Latest / The Nation Podcasts / The Return of McCarthyism w/ Chris Lehmann / The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

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The Return of McCarthyism w/ Chris Lehmann / The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: The old world is dying, the new world's legacy born.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now is the time of monsters.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: With those words from Grabs, yeah, welcome you to the time of monsters podcast.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: This podcast is sponsored by the nation magazine.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm GT here right here for the nation.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: So this week, I want to look at an imaginary monster that the Republicans are playing out.
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's our old friend, the Red Menas.
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: You might remember him for the days of Jay
• 0:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is being revived, Donald Trump and a lot of big Republicans are talking a lot about the commies that are hiding under your bed and are ready to take over America.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Which might seem strange since the last I heard the Berlin Wallfell in 1989, two years later, the Soviet Union.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: collapse.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: We live in what I think Mr. Francis Fukuyama called the end of history.
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  [SPEAKER_01]: We're capitalism is the only major ideology across the globe.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what's going on?
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why is Marxism such a threat?
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: just seen as a threat by Republicans, but even some supposedly centrist types who write for the Atlantic or organizations like the Center for American Progress, we're also very worried about the revival of Marxist lemonism in these United States.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, to talk about all this, I'm very happy to have our old friend of the podcast fellow writer for the nation, Chris Lehman, who wrote a column about this, which I'll link to.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: But first of all, Chris, welcome to the program.
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks as ever for having me, Jay.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good to be here.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think to understand what's going on, maybe one thing to start with is what's happening on the Republican side.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because I think that this is a predicate for all of this is actually the very poor poll numbers that Donald Trump and the Republicans are facing leading up to the return and the sort of panic that's happening on their end.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
• 2:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, absolutely.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think you're right.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: You see this kind of desperate casting about for any kind of rhetorical distraction, any sort of viable enemy that they can make stick through the home stretch of the midterms, and it comes from this position of
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, what for the GOP is is an appalling showing in the polls for their leader Donald Trump.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was a flurry of polls released this week that show him in the sort of 35 to 32 percent approval range, which is a historic low.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think, you know, honestly,
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: isn't the bottom yet, you know, I think that he has just over night has resumed aggressive bombing and Iran after this punitive memorandum of understanding and June to end the conflict.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's no discernible strategy, no discernible war and beyond these impossible notions
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: the regime or wiping out the theoretical nuclear capacity of Iran.
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's taken on all the sort of familiar homercs of a forever war in Middle East and Americans have seen this movie before, and they know it isn't going to end soon, and it doesn't end well.
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's also directly accelerated, the rise
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know escalated in price of gas, which is a direct result of Iran's control of the straight-up or moves.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there, yeah, the Republicans, you know, in what for them is a critical election cycle where, you know, they have a six-seat majority in the house, that looks in my view,
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Senate now looks to be in play in a way that few people would have predicted this time last year.
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, what they're doing.
• 4:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think there's also been a lot of polls showing place like Texas and North Carolina like things are in play.
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, stepping back a little bit, I do think, you know, like Trump has always had that sort of maga support, but the reason he won in 2024 was that he was able to get a lot of, you know, like more marginal, sort of, it's not critical of matters, right?
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think like to my mind, you know, people like talk about social issues and trans issues.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've never seen any evidence that this is, I see like driving significant number of owners, but what actually to be the most possible claim that Donald Trump had in 2024 was that there's a cost of living crisis that inflation is a problem and that the United States
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if I'm at least in Europe, which he promised that he would end very easily on day one.
• 5:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right, you're right, and look at where we are, and that's, I mean, the other important polling data point that emerged as frequently as there was a poll showing that among people who voted for Trump in 2024, 22% say they never got their vote, which is very, very high.
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I, you could say that that represents probably a
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: nearly all of these little propensity people who, you know, sort of went to Trump out of frustration where the cost of living went to status quo in DC.
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, they're seeing that this is the same old song in dance.
• 6:13
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• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: is rooted in and I write about a, you know, a pulling firm hired by the House Republican caucus that is basically saying the way forward here is to call all Democratic candidates for house seats communists.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's sort of a hilariously unscientific pool, I mean it.
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's what we get into the full, like, at the same time.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to underscore this sort of strategy here, which is like that they have concluded that this is going to be like a hate election.
• 7:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think like all of Trump's elections deserve to be able to handle that now and we are like not an environment of negative partisanship, all elections in this climate are hate elections of one form or another, but the point is that there's very little positive support.
