'Chaos, Distraction and the Danger to Democracy' with George Pappas

In this conversation, Anna explores some contemporary political and geopolitical tensions with former US immigration judge George Pappas. George covers the the challenges currently facing democracy, in the US in particular, and names chaos, the politics of cruelty and culture war distractions (including around immigration) as techniques being used to distract from the deeply material challenges faced by so many, and that are now in such urgent need of addressal.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

My name is Annette Rear and I welcome you to Comp Explorations, a podcast that explores using combinations of conversation, meditation, hypnotic techniques, intellectual inquiries, sound, music, language, and curiosity, to explore healing, spirituality, and imaginative reality tellings for the 21st century and beyond. George has been in Britain at some point in the past. And we wanted to explore today this whole question about immigration and what's going on both in states and possibly in the UK, and just the pressures around immigration. But George, do you want to kind of fill people in on your experience in recent times with the Trump regime?

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me onto your podcast and to your um audience. And um yes, the recent experience of my judicialship uh or experience on the bench is pretty uh dramatic. We're in unprecedented territory. So what I've gone through has really never happened before. Um, we have a government that is um defying what we call here federal court orders. And traditionally, if the judiciary, um, or like the Supreme Court in the UK issues an order, uh, you would expect the executive or the legislature to uh fall in line and follow those orders. Well, we're we're in an environment where that's not happening. We have a constitutional crisis where the president's defying court orders. And the immigration courts have fallen into this vortex of undermining what we call constitutional due process rights, the right to have a fair hearing. Um, this has been the uh the guiding North Star of our immigration jurisprudence for the last, you know, 30, 40 years. And that's been directly assaulted by this administration. I, and probably another 110 judges were summarily dismissed by the Trump administration. And the reason why he could do that to us is that uh our judicial department falls under the Department of Justice, which falls under the executive branch. Unlike what we call Article III courts, which are independent, those courts are part of the judiciary. So our separation of powers has been a little convoluted. Our judicial role has been placed under the executive's authority. We're not under the judicial branch, which is why we're vulnerable to these kinds of uh political pressures. In the past, there's been pressure on these judges because they fall under the Department of Justice, and the jurisprudence that can be implemented can also be um uh cited by the Attorney General. They can't step in and create their own precedents, and then we have to follow that. That's a little different from the other uh courts in this country. Uh, but in the past, you never had a wholesale dismantling of the judicial branch in the executive office. We're known as the Executive Office of Immigration Review or an agency under the Department of Justice. And so since January 20th, when President Trump was inaugurated, within hours he fired our entire leadership uh in uh Virginia and then proceeded uh on a every couple of weeks basis to wholesale fire 13 or 15 or 18 judges nationwide. We've now reached a stage where about 130 of us have disappeared. There were about 700 judges in January of 2025. Today we have less than 600. And to add insult to injury, and there's many injuries here, uh, we were being replaced by military judges known as JAGs, who have no immigration law experience, being put into this position that we were in, where we needed at least two years of training to really do a good job. And yet these folks are coming in with no experience, and they're called temporary judges. They're not even permanent. So basically, what we have here is the installation of a rubber stamp regime in immigration courts. Um, so those are just some of the recent highlights of what's happened to the immigration courts and due process.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

And would you say, George, that part of the kind of underlying agenda and rationale behind the removal of immigration charges is precisely to remove the experience and to create the kind of pressure that makes it even more inefficient. So that so that actually there's a greater alleged justification for the role of ICE in managing the chaos, the alleged chaos, or the created chaos, or the expanded chaos of immigration processes.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Well, hang on to the word you used, chaos, because it's the operative word here. Um what we have here is the politics of cruelty, and I've produced many messages and broadcasts on this. The politics of cruelty has many facets, one of which is to dismantle the uh immigration court system and due process and fair hearings. That's one facet. Uh, the other process of cruelty is to make detention so horrible that people who are detained will beg to self-deport and leave the country. That's another facet of cruelty. The most visible uh policy of cruelty obviously is ice and starting in Los Angeles and then moving up to Portland, uh, California, uh, and then to other cities and culminating in Minneapolis, as you saw, where we had uh two American citizens um murdered by ICE. Uh, many were assaulted, and even videos are coming into play now showing how ICE has lied and fabricated their interactions with the public. And so what's happened here, and this mirrors what happened during the Vietnam War in the United States, for the first time, Americans are realizing this is no longer an immigration issue. The violence and terror that ICE has inflicted on these cities has now morphed into a threat to everyone's civil liberties. And so now this is no longer an immigration crisis. I will be so bold as to say that the successful resistance on the ground by Americans against ICE has been very effective. These have been nonviolent resistance. This has been key. Uh, you don't see riots, you don't see buildings burning, you don't see cars burning. Uh you see nonviolent, aggressive, but nonviolent resistance to how ICE is going door to door to door on sit on streets looking for people in their homes. And so that resistance and the debacle with the murders of uh Freddie and Good uh finally uh compelled the administration to backpedal. And they brought in Tom Holman to sort of put out the fire that was raging uh in Minneapolis. But I will be so bold to say, in addition to what we call the Epstein files, that this successful resistance against ICE is another reason why the timing of this insane war in the Middle East was launched. It's it's the old playbook. Let's deflect the tension by starting a campaign overseas and take the spotlight away from what's happening domestically. Uh, I don't think that's a very far-fetched um uh statement. So the politics of cruelty has inaugurated the reality of chaos. And your word of chaos is so operative here because it plays into a system that's been going on for probably over 100 years. Chaos creates opportunity for the moneyed class to scoop up profits and resources at a discount. Chaos represents profit for a sector of society, and it's happening right here. Uh, chaos produced the Iranian coup in 1953. Chaos produced the uh Venezuelan um invasion uh just a few weeks ago by the Trump administration using a smokescreen of calling it a police action. It was uh it was a it was an act of war without the authorization of Congress. But that chaos has given uh the uh moneyed interests in Venezuela, uh the U.S. interests control over the oil and gas. So that's gonna come back to American pockets. The chaos in 1953 uh brought in the Shah and was allowing both the British and the Americans to extract oil profits. Those are just two simple examples of how chaos creates profit. This chaos now with the Iranian war is also about money and deflection. Um, so your word of chaos is so critical to what's going on with the immigration as well. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Yep. So, yeah, so you are quite an outspoken ex-judge, uh, and you're doing your best to raise people's awareness of what's going on. What's going on with the rest of your former judicial colleagues? Are you aware of where they are and what they're doing? And how are the American immigration judiciary and the judiciary more broadly handling the Trump the Trump administration, their manipulation and their selective ignoring of courts and the packing of the Supreme Court? How are judges who've spent, I don't know, sometimes decades um immersed in jurisprudence, immersed in constitutional values, immersed in legal interpretation? How are they handling all of that, George? Is there any sense of kind of a collective um position emerging, or is it very fragmented?

SPEAKER_01 10:58

It's very solidified. We have an organization called justice.com. These are all over 280 former Department of Justice lawyers, judges, and other officials that have either been fired under this administration or were forced out or resigned. And our organization is there to help each other, uh, to help spread our discourse through the media. We have countless um interviews with the media across the United States and to uh solicit funding for any uh litigation that is necessary for some of its members. So this branch started uh with Stacy Young. She's done a phenomenal job of starting Justice.com out of Washington, D.C. She was an 18-year veteran in the civil rights division, and so she's galvanized um a lot of unity amongst the ex-Department of Justice officials, which include immigration judges. In addition to that, uh many of my colleagues, about 70 of us, have been collectively together uh communicating in terms of how we can go and move forward in our next chapter. We realize that we've been unjustly removed. That shock and awe is gone. We we know that happens. And many of us are either um moving into other um government jobs on the state level. Uh, some are working with private law firms, uh, some like me are restarting their law practices. Uh, we're moving on with our lives, but we're moving on uh knowing that we have uh unity behind us. We have a collective experience which is really unique. Um, but a few of us, like myself, are also outspoken. We have continued to speak uh in public forums about what's happened to the immigration courts and trying to relate that to a broader ideological uh assault on our democracy. So it's not just an immigration issue. So that's what our colleagues are doing, my former colleagues are doing. In terms of what the judiciary or judges are doing on a broader level, you have to give a lot of credit to the federal judges that are on the U.S. district court level and the circuit court of appeals. These are all just below the Supreme Court. They have been the last constitutional guardrail that has kept the flames in check because Congress has abdicated its role to be a check and balance to the executive. As you know, Congress is controlled by the Republican Party, and they have done nothing to contain the abuses of uh Trump and his administration. Uh, however, the federal courts have not, and they have consistently uh ruled where the administration has overstepped uh in its constitutional boundaries, and they have slapped this administration with contempt and with uh a record of astonishment. There's over 50 uh cases at least, maybe more now, where the federal government has defied judicial court orders. Uh in Minneapolis, the federal judge uh admonished the uh assistant chief, uh, I'm sorry, assistant attorney, who, in reply to the judge, says, Your Honor, cite me for contempt of court. I don't have enough hands to handle the workload. We're buried. You can, I'd rather go in jail for 24 hours than deal with this nightmare that we're dealing with. They are overwhelmed. And of course, because the immigration courts have folded as a due process location, uh, many of the uh initial trial um facts of findings of fact have now morphed into the federal court level, and they have been overloaded with over 18,000 habeas corpus petitions, uh, most of which, about 95%, have been granted. But this is work that's traditionally done in the immigration courts, not in federal courts. I just got another one today that was granted to force the uh immigration courts to hold a bond hearing. That's another discussion. But the judges have held their line. Uh, they've been a pillar of constitutional protection. Uh, as far as the Supreme Court, uh, they have really dropped the ball by allowing this administration to function within what's called the shadow docket. These are decisions without any reasoned explanation. And then they have the audacity to criticize other federal judges for not following precedence. And the retort to that is you didn't give us any precedence. You just gave us a blank yes or no, and you expect us to use it as precedent. You know, so even the judges amongst themselves are now criticizing the Supreme Court uh for not giving them any reasoned decision. And these are temporary uh decisions by the Supreme Court when they allow the administration uh to succeed on a temporary basis, it allows the administration to inflict damage, either constitutionally, either with civil liberties, uh, deprivation of people's uh property and life. Obviously, many people have been deported illegally. Uh so the MO, the modus operandi of the administration is even if it's illegal, let's just do it. Because by the time the courts catch up with us, the damage will have been done. To give you a glaring example of this, uh, there was a memo written in 2025 by Todd Lyons, the ICE director, that said to the prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York, ICE has the authority to arrest people in immigration courthouses. On March 24th, 2026, just a few days ago, the prosecutors for the Southern District of New York received notice that, in fact, that memo was wrong, and that the ICE legal guidance on that memo was wrong, and they had to apologize and give notice to the federal judge that ICE did not have legal authority to arrest immigrants in immigration courts. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people were illegally arrested in these courts. They were illegally put into tension, illegally deported. Astronomical debacle, uh, huge uh liability now for the government in violating, actually, an admission of violation of the law. This is one of the rare times that we have an admission from the administration that they legally made a mistake. And uh there's uh an act called the uh Federal Tort Claims Act, where individuals can sue for money damages uh if the government has exceeded their authority. There will be many tort claim acts filed because of what the administration has done. But you've seen the television news, you've seen the reports how ICE has gone into these courthouses, causing terror, slamming people to the ground, putting them in cuffs, children, wives going through such trauma, all done illegally. All. So the law, the legal system is catching up. The federal courts are the ones within the judiciary that have done the most to contain the constitutional meltdown. And so that's been the backdrop, what we've done collectively as former judges, and what the judges who are still sitting on the federal bench are still doing to protect the separation of powers. That's that's where we are today.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

How effective is that, though, George? Because there's a kind of tension there, isn't there? I'm sure it's um I'm sure it's not a monolithic binary picture. But on the one hand, you've got judges making judgments, you know, offering declaratory justice and you know, presumably having some impact. But you also mentioned that the administration routinely ignores judicial judgments. So where's it shaked down? Where what's the balance there in terms of, yeah, the judges are, you know, they're speaking out, they're making the judgments, they're making the declarations. But if the administration is basically going, well, you don't have any power to stop us, where's the balance in terms of the balance of effectiveness there?

SPEAKER_01 18:44

The power, the balance has been reduced to public discourse. Um, the boots on the ground, the people, the citizens. You saw the uh No Kings march a few days ago. We had about 12 million people marching in the United States, not counting Europe. It's going to be that kind of open resistance, nonviolent resistance, that is going to help um remove the abuses that we are seeing. The window on our democracy here is close to being shut. Uh, we don't have much time left. The uh consequences of chaos, which includes defying court orders, is manifold. You have the defiance of judicial orders, you have the reckless foreign policy adventures from Venezuela, to the killing of people in boats in the Caribbean by our military, to the uh irresponsible threat to annex Greenland, uh, to the threat of leaving NATO, to the accusation that Ukraine started the war against Russia, uh, to the debacle now with Iran. Uh, the economic ripple effects just from Iran and the Strait of Hormos have yet to be fully impacted. It's going to take a little time, but within weeks, uh, petrol is not going to be the only thing that's going to be expensive. Uh, this is a life-changing event. Uh, the normal that we had prior to the invasion into Iraq by uh the Trump administration is not going to come back. So all of this creates a sea of chaos, but also a sea of awareness. People are beginning to wake up here. Um, they realize it's immigration is just part of a sea of complaints now. It's not the only issue. Uh, you know, inflation is going to pick up, unemployment is going to suffer. Uh, people are starting to lose their homes due to foreclosures in Nevada and Florida. Those real estate markets are beginning to crumble. We've lost over 500,000 manufacturing jobs just in the last year and a half. So the effects of all of these um adverse consequences on our economy and our political discourse are coalescing to finally bring out the sleeping giant, which is the people, because that's the only institution that is left to counter the billions that have been spent to gaslight an American public. The mega element of our society is not going to change no matter what level of evidence we produce. Uh, that is not a fact-based movement. That is a visceral movement that has morphed into identifying themselves with Trump. So any criticism of Trump, they consider a direct attack on themselves. Those people are not going to be convinced. Um, however, there are still large swaths of American society that are waking up and realize they can no longer sit on the sidelines and not vote or speak out. So that movement is finally taking off. Um, I'm encouraged with the millennials, they're getting involved in that movement as well. So, yes, we do expect a Change uh in the upcoming elections in the House of Representatives. I expect some movement in the Senate, and that will contain some of the legislative effects of what this administration has been doing. But we have got a long way to go in this country. The Democrats are not united. They're still influenced by the moneyed interests that control the right. Both parties are guilty to succumbing to the uh the moneyed interests. And so we have a lot of work to do on campaign finance reform because obviously it affects our democracy. So, yes, the judiciary alone can't do it. They've contained some of the fallout legally and judicially, but that's not enough. We have been reduced to the streets where we have to vote and get the word out. So that's my job, speaking out wherever I can to help raise awareness about what this administration is doing. And to let people understand that there's an ideological um foundation to this movement. Um, the ideological smoke screen, which I call a smoke screen, is there to confuse people about who a real American is. You have AJD Vance out there uh telling that unless you have ancestors that go back to the American Civil War, you're not considered a real American, even though you may have been naturalized to citizenship just a few days ago, a few weeks ago, or a few years ago. He has created a hierarchy of um uh power and control and privilege, which is another way of saying he is promoting white supremacy in the United States. And uh as someone recently uh introduced me to uh an individual called Mr. Yarvin. Thank you very much, uh Anna, for introducing me to this um dark web character who has been promoted and financed by Peter Thiel, who financed J.D. Vance, who has brought in his own uh uh supporters into the Trump administration. Thiel is just one billionaire that hasn't had an oversized reaction or influence on our politics. He's not the only one. You've got the Koch brothers and so forth and so on. But that dark ideology of who a real American is promotes chaos. Chaos is good for Peter Thiel because that gives him an opportunity to make money. Uh, chaos is good for the other billionaires because they can scoop up and purchase resources or finance regime change. And chaos internally uh tends to allow um run roughshite over constitutional norms, institutional norms, and of course the dismantling of the institutional structure of this country is part of that chaos. The Department of Education has been eviscerated, USAAID has been eviscerated, which means billions in foreign aid have stopped. Um, the State Department lost 1,500 people who were fired in one go. The Consumer Protection Board was almost eviscerated, but for the federal courts. Uh, these are just some of the institutions that have been either attacked, dismantled, or eviscerated. And most people don't realize that that institutional structure is what protected our free market economy in this country. The myth is that the free economy creates jobs. No, the government creates the environment to have a free economy. Those free economies have rules. But for the government, those rules would not be in place. And um, I can go on and on about this. But to get back to your point, the people, the citizens, that is where the guardrails have to be remain firm in order for us to stop the assault, both domestically and internationally, in terms of what our country is doing at the moment. Um I just hope that Europe, you know, says a prayer for us because we have our work cut out for us. Uh, we have a fight on our hands that is not national, it is global. And uh that is the threat, as you can see. Just choking off the Strait of Hormuz is now having global impacts on Europe. Europe is caught in a bind. They were buying gas from Russia, that caused a problem. Then they started buying gas from us, though that's causing a problem because our president is holding Europe hostage. Our president of the United States is holding Europe hostage. Wow, things have changed.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

They have. Um, just coming back to this point about the people being the final guardrail, right? And you mentioned the vote and the election. I I know that you're talking really about the midterms, but I know that there are some local elections that are also taking place and some districts are flipping blue. Do you think, George, that the midterms will go ahead? And if they do go ahead, do you think that they will be a charade emptied of true meaning by manipulation? Um, Bannon, Stephen Bannon's already talking about putting ICE agents at the polling stations, which will have a massive chilling effect on minority vote. The Save America Act, as Trump insists on calling it, would eviscerate the female vote. I mean, do you honestly think that the midterms will be the checkpoint that so many commentators seem to feel they will be?

SPEAKER_01 27:09

Well, President Trump is really deranged at the moment. He's desperate, uh, he's flailing from hour to hour, not day to day. There's no strategy, but one strategy he does have at all costs, try to disrupt the midterm elections. That we know is going to happen, and it's going to be attempted in several ways. He's trying to hold Congress hostage unless they pass the SAB Act. Well, he doesn't have the votes in the Senate, so it's not going to happen. Um, he's instructed the Department of Justice to file these lawsuits against maybe, I don't know, 10 or 20 states to give up their voter rolls. That's not going to work. The federal government has no province, constitutional province. Those are state-controlled ballots and voter rolls. The federal government does not control that. The federal government does not control the elections. Um, but there is one wild card here. One. If there is the equivalent of another 9-11 in the United States, I can guarantee that there'll be a state of emergency declared. Uh habeas corpus will be suspended. Anyone that's perceived to be an enemy or threat to national security will be arrested. That's another reason why they're spending $35 billion right now to buy new warehouses to process so-called immigrants. It's not for the immigrants, it's for everybody when and if that state of emergency arises, which is why this debacle in the Middle East is so dangerous. Um, as bad as it is in terms of the economic supply chain disruption, it increases astronomically the chances that Iran or some proxy will launch a major terrorist attack in the United States, which would be a gift to this administration, because that's exactly what they want to have.

SPEAKER_00 29:06

It'll be that or a false flag, won't it? Or a false flag. I mean, you know, I mean, I think it would be a very obvious play from the ideology driving, say, Miller and Bannon and others, a very obvious play would be a false flag, which you know, and and Miller's always talking about the insurrection act, is he not? I mean, the the kind of signals are there. So in if if if that happens, George, and if if the midterms are called off or or if they go ahead, but they're a kind of authoritarian sham, what guardrail realistically is left in terms of the people?

SPEAKER_01 29:55

No, we're in the unknown. I mean, obviously, even if the Democrats recapture the House of Representatives, uh, the administration will continue to attack the um efficacy of the election. It's already started now. You know, that's why he's alleging fraud everywhere where there was no fraud. And he will blame fraud again if the Democrats steal the election again. That drum beat won't start. And that obviously caters to his base. Um, this is a generational issue. This is not going to be solved with one election cycle. The damage here has been huge. Um, you know, Mark Carney out of Canada, you know, hit it right on the head. The old order is gone. We're entering a new uh system of uh reality, and um the middle countries have to fend for themselves. In terms of domestically, um it's really going to be tough to say where we're going after this. Obviously, if we can contain some of the uh fire drill or fires with the midterms, that's great. But the battle for public discourse, the battle for truth is going to be an ongoing battle. Uh, the preservation of our so-called democracy is still a work in progress. Uh, our generation is going to have to put up a vigorous fight to counter all of the tentacles that are attacking it. Uh, Bannon is just an architect of chaos. I mean, that's all he's promoting, is chaos. Bannon has got no structural replacement for any of this. Um, Bannon and his followers, and that includes Jarvin, it includes Peter Thiel, it includes J.D. Vance and a whole host of others. Uh, they believe that chaos will give them the platform to bring in the CEOs and the um the titans of industry to control our society. Um so we're in uncharted waters. Uh, if we let this lunatic fringe contain, I'm sorry, obtain uh power, and they do have power right now, uh, and if they continue to exert power, the institutions that we know will melt away. And whether it's due process, individual rights, civil liberties, economic growth, all of the above, all of that's going to be threatened. So unfortunately, here, the only guardrail left is the people. And if this movement that we've seen with the No Kings efforts produces new coalitions, uh, then I'm cautiously optimistic that this country will prevail. We've been through a lot worse. And now we are at another inflection point where our democracy is under the greatest stress ever. I mean, we've fought wars, World War II and others. We've had a civil war. Uh, this is a new kind of civil war. It's a um it's a war which attacks the very structure which keeps us together as a country. All the norms that we have built up over the centuries are under threat as we speak. And the role of media, the role of um um uh social media companies has played a huge role in turbocharging the disinformation and the gaslighting that is going to have to be addressed because that information uh gaslighting that has been turbocharged has unleashed so many negative forces in our democracy. And then, of course, you have the uh the Russians and the Chinese and the others uh taking advantage of all of our divisions and amplify them further with their own uh false flags. So our society is under assault. Um, we are our ship is um sinking, the cracks have started, it hasn't sunk, but we are definitely in trouble. And let's hope the guardrail that we do have left can at least put down put out the um the leakage in our ship so we can restore it to some sort of stability. But uh politically, we're fighting World War III right here in the United States. Right now, it's bad.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

It is bad. I I agree. Um, what would you say to British voters going to the polls? We've got the local elections in May, May the 7th, I think. Um, and of course, we have here some discourse with the Reform Party, Advance UK, Restore, uh, UKIP is still active, and we've got people like Liz Trust talking for um calling for a kind of Trump-like approach, a British ice. What would you say, as someone who's living through this in the US right now, as someone who's not given in my experience to hyperbole or hysteria, what would you say to British voters who might be tempted to think that these are solutions, that the American model, the Trump model, offers some kind of solution to uh an alleged, and I'm gonna say alleged, immigration crisis in the UK because actually it's vastly overplayed and manipulated. But what would you say to average British voters who were they to stumble across this conversation, as someone who's seen it as a as a judge, you've seen the inside of it, you've seen stuff going on, what would you say to British voters about whether or not they can trust these approaches from people like reform? How plausible should they find that?

SPEAKER_01 35:18

Well, if you're using our example, it's no mystery of what's going to happen. You're going to have the boots from the authoritarian state um marching on your streets, arresting people who are perceived to be threats to British society. Um it's happening here in the United States. Gaslighting and public rhetoric is going to create an ideological um patriotism to sanction what these uh enforces of your homeland are going to do. Don't be fooled. You fell for the game once with Boris Johnson when he told you what Brexit would do. Well, that lie has cost you big time. Moving forward, um, the special relationship that you had with the Americans on the governmental level is melting down daily. Uh, your dependence on American military hardware has got to change. You have to move back to Europe. I'm glad that uh the government is working closely with uh the Germans and the French to craft a new horizon for European unity. Britain is part of Europe. Let's not forget that. The channel is just a few miles wide. You're part of Europe. Uh, it was nice that you had a special relationship starting with Churchill and Roosevelt, but you can bet that that's not working anymore. You have a president that's insulting you, your own prime minister, mocking your own prime minister. Finally, Sturmer woke up and said, I've been I've been insulted. Um, no more palace gallus for our administration. Please, no more invitations from the king. In fact, your king is coming here in two weeks to do what? I don't know. But in terms of Britain and its society, the lunatic fringe um started a while ago. I forgot his name. The river of blood speech. Was it at Enoch Powell?

SPEAKER_00 37:17

Enoch Powell, yeah, Enoch Powell, all those years ago.

SPEAKER_01 37:20

Enoch Powell and the rivers of blood speech uh resonates to this very day. Um, you know, you had the fascists with Mosley in the 1930s. This is not old for Britain, you've seen this before. Uh, and Enoch Powell was right that immigration would eventually be used as a political push-button issue to uh create a more um protective uh political environment, uh which is what the conservatives relied upon. Don't use immigration as a scapegoat. Immigration is a plus. Embrace it. It brings new ideas, new vitality, new business to your society. Uh don't become hungry and create an iron curtain around your country to protect the homogeneity of the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom or England or Scotland, you've been global for centuries. Don't become isolationist all of a sudden. Uh, broaden your network, broaden your alliances, make the Commonwealth real, not just a rubber stamp of you know, conventions. Mark Carney is taking the lead on that. Follow Mark Carney, embrace those coalitions. You can no longer depend on what the United States has done. Actually, the best thing that's happened to you is that the United States has blown itself in the head. You realize you cannot depend on us. You have to build infrastructures and institutions long-term to protect your own society. Uh, Liz Truss couldn't manage a mousetrap, let alone the United Kingdom. And she proved that when she was Chancellor, why, for two weeks. Uh, there was a financial meltdown. Uh, she will listen to any of these cycle fence out of the uh Lunatic Fringe from the Right. Uh, and she too is receiving money from CPAC and others that promote her uh fringe economics. Um, Britain has a long history of working class coalitions, of working class politics. Uh, the labor movement is much more solidified, even though it's been diluted to some extent in the um the recent memory. Still, the tradition of working class unions uh entering power, uh, certainly with the uh the labor government, has a long history efficacy in the United Kingdom. I don't think that's going to go away. Um, the power of the working class remains in place. So you have a liberal tradition, when I say the liberal party as opposed to the US, that's still in place in the UK. The conservatives, the Tories in the UK are the ones with the real identity crisis. Uh, and I think let them have their own uh party because they are not fit to lead, and you saw that over the last 20 years. The biggest problem that the UK faced, and it and it happened with the United States, is that Labor and the American Democratic Party were moved into the center. You saw that with Clinton and Tony Blair. They left their ideological um places and moved into the center, and there was a blurring between what was conservative and what was liberal. And um, you know, you saw Tony Blair and um his successor, Gordon Brown, embracing, you know, the city down there in London. Big mistake.

SPEAKER_00 40:20

Um that was neoliberalism, wasn't it, George? Um I mean, neoliberalism is the is the big beast in all of that. You know, it's kind of intrinsically neocolonial and you know, profoundly predatory, and lifted the ceiling off inequality in a way that has permitted the the mass accumulation of wealth by a small group of individuals in a way that's intrinsically destructive to democratic balance.

SPEAKER_01 40:50

Intrinsically, they've they've hijacked our democracy here, and the liberal billionaire class has done a phenomenal job of financing their lobbyists, which create the legislations which protect their interests, which create the inequality. And it's this inequality over the last you know 26 years that has created the uh the fuel that has produced the MAGA movement. Um, the dislocation, the alienation, uh, the financialization under neoliberalism has alienated the individual from their humanity. Uh, hospitals are judged on their profitability. In the universities, as you know, universities are now looked at as a balance sheet. Uh, entire departments are being eviscerated in the UK and also in the US because of the financialization of education. This whole neoliberal matrix of using numbers and accounting figures to judge human worth and national wealth is just atrocious. But the end result is that it's created an inequality. And that's why people feel lost, they feel helpless, they feel isolated, and then they become subject to the Liz Trushes and the Donald Trumps and the Nigel Farages. These charlatans then emerge uh from the fringes to produce these solutions to the dismay and inequality. And so that's where society becomes vulnerable to these French politicians.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

They promise they promise to address the material conditions of you know the inequality, yeah, inequality in itself is is problematic, but the real disparity is material. It's the fact that people struggle with two or three jobs and still have to choose between eating and eating. It's the fact that there's a growing, what we could call a precariat, people who live from day to day. Um, and that material inequality, we're constantly deflected from looking at it properly politically by stupid culture war distractions and of course immigration and the cult, you know, the kind of culture war dimensions of the immigration panic. I am really thankful that there are more and more people waking up and saying, actually, we need to talk about the power of the 1% against the 99%, and we need to talk about the material conditions in which people are struggling to put meals on the table. This is vital that we get to this material level of the inequality. You know, it's not just inequality of status, it's lived, hard, raw, desperation, and people on the edge. And it's really vital that we address that. And I don't see how any of the policies, so called, offered by Trump, or the policy position of people like the Tories in Britain, or even uh, to a large extent, even neoliberal Labour, because they're still quintessential. Essentially neoliberal. They're nicer about it, but they're still neoliberal. I don't see how they are actually getting to the root, the material root of the problem. And we need to actually go far, far deeper, I think. Um, and so I think to me, that's one of the one of the issues at the moment in British politics is the cultural distraction from what's really going on, for what's really at stake.

SPEAKER_01 44:25

The cultural disraction has been the key to allowing the uh inequality to fester. Let's talk about gay rights, let's talk about immigrants in the United States. Let's talk about gun control, let's talk about abortion. Uh, all of these issues are not issues about the material existence, the standard of living. And people become absorbed in these issues and vote against their own interests. That's right. Uh and I will certainly say that people who voted for Brexit have voted against Britain's interests. You are now beginning to see the consequences of that decision. The gaslighting that went on with cultural issues, primarily immigration, uh, as the run-up to the Brexit vote, had a huge impact. Um, of course, Cambridge Analytica uh had impacts both in American elections and with Brexit, influencing how people voted. But distraction has been a key wedge to deflect attention away from the material standard of living of people who are in working class, middle class uh stations in life to just get on with their lives. Their lives have suffered, they've become stagnant, while the 1% has seen an astronomical growth in their wealth and the wage level for everybody else, the 80%, everybody down, has stayed pretty much the same over the 20 years. What's happened here? Well, that curve moving up is a result of their billions that have been invested in lobbying, billions that have been invested in deflection with cultural issues, and that has produced a horrific attack on our standard of living. If people remain, and if the opposition, labor or democratic or green or reform movement, if they put the spotlight on how the material daily existence of people has suffered and why and what needs to be done to fix that, they will start to coalesce and become a movement. Keep your eye on the ball. Has your standard of living suffered over the last 25 years? The answer is going to be yes. Why? What factors have affected my standard of living, my ability to put food on the table, my ability to get a job? What has prevented my ability to thrive on those issues? So I think the progressive movement, we call them progressive here in the United States, the AOCs uh and others on the so-called left in the United States are focusing on the material issues. Um, the Democratic Party, the moderates that are still tied to Wall Street money are still resisting. Chuck Schumer, Jeffries in Congress, they are still moderate, they are not playing hardball enough, they are caving in. They still don't get the message. Even now, as we speak, if even the Republicans, I'm sorry, the Democrats succeed and take over the House of Representatives, they're not talking about accountability. They're still talking within the context, we need to move on. We can't look at the past. We have reached a crisis in this country where people who have violated our constitutional norms, have impacted people's daily lives, have to be held accountable. Whether it's the Millers, whether it's the Heskett's, the Department of Defense, or Department of War Secretary, that entire cabinet has to be held accountable for what they've done. Gross violations of our rule of law and the norms which have uh protected our uh you know standard of living. And those politicians which run rough side uh and over working class conditions and material opportunity, educational opportunity, at the behest of a billionaire class or a corporate class, need to be held accountable. The media, unfortunately, whether it's Murdoch and his empire and other media outlets, have been consolidated. There's only a few places where people get information and it's totally skewed. The public must find ways to educate themselves and read beyond the mass media, whether it's the BBC or MBC or CBS, they're no longer reliable. Uh, if you're reading and listening only to those sources, you're being gaslighted. That's the bottom line. And if you're being gaslighted, you're allowing ilequality to continue to fester because you don't know why your standard of living is suffering. So question, read, and learn and stick together, and maybe something will happen.

SPEAKER_00 49:00

Yeah, and resist the distractions, address the chaos as best you can. And it's time, isn't it, for us to evolve politically towards a kind of ethic of radical realism, inclusion, authenticity, and really recover norms of respect for basic material goods, you know, material modes of flourishing as embodied beings that share a planet, but really get back to some really basic stuff that we've lost sight of with all the kind of disembodiment of capitalism and the kind of financialization, the separation of financialization from material production and all the rest of it. We have to reverse that somehow. We have to actually get more to a kind of notion of a commons-based notion of inclusion, of material attentiveness to material conditions, and recognize that unless we do this, we're really on a path to ecological, sociological, political self-destruction.

SPEAKER_01 50:13

That would be true, and I I agree with you. Those who have the power and the money today seek to maintain their status and control is to divide us, to divide the working class. They will create false flags, false enemies, or diversions. Diversions create division. If we are divided, we lose. In the United States, there's a tradition of using race to divide the working class. If you're of a different color, you can't be part of a union. This goes back to the Second World War, um, even the Civil War. The um the race card has been used very effectively in this country to show that it is a um not a win-win situation, but a zero-sum situation where if we protect the so-called others, the minorities, the white majority loses. If we protect the immigrants, give them due process, give them an opportunity, it's going to cost us the white majority or the American citizens. That cost benefit, that zero-sum uh analysis is what has been used to divide the class. Uh, the scariest moment during our civil rights era was the fact that the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement were coming together as one. Um, once that coalition was split, uh, there was a retrenchment back to more conservative or neoliberal uh tenets. But the key here is don't allow deflections, false issues, immigration, um certain foreign policy adventures to divide who you are. Keep your eye on the ball. We breathe the same air, we walk on the same earth. Why are we classifying human beings in different categories? That is being done to divide us. That gives you the false sense that you are privileged and somebody else is not. If the other person appears to be getting a benefit and you're not, you seem to be losing, you're going to blame the other person on your level for causing your standard of living to go down. When in reality, it's the 1% or those above who have manufactured this false division to keep you occupied with a false complaint while they continue to lobby parliament or Congress to pass the legislation and tax breaks that keep them in power. If you stick together as communities, if you talk to each other, if you do research, it will be harder for those that have power to divide you. If you are divided, you lose our society suffers.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

Yeah. Good point to end on, George. Thank you so much for your time and for what you're doing. You know, I really admire and respect your very very principled stand, your authenticity and your willingness to show up and speak up in times that are actually quite threatening.

SPEAKER_01 53:16

They're threatening. And I appreciate you the platform and the podcast that you're running, and having this discussion is so important. And uh I hope that through my example, it shows that even one person can make a difference. Um, and it's opportunities like this that are so valuable to all of us. Thank you for inviting me.

SPEAKER_00 53:35

Well, it's um great to see you, George. Um thank you. And perhaps we'll see each other again in happier times.

SPEAKER_01 53:42

Absolutely, sooner rather than later. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 53:46

Okay, catch you soon.

SPEAKER_01 53:48

Thank you, George. Bye. Bye bye. Thank you.