From Russia with love: Putin's interference in the US election

In this episode:
- Russian interference and Tenet Media: paying American right-wing influencers to do what they already do; pro-Trump commentator Dave Rubin’s journey from left to right, or why libertarians ally with the far right.

- Operation Doppelganger: impersonating mainstream media and mixing fact and fiction to sow division in US domestic politics.

- JD Vance: from darling of mainstream shows to far right politician; Vance’s right-wing nationalism and the “white working class” narrative.

- No need to avoid the press: Kamala Harris and her first TV interview with CNN.

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Transcript

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Even in 2016,

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when I was,

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you know,

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when Trump was first gaining momentum and first debates and all that stuff and

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everybody was going crazy and I definitely was not a Trump supporter at that point,

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I kept saying,

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despite the fact that I didn't like how he was talking to Megyn Kelly and all that,

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I was like,

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this guy is more real than the rest of these people.

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If you just, you can name 20 Democrats.

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Yeah.

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Elizabeth Warren, all the way down.

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Just look at the last crop of Democrats, Pete and Biden and the rest of them.

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Who's more real?

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Is it Donald Trump or Joe Biden?

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Who's more real, Donald Trump or Pete?

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Who's more real, Donald Trump or Elizabeth Warren?

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Like, it was just so damn obvious.

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And when they try to be humans,

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it's why I like those clips,

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you know,

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with the newscasters,

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you know,

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when they have to actually be human for a second and they're like they can't quite compute.

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I love that about Senator Kennedy,

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too,

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and he has so many hilarious clips out there of,

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next time you're in trouble,

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call it crackhead,

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because it's just the best thing I've ever seen.

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But it reminds me of these times that the Democrats tried to be real humans.

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Do you remember that video of Elizabeth Warren walking into her own house and

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getting a beer out of the fridge and trying to act like she's,

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like,

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casually there?

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That was so weird!

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I'ma get me a beer.

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Like, you people are just absolutely terrible.

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You just heard Dave Rubin and Isabel Brown,

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two pro-Trump influencers,

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in one episode of People of the Internet,

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aired on YouTube earlier this year.

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David Rubin hosted the show on the YouTube channel of Tenet Media,

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a US-based media company that,

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according to a US Department of Justice statement released on 4th September this year,

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received several million dollars from two employees of Russia Today.

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Russia Today is also known as RT.

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It's a multi-language state-controlled media pushing Kremlin's propaganda throughout the world.

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Putin's meddling in US domestic politics and elections is of course nothing new and

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dates back to the 2016 presidential election won by Donald Trump.

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This is the second episode of Weird, a global take on the US election.

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You can check the first episode of our podcast on our website at weirdpodcast.com

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and on our YouTube channel at WeirdPod.

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My name is Vito Laterza.

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I'm an anthropologist,

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political analyst,

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and associate professor at the University of Agder in Kristiansand,

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Norway.

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I'm also a fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala,

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Sweden,

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where I'm broadcasting from today.

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Hi, and my name is Louis Römer.

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I'm an anthropologist,

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media scholar,

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and lecturer here at Vassar College,

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New York,

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where I am broadcasting from today.

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What you heard is a pretty run-of-the-mill attack on U.S.

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Democrats,

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whose alleged inauthenticity is compared to Donald Trump,

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who's,

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according to this right-wing messaging,

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more real.

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The rest of the show we sampled here repeats pretty much all the main tropes of

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what was then Trump's campaign against Biden.

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The clip is from February 2024,

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when Biden was still the Democratic nominee before Kamala Harris took over.

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As Charlie Wurzel noted in his piece,

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YouTubers are almost too easy to dupe on the Atlantic,

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in this election interference operation,

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Kremlin operatives didn't actually have to do much because they just paid already

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existing media producers for content they were already producing.

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One influencer allegedly received a monthly fee of $400,000 plus a $100,000 signing

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bonus to produce four weekly videos on Tenet Media.

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Another one got $100,000 per video.

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Since launching in November 2023,

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Tenet posted nearly 2,000 videos with more than 16 million views on YouTube alone,

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and they also used other social media such as X,

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Instagram,

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and TikTok.

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Some of the big names that Tenet Media recruited include not only Dave Rubin,

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but also Benny Johnson and Tim Pool.

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They have millions of followers on their channels and are well-known in this kind

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of pro-Trump social media galaxy.

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They have denied any wrongdoing and actually claim to be victims of the Russian scheme.

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Louis, what's going on here?

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Why are Putin's people putting in such large sums of money into American right wing influencers?

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Well, to answer this question, it's helpful to look at this particular incident in a longer perspective.

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All the way back in 2016 and before that, there was many rumors, discussion about potential Russian

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influence operations in the US.

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What has come out of that is particularly propaganda operations that were targeting

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particularly African-American voters in the US in swing states.

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And here the goal is not so much even to convert people

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from one,

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you know,

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sway from one candidate to another,

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but just to sometimes dissuade people from voting,

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demotivating them,

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demobilizing them,

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sowing division,

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exploiting wedge issues,

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and so on.

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So that's really what this is a part of.

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What we just saw is a part of this broader attempt from Russian propagandists to

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try to find these particular types of places where they can create division,

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demobilize,

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fracture the coalition that they want to oppose.

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So what about the style that this kind of Dave Rubin and Isabel Brown used?

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What can we say about the performance?

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I mean,

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it's very interesting to see this clip now in the aftermath of Tim Walz's reframing,

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right,

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of this notion of authenticity.

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around who gets to own authenticity, who gets to own realness.

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I think one of the reasons why Tim Walz ended up becoming the VP was that coup de grace where he

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took this framing strategy up from under,

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pulled it up from under the MAGA world,

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where they were really banking on framing themselves as the normal,

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the authentic,

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the real people.

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And then the Democrats are weird, right?

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one of the speakers was like, they're so weird, right?

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It's almost prefiguring like the way that Tim Walz was gonna adopt and flip this frame.

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But one thing that I do want to emphasize here is how little detail we get about

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the supposed realness of Trump.