• 7:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's very few people who are thinking like, I feel good about the United States, and their dollar Trump is born in America.
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to give the Republicans another shot.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: bitter and angry and the only way the Republicans can salvage their position is to make them hate the Democrats more and and the way that you know like according to this poll and the president rhetoric that they're gonna go with this is the idea
• 7:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: that they're communist and I would before getting to the pool I would have also auto a new score like there's a kind of hilarious wrinkle in all this which is that um there this is the upping of the ante because you know they've been calling the democrats socialist for a long time which is you know for my position I was like you know I wish uh
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: But at Donald Trump has said a few times that like, you know, these are the regular socialist we're talking about, these are communists, which is basically saying that, oh, you know, like acknowledging that the socialist attack does not work, that you have to, you know, you're like three drinks in and it's not working, you've got to start using some harder liquor.
• 8:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the, but all of which is leading to this poll that they commissioned, which is making the case said, yes, the way to, you know, get out of this mess, to rally the troops, to get people like you to rub against again, is to call all Democrats, not just socialist, but communist.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it's, you know, again, if you sort of look at the poll more closely, it's asking people what they view as the most destructive form of government for the United States, and they're given three choices, right?
• 9:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: One of which is communism, the other is socialism, the other is Marxism, which by the way is not a system of government.
• 9:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a philosophy out of which, you know, these other forms took shape, but it, you know, it doesn't
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: in this rhetorical world, they're all the same thing and it's basically an effort to you know, use this shoddy, pulling methodology to determine what epithet gets people's blood boiling the most and that surprisingly it's communism because after all the United States devoted most of the 20th century to turning communism into this demon that was going to overthrow.
• 9:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our government, our way of life, we're going to, you know, it was God bless, it was going to end religion, everything that Americans hold dear.
• 9:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, you know, the problem with this.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: approach is as you noted, communism has been dead on the historical stage, apart from North Korea and Cuba for 35 years.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, at least during the original red scare, there was a Soviet Union and there was a superpower that was, that said, yes, we are out to destroy the
• 10:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, there was there was a plausible enemy to construct a red scare, this time, you know, you know, I also mentioned in my piece, you know, the State Department under Senator
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: or former Senator Marco Rubio, who is a from a Cuban immigrant family and has made the overthrow of the regime in Cuba, sort of his A.
• 10:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Have like mission and life has drafted this insane 100-page document, asserting that basically Cuba, which is this incredibly week regime that we're now in the process, tragically of trying to starve and deprive
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: of core living staples is somehow the new Soviet Union that it's engineering this across the board take over of universities of non-profits in the United States, outfitting them with
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: operational plan of taking over the United States, and all you have to do is just do the math and look at the shape that Cuba is in today and think, okay, this is what we're afraid of.
• 11:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is like the nerve center of the new communist global conspiracy.
• 11:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think we can get that out of that.
• 12:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 12:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
• 12:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it does sort of call to mind.
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this sort of fantasia is not entirely new.
• 12:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've been including to it as like a sort of history.
• 12:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just wondering, right?
• 12:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is this sort of like Ronald Reagan era?
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hollywood fantasia is like Red Dawn.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: John Millious Classic, which does the plot, I believe it's like Cubans, Nicaragans, and maybe North Koreans.
• 12:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, it's a proto-actress to be able, you can say, right?
• 12:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, which are all like countries of very poor relatively small population.
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like if they can do it, you know, congratulations, like, you know, like it is one of these cases where, like, you know, like a small island nation in soccer defeats Spain or France, you know, like congratulations and now it's that reward.
• 13:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but but but but but yeah, you're right.
• 13:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think some of this fantastic element comes from being very slippery about it.
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know set Ted Cruz It was talking about how like all the communist countries have very wealthy leaders and he had do the Castro family in Cuba And he also said Vladimir Putin Which I you know like I'm sorry like there's a lot to be said about Vladimir Putin now right
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's Russia is a capitalist country where all the garks, you know, are aligned with the state and have like a lot of power.
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has no quite the reverse.
• 13:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: To the extent that there's ideology, there's a claims to be a nationalist embodiment of Orthodox Christianism, which is not communism.
• 13:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I mean, that's the thing is, you know, the communism does have this sort of residual, as I was saying, that that's the reason it came out first and this rigged pulled, you know, there's still this kind of dim perception, even, you know, 30 years after the end of the Cold War, that
• 14:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's a bad dictatorial system that we should shine.
