All Episodes
Previous Next
April 27, 2021 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
59:39
The Right Lives In A Fantasyland

Nick Hauselman and Jared Yates Sexton talk about the Right's violent need to continue living in a fantasy of white supremacy and American exceptionalism and bring on the one and only Wajahat Ali to get to the bottom of their self-immolation.   To unlock exclusive content, including the Weekender shows on Friday, become a patron a http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
I'm kind of more worried about the rest of the country, which, thanks to police inaction, in case you haven't noticed, is, like, boarded up.
So, that's more my concern.
But I appreciate you coming on, Ed Gavin.
Thank you.
Nope, done.
But in my case, on any given day, there were two or three dozen, what I call knuckleheads, who just wanted, they wanted chaos.
They wanted it all their way, or no way.
And, you know, American democracy just doesn't work that way.
Hey everybody, welcome to the Mookrake Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Sexton, here as always with Nick Halsman.
Welcome to the show.
We've got a special one for you today.
Friend of the pod and one of the best writers and political thinkers out there, Wajihat Ali is coming on.
We're going to have a conversation with him that we are really excited to talk about, including, you know, the American right continuing to lose their mind.
And on that subject, before we bring on Waj, Occasionally, Nick, there's an article that comes out.
And those articles, sometimes words will come out and they'll change the world.
You think, like, Thomas Paine's Common Sense could help, you know, start a war for independence.
And, you know, the theses of Martin Luther posted on a church door.
So before we get to this conversation, I think this is a seminal text, is what I'll say.
A touchstone, if you will.
A real touchstone text.
And we're going to take a look at it because I actually think this did so much for me in starting to not just... I've understood what the rights thought is and what they're going.
And we've called it delusional.
We've called it another reality.
This actually sheds some light on something that we've been groping for in the dark, Nick.
And by the way, we like to surprise each other on this podcast, so Nick has not read this article.
And I am Very excited to read a little bit of this article to him.
So, to understand the conservative, quote-unquote conservative, because they're not actually conservative, right, in America, we would like to take a look at a really incredible article in the Orlando Sentinel, which, you know, is where you go.
I love Disney World, but wokeness is ruining the experience.
Womp womp.
How do you feel right now?
How do you feel before we even, like, start to wade into this?
There's no question that my enjoyment of a place like Disney World is clearly going to be affected by wokeness.
By wokeness.
This is by Jonathan Van Boskirk.
Which, by the way, we're recording this, I just want to say before we even start talking about this, we're recording this on Monday, April 26th.
Yesterday, for those who are not on the Internet, and good for you, God bless, you might have missed that the American right talked itself into the idea that Joe Biden was going to limit Americans to four pounds of red meat a year.
And so every person in the American right immediately went out and consumed four pounds of meat immediately, despite it being completely made up.
So let's let's try and understand our our country people.
My family and I have been loyal Disney customers for decades.
We vacation at Disney World every year.
We take a Disney cruise every year or two.
Consequently, we spend way too much money in Orlando.
I would say way too much.
Sure.
I would say way too much.
Yeah, put it in Bitcoin.
Unfortunately, I'm strongly rethinking our commitment to Disney and thus Orlando.
The more Disney moves away from the values and vision of Walt Disney, Real fast, a quick footnote, Nick.
What were the vision and values of Walt Disney?
They aligned probably closer to maybe Hitler than they did to FDR, for instance, I would think.
Yeah, for those who don't know, Walt Disney was a notorious anti-Semite and on top of that was involved in a Hollywood group which made sure that all entertainments coming out of Hollywood were strictly pro-American, which made them propaganda for the right in America for a very long time and actually did a great job of indoctrinating people for a very long time.
The more Disney moves away from the values and visions of Walt Disney, the less Disney World means to me.
Disney is forgetting that guest immersion Guest immersion is at the core of its business model.
When I stand in Galaxy's Edge or Fantasyland, Fantasyland by the way, I know I am in a theme park, but through immersion and my willingness to set the real world aside, something magical happens.
That spell is broken when the immersive experience is shattered by the real world, and boy has Disney been breaking the immersion.
Do you want to guess where this is going, Nick?
I mean, generally it's going to have to be something like maybe they're speaking in Spanish as well as English or something like that for the instructions on the rides.
I don't know.
Recently, Disney announced that cast members are now permitted to display tattoos, wear inclusive uniforms, and display inclusive haircuts.
Do we want to go ahead and translate what he's saying?
Yeah, you have to look like you're out of Pleasantville or something, I suppose.
Yeah, he's saying they're letting people of color express themselves at Disney World.
Disney did all of this in the name of allowing cast members to express themselves.
The problem is, I'm not traveling across the country and paying thousands of dollars to watch someone I do not know express themselves.
I am there for the immersion and the fantasy, not the reality of a stranger's self-expression.
I do not begrudge these people their individuality, and I wish them well in their personal lives.
Do ya?
But I do not get to express my individuality at my place of business.
I've got something a revelation for you as well that goes exactly with what having not known that you want to talk about this today.
I walked around the mall yesterday for the first time in.
13, 14 months.
Not that I did it that often when I was, before the pandemic, but I walked around and I, and I, you know, all of a sudden, and it's crowded, right?
Most people wearing masks, it's just fine.
Most people, some people, you know, nose uncovered and some people without anything.
But what I kind of felt like was hitting me was that we're now out and about, and we're now faced with people who don't look like us.
And if you had spent any time indoors over the last year in the pandemic, and now you are out about again, this is going to now, the agitator is going to be stirred up in a way that maybe you had, you know, perhaps you get used to it.
You get used to being around people who don't look like you in normal circumstances.
And now that we're back to this again, you know, it's getting stirred up in worse ways than ever before.
And we get shit like this.
Well, you're exactly right.
There is going to be there are going to be some social and political ramifications.
There absolutely are.
It's like being on the public sphere is going to be something.
But I will say.
The idea that like people can't express themselves because they're going to interrupt the childish fantasy of some white dude at an amusement park.
There is no better concentrated definition.
of white exceptionalism and American exceptionalism.
This idea that, oh, you know, these people, I have no problem with these people, but, you know, they need to wear their clothes a certain way, they need to speak a certain way, they have to behave a certain way, or else they're going to make me uncomfortable and ruin my fantasy.
What we're talking about is the American right's fantasy.
Which is being interrupted.
The idea that they're good people, and that America is like a totally perfect, godly, chosen place, and that they're not actually hurting anybody.
They're just asking everyone, you know, maybe, what is it, what's the old shit, right?
Like, pull up your pants, or wear your hat the right way, or whatever it is that they make up, right?
Which is whatever that makes them feel uncomfortable.
It's not a delusion.
It's not It's it's not this sort of lie that they're telling themselves.
They're worried about their fantasy is what it is But let me just give you an insight into someone who actually has a pass to Disneyland in the wonderful world of you know, California we go a lot
Okay, so this notion of a fantasy, like I don't even understand where he's going with that anyway, because let's face it, especially if you're an adult, it's a slog, it's hard, it's crowded, it's a lot of lines, it's not like that fantasy gets interrupted every second, unless you're maybe for that one brief moment on the Harry Potter ride or whatever, or that's universal, but whatever, where you can kind of get immersed.
The rest of the time, you are just faced with reality the whole time.
So this is really a veiled article, right?
He's not necessarily even talking about Disney World specifically.
You know what I mean?
I don't know if that's true.
I think... So what you're actually talking about, and this is an important thing, and I hope we get to talk to Wash about this.
You're actually talking about the difference between being a mature adult living in a material world versus someone who lives in, like, gleeful denial.
Do you know what I mean?
That's interesting.
Like, so, for instance, like, we have this podcast where we talk about American realities and deep politics and what's actually going on.
Like, we're talking about, like, what is actually occurring in the world and how it occurs and how it transpires and why it occurs, right?
Now, people might say that's cynical.
It's not actually cynical.
It's materialistic.
We're talking about things that are actually happening and how they happen.
This person is living in a fairy tale with Tinkerbell and Captain Hook and Pluto and God knows who else just showing up and living out this weird fantasy where people are supposed to wear their clothes for his approval.
They're supposed to cut their hair for his approval or hide their tattoos for his approval.
Who the hell is this person?
Right.
You're right.
It's not an adult, it's not an adult perspective whatsoever.
And also, so if you're talking about the hair and the tattoos, it's not the people wearing the costumes that are walking around like Minnie Mouse and whatever.
These are obviously, he's talking about people who are like at the cash registers, I suppose, right?
Like this is even, Uh, you know, I mean, I'm sure that the Venn diagram between him and the people who can't stand going to, like, a football game and seeing the players kneel, uh, are probably this- it's a circle, right?
This is the same idea.
Uh, sports is not for politics.
It's for, you know, just for- Wait, as they unfurl a giant American flag on the field, and the troops march out, and we say we salute our troops.
Right, exactly.
But then we have to play on their playing field.
We talked about this before, but the notion of them thinking that kneeling, for instance, before a football game or basketball game, is an affront to the flag or to our troops, versus a statement about cops killing black people.
They think that they get to decide what terms these things mean to them.
versus what the people who are doing them mean why they're doing them.
100%!
And that kind of is the umbrella patriarchal white grievance thing we've been talking about in a nutshell, right?
They get to define the terms and they get to define their grievance. - 100%.
And by the way, everything that you're talking about is intellectually true, but I'm going to go ahead and reduce it down to the common sort of lowest base instinct.
And listen, you're a father.
I'm, listen, I'm just on this side of 40, but I still remember what it's like to be a child.
I have friends who have children.
We're talking about childish behavior.
Think about what we're talking about here.
My trip to Disney World isn't the way that I want it and so as a result I'm gonna stomp my feet and yell about it and demand somebody make it different.
I'm gonna eat as much food as I want and I don't care if it makes me sick or if it hurts anybody else.
You can't take Dr. Seuss away from me.
You can't take my book away from me with the colorful images and it's happy racism.
This is childish behavior.
It is such an immature, and you know how kids can be when they're little.
They don't have that sort of filter where it's like the world has to bend to whatever they want at any given time.
We're dealing with a population that is lost in childish fantasy at this point.
I mean, I had a girlfriend who had a Marvin the Martian tattoo.
Is that not acceptable to use a Disney character as a tattoo if you're working?
That's not Disney.
Marvin is not?
What is he, WB?
No!
Are you kidding me?
Is it WB?
What is that?
I don't even know.
That's WB!
He did battle with Daffy Duck.
Sorry.
I mean, I am known to wear Adidas and Nike at the same time, so forgive me for the faux pas.
That makes me itchy, Nick.
Oh, no.
So that's the point.
It's like, let's really unpack exactly what the reaction is that he's having to blue hair, right?
I'm assuming is what he's talking about.
Or like, I don't know, I'm on Mohawk or something, right?
I bet it's like dreadlocks.
I bet he has natural hair!
You know what I mean?
This entire article, he does everything he can not to say black.
You know what I mean?
Black and Hispanic.
He does everything possible to not have to say that.
Yeah, and so as a result, listen, I pride myself in, you know, walking around people's shoes for a minute, however dirty those shoes are, and the question then is, okay, so he sees this, he's faced with it, and in his mind he's being reminded of the other.
Right.
The replacement.
Right.
We have to sort of figure out what this what the connection from one end of the brain to the other is.
And it's it's he's obviously upset about it.
So he doesn't want to be reminded of the you know what the influx of other people that don't look like him.
And is there any other way we can define what he's going through in this?
No, because the world stops and starts at his beck and call.
And that's what he wants.
And that's what white Americans want.
It's not enough that white Americans have power.
It's not enough that white Americans control politics and culture.
They want people to not only, like, let that alone, they want people to thank them for it.
Right?
Which is what we see constantly.
It's like anytime LeBron James, like, utters a crossword, they're like, well, he's not grateful.
Right?
He's not, he's not properly grateful.
And look at this country that allowed him to make the money and have the name that he does.
He should be grateful.
And that is, it all has to do with this absolute, nonsensical, bullshit reality that these people live in.
I thought that this was an absolutely incredible article for, like, exposing that mindset.
Because they can't talk about what they're talking about.
If he was talking about race, if he was talking about politics, that would be a problem.
He's talking about something else away from it.
Well, thankfully, some of these other people on that side are talking about it, and I don't think it's a slip-up anymore, right?
They are out loud saying the quiet parts, as we saw earlier today as released by Rick Santorum on the video, which we'll talk about.
But, you know, that's the other thing.
This is not in a bubble, right?
This ideology and this article is not written with nothing behind it and no history of what we've been going through since the start of this country, basically.
And that's the thing.
You have to be able to piece these things together and it becomes a mosaic, a very racist mosaic.
And that's what I think the self-reflection or lack thereof doesn't allow them to see how they are fomenting the hatred.
And as a result, you know, a good thing.
We got back to that same idea where if it's not the N word, he didn't say anything.
You know, there's not a word you can do in a word search that will prove that it's racist, that it's not racist.
And there's no systemic racism.
How dare you, Nick?
He just wants his Disney World.
Oh, God, the humane.
All right.
We got to bring Waj on to talk about this.
I'm really excited to talk to Waj about Disney World and Rick Santorum and Tucker Carlson.
So hang on for just a second.
We're going to have Daily Beast columnist Wajihat Ali with us here in just a moment.
Alright people, we are here and this is a special treat.
We have Wajahat Ali, a columnist for Daily Beast, one of the smartest people out there, has had everything dead to rights for a very long time.
I just told Waj I was very excited because before we brought him on, we were talking about this wonderful article in the Orlando Sentinel about a Republican Disney World patron who was upset about his fantasy being interrupted by Park workers with what he called and and and I'll go ahead and make sure I have this right inclusive haircuts
Inclusive haircuts and inclusive tattoos that they were ruining his fantasy.
We were talking about how the American right has been engaged, not just in like a delusional reality, but a fantasy.
And I think that is just about the most perfect way to actually talk about this, because it's people of color and poor people who are just ruining that fantasy wash.
It's just really ruining that immersion for them.
I need more racist crows from Dumbo.
This is what I need in my life.
I need more racist crows talking jive to a flying elephant.
This is what tethers me to the ground of Americana.
This is how, you know, when I think of America, I think of Jesus, racist crows, brooms that are dancing, Mickey Mouse.
And that's, you know, that's what our founding fathers and the prophets really wanted.
U.S.A.
U.S.A.
But then when you see like a fade haircut or when you see braids that that that is what knocks me off my pedestal of reality.
I need I need to be immersed in a small world after all, literally.
Yeah, you are aware.
Pirates of the Caribbean, the pirates have to be white.
They're being replaced by some Jamaicans.
I can't have that.
I mean, here's the thing.
I want them to be scary, but not too scary.
Right, like if I'm going to Disney World, I don't want to be made that uncomfortable, right?
In my lily white reality.
But didn't Captain Jack Sparrow have like different hair and like gold teeth and tattoos?
How come that's okay?
Like, no, like, I want to, like, logically take this to the next level, right?
Because I've gone to Disney World a couple of times.
My wife's from Florida.
And so we have kids.
And before the lockdown, we went.
And so they re-updated Pirates of the Caribbean in light of the massive success of the now, what, four or five movies?
And so they replaced those old lily white pirates with these funky new Jack Sparrow pirates with tattoos.
But that's OK.
But God forbid if you have What exactly is an inclusive haircut?
I think all of us are at that certain age that if we have hair on our head, we're just grateful.
I feel like I'm a South Asian unicorn.
I'm 40 years old with hair on my head.
Any hair, it just makes me happy.
You know, Waj, I think you and I have, like, written for enough editors.
I think that we can read a column and we can feel the touch of an editor.
You know what I mean?
Where they, like, move somebody towards words.
I would love to see that rough cut and see what those hairstyles were called in the first draft.
Yeah, I think whoever published that is like, this is gonna go viral.
This is amazing.
This is gonna be a nonsense cultural war that will pit the left versus the right.
And we will have something fake to talk about in addition to Biden stealing our meat, which is now, you know, because they went so far, they went like for months with Dr. Seuss, which was very impressive. - Incredible. - Considering the pandemic Like they milked Dr. Seuss for like four months.
And then now the base needs something, like the base literally needs meat.
Like we need to be fed anger and rage and conspiracy theories, so let's give them Disney World and some haircuts.
And which was, it's like everything about that, even the photo, the guy looking at, like the guy, the figurines in the background, it's just, it's chef's kiss, it's beautiful.
Well, you know, we were talking earlier about what the glitch is in the brain when he's subjected to these images, kind of like in Clockwork Orange, right, where his eyes are forced open.
He has to see these people.
What do you think?
What is it that's conjuring up that's making him so upset that he has to actually run to write a column about it?
You know, he probably noticed that Goofy has black ears for the first time and is wearing his hat sideways.
Uh, that could be very triggering for a grown white man, you know?
Like, I'm used to Goofy wearing his hat in a very one-directional way.
Uh, you know, he probably saw, uh, Minnie Mouse flirting, uh, a little bit with maybe, uh, Daphne.
I don't know.
Maybe they were just friends, but he probably thought there was some, like, lesbianism happening, you know, that triggered him.
Uh, you know, this is one of those things where you, in all seriousness, you will, it shows the obsession and the fear of a particular mindset, right?
If you are obsessed with this fear, you will literally see it in the most benign things such as Disney.
So if you are literally terrified of black and brown people as your neighbors, if you're literally terrified of LGBT people, if you're terrified of Muslims, if you're terrified of a name which has more than two syllables, if you're terrified of saying the word Kamala, and that is what's force-fed To you, to your brain, to your eyes like in Clockwork Orange, right?
24-7 through a right-wing ecosystem.
It's not just Fox News, right?
It's the podcast, it's Fox News, it's talk radio, it's the online essays, right?
It's an entire closed ecosystem with a 24-7 information loop.
Then that literally colors your perception of the world to the point where you can go to Disney World and instead of just enjoying it's a small world, you're looking at that brown I didn't see that brown kid in America.
Where did that brown kid come from?
It used to be Lily White.
They're replacing us.
It's really fascinating.