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Like there isn't really evidence

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So really, this is a good example of priming, right?

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So what's happening here is an audience is being told how to perceive something,

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how to view something without too much content,

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without too much actual concrete evidence,

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but it's really to...

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pre-shaped perception.

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So you can talking about preemptive framing,

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basically,

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which is a tactically where you define someone or something before they get a

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chance to define themselves.

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Yep.

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And so in that way,

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the audience is already trained to understand Democrats as being not normal because

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they've been told to do so even,

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and it's often these preemptive framings are very hard to shake off.

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So the first one to get that gets to define,

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gets to control the debate,

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but it's really interesting how that definition of who's weird and who's normal has

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been

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unsettled right and over the last couple of months yes and i think that's what we

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explored in episode one that you can check on our uh channels i mean we went a bit

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more in depth about tim waltz the vice presidential nominee for the democrats

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basically what what he actually did to revert all of this right because for a long

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time as you said

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It's been the Republicans,

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the right-wingers,

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who have this kind of assumption that they are the normal ones,

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so they know what's true or what should be taught by the viewers or the listeners.

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But now here you have a Democrat trying to turn that around and say,

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actually,

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it's the Republicans who are the weird people.

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It's these people just talking, you know, about Trump being real who are weird, you know.

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And I think today's show will go a bit into this weirdness on that kind of right

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wing and libertarian side of it.

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Let's listen to another clip where we explore a bit more who is this Ruben guy and his trajectory.

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I'm puzzled by the anger on the left about everything.

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There is anger about everything because they believe they're victims.

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And when you're a victim, you have the righteous indignation to be angry at everything and at everyone.

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So I get a particular special strain of this anger because I was one of them.

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And when they see a refugee leave and escape and then get to some level of success,

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that's the kryptonite for them, right?

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Because they don't want people to realize,

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oh,

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you can get out of this,

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that you can find what your truth is,

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you can find another path,

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you can find success,

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you can find happiness,

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whatever it is you're looking for,

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you can find it.

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And they don't want that because they want conformity.

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Yeah,

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that was Dave Rubin talking to John Stossel,

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another right-wing libertarian podcaster,

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and he's from a YouTube recording that was released in February this year.

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Rubin is openly gay and has a Jewish background and used to have a show on the

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left-wing network,

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The Young Turks.

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So here, Ruben is talking about leaving the left, basically.

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In 2020,

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he published the book,

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Don't Burn This Book,

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Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason,

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where he narrates this personal journey,

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right,

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from leftist commentator to what he calls classical liberal.

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Mind you,

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he's now a Trump supporter,

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so I think the label right-wing libertarian might be a bit more appropriate.

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But I'm struck by the way he talks about the left.

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I mean, it almost sounds like he left the cults of some sorts, right?

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Yeah, it's very interesting.

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And even reflecting on the title of his book,

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Don't Burn This Book,

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just a month or so ago,

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we saw images from Florida where entire libraries of books are being tossed in the

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garbage as the governor there,

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DeSantis is implementing his,

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essentially what are book bans.

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So really here again,

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you see this kind of attempt to define the other side in ways that probably would

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be quite unrecognizable for people on the left or the center in terms of how they are.

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And there is also something that strikes me there about finding happiness, right?

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That trope here of the pursuit of happiness that really hooks into some pretty

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primordial American myths,

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right,

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about finding success,

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the pursuit of happiness being part of the language of the founding fathers,

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right?

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So that's an interesting thing that gets woven in there,

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that you have to leave the left,

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and the left is conformity.

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And all of that has really been quite effectively rebutted in the past months when we see

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democratic politicians claiming this notion of freedom and saying, well, what they want, right?

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The Republicans, people like Dave Rubin, they want conformity.

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We want you to be free to express yourself.

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We want you to be free, et cetera, et cetera, right?

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So they've taken up that same set of tropes,

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but have deployed them in very different ways that Rubin is here.

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And I think the point you're making also shows that,

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I mean,

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sadly,

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perhaps this is a lot of performance,

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right?

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It's a rhetorical game.

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So in the end,

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the words don't always mean what they're supposed to mean,

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but it's what you were saying before.

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It's more about convincing,

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persuading the audience that you are the real thing,

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that you are the ones who holds the truth and,

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you know,

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the right answers to your problems.

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And therefore the others are the enemies, you know, the people you have to discard, you know,

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insult even or get rid of because they are on your way to happiness.

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I think another point that emerges here quite clearly,

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I think from what you're saying,

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but also from Ruben's case,

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we're really going beyond this kind of left and right categories,

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right?

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So here there is somebody who says I'm moving from the left, but then I'm still a libertarian.

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that there's all this idea of diagonalism that we already explored in episode one.

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You can go back to that.

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There's this very good piece by Callison and Slobodian in the Boston Review.

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Basically, diagonalism is this emerging field of populist politics where traditional distinctions between

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left and right are abandoned.

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So there is a strong focus on individual freedoms.

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We see that in Ruben, but as you said, also now in the counter movement by the Democrats.

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But again, these movements in the end still tend to lean towards the right.

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So even though Ruben claims all the time that the left

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They are the authoritarian, they are the bad guys, so to speak.

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In the end,

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he can't really get out of this kind of right wing,

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this trajectory towards the right,

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even as he calls himself a classic liberal.

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I wanted to play another clip by Ruben in the same interview,

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which shows this move and this reflection on the left and right quite clearly.

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I would say that generally speaking,

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the left-right paradigm or the left-right dichotomy,

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whatever you want to call that,

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it doesn't really fly anymore.

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I think you basically have libertarians,

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and I mean that in terms of people who basically want to live and let live,

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and then you have authoritarians and people who want the government to control things.

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I don't know where that really falls left-right anymore.

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Since I started down this political evolution,

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where I've now connected with people like you and conservatives like a Ben Shapiro

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or a Dennis Prager or a Larry Elder or just any of these people,

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some of the Fox guys like Gutfeld or Tucker.

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Everybody, for all the differences that we might have, I'm pro-choice, most of them are pro-life.

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I'm against the death penalty, most of them are for the death penalty.

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They're all willing to sit down and discuss ideas.

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And we all,

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I think,

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agree on one thing more than anything else,

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which is within the framework of free speech,

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which is that we want to live in the same country.

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I want to live in the same country with people who disagree with me.

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And the problem that the left is having right now is if you deviate from whatever

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the given moment of feelings are,

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they will expunge you.

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I mean, here we hear a lot of this kind of libertarian talk, right?

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So he's saying that the real difference is not left and right, but libertarian versus authoritarian.

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Perhaps we need to tell our audience a bit more about this libertarianism, right?

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Because it's kind of quite distinctive of the American tradition.

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Of course,

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it's having a lot of influence also in Europe and other countries,

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but there's something quite distinctively American about that.

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Yeah.

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The thing that always strikes me as so ironic about US libertarian rhetoric is

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something that I think I could best summarize by an image I saw once while I was

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driving from my office on the way to my home.

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There was a flag that says, don't tread on me, right, which is often used in right libertarian context.

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It's this kind of anti-authoritarian,

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you know,

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image that hearkens back to the American Revolutionary era.

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alongside Back the Blue,

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which is a slogan that was used against the Black Lives Matter protests,

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very much in favor of,

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you know,

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in support of the police,

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which is the avatar,

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the incarnation of state authority.

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Right.

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So there is this interesting paradox of on the one hand, yes, freedom, but on the other hand,

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authority and what it ends up being often is freedom for me authority for you right

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i am i'm liberated to constrain you and so what ends up happening in terms of how

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the left is being defined the left here is being defined as authoritarian and

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dangerous

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it then becomes the alibi for actually arguing for repressive measures against the

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so-called authoritarian left,

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which paradoxically then ends up the people who say they are for freedom arguing

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for authoritarian measures.

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Right.

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So it's therefore free speech.

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The other team are people who want to cancel you.

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They want to expunge everyone.

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So we need to expunge them in order to save free speech.

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Right.

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So that's the propaganda move that happens.

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one way to think about this is as a mirror politics, mirror argumentation.

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You accuse the other side of that which you might want to do.

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Sometimes it's not even an intentional move.

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It is something that is created through the course of these moral panics around freedom and

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and constraint that can lead people to actually advocate for extreme measures in

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order to preserve the so-called freedom which paradoxically break the freedom,

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right?

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Because you have to repress to preserve.

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Well, I mean, you talk about Black Lives Matter.

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So you're also hinting there as some kind of racial politics,

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which of course in the US and the Western world,

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you know,

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it's always been historical and it's coming to the fore in a very strong way in

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these recent years of right-wing populism.

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Do you think there's some kind of alliance there around race that is bringing these

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libertarians with the,

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basically with the far right and really aligned in the end,

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you know,

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around the arguments you mentioned?

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Yeah,

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I think effectively,

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and I know there are libertarians who see this and recognize this as a problem

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among libertarians,

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but quite effectively,

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certain groups of people with migrants,

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queer people,

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transgender people,

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and of course,

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black people who are specifically in these

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in these racial justice movements such as Black Lives Matter have been quite

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effectively framed,

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quite effectively defined as being threats to freedom.

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And thus this then becomes an easy way to rope

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libertarians into a right wing,

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a far right coalition,

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because then they end up endorsing paradoxically on limiting the freedom of the

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people who they see as a threat to freedom.

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And I think that's where perhaps the alignment with Putin also becomes quite clear, right?

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Because we're talking about one half of the big Russian interference operation that

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has been uncovered recently by the FBI and the Department of Justice.

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So in this half, this tenet media kind of operation,

(00:20:37):
it doesn't look like the Russia Today operatives had to do much, right?

(00:20:41):
The propaganda was already there.

(00:20:43):
These people are quite aligned.

(00:20:44):
We know that Trump and Bunce, even on foreign politics, they're pretty aligned with Putin.

(00:20:48):
They said that they will pretty much side with Putin in terms of ending the

(00:20:51):
Ukraine-Russian war in their own way.

(00:20:54):
We discussed a bit that also in episode one, if our listeners want to go back to that.

(00:20:59):
So what's the alignment there with Putin, if you had to put it in a few words?

(00:21:05):
yeah i i think it's a mistake to um assume or to approach the notion of russian

(00:21:12):
interference as russia trying to inject some foreign ideology into the bloodstream

(00:21:20):
if you will to use a metaphor there of u.s political discourse but really what is

(00:21:26):
happening is something a lot more strategic

(00:21:29):
in the sense of a convergence and really Russia just exploiting divisions and

(00:21:35):
trends that already exist and already are rooted in US political discourse.

(00:21:45):
They're not necessarily trying to

(00:21:49):
inject new ideas more than that they're trying to materially often support the

(00:21:55):
tendencies that converge with their own agenda.

(00:22:00):
And in this case, what they really are interested in is a sense of

(00:22:08):
a realignment of the US vis-a-vis their policies in Eastern Europe.

(00:22:14):
Right.

(00:22:14):
They definitely want less NATO presence there.

(00:22:17):
They want to be able to expand their

(00:22:23):
their zone of influence back to where it was during the era of the Cold War.

(00:22:32):
And one way to do that is to strengthen the elements in U.S.

(00:22:36):
society that want also a smaller footprint of U.S.

(00:22:42):
influence in that sphere.

(00:22:46):
Well, on that note, let's listen to U.S.

(00:22:49):
Attorney General Merrick Garland a few days ago in a press conference on 4th of

(00:22:54):
September when he talks about the other part of this Russian operation.

(00:23:00):
The online infrastructure used by the Russian public relations company known as the

(00:23:05):
Social Design Agency or SDA and related actors included what are sometimes referred

(00:23:11):
to as cyber squatted domains.

(00:23:14):
These websites were designed to appear to American readers as if they were major US

(00:23:20):
news sites like the Russian Post or Fox News.

(00:23:24):
But in fact, they were fake sites.

(00:23:27):
They were filled with Russian government propaganda that had been created by the

(00:23:31):
Kremlin to reduce international support for Ukraine,

(00:23:34):
bolster pro-Russian policies and interests,

(00:23:38):
and influence voters in the United States and in other countries.

(00:23:43):
Internal documents

(00:23:44):
of the Kremlin described the content as,

(00:23:46):
quote,

(00:23:47):
bogus stories disguised as newsworthy events,

(00:23:50):
close quote.

(00:23:52):
This malign influence campaign has been referred to as doppelganger.

(00:23:58):
The Russian public relations company drove viewers to these websites by deploying

(00:24:03):
influencers and paid social media advertisements.

(00:24:07):
They also created fake social media profiles,

(00:24:11):
posing as US citizens, post comments on social media platforms with links to the sites.

(00:24:18):
According to SDA's records,

(00:24:20):
it actively sought to quote,

(00:24:22):
eliminate the possibility of detection of the Russian footprint.

(00:24:31):
Yeah,

(00:24:31):
that was Merrick Garland basically describing in quite clear and synthetic terms

(00:24:36):
what this doppelganger operation was and still is,

(00:24:41):
because actually this operation covers many more countries than just the US.

(00:24:45):
There's been France,

(00:24:46):
Germany,

(00:24:46):
Italy,

(00:24:47):
and many other countries hit,

(00:24:48):
usually countries that support Ukraine,

(00:24:50):
especially in the West.

(00:24:51):
It's been going on at least according to various disinformation experts,

(00:24:56):
at least since basically 2022 when the war erupted.

(00:25:00):
um but i think what i found quite interesting is really this idea again pushing the

(00:25:05):
boundaries between fake and true right uh and using a very simple technique you

(00:25:10):
know the cyber squatting as they call it it's actually a pretty old technique so

(00:25:14):
what you do for instance when you type your gmail too quickly you make a typo you

(00:25:19):
know back in the days you know some kind of

(00:25:21):
scammer of, you know, very aggressive advertising.

(00:25:24):
Sometimes even porn website would have these other domains just to redirect traffic there.

(00:25:29):
So basically that's what they're doing.

(00:25:30):
They made it so realistic that if you were on this kind of fake domain,

(00:25:34):
for instance,

(00:25:35):
the Washington Post,

(00:25:36):
instead of being .com,

(00:25:37):
it was .pm.

(00:25:39):
basically in some of these sites you would link and go back to the real domain.

(00:25:43):
So that's how basically mixed up it was.

(00:25:46):
And I think the other interesting thing was really the mixing of fake and real.

(00:25:49):
So it's quite clear from the documents we now got from the FBI because they had

(00:25:53):
documents directly from the companies operating pretty much under

(00:25:58):
We don't know the level of coordination,

(00:26:00):
but we know that basically they are linked to the Russian state.

(00:26:04):
They basically made it clear that the fake news had to kind of be hidden within a

(00:26:08):
lot of pretty plausible,

(00:26:09):
realistic,

(00:26:10):
and real news.

(00:26:12):
Right, because embedding it within plausible and real information helps to lower the guard of scrutiny.

(00:26:24):
I mean,

(00:26:24):
other tactics have relied on social media accounts or Facebook pages,

(00:26:32):
right,

(00:26:33):
that would allow,

(00:26:34):
would enable sharing.

(00:26:35):
And one of the things about sharing is that if you're sharing something online,

(00:26:41):
from somebody you know if if if somebody reads that post and it's been shared by a

(00:26:46):
friend you're more likely to trust it even if you don't necessarily know the source

(00:26:52):
from from where the person you know got that post from so um setting up facebook

(00:27:00):
pages with sock puppet accounts and so on um

(00:27:06):
There are many doppelgangers currently all still on social media.

(00:27:10):
Every person who gets any kind of following will often have to swap down multiple

(00:27:21):
attempts of impersonation,

(00:27:23):
many doppelgangers,

(00:27:25):
because this is an active tactic,

(00:27:28):
which not only Russia uses,

(00:27:30):
it has to be said,

(00:27:31):
other entities are as well.

(00:27:34):
Yeah,

(00:27:34):
perhaps I think going back to the point before,

(00:27:37):
because sometimes this mention of Russia tends to create also this kind of

(00:27:43):
progressive sensationalism,

(00:27:44):
if you want,

(00:27:45):
or anti-Trump sensationalism.

(00:27:47):
I mean, as you said before, a lot of these things are really homegrown.

(00:27:51):
we're seeing much more of an organic alliance between sectors of the far right and

(00:27:55):
these libertarian thinkers and propagandists and Putin rather than some kind of a

(00:28:00):
subordinate relationship where Putin or his Russian operatives will call all the shots.

(00:28:05):
A lot of this stuff have become pretty much staple of propaganda tactics.

(00:28:09):
They've been staples of propaganda tactics from Western and other entities

(00:28:13):
very long time.

(00:28:14):
So Putin and his team are just very good at it.

(00:28:18):
So we can definitely say that.

(00:28:20):
But it doesn't mean that somehow they invented this or they are the only people in

(00:28:24):
town using this kind of tactics.

(00:28:28):
I mean,

(00:28:28):
I think one thing that was quite interesting to read in the really interesting

(00:28:32):
affidavit that was released by the

(00:28:35):
Department of Justice from this kind of FBI agents who worked on this.

(00:28:40):
This was a document obtained from the Social Design Agency,

(00:28:44):
one of the scrambling controlled companies that operated that basically ran this operation.

(00:28:50):
And this part basically reads,

(00:28:52):
in order for this work to be effective,

(00:28:54):
you need to use a minimum of fake news.

(00:28:56):
and a maximum realistic information.

(00:28:59):
At the same time, you should continuously repeat that this is what is really happening.

(00:29:04):
But the official media will never tell you about it or show it to you.

(00:29:07):
So once again, this anti-establishment, right?

(00:29:10):
So we are the ones telling you the truth and there's a conspiracy, you know, hiding it from you.

(00:29:16):
I mean,

(00:29:17):
there's a pithy phrase that I use to think about this,

(00:29:22):
which is the notion of the Galileo gambit,

(00:29:26):
right,

(00:29:26):
which is to persuade people that some nameless,

(00:29:33):
amorphous cabal is trying to silence you.

(00:29:38):
And therefore, like Galileo being persecuted, you have the truth, right?

(00:29:45):
Now,

(00:29:45):
maybe people are trying to silence you or maybe people are just laughing at you

(00:29:49):
because you're talking nonsense.

(00:29:51):
However,

(00:29:52):
if you can successfully persuade people that you are this,

(00:29:56):
you know,

(00:29:57):
speaker of truth,

(00:29:57):
brave truth teller,

(00:29:59):
brave speaker,

(00:30:00):
of truth to power,

(00:30:02):
maverick,

(00:30:02):
going against the establishment,

(00:30:04):
what have you,

(00:30:05):
you can then often persuade people of what you're trying to say,

(00:30:09):
even though it's not on the basis of the content of what you're arguing for,

(00:30:14):
but the basis of this speaker of truth to power persona that you've constructed,

(00:30:20):
right?

(00:30:22):
It is very common,

(00:30:24):
right,

(00:30:26):
to see this sort of a claim like I'm being silenced and being made over and over again.

(00:30:33):
And but when you scrutinize that claim,

(00:30:37):
you notice that these people have significant platforms and outreach.

(00:30:42):
So

(00:30:43):
Yes.

(00:30:44):
Right.

(00:30:44):
So then in terms of the facticity of that claim, it falls apart.

(00:30:48):
But what really is, it's a tactic to allow people to start to empathize with people as victims.

(00:30:57):
So it's very interesting mode of mirror propaganda there, because while you're accusing the left

(00:31:05):
of constantly being victims,

(00:31:09):
the main propaganda strategy that you are using to gain persuasive appeal is to

(00:31:15):
frame yourself as a victim who is being oppressed by the oppressive left.

(00:31:20):
Right.

(00:31:21):
So the mainstream, you know, is lying to you.

(00:31:24):
They've betrayed you.

(00:31:25):
They're oppressing you like they're oppressing me.

(00:31:29):
I'm the person who has the real truth and they don't want you to know.

(00:31:34):
Here's the truth that they don't want you to know.

(00:31:36):
Right.

(00:31:36):
That's usually the cliche here.

(00:31:39):
Like, here's the truth that they don't want you to know.

(00:31:41):
And therefore and it's true because they don't want you to know whoever they is.

(00:31:46):
Yes,

(00:31:46):
and I think this really leads us back to one of the main characters of the current

(00:31:52):
US melodrama,

(00:31:54):
J.D.

(00:31:54):
Vance, right?

(00:31:55):
Who, of course, shows many parallels.

(00:31:58):
He's the vice presidential nominee for the Republicans.

(00:32:01):
We have touched on him a little bit in episode one,

(00:32:04):
mostly to show the quite aggressive xenophobic propaganda he's pushing.

(00:32:09):
But I think we want to dig a bit deeper in this episode into his persona and also

(00:32:13):
his trajectory,

(00:32:14):
because a bit like Ruben,

(00:32:16):
kind of changed over the years.

(00:32:17):
It wasn't always like this, right?

(00:32:20):
So he writes this book, Hillbilly Elegy, you know, published in 2016 in the middle of the Trump campaign.

(00:32:27):
You know, again, it's also about victims.

(00:32:29):
In this case, the victims are the Appalachian, you know, this very mythical

(00:32:33):
people now.

(00:32:34):
Appalachia is this rural region of the eastern part of the US that covers many states,

(00:32:40):
including many of the battleground states,

(00:32:42):
you know,

(00:32:42):
Michigan,

(00:32:43):
Pennsylvania,

(00:32:44):
Wisconsin.

(00:32:45):
We all know it because at some point it was producing most of the coal.

(00:32:50):
of the US as a country.

(00:32:53):
So a lot of this idea of the white working class very much, this idea of the rural whites.

(00:32:58):
So what's happening in Hillbilly Elegy?

(00:33:01):
Who are the victims there?

(00:33:02):
And how did Vance start his political career really?

(00:33:05):
Because that book in 2016 was really his launch on the political scene.

(00:33:11):
Yeah,

(00:33:12):
and it's interesting that in November 2016,

(00:33:15):
a few people who had reviewed the book already observed that the memoir,

(00:33:22):
Hillbilly Elegy,

(00:33:24):
had the structure and the rhetoric that one would expect for a,

(00:33:35):
future politician that is intending to run for office.

(00:33:40):
Compare Hillbilly Elegy,

(00:33:42):
for example,

(00:33:42):
with the Audacity of Hope,

(00:33:47):
the memoir that Barack Obama used to launch his career as a national nationwide politician.

(00:34:01):
And it's almost the titles already show that there is a kind of intertextual, a kind of response, yeah?

(00:34:11):
Audacity of Hope, Hillbilly Elegy.

(00:34:15):
There is an interesting response there, common response there.

(00:34:19):
And of course, this book has become well-reviewed, discussed.

(00:34:26):
First, it was praised among

(00:34:29):
the establishment liberal media, New York Times, Think New York, et cetera.

(00:34:34):
It even got made into a movie with Glenn Close and Amy Adams, so some high-profile stars.

(00:34:49):
The narrative is quite interesting that is being promoted here because the primary

(00:34:56):
victim in the memoir in many ways is Vance himself,

(00:35:00):
who is the victim in the most direct manner of his mother's abuse.

(00:35:07):
But then this gets extrapolated into a broader narrative of the abandonment of the

(00:35:14):
so-called white working class in Appalachia and the Rust Belt.

(00:35:20):
So already from the outset,

(00:35:23):
there were people from Appalachia who questioned not only his own authenticity to

(00:35:28):
speak on behalf of Appalachia,

(00:35:29):
because he grows up in suburban Ohio,

(00:35:32):
not in rural Appalachia,

(00:35:34):
but yet he was being

(00:35:36):
presented in the liberal media as some kind of whisperer of Kentucky and West

(00:35:42):
Virginia coal country,

(00:35:44):
which is really someplace where his ancestors are from,

(00:35:48):
his grandparents,

(00:35:49):
great grandparents,

(00:35:49):
but not really where he himself

(00:35:52):
is from, right?