• 14:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: But again, you have this core pot, you know, if you're going to say that the DSA, you know, movement on the left in the Democratic Party represents a communist movement, you've got nothing to work with, you know, it comes out of an explicitly anti-communist strain of American socialism.
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, this is all bracketing the big problem that, you know, there is no world wide communist conspiracy anymore.
• 14:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, but, you know, even if you're at a positive that, like, DSA is not the place to go.
• 14:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you have also the additional problem which I've made in several column, the point I made in several columns.
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: So,
• 15:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like socialist politicians are right now among the most popular political figures in America.
• 15:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're going to say, like, as this poll for the GOP caucus is, like, okay, they're the socialist running around.
• 15:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: You better call them communist because that's what they really are and be that's how you really are.
• 15:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: get under their skin and get normal Americans in a state of pious outrage about all this.
• 15:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just not work.
• 15:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you've got Bernie Sanders, you've got Zarring Mom Donnie, you've got AOC who are all regularly pull among the most likes political leaders in this country.
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you've got a current wave of nominees on the Democratic side in this midterm cycle.
• 15:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: who, you know, performed against this establishment Democrats, they don't, you know, they don't present as wild-eyed Leninists by any stretch of the imagination.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're proposing things that Americans buy in large want to see, like a more affordable cost of living universal access to healthcare and education and housing.
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like these, these are good things for most people.
• 16:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And
• 16:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, tired with the brush of communism, you're actually, and, and someone is, you know, you're, you're undercutting what?
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: if you're the Republican party, you should be having some sort of affordability agenda.
• 16:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's exactly right.
• 16:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it does speak to the weakness of this attack.
• 16:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think more broadly, I think you and I would both agree that for at least in 2008, and arguably going back to the rack board in 2003, the United States has been living in an anti-system moment.
• 16:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: there's a lot of distrust of the political system of the establishment and candidates who run against that as Barack Obama did in 2008 that his Trump did in 2016 do very well.
• 17:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think the Republicans rightly are like framing us as like we stand for the American system of capitalism and our enemies are cognizant like they're standing for the status quo
• 17:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: uh... moment where like you know you can also find polling showing that like even among republicans like you know like billionaires are not popular uh... data centers are not popular so look at the values not popular so it does seem like uh... you know just on the you know narrow horse race question like uh... uh... this is not only like uh... uh... a quick sonic and puzzling thing but a potentially soft defeating thing like
• 17:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know where you go with the move, you know, I mean, I do know, you know, because it's Trump and it is an authoritarian regime that has, you know, propagated, you know,
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: paranoid directives to go after anti-fab people as threats to our way of life and all that, but I just don't know where you go politically with something like this.
• 18:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can't, you know, again, you know, there are other polls now that show that Americans explicitly prefer
• 18:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're not actually playing to your electoral strengths with this line of attack, and it's also, you know, I think most Americans presented with, and you are, by the way, since this, this advisory went out to,
• 18:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: the House Republican Conference, you're seeing this predictable title wave of commentary from hard-right news outlets echoing, saying, you know, yes, the Democrats are communist, communistism is this evil force that's going to
• 19:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, on due our way of life blah blah, but when you're looking at people who are trying to keep data centers out of their, you know, from consuming all the water and electricity and their districts who are trying to, you know, find manageable health care costs, you know, and aggressively in an environment where
• 19:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Trump has now, the Trump administration has now reversed its subsidies to Medicare drug plans, who are just trying to contend with the cost of living and this insane war in Iran.
• 19:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, people are just saying, like, you, you want me to care about common.
• 19:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not publicly insane.
• 19:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I don't know, I think so.
• 19:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to underscore, like something you'd mention, maybe we should go to a little bit, like the non funny part of this is, yes, really like state power.
• 20:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the fact that, you know, they are trying to move to a position of designating sort of political descent in the United States.
• 20:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: as a threat, and especially saying that it's like left wing ideology, you know, we would say conjure up like, you know, a range of opinions, you know, going from antifa to like sort of environmentalism of being dangerous.
• 20:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then this is like, you know, like using the real, and try to internationalize this as well.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: But like through
• 20:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: going to countries around the world and say we have to all get together to fight the communist threat and from reporting, seems to have elicited a reaction of a puzzlement from American allies in Europe and Asia who don't see Antifa as a top priority or something very real.
