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The Home Front · Political Junkie Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_00: There are known knowns.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: There are things we know we know.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: We also know there are known unknowns.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: That is to say we know there are some things we do not know.
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SPEAKER_00: But there are also unknown unknowns.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: The ones we don't know we don't know.
0:54
SPEAKER_01: Hey, political junkies.
0:56
SPEAKER_01: This is your host,
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SPEAKER_01: Claire Potter,
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SPEAKER_01: and this is the Homefront edition of the Political Junkie podcast.
1:04
SPEAKER_01: Neil was off this week,
1:05
SPEAKER_01: and I'm fortunate that I have a special guest,
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SPEAKER_01: my friend and former colleague,
1:11
SPEAKER_01: still my colleague,
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SPEAKER_01: Jeremy Varon,
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a history professor at the New School for Social Research and
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Eugene Lang College.
1:20
SPEAKER_01: Jeremy has a great name.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: new book out called Our Grief is Not a Cry for War.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: It is about the anti-war movement.
1:29
SPEAKER_01: It really begins slightly before the 21st century,
1:33
SPEAKER_01: and it continues on into the present,
1:37
SPEAKER_01: really,
1:38
since the United States really just got out of Afghanistan a
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few years ago and
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SPEAKER_01: We still station troops in Iraq.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: The bulk of Jeremy's book is about the movement to end the war on terror.
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SPEAKER_01: how it got going,
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SPEAKER_01: how people tried to stop it,
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SPEAKER_01: how they failed to stop it,
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SPEAKER_01: and yet how they continued their activism nonetheless.
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I want to take a second just to introduce you to Jeremy because
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he's a perfect
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SPEAKER_01: example of someone who is really a scholar activist.
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You know,
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there are a lot of people who call themselves scholar activists
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and their activism
2:16
really consists of going on Twitter a lot and saying a lot of
2:20
things to people in
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SPEAKER_01: this sort of freelance pundit type way.
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Not that there's anything wrong with that,
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but Jeremy really puts his body on the line.
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SPEAKER_01: He's been a member of Witness Against Torture.
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SPEAKER_01: He has gone to Guantanamo to protest the continued
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incarceration of people who were captured decades ago in places
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like Afghanistan
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SPEAKER_01: and Iraq and who were never tried.
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SPEAKER_01: Some of them have never had charges lodged against them.
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SPEAKER_01: Jeremy's commitments led him into research on the Weather Underground,
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SPEAKER_01: which was the subject of his first book published in 2004.
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SPEAKER_01: But Jeremy also included in this book the Red Army Faction,
3:04
a revolutionary group in Germany that sought to protest what
3:09
they saw as German
3:12
acquiescence to the history of Nazism and anti-Semitism and to
3:19
really sort of
3:20
strike back against the bourgeois German state that had taken
3:24
over after 1945.
3:26
It's a fascinating comparison showing how actually a lot of
3:30
these activists talk to
3:32
SPEAKER_01: each other across the boundaries of state and nation,
3:36
SPEAKER_01: how they watched each other.
3:38
And it really sort of looks at how young people tried to change
3:43
the world by
3:45
SPEAKER_01: creating a revolution.
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SPEAKER_01: Jeremy's new book, Our Grief is Not a Cry for War,
3:52
SPEAKER_01: takes its title from the survivors of another kind of violence,
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SPEAKER_01: people who had lost loved ones,
4:00
SPEAKER_01: friends,
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SPEAKER_01: and relatives in the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.
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SPEAKER_01: and the plane that went down in Pennsylvania on 9-11.
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These 9-11 victims were said to want some kind of justice that
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included war.
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SPEAKER_01: They vigorously said they did not.
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SPEAKER_01: So in fact,
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SPEAKER_01: as the Bush administration rushed to war,
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SPEAKER_01: people who had suffered terrible,
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SPEAKER_01: horrifying losses
4:33
actually joined up with an anti-war movement that had its roots
4:37
in the 20th
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SPEAKER_01: century,
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SPEAKER_01: that had its roots in communist splinter groups,
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SPEAKER_01: that had its roots in radical feminism.
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It's really an extraordinary book about how a peace movement
4:50
comes together
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SPEAKER_01: What counts as winning, even if you lose the bigger struggle?
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SPEAKER_01: The war, of course, happened.
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SPEAKER_01: Peace activists couldn't stop the war.
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SPEAKER_01: And yet they continued to make it visible,
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SPEAKER_01: to use a kind of language they did not use then,
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SPEAKER_01: but that we use now.
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They continue to insist that a state of war in the United
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States not be normalized.
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And that was a really important task because the war on terror
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went on actively for 20 years.
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And what it seems to have done is made a swift transition to a
5:31
war on Americans
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SPEAKER_01: under the Trump administration.
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So for those of you who want to know something about what peace
5:38
movements do,
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SPEAKER_01: how they hold themselves together despite the challenges,
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SPEAKER_01: how very small amounts of people can make a really big difference,
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SPEAKER_01: this is the book for you.
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SPEAKER_01: But it's also a book for our particular moment.
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SPEAKER_01: As we face armed police,
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SPEAKER_01: militarized beyond anything we might have imagined,
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SPEAKER_01: being dropped into our communities,
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SPEAKER_01: pulling people out of their cars,
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SPEAKER_01: pulling people out of their jobs,
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SPEAKER_01: arresting American citizens and incarcerating them,
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SPEAKER_01: even though they're carrying papers saying that they are citizens,
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SPEAKER_01: arresting people who are legal residents of the United States.
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And of course,
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as we saw in the killing of Renee Goode in Minneapolis,
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increasingly
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SPEAKER_01: these soldier police,
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SPEAKER_01: warrior police,
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SPEAKER_01: whatever you want to call them,
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SPEAKER_01: are using the tactics that are actually used in a war.
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SPEAKER_01: They were used in Iraq,
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SPEAKER_01: that were used in Afghanistan,
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SPEAKER_01: that were used in Fallujah,
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and they are using these tactics to try and destroy a peaceful
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opposition to
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SPEAKER_01: Trump's mass deportation policies.
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SPEAKER_01: So I'm very excited to have Jeremy on the show this week.
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SPEAKER_01: And
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SPEAKER_01: I welcome you to this edition of Political Junkie.
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SPEAKER_01: Jeremy Varon, welcome to the show.
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SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me.
7:15
SPEAKER_01: Well,
7:15
SPEAKER_01: Jeremy,
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SPEAKER_01: you are here today because of this beautiful book that landed on my desk,
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SPEAKER_01: Our Grief is Not a Cry for War,
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SPEAKER_01: The Movement to Stop the War on Terror.
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SPEAKER_01: And frankly,
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SPEAKER_01: Jeremy,
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I don't think our listeners could be reading this book at a
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better time in American
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SPEAKER_01: history.
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You couldn't have known that when you started,
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but we are,
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in fact,
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it seems,
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SPEAKER_01: engaged in a kind of war with the government now,
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SPEAKER_01: and I'm hoping we can talk about that a little bit today.
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SPEAKER_01: But I know you were involved with anti-war politics.
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Can you tell me what caused you to want to go to the other side
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on this and write a
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SPEAKER_01: history of the movements you've been attached to over the years?
8:00
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for the question.
8:01
SPEAKER_02: I mean, first, let me say I was born in 1967.
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So in the shadow of the Vietnam War and in sort of the
8:07
afterglow of the movement
8:09
SPEAKER_02: against the Vietnam War,
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SPEAKER_02: which was reputed to be the biggest,
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SPEAKER_02: the best,
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SPEAKER_02: the most effective anti-war movement in history.
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SPEAKER_02: And my sense of politics and morality were very much...