(00:35:53):
So there was a lot of challenge around that.

(00:35:56):
But then the other part,

(00:35:57):
which is the narrative of victimization of the white working class that probably

(00:36:02):
elegy produces,

(00:36:04):
focuses very much on the idea that the working class was betrayed by,

(00:36:09):
you know,

(00:36:10):
coastal elites,

(00:36:11):
liberals,

(00:36:12):
et cetera.

(00:36:14):
who have disdain for them,

(00:36:15):
but then he adds the notion that it is the schemes to improve the economic

(00:36:26):
livelihoods of the working class that have harmed him somehow.

(00:36:30):
in a very clever way within this victim narrative is packaged a narrative about cultures of poverty.

(00:36:40):
And he said,

(00:36:40):
basically blaming the white working class for its own misfortune and suffering saying,

(00:36:46):
well,

(00:36:47):
we just,

(00:36:48):
we,

(00:36:48):
and he's speaking as being a member

(00:36:53):
We have self-destructive cultural tendencies.

(00:36:56):
His mother is the main example of this that he uses in his book to argue this.

(00:37:00):
And therefore,

(00:37:02):
the schemes to improve the livelihoods of white working class people won't work and

(00:37:08):
are harmful and are part of the betrayal.

(00:37:12):
All right.

(00:37:13):
So who's the victim and who's to blame is a major reason why this book ended up

(00:37:19):
being later,

(00:37:21):
after being celebrated initially,

(00:37:24):
ended up being really strongly criticized,

(00:37:27):
especially by other people from Appalachia.

(00:37:31):
Yeah,

(00:37:31):
so let's listen to a clip from an interview,

(00:37:34):
again,

(00:37:34):
one of these mainstream liberal media interviews that JD Vance had.

(00:37:40):
It was with Charlie Rose.

(00:37:42):
He kind of fell a bit into disgrace after some kind of sexual harassment scandal after.

(00:37:47):
But Charlie Rose was pretty much at the top of his game then,

(00:37:50):
very mainstream,

(00:37:51):
you know,

(00:37:51):
did also 60 Minutes at some point.

(00:37:53):
So let's listen to this clip with a quite different Vance from the Vance we know today.

(00:38:03):
Yeah,

(00:38:04):
so I think there is a precious little dialogue between these two big cultural

(00:38:08):
segments of America,

(00:38:09):
so sort of middle America,

(00:38:11):
flyover country,

(00:38:11):
whatever you want to call it.

(00:38:13):
Donald Trump has become their sort of representative,

(00:38:15):
and they're very proud,

(00:38:16):
even though they may not like him.

(00:38:20):
Sure, for saying that folks cling to their guns and religion, right?

(00:38:23):
Which I think it was a well-intentioned comment, right?

(00:38:25):
He mentioned that folks were struggling economically and that was his explanation,

(00:38:29):
but it was sort of layered with a certain amount of condescension.

(00:38:31):
You know, adults that you respect don't cling to things.

(00:38:35):
You might have said it a much different way and I don't think the comment would

(00:38:38):
have had nearly the effect that it did if he had said it in a much more

(00:38:41):
compassionate way.

(00:38:42):
So how do we change this?

(00:38:44):
Yeah, so that's a really tough question.

(00:38:48):
I mean,

(00:38:49):
I continue to think that one of the big problems,

(00:38:52):
one of the big sources of this cultural divide is the fact that people aren't

(00:38:55):
spending a whole lot of time together.

(00:38:56):
So,

(00:38:57):
you know,

(00:38:57):
when my wife,

(00:38:58):
who is of Indian descent,

(00:39:00):
was born in San Diego,

(00:39:01):
the first time that I brought her home,

(00:39:02):
I was terrified that she would think my family was a bunch of dumb hillbillies and

(00:39:06):
that my family think that she was this sort of out of touch elitist.

(00:39:09):
And the truth is that they actually love each other.

(00:39:11):
And that's obviously a small example.

(00:39:13):
But

(00:39:14):
When people spend time to each other,

(00:39:15):
there's contact theory that suggests that when people from different groups spend

(00:39:18):
time with each other,

(00:39:19):
they actually empathize with each other in a much greater extent.

(00:39:23):
It's a consequence of the fact that we have too much geographic segregation between

(00:39:27):
the elites and the rest of the country.

(00:39:29):
At the end of the day,

(00:39:30):
if you're a policymaker in Washington,

(00:39:31):
D.C.,

(00:39:32):
you know very little about the people in Middletown,

(00:39:34):
Ohio,

(00:39:35):
not because you're a bad person,

(00:39:36):
but because you don't actually spend much time with them.

(00:39:39):
That was JD Vance in October 2016.

(00:39:43):
So that was only a few months after he had released his book, Hillbilly Elegy.

(00:39:50):
Let's listen to him now in a podcast that he had with Eric Weinstein on Weinstein's podcast,

(00:39:57):
The Portal,

(00:39:59):
when they were basically talking about childcare and free market economics.

(00:40:03):
Let's listen to this clip.

(00:40:07):
You can sort of see the effect it has on him to be around them.

(00:40:10):
Like, they spoil him.

(00:40:11):
There's sort of all the classic stuff that grandparents do to grandchildren.

(00:40:15):
But it makes him a much better human being to have exposure to his grandparents.

(00:40:20):
Well, I don't know... And the evidence on this, by the way, is, like, super clear.

(00:40:23):
That's the whole purpose of the post-monopausal female in theory.

(00:40:27):
Did your in-laws, and particularly your mother-in-law, show up in some huge way?

(00:40:33):
She lived with us for a year.

(00:40:35):
So I didn't know the answer to that.

(00:40:38):
That's this weird unadvertised feature of marrying an Indian woman.

(00:40:42):
It's in some ways the most transgressive thing I've ever done against sort of the

(00:40:47):
hyper neoliberal approach to work and family.

(00:40:53):
So we just listened now to a quite different Vance.

(00:40:56):
You know, there was the one talking about Obama.

(00:40:58):
Okay,

(00:40:58):
one can take issue with his position there,

(00:41:01):
but still in a very intercultural way,

(00:41:04):
showing some kind of sensitivity,

(00:41:06):
even talking about group contact theory,

(00:41:08):
how people empathize more,

(00:41:10):
you know,

(00:41:10):
if they spend more time together.

(00:41:12):
And then we get this pretty shady clip, you know, with another tech bro.

(00:41:16):
I mean, both of them, both Eric Weinstein and JD Vance having come on Peter Thiel as a patron.

(00:41:22):
We'll talk more about this right-wing libertarian tech billionaire, the founder of PayPal.

(00:41:28):
We will have other shows to talk about that.

(00:41:30):
But the content is very crude, right?

(00:41:33):
And it looks like, okay, he's trying to use neoliberalism.

(00:41:36):
So some hint of leftism there,

(00:41:39):
again,

(00:41:39):
of a critique of capitalism,

(00:41:41):
but really just to affirm pretty crude statements about gender roles and also

(00:41:46):
racialized gender roles.

(00:41:47):
Somehow the role of Indian women is to take care of children or, you know,

(00:41:52):
and similar kind of discourse.

(00:41:55):
So,

(00:41:55):
and now you fast forward,

(00:41:57):
even now what we're hearing in the speeches,

(00:41:59):
you know,

(00:41:59):
very rabid anti-immigrant propaganda.

(00:42:02):
So what's going on?

(00:42:03):
So how can somebody change so much just within a few years?

(00:42:09):
I mean,

(00:42:09):
it's an open question whether or not he actually changed,

(00:42:13):
or maybe it is the discourse around him that has changed.

(00:42:17):
But I'll say this.

(00:42:20):
One thing that really stands out is a shift of emphasis from a politics of recognition, right,

(00:42:29):
the coastal elites need to recognize and see the middle America sensitivities and vice versa, right?

(00:42:42):
So he's really centering his argument there around the politics of empathy and recognition,

(00:42:48):
which very much

(00:42:50):
explains why he was able to appeal to centrist and liberal commentators because

(00:43:00):
what he's offering as a solution for the problems in the U.S.

(00:43:06):
is nothing too radical.

(00:43:09):
It's just let's all get together and empathize and see each other, be seen and be heard.

(00:43:16):
and so on.

(00:43:17):
What's interesting in comparison to 2020 is how much that framework has been

(00:43:24):
completely tossed aside in favor of a quite brutish disregard for sensitivities of women.

(00:43:36):
And

(00:43:37):
The bigger question here is, are these things actually in contradiction?

(00:43:42):
Perhaps the project was never a,

(00:43:46):
for him,

(00:43:47):
never a politics of recognition and empathy that would be universal,

(00:43:54):
but rather to argue that certain segments of the US population deserve more empathy

(00:44:00):
and sympathy than others.

(00:44:02):
So maybe in fact,

(00:44:04):
that's really what's changing in terms of his rhetoric is the emphasis of

(00:44:10):
recognizing and empathizing with so-called middle America,

(00:44:14):
which he then ostensibly claims to represent.

(00:44:19):
And now the emphasis is shifting towards disregarding, yeah?

(00:44:25):
and marginalizing those that are ostensibly undeserving of such sympathies,

(00:44:31):
such as immigrants and women or immigrant women.

(00:44:35):
Yes,

(00:44:36):
I mean,

(00:44:36):
I think it's still important to make the point about this kind of politics of respectability.

(00:44:41):
I know it's been attacked left and right, sadly.

(00:44:45):
But while I wouldn't agree with Vance in 2016,

(00:44:50):
I would have much preferred to have Vance in 2016 as a respectable political

(00:44:55):
commentator

(00:44:56):
than Vance now in 2024.

(00:44:58):
I'm making the point about the damages that then this awful vitriolic rhetoric does.

(00:45:04):
As you said,

(00:45:05):
I think you're right to say that the basis of the rhetoric is already there,

(00:45:08):
but I think it makes a lot of difference if you make some kind of slightly

(00:45:12):
problematic statement about Obama and intercultural understanding to the kind of

(00:45:18):
stuff we're hearing now in the

(00:45:20):
in the Trump and Vance campaign.

(00:45:22):
But to wrap up this part on Vance,

(00:45:26):
let's see also how this mix of left and right really comes in this very masculine way,

(00:45:31):
I would say,

(00:45:32):
in a recent speech he had just a few days ago at the International Association of

(00:45:38):
Firefighters Conference in Boston.

(00:45:43):
Thank you, guys.

(00:45:44):
Thank you so much.

(00:45:50):
Semper Fi, guys.

(00:45:51):
It sounds like we've got some fans and some haters.

(00:45:54):
That's OK.

(00:45:55):
Listen to what I have to say here, and I'll make my pitch.

(00:45:58):
President Trump and I are proud to be the most pro-worker Republican ticket in history.

(00:46:04):
And I want to talk about why we're fighting for working people,

(00:46:08):
why we're going to fight for unions and non-union alike.

(00:46:13):
After supporting Democrats for so long in this union, what has it gotten you?

(00:46:19):
Over the past 70 years,

(00:46:20):
union membership in this country,

(00:46:22):
and this is not a good thing,

(00:46:23):
but it has declined.

(00:46:25):
The influence of unions has declined.

(00:46:28):
And the wages of working people,

(00:46:30):
union and non-union alike,

(00:46:32):
have not kept up with the pace of inflation over the last three and a half years.

(00:46:36):
So I want to ask you a question that Donald Trump asked America in 2016,

(00:46:40):
what the hell do you have to lose?

(00:46:43):
You all are the embodiment of American spirit, heroic, determined, selfless, hardworking, and tough.

(00:46:52):
This country was built by people like you.

(00:46:55):
America is great because of people like you.

(00:46:58):
And I believe you deserve a government that is loyal to you.

(00:47:11):
I would say not exactly a success.

(00:47:13):
I mean,

(00:47:14):
you don't really call your target audience haters,

(00:47:18):
but still we can hear this kind of,

(00:47:20):
again,

(00:47:20):
left-right mixes where this macho nationalism is kind of masked as a kind of

(00:47:26):
advocate of the working class.

(00:47:27):
But I would say the nationalism and the very masculine form of these tough people

(00:47:32):
who built America seems to really overtake any kind of sensible discussion about

(00:47:39):
progressivism or being pro-worker

(00:47:42):
and any related issues as such.

(00:47:45):
Today,

(00:47:45):
we spent quite a lot of time on this right-wing Republican side of the campaign,

(00:47:51):
but let's see what's up on the Democrat side.

(00:47:54):
One piece of news is that Harris and Waltz have finally given an interview to the media.

(00:47:59):
They spoke with CNN's Dana Bash at the end of August.

(00:48:04):
Let's listen to a clip where Kamala Harris talks to Bash on CNN.

(00:48:12):
We have inflation at under 3%.

(00:48:15):
A lot of our policies have led to the reality that America recovered faster than

(00:48:20):
any wealthy nation around the world.

(00:48:22):
But you are right.

(00:48:24):
Prices, in particular for groceries, are still too high.

(00:48:26):
The American people know it.

(00:48:27):
I know it.

(00:48:28):
which is why my agenda includes what we need to do to bring down the price of groceries.

(00:48:32):
For example, dealing with an issue like price gouging.

(00:48:35):
What we need to do to extend the child tax credit to help young families be able to

(00:48:40):
take care of their children in their most formative years.

(00:48:43):
What we need to do to bring down the cost of housing.

(00:48:46):
My proposal includes what would be a tax credit of $25,000 for first-time home

(00:48:52):
buyers so they can just have enough to put a down payment on a home,

(00:48:57):
which is part of the American dream and their aspiration,

(00:49:01):
but do it in a way that allows them to actually get on the path to achieving that

(00:49:06):
goal and that dream.

(00:49:07):
So you have been vice president for three and a half years.

(00:49:10):
The steps that you're talking about now, why haven't you done them already?

(00:49:15):
Well, first of all, we had to recover as an economy, and we have done that.

(00:49:19):
I'm very proud of the work that we have done that has brought inflation down to less than 3%.

(00:49:23):
The work that we have done to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors.

(00:49:28):
Donald Trump said he was going to do a number of things,

(00:49:30):
including allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

(00:49:33):
Never happened.

(00:49:34):
We did it.

(00:49:36):
I chose this clip because I wanted to show that Kamala Harris actually did quite well, in my opinion.

(00:49:43):
But we're hearing quite a lot also from the Democrat side that perhaps she's not

(00:49:47):
doing so well in unscripted environments.

(00:49:50):
There's been some kind of strategy perhaps by some of her advisers not to expose

(00:49:54):
her too much to the press.

(00:49:55):
What do you think?

(00:49:57):
Well,

(00:49:58):
it seems to me that this strategy of trying to shield her from press encounters

(00:50:05):
might be overcautious,

(00:50:06):
because as we saw,

(00:50:08):
she seems to be doing pretty well with improvisational answers,

(00:50:14):
with thinking on her feet on the clip we just saw.

(00:50:18):
And there's always risk that if one isn't out defining the issues, then

(00:50:25):
and defining oneself as a candidate,

(00:50:28):
then that leaves the room for the other to define to to to be defined by the other.

(00:50:34):
Right.

(00:50:34):
So if you're not defining the issues, then the other people are defining it for you.

(00:50:40):
And that's not strategically the best position to be in.

(00:50:45):
Then on the other hand, we can also see a contrast

(00:50:50):
between what Kamala Harris is doing in terms of defining the economic issues that

(00:50:57):
she's running her campaign on and how strongly they contrast

(00:51:02):
with J.D.

(00:51:03):
Vance's presentation,

(00:51:05):
which with Kamala Harris,

(00:51:08):
who stresses on defining the problem in terms of redistribution of resources,

(00:51:16):
getting prices down,

(00:51:17):
going after prize gougers.

(00:51:19):
She's drawing on her experience and her personality,

(00:51:23):
her public persona as a prosecutor here to link up that history with what she's

(00:51:30):
going to do in the future.

(00:51:32):
right,

(00:51:32):
that lends credibility to this idea that she's going after price gouging and also

(00:51:38):
defining the problem as certain economic elites were keeping prices artificially high.

(00:51:45):
In contrast with Vance, what we see is a talk about redistribution of

(00:51:53):
affects of emotions, right?

(00:51:56):
We'll be loyal to you.

(00:51:58):
We're redistributing loyalty instead of money.

(00:52:06):
And then also emphasizing this notion of not a working class defined in economic terms,

(00:52:13):
but this notion of hardworking Americans,

(00:52:17):
tough,

(00:52:18):
right, tough and, you know, hale and hearty.

(00:52:23):
So a constituency being defined in cultural terms,

(00:52:28):
really,

(00:52:29):
right,

(00:52:30):
as having these kind of traditionally masculine qualities,

(00:52:35):
right?

(00:52:35):
hardworking, serious, who built America.

(00:52:38):
And what we're getting here is about loyalty,

(00:52:40):
loyalty to America,

(00:52:41):
loyalty from Vance and Trump to them,

(00:52:45):
and not so much in terms of redistribution,

(00:52:48):
at least no concrete things being offered in terms of redistribution of actual job

(00:52:54):
opportunities or or taking prices down and so on.

(00:52:59):
It's more like that the economic

(00:53:02):
narrative is used, is subsumed by Vance under a cultural narrative of betrayal, of affect, emotions.

(00:53:14):
Yes, and I think we go back to some of the points we made earlier in the show.

(00:53:18):
There's not much definition of what this social and economic program will be from

(00:53:23):
the side of Vance and Trump,

(00:53:24):
while we have pretty clear measures,

(00:53:26):
you know,

(00:53:26):
from Harris and Walz.

(00:53:28):
We covered quite a lot today.

(00:53:30):
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(00:53:33):
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(00:53:37):
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(00:53:39):
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(00:53:43):
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(00:53:48):
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