Nick Hauselman is out and about, so Jared Yates Sexton welcomes actual friend of the pod Karl Folk (the Institute of Unreality) onto the program to talk about the threat of Tech Fascism marrying the MAGA Movement, the true nature of Elon Musk's power grab, and the truly historical moment of hope and possibility we're living within and why we must take full advantage.
To gain access to the subscriber-only Weekender edition of the show, head over to Patreon and subscribe today.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
I thought I'd take you behind the scenes a little bit.
When you get to an event, they've got a ton of crap for you to drink and eat.
We've got three bottles of Diet Coke to do about a dozen Snickers, a bag of chips.
If I ate even half this stuff, of course, I'd balloon up like crazy.
This is the energy that powers the presidential and vice presidential campaign.
Of course, I'm honored to be supporting President Trump.
I'm honored to be his running mate.
If you want to help us, Chip in $5, chip in $15 to get the message out and to get people to the polls.
This election is so important.
Your resources help us do the things we need to win.
Yeah, that's right.
There is no theme music this week, and everybody knows what that means.
That means Bon Voyage to Nick Halseman, who has set off for greener, more tropical, beautiful features and experiences.
Instead, you are with me, Jared Yates-Sexton, on the Muckrake Podcast.
And, you know, I thought of no better way to start this than listening to the beautiful Beautiful mutterings of J.D.
Vance.
What an incredible political figure and leader he is.
I am here with Carl Folk of the Institute of Unreality and my stablemate over at Splinter News.
Carl, I am so glad to welcome you back on the McCraig Podcast.
Glad to be here, and what a decade the last couple weeks have been.
Oh, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir.
That is a reference that maybe 25 people will understand, but here we are.
Just a reminder before me and Carl go deep on all of the weirdness that you come to expect.
Reminder, go to patreon.com slash mccraigpodcast.
You support the show, you keep it editorially independent, ad-free, you keep us growing.
Also, you get the weekender episode on Fridays.
Carl, I feel like it has literally been three to four years since you and I spoke back during the sweeping protest against the atrocities in Gaza.
It's incredible how much things have changed since then.
And I want to talk to you about a variety of things, but I think the best place to start with all of this, I'm going to play a little clip here.
And that clip is, unfortunately, from a Donald Trump speech in front of a crypto conference in Nashville, Tennessee.
And we'll get to where this comes from and significance here in just a second.
This afternoon I'm laying out my plan to ensure that the United States will be the crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world.
And we'll get it done.
If crypto is going to define the future, I want to be mined, minted, and made in the USA.
It's going to be.
It's not going to be made anywhere else.
And if Bitcoin is going to the moon, as we say, it's going to the moon, I want America to be the nation that leads the way.
And that's what's going to happen.
No, you're going to be very happy with me.
You're going to be so happy.
You're going to say, he's the greatest guy.
That's why I'm proud to be the first major party nominee in American history to accept donations in Bitcoin and crypto.
And they've made a lot of them, I might tell you.
And I appreciate it.
Since we made that announcement on May 21st, we have already raised $25 million, much of it in Bitcoin, crypto, and others.
Others that are very, very good also.
Carl, so the significance of Donald Trump embracing cryptocurrency in front of a conference in Nashville.
First of all, we don't even have time to talk about the fact that accepting cryptocurrency for donations to his campaign is a giant money laundering scheme, the likes of which I don't even know that we can even properly get into.
But I do want to talk about the fact And we've been talking about this on the McCraig Podcast and I've been talking about this on my sub stack.
J.D.
Vance joining Donald Trump's ticket represented more or less the buying off of Trump and the MAGA movement by techno-fascists including Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, you know, I've allegedly It was done to secure tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars in support and technical assistance to the Trump campaign.
But I thought it'd be a good idea to talk about just why Donald Trump, who has no idea what cryptocurrency is, has no idea what he's reading off the teleprompter, why he feels it is so important to go in front of these crypto fanatics and talk about his support and how his agenda will follow and also go ahead and tie in Friend of the Pod, J.D.
Vance, while we're at it.
Friend of the Pod.
Friend of the... I think it's one of those things, like, I look at it as a corporate merger, right?
Like, these are two very different wings of the same corporate franchise, right?
And, like, the American fascist movement is best described kind of as a corporate culture and also this Pseudo-religious culture and some of these other things are being used kind of as PR shields, right?
In some ways.
And Vance is an explicit move towards the techno-fascist, technocratic right that the American New Right has really embraced, you know, over the last decade, but specifically the last four years.
And Vance You know, that merger between Vance's kind of technocratic, techno-fascist Silicon Valley new right-wing and the Trump-MAGA new right is a big deal, right?
And I think that a lot of people have lost some of the sight we could have of that, for good reason right now, because we're calling these people weirdos and creeps and fascists, which is all right and good.
Andy Vance is a creep and a fascist, yes.
Yes, and a weirdo.
And a weirdo.
A weirdo.
And so I think there's something to be said, you know, understanding that Vance and Trump together represent a much larger fascist corporation than just what Trump does individually with his Brand of fascist Republican politics, and then this side.
And the Thiel, you know, Marc Andreessen, David Sacks side of the American New Right is, in some ways, much more dangerous and much, much, much more aggressive towards their accelerationist goals.
And ultimately, the people they follow, you know, whether that's Curtis Yarvin or Nick Land or, you know, Nick Bostrom,
Ultimately, their end goal is literally ending democracy and placing a right-wing corporate state that has the power of ultimate surveillance through tech and would look more akin, according to them, to a science fiction fascist
Technocratic world and they're not at all subtle about this right like you know you have feel And Vance kind of in a network of people who right now are openly calling for overthrowing San Francisco and installing a dictatorship of the technocratic elite.
And these people are all interlinked.
It's one mindset.
And it's a deeply, deeply dangerous movement that right now is really moving into the forefront of what it looks like the Republican Party wants to be going forward.
And I think that's a thing.
So I just want to start, for people who do not understand this, you just brought up the San Francisco Initiative.
This is not hearsay.
This is not conjecture.
And here's one of the reasons I love talking to Carl, people, is because those of us who actually study this stuff We've been watching this train coming down the tracks for a long time.
And it's not because we're clairvoyant.
It's because we have literally listened to what these assholes have to say.
They've been very open about what they want.
And that's actually one of our advantages.
You know, I was saying this a while back whenever Romney was talking with, I believe it was Anthony Blinken, about Gaza.
We're very lucky that these assholes haven't figured out yet to turn the cameras and the mics and the recorders off.
Because for years...
And I like to give homework assignments.
You and I are both academics and teachers by heart.
If y'all don't know who Curtis Yarvin is, go look up Curtis Yarvin.
And I want people to understand that Musk, Thiel, all of these different groups who, for the record, have been merging with the military-industrial complex and taking it over.
As the military-industrial complex and the entire apparatus of empire has been outsourced, and we paid these people basically to take power, which was the neoliberal project to begin with, as they've taken this stuff over, they have not just started to become critics of democracy, they have become full-throated advocates of the destruction of democracy and the takeover by a techno-elite.
They truly believe With Naziistic ideology that they are genetically superior, that they are better than the regular person, and like the old ideas of fascism, that democracy is weakness.
That it's diluting control by the people who were born to control, which is what has always happened in these authoritarian ideologies.
J.D.
Vance has never had a job that Peter Thiel didn't get for him and pay for him.
And why?
And I'm using this term.
He has been groomed for this.
The same way that Blake Masters, the only person who maybe is weirder than J.D.
Vance, and Arizona, which is extremely weird, rejected.
Blake Masters.
But what happened is Peter Thiel tried to buy two seats in the Senate to try and take over the Republican Party, which Musk and Thiel and all these techno-fascists have always wanted to do, and they see the opening now.
I want to save for the record.
Donald Trump has no idea what he's talking about.
Whatsoever.
He doesn't know anything about crypto.
He basically was told, I'll get you a bunch of money, and by the way, we'll go ahead and create an apparatus that can help you have control and change society.
Not only is it surveillance and the total takeover of government, it's also behavioral modification.
And one thing that we've seen with social media and these tech companies is they understand that by using technology that understands us often in ways that we don't even understand ourselves, that they can change culture, they can change politics, they can change our entire behaviors.
They believe that this, and you use the term merger, I think about it like an old feudal marriage, right?
Together of different families, right?
For the purposes of power and prosperity.
Trump was given the influence of tech and unlimited resources because these people have historic wealth and accumulated capital.
And in exchange, J.D.
Vance is once again being groomed to take over the MAGA pseudo-populist movement, to be the heir apparent to Donald Trump.
And what will he be?
The same thing that Donald Trump has been for his wealth benefactors.
J.D.
Vance will be a puppet for techno-fascists who have been very, very open.
You and I both know, and anyone who studies this thing, they've been very open with what their desire is, which is the final death of democracy.
And control by an elite who believe that they are the ones who should control every single sector of society.
No question, right?
And I think that that's a really important point.
Like, Vance is the point person now for a movement, at its heart, that's a neoreactionary and monarchist movement, right?
So, when you're dealing with a movement that's core beliefs are monarchistic, right?
Like, you have things in play that are really outside of the norm, even for certain
Far-right groups, so this is a real interesting and explicit kind of coming together of Thoughts and I like this idea of families right it's it's a real integration of different even heritages of hate and and different thoughts of what democracy Is as a problem right because it's never framed as a solution.
It's always a problem and With someone like Yarvin, for example, right?
Like, ultimately, he believes that capitalism... I'm gonna butcher this quote, but should be sharpened to a fascist point.
And that's his stated beliefs, right?
And these are not, like, not known in the circles that Vance, Thiel, now the Trump campaign, are deeply intertwined.
And it's not like it's, oh, whoops, our deep social philosophical debate devolved into, you know, building a second fascism.
No, it's a destined point of this thought process and ultimately the neo-reactionary movement, right?
Because it is a feudal belief system.
They need serfs.
They need a lower class.
They believe that they are supermen and superwomen.
And we can see that in Musk's views on birth and his having multiple children all over the place.
We can see it reflected in some of the propaganda around the Great Replacement.
It's everywhere, right?
So, like, their belief is that they can literally outbreed the rest of us.
And they're building the technological and Kind of behind the scenes political infrastructure to make that happen really quickly compared to other movements that have had similar beliefs but aren't accepted as broadly because they're not worth Collectively, you know, five trillion dollars.
I want to say first off that everything that we are talking about, I'm sure there are listeners right now and they're like, man, what Jared and Carl are saying sounds very fascistic and Nazistic.
It is literally a rebranding of the authoritarian flavors of the 20th century.
Yes.
It just happens to have a techno sheen.
And I know it sounds like science fiction, but you also need to understand listening to this.
That's where they get their ideas.
Oh yeah.
Creative, innovative people.
They literally, there's a reason they latch on to these established concepts.
They see them as predictive.
And an interesting aspect of this, and I wrote about it in The Midnight Kingdom, and this was a few years ago that I was doing The Midnight Kingdom, I saw where the tech California ideology, anti-democratic idea, was going.
And originally, Carl, It was what I would call soft persuasion, right?
And the example I would give here is the metaverse, right?
Meta, Facebook, all of that was trying to create a corporatized realm where most people would spend their entire lives It was not a pastime.
It was not going to be something you did when you had free time.
It was basically where you were going to work, where you were going to have your experiences.
And the entire purpose behind this, and neoliberalism did this, fascism did this, all these ideologies do this.
They want the populace to be a captured group of people.
They don't want them to vote.
They don't want them to be educated.
What they want is a neo-feudal state.
Yes.
Yes.
And the main characteristics of feudalism, it's not just that you, and we don't need to get into the economic aspects of this, which is you create the food that the people need for the winter, right?
Right.
Right, exactly.
What it actually is, is a captured population that is kept either illiterate or lost in a fantasy narrative under the control.
In the past, it was the priest class.
It was the church.
Yes.
And you were able to define their imagination.
They obviously didn't have votes.
They had quote-unquote total control.
And I want to say this for the record.
One of the most amazing things that humanity ever did was to fight its way out of the feudal system.
That doesn't mean that capitalism is good or perfect or in any stretch of the imagination.
Liberal democracy was a revolt against feudalism in order to create a more human and nearing something free and full of liberty.
They literally want to destroy liberal democracy, push people back into the past, And what they think that they have at this point, and again you'll notice we haven't talked about Trump or Vance in a moment because they're point people for this.
This isn't their ideology.
They're empty vessels, right?
Like that's ultimately what this is, is we've got empty vessels pushing a much larger agenda.
Right, and they literally want to deal a death blow to what liberal democracy did to feudalism and theocratic control.
They believe they have the tools for it.
And quite frankly, maybe they do, which I think is one of the reasons why it's important that we sound this alarm right now, because what are people getting caught up in?
It's the personality-based politics.
Donald Trump, J.D.
Vance, and meanwhile, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, everybody in that entire circle, like the industrialists of the 20th century, they are attempting to use their wealth and influence and power to go ahead and cement their control.
It just so happens this has this new technological sheen to it.
Well, exactly.
No, exactly.
And I mean, you know, the neo-reactionary thought and the thought that is kind of permeating these circles ultimately is an anti-Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment argument.
Absolutely.
Nick Land, one of the preeminent guys in Both Yarvin's world as a kind of a co-thinker, but then in the Silicon Valley, right, as an influence is Nick Land, and he called his movement the Dark Enlightenment, right?
Like, these people are very not subtle that the goal ultimately is going back to pre-Enlightenment structures of both hierarchy, thinking, and society and government, right?
Like, this is a massive spread of Not just like, we're going to end some personal rights or civil rights, we're going to repeal literally everything post the Enlightenment.
And, you know, some of the thinkers in that same circle, kind of going back to what you were saying about the pre-authoritarian phase, the soft power phase of these digital and kind of Silicon Valley groups, you know, one of their big thinkers Oh, Pines pretty regularly and did for a long time about keeping the general masses in digital and AI prisons.
Kurzweil.
That's right, Kurzweil.
Who wanted to get rid of humanities, higher education, and any thought work culture.
They literally, Carl, and this is the wildest thing, when I read this, I screamed.
Oh yeah!
He literally said that the fate of future masses ...were to basically be guinea pigs for technological progress and to create curated content.
They didn't need to learn, they didn't need to grow, they didn't need to live individual lives.
They basically needed to be reduced to a mindless mass that did as the people at the top of the hierarchy wanted them to do.
Exactly.
Yes, exactly.
No, and that's just it, right?
Like, there is a through line here that is not just anti-democratic, It's anti-human, it's anti-reason, it's anti-everything that brings us as a society together as a communal organism, right?
And so that's the part for me where...
You start to dig deep enough, and all of this reverts back to some of the core, you know, ur-fascism that we've dealt with in this country since its inception.
But really, any time there is a challenge to corporate and a very specific sect of corporate power, does it move from kind of the standard Well, we're going to do business as usual, but we're angry about it, to well, we're going to shed that skin and say, well, democracy is no longer the answer.
The answer is us.
And that, you know, is a pretty.
It's a pretty quick transition, even for the United States, even for somewhere where this has happened at somewhat.
Not regular, but there have been a few times where this has been a thing in our history, right?
Where white capital control comes under question and things, I mean, they caused a civil war about it, right?
And two world wars for that matter.
Yeah, literally.
And that's just it.
You know, at the end of the day, this is a fight that's been fought since The Enlightenment against the people who now are saying that the Enlightenment isn't just a problem, but needs to be reversed, essentially.
And having them be the second line for the most powerful office in the world is, you know, that's a real true one heartbeat away from something that most people still can't even conceptualize the kind of world these people look at.
Because it's not just like, You know, some Christo-fascist, hard autocratic state.
This is something completely separate.
This is very well thought through and there's a technological basis that is already being tested in places like Palestine and in different border areas, whether it's our southern border or wherever.
India, China, yep.
Yes, yeah, and those technologies, you know, can literally rewrite the world you live in for you personally.
And we don't have really any ability to have that conversation yet because we're still drawing back from the Trump over, you know, kind of hangover, right?
And people are just now coming out from kind of underneath the powered, you know, the fully powered propaganda machine that has been pointed at them for a decade just to maintain Trump.
And so these are massive issues that have so many little bits and pieces around.
We've got, you know, we've got years of work just to untangle this if we get through the election.
But understanding that the explicit merger and union of these families has happened, you know, I really can't stress enough how much that marks a difference for what this party is going to be going forward.
I agree, and I want to look at some of the things that we're unfortunately going to have to deal with.
Before we do, I just want to draw a couple of things from what you just said.
First of all, when I speak of the worldwide authoritarian movement, these people have been the nodes.
They've everything from China to Russia to India to what's happening in Israel.
There is a reason why Netanyahu is so happy to be next to Elon Musk after he's basically reposting the protocols of the elders of Zion.
Correct.
Yes.
Because not only are they on the same side and all of the religious ideologies, all of those things, they break down under the belief, the autocratic belief that there are some people who deserve all the power and the wealth.
They don't care about this religious stuff.
It's the sheen.
And I do have to say that what always happens is it's about the accumulation of capital and power, but they are going to use religion for those purposes.
Donald Trump, of course, was saved by God, right?
God reached down and saved him and Christian nationalism is taking off.
And they're all converting to Catholicism.
Yes.
They're all becoming born again Christians.
And it's because it's advantageous.
It's always how these partnerships work.
And it doesn't also matter about nationalism.
And speaking of, what I'm gonna do right now, Carl, is I'm gonna share, this is a deep fake that Elon Musk shared on Twitter.
We don't have to talk about the legality of this because this is deeply problematic.
But this, for anybody who hasn't seen this so far, this is completely and utterly faked using an AI program taking advantage of Kamala Harris's voice.
And I just want people to hear this, so we're going to listen to this thing in full.
I, Kamala Harris, and your Democrat candidate for president, because Joe Biden finally exposed the senility of the debate.
I was selected because I am the ultimate diversity hire.
I'm both a woman and a person of color.
So if you criticize anything I say, you're both sexist and racist.
I may not know the first thing about running the country, but remember, that's a good thing if you're a deep state puppet.
I had four years under the tutelage of the ultimate deep state puppet, a wonderful mentor, Joe Biden.
Joe taught me rule number one, carefully hide your total incompetence.
I take insignificant things and I discuss them as if they're significant.
And I believe that exploring the significance of the insignificant is, in itself, significant.
I'm talking about the significance of the passage of time.
Right?
The significance of the passage of time.
So when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time, and there is such great significance to the passage Another trick is trying to sound black.
I pretend to celebrate Kwanzaa, and in my speeches, I always do my best Barack Obama impression.
So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump's tight!
And okay, look, maybe my work addressing the root causes of the border crisis were catastrophic, but my knowledge of international politics is truly shocking.
- The United States shares a very important relationship, which is an alliance with the Republic of North Korea.
It is an alliance that is strong and enduring. - And just remember when voting this November, it is important to see what can be unburdened by what has been.
And by what has been Joe Biden. - Oh man.
OK, so first of all, I just want to say, Carl, that, you know, there are things that happen that seem maybe quote unquote insignificant that later on are going to be the beginnings of a chapter in a book.
This to me feels like that.
Of course we are now seeing Musk putting his finger on the scale when it comes to what's going on with Venezuela's election.
He is obviously leveraging his money, his influence, and his control of the corporate media space in order to move things.
I personally have noticed a broad swath of censorship tools on Twitter.
That I am absolutely certain mirror what happened in India, China, and elsewhere.
We're in unprecedented territory where this asshole, fascistic, techno-oligarch is now taking all of his heft, all of his weight, all of his power, and is going full bore into this authoritarian push.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's something that I think for those of us who watch, again, like we've You know, seeing the constellations and understand kind of what we're looking at, so we've kind of been trying to raise the alarm on Musk specifically for a while, but now it's beyond any doubt, right?
Like, you have very clear, um, doublespeak the whole deal, right?
Like, denying the reality of things that he's already said in their tweets.
I mean, there's just the back and forth, and realistically, like, That, that, uh, that spot that he, you know, that fake AI'd spot that he retweeted, right?
Like, at this point, they're causing chaos.
Yep.
And they're causing chaos to cause chaos for chaos's sake.
And, you know, some of this works to demotivate, some of it works to just cause inner party conflict, and ultimately, like, that's what I'm seeing a lot of right now from right-wing, um,
Kind of troll accounts and stuff is there popping up into comment sections in accounts that are not Camouflaged well, let's say but you know moderately grab bag ideological cover and They're just going in and causing chaos, you know saying literally just opposing whatever one other person saying or other groups are saying and You know some of that Is being driven by guys like Musk right now.
Some of it's far-right, you know, kind of traditional big air quotes around that kind of political far-right BS.
But, you know, there is going to come a point where a guy like Musk... And I think it was that moment with the AI tweet.
Trips over the line of being like an edgy, I can keep the bullshit facade going to the point where there's clearly Something very massive happening in his world, right?
This is someone who owns a significant portion of the United States space-based platform, whether that's military or civilian.
This is someone who has repeatedly shared neo-Nazi content from differing accounts, and I think we have to, you know, I think everyone has to understand, take these people at their word, Like, he is fully radicalized into a system of thought that is not just anti-democratic, but ultimately anti-human.
You know, they're going to do everything they can, whether that's demotivate people using censorship tools, whether that's cause chaos just by sharing bullshit.
They're going to use every trick in the book, especially because for a guy like Musk or for Trump himself, as we're starting to see, a lot of their gravitas, for lack of a better word, is built in an unreal space. for lack of a better word, is built in an And so the minute that starts to collapse, they're forced to actually politic or do whatever in a way they haven't been forced to.
And so it forces them into a position where they are automatically going to be defensive.
And the more we do that, the more it happens, you know, I think at the end of the day.
I want to say, I think Rhodes, or Rhodes, I was getting ready to talk about Cecil Rhodes here in a second, I jumped the gun.
I think Musk, and I'm thinking about another South African.
It's really something, because, you know, when you study this stuff, history gives you a roadmap of all of it.
Like, even going back to the original corporations, like, you understand that corporations use nation-states, they grow larger than them, and then they take them over.
And they turn them into puppets and extensions of themselves, whereas the nation-state tried to use the corporation as an extension of themselves.
You know this.
And there have been these personalities.
Cecil Rhodes is definitely one of them, right?
Another white supremacist who used his power and wealth basically to control an empire.
But every now and then, Something new and novel that should have been predictable sort of raises its head.
And Elon Musk is one of those people.
And you know, he's a failure at almost everything that he does.
People need to understand the only reason that Elon Musk is the wealthiest man in the world, this side of Vladimir Putin and probably some other people with hidden wealth, Yes.
is because the U.S. government made him that.
Because he figured out the perfect way to use the neoliberal global structure of outsourcing in order to enrich himself while producing nothing of actual worth.
But what he is talented at is he has been able to harness his own destructive, malignant narcissism, to believe that not only should he be able to have sway over politics, which there is no end to the amount of billionaires in this world who influence our politics which there is no end to the amount of billionaires in this world who
And they fund everything from the Heritage Foundation, things like Project 2025, one thing after another, and they have effectively dismantled the entire administrative state and the social safety net.
Yes.
has decided because of the ideology that you and I have been talking about, that not only does he deserve to hold sway over the world, but that he is going to do it as the figurehead of what is happening.
Yes.
And I think there is something inside of us, Carl.
We look at individuals like a Donald Trump.
We see him, we understand him, we're repelled by him.
But, you know, we understand he's running for president, We understand he's been president.
That he's pursuing these things for himself and his own aggrandizement and profit.
The size and scope of what Elon Musk is attempting to do right now is so repugnant and large that it's almost hard to wrap our heads around it.
Do you know what I mean?
It almost boggles the imagination what he's doing.
Well, I mean, it's kind of reimagining... You know, I've kind of... I've bandied about how I want to talk about Musk, because there are a lot of ways that I think are right, and a lot of ways that I don't think are as useful.
But I've been really thinking about him in context of something like the...
East India Trading Company, right?
Like this is something's happened where he thinks he's cracked the next form of true capital expansion.
And part of that hinges on him getting the space, which I think is fun.
Because that really... By the way, Carl, and I always like to bring this up because this is what cracks what you're talking about, which is those corporations that handled the slave trade and also good trades, they were the ones who said, that ocean over there, that sea over there, is incredibly dangerous.
We'll go that way and take care of it.
If you think about space as an ocean, And you stop thinking just in terms of terrestrial exploration.
It's the exact same damn thing.
No, it's 100% that, right?
Like, they look at seafaring and space travel very similarly, and when you think about something like any of the East India companies, what you see is the same kind of Stepping away from norms, both social and cultural, to go after profit, right?
You get your own world.
Yeah.
Away from the nation's name.
Exactly.
And, you know, there's so many different examples of where that goes, right?
Whether it's getting nutmegged from You know, the islands around Java, and then murdering everyone because he didn't like that they were asking for, you know, a shred of humanity, or to the international slave trade from, you know, through the Americas.
This was the novel approach, right?
It wasn't that they were looking at humans as goods.
Which is a huge component of how we understand it, which is correctly so, right?
Focus on the terrible thing.
But it was this novel approach to saying, well, we'll conquer these places.
We'll take these places over.
We will dominate them.
In your name and in our name.
Extract everything we can from the soil, the people, and the environment.
And...
You will give us the benefit of the doubt that we're going to exert our will correctly.
And what we found is that's just not how this works.
And Musk is the logical extension of that, right?
He sees Mars the same way that someone like the funders in Spain saw the Americas, right?
Which is, we can go there and take things from it.
To get what we need, which is more money, land, and people to further our authoritarian world, right?
And, like, Mosk does truly believe, I think, from everything we've seen, that he is some sort of, you know, king.
Some kind of ubermensch that's going to lead America to some bizarre, you know, he's a giant 40K fan.
Some bizarre Imperium of Man scenario where his kid's going to be the tech wizard of Mars, right?
Like, he named one of his children after a 40K, like, a Warhammer 40K character who literally is in charge of sacred technology that helps to forward space fascism for ages.
So, like, this isn't something that's foreign to these people either.
They make it very clear that they believe, too, in this...
You know, storytelling and this mythology that they have stolen from popular culture because they can't create anything of their own.
It's Musk's through line, right?
He steals, says it's his own, and then turns that into money.
And he's going to do that with a governmental system if he has that ability.
Which is exactly what the East India Trading Company did.
Exactly.
You know, Carl, and by the way, as we're talking about this, I'm thinking so much about the shallow analysis that is given to us by our news media.
And the fact is, and I want to reassure everybody again, We're not high, we're not ranting and raving about... No!
We're literally talking about history and what these people have said.
This would sound insane, you know, in the primetime hour, and yet it's actually what is happening and people need to understand that.
Well, and there's a lot of support for it, right?
Like you and you and I could provide probably literally a book's worth of just I've done it.
Yeah, literally, you've done it.
There are other and there are other you know, like there's so many other great resources out there right now talking about this specific side of the movement that we're now going to be faced with.
And I think it's really important to understand for everyone, like these people Are supervillains?
Because they've stylized themselves as that.
So when we talk about it, some of what they've done is given themselves the power to say, look, they're portraying us as supervillains.
We have these normal ideas.
When in reality, this is totally outside the box for almost any ideological movement outside of a few during the earliest parts of the 20th century.
Absolutely.
I mean, the futurists and the Nazis and the fascists.
Yeah, exactly.
So, let's return from space for a moment, Carl, because I've been looking forward to talking to you about this.
When we last talked, the situation was dire and grim, and we had talked pretty regularly, exchanged texts and DMs, about watching this thing take place.
And I want to very much focus on something, and as we're doing it, We can talk about Kamala Harris, but again, we cannot get caught up talking about personality politics, Messiahs, Saviors, any of that.
And we can talk about her candidacy and what it represents, and that's fine, but we also need, I think, more importantly, to focus on something.
The Democratic Party is always going to let you down until something dramatically changes.
But what people need to hold on to right now is something that is more rare than any mineral or any riches on the planet Earth, any limited resource, which is a moment of hope, and possibility.
And what people are feeling right now, and I've been trying to caution people, do not turn Kamala Harris into a messiah or savior.
She is a politician with limitations.
We have already, anybody who is looking at this objectively already has reasons to say, I don't know what a Kamala Harris administration would look like.
I have some concerns.
But what the individual voter and person and the Democratic small D mass needs to recognize is the feeling that they're having right now is the most powerful thing in the world.
Oh, no question.
Which is the belief that, oh my god, and I don't want to steal Harris' thing, the unburdened by what has come before us, but what is really true is that revolutions and massive changes for the better happen when we feel unburdened by what we understand and what we think is possible.
And if you want to create something in this world to make it better, you have to harness this feeling that we have right now and use it to build that world that you want to build.
No question, right?
Like, I mean, this is one of the most fluid environments I think any of us who are under about a hundred have ever seen in this country.
And like, you know, this nihilism and hopelessness that we've been kind of inundated with for a decade by Trump's people and by the media, right, have worked in concert in some way to really condition people to see things only through the negative light.
And there are definitely some issues with Kamala, right?
And what could be.
But the reality is like...
Earlier today I saw James Carville tweet something out that looked really a lot like some of the DSA kids that I follow.
And between that and some of the things that Nancy Pelosi has done in the last six days, I'm very interested to see what's actually going on here.
Because we're getting a number of different things here.
The situation we're faced with, right?
We've seen one of the largest political upheavals within an inner party move in America.
In a century?
At least a century.
Yeah, or more.
And we've seen an act that really, truly is unprecedented.
No one truly saw that Biden stepping down was on the real radar as a thing.
And so, you know, We can't get bogged down in identity or any kind of claims of Messiah or any of that.
But I think it is interesting seeing how people have taken this moment and said, okay.
We have some options here.
They're not perfect.
One is so bad it's actually kind of...
Well, and can I make a quick point on that?
We haven't had any space between that dark and the nihilism that emanates from that, right?
And the hopelessness and despair that emanates from Trump's fascist world.
Well, and kind of make a quick point on that, because I think that this deserves it.
A lot of people are drawing comparisons between Kamala Harris's candidacy and Barack Obama's candidacy for a variety of reasons.
But people need to understand that when Barack Obama's, for lack of a better phrase because it's true, cult of personality took off in 2008, he was not facing an opponent with fascistic solutions.
He was facing a fallen, wounded, bleeding system.
Yes.
Yes.
Right.
The National Craft of 2008 created an environment where it felt like something needed to be done, but it didn't have the counterbalance of a fascistic vision.
We just had George W. Bush, not exactly the same as what we're dealing with Trump.
And I do think what you're saying right now, that counterbalance, I think, gives it a very, very specific sort of momentum.
No, it does.
And it's something that I've never seen, for sure.
And I don't know if anyone else has here, this thing where now we're getting a gap between the projected world that the right has built.
and something that's not that, right?
Like we're getting a real gap here in between the corporate consumer world that we're always kind of dealing with in this country, and then this other side that's this corporate but far right and extremely dark political world.
And, you know, that distance is incredibly invigorating because it does give us a space where things are possible that weren't, It opens up doors to potential futures that weren't.
And it also allows people to literally step back and say, whoa, this is weird.
This shit is strange.
This shit is uncomfortable.
And, you know, one of the things that I've seen now perusing TikTok is there are people starting to come forward and say, Whoa, what happened over the last six years or five years or four years?
And really like that space allows people to step back in a way that Biden couldn't, right?
Like Biden just, his campaign didn't allow space because he was running something that was more akin to a 1960s or 70s campaign than anything modern.
Or 90s to be gracious.
Yeah, to be gracious, right?
So we have this very weird juxtaposition where the current White House was going to lead us to disaster.
in their response.
Then you have a second ticket that's coming from the White House that understands it, has given some room, allows people to make fun of things, which is really crucial to creating space, because you're creating space cognitively, right?
This isn't a physical distance, this is a cognitive and social distance away from these ideas, and giving people avenues to say, like, this is weird, or Uncomfortable or creepy or whatever it is, that gives people a moment to think for themselves, right?
And that's really crucial to getting people out from behind this.
So I think, you know, with Harris, we have no idea what the future holds.
I think this is a wholly new arena politically that just does not have the trappings of the neoliberal world that Biden represented for sure and others have going backwards.
And to me, that's an area that's so exciting.
It's really kind of, I cannot describe how cool a feeling that is, because we do have room now to explore things that before felt truly like fiction.
And the more we can build on that, imagining something that could be, is not overtly fiction and has really true, truly immeasurable power.
Over what we do next.
And I think that's the thing that for me right now is the most hopeful, aside of politics.
I don't, you know, the parties who gives a shit at some level.
We're dealing with fascism and a lack of thought, a demonization of thought and forward thinking and looking towards better.
And then you have something now that really has figured out That the space isn't for us to be your leaders.
It's the space for us to give your ideas and your thoughts for what's best, a space to grow.
And that's totally unique, right?
And it totally counters Trump and the Republican and the New Right nihilism and cynicism that they've depended on.
Since 2015 to fuel.
I can't remember if you and I talked about this in the conversation we had for my sub stack or the last time you were on the podcast.
But we talked about how even though things feel intractable and insurmountable and like there's no way that you can possibly make a difference or anything could possibly change that you have to be prepared for the moment.
Politics is not all confetti, ticker tape, parades, and celebrations.
It will break your heart.
But you have to retain faith that when the moment arrives, you can meet it.
One of the things that neoliberalism has done so effectively is crush any glimpse that something can change, or that any glimpse that something can become different.
And I want to point something out.
The last time we had an inflection point like this, besides Barack Obama, which is a different conversation, Was in 1984 when Ronald Reagan ran the gamut for re-election.
Yes.
The Democratic Party had a moment of absolute panic.
They thought they might never win an election again.
And Al Fromm and Bill Clinton and the neoliberals of that era, they changed the party in totality and created the neoliberal consensus.
Yes.
Which has caused everything over the past few decades.
This moment, and I've been trying to do more of this on the podcast because I want to pull back the curtain for people to understand how this is happening.
The Democratic Party just went through a massive crisis.
Yes.
The powers that be, the sclerotic leaders of the party, there's a generational shift that's happening.
It is not a fait accompli.
We don't know how it's going to shake out.
We don't know who's going to take the reins of this party.
We don't know what Kamala Harris or her potential running mate or the people who run this entire establishment, we have no idea what they're going to do or listen to or be open to.
The powers that be within the party are freaking the fuck out because they do not have control over it right now.
Which, I just want to go ahead and draw the lines here, is what happened with the Republican Party in 2016.
When Donald Trump took over the party, the powers that be recognized that the base, even though they were captured in a pseudo-environment, pseudo-populist movement, They recognized that they had to change, which is what led to what you and I opened the show talking about, this new techno-feudalistic idea.
That took over the party, which is why we are facing the threat we are now.
Exactly.
We have to provide a counterbalance.
We have to provide new solutions.
We do have to take advantage of the chaos within the Democratic Party, the hope that is springing, and here's the reason why.
Hope is contagious and addictive.
When people feel this, it can be crushed.
And people are going to try and crush this.
But this is an opportunity to put into action the solutions that need to be realized and the movements that are there and brimming and growing, whether it's labor, solidarity, people's rights movements.
This is the opportunity that we've been looking for.
And if the door shuts on this, And these doors shut very, very quickly.
And they shut hard.
You will not see a door like this open for a long time.
Oh no, no.
I mean, this is literally... There are very few times you actually have once-in-a-lifetime chances to remake things kind of in a way that's positive and is going to do long-term material good for a large amount of people.
And this is definitely one of those, right?
Like, we have ourselves in a moment where We can kick open doors that literally change the lives of tens of millions of people throughout forward-going history, both in this country and outside of it.
You could argue billions, yeah.
You could, absolutely, no question.
And I think, you know, what we have to understand is, like, all of this is going to be generational change.
A lot of us who are Over 30 are probably going to do a lot of tree planting where we never see those trees.
But that's the best thing we could have right now is an environment where we can plant trees.
Because with the other options we've been given for a long time, we didn't even understand that we needed to or that it was possible.
So now, you know, there's a real, there can be An argument made for avenues that look so revolutionary in how they change our system, it would be equally outrageous to say as some of the things people said about Trump in 2016 with the Republican Party that we've seen to come true.
And so I think that's the way to look at this, right?
Like this isn't, this is the beginning stages of something that could be truly remarkable in a truly History book writing kind of way.
And we've done it before, right?
Like this is the same trajectory that FDR had.
Yes.
In certain ways where there was not a mandate, quote unquote, in the way that we would normally understand a political mandate.
But this was a human and social mandate to not just do better, but make it harder to do wrong.
Well, and I'm so glad that you brought up FDR, because I want to reiterate, we are not talking about Kamala Harris here.
We are not talking about the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.
FDR was a once-in-a-lifetime figure, a class traitor.
Who recognized that literally a completely new direction was necessary to not only save America and the world from financial ruin, but also the tendrils of corporate-run, industrialist-backed fascism in the United States of America.
Exactly.
But what we need to understand is that we need to do something before that crash.
We need to do something before those fascists and the Nazis actually take power.
And for the record, we are facing a worldwide, and I hate to use this phrase but it's true, we are facing a worldwide game board right now.
That looks a hell of a lot like the lead up into World War I and World War II.
And people need to understand that those wars, for all the conventional history that you have been taught, those wars were not about the personalities involved.
They were about the material conditions and the capitalistic conditions that led to apocalyptic clashes over resources, empire, colonies.
What we're looking at now With the redistribution of wealth that neoliberalism gave us, the historic inequality we have, concentrated power in the hands of Elon Musk to go ahead and bring this thing full circle, but also the ravages of climate change.
And the people that we're talking about, they understand that climate change is real.
They understand that these people are at least aware of that and how it's going to affect them.
No question.
Now, we have an opportunity that I don't think that Americans had in the early 20th century leading up to FDR, the New Deal, and World War II.
No question.
We have the opportunity to avert a disaster unlike any that we have really ever seen before.
The question is whether or not we'll actually harness that.
We'll take advantage of that.
But I do want to say, and this is why, and Carl, you and I, I think, at times can be labeled as prophets of doom.
Because we really don't want to sell people false hope.
But in one of the things I've admired about you, and one of the things I've tried to maintain, and people have sometimes questioned, I have hope.
I am optimistic.
And the reason is because this situation, which seemed impossible even weeks ago, is now very much in play, and is very, very real, and the opening is now.
Oh yeah!
No, I mean, you know, I joke about being on the dystopia beat, but the reality is, like, the other, the inverse of dystopia, right, is working towards something that looks like utopia.
And we're never going to achieve that.
But we are going to do the work of trying to realize as much of what can be better than not.
And I think, for me, You know, what's drawn me to the far right is, in some ways, the lack of hope, right?
Like, there's this void at the heart of all of this that drives its own reason, drives its kind of unrelenting assault on truth and your ability to understand things.
Because, ultimately, this is something that Feeds on optimism, feeds on hope, feeds on feeling safe, and feeds on ambiguity.
And it's easier in some ways to be optimistic.
You can't help it.
is to be nihilistic.
And I've had my moments.
I think anyone who does the work that you or I do has had their moments over the last...
You can't help it.
You can't help it.
Eight years where things have looked really heavy.
And I would say that up until two weeks ago, that was the heaviest environment politically you could be in.
There was an inevitability, an air of inevitability to Trump.
They were weaponizing that inevitability to start to crush opposition to them.
They were starting to use it to demand loyalty and pledge fealty to their worldview.
Carl, the environment was set by a media and political class rooting for Donald Trump 100%.
Become respectable.
And thank God that he is so weird and self-destructive and couldn't do it.
Well, like, that's the thing.
I think people fundamentally have misunderstood, like, assassination or assassination now looks, the environment for that is a lot different than it was even 20 years ago, right?
And, like, something's changed where you can't It's really hard to turn almost being assassinated into any kind of political momentum anymore because there's some weird thing where like assassination now truly means Well, maybe that person you know like maybe there was a reason someone took a shot at and That's a really different world politically for Trump to exist in anyone frankly, but Trump is a great example of you know
For an aspiring autocrat to not be able to take that and shape it into a weapon themselves is something truly astounding.
But couple that then with the RNC failure, the Vance failure, and an immediate shift because of the Harris campaign coming into effect, it's left a hole that a lot of people filled with, I think, nihilism and cynicism for good reason.
It was a shit environment.
and still is in a lot of ways, but it allowed them to say, oh, well, there's something now that could be.
And that is that hope that could be.
Once that thing goes, like you said, it's infectious and in a way that really is unpredictable to the point where none of us know what's coming next.
We've seen more political change, like I said, in the last two weeks than most people have ever seen in this country in their lifetime.
And it leaves me happy and excited because it does mean we've got some doors to go walk through.
Even if it's just to test it out!
Like, we might be able to test out some things, versus just, this is what we're doing, this is how it's going to be, this is the neoliberal prescription, which is austerity, this is this.
I think that's the thing to me that's really interesting, because this is now framed as looking forward, which also, in addition to neutering Trump's message, it neuters the idea of neoliberalism reconstituting itself constantly to repackage itself to sell it back to you.
And that tells me there's an avenue there that neoliberalism in its form that we understood went out with Biden.
And we may have something new here that we can shape in our image versus having to figure out how to shape our image around it.
Well, and we need to stop thinking about politicians and parties as something that should determine the future as opposed to being the representation of the people and the people's will.
Exactly, exactly, exactly.
Which is, and I've been trying to say this and I want to get this on the record, I've been writing about this, I've been giving briefings and strategy sessions on this.
People need to understand that the last time we were in a situation like this was the Progressive Age.
Where all of a sudden people stood up and they said, you know what, these robber barons, these oligarchs, we're tired of this shit, we're going to come together.
And here's a warning from the past, everyone.
The administrative state that has led to the American Empire took advantage of that.
Woodrow Wilson was not a champion of the people, but a technocratic asshole.
And we need to understand that what is available to us is a new iteration of what we've seen with different features Now you need to expect something from the Democratic Party, and now you need to tell them what needs to happen.
And while you're doing that, we also have to come to the realization that we have been driven by fear.
And what have we chosen?
We've chosen the safety of the known bad versus the fear of the unknown good.
We can figure that out, and if we can change course, we can literally change the world.
Yeah, we're gonna do whatever we want then, right?
Like, it will literally be our world to change at that point, and that's just it.
I couldn't say it better.
Like, if we figure this out now, we've got some worlds to build, and some people to help, and some things to really put into action that look a lot like a revolution when done right.
Without any of the problems that people ascribe to true political change, which is that it's hard or scary.
We've done scary for twenty years.
We've lived scary.
We have, right?
We've lived an increasingly ratcheted form of scary.
And at this point, I think we all can do scary, so let's do scary but with the The caveat that it's scary because it's unknown, not because there's an implicitly bad outcome from us just having to choose the best of the worst.
And that freedom to think is crucial.
It's everything.
It's crucial, right?
Like one of the things that we've talked about today and is going to become a bigger part of the conversation is that the right They can't function in that environment.
They can't see that world.
They don't understand that you have to be able to think, not just strategically, but you have to think about what others do.
Because if you want to be able to actually do the government thing, big air quotes there, you have to be able to anticipate things.
And reactionary ideology, which is all of the thing we're dealing with.
Completely antithetical.
Can't think structurally about threat, about strategic interaction, about, you know, being even remotely, you know, opaque about what they're thinking. you know, opaque about what they're thinking.
And, you know, that's been one of our best.
We've gotten very lucky.
We're very lucky.
That these people are stupid, right?
And stupid in a very crucial way, which is that they don't understand people.
They understand power, they understand domination, they understand control.
They don't understand people, and they don't understand that all of us are different, and that's what actually... that's a superpower, right?
Like, it's a superpower they can never hold.
Because we as a people can think of each other.
Yeah, and we can think of our shared future.
Carl, my friend, it is always good to talk to you.
Tell the good people where to find you.
You can find me at Splinter News.
I'm writing over there with Jared and a couple others.
My website at www.instituteofunreality.com.
You can check me out here when I'm on, and you can check me out on Twitter and BlueSky at BrainNotOnYa.
My elder millennial brother, www.
It does not give up very easily.
I'm not giving up the World Wide Web.
I can't!
It is my check at the first week of the new year, even though I don't do checks anymore, so I have to keep one of them, right?
Like, I just have to stay in my elder millennial lane.
Oh, Carl, thank you so much.
Everybody, that's gonna do it for today.
I will be back, uh, taking the helm of the Muckrake on Friday.
Reminder, go to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast in order to gain access to that.
I know you wanted, like, thousands of you are listening to the preview.
Go ahead, patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
In the meantime, everybody, you can find Nick at CanYouHearMe?
