This is a preview of The Weekender edition of the Muckrake Podcast. Please go to patreon.com/muckrakepodcast to gain access to the regular Weekender episodes on Fridays.
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman dig into the Pentagon’s new “domestic civil disturbance” rapid deployment plan, why it signals a creeping police state, and how it connects to ICE’s push for legalized racial profiling. They also cover Gavin Newsom’s decidedly non Trump-style gerrymandering gambit, the Trump takeover of the Kennedy Center, and a disturbing report on Meta’s AI chatting with minors.
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Welcome to the weekender edition of the Muckrake podcast.
I'm Jared A. Sexton.
Here with Nick Houseman.
How you doing, Nick?
I'm good.
This is the ASMR episode, it sounds like.
I've heard from people that they like it.
Yeah, it's a good sound.
It really is, especially when it's close to the mic.
It's not a bad gimmick.
We're celebrating the end of the week.
We're taking the load off.
It's an easier type of shit.
I mean, we have nothing disturbing to talk about today.
Oh, absolutely not.
And by the way, there are very few sounds that are as recognizable as what that sound is.
I think.
I like it.
I'm putting my chip down on the table.
I like it.
I like you, listener.
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We know you listen to the previews.
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And for everybody who's supporting the show, thank you so, so much.
Nick, one of the ongoing themes that we've been covering, and you know, I was thinking about this as we were prepping the show today.
I was thinking about sort of the different eras of the Muckrake podcast that we have had over the years.
It was watching, you know, the rise of authoritarianism, the failure of the status quo to meet that and defeat it.
And eventually we knew that we were going to arrive at this point.
One of the main threads that I think you and I have been following for a while is the creation of a fascistic police state.
And we've already heard about federal troops going into these major cities.
We'll touch on that a little bit more because I think that's been very interesting and some of the things I've been hearing and I think you've been hearing.
But there has been a reveal that the Pentagon has been working on a plan that is being called the quote domestic civil disturbance quick reaction force.
And this is a plan that will keep over 600 troops ready at all times to be deployed immediately in as little as one hour to anywhere within the United States of America in order to quell any sort of protest or disruption or whatever you want to call it.
Nick, this kind of feels like finding one of the guns that will eventually be a smoking gun.
Okay.
You know, it's funny.
Someone, everyone should go back and listen to our podcast we did about RoboCop because that's a sentence that you can say out loud.
Yeah, yeah.
And in that pod, it was all alarmist.
It was like, you're being ridiculous, Jared.
Why do you keep talking about this and saying like, oh, we're going to end up having, you know, militarized police in the streets and all whatever.
But it's like nothing has been proven untrue with what you've said.
And when I, and I, because I've been the guy who's been like, yeah, I don't, I don't think we're going to get to that point where you've seen like in a movie like RoboCop.
And you know what?
Every day that goes by, it does get closer and closer.
And we'd see actual footage of this.
So there is no question that that's what they want to do, especially because, you know, there isn't a lot of unrest going on right now.
I have to mention that they're anticipating that they're going to do much to create said unrest, you know, and that's really kind of frightening.
The other problem is there's a logistics issue.
They're going to be stationed in Arizona, I believe, and then in Louisiana, somewhere where we're going to be able to do it.
I think Alabama.
Alabama.
Well, I'm sorry to tell you, but those two areas are not an hour away from anywhere in the country, potentially, when they're needed.
You know what I mean?
That's not central enough.
So I don't understand how that's supposed to be a quick reaction force as it is, even if we're just talking about it, you know, being effective.
So your critique is that the fascistic reaction force would not act quickly enough.
Yeah, they should be spread out a little bit more, maybe a little smaller and whatever.
It's ridiculous, Jared.
Now you've got me doing this and now I'm upset.
I guarantee you among the plethora of people who listen to this.
There are operatives within the Democratic Party.
There are politicians.
I guarantee there's some people at the Heritage Foundation who are hearing what you have to say and possibly random things.
So hopefully they hear your concern and they will figure out how to fine-tune this thing.
I hope not.
I hope that they realize, you know, that this is, you know, also the sheer cost of this to keep this kind of 24-7 tactical response team would be ridiculously expensive too.
Well, I'll just start off by saying if any of those people are listening, I have a single piece of advice.
Since you've already offered your advice, I want to give my piece of advice.
Please.
Go fuck yourself.
You mean if in case you're just going to be following orders?
If they're just listening, I just want them to know I mean this sincerely, go fuck themselves.
And Nick, the thing with this, and again, want to pull back just for a second.
This has been in the works for a little while.
And again, we talk about how the Trump administration is an opportunity for some of the plans that have been in the coffer, like to come in hopper, not coffer.
I've been on an incredible roll of missaying things.
I want to tell everybody, it's ass over tea kettle, not ass over teacup.
I know this.
I know it in my head.
It's just when it comes out, it comes out wrong.
But what's been in the hopper for a while is that this idea was proposed in 2020.
And it was proposed leading up to the presidential election of 2020 with the idea that there might be some type of major civil conflict that would take place.
And Nick, I think the people listening, if they keep their calendars in their heads and their context in their heads, not just why would they be afraid of the 2020 election, but what had happened just recently in 2020 that might have led the Pentagon and capitalist forces to want a reactionary force to be prepared.
Oh, I don't know.
I was going with the George Floyd protest.
It would be the George Floyd protest.
One of the biggest and most sustained protest movements in the history of the United States of America.
And I think looking at this thing, you know, it wasn't about predicting.
It was just kind of taking a look at all of the elements that were coming into place.
Like nonpartisan, there is a feeling within the capitalist class that intentional inequality, historic inequality is going to need a crackdown through law enforcement, through the military.
A lot of what we're seeing right now are these pieces being put in place.
And the BLM protest of 2020, which of course didn't happen in a vacuum, they happened during the COVID pandemic and this large multi faceted protest movement.
I think what is being anticipated here is that what is happening in terms of neoliberal capitalism making the turn into fascism, the lowering of the standard of living and the decline of America, that eventually at some point, there's going to be a type of protest movement in that way.
And you're going to see it happen many places.
We already saw the capability of it with the No Kings protest, the largest protest day in the history of the United States.
I think looking at this, it's trying to anticipate where and how these things are going to pop up and try and crush them as quickly as humanly possible, which is not what happened during the BLM protest.
You know, and the historical context is interesting as well, because would you think it's safe to say we have not had anything in recent history in the last 20 years, anything that remotely resembles the kind of civil unrest we had like in the civil rights movement in the 60s?
I mean, it depends on how you're categorizing it.
If you're talking about protests, I mean, we've seen things on that level.
But when you talk about actual citizen to state government violence, no, we've seen a semblance of it with right-wing militias and extremists that have done this asymmetrical type of warfare, but we haven't seen it from a different political perspective in that way in any way, shape or form.
Yeah, okay.
And like, and I would say and during that time in the 60s, it was like sort of pound for pound, much more of a, of a, of a, the violence was certainly higher, but then it was just more widespread.
I feel like even though we are seeing protests, quote unquote, we're not seeing the kind of violence that would break out across the country kind of consistently.
And so you have people who are like Trump who were, you know, adults during this time.
And so they, they had the context of what that was like.
And I almost feel like maybe that's what's fueling this agita about it now.
And they like putting it down and suppressing whatever might happen, even though historically they were, it wasn't the kind of thing that you would, um, you would have that kind of reaction towards, right?
Like that, that's my, sort of my feeling on it right now is where, where it's like, it's, it's, it's overkill times a thousand because in reality, A, we're allowed to protest, right?
That's part of our rights as citizens.
But B, like even when it gets to be, you know, tumultuous, it's like still manageable in some degrees.
I know we could say there's flare-ups in St. Louis and around George Floyd.
But again, I still don't see how it was like anything we would seen, you know, from 30 or 40 years ago.
Well, I think, and, you know, we have to be careful when we talk about this because there's a couple of different factors that are taking place.
First things first, like when you look at the social revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s, which sort of set the background of what you're talking about.
And if you actually look at the numbers of that era, Nick, the amount of bombs that were placed in buildings, the amount of murders, the amount of explosions, you name it, was really shocking.
It gives you an idea of exactly what could happen.
Of course, we have past labor wars between unions and national troops and federal troops and all of that.
There have been times of very, very specific violence.
But what happened during those social revolutions, whether or not it was civil rights, whether or not it was gay liberation, feminism, the anti-war, free speech, whatever it was, those things had elements to them that were class.
You know what I mean?
That had economic sort of feelings to it.
I don't think the people putting this together are like, oh, wow, we're on the verge of a class war.
I don't think that they have those meetings where they're like, man, historic inequality is going to lead to this.
But I do think that there is a feeling.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, I think even people who don't understand, you know, class theory, even people who think that class doesn't exist anymore, people who are not interested in those ideas, there is a feeling that there is a pressure building right now and that there is a momentum to this, both in terms of exploitation.
I mean, my God, you know, we're going to talk about AI in a little bit, like the massive amount of labor displacement that's going to take place with that if they continue down this road.
We're going to talk about the Supreme Court in a minute, like how many rights and privileges and protections could be taken away or stripped.
Those things have that element underneath it, that pressure that's building.
And there's a reason why law enforcement has been armed the way it has, why mass incarceration has grown.
We now have this development of a police state, private prisons, detainment units, concentration camps.
It is starting to feel, and I don't think people could even communicate it, like not necessarily that this is a powder cake that's going to blow, but that this is a powder cake that could blow at some point.
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