8:20
shaped by the social movements of the 1960s and the very
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passionate responses to,
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SPEAKER_02: you know,
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SPEAKER_02: the Vietnam War.
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SPEAKER_02: So I've always been fascinated by issues of war and peace as a historian,
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cut my teeth on big epic narratives detailing years and years
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and years of anti-war
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SPEAKER_02: protest.
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And I always identified with anti-war politics,
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first from a pacifist standpoint,
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and then
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SPEAKER_02: more from a broadly anti-interventionist standpoint.
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I protested the 1991 Gulf War,
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which famously kicked the Vietnam syndrome in the butt.
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SPEAKER_02: America had crossed the Rubicon of a major military intervention.
8:56
SPEAKER_02: And then when 9-11 happened,
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SPEAKER_02: I was obviously horrified by the 9-11 attacks,
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SPEAKER_02: but over time horrified by the American response,
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SPEAKER_02: which was so reckless,
9:07
SPEAKER_02: so
9:08
SPEAKER_02: disproportionate,
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SPEAKER_02: so pretextual in some sense,
9:11
and so destructive that I felt a moral obligation like millions
9:16
of Americans and
9:17
SPEAKER_02: people around the world to try to end the Iraq War,
9:21
SPEAKER_02: oppose the United States' torture program,
9:24
SPEAKER_02: and exercise some restraint on American war-making.
9:28
In all my years in the movement,
9:30
I never really thought of writing a book.
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SPEAKER_02: But it occurred to me around 2014, 2015, gee, somebody has to do this.
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SPEAKER_02: This was a big, robust, spirited, dynamic movement.
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People gave years of their lives,
9:46
immense sacrifice and courage to promoting peace.
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SPEAKER_02: And yet it was so little remembered by historians,
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SPEAKER_02: discussed by the media,
9:56
SPEAKER_02: memorialized in our culture.
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SPEAKER_02: So I was trying to rescue the movement from a kind of memory hole.
10:01
SPEAKER_02: and thought, here I have a professional skill set.
10:04
SPEAKER_02: I had written two books prior.
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SPEAKER_02: I was half a degree of separation from all of the major movement figures.
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I understood the grammar of movement culture and had some sense
10:15
of a timeline in my
10:17
SPEAKER_02: head of its important moments.
10:19
SPEAKER_02: And then I began this very ambitious project of researching
10:24
You know,
10:24
a social movement that spans seven or eight years in my
10:28
telling.
10:28
And then I should say that though I was part of the movement
10:31
and intimately
10:31
SPEAKER_02: involved with it,
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SPEAKER_02: probably 95% of what I report on in the book,
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SPEAKER_02: I had no idea was taking place,
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SPEAKER_02: you know,
10:39
SPEAKER_02: at the time.
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SPEAKER_02: And then that was in a sense,
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SPEAKER_02: the biggest surprise that the anti-war movement was more diverse,
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SPEAKER_02: more pervasive,
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SPEAKER_02: more diffuse and dispersed than I understood.
10:48
SPEAKER_02: So it was a huge education for me about a movement of which I was a part.
10:54
SPEAKER_01: Well,
10:54
and it's an incredibly valuable book in the sense that it pulls
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together a lot of
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different movements that were sort of connected to each other
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and sort of not.
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SPEAKER_01: Some of them came out of much older movements.
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SPEAKER_01: I was happy to see the War Resisters League,
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which Andrea Dworkin had her first internship when she was a
11:13
student at Bennington
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SPEAKER_01: with the War Resisters League,
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SPEAKER_01: which is where she met a whole bunch of people that she would later...
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SPEAKER_01: join as radical feminists.
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So there are these older groups,
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there are new groups that spring up and you show how they do.
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SPEAKER_01: There are also a lot of women in this book.
11:31
And can you talk about the centrality of women to the modern
11:36
peace movement?
11:38
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
11:38
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
11:38
SPEAKER_02: this was another,
11:39
SPEAKER_02: I think,
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SPEAKER_02: delicious discovery that a lot of the leading figures,
11:43
SPEAKER_02: as you indicate,
11:44
SPEAKER_02: in the post-2000 9-11 anti-war movement were indeed women.
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SPEAKER_02: And then typically they were at the young end of the new left generation,
11:54
SPEAKER_02: where maybe adolescents during the Vietnam years,
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SPEAKER_02: older brothers and sisters may have gone to protest.
11:59
SPEAKER_02: So they were very much influenced by the movement culture of the 1960s.
12:04
SPEAKER_02: And many of them became essentially professional
12:07
SPEAKER_02: organizers and advocates working in global health for abortion rights,
12:12
SPEAKER_02: to promote free speech rights,
12:14
SPEAKER_02: the rights of workers,
12:15
SPEAKER_02: etc.,
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and had by the early thousands vast experience in a wide
12:20
variety of social movement
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SPEAKER_02: activity and a sense that,
12:23
SPEAKER_02: at least in a limited way,
12:26
SPEAKER_02: Victory is possible if you have a strategic orientation,
12:29
SPEAKER_02: a good skill set,
12:31
SPEAKER_02: you know,
12:31
SPEAKER_02: know how to work with Congress or work with some recalcitrant,
12:36
SPEAKER_02: you know,
12:36
SPEAKER_02: companies.
12:37
So these were very idealistic people,
12:40
but also with a pragmatic understanding that.
12:44
SPEAKER_02: You know,
12:44
the point of so much activism is to have real gains in which
12:49
hearts and minds and
12:50
SPEAKER_02: then policies shift.
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SPEAKER_02: And then the most notorious women's center,
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SPEAKER_02: women's based group of this movement was,
12:57
SPEAKER_02: of course,
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SPEAKER_02: Code Pink.
12:58
SPEAKER_02: And then this was created by Medea Benjamin,
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SPEAKER_02: Diane Wilson,
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SPEAKER_02: Gail Murphy and a handful of others,
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SPEAKER_02: all in their 40s.
13:08
SPEAKER_02: at the time,
13:09
SPEAKER_02: with,
13:09
SPEAKER_02: again,
13:10
SPEAKER_02: a diverse range of social movement activity,
13:13
who wanted to promote and privilege the voice of women in
13:17
opposition to war.
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SPEAKER_02: And they weren't essentialists who thought that,
13:22
SPEAKER_02: you know,
13:22
SPEAKER_02: women were genetically oriented towards peace,
13:25
but they understood that women are mothers and caretakers and
13:29
moral guardians,
13:31
SPEAKER_02: and that in
13:32
the course of modern warfare more and more civilians and women
13:37
are affected as
13:38
victims as opposed to men in standing armies so the fact that
13:42
women became
13:43
prominent in an era of war making that is actually more
13:47
destructive towards
13:47
civilian life and female life and the lives of children made a
13:51
kind of sense and
13:52
SPEAKER_02: they detected in the war making effort an enormous amount of machismo
13:58
whether it's the gruff masculinity of Cheney or the kind of
14:03
goofy cowboy persona of Bush.
14:06
SPEAKER_02: And they wanted to articulate values of peace,
14:10
SPEAKER_02: fellowship,
14:10
SPEAKER_02: connection,
14:11
and compassion as an alternate set of values to the
14:16
belligerence of the government.
14:17
SPEAKER_02: And I think some of the most impressive work that
14:20
such forces did was going to Afghanistan and going to Iraq and
14:24
working with women
14:25
civil society leaders in those societies and working with the
14:30
poor victims of U.S.
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SPEAKER_02: aggression to offer them compassion, comfort,
14:36
SPEAKER_02: compensation as possible for their suffering and loss.
14:40
SPEAKER_02: So there was a tremendous amount of sort of female to female fellowship,
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SPEAKER_02: transcending national borders,
14:47
SPEAKER_02: often entailing great degrees of personal risk and hardship.
14:51
And then women really emerge as some of the primary
14:55
protagonists of my story.
14:56
And I think I will have made my mother proud,
14:59
who loved quoting the Harry Belafonte song.
15:01
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
15:01
SPEAKER_02: The women are smarter.
15:02
SPEAKER_02: And I think the book proves that point.
15:06
SPEAKER_01: Well,
15:06
and these women were also pointing to one of the many lies that
15:11
was told during the
15:13
SPEAKER_01: war on terror,
15:14
which is that Bush and Cheney promoted the war on terror around
15:17
the liberation of
15:18
SPEAKER_01: women.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: That,
15:19
SPEAKER_01: you know,
15:19
SPEAKER_01: when the United States went to Afghanistan,
15:22
SPEAKER_01: women would be allowed to go to school again and reenter the professions.
15:26
that women in Iraq would no longer have to wear a burqa or,
15:31
you know,
15:31
whatever.
15:32
SPEAKER_01: And so the use of women as a kind of cudgel,
15:36
SPEAKER_01: an excuse,
15:37
SPEAKER_01: a moral excuse for making war,
15:39
SPEAKER_01: is something that these American anti-war activists take on head on.
15:45
Yes,
15:45
and I would add to that the notion that war appeals to the
15:49
so-called security mom,
15:51
right?
15:51
SPEAKER_02: That women are interested in safety in some basic sense.
15:56
So the war on terror was waged on behalf of the good mothers of
15:59
America whose
16:00
SPEAKER_02: primary duty is to keep their children safe.
16:04
SPEAKER_02: And that's obviously a retrograde gendered ideology.
16:07
But,
16:07
you know,
16:07
women pushed back and then wanted to show that they could be
16:10
fierce.
16:11
SPEAKER_02: And Code Pink became famous
16:13
SPEAKER_02: for its very provocative and confrontational direct actions,
16:18
SPEAKER_02: heckling government officials,
16:20
SPEAKER_02: various kinds of displays and provocations outside of the White House,
16:26
and then at times putting themselves in harm's way in active
16:31
war theaters to say
16:33
that we are the protectors of life and are duty-bound to make
16:37
this sacrifice.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: Yes,
16:39
SPEAKER_01: and of course,
16:40
SPEAKER_01: paradoxically enough,
16:41
SPEAKER_01: the war on terror is also the first American conflict in which women
16:46
SPEAKER_01: are really in combat.
16:48
And partway through the war on terror,
16:50
officially women are designated in combat roles.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: But these are also two wars where there is no front stage and backstage.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: And women,
16:59
SPEAKER_01: and really in the first Gulf War as well,
17:01
SPEAKER_01: women are ending up in combat situations,
17:04
SPEAKER_01: even while not being officially in combat.
17:06
SPEAKER_01: So we've got this sort of weird moment of
17:09
women being promoted within the military at the same time that
17:13
women are taking a
17:14
SPEAKER_01: much bigger leadership role in the fight against the war as well.
17:20
SPEAKER_02: Yes, also with some significant female backers of the war.
17:25
SPEAKER_02: And then here I would point to the centrality of,
17:27
SPEAKER_02: you know,
17:28
SPEAKER_02: Hillary Clinton,
17:29
SPEAKER_02: who during the war published this book,
17:31
SPEAKER_02: It Takes a Village,
17:32
SPEAKER_02: all about,
17:33
SPEAKER_02: you know,
17:33
SPEAKER_02: child rearing and nurturance.
17:35
And a lot of her female constituents in New York,
17:40
she was a senator at the time,
17:41
were...
17:42
enraged that the world's leading feminist is aligning with a
17:47
war so deeply
17:48
destructive to the lives of women and children in Iraq and
17:53
Afghanistan and that
17:54
they saw her as a kind of you know hypocrite or an
17:57
establishment feminist who
17:58
SPEAKER_02: didn't
17:59
understand the natural opposition of feminism to militarism you
18:05
know within their
18:06
understanding and then you know i should point to a couple of
18:09
other things i mean
18:10
one uh several women played a central role in iraq veterans
18:14
against the war the
18:15
SPEAKER_02: first executive director was a young woman named kelly
18:18
SPEAKER_02: Doherty,
18:19
who took a leadership role in this very important organization
18:22
and a very male
18:23
SPEAKER_02: culture of veterans.
18:26
SPEAKER_02: And also there's,
18:27
SPEAKER_02: you know,
18:27
the tragic instance of women being involved in some of the
18:32
sexual sadism at Abu
18:34
SPEAKER_02: Ghraib.
18:35
And Barbara Ehrenreich,
18:36
a famous feminist,
18:37
gave a speech actually at Barnard's commencement.
18:41
saying that this is a horrifying moment because we have the
18:46
wicked caricature of
18:48
SPEAKER_02: the Islamist condemnation of the decadence of the West,
18:52
SPEAKER_02: including gender equality and a kind of sexual perversion.
18:57
And then here you see Iraqis exposed to terrible abuse that was
19:02
an affront to
19:03
deep-seated notions in their culture about the privacy and
19:06
integrity of the body
19:07
SPEAKER_02: being,
19:08
SPEAKER_02: you know,
19:08
SPEAKER_02: perpetrated by women.
19:09
SPEAKER_02: So there's obviously very complicated gender politics.
19:13
SPEAKER_02: And,
19:13
SPEAKER_02: you know,
19:13
SPEAKER_02: very evidently,
19:14
SPEAKER_02: you know,
19:14
SPEAKER_02: our current Department of War leader thinks that,
19:18
SPEAKER_02: you know,
19:18
SPEAKER_02: the military became too soft,
19:20
SPEAKER_02: too woke,
19:20
SPEAKER_02: too influenced by DEI,
19:21
SPEAKER_02: too friendly to
19:23
women and the pendulum has swung again away from the kind of
19:27
provisional equality
19:28
SPEAKER_02: that the military was promoting.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: What you're describing,
19:32
SPEAKER_01: Jeremy,
19:32
SPEAKER_01: is a military,
19:34
SPEAKER_01: of course,
19:34
SPEAKER_01: that the Trump administration is trying to get women out of,
19:38
SPEAKER_01: trying to get transgender people out of,
19:40
SPEAKER_01: trying to get gay people out of,
19:42
SPEAKER_01: really,
19:42
SPEAKER_01: and make it a much more masculine environment.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: So I wonder if now we're kind of turning back to a time,
19:50
and I'm thinking now about the murder of Renee Good in
19:54
Minneapolis this week,
19:56
SPEAKER_01: if we're turning back to a time where the state is sort of
20:00
endlessly masculine and we're going to begin to see the face of
20:05
resistance to the
20:05
SPEAKER_01: state,
20:06
SPEAKER_01: whether it's war-making abroad or war-making at home,
20:09
SPEAKER_01: as increasingly female.
20:11
SPEAKER_02: I would hope so, to what you just laid out.
20:14
I mean,
20:14
let me first say that Trump and Hegseth are clearly obsessed
20:19
with lethality.
20:21
SPEAKER_02: It's a word that they're in love with.
20:23
SPEAKER_02: And they see lethality as a military and masculine virtue.
20:29
And at some level seem to get almost a libidinal thrill in
20:34
killing people or
20:36
SPEAKER_02: asserting their right and their capacity to kill people.
20:40
And I think this turn is based on a fundamental misapprehension
20:45
that the war on
20:46
SPEAKER_02: terror somehow failed because it wasn't lethal enough,
20:50
SPEAKER_02: right?
20:50
This was the same myth about Vietnam,
20:52
fighting with one hand tied behind your back.
20:54
We didn't have the wherewithal to get the job done because we
20:57
were too respectful
20:58
SPEAKER_02: of human rights.
20:59
SPEAKER_02: That's not the story of the Iraq war at all.
21:01
SPEAKER_02: The Iraq war was scandalously brutal, suffused with war crimes,
21:08
gross and pervasive psychological,
21:13
physical,
21:14
and sometimes sexual abuse of Iraqi civilians.
21:20
And the Iraqi people turned so bitterly against the occupation
21:24
fundamentally
21:25
SPEAKER_02: because of the brutality of the occupation itself.
21:29
SPEAKER_02: Abu Ghraib is the most notorious instance,
21:31
SPEAKER_02: but Abu Ghraib-like violence was absolutely pervasive.
21:35
SPEAKER_02: And at a certain point, Iraqis
21:37
SPEAKER_02: banded against the Americans to defend in their minds their faith,
21:41
SPEAKER_02: their honor,
21:42
SPEAKER_02: their country,
21:43
SPEAKER_02: their family,
21:45
SPEAKER_02: and their home.
21:46
SPEAKER_02: And this is typically what happens with imperial misadventures.
21:50
The imperialists sort of misunderstand people's sense of
21:54
attachment to place,
21:56
SPEAKER_02: to nation,
21:56
SPEAKER_02: to identity,
21:57
SPEAKER_02: to culture.
21:58
SPEAKER_02: to, you know, family.
22:01
SPEAKER_02: As to today, yes, they're remasculinizing the military.
22:07
And I think the face of this menace is the big burly masked ICE
22:13
agent stepping out
22:15
SPEAKER_02: of some hulking SUV to try to tackle or otherwise
22:21
SPEAKER_02: abused some vulnerable suspect.
22:25
SPEAKER_02: At the very end of the footage released this afternoon,
22:28
SPEAKER_02: presumably from the body cam,
22:31
SPEAKER_02: you hear possibly the shooter calling Ms.
22:35
SPEAKER_02: Good a effing bitch, and that speaks volumes about
22:41
SPEAKER_02: the attitude underlying this violence.
22:45
And one of my grand conclusions from all of my opposition to
22:49
and study of the war
22:50
SPEAKER_02: on terror is that sadly,
22:51
a lot of people equate national strength and security with the
22:57
ability to inflict
22:59
SPEAKER_02: harm and violence on vulnerable others.
23:02
It might be a general tendency of nationalism when we need to
23:05
sort of carefully study it.
23:07
SPEAKER_02: But there is a constituency that thinks the more pain we can exact,
23:13
SPEAKER_02: the stronger and the safer we are.
23:17
And part of the abduction of Maduro was the spectacle of
23:21
humiliating him,
23:22
right?
23:23
SPEAKER_02: So there's this photograph of him wearing the goggles and the earmuffs.
23:28
SPEAKER_02: And all of the military experts say, oh, it's so he...
23:32
can't listen to conversations around him and doesn't know where
23:34
he's going but to
23:36
anybody who's studied guantanamo thoroughly it's evocative of
23:40
the images of the
23:41
detainees brought to guantanamo where the earmuffs and hand
23:45
muffs and the goggles
23:48
SPEAKER_02: were the exercise of carefully studied psychological techniques
23:55
for a kind of sensory deprivation that can drive a person mad
23:59
within an hour or two.
24:02
SPEAKER_02: So in effect,
24:03
SPEAKER_02: that was a kind of on air form of,
24:05
SPEAKER_02: you know,
24:06
SPEAKER_02: soft torture against a guy who 36 hours ago was,
24:10
SPEAKER_02: you know,
24:10
SPEAKER_02: the president of a country,
24:12
SPEAKER_02: rightly or wrongly.
24:13
SPEAKER_01: Right.
24:14
SPEAKER_01: Well,
24:14
and they also strap diapers on people and force them to soil
24:17
themselves for hours
24:18
SPEAKER_01: as they travel to places.
24:20
And then that stuff like that is also a feature of the current
24:25
immigration lockups.
24:26
SPEAKER_02: Like,
24:26
I don't know if you've been reading about these presidents in
24:28
Texas and Louisiana,
24:30
but there's this willful subjection of the detainees to bodily
24:35
filth as a dimension
24:37
SPEAKER_02: of their degradation.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, bodily filth.
24:40
And then also,
24:41
and we'll get back to your book in a second,
24:43
because they're nicer people.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: But also,
24:46
SPEAKER_01: when I was reading your account of Abu Ghraib in this book,
24:50
SPEAKER_01: I thought,
24:51
SPEAKER_01: well,
24:51
SPEAKER_01: Seacott,
24:52
SPEAKER_01: you know,
24:52
SPEAKER_01: Abu Ghraib came back to the Americas in the form of Seacott,
24:57
SPEAKER_01: except it's an institutionalized,
24:59
SPEAKER_01: highly technologized,
25:01
SPEAKER_01: intensified version of what was being done at Abu Ghraib.
25:05
SPEAKER_01: And
25:06
that the American government actually sent people to Seacott
25:10
knowing that they
25:11
SPEAKER_01: would be tortured is also a residue of this war,
25:15
SPEAKER_01: isn't it?
25:16
SPEAKER_02: It is.
25:17
SPEAKER_02: And,
25:17
SPEAKER_02: you know,
25:18
SPEAKER_02: I should say that when I wrote the book,
25:20
part of the goal was to force a kind of reckoning with the
25:24
unexamined legacy of the
25:25
SPEAKER_02: war on terror and legal terms,
25:27
SPEAKER_02: political terms,
25:28
SPEAKER_02: geopolitical terms,
25:29
SPEAKER_02: etc.
25:30
SPEAKER_02: And I feel like since the time of its publication,
25:34
SPEAKER_02: which was early November,
25:36
SPEAKER_02: in a way,
25:37
SPEAKER_02: the toxic legacy of the war on terror has come back with a vengeance.
25:42
primarily in the form of the utter impunity with which the
25:48
trump administration and
25:49
various federal agencies claim the right to exercise violence
25:54
in one case to abduct
25:56
a foreign leader no matter what the un charter says or the war
26:00
powers act says or
26:01
national and international law says or even what the american
26:04
people think only 33
26:06
SPEAKER_02: of whom support the abduction.
26:09
SPEAKER_02: And in the case of the death of Miss Good,
26:11
SPEAKER_02: this notion that if you exercise your First Amendment rights,
26:15
SPEAKER_02: and heaven forbid...
26:18
obey the order of law enforcement,
26:21
the justifiable punishment may be your death.
26:26
SPEAKER_02: And when JD Vance says that these officers enjoy absolute immunity,
26:32
SPEAKER_02: this is the admission of a functional state of tyranny.
26:40
SPEAKER_02: And Americans are disgusted and they are starting to rise up.
26:45
And you actually have a wonderful suggestion that if there was
26:49
a gender dimension
26:51
SPEAKER_02: to this as a resistance to a kind of weaponized hypermasculinity,
26:57
SPEAKER_02: that could add an interesting difference.
27:00
SPEAKER_02: you know, dimension to the protest.
27:01
So people on the right,
27:02
of course,
27:03
are going to say,
27:03
oh,
27:03
that's just wokeism.
27:05
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, that's what we in the first instance hate.
27:08
SPEAKER_02: So,
27:09
SPEAKER_02: you know,
27:09
SPEAKER_02: the gender ideology warriors like yourself,
27:12
SPEAKER_02: and I mean it as a compliment,
27:13
SPEAKER_02: like stay in the fight.
27:15
SPEAKER_02: Sadly, you've arguably never had greater evidence for your broad case.
27:20
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's a
27:24
SPEAKER_02: rapist and a, you know, proud misogynist.
27:27
SPEAKER_02: And then now a hyper masculinized military,
27:31
SPEAKER_02: you know,
27:32
SPEAKER_02: shooting like a lesbian mother,
27:35
SPEAKER_02: calling her a bitch,
27:36
SPEAKER_02: like you can't make it up.
27:38
And saying it's her own fault,
27:39
if only she had been obedient,
27:41
she would have been spared.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: And that's, that's the part that I think sort of broadcasts a general
27:48
SPEAKER_01: humiliation that is in store for women under this administration.
27:52
SPEAKER_01: So,
27:52
SPEAKER_01: Jeremy,
27:53
let's go back to the beginning of the book because it really
27:57
gathers steam on 9-11,
27:59
SPEAKER_01: but there's a prequel to 9-11,
28:02
which is the first Gulf War and a series of groups and actions
28:06
in the 1990s that
28:08
SPEAKER_01: lay the basis for what is going to happen
28:11
SPEAKER_01: after the Twin Towers are struck.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: Can you talk about that a little bit?
28:15
Who are these groups and what are the tactics that they develop
28:18
that we will then
28:19
SPEAKER_01: see forming the basis of the anti-war movement after 9?
28:23
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
28:23
SPEAKER_02: I mean, so in 91, I was fresh out of college.
28:26
I was a big campus activist and then immersed myself in
28:29
anti-war politics in
28:30
SPEAKER_02: Washington,
28:30
SPEAKER_02: D.C.,
28:31
SPEAKER_02: and actually affiliated with the National Coalition to Stop U.S.
28:35
Intervention in the Middle East,
28:36
whose great rival was the National Catholic
28:39
SPEAKER_02: campaign for peace in the Middle East.
28:40
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, cue the Monty Python joke, right?
28:43
So you had these two powerful coalitions,
28:45
one of them hard left,
28:47
another one center left.
28:49
SPEAKER_02: One of them refused to condemn Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.
28:53
The other one said Hussein's a tyrant and sanctions might be a
28:57
way to expel Iraq
28:59
SPEAKER_02: from Kuwait without going to war.
29:01
One hostile to the Democratic Party,
29:03
another willing to work with the Democratic Party.
29:06
And these intramural differences between the two coalitions
29:10
never ultimately
29:11
amounted to much because the war came and went so quickly and
29:15
was such a massive
29:16
decisive military victory for the United States that these
29:20
divisions sort of
29:21
SPEAKER_02: quickly became kind of moot.
29:23
SPEAKER_02: But then that was followed by many, many years of sanctions.
29:27
SPEAKER_02: against Iraq,
29:27
SPEAKER_02: which were horribly punitive,
29:29
SPEAKER_02: claimed tens or hundreds of thousands of lives,
29:33
SPEAKER_02: including the lives of many Iraqi children.
29:36
SPEAKER_02: And then forces from both of those two coalitions stayed in the struggle.
29:41
SPEAKER_02: And you had both hardcore communists and hardcore pacifists
29:45
doing sanctions-busting missions in Iraq to try to bring in
29:50
medicine and foodstuffs
29:52
SPEAKER_02: and raise public awareness of the devastating effect of these sanctions.
29:55
SPEAKER_02: So when 9-11 happens,
29:57
SPEAKER_02: you have literally some of the same characters with old grudges,
30:01
SPEAKER_02: old rivalries,
30:02
SPEAKER_02: long histories with one another.
30:04
SPEAKER_02: And the post-9-11 movement
30:07
SPEAKER_02: powerfully reflected that division.
30:10
SPEAKER_02: The smaller, more militant coalition was the answer coalition.
30:14
SPEAKER_02: And I know some of these folks,
30:15
SPEAKER_02: they tend to be very doctrinaire,
30:17
SPEAKER_02: but also incredibly good at organizing.
30:20
SPEAKER_02: So instantly you see the printed signs,
30:22
SPEAKER_02: they're great with permits,
30:23
SPEAKER_02: they're wonderful defending civil liberties,
30:25
SPEAKER_02: including in federal courts.
30:28
SPEAKER_02: So they tend to be the first ones out of the gate.
30:31
SPEAKER_02: And a lot of people in the movement thought they were too extreme
30:37
SPEAKER_02: an organization to credibly lead what had to be a mass movement.
30:41
SPEAKER_02: So then this other coalition called United for Peace and Justice formed,
30:45
SPEAKER_02: and it was much more mainstream,
30:46
SPEAKER_02: but still fairly firmly left.
30:49
SPEAKER_02: And then the two organizations work sometimes together,
30:53
SPEAKER_02: sometimes side by side,
30:54
SPEAKER_02: sometimes at each other's throats for the next years.
30:58
SPEAKER_01: And there are distinct groups that you describe.
31:02
One is a lot of the families of 9-11 victims who say,
31:07
we don't want a war.
31:09
SPEAKER_01: A response to this, I mean, that's really your title.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: Our grief is not a cry for war.
31:13
SPEAKER_01: Don't exploit what happened to us to do this terrible thing.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: Then you have the anti-war movement.
31:19
And then you have a sort of broader American public that is
31:23
kind of in favor of war.
31:25
SPEAKER_01: So how is it
31:27
that anti-war organizers try to prevent this war from happening
31:33
at all in that atmosphere.
31:35
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
31:36
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
31:36
SPEAKER_02: So the anti-war movement, as you indicate, was diverse.
31:38
SPEAKER_02: Some of the real heroes of the story,
31:42
SPEAKER_02: as I see it,
31:43
SPEAKER_02: are these anti-war family members who lost loved ones on 9-11.
31:49
SPEAKER_02: And the basic message is,
31:50
SPEAKER_02: don't think you're doing this on behalf of my deceased husband,
31:54
SPEAKER_02: daughter,
31:55
SPEAKER_02: father.
31:55
SPEAKER_02: Don't think you're doing it on behalf of me.
31:58
SPEAKER_02: You are not
32:00
SPEAKER_02: avenging the crime of 9-11 by attacking Afghanistan and then Iraq.
32:05
SPEAKER_02: Rather,
32:06
you're repeating the crime of 9-11 by exposing more civilians
32:10
just like me to
32:12
SPEAKER_02: suffering,
32:13
SPEAKER_02: death,
32:14
SPEAKER_02: pain,
32:14
SPEAKER_02: and separation.
32:15
SPEAKER_02: So they had a unique kind of moral authority to make the anti-war case.
32:20
That didn't mean that they weren't also harassed and pilloried
32:25
and demonized by
32:28
SPEAKER_02: you know,
32:28
SPEAKER_02: haters throughout America,
32:29
SPEAKER_02: but they had a certain kind of,
32:31
SPEAKER_02: you know,
32:31
SPEAKER_02: status and standing.
32:33
SPEAKER_02: And then,
32:33
SPEAKER_02: you know,
32:34
SPEAKER_02: I should say that whereas most of the country was overwhelmingly for the
32:38
SPEAKER_02: Afghanistan war,
32:39
SPEAKER_02: Iraq was another matter.
32:41
SPEAKER_02: On the eve of the war, maybe 38 to 40% of Americans opposed it.
32:45
SPEAKER_02: There were very famous demonstrations on February 15, 2003.
32:48
SPEAKER_02: Perhaps you went to one of them in which... Indeed, we were pettled.
32:52
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
32:52
SPEAKER_02: Oh, you were kettled.
32:53
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
32:53
SPEAKER_02: Congratulations.
32:54
SPEAKER_02: You know,
32:54
so several million people turned out in the United States and
32:57
then globally between
32:58
SPEAKER_02: 15 and 30 million people turned out worldwide on all continents,
33:03
including Antarctica in what remains the single greatest day of
33:06
protest in the
33:07
SPEAKER_02: history of the world.
33:08
SPEAKER_02: That didn't stop the war.
33:10
SPEAKER_02: People were crestfallen and heartbroken that the war started anyhow,
33:14
SPEAKER_02: but they didn't exit the fight.
33:16
SPEAKER_02: And then for years thereafter,
33:19
Tenaciously tried to educate the American public about the
33:25
deceitful origins and
33:27
SPEAKER_02: terrible cost of this unfolding disaster.
33:34
And they were working against a media that by and large
33:37
underreported anti-war activism.
33:40
against a propaganda machine that insisted that the mission was
33:44
accomplished or it
33:45
SPEAKER_02: might be accomplished soon.
33:47
SPEAKER_02: There's light at the end of the tunnel just around the corner.
33:50
All of those sort of rosy assessments that never came true and
33:55
a kind of visceral
33:56
patriotism felt by many Americans that escalates when the lives
34:03
of Americans are on
34:04
SPEAKER_02: the line in some foreign intervention.
34:07
SPEAKER_02: And
34:08
SPEAKER_02: When the Iraq War so obviously bogged down and became a quagmire,
34:13
SPEAKER_02: prima facie,
34:13
SPEAKER_02: the case of the anti-war movement,
34:16
SPEAKER_02: grew much stronger.
34:18
And then eventually a critical mass of Americans could see the
34:21
great chasm
34:23
Between the virtual delusional picture of the war that Bush and
34:28
Rumsfeld presented
34:29
and the reality on the ground to the extent that it could even
34:33
be discerned.
34:34
SPEAKER_02: And by 2005, 2006, durable majority lost patience with the war.
34:40
which had descended into what I call an unmanageable maelstrom
34:44
of chaos and death,
34:47
SPEAKER_02: completely inscrutable politically,
34:50
SPEAKER_02: with no end in sight and no objective worthy of the sacrifice.
34:55
SPEAKER_02: And it took many more years for the war to then end.
34:59
But there was a moment of turning,
35:01
and then that should give us some hope.
35:04
The Bush administration also thought it was waging its power
35:08
without constraint.
35:10
But there was the constraint of the Iraqi resistance and
35:13
eventually the constraint
35:15
SPEAKER_02: of growing public skepticism towards the war.
35:18
SPEAKER_02: And there were some very important defections, like John Murtha.
35:21
SPEAKER_02: Do you remember him?
35:22
SPEAKER_02: He was a pro-war Democrat.
35:24
SPEAKER_02: And in the mirthquake, he said, this war has to end yesterday.
35:29
SPEAKER_02: The people are way ahead of Congress.
35:31
SPEAKER_02: He visited Walter Reed Hospital.
35:33
SPEAKER_02: He read the letters of
35:35
you know,
35:35
constituents saying you must end this war and had a change of
35:38
heart.
35:38
SPEAKER_02: And then I should reference also a Republican congressman,
35:43
SPEAKER_02: either Jones or Johnson,
35:45
who was behind banning French fries from the Capitol cafeteria
35:50
and calling them
35:50
SPEAKER_02: freedom fries.
35:52
SPEAKER_02: He eventually felt so distraught over his support of the war.
35:56
that until his death he personally wrote something like 12,000
36:01
families of deceased
36:02
and severely wounded soldiers in an unbelievable private act of
36:07
recompense and
36:08
SPEAKER_02: redemption.
36:10
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's interesting.
36:11
I want to pick up on that because one of the things that I
36:15
remember thinking when
36:17
we were protesting and trying to get the war to not happen is
36:21
that there was no
36:22
SPEAKER_01: reflection on what the residue of other wars had been.
36:26
I had known endless numbers of people who were older than me
36:29
who came back from Vietnam.
36:31
SPEAKER_01: just kind of broken.
36:32
SPEAKER_01: They weren't evil people.
36:34
SPEAKER_01: They weren't bad people, but they struggled with addiction.
36:37
SPEAKER_01: They couldn't get their lives together.
36:39
SPEAKER_01: They struggled with PTSD.
36:41
SPEAKER_01: Some people were fine.
36:42
And,
36:42
you know,
36:43
the psychologists know that some people are fine and some
36:45
people are not.
36:46
SPEAKER_01: And we don't know why that is.
36:48
But I just remember thinking that the costs in humanity and
36:54
medical care and trying
36:56
SPEAKER_01: to clean up after this war
36:59
SPEAKER_01: were not being discussed at all.
37:02
How is it that the public manages to forget over and over and
37:08
over again that the
37:09
SPEAKER_01: outcome of war is
37:13
SPEAKER_01: you know, is terrible.
37:15
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
37:15
SPEAKER_02: that's the central and eternal lesson,
37:19
SPEAKER_02: that war is always hell for all of its combatants.
37:23
SPEAKER_02: The cause and context for war crimes is war.
37:27
The torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib was in a sense a
37:30
byproduct of the invasion
37:32
SPEAKER_02: of Afghanistan.
37:33
SPEAKER_02: And then war is always a profound human failing.
37:38
And any sense of history or rigorous morality should scream
37:43
that war is to the best
37:46
SPEAKER_02: extent possible to be avoided.
37:50
SPEAKER_02: But this is the great unlearned lesson.
37:54
SPEAKER_02: And the government always makes the claim of national security,
38:00
SPEAKER_02: always promises swift and certain victory.
38:05
SPEAKER_02: and always claims the mantle of virtue,
38:09
SPEAKER_02: or almost always,
38:10
SPEAKER_02: like Trump might be a different matter.
38:12
But George Bush waged the war on terror as the defense of
38:15
civilization itself
38:17
SPEAKER_02: against barbarism,
38:18
everything that is pure and decent and true and good about
38:21
Enlightenment modernity,
38:23
SPEAKER_02: from freedom of religion to freedom of speech to
38:27
SPEAKER_02: gender equality to you name it.
38:30
So Americans went into the war,
38:33
many Americans regarded the war as deeply purposeful.
38:37
SPEAKER_02: and moral to neutralize thugs who are beyond the pale.
38:45
SPEAKER_02: And then that idealism did not drive the narrative of the conflict.
38:53
And in fact,
38:53
so much American conduct was exactly contrary to the righteous
39:01
claims.
39:02
SPEAKER_02: And then within the anti-war movement, I was most especially
39:06
SPEAKER_02: an anti-torture activist.
39:08
And it broke my heart and my heart is still broken to know that
39:13
America committed
39:15
in a serious way as a matter of policy to catastrophic
39:21
violation of human dignity
39:23
SPEAKER_02: that is torture.
39:25
SPEAKER_02: And then in my anti-war activism,
39:27
I thought we were just calling the country back to its
39:31
constitution and the rule of
39:32
SPEAKER_02: law and common sense morality and everything that
39:35
SPEAKER_02: It, you know, claimed to be defending.
39:37
SPEAKER_02: And then to the soldiers,
39:39
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
39:39
SPEAKER_02: they were in some senses both perpetrators and victims and then had,
39:43
SPEAKER_02: you know,
39:44
SPEAKER_02: paid an enormous price and shouldered an enormous burden.
39:48
And then a lot of the psychological problems that you
39:51
referenced are absolutely
39:53
SPEAKER_02: prevalent among this new generation of soldiers.
39:56
SPEAKER_02: veterans, something like 22 to 26 veterans commit suicide every day.
40:02
SPEAKER_02: And it used to be the Vietnam generation,
40:04
SPEAKER_02: and now it's tilted more and more to the veterans of more recent wars.
40:09
And psychologists and others have really developed this concept
40:13
of moral harm that
40:14
SPEAKER_02: you may have heard of.
40:15
SPEAKER_02: There's books and books written about it,
40:17
SPEAKER_02: or moral injury,
40:18
and a sense that part of the injury that these people bore was
40:23
their conscientious
40:24
SPEAKER_02: sense of having done wrong.
40:26
SPEAKER_02: And that's an absolutely terrible thing to have to live with.
40:30
SPEAKER_02: And a small and courageous subset of the veterans were honest,
40:36
SPEAKER_02: confessing both what they had done and their profound moral misgivings.
40:41
And one of the most indecent things I find about war is rich
40:45
men in expensive suits
40:47
SPEAKER_02: making young men and now women
40:51
SPEAKER_02: bear the sort of filthy burden of their arrogance,
40:56
SPEAKER_02: and often the utter corruption of their intent.
40:59
SPEAKER_02: So the Vietnam veterans were betrayed,
41:03
and then I would argue that another generation of soldiers has
41:07
been betrayed.
41:08
Even as some may have acted honorably,
41:10
civilian assistants,
41:12
fought the bad guys,
41:13
have
41:13
sort of pride in their service but it's painful for the country
41:17
to recognize that
41:18
in the case of Iraq at least the sacrifice appeared to be for
41:23
nothing and even
41:25
SPEAKER_02: Trump says that and how do you live with that
41:30
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
41:31
SPEAKER_01: Well,
41:31
and there is one theory that the fact that these wars were
41:36
fought on the backs of
41:37
SPEAKER_01: the poor,
41:37
SPEAKER_01: because of course we no longer had a draft.
41:39
SPEAKER_01: So the poor are incentivized to join the military, to gain skills, to
41:45
SPEAKER_01: get education, to support their families, and so on.
41:48
There is one theory about the MAGA movement that it is a
41:52
profound sense of
41:53
SPEAKER_01: betrayal,
41:54
SPEAKER_01: and to draw a sort of inaccurate but vivid comparison,
41:58
SPEAKER_01: that's not dissimilar from Germany in the 1920s,
42:01
SPEAKER_01: that this sense that
42:04
There is a whole elite group of people that have fed you into
42:08
the wood chipper,
42:09
SPEAKER_01: and you're supposed to make sense of it afterwards,
42:12
can really push people towards populist resistance that is not
42:16
at all progressive.
42:17
SPEAKER_02: I think that's right.
42:19
SPEAKER_02: You know, very dramatic, but I think, you know, poignant language.
42:23
And I think a lot of veterans did feel like they were fed into
42:25
the wood chipper by,
42:26
SPEAKER_02: you know,
42:26
SPEAKER_02: globalist elites.
42:27
SPEAKER_02: And then Trump has a populist, anti-globalist message.
42:32
And I think some veterans identify with him so strongly or
42:36
active duty military as
42:37
SPEAKER_02: somebody who has their back,
42:39
SPEAKER_02: who gets them,
42:39
SPEAKER_02: who understands them and isn't going to turn them into,
42:42
SPEAKER_02: you know,
42:43
SPEAKER_02: cannon fodder.
42:45
SPEAKER_02: Trump's belligerence is ticking up.
42:47
SPEAKER_02: And then his big dilemma is that he wants all of the spoils of conquest
42:55
SPEAKER_02: without launching another stupid war.
42:59
SPEAKER_02: So with the Venezuela intervention,
43:01
SPEAKER_02: there's all this talk,
43:02
SPEAKER_02: oh my God,
43:03
SPEAKER_02: it's going to be another Iraq.
43:04
SPEAKER_02: And it could be.
43:05
SPEAKER_02: And that's an important warning.
43:07
SPEAKER_02: But I think Trump doesn't want it to be another Iraq.
43:10
So they're trying to figure out how can you coercively achieve
43:16
your ends with
43:17
SPEAKER_02: little or no loss of American life.
43:20
SPEAKER_02: And then sadly, the sort of moral wages of
43:24
Public discussion is that so long as no American dies,
43:28
who really gives a damn?
43:30
And the dream of first century war makers is war with as close
43:36
to zero losses as
43:37
SPEAKER_02: possible,
43:38
SPEAKER_02: long distance,
43:39
SPEAKER_02: remote,
43:40
SPEAKER_02: mechanized.
43:41
SPEAKER_02: And when Trump says that,
43:42
SPEAKER_02: oh,
43:42
SPEAKER_02: he had a second wave for Venezuela planned,
43:45
SPEAKER_02: I think it would be a huge fusillade of
43:48
cruise missiles to assassinate the current leader and blow up
43:52
ministries in
43:53
SPEAKER_02: civilian neighborhoods.
43:54
They really want to do this in a way where no American dies so
43:59
Trump doesn't have
44:00
SPEAKER_02: that on his head and MAGA doesn't turn against him.
44:02
And then how many American casualties would start to feel
44:06
unacceptable to the American people?
44:09
SPEAKER_02: Who knows?
44:09
SPEAKER_02: We're not there yet.
44:10
But it is a very sort of perilous game with the politics of
44:16
American death
44:18
SPEAKER_02: being perhaps the most important grammar to structure the conversation.
44:26
SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: Now,
44:27
SPEAKER_01: Jeremy,
44:28
SPEAKER_01: I want to talk about something else,
44:30
SPEAKER_01: because as I was reading your book,
44:33
SPEAKER_01: I was sort of hit with this wave of despair.
44:36
SPEAKER_01: Okay,
44:36
SPEAKER_01: I've been involved with all of these peace movements all my life,
44:39
SPEAKER_01: and they've never stopped a war.
44:40
SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, they do other things.
44:44
SPEAKER_01: And I think your book really evokes the level to which people
44:48
people who care about justice actually survive and reproduce
44:54
themselves in peace
44:56
SPEAKER_01: movements that may not stop wars,
44:58
but they actually do build a kind of social justice
45:02
infrastructure and intellectual
45:05
SPEAKER_01: apparatus that can prepare us for the next challenge.
45:09
SPEAKER_01: Is that a good reading of your book?
45:11
i think that was superbly put i mean thank you you know
45:15
beautifully articulated and
45:16
i would say you know that if any war movements don't often stop
45:20
wars they tend to
45:22
limit their intensity and duration and that was the ultimate
45:25
effect of the
45:26
anti-vietnam war movement it probably would have lasted longer
45:29
and more people
45:29
probably would have died and that's probably the best you can
45:33
say about this
45:33
SPEAKER_02: anti-war movement too that if it didn't exist at all
45:36
SPEAKER_02: The war would have been longer and bloodier and probably the U.S.
45:39
still would have met ruin in Iraq,
45:41
but it would have been a much more protracted story.
45:43
So I would like to believe that we can save lives even though
45:47
the number is never verifiable.
45:50
And then there's that whole question of building community and
45:54
connection and community.
45:57
SPEAKER_02: compassion and fellowship.
45:59
SPEAKER_02: And then these things are in and of themselves good.
46:03
And they also do help to grow infrastructures of resistance to
46:09
be mobilized in the
46:10
SPEAKER_02: face of the next outrage.
46:12
SPEAKER_02: And then interestingly,
46:13
SPEAKER_02: I'm just finishing a book called On Activism,
46:16
SPEAKER_02: Friendships and Fighting by Ben Shepard.
46:17
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you know him, but he's a famous HIV
46:20
aids activist and then it's all about the centrality of
46:24
friendship within activism
46:27
which is not anything i've ever sort of explicitly thought of
46:30
until reading his
46:31
book but i realized geez you know i met my wife in activism my
46:34
three best male
46:35
friends are all active and maybe there's something you know to
46:37
this so not only
46:38
SPEAKER_02: does like kind of find like but these deep affective you know bonds form
46:45
As do prefigurative communities that try to model compassion
46:50
and understanding
46:51
SPEAKER_02: itself as an act of resistance to whatever is motivating war.
46:56
SPEAKER_01: Well,
46:56
and I've noticed here in Western Massachusetts that in the
46:59
current crisis,
47:01
SPEAKER_01: there are all of these people who have been active in previous movements.
47:05
SPEAKER_01: And when Trump was elected the first time, they were ready.
47:08
SPEAKER_01: And they started things and got people together.
47:12
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we have little demonstrations in town and so on.
47:16
But also,
47:17
every time there is another crisis,
47:20
these groups go into motion in a more intense way.
47:23
SPEAKER_01: They pull more people in.
47:24
SPEAKER_01: And they also serve the purpose,
47:26
SPEAKER_01: I think,
47:27
SPEAKER_01: of helping us all,
47:29
SPEAKER_01: you know,
47:29
SPEAKER_01: when these catastrophic things happen,
47:32
SPEAKER_01: whether it is a city being leveled with American bombs,
47:36
SPEAKER_01: or whether it is,
47:38
SPEAKER_01: you know,
47:38
SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking Gaza,
47:40
SPEAKER_01: but I'm also thinking
47:42
SPEAKER_01: the cities in Ukraine being leveled by the Russians.
47:45
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
47:46
SPEAKER_01: there's so much violence in the world and it's so hard to respond to,
47:50
which is why something like Rene Good's murder just sort of
47:55
lights the fuse on a
47:57
SPEAKER_01: certain level.
47:57
SPEAKER_01: But I think a lot of these groups,
48:00
SPEAKER_01: as they have sustained themselves over the years,
48:03
SPEAKER_01: provide a real social function of reaching out to people and saying,
48:07
SPEAKER_01: come to the park,
48:08
SPEAKER_01: make a sign,
48:09
SPEAKER_01: listen to speakers.
48:10
SPEAKER_01: You will be with friends.
48:12
SPEAKER_01: You don't live in a completely hostile environment.
48:15
SPEAKER_01: And that is useful, too, even when you fail to stop the war.
48:21
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
48:21
SPEAKER_02: I'm an incorrigible and inveterate protester who's been to hundreds,
48:26
SPEAKER_02: if not thousands,
48:28
SPEAKER_02: of rallies and vigils.
48:30
SPEAKER_02: big and small.
48:31
SPEAKER_02: So,
48:32
SPEAKER_02: you know,
48:32
SPEAKER_02: I vote with my feet and such gatherings do have the purpose that you,
48:38
SPEAKER_02: you know,
48:38
SPEAKER_02: describe.
48:39
SPEAKER_02: Like that said,
48:40
I'm deeply worried that whatever resistance is being mounted is
48:46
inadequate to the
48:47
SPEAKER_02: authoritarian threat that Trump poses.
48:51
And you would like to believe that the constraints of law and
48:55
congressional action
48:58
SPEAKER_02: And the media were more significant.
49:02
SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't up to grassroots activists in Northampton,
49:06
SPEAKER_02: you know,
49:07
standing on a corner with a sign encouraging people to honk
49:10
their horns to save
49:11
SPEAKER_02: American democracy.
49:12
SPEAKER_02: Like we're at a very,
49:14
SPEAKER_02: very,
49:15
SPEAKER_02: very dangerous threshold where,
49:18
SPEAKER_02: again,
49:18
SPEAKER_02: Trump's message to the world is stop me if you can.
49:21
He says he's accountable only to his own morality,
49:24
which is no morality at all.
49:25
SPEAKER_01: Gary.
49:26
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
49:27
Stephen Miller basically said the only law that makes sense is
49:31
the law of force,
49:31
SPEAKER_02: the law of jungle.
49:32
SPEAKER_02: It's been that way since sort of Roman times.
49:35
SPEAKER_02: And these are folks who feel entitled to take.
49:40
SPEAKER_02: through the use of force or the threat of force.
49:45
And to an alarming degree,
49:47
to this point,
49:49
they appear to be getting away with it.
49:53
And then this is what we feared when Trump won reelection,
49:56
which itself is remarkable.
49:58
because he took a murderous riot to overthrow a free and fair
50:02
election and somehow
50:04
convinced enough Americans that this was a glorious day of
50:07
pushback against the
50:10
SPEAKER_02: deep state.
50:11
So there's a massive ideological distortion in tailing a
50:18
vandalism of basic
50:20
SPEAKER_02: observable truths,
50:21
SPEAKER_02: and then a politics of lawless violence emanating from it.
50:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
50:29
SPEAKER_01: So Jeremy,
50:30
there's so much to talk about with this book and it's so
50:34
valuable and in many ways
50:35
SPEAKER_01: comforting in this moment because listeners,
50:38
you'll read about people who are grappling with the same kinds
50:42
of despair as we are
50:44
now and turning that despair into work and love and creative
50:49
ways of trying to make
50:51
SPEAKER_01: an argument in public that no one wants them to make.
50:54
SPEAKER_01: Jeremy,
50:55
SPEAKER_01: if you were to in a capsule form,
50:57
SPEAKER_01: tell our listeners why they should read this book now,
51:00
SPEAKER_01: what would you tell them?
51:02
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
51:02
SPEAKER_02: the first thing I would say is that anytime a grave injustice exists,
51:06
it's important to know for the moral and political and
51:10
historical record who stood
51:12
SPEAKER_02: up,
51:13
SPEAKER_02: why,
51:13
SPEAKER_02: what did they do,
51:14
SPEAKER_02: and what difference did their conduct make.
51:16
SPEAKER_02: The war on terror was a moral catastrophe.
51:18
SPEAKER_02: A million people dead as a direct consequence of US interventions,
51:22
SPEAKER_02: four million dead as an indirect consequence,
51:24
SPEAKER_02: almost 40 million displaced,
51:26
SPEAKER_02: $8 trillion and counting.
51:28
SPEAKER_02: Right.
51:28
SPEAKER_02: And then there were people in the United States and all over the world,
51:31
SPEAKER_02: conservative,
51:32
SPEAKER_02: liberal,
51:33
SPEAKER_02: inside government,
51:34
SPEAKER_02: outside government,
51:34
SPEAKER_02: who tried to impose some constraints on this outrage.
51:38
SPEAKER_02: And they have a deserving place in the great annals of American descent,
51:42
SPEAKER_02: along with the suffragettes,
51:44
SPEAKER_02: the abolitionists,
51:45
SPEAKER_02: civil rights folks,
51:46
SPEAKER_02: labor folks,
51:47
SPEAKER_02: etc.
51:47
SPEAKER_02: So if you value
51:49
SPEAKER_02: the tradition of conscientious dissent,
51:53
SPEAKER_02: which is one of the great veins of American democracy,
51:57
SPEAKER_02: then you should appreciate the sacrifice and commitment of these people.
52:03
SPEAKER_02: And then I would say it demonstrates the qualified victories
52:06
you know,
52:06
can be had,
52:07
but it takes a lot of smarts and a lot of strategy.
52:10
SPEAKER_02: And we need to learn,
52:12
SPEAKER_02: you know,
52:12
SPEAKER_02: the positive and negative example of,
52:14
SPEAKER_02: you know,
52:15
SPEAKER_02: whatever people tried as they try to mobilize,
52:19
SPEAKER_02: as they try to mobilize people power.
52:21
SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
52:22
SPEAKER_01: Jeremy, thank you so much for writing this book.
52:24
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for coming on the show.
52:26
And I'm really looking forward to hearing from listeners about
52:31
this episode.
52:32
SPEAKER_02: Great.
52:32
SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much.
52:33
SPEAKER_01: Bye-bye.
52:44
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53:15
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53:24
Political Junkie is written,
53:26
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53:26
edited and produced by me,
53:28
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53:29
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53:33
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53:38
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53:39
SPEAKER_01: now see you next week
54:18
you