Yeah, you know, I'm so glad you brought up the meat thing.
I had a moment yesterday where, you know, it's like social media has like this weird sort of barometer that you see these things start to percolate up, right?
All of a sudden the rumor began that Biden was going to limit Americans to four pounds of meat a year as some sort of like a, you know, a fight against climate change, which was completely nonsense.
This has not been written down anywhere.
Like somebody somewhere said these are ways that maybe Americans could decide to help out.
And then immediately it was like after lunch, apparently the entire American right got very, very hungry and needed some red meat in their lives.
And they all went out and basically bought like five pound pot roast and then cooked them in the most disgusting possible way and then consumed it.
And basically, and this is no joke, you want to like actually talk about like the concrete effects of this.
They were ingesting dangerous amounts of meat for themselves while also actually going ahead and adding to a very real problem that will affect them and also their children.
It was a suicidal self-harm kind of an action, which is the American right in a nutshell right now.
And it was completely fabricated, completely astroturfed, no truth to it whatsoever.
But we're watching this train come off the tracks, and I mean, it didn't have many wheels on the tracks to begin with.
It's self-immolation.
I think that's the key thing.
It's dying for whiteness.
It's dying to own the libs.
But at the end of the day, you kind of sit there and observe, and it's really, it is sad in a way, because you are destroying yourself, right?
Like, first of all, you're destroying your colon.
So, like, your colon's like, why?
Why did I have to be attached to a right winger?
Why couldn't I have been attached to a vegan?
Just like, you know, this bleeding colon that's just crying in pain after eating like a 10-pound steak.
But also, like, you know, it was manufactured by the right wing, and it just shows that when the right wing now exists in the conspiracy theorist bubble, because that's where it exists, right?
Let's not forget that last year, the right wing, specifically I'm talking about the GOP establishment, met and they had a decision to make about QAnon.
And they decided that QAnon is so influential with their base that they're going to roll with it.
So now they're rolling with QAnon and Deep State, which I always want to remind people our law enforcement has said is a national security threat.
So when 4chan and 8chan and Deep State and QAnon are part and parcel of your information network, what else do you expect?
And so Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, who has been remarkable in killing so many of his Texas residents, even he retweeted it, right?
And it goes to show you that once you get hit by the right wing, because I've been hit by the right wing, I think Jared, you have been as well, I'm convinced they're on the same Slack channel.
I completely agree.
Because Daily Caller comes out, three minutes later, Washington Examiner, five minutes later, a politician, ten minutes later, Fox News, later at night, copy on Tuxer, it's copy for Tucker Carlson's monologue, right?
How does this magically happen?
Same talking point, same fear, same conspiracy, same words.
They're obviously working together in a closed information network, and they're feeding this literally red meat to their base, and their base is killing themselves.
Because if you give your base an enemy, and if you tell them that enemy is coming after them, our primordial brain says fight or flight.
I have to survive.
I have to protect my children.
Any means necessary.
If that means I have to go kill a cow and put that cow on my plate and destroy my colon, dammit, I'm gonna do that.
Well, I think we'd be remiss if we didn't at least acknowledge the methane problem as well, because that seems to be the biggest fear for me, both individually and then the cows.
But, Waj, are you really, really just... Do you say a thank you every day when you wake up that John Boehner has come out and sort of tried to explain to us all how much the Republican Party is a party of conspiracies and nut jobs?
Do you feel like that's how important his statement has been?
I think so.
I think we all owe a standing ovation and slow golf clap to John Boehner for now in his retirement as he's smoking cigars and doing his audio version with profanities laced towards Ted Cruz.
You know, the hero.
Oh, the sacrifice that you made, Boehner.
Like, I did not get on this Boehner praise train because Boehner is utterly complicit in what the GOP has become.
This guy knew exactly where the train was headed.
And I think he, instead of being praised, he should be condemned because, bro, you knew.
You're admitting that you knew.
And when you had an opportunity to step up and warn this country to save this country from this impending extremist outfit posing as the GOP, what did you do?
Nothing.
And, you know, and even now he does nothing.
Like, did he vote for Obama?
No.
Did he vote for Obama?
Biden?
No.
And so why should I applaud you for getting a six-figure, maybe seven-figure book deal?
And now that it's all safe, you can swear out Ted Cruz.
When you had the platform, you could have said, I am renouncing this.
The GOP is going off the rails.
I'm warning my GOP brethren.
I'm warning the political ecosystem.
But he kept quiet.
And his complicity will always be remembered, at least by me, at least by you.
I think it's important.
Because the White House press, let's not forget, the last thing I'll say is the White House press, this is why it's so, it's, you know, for those people who are listening, you know, I'm in Virginia, close to DC, you know, I used to be commentator for CNN, contributor to New York Times, right?
I can tell you that the way the town works is this incestuous network, right?
I'll scratch your back, you scratch my back, we'll be friends.
It's all about access.
So Boehner used to host all these journalists while he was in Congress and used to regale them with stories.
And I'm sitting there as the press is sitting there talking about, oh, Boehner used to tell us great stories, ha, ha, ha.
I'm like, why are we so chummy with Boehner?
It just shows you how everything is so gross and it's so incestuous that he's able to whine and dine you afterwards and you go to him for scoops but you didn't impress him.
And now that he comes out and says this, it's like, oh, we're supposed to applaud Boehner?
Not me.
Yeah, it's weird how far bullshitting with those people will get you.
I mean, George W. Bush is doing that exact same thing right now and being rehabilitated by everybody on the map, really, right now.
I brought you on here because I wanted to talk to you about a thing that I felt like you have nailed dead to the wall.
Unfortunately, Nick and I have been covering this.
This has become one of our, basically, weekly segments.
Which is the ascent of one Tucker Carlson.
I was chatting with somebody the other day, DMing with them, and they said, and I'm going to remember this for a long time, he smells it.
And by that, like this is a thing where Tucker Carlson is obviously he recognizes what's going on.
This is a guy who understands messaging.
He's talking about the parties.
He's been in every party, every network, everywhere, all along the place.
He now recognizes where the wind is blowing.
He understands that white nationalism, anti-majoritarian politics, also a politics of rage and paranoia and conspiracy theories.
Where it is going, he is obviously cresting with this wave.
How are you feeling about this thing right now?
Because I think it is a walking nightmare.
Yeah, I said the hoods are off.
And the hoods probably have been off for a while.
And people say, oh, Wads, the hood's been off since 1950s.
However, I want to say this is, if you go to 1980, right, Lee Atwater, Republican strategist for the Republicans, openly said in a famous quote, right, we can no longer say the N-word.
And he said the N-word.
It used to be N-word, N-word, N-word.
But we can no longer say it.
And so now we had to change the words and you have to make it so nebulous that you're pretty much giving, you know, these dog whistles, right, like welfare queens and so forth.
So that was the 80s.
The Republican Party courted white rage specifically during the 60s with the Civil Rights Act and the Immigration Nationality Act.
And that's how they lost so many of these southern white Democrats, right, who became Republican.
And Goldwater was the first one to recognize it.
Nixon kind of really honed it.
Reagan and Bush kind of perfected it, especially when Bush went with white evangelicals, right.
But McCain and Romney were kind of the last gaps.
They were, you know, what I always tell people is the Republican Party for the past 50 years has actively courted as like their Luca Brasi.
It's ugly.
It's disgusting.
But we're going to unleash this hitman to win over the votes.
But we're in control.
We're in control of Frankenstein.
Well, what Trump did is Frankenstein escaped, right, and turned on its masters.
Literally.
All those architects like Boehner, people like all the architects of the Iraq war.
I'm so happy that George W. Bush now is now known as an eccentric painter who gives toffee to Michelle Obama.
But he's an architect of one of the most disastrous wars and Katrina and racism.
Right.
Terrible.
For those who are old enough, remember his eight years were terrible.
But now the hoods are off and Tucker smells it.
He sees it.
He understands it.
He goes, there's no going back.
This is the party of QAnon.
This is the party of insurrection.
This is the party of literally the replacement theory.
And I'll give you one example because everyone's focusing on Tucker.
I've written about him, and I'll keep bringing it up, Paul Gosar.
Paul Gosar in February literally gave the keynote address to a white supremacist organization, then came back and tweeted out a white supremacist slogan and has yet to be condemned by Republican leadership, at least back in the day, and I'm talking about a couple of years ago, Steve King of Iowa was forced to kind of like be sacrificed by the Republican party, right?
Remember they stripped him of his committees?
Well, what's the difference between what Steve King is saying and what Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson are saying?
Literally nothing.
Nothing.
And that shows you the shift.
So when people say, oh, Waj, no, it's always been this way.
What I try to say is, yes, but at least it was covert.
Now it's not covert.
And this is why we're in really dangerous territory, because you and I have been warning people about this for the past five, six years.
Everyone says, oh, Waj, the center will hold.
And I'm like, I believe Gosar, Tucker, And Marjorie Taylor Greene are the present and future of the party, and I hope I'm proven wrong but I don't think I will be.
Well, here's an interesting question, because we spent time talking about Tucker and how he's intoxicating to his audience.
But now I'm starting to wonder, is he really a great salesman?
Because he does say things like, well, we know what happened to the Capitol wasn't such a big deal.
That is fact.
Like, that is fact is his big, you know, keyword, key phrase.
But now I'm starting to wonder, maybe he isn't really a great salesman.
Maybe they're already so conditioned for this that it doesn't take any kind of presentation to further this ideology.
What do you think?
Yeah, I actually agree with you.
I don't praise Tucker for this because I remember when, who did Tucker take over for, right?
Everyone forgets, Bill O'Reilly.
And when we were growing up back in the day, I'm talking about 2003, 4, 5, 6, Bill O'Reilly was the bad guy.
He He was the tucker.
I always used to say that the way this ecosystem is set up, it's like Hydra, right?
You cut off one, another will take its place, literally.
And so when people said, oh, Bill O'Reilly's gone, there'll be change.
I'm like, nope.
Tucker just fit right into that spot, and then who fit in right after Tucker?
Laura.
And so it doesn't matter.
Even if Tucker gets felled by some insane, let's say he says something so egregious that Lachlan Murdoch is forced to part with him, it doesn't matter.
They'll bring in Dan Bongino, right?
All they need is someone to parrot the talking points.
That's all they need.
The bar is very...
We're not going to get them back.
charismatic, they aren't that smart.
It's not like they're really good looking and brilliant.
They're not that witty.
They're not funny.
But they need someone to feed them.
And so the base has been so conditioned, right?
And the base has become radicalized where I have said, and I hope I'm wrong that I've said this to Jared, I think in our lifetime, you know, our respective age group, I think we've lost about a quarter of Americans.
We're not going to get them back.
I think we've lost them.
But we can still get the majority.
And And I do think in a strange way, like if this might be some gilded touch to this, because they have nothing left except white rage in an age where there's a pandemic and a recession.
You saw the latest poll numbers.
Pretty remarkable for Biden.
It's not sticking with the majority, but they'll get this 25 to 33 percent, which is pretty terrifying that, you know, we would assume in a normal, sane democracy, 5 to 10 percent are cranks.
This ain't 5 to 10 percent, guys.
And so 25 to 33 percent could do a lot of damage.
That's my fear.
And they've already done a ton of damage.
I mean, and on top of that, like, you know, we've been talking about this for a while now, Waj.
As they recognize that their fate, I mean, they're historically unpopular.
Nobody wants them, right?
Except for like this core group of what you're talking about.
And these actions that they're taking, everyone's like, I can't believe that they're, you know, disenfranchising people so openly or that they're making it legal to run over protesters.
Or if you protest the wrong thing, you'll get student aid taken away, possibly your vote taken away, all of these, you know, sort of public goods.
And the whole point is they're desperate.
They have no other choice because they have made a decision.
And they made a decision going back into 2012 when Obama won re-election.
They knew they needed to enlarge their umbrella, move away from their native xenophobic politics.
And they made a decision.
They went all in on Donald Trump.
And they have no other recourse at this point.
They are desperate.
And they are trying to keep themselves from being politically eradicated.
It's a death spiral, right?
And so I've said this before, and people say, what do you mean?
And so I said, we're witnessing the death rattle of white supremacy, which has become a death march, right?
And so the surge is because they know they're dying, right?
It's like, it's like an animal that's most dangerous right before it's put to bed, hopefully.
And this is why you're seeing it.
It's global too, right?
And I've been kind of like researching this for about 10 years when I focused on the Islamophobia industry in America.
about these characters and this ecosystem that emerged.
And I warned as many people as I could, and people just didn't listen.
I said, listen, this is going to be, it's not just going to be in America, it's global, it's interconnected.
And you guys are saying that love is going intersectional, so is hate.
Because it's not just anti-Muslim, it's anti-Black, anti-Latino, anti-immigrant, it's especially anti-woman.
People don't see that angle often.
And it's anti-LGBT, and they're going to combine their forces, right?
It's going to be like the brotherhood of mutants.
If we're the X-Men, it's going to be the brotherhood of mutants.
And the New York Times did this huge piece that came out two days ago, talking about how American Islamophobes and the American right wing are literally paying for Tommy Robinson, this EDL white extremist who's gone mainstream with white nationalism in Britain, right?
So you're literally seeing this fertilization all around in Hungary, in Poland, in France, in England.
This is not just an American phenomenon.
And the right wing realizes they're on to something, which is why Steve Bannon, remember, Steve Bannon went to Europe.
He was talking- Started economies.
Yeah.
He talked to Le Pen's party.
He says, wear it with pride.
And he talked to Alexander Dugan in Russia.
I mean, all of these people are comparing notes and bringing- And Robinson's going to Russia now.
The article said now that it's like, you know, there's a backlash in England, and the money's running dry, where are they going?
Russia.
And so Russia is like, great, if I can foment a disruption like I did in 2016 around race and religion, let me do it again.
And the sad part is, going back to your point, Jared, it is a self-immolation of our democracy.
But I don't think people care.
I think they're like, I remember that someone showed me an article.
The right wing came after me last year.
I was on CNN.
I gave an analogy.
I said, for some of these people on the right wing, if you gave them a choice, And this is again, a metaphorical analogy of renting their room to a person of color or burning down the house, they'll burn down the neighborhood.
And of course you're like, well, John Delis says white people will burn down the neighborhood.
I have a black neighbor.
And I'm like, I'm like, and then I'm like, lo and behold, was I proven right?
Look at January 6th.
Um, so this is where we're at and people still don't want to see it.
And I think the last thing I'll say is the reason why I don't think people want to see it is because people don't want to talk about white supremacy.
If you talk about it, you have to acknowledge it.
You have to acknowledge your role and then you have to acknowledge what we're going to do to dismantle it.
No one wants to have that conversation.
So everyone says, we voted for Obama.
We live in a post racial society.
Oh, look, So many people of color nominated for Oscars.
Let's not talk about the real problem.
Both sides.
Now that you bring that up really quickly before we finish this off, I take it you saw Judas and the Black Messiah.
Is that safe to say?
Yes.
I watched it the other night and I started to realize what the Black Panthers were advocating for.
So my question was, I'm thinking about this, is what they were advocating for, aside from any kind of the violent, you know, things that they might have done as Black Panthers, but the things they were advocating for, I don't think, has anything changed?
I mean, we still have police killing people of color.
We still have terrible education system.
We don't have health care, right?
Like, does that ring true to you, too?
Like, we haven't even gotten anywhere from 1970.
No, I mean, if I was watching Ma Rainey yesterday on Netflix, it's an August Wilson play made into a movie.
And I think that takes place in the 40s.
And just some of the monologues that the black musicians give, similar.
It's like, you know, it's like these white producers are going to come and take our money.
They only want us for our talent, but we're going to get no power in front of them.
We have to nod our head, but behind our back, you know, we have to plot resistance.
And you're like, huh, that sounds very topical, the conversations we're having now.
Judas and the Black Messiah, right?
It's like very topical.
Selma.
Why are these stories, these historical stories, so resonant?
It's because we're still dealing with the same problems.
And Jared mentioned it.
Look at voter suppression.
This is nothing new.
The South, not even just the South, white America did everything in its power after 1865 to make sure that black people and people of color knew their place.
And so when people say that the filibuster is a relic of the Jim Crow, it is!
Obama said that!
When people say that these new voter suppression laws in Georgia and basically all across America are reminiscent of Jim Crow, it's because it is.
This is white supremacy trying its hardest, trying its best, trying its damnedest to hold on to power by any means necessary.
And that's what we're witnessing.
And this is where we need white allies to step up.
Absolutely.
And by the way, it's incredible how much that colorblind, Atwater, Reagan-esque, like, just screwed with everybody's perception of progress.
Like, everything's fine after 1980.
Like, we don't have any racism or inequality at this point.
We're in progress, right?
And we voted for Obama!
Twice!
Yep.
Yep.
Well, thank you so much, Wajihat Ali, who is a columnist with The Daily Beast, one of the best people out there.
I gotta ask, how's your book going?
I have till May 7th to finish everything.
I've done it.
I'm just looking at final edits.
My wife really likes it, so at least one person likes it.
Hey, you can't beat that.
All right.
January, hopefully 2022.
I hope you guys like it.
It's called Go Back to Where You Came From and Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American.
That's a winner of a title.
That's what that is.
Thanks.
And they let me keep all of it, so hooray.
Wonderful.
All right.
Where can the good people find you, Washington?
I'm on the Twitters at Wajahat Ali or at Daily Beast or sometimes on friendly neighborhood podcasts like yours.
All right, buddy.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, guys.
Thanks for inviting me.
So that was Wajahat Ali, who is a writer for the Daily Beast and just a terrific interviewer with a great perspective on the political landscape.
So really glad that we could set that up and bring him in.
Waj is the best.
Yes.
Yeah.
He is.
And it's great to be able to have him just, you know, lay it out there in very clean terms where we can understand what's going on.
And what we talked about at the end there about Judas and the Black Messiah, especially coming off of the Oscars, which were yesterday, which you didn't watch them, did you, Jared?
Yeah, of course I did.
Oh, really?
I think people don't watch them anymore, right?
It seems like, I don't know.
That's fun.
The Oscars exist for everyone to argue about whether or not the Oscars should continue existing.
I mean, that's, you know, it's like that.
I wrote about this yesterday.
It's like that Saturday Night Live and the royal family.
They exist so we can argue about whether or not we should keep going with them.
Well, you know, it's funny because I was an art major.
So as an artist, like I battle constantly with this notion of like rating art and having to put one piece of art above someone else's.
And so that's that's a troubling thing.
And then in the in the crucible of like the Oscars, where you're now wearing these tens of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry and dresses and stuff, it seems kind of crazy.
But but I did enjoy watching Glenn Close dance to hip hop last night.
That was fun.
It was totally scripted for the record and a lot of people didn't get that and it was like this totally obviously scripted sort of thing and people didn't get it.
I thought it was an interesting what I would call a pseudo event which is where now in popular culture basically producers of shows and this is in every television show and movie and basically everything you watch that has like a group of people like crafting it They are looking for meme-able content.
They want something from it to be turned into a GIF or something that can be added to and edited and that's exactly what that Glenn Close moment was.
Like we were watching a meme being born like in real time.
And I'm okay with it.
But I did want to bring back that notion of what we saw in Judas and the Black Messiah, which is about the Black Panthers in Chicago in 1970.
And it just sort of struck me as the credits are rolling and I'm reflecting on what we saw.
And it won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor because Fred Hampton, the guy who plays him, does such a great job recreating that person of the historical figure.
The things he was advocating for, though, It's strange.
I feel like we haven't barely budged in terms of trying to meet those goals and what they wanted back then in 1970, which is what, 50 years ago.
Have we moved forward at all?
I mean, please tell me that we have.
You know, we have in certain ways and we haven't in others.
And I have to tell you, I really enjoyed Judas and the Black Messiah.
And I enjoyed it for a few reasons.
Number one, the performances were fantastic.
But I also thought it was, going back to what we were talking about in the first segment of the show, it's a mature view of a topic.
And a lot of the times you'll watch a biopic or a political pic and it just sort of treats people, you know, as we talk about, heroes, messiahs, and, you know, villains and devils.
That's not how this was.
It was a complicated portrait of a complicated group.
But one of the things that I appreciated about it the most is I know that when I was growing up and I grew up again in like white identity evangelical circles, I was told that the Black Panthers were a dangerous group of people, a gang, right?
That was like trying to destroy America and was intent on robbing and hurting people, which is like complete white supremacist Paranoia.
This was a group that was incredibly dedicated to grassroots change, right?
The idea of black liberation and the idea of black power and the idea that, like, politics and society needed to change, and they were willing to make that change via working in their neighborhoods, working in their communities, but also forging alliances.
And that was an interesting thing that that movie showed, I want to point out, is that they were willing to work with Like openly racist people, right?
And they more or less started working more towards a leftist sort of a Marxist ideology, which is we're all oppressed peoples and a lot of the hatred and distrust that we have are based on capitalism and economic competition.
That whole point is something that has been left alone.
For a very long time.
And when we look at the 60s, the Civil Rights Movement, all of that, the mythology of America wants us to believe Civil Rights Act got passed, suddenly everything was perfect.
Right?
All of a sudden, outwardly racist things were illegal.
Well, that doesn't mean that racism went away.
It actually inflamed racism and made racism burrow deep into the foundation of the country and work itself through more insidious means.
And this is something that we need to realize, which is racists and white supremacists and the practitioners of racism and white supremacy, the people in power and with influence, They have gotten more talented at hiding their racism and their white supremacy.
They have gotten much more talented in making sure that those things are in laws and in politics without them being apparent.
So a lot of the things that they were marching for in the 60s and the 70s and fighting for in those times, those things are still here.
It just so happens now they're hidden under a layer of propaganda or a layer of deniable rhetoric.
And that's one of the main problems we're dealing with, right?
I agree.
I mean, the fundamentals are still the issue, right?
That's the issue, is we still have a greatly unequal educational system.
We have the economic system.
So I'm kind of, the other question that I have is, is what is more triggering to the right?
Someone who wants to question the concept of economic competition, that basically are the way our economy is formed, or the fear and hatred of people of color?
They mixed them both in one, but I'm wondering if there is one that's worse than the other to them and what triggers them.
I don't know if there's any way to disconnect those two things.
Aha.
Because, so what I am discovering in the research that I'm doing, and again, I went back to the source, like I went back to like the beginnings of capitalism, and I have to tell you, things like race are constructs that are used to go ahead and legitimize exploitation.
Right, like, like, oh, and I have to tell you, man, it's so gross.
It's like when they're talking about like Africans, they're talking about them as like being cursed because they come from Noah's cursed son, Ham, right?
Who came across as dead.
I don't know if people know this story, but Noah got shit blackout drunk one day and Ham looked upon him while he was naked and he was then cursed to be a servant for the rest of his life and for eternity.
And so there was the European, this is true.
That's 100% true.
The Europeans told themselves a story about Africans that they, that the reason that they look different was because they were cursed with sin and that they were the descendants of this cursed child of Noah.
And as a result, Nick, they shouldn't feel bad about enslaving them because they were different.
They were from a different group of people and they deserved to be enslaved and it was God's plan.
So that exploitation and racism, they go hand in hand.
Because you have to come up with a story for why people can be exploited, whether or not it's, oh, they're not as intelligent.
Oh, they don't understand politics.
They don't understand culture.
They need taken care of.
They're lazy.
Like all of these different things, like those mythologies are things that make people who exploit them feel OK about their exploitation.
So all of that bullshit is like completely interconnected.
And it kind of feels like the justification that the South might say for fighting a civil war is their economy.
We need to protect our economy.
But what is their economy then?
Slaves, right?
That's what they were fighting for, even though they can say, well, it wasn't about slavery.
That's why we weren't fighting for it.
But it was.
And they can just cover it up with different euphemisms and different ways of explaining it, which is what Lee Atwater did.
Have you ever seen, there's a one man show about Lee Atwater that a buddy of mine did in Chicago.
I don't know if you've ever seen it.
And it was a tour de force of a show where it basically, you know, before he dies, he has a kind of come to Jesus moment where he tries to acknowledge all the horrible things he did.
And it was to this day, I probably saw it in 1996.
And it was seared into my brain because it was a it was a great performance would be what what he was saying and how he was I think he was dying of brain cancer and just lamenting his entire life, basically, for what he did, which could very well be the ground zero of what we're talking about.
We're always trying to find that, right?
Like 12 Monkeys, we're trying to go back in time to figure out where that, where it starts.
I mean, certainly Lee Otwater has to be one of the guys.
I mean, we go farther back, but he's got to be one of the big touchstones we would look at.
Yeah, so when we're doing our next episode of our documentary series, which hopefully we'll be able to do this summer as I get done with classes.
Yeah, Lee Atwater is going to be a major character.
And for those who haven't heard of him, Lee Atwater was sort of the dark prince of Republican politics in the modern era.
And Atwater was this Southern good old boy who had a really, What do I say?
Uncanny ability to understand what racists in America needed to hear.
And how to go ahead and translate.
And one of the things that Waj brought up is sort of this, it's almost like the Rosetta Stone.
For people who don't know, the Rosetta Stone is this thing that we found, like, you know, archaeologically, that, like, told us, like, all these different languages and sort of gave us the translation.
Lee Atwater happened to give this just Completely out of nowhere interview, and he was at like a Republican convention or event, and somebody caught him in the right mood, probably with a couple of drinks in him, and he said to the person, he's like, oh yeah, all of our policies are absolutely racist, like we are doing this intentionally to be racist and also to appeal to racists, but we have this coded language, right?
We talk about busing, we talk about taxes, we talk about all of that, we talk about everything from it, but what we are saying is the N-word.
We can't say the N-word out loud anymore, but, and by the way, the thing that's really scary, and I'm glad that Waj brought this up, the thing that's really scary, and we talked about it actually last week, is when they just start saying it again.
You know what I mean?
Where they're just like, well, we're done.
We're not even gonna hide behind this Atwater shit anymore.
But if people want to know about him, a really good documentary is called Boogeyman, the Lee Atwater story, which gives a really good insight.
And by the way, if you want to learn about Atwater, You're learning about Atwater.
You're learning about Roger Stone.
You're learning about Paul Manafort.
You're learning about the dark arts people of the Republican Party who are the ones who have always been behind the scenes pulling the dark shit, right?
The rad fuckers, so to speak.
And, you know, they, and by the way, they didn't just do it for the Republican Party.
They did it for warlords around the world.
Right.
These are some of the most damned people imaginable.
But yeah, to understand the modern Republican Party and their usage of white supremacist tropes and their hiding of it, you have to understand Atwater.
And when you're done reading that, then you definitely need to get Stuart Stevens' new book called It Was All a Lie, How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump.
Because he is basically Atwater 2.0 and lays it out in great detail exactly what they were doing.
Another thing that we have to point out is not just that history doesn't look like the story that we've been told, which is about progress, right?
It's a very prune story that we're constantly getting better, and yeah, some things need work, but just hold on, right?
Just hold on, I promise, you don't need to be in the streets, you don't need to take any radical action.
Whoa now.
And that's Tucker Carlson's specialty, by the way, while we're on the subject of that, dude.
But the other problem with it, and we need to be very clear about it, because you brought up Judas and the Black Messiah, and this is an important thing that we need to talk about, which is Fred Hampton, the subject of that movie, was murdered.
He was murdered by American law enforcement.
And there is a long history of revolutionaries, or people who trouble a system, Being either murdered, harassed, undermined, attacked, all of those things, including Martin Luther King Jr., who was harassed to the point of they wanted him to kill himself.
And we don't know what else happened, but it was pretty bad.
It's pretty bad to look at what happens in this country when you have people who actually want to push forward reform and change.
And I've talked about it on this podcast before.
Not only is law enforcement and law enforcement at the federal level and intelligence at a foreign level or a national level, is it dedicated to suppressing reform movements?
But they also work with far-right movements.
They work with all these, the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, you name it.
Before that it was, you know, fascists in the streets.
They work with these people because they have a common objective.
Which is to continue that story, to keep that manufactured history in place and unquestioned while continuing to keep actual reform from being handled and to keep that hidden oppression that we're talking about hidden and effective and secure.
Well, I've talked about this a lot in the past, where I'd say, you know, if aliens came down to our world and observed us for a week, they would say this.
They'd say, this is how it's set up on purpose, right?
You want these people of color to not be able to succeed.
And you want these people over here who are white.
That's the poll.
Isn't that the point?
Meanwhile, by the way, that's going to happen, right?
In like the next 25 years, we're going to make contact with Dude, I don't know about you, but it's like every day there's like new shit coming across the wire that is like weird.
I'll just say that.
I can only hope that they're friendly.
Because if not, we're in trouble.
Well, statistics show that they probably would not be.
So, we got that going for us.
But we will tackle that at a later venture.
Right now, we're going to take care of terrestrial concerns.
Hopefully.
It's a cookbook!
That's a deep cut.
That's a deep cut that 15 people listening to just went...
Look up.
It's a cookbook.
You'll find it.
That's a good episode of TV.
All right.
We are going to wrap this thing up.
Thank you again to Wajahat Ali, who is just fantastic.
What do you say for our weekender?
We'll take some questions.
We'll allow the patrons to ask some questions.
Yeah, so let's ask some questions.
We'll open it up to our patrons to ask us some questions over on the Patreon.
If you're not a subscriber at this point, what are you doing?
I mean, The Weekender is a fantastic show.
We have a great community with the Muckrake community.
All you have to do is go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
A lot more people are joining up, Nick.
It's catching on.
They're enjoying themselves.
We're getting really good feedback on this stuff.
I think people are really embracing the thing.
So go over to patreon.com slash Montclair Podcast.
We'll open up a post for some questions.
We'll deal with those on The Weekender, which will come out this Friday, which is our patron-only exclusive show.
We will be back.
If you need Nick before then, you can find him at Can You Hear Me?
SMH.
You can find me at J.Y.
Sexton.
▲
Export Selection