• 21:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now, absolutely, you know, and again, to go back to this original poll, like, you know, there were, there obviously, they didn't ask American voters if they might view Maga authoritarianism or Christian nationalism as a destructive form of government, which most clearly is and enjoys sort of right now on challenge state power.
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: So,
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, it's a way to craft this kind of insulated vision of our politics at a moment when there is all this pressure bearing down on what used to be called the Maca Coalition, which simply doesn't exist anymore.
• 21:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think, yeah, it is worrisome because this is what authoritarian regimes do when they feel threatened, it's a go out and they try to designate new enemies, they try to whip up red scares and mass hysteria around.
• 22:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: things that simply aren't a credible threat.
• 22:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, what is truly alarming, and this is that it's not just Trump, it is Mark or Rubio, it would be top-lanch if they can get his nomination and add it to Senate.
• 22:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: These are people who are, you know,
• 22:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is what they do.
• 22:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is how they get off.
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• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 22:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 22:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd like to try to, you know.
• 22:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, oh, totally.
• 22:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, they would love to, I mean, I'm sure, by now, someone has called 5G or communist.
• 22:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that is the role he's playing.
• 22:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's being dragged before us on a trip to a funeral.
• 23:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, he's, they're demanding that he show his loyalty to the regime.
• 23:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he's, he's not and that just feeds every narrative that he is just
• 23:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Conspiracy figure who had enjoyed this unearned sort of quotient of power in DC and, you know, with all of these conspiracy theories, you always come to the point of like, okay, if you grant all these premises, what was Fauci's endgame?
• 23:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: mass obedience to public health directives in a pandemic, like, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I
• 23:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the COVID response was rolled out which, by the way, all occurred under the Trump administration.
• 23:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know.
• 23:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's to forget.
• 23:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: But, um, well, I mean, because we see there he is, like, as I understand it, that Fati worked with the Chinese Communist secretive bio weapon, uh, which was also a hoax, and was not actually harming people.
• 24:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
• 24:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I then, I went along with this and, like, invented a vaccine, which actually did kill people.
• 24:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, that's, that's the thing is yeah, I always like in these situations try to like fast forward to what the theoretical endgame would be and I guess it would be that Donald Trump and Anne Fauci become partners and
• 24:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, Fauci is an attractive, you know, the Fauci attacks work in a way because there isn't an underlying ideology, you know, or maybe you can assign some big state, you know, alliance with the Communist China.
• 25:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, yeah, no, no, no, yeah, it's very big.
• 25:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Will it's very few works if it's advantage?
• 25:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, but I mean, in terms of like the, I mean, I think we don't want to underplay the, you know, like having an FBI and Department of Justice.
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, of course, you know, things that they have the power to go after, like, people, they are, and we know right from the second red scare under McCarthy, that this is a very potent,
• 25:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, formation of power that can really destroy people's lives and stifled this end and stifled free expression.
• 25:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, I mean, we're just about the actual effort to conjure throughout, but the result of moving forward with this premise in the Trump White House could be really disastrous.
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I do actually think we've alluded to the earlier red scares before, but I mean, I think it's worth discussing what they were and perhaps the crucial differences, you know, like the red scare coming out of the first world war.
• 26:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: like seeing the left, particularly after the Soviet Union, came into existence, trying to destroy the left.
• 26:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And with the second red scare, I mean, I think one thing that is crucial to understand is that it is a bipartisan effort and it will always start it under the Democrats.
• 26:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: the Truman administration introduced loyal teos and the sort of centrist democrats of that age to where Marshall dunder the Americans for democratic action.
• 26:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you go back and read Arsir Sleschinger's vital center, which
• 26:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: was absurdly revived in the Clinton administration as a sort of Bible and pragmatic centros politics.
• 27:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's full of this on-hinged anti-communist rhetoric talking about how the state department is allows you with pinkos and how, yeah, you know, McCarthy's bad, but we need
• 27:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, I mean, it was part of these every internals for those of the Democratic Party, you know, we between the sort of, you know, new deal-wing of Henry Wallace and the more, you know, business-friendly Truman-wing.
• 27:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, and, I mean, I mean, the late great, Congress, Marie Kempton, you know, succinctly put it by saying that, you know, McCarthyism was just Trumanism, carried to its logical conclusion, but in both cases, I mean, like, what,
• 27:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: gave this sort of bipartisan red scared juice was on the one hand the existence of a you know plausible foreign threat like the Soviet Union came to existence 1917 the world's first you know like explicitly worker state and you can
• 28:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: rally people, you know, particularly sort of like I'm the business class against that in both parties.
• 28:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that the bipartisan nature of it also gave it a lot of strength.
• 28:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it was like, I'll be a bipartisan attempt to link dissent in America with this foreign, you know, plausible foreign adversary.
• 28:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, blah, blah, blah.
• 28:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's important to note in this connection, too, because this is the part that the Trump administration is way out ahead on, both of the prior red scares were targeting immigrants, areas.
• 28:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, very much so during the Pomerades, which we're sort of an early campaign
• 28:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, during the McCarthy scare was a very barely concealed sort of animus toward Jews in particular who played a significant role in American communism.
• 29:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: at the time, but these were both, um, you're saying, it's been a different situation.
• 29:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I guess figures like CLR James and Louis Corrie, I mean, they did, uh, I did a part of like a larger sort of native as turn in in America.
• 29:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now it's a large country of the, you know, the Senator for an elements that were fun since then, um, yeah.
• 29:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: rebellion.
• 29:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: So now we sort of have the logic kind of start on its head where we have this massive anti-immigrant crusade that's not ideological per se that's you know sort of premise on the false claim that immigrants are our um
• 29:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: prone to crime and mayhem.
• 29:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: They actually don't commit crime at a higher rate and it, in fact, I've seen that for you.
• 29:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we lower rate than the native population.
• 29:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: But so now they're trying to future on sort of as an afterthought.
• 30:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, by the way, there's this communist threat, too.
• 30:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Which is not really, I don't think they can positively claim its rooted in the immigrant population because
• 30:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you have a lot of, you know, Venezuela and immigrants, a lot of immigrants from left regimes.
• 30:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, it's totally incoherent.
• 30:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know.
• 30:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, it's absolutely coherent.
• 30:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think, I mean, if there is a significant hope that, you know, this doesn't get anywhere near as damaging as the earlier red scares.
• 30:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the lack of bipartisan buy-in and also the fact that the, you know,
• 30:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it is important to articulate that the Democratic establishment would gladly sign on, I think, too.
• 30:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, this is what I want to get to because this sort of like expression of like fear of communism.
• 30:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, it's not just for the Trump administration, but there is like, you know, like the Atlantic muslim.
• 31:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think under Jonathan Chate has a
• 31:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: done a few articles like saying, you know, the DSA, you know, that has a... Yeah, Jamie Kerchek just had this insane sort of screen in the Atlantic.
• 31:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Where he actually says that the DSA is a parasite that will devour the who's still organism or the Democratic Party, which is classic red scare, right?
• 31:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the enemy within.
• 31:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: The enemy with us also humanizing rhetoric, which is dangerous too, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know, so so so there is and I would, you know, and it's like politically, this is like aligned with, you know, significant figures within the Democratic party, I mean, I'll name.
• 31:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: near a tendon of the Center for American Progress, who are very worried that the DSA candidates are doing very well.
• 31:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, in a sort of factual battle for the future of the Democratic Party, there are Center Solvents who are like sort of...
• 32:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
• 32:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if, if, you know, and again, this is a pure thought experiment, but if the right wing harnessing of the Red Menace rhetoric right now,
• 32:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: were smart, it would be sort of a wedge that they would be using to deepen the divisions within the Democratic Party.
• 32:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but I don't think that's happening.
• 32:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I love it.
• 32:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: But because, you know, the explicit strategy is to tar all Democrats as communists.
• 32:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 32:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
• 32:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, and also, I mean, I think a lot of these sort of the democratic side of the surrounding Muslim arguments suffer from their own.
• 32:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: kind of like incoherence.
• 32:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, Jonathan Chates argument is that the DSA is not being loyal to the heritage of Michael Harrington, who he says like kept out communist.
• 33:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I just want to say a couple of things, one of which is Michael Harrington, many of his admirable figure, but like I don't think there's like one person in like
• 33:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: thousand in the DSA right now who could tell you who Michael Harrington was.
• 33:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's sort of like the appeal to the legacy of Michael Harrington is a bit puzzling on that regard, but but also amusingly like I'm old enough to remember like in the 1980s there was a faction within the DSA
• 33:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: became a neoconservant.
• 33:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right.
• 33:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, using the DSA in the 1980s, and he quit the DSA because he said the Michael Heritage and his soft on communism, and the evidence that he used was that the DSA was a poