find fertile ground among students and faculty, and especially at elite colleges. Your IVs, your liberal arts schools, your flagship state universities. They influence the worldviews of the next generation's ruling class. Worldviews they'd like to ensure are themselves properly fascist. So universities must be brought into line. And ideally, they will be brought under regime control. This isn't just speculation. It's not just informed conjecture based on indirect evidence. It's all part of a publicly available plan.
SPEAKER_152From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the Daily.
SPEAKER_123Okay, okay, okay. I've got feelings about the Times, maybe you do too. They're still just asking questions about trans kids while the GOP sharpens its knives. They keep stepping on rakes when they come at Zoran. New York is a city overrun with writing talent, and they keep paying Brad fucking Stevens, but still, but still, sometimes I learned something.
SPEAKER_152During a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Republican lawmakers once again accused university leaders of failing to do enough to combat anti-Semitism on their campuses. A claim that the university officials strongly rejected. The hearing was the latest attempt by Republicans to use what they see as the growing threat against Jews to their political advantage. And it's a plan that was first laid out by the same conservative think tank that authored Project 2025.
SPEAKER_123So, yeah. The right-wing group that wrote the playbook for a prospective Trump second term, but that the country immediately hated, so Trump pretended that he'd never heard of it before winning the election and using it as his roadmap to the fascism that we are currently living under. This group had another project cooking in 2024. So what was it? Here's Times reporter Katie J. M. Baker.
SPEAKER_70Last October, I saw that the Heritage Foundation had published this mysterious, long policy paper called Project Esther online that it said was a national strategy to combat anti-Semitism in the US. But when you read it, it becomes clear very quickly that what it really is is a plan to dismantle the pro-Palestinian movement in the US so that, as critics say, it can crush progressive movements more generally.
SPEAKER_123Despite the fact that Project Esther is about anti-Semitism, the point person behind it is a VP at Heritage named Victoria Coates, herself a devout Christian. Even according to Heritage, an overwhelming majority of the organizations that joined the task force were not Jewish either. They were either explicitly Christian or broadly conservative. In fact, most mainstream Jewish groups kept their distance, noting that Project Esther showed not even the faintest interest in addressing right-wing anti-Semitism, and thereby surmising that it was, first and foremost, a political document. In fact, if you take a look at its text, you can see that the war in Gaza, the protest it inspired, prejudice against Jewish people more broadly, these were not Project Esther's purpose. So much as the beachhead it used to enter a larger fight.
SPEAKER_70So these people and groups aren't just anti-Semitic, but they're anti-capitalist, anti-Western, and anti-what heritage calls the shared Judeo-Christian values they believe are so integral to America.
SPEAKER_152So in other words, the sudden interest in anti-Semitism, it's not just about threats against Jewish people. For the Heritage Foundation, they're seeing what's happening on campuses and they're reframing the debate as kind of a homegrown threat against America. Yes, exactly.
SPEAKER_123Reframing, concocting a radical revolutionary terrorist organization out of whole cloth. It's in the eye of the beholder, I guess. And through the eyes of Project Esther, the United States looks to be endangered by what it calls the HSN.
SPEAKER_68Looking for a better way to shop? Look no further than the Home Shopping Network.
SPEAKER_123For better or for worse, the home shopping network is a real thing that actually exists in the world. Rather, our country is allegedly imperiled by the Hamas Support Network. An entity that Project Esther compares to the Ku Klux Klan and the German-American Boond, an organization of Nazi sympathizers that lasted from 1936 until the US entered World War II in 1941. The key difference between the KKK and the Boond on one hand and the HSN on the other is that those earlier examples had membership roles, official leadership structures, charters that outlined ideological commitments, and so forth. The HSN, by contrast, is just a name that Heritage gave to an entire category of organizations and individuals, broadly united by their criticism of Israel's treatment of Palestinians. The Hamas Support Network is not something that one identifies with. It's essentially an epithet that Heritage bestows on its opponents. It includes literal fighters for Hamas, members of activist organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, and presumably the sixty percent of Americans who now hold an unfavorable view of Israel, according to a pew poll from this April. Using Heritage's definition, you might well belong to the Hamas support network without even having realized it. By pretending that this amorphous collection of people who share only the vaguest of sympathies constitutes a network. Heritage deliberately obscures the differences between, say, a suicide bomber affiliated with the Islamic State and a college sophomore in the Midwest, upset to learn that the intentional starvation of babies isn't a red line in American foreign policy. And elighting such obvious distinctions allows the right to claim that the latter is, at best, a useful idiot, unwittingly working on behalf of the former. By fabricating a framework where students in the U.S. are dropped in the same conceptual bucket as foreign terrorists, Project Ester can then justify all sorts of interventions on university campuses that would otherwise be recognized as blatantly authoritarian. And just like Project 2025, Project Ester is no longer theoretical.
SPEAKER_147Federal immigration authorities arrested Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil at his university-owned department over the weekend. One of the latest people to be detained by federal agents and threatened with deportation is a doctoral student at Tufts University. This arrest is the first publicly known deportation effort under President Trump's new plan to remove alleged Hamas sympathizers from college campuses.
SPEAKER_79Joining us to talk about all of this is Mora Finkelstein. Mora is a scholar and was a professor of anthropology for nine years at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Even though she was tenured, she was fired earlier this year over her social media posts in support of Palestinian rights.
SPEAKER_148After this interview, Columbia Professor Frankie now faces termination after two Columbia professors filed a complaint against her with Columbia's Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action.
SPEAKER_123They have, by and large, caved the Trump administration. Often on matters that have nothing to do with Gaza. Nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Matters like transports or DEI, whatever that is. And as they've done so, they've treated students, faculty, and citizens alike as gullible idiots. Trying to gaslight us all into believing that they aren't, in fact, gutless cowards, ready to abandon their institution's stated values, to satisfy a would-be tyrant. Here's acting President Claire Shipman from my alma mater Columbia University, fooling absolutely nobody.
SPEAKER_04I think there are a couple of really important things about this agreement from our point of view. One, it doesn't cross the red lines that we laid out. It protects our academic integrity. That was, of course, essential to us.
SPEAKER_03Brown University just became the latest Ivy League school to make a deal with Donald Trump, announcing a $50 million deal with the government.
SPEAKER_94Dartmouth College faculty and alumni are calling on the school's president to join other colleges and universities across the country in formally condemning what they say are the Trump administration's attacks on higher education.
SPEAKER_25But she isn't falling in line with other schools yet.
SPEAKER_128This morning, the University of Pennsylvania reversing course, saying it will now ban transgender athletes and strip trans swimmer Leah Thomas of her swimming titles. The school reaching a deal with the Trump administration.
SPEAKER_04It doesn't cross the red lines that we laid out.
SPEAKER_07It protects our academic integrity. The university agreed to suspend, expel, or revoke degrees from some 70 students who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
SPEAKER_137But they're also telling the federal government you can tell us how students should be disciplined.
SPEAKER_07It protects our academic integrity. It will issue a report to a monitor to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion is not promoted on campus. It protects our academic integrity.
SPEAKER_62Here are some of the reforms. It's Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department will now be under receivership.
SPEAKER_04It protects our academic integrity. It protects our academic integrity.
SPEAKER_03Brown University just became the latest Ivy League school to make a deal with Donald Trump announcing a $50 million deal with the government to have their funding restored. Trump reacted on Truth Social writing this: Woke is officially dead at Brown.
SPEAKER_40It doesn't cost the red lines that we laid out. It protects our academic integrity.
SPEAKER_123Now the consequences of MAGA's disingenuous exploitation of the Gaza protests continues to reverberate throughout higher ed. But this astro-turfed moral panic may well be the high watermark of Israel and its defenders' influence over American politics.
SPEAKER_51The left has turned against the country because well the deliberate targeting of children is a critical factor in determining genocidal intent. In the report, 94 pages long with citations, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry lays out examples where it says even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured. Actions by Israel, it says that form part of a deliberate strategy to destroy the future of the Palestinians in Gaza by targeting their children.
SPEAKER_123And on the right, well, a sizable chunk of these guys are just out and proud anti-Semites. Here's Nick Fuentes.
SPEAKER_128The Jews are destroyed. This country.
SPEAKER_123Others are maybe a bit more discreet about their bigotry. Claiming the mantle of isolationism and arguing that the United States should disentangle itself from the rest of the world, especially the Middle East.
SPEAKER_137Tucker Carlson. I'm a nationalist. I care about my country. I don't want to hurt Israel, but Israel's problems are not my problem. They're different problems. I wish Israel the best of luck. I don't think the United States owes Israel anything. I don't think the United States should give Israel anything. I think we should stop all aid to Israel, all special deals for Israel.
SPEAKER_123Sounds okay. At least until you remember that this is the same guy who gave Fuentes a sympathetic interview and had this to say to the Nazi-friendly Holocaust revisionist Daryl Cooper. A guy who literally called Hitler a peacemaker.
SPEAKER_138I just want to say I think you are the most important popular historian working in the United States today.
SPEAKER_123Even inside the Trump regime, J.D. Vance has criticized Israel in terms that, frankly, I would have loved to hear from the Biden administration.
SPEAKER_142Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time. And he happens to be the head of state of the world's superpower. If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world. The defensive weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars.
Shit Go Boom
SPEAKER_123The cross-ideological anger at Israel has reached a fever pitch with the ongoing war against Iran and the role that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu played in baiting Trump into this manifestly stupid conflict. To be clear, Trump's choice to succumb to BB's fluffing was his own. He is a dumb fucking child with an easily stroked ego and a moron's delight at seeing shit go boom. But stage four does tend to be the moment where egomaniacal man-children dictators get belligerent on an international scale. In March 1938, Hitler's Germany annexed Austria. An event known as the Anschluss.
SPEAKER_110In Vienna, city of Solomon's music known around the world, 500,000 pack the streets while the buildings are covered with the symbols of the German relief. With six tanks leading the two months alone procession of public family and stolen compliments, and with German bummers controlling the scummingers, and the bumpers with the mother and sea service, and this is the lands of his brother, and his mother and chemicals of the Sudatenland region of Czechoslovakia before occupying the rest of the country the following year.
SPEAKER_123And ultimately invading Poland in September of 1939. The formal start of World War II in Europe.
SPEAKER_34Poland's 34 million inhabitants crushed, scattered, and enslaved. Tens of thousands of square miles of territory shrink before the movement of lightning armored columns. Poland and the world learned the meaning of a grim new word. Blitzkrieg.
SPEAKER_123Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935 and annexed it the next year. Albania met the same fate in 1939. Now, for a long time, Trump's purported isolationism was seen by some as evidence that he wasn't actually a fascist. Back in 2017, Paxton himself said as much. In an essay for Harper's, he wrote, Unlike the fascists, Trump seeks no territorial gains. As we discussed last episode, Paxton changed his mind after January 6th, where he thinks the line into fascism was definitively crossed. And when it comes to foreign policy, 2017 was 2017. And here, in 2026, Trump has absolutely embraced a characteristically fascist expansionism and warmongering. He may have campaigned on this.
SPEAKER_12Under Trump, we will have no more wars, no more wars, no more wars. My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker. That's what I want to be. A peacemaker. We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.
SPEAKER_123But he's governed like this.
SPEAKER_12At my direction, the United States Armed Forces conducted an extraordinary military operation in the capital of Venezuela. Overwhelming American military power, air, land, and sea was used to launch a spectacular assault. And it was an assault like people have not seen since World War II.
SPEAKER_25President Trump dramatically ramping up the rhetoric against Iran with the new post threatening quote, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.
SPEAKER_12We need Greenland for national security and international security. So uh we'll I think we'll uh go as far as we have to go.
SPEAKER_11Can you assure the world that you are not going to use military or economic coercion? That's a strategy.
SPEAKER_12I can't assure you you're talking about uh Panama and Greenland. No, I can't assure you on either of those two.
SPEAKER_64Trump issued a new message tonight hinting once again that the U.S. is considering taking action in Cuba.
SPEAKER_12Cuba, which we will be taking over almost immediately. On the way back from Iran, we'll have one of our big, maybe the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, the biggest in the world, will have that come in, stop about a hundred yards offshore, and they'll say, Thank you very much, we give up.
Yakety Sax Gestapo
SPEAKER_123But cowing the media, putting the screws to universities, even Trump's turn towards a more belligerent foreign policy. As heavy-handed as they've been, they're not the most obvious signal that we've entered stage four. That'd be the thugs at immigration and customs enforcement, better known as ICE. They're equally contemptible brethren at CBP, Customs and Border Protection, and the rest of the Department of Homeland Security. Overseen until March by Christy Noam. Now under the leadership of Mark Wayne Mullen. Mark Wayne is all one word, by the way. No hyphens. We've all seen the videos by this point. The ones where the dumbest, meanest guy on your high school football team terrorizes five-year-olds, pregnant women, shoots your neighbor in the face. You don't need to be a historian to understand that when armed men and balaclavas start snatching people off the street, start murdering them, and then smearing their victims as domestic terrorists, they're not the good guys. They're the type that become history's villains. The type who end up on trial for war crimes, claiming that they aren't responsible for their own actions.
SPEAKER_33We are only following orders, nothing more.
SPEAKER_123And these guys they have a lineage. See, as fascism moves from its third stage to its fourth, the locus of its violence shifts. In stage three, the goons do their dirty work largely outside the auspices of the state. But after fascists seize power, the goons go pro. They get badges. They become the law. In the wake of World War One, middle class and land-owning Italians were increasingly stressed out by their country's rising socialist movement. Over in Russia, the Bolsheviks had popped off their revolution in 1917. So these wealthy Italians, in other words, they had reason to fear that their fellow Pisans might be coming for their wealth, their farms, maybe even their heads. Torches, pitchforks, guillotines. You know the deal. So they organized their own militias, the Squadristi, to defend themselves and the spoils they believed to be their birthright. These forces were decentralized. A loose network of platoons, largely made up of veterans of the Great War, with each branch run by a local boss. They were broadly aligned in their hatred of socialists, but every boss was jealous of his own power. And pursued his own personal goals. History? Generally knows them by their uniforms. The black shirts. It seems like white shirts or like green shirts or maybe blue shirts. They might have made for a more comfortable gang of fascists. But black looked tough. And it didn't require much cleaning. And there was a lot of military surplus clothing in that color left over from the war. Just a few months after claiming the office of Prime Minister, so we're talking February 1923, Mussolini integrated the Squadristi into the official government, rebranding them the Voluntary Militia for National Security. This consolidated and centralized the blackshirts, putting all of them directly under the personal control of El Duce, and authorizing them to amp up their ideological repression. Now with zero fear of legal repercussions. Because, well, they were the law. In the Italian case, the movement of fascist thuggery from outside the state to inside it was smooth and direct. It was literally the same people, the same shit states. Except now they were exercising state power instead of challenging it.
SPEAKER_33This is the first occasion on which these two famous papers have met. Each holds in his hand the destiny of a great nation, and the whole world looks with equal interest on this meeting.
SPEAKER_123It was rockier. In the decade or so before the Nazis came to power in 1933, the most visible manifestation of the party was its paramilitary detachment, the SA, short for Sturmabteilung, or Storm Division. And like Mussolini's thugs, these guys were nicknamed after their precious little costumes. The brown shirts. The brown shirts were indispensable to the Nazis' ascent. They roughed up and intimidated party enemies, they onboarded bitter Germans into the movement, giving angry men a sense of community and purpose, and channeling their rage at convenient targets, especially Jews and leftists. And crucially, they helped create the perception that the Weimar Republic was spinning out of control. They would provoke street battles with their communist rivals, then use those battles as evidence that society was slipping into disorder. The kind of disorder that needed a strong fascist hand to bring it under control. It was a situation that Hitler leveraged into getting himself appointed Chancellor in 1933.
SPEAKER_331933, the year of the monster.
SPEAKER_123Effectively putting him in control of the country. At that point, the SA was huge. It had three million members, all operating under the leadership of Ernst Rom. It was also increasingly a liability for the Nazis as they sought to consolidate their new power. German conservatives were unsettled by the fledgling regime's connection to a massive outfit of radical working-class brawlers. The Reichswehr, the official German army, it was still limited to 100,000 men by the Treaty of Versailles that ended the First World War. In terms of manpower, then, it was absolutely dwarfed by the brown shirts. And Rome explicitly aimed to absorb the Reichswehr into the S.A. to form what he called a people's army. Helped, of course, by himself. The old German military elite were desperate to preserve their power. And Hitler wanted to keep its leadership on his side, lest the country's establishment organize against him. And on top of that, the essay represented a specific ideological branch of the Nazi family tree. As I said, its recruits were largely drawn from the working class. And many of them had even been communists before switching teams. These guys were nicknamed beefsteak Nazis. Brown on the outside, red on the inside. Get it, you know, brown for fascism, red for communism. The sort of working man's populism that, say, J.D. Vance or Tom Cotton campaign on. But don't really give a fuck about. And now with their boy Adolf in power, this faction was energized by the possibility of what they called a second revolution. Nationalizing industries, seizing land from large estates, economic leveling, the nascent socialism and national socialism. But Hitler was pragmatic. He did not want to make powerful enemies among the German industrialist and landed aristocracy. And, frankly, he had never cared that much about fascism's latent anti-capitalist strains, especially compared to its racial project. The national was always more important to him than the socialist. In other words, an empowered essay would upset Hitler's rich allies and distract from the issues that mattered most to him. So the Fuhrer Heta dealt with. In summer 1934, he authorized what became known as the Knight of the Long Knives. Ernst Rom and much of the rest of the SA leadership were murdered. As were other ideological opponents. That effectively marked the end of the brown shirts as a political force, if not as an organization. They continued to exist. The SA was heavily involved in 1938's Kristal Dock, for example. But as agents of Nazi violence and repression, they were effectively replaced by the SS and the Gestapo. These guys were entirely different animals than the SA street thugs. The SS, short for Schutzstaffel or Protection Squadron, they started out as Hitler's own personal Praetorian Guard and grew out from there. They had aristocratic pretensions and believed themselves to be the Nazi movement's ideological vanguard. To join, you had to prove a pure Aryan bloodline dating back to at least 1750. They dressed in sleek uniforms, produced by Hugo Boss. They modeled themselves on the Teutonic Order. Basically the German version of the Knights Templar.
SPEAKER_114Heinrich Himmler's vision of the SS has from the beginning extended far beyond his eugenic project to breed a race of pure-blooded Aryans. His intention is to create a military religious order, an order steeped in Aryan mysticism. He believes the history of the Aryans had begun in 228,000 BC. An era in which there were three suns in the sky, and the world was populated by giants and other fantastic creatures.
SPEAKER_123Fascists are such fucking dorks, man. In the last installment, we talked about Curtis Jarvin. The dweeby bigot writer, revered by Elon Musk, Peter Teal, and J.D. Vance. And Jarvin's penchant for describing modern politics through J.R.R. Tolkien metaphors. Motherfucker calls himself a dark elf. The SS they were essentially a bunch of Renfair LARPers. They even had their own castle, where their leader, Heinrich Himmler, led them through nerd-ass rituals inspired by the Knights of the Round Table.
SPEAKER_114In this strange chamber, Himmler and his chosen twelve commune with the Aryan race soul and the spirits of the Germanic ancestors.
SPEAKER_123But these nerds were evil and disciplined. They'd go on to be the men who carried out the Holocaust. Mass murder with ruthless efficiency. The SS was deeply intertwined with the Gestapo. Himmler controlled both organizations by the time of the Knight of the Long Knives. The Gestapo were the Reich's secret police. The SA instilled fear through violent public spectacles.
SPEAKER_125But the Gestapo they worked in the shadows.
SPEAKER_123They didn't need millions of members like the Brownshirts. But the force never numbered more than 30 or 40,000 in a country of 80 million people. But these numbers were supplemented by their extensive network of informants throughout German society. You never knew who might rat you out if you shit-talk the regime.
SPEAKER_125Your neighbor, your friend, your colleague, even your kid. The Gestapo turned Germany into a panopticon.
SPEAKER_123People police themselves. Acting as though they were always under surveillance. Because they always might be.
SPEAKER_125And when your number was up, you might get a knock on the door at 3 a.m.
SPEAKER_123Agents might whisk you off to a torture chamber. And then when they were done beating the shit out of you, they decided to step the courts by filing a form, placing you under protective custody.
SPEAKER_125And put you on a train to Dachau. It's all smooth.
SPEAKER_123Or quietly arresting them and locking them up. The motivation's the same. Hatred and domination. But in the transition from fascism third stage to its fourth, the cruelty is integrated into the state apparatus. This is where the Italian and German Models converge. Mussolini invited his goons into the government.
SPEAKER_125Same black shirts, but now with badges.
SPEAKER_123Hitler opted to replace his brown shirts with a more disciplined SS and Gestapo.
SPEAKER_125But the result is effectively the same. Fascist sadism claims the mantle of the state with all the power that entails. Violence that's legal and accountable only to those who perpetrate it.
SPEAKER_123Now obviously the situation in the United States today looks a lot different than the one in Europe a century ago. We're not emerging from the wreckage of an unprecedented global war. And while there's certainly been an uptick in political violence over the last decade or so, it pales in comparison to the running gunfights between Nazis and communists endemic to Weimar Berlin. We have nothing on the scale of a three million strong force of fascist paramilitaries like the brown shirts. Different eras, different places, different circumstances. But as the cliche goes, history doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes. Though vastly different in size, there are contemporary American analogues to the SA. The two most prominent the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. Let's start with the Oath Keepers. The group is the brainchild of a former U.S. Army paratrooper and Yale law graduate named Stuart Rhodes.
SPEAKER_97Stow what? Stow what? Stow. Stow. Stow. Stowie? Stowie? Sweetie? Stow what?
SPEAKER_123In addition to being a devoted father.
SPEAKER_98Among my earliest memories was I startled Stuart while I was waking him up, and he snapped upright and drew a folding knife on me when I was, I believe, around four years old. I lived absolutely under the thumb of an emotional terrorist.
SPEAKER_123And doting husband?
SPEAKER_132It was just just a dark and depressing existence. Getting out was um was one of the hardest things, and really up until we got out, we did not know if we were all gonna get out alive.
SPEAKER_123Rhodes is a man with a flair for the dramatic. In April 2009, he launched the Oath Keepers on the anniversary of the first real clash of the American Revolution at its battlefield in Lexington, Massachusetts. Remember what else happened in early 2009?
SPEAKER_39I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear that I will execute the office of president to the United States face.
SPEAKER_123Black guy, White House. I'm sure the timing's just a coincidence. But at its founding, the group's ideology was pretty bog standard for the American militia movement that first grabbed the public's attention back in the 1990s. Think Ruby Ridge, Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing. The Oathkeepers loudly professed a hatred for the federal government. They vowed to resist what they claim was the country's slide into authoritarianism. And their founding document pledge resistance against warrantless searches.
SPEAKER_78Immigration officers are being told that they can legally force entry into someone's home to make an arrest without a warrant signed by a judge. Detention camps.
SPEAKER_123And of course, Stewie and his oathkeepers have remained steadfast in their values and had harsh words of criticism for the second Trump administration. Wait. Wait, no.
SPEAKER_120Right now, under federal statutes, President Trump can call us up as the militia if he sees it necessary. He can do that, and I think he should do that. And so that's what I'll be advocating for from him. So from the bottom, from from down in the rank and file, we can, you know, let President Trump know that we're ready to serve, encourage him to do that, call us up as the militia.
SPEAKER_123So it's taken some mental gymnastics for the keepers to cozy up to a federal government that they have always insisted is tyrannical. But conspiracy theories about the deep state have helped them square the circle. The quote-unquote real federal government, the one they're so terrified of, the one straight out of Timothy McVeigh's nightmares. It's not the president who is literally in charge of that government. It's not the regime functionaries that he literally appoints. It's a shadowy cabal of liberal bureaucrats, foiling the grand and good plans of Donald Trump from like the middle management jobs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or famous fortresses of wokeness, like the Pentagon?
SPEAKER_12Uh we should have won everywhere. We could have won everywhere, but we we really chose to be uh very uh politically correct or wokey, and uh we just fight forever.
SPEAKER_123And uh then we're but the reality is that the Oath Keepers they are fine with aggressive, even authoritarian executive power when it's targeted at people who aren't them. People they don't like. Stewie Rhodes targeted his recruitment efforts at those already skilled in violence. Cops and veterans. A leak in 2021 showed that of the group's current and past members, around two-thirds were former military or law enforcement, and 10% were currently on the job. These are dangerous people. And you might remember their little field trip to the U.S. Capitol from a few years ago.
SPEAKER_03Oath Keeper's founder, Stuart Rhodes, will stand trial alongside four other members of his militia group. They're the first January 6th rioters to face rare, seditious conspiracy charges.
SPEAKER_123The United States has seen posse of redneck losers like the Oathkeepers before. The Proud Boys, though, they represent something kind of new on the American scene. Which, well, they were founded by a Canadian. I always exhale a little when I find out an awful person isn't one of my countrymen. Let's talk about Gavin McInnes for a minute. Back before he established himself as one of his generation's preeminent fascists, back when he was still safely quarantined across the border in Montreal, McInnes co-founded Vice Magazine. For my fellow millennials, yeah. That Vice. For my younger listeners and my older listeners, Vice Magazine and later Vice Media was what guys who are now in their forties took for a cool outlet. Around the same time, they were wearing their girlfriend's jeans and snorting lines off the toilet seat at Union Pool. If you know you know. It was the New York Times of Otts era Andy Slea's. I read it. I had friends that wrote for it. And to be fair, they did do some really good work. Especially after Gavin left in 2008. They won Emmys. They won Peabodies. But Kevin McInnes. He was the resident asshole. Here he is reminiscing about an interview he gave in 2003.
SPEAKER_122In the New York Times, I said the following. This was a bad one. I love being white. I think it's something to be very proud of. I don't want our culture diluted. We need to close the borders now and let everyone assimilate to a Western, white, English-speaking way of life.
SPEAKER_123In a joke he made in 2016.
SPEAKER_122I uh I I called Jada Pinkett Smith a monkey actress. Cool.
SPEAKER_123Cool, cool, cool. At the time, though, there were a lot of people willing to chalk it up to some kind of punk rock edginess.
SPEAKER_69Like, how much of that is like the transgressive Gavin who's like a fucking 17-year-old kid from Mississauga, Ontario, or something, constantly trying to push people's buttons?
SPEAKER_123But at least with the benefit of time, some of his vice colleagues, like the documentarian Thomas Morton, were ready to understand that the line between irony and sincerity is sometimes perilously thin.
SPEAKER_35If you're pretending, if this is an act, you have to be careful who you pretend to be, because who you pretend to be is also who you are.
SPEAKER_123After his breakup with Vice, McKinnon spent the next decade or so kicking around different projects. He tried and failed to get a TV pilot off the ground. He co-founded NetAgency. But in 2014, he wrote a column for a thought catalog.
SPEAKER_122The trans one. And his partners sent him packing. So they go, we're gonna put you on leave.
SPEAKER_123From there, he podcasted into guest spots on the shows of his cool new friends. Friends like Sean.
SPEAKER_137Here now with Reaction, author of The Death of Cole, Gavin McGuinness.
SPEAKER_123And Alex.
SPEAKER_86This morning I saw three reports, I couldn't even watch them all, saying ban Alex Jones off of iTunes. Gavin, I hate to make this about me, but this is getting absolutely, totally insane.
SPEAKER_123And in 2016, the year that Trump was elected president the first time, McInnes started himself a little club.
SPEAKER_111Proud of your boy. I'll make you proud of your boy. Leave me bad as I've been, Ma. You're in for a pleasant surprise.
SPEAKER_124Yeah. They took their name from a song from the stage version of Aladdin.
SPEAKER_123Their official oath, though, suggests a less than open attitude towards Arab culture. Here's former Proud Boys president Enrique Terriot leading some members of the pledge.
SPEAKER_127I'm a Western chalvinist.
SPEAKER_123That's uh fourteen words, if you're counting. But the boys. They swear there is nothing racist about them. That the West is distinct from whiteness. And it's true that they have non-white members, but Ontario himself is Afro-Cuban. Korea is talking to Vice. Post-Gavin Vice.
SPEAKER_56Explain that ideology to me.
SPEAKER_69Chauvinist just means extremely patriotic. And when we say the West, we mean the United States. Western society has built the civilized world that we are in today.
SPEAKER_123So according to Terrio, there's nothing white about Western chauvinism. I wonder if he's run this interpretation by Gavin. I mean, Western culture is pretty darn white. Saw we. Not to mention that McKinnon has written for the openly white supremacist magazine American Renaissance. Not to mention, Proud Boys wear shirts emblazoned with slogans like Right Wing Death Squad and 6 MWE. 6 million wasn't enough, uh, reference to the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust. And not to mention that the group has marched alongside Adam Waffin Division, Identity Europa, and the KKK. And that its membership roles are known to overlap with these organizations. Non-white members like Terryo give cover against accusations of racism. But to be welcome in the Proud Boys, he essentially had to pledge that his own cultural background was inferior. Why might someone do this? Professor Eduardo Gamara. Speculating device. I think it's false consciousness, frankly.
SPEAKER_22This view that somehow, you know, they can move into white society. They identify perhaps as a negation of their own background.
SPEAKER_123As a white dude, it's not really my place to comment on this. But there is precedent for what Professor Gamara is talking about. If you're interested, look up the Association of German National Jews. Now, like the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys never approached the size of organizations like the Brown Shirts. Most of the estimates I've seen put their ranks somewhere in the mid-4 figures. But these things are relative. And the Proud Boys were key players in the resurgence of ideological street violence that marked Trump's first term. They fought leftists in Berkeley throughout 2017. They had a presence at Charlottesville's infamous Unite the Right rally. And they attacked black churches in DC during the 2020 George Floyd protests. And lest anyone think the boys were freelancing without Trump's blessing, remember his 2020 debate response when Biden brought the group up.
SPEAKER_12What do you want to call them? Give me a name, give me a name. Stand back and stand by.
SPEAKER_123That is exactly what they did. They showed up in DC on January 6th. Somewhere in merch with the words stand back and stand by plastered across it. Along with the Oath Keepers, they were key players in the attack on the Capitol. The two groups even coordinated their efforts. From the House's J6 committee hearings back in 2022.
SPEAKER_85In footage obtained by the committee, we learned that on the night of January 5th, Enrique Tario and Stuart Rhodes met in a parking garage in Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_46There's mutual respect there. I think we're fighting the same fight, and I think that's what's important.
SPEAKER_124Around a hundred Proud Boys caught charges for January 6th.
SPEAKER_123At least 53 were convicted of a felony. Four of the leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy. With Terrio receiving a 22-year sentence. The Oath Keepers' leadership. It was also brought down by sedition charges. Little Stewie Rhodes.
SPEAKER_97Stewie? Stewie? Sweetie? Stewie?
SPEAKER_123Was sentenced to 18 years. Both organizations, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, were effectively hobbled during most of the Biden era. But they limped along, occasionally venturing out into the world to make asses of themselves.
SPEAKER_18Alameda County deputies say a group of men described as members of the Proud Boys Organization stormed into Drag Queen Story Hour, screaming homophobic and transphobic slurs.
SPEAKER_109You know, they came in and they were screaming about like pedophilia and saying things like, We have to save the children. And I mean they were terrifying the children.
SPEAKER_123But within hours of taking office again in January 2025,
Pardon Me
SPEAKER_123Trump did his guys a solid.
SPEAKER_141Pardons and commutations. Pardons and commutations.
SPEAKER_90On the evening of his inauguration, President Donald Trump not wasting any time getting down to business.
SPEAKER_141Pardons and commutations.
SPEAKER_12Approximately 1,500 per pardon.
SPEAKER_141In commutations.
SPEAKER_90We have about six commutations.
SPEAKER_141Parts and commutations. Parts and commutations. Even for people convicted of brutally assaulting police officers. And for the leaders, Proud Boys, and boatkeepers.
SPEAKER_28We have trapped over a dozen cases of January 6 defendants who have new or resurfaced legal trouble. A lot of child sex crimes.
SPEAKER_05I'm guilty of receiving child sexual abuse materials back in jail.
SPEAKER_145This time for three online solicitations.
SPEAKER_28At least two people have been completely killed January 6th defendants, including a mother of two named Victoria Hillson.
SPEAKER_153Sources tell CM that Trump administration officials have discussed inviting some hardened January 6th convicts to the White House for a potential visit and a meeting with the president. One of the officers on attacked on January 6th, Michael Fanone, joins us now. What do you say, Michael?
SPEAKER_142Yeah, I mean, uh, this is what I would say to Stuart Rhodes. Go fuck yourself.
SPEAKER_153Okay. We didn't obviously get to to beep that word out.
SPEAKER_123So the Jan Sixers, Oathkeepers and Proud Boys among them, they're walking free. At least the ones who haven't got their asses thrown back in jail already. But neither group is making many headlines. Trump doesn't need them to. As extremism researcher Freddie Cruz put it, the groups are taking a hands-off approach right now because their interests are often aligned with the government. Like in Italy, in Germany, once the regime consolidates power, it welcomes fascist violence under the banner of the state. This brings us back to our friends at the Department of Homeland Security. ICE and CBP. Now it is not clear the extent to which members of groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys have actually joined the government's bitch squads. But the regime certainly seems to be reaching out to them. And to people like them. From a CBC documentary.
SPEAKER_134In August, ICE posted this image on Instagram and X. Note the tagline. Which way, American man? It's a meme often used by right-wing influencers, and which refers to this 700-page anti-Semitic rant popular with neo-Nazis. Or this one, posted just after the killing of Erne Good in Minneapolis. What are we looking at?
SPEAKER_74So this phrase will have our home again. That is a lyric from a song released in 2020 by a white nationalist group called the Pine Tree Riot, affiliated with a white nationalist organization in the United States called the Manderbond. Some organizations like the Proud Boys kind of took up the song as they're owned they started singing it at rallies.
SPEAKER_134And the Proud Boys have taken notice. On the messaging app Telegram, one chapter reposted that ad next to a picture of a literal dog whistle, adding the line, message received. It's one of several posts from affiliated accounts encouraging members to apply. Heidi Beric is the co founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.
SPEAKER_100The most dangerous part about it is that this probably is attracting white supremacists and other racial extremists to perhaps join the ranks of ICE. And that is a very toxic, very dangerous situation.
SPEAKER_123And while the administration has stonewalled efforts from lawmakers like Jamie Raskin to divulge hiring records, it does appear to be happening. Some dogged reporting from Stephen Monticelli and the Texas Observer uncovered that ICE Assistant Chief Counsel Jim Rodden runs a white supremacist Twitter account. Rodin is now bad on the job. Prosecuting cases an immigration court. Is it an isolated incident? The Daily Mail found that when ICE recruits in a training center in Georgia took off their shirts for a workout, their hasty bodies were festooned with white supremacist tattoos. This corroborates the account of Javier Ramirez, an American citizen.
SPEAKER_01I was born in San Marino, California.
SPEAKER_123Wrongly detained by ICE.
SPEAKER_01I heard a killing voice declared, get him, he's Mexican. And by 8 p.m. I was already I was where my rights spending five long days in the prison zone?
SPEAKER_123He reported seeing Proud Boys Inc. on the same agents who slammed him into the pavement.
SPEAKER_01I just feel a knee oiling on my face and then on behind my my neck.
SPEAKER_123And denied him access to his diabetes medication. Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein has reported that sources inside of ICE have expressed concern at the quote, weird tattoos on new recruits. And there's even a video of a masked agent in Massachusetts with a Volknut symbol tattooed on his arm. Favorite of a certain flavor of bigot. Seeing as how you're two hours into a podcast episode about the rise of American fascism, odds are good that you're already aware of the absolutely unhinged amount of money that was pumped into DHS last year. From MPR.
SPEAKER_63The one big beautiful bill is directing more than $175 billion to immigration enforcement. If you leave out the US and China, that's more than any country in the world spends on its military in a year. ICE alone is set to get $75 billion of that money.
SPEAKER_104I think it it is it is really difficult, even for me, and I spend all day long thinking about this stuff to wrap my head around and what that's gonna look like. They're gonna have massive physical presence of like militarized um agents on the streets. I anticipate that that's gonna become a norm.
SPEAKER_123I bet you remember where we were at by winter.
Minneapolis and After
SPEAKER_102Make this December one to remember.
SPEAKER_131DHS has dubbed its new ICE operation in the Twin Cities is Operation Metro Surge, and in its first three days, the agency says it has made at least 12 arrests, including five Somali individuals, several with previous convictions for fraud.
SPEAKER_145Earlier this month, President Trump surged federal agents into Minnesota's Twin Cities. ICE claims they have arrested over 400 people since December 1st, but there's strong pushback from some locals.
SPEAKER_71Across the river in Minneapolis, a handful of people gathered in protest of ICE. Part of the symbolism of being in front of the courthouse today is we want to process.
SPEAKER_37One of the funny videos you'll see out there recently is Nick Shirley coming to Minnesota.
SPEAKER_42The FBI is responding to new viral video in the Minnesota fraud scandal. It shows a YouTuber confronting the owners of a daycare center. Remember the name Nick Shirley. FBI director Cash Patel says he's sending agents and resources to investigate.
SPEAKER_20But there's even more scrutiny now following a viral video from an independent journalist visiting those daycare centers. We're gonna be walking around like we are blind people. Independent journalists about to go buy some dry ice right now. Independent journalists, make sure that subscribe button.
SPEAKER_27JD Vance said Nick Shirley has done far more useful journalism than 2024 Pulitzer Prize winners.
SPEAKER_118I'm here in Washington, DC, and today I will be testifying in front of Congress.
SPEAKER_38The issue gained renewed national attention in late December 2025 following a widely shared YouTube video posted by one of our witnesses, Mr. Nick Shirley. His reporting prompted federal authorities to intensify investigations, expand oversight, and coordinate multi-agency enforcement efforts.
SPEAKER_20Gombi lay!
SPEAKER_12These aren't people that work and they complain and do nothing but bitch. We don't want them in our country.
SPEAKER_73President Trump and Secretary Noam have taken the handcuffs off of us now.
SPEAKER_126Gombi.
SPEAKER_54Happy New Year, America. President Trump is ringing in the new year tonight with festivities at his Palm Beach mansion. Trump wished for world peace.
SPEAKER_12Good evening, America. We had men playing in women's sports, transgender for everybody, and our country was laughed at from all over the world. But they're not laughing anymore. How do you feel about 2026? I feel so good about 2026. I feel optimistic.
SPEAKER_128And then on January 7th.
SPEAKER_43That's fine, dude. I'm not mad for it. Get out of the car. Get out of the fucking car. Get out of the car.
SPEAKER_80I will tell you this. You raise your voice? I raise your voice.
SPEAKER_11You what? You erase my voice? Whatever it is. You erase my voice, is that what you said? If I raise my voice, you'll erase my voice.
SPEAKER_13Exactly, yeah.
SPEAKER_07Learn what? What's our lesson here? What do you want us to learn?
SPEAKER_09You asked about a shooting that we just had in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was an act of domestic terrorism.
SPEAKER_49We're learning new information about Renee Good, the 37-year-old who was shot and killed by a federal immigration agent. Woman who's very violent. She's a very radical person. Former neighbors of hers say they remember Good as a good mother to her children.
SPEAKER_56That was just a mom who loved her kids, loved her spouse.
SPEAKER_68Now, the smiling, clueless women who are currently throwing their lives away on behalf of Somali rapists in the streets of Minneapolis are not capable of grasping the consequences of something like this.
SPEAKER_12I felt horribly when I was told that when I learned her her parents and her father in particular is like was a tremendous Trump fan. He was all for Trump. Love Trump. We spoke to her father, Tim.
SPEAKER_23I think they have their narrative. I think they have to support their narrative.
SPEAKER_142You have a woman who aimed her car at a law enforcement officer and pressed on the accelerator. Nobody debates that. Our analysis of bystander footage appears to show the agent was not in the path of the victim's SUV. Nobody debates that.
SPEAKER_68It's impossible to ignore how female-driven a lot of this outrage is.
SPEAKER_141The moment the agent fires, he is standing here, to the left of the SUV. And the wheels are pointing to the right, away from the agent.
SPEAKER_142It was a lesbian agitator who got herself killed at the behest of her lesbian friend. I can believe that her death is a tragedy while also recognizing that it's a tragedy of her own making.
SPEAKER_09The person who lost their life here, Alex. The Fed said he was armed and threatening officers, but the armed suspect reacted violently.
SPEAKER_140A border patrol agent pushes a woman, Pretty gets in between the woman and the agent, who then appears to deploy pepper spray.
SPEAKER_93More than six masked agents.
SPEAKER_95Now, Trump administration officials accused Predi of becoming violent. Video from the scene, though, contradicts that narrative.
SPEAKER_14A neighbor was murdered. I mean, they were murdered on the street. I'm just angry. I'm seven years old. I'm angry.
SPEAKER_15What a scene in an American city in 2026. The growing outrage in Minneapolis, the images of a five-year-old boy returning home from preschool, detained by ICE. They say ICE officials were using the boy then as bait to try to arrest the boy's mother as well.
SPEAKER_135The chilling image of that little boy standing out in the cold, striking a cord with so many here.
SPEAKER_148Many businesses are shutting their doors today to protest immigration enforcement here in the Twin Cities. They're not going to go to work or school or shop, or as part of an economic blackout, it's being called a day of truth and freedom. Some call it a general strike. Minnesota's last major general strike was back in 1934. Organizers include faith leaders, scores of unions.
SPEAKER_113Thousands of people braved bone-chilling temperatures this afternoon for a rally in downtown Minneapolis.
SPEAKER_92Temperatures at negative eight and a low of negative 20. Thousands came out today and braved the cold. Marching through the street, you're afraid to go to rallies.
SPEAKER_53Whether it's 12, you're afraid to go to rallies because you don't want to be shot. You're afraid to stand up for things because of fear. It's important to show my kids that no, you can stand up for what you believe in.
SPEAKER_151One family says three of their children, including a six-month-old, had to be hospitalized after agents reportedly fired tear gas at their vehicle.
SPEAKER_14What the fuck is going on, dude?
SPEAKER_151This is insane. Gas grenades set off the airbags, trapping them inside as gas filled the car.
SPEAKER_13And when he came in, he was like lifeless. Had to give him mouth to mouth in CPR.
SPEAKER_14I've never protested in my life. I'm not fucking paid to be here like everybody fucking says. What the fuck is that? I gotta work in the goddamn morning, just like everybody else.
SPEAKER_17New video shows federal agents arriving at a popular Minneapolis restaurant, but employees in the community stood in their way.
SPEAKER_14I'm just here trying to stand up for community, dude.
SPEAKER_55They said to me, We're from the Department of Homeland Security. They said we don't need a warrant. I said, yes, you do.
SPEAKER_14We're all human beings here. I don't give a shit who you are, where you came from, what call you are. Doesn't fucking matter.
SPEAKER_87This is wrong. We defended this community.
SPEAKER_108I love my community, I love my city, and I hate what's happening to it with people who frankly aren't from here coming in and telling us who should be here. And I'm when it comes down to loving my neighbor, I'm just gonna love my neighbor. If Isa is gonna stay here, then I'm gonna stay here. We're sticking together as a community.
SPEAKER_87Minneapolis strong. Community first, they don't belong here, they're not this community, they're not what we believe in. We support and love each other, and you can see exactly what happens when they try to f with us.
SPEAKER_119America in 2026 is more divided than ever, but there is one thing that everyone can agree on. Fuck ice. And that comes from all the wrestlers, referees, and audience members at the AEW match last night. It's a wonderful thing to see.
SPEAKER_116Now you might think it's bad form to call somebody a Nazi, but then this is Greg Bovino. Here he is. Uh, again in Nazi drag. It looks like a bespoke coat, though Bovino swears he got it at a vintage store in Argentina.
SPEAKER_103The federal judge called Bovino, quote, evasive and not credible when talking about how agents use force against the public.
SPEAKER_10Were you telling us the truth? That's the question. Um, there you answer that yes or no? Yes or not, yes or no.
SPEAKER_42Okay. Have there been uses of force that have been less than proper?
SPEAKER_29No, all uses of force have been more than exemplary.
SPEAKER_103This video shows Bovino deploying tear gas at incredible protesters, despite being told by one of his own agents it wasn't necessary.
SPEAKER_47With respect, it feels as though, in some ways, you're blaming the victim.
SPEAKER_29The victim, the victims of the Border Patrol agents. I'm not blaming the Border Patrol agents. The victims are the Border Patrol agents.
SPEAKER_23The guy who just said that he was a veteran of war in Afghanistan won't blame me and said he's driving around town like an Afghan warlord.
SPEAKER_29Arrest as many people as you want to.
SPEAKER_107Hey fam, I was in Minneapolis and we just stumbled upon Greg Bovino at a fucking speedway from a free big photo shoot. For those following along at home, I have nothing against short men, but I do just have to report back there is about a four-inch height difference. Do you want to get closer so they can see?
SPEAKER_102Oh my god. She got him on his tippy toes, bro.
SPEAKER_107Greg, you're standing right there in front of me, but to everyone following along at home, I hope you fucking eat shit. I hope this keeps you up at night for the rest of your life, and no one fucking wants you here.
SPEAKER_102She got him on his tippy toes, talked mad shit directly to his face, cooked his ass. Oh my lord.
SPEAKER_00So we can confirm here that commander at large, Gregory Bovino is no longer that commander at large. He's been relieved of command. The ice surge in Minnesota appears to be coming to a close.
SPEAKER_57I have proposed that President Trump has concluded that this surge operation complete.
SPEAKER_08And there you have it, after more than two months of increased ice presence in Minnesota border zone.
SPEAKER_19Whether it was standing in minus 40 degrees temperatures or it was delivering food to a family that simply wanted to feed their children, Minnesotans never wavered. And for that, I will be forever grateful. I think it's probably safe to say the rest of the country will be forever grateful because they showed what it means to stand up for what's right, to stand up for the true principles of this country, to stand with the Constitution, and to stand with human decency.
SPEAKER_123If you'll allow me to be a sentimental door for a minute, it reminded me of a great line from a lesser Star Wars installment. In episode nine, is when it looks like the resistance is on the precipice of defeat. A legion of ships from around the galaxy arise to put themselves on the line and join the fight against the first order. One of the order's generals, played by Richard E. Grant, stares out at the Armada, dumbfounded, and turns to a subordinate. Like we saw in Minneapolis. ICE has been lean on state and local law enforcement, even deputizing sheriffs and others to make arrests on its behalf. From NPR.
SPEAKER_60The greater cooperation with local police, right, that represents this quieter approach than what we saw, for example, in Minnesota or even in Chicago, where, you know, remember, observers would track ice and use whistles to alert neighbors to their presence. When local police are doing immigration work, it makes it harder for the community to know what's going on. That's according to Kristen Etter of the Texas Immigration Law Council. Your whistle doesn't work in Texas.
SPEAKER_47You're not going to need a whistle in Texas because you're never going to have that Minneapolis moment. They're going to try to keep this hidden as much as possible.
SPEAKER_123Mark Wayne Mullen, Christy Noam's successor at the Department of Homeland Security. He alluded to the strategy at his Senate confirmation hearing. It whisked them off in the dead of night, person by person. Family by family. But even as they've aimed to be less visible, ice is still on the streets, still terrorizing communities, and still killing people. And over just the past week, we've seen ice murders in Houston.
SPEAKER_95Alright, we're getting a new look at surveillance video that shows the moments before the deadly ice shooting in Texas earlier this week.
SPEAKER_21Lorenzo Salgado's son says he is a Mexican immigrant who has been living in the United States for 35 years with no criminal history.
SPEAKER_148The 52-year-old father, husband, small business owner.
SPEAKER_48The Department of Homeland Security says the ice agents involved were not wearing body cameras and the unmarked cars they were driving were not equipped with dash cameras. But the videos that have been uncovered raise questions about the federal authorities' description of what happened.
SPEAKER_129That's right. And in Maine.
SPEAKER_77She's got her little pink backpack sitting next to her on the ground that she's crying. Just inconsolable. So so a little girl found daddy laying in the street up there.
SPEAKER_123Do you expect accountability for either of these murders?
SPEAKER_125I sure as shit don't.
SPEAKER_123There was no accountability for Renee Good. No accountability for Alex Pratty. And both of them were American citizens. White American citizens. The fact that no one who has paid a modicum of attention to the news thinks that these slains are going to be substantively investigated. It shows how deep we are into stage four. Masked agents of the state senselessly killing people in broad daylight. As witnesses watch on. And often as the camera phones roll. We expect the authorities to shamelessly lie. We expect them to treat us like fucking morons. We expect them to blame the innocent people, people whose blood they spill into the streets for their own murders. We expect them to protect the slayers and to demean the slain. And they expect us to expect that. A society doesn't reach fascism's fourth stage by transforming its entire population into bloodthirsty sadists. It gets there by wearing enough of us down. By badgering us into giving up. By making us forget what basic decency looks like. By acclimating us to evil.
SPEAKER_125That acclimation, that sense of learned helplessness. It can end in very dark places.
Kill the Shark
SPEAKER_123When left to its own devices, fascism does not settle into an equilibrium. It spirals out. As a sham ideology, fascism can't deliver on its promises. It promises its adherence, a return to a past that never existed.
SPEAKER_43And we will make America great again!
SPEAKER_123A past that never can exist.
SPEAKER_125And it needs ever more enemies to blame. Its natural culmination is war abroad.
SPEAKER_123This is why attempts at appeasement are so futile.
SPEAKER_32The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem, which has now been achieved, is, in my view, only the relief to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace.
SPEAKER_123You cannot bargain fascism into stasis. It's not interested in partnership. It's not interested in reaching across the aisle. And whatever it says. It's not interested in making deals. It lives in a state of self-created emergency. It lives for violence.
SPEAKER_124And it lives for domination.
SPEAKER_125You have to dominate. You have to dominate.
SPEAKER_123Like a shark, it's always moving. It pumps ceaselessly forward, hunting for the next kill, new prey to dismember and devour. New enemies.
SPEAKER_125You don't negotiate with a shark. You fucking kill it. Imagine that you could travel back in time to October 2024.
SPEAKER_123Just before our country decided to play a society-scale game of Russian roulette. Imagine you told the world of that moment all the things that we've covered in this episode. Trump's assault on the press and on universities. His aggression toward our nominal allies. His men in masks. Killing people on the streets with no accountability. Building monuments to himself.
SPEAKER_146Trump announcing construction crews will work 20 hours a day for up to three years to finish the 250-foot arch before he leaves office.
SPEAKER_101Trump derangement syndrome. Cases are flaring.
SPEAKER_123Our present is so, so, so far from that past. And that was a past we all lived in less than two years ago. Trump has more than two years left in office. This is not as bad as things are going to get. They will get worse. It didn't drop from the sky fully formed. The Nazi shark pumped forward, forward, forward. It was a continuous journey. One stage leading to the next. Mega, it hasn't yet metastasized into fascism's fifth and final stage. But we have concentration camps. We have secret police. We have an FBI and a Department of Justice explicitly targeting regime enemies.
SPEAKER_125The shark is circling.
SPEAKER_123At this point, don't trust any so-called voice of reason who beseeches you to calm down. Those motherfuckers have been wrong over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_81People wonder about the peaceful transfer of power. I can assure you it will be peaceful. And if the Republicans lose, we will accept that result.
SPEAKER_50A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there, which I know is fucked up. It's just not as fucked up as I thought it was.
SPEAKER_123They aren't reasonable. They're either stupid, complicit, or in denial. Fascism can be turned back. Other countries have done it. In 1932, the Finnish government stared down a fascist coup with its president suppressing the rebellion through a radio address rather than bullets. In 1936, French communists, socialists, and liberals set aside their differences and formed a popular front to beat their country's rising fascist movement through ballots. More recently, Brazil did what the U.S. couldn't or wouldn't. Locking up the lying fascist bitch who mobilized the country's right-wing freaks to storm their own capital. Two years and two days after ours did.
SPEAKER_80The former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has been sentenced to more than 27 years in jail for trying to orchestrate a coup after he lost the 2022 election.
SPEAKER_123An actual functional democracy to our South actually took crimes against the Republic seriously.
SPEAKER_124The shark can be killed. The shark must be killed. Time to pick up the fucking harpoon.
Outro
SPEAKER_123In accordance with the principles of fair use, we use clips from Kung Fu Panda 3, Fox Business, MS Now, The Daily Show, NBC News, ABC News, Today, CNN, World Event News, CBS News, Fox News, 60 Minutes, France 24 English, KSDK News, ELF, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, All Things Considered, The New Republic, The Interview, Half Baked, PBS News Hour, This Week, Inside Edition, The Hill, The ITN Archive, Human, All Too Human, Comrades in Arms, Forbes, The Guardian, Face the Nation, National Conservatism Conference, Politics and Pros, Bloomberg Television, New York Post, Politico, The Associated Press, CBS Chicago, KTVU Fox 2 San Francisco, The Daily, The Home Shopping Network, Fox 5 Atlanta, The Electronic Intifada, Democracy Now, WCAX, CBC News, America First with Nicholas J. Fuentes, Tucker Carlson Network, Periscope Film, Dropsite News, KARE 11, CBS Miami, Nuremberg, Reds, Engine YouTube, British Path, The Occult History of the Third Reich, Family Guy, BBC News, Gateway Pundit, Times of India, Rebel News, Moynihan Report, Hannity, InfoWars, Aladdin on Broadway, Business Insider Today, Vice Media, CNBC, NBC Bay Area, Hot Save America, C-SPAN, KCRA3, KVUE, KHOU 11, Through Line, Lexus, Nick Shirley's YouTube, Harrisburg 100, ABC7 New York, News Nation, Dick Clark's New Year's Rock and Eve, Newsweek, Overlord 7225, Matt Walsh, Reuters, The New York Times, USA Today, CBS Boston, 13WMAZ, Fox 9, Minneapolis, St. Paul, WCCO CBS Minneapolis, Rule American Media, Love It Or Leave It, Son Piker, The Wall Street Journal, Live Now from Fox, Star Wars Episode 9, The Rise of Skywalker, Morning Edition, All In with Chris Hayes, News Center Main, The Doors, Brute, News.com.au ABC News Australia, The Wall Street Journal, and Real Time with Bill Maher.
SPEAKER_124Music from Megan Wafford, Yu-Dio, Nine Inch Nails, in the Great Pacific Garbage Vortex. Until next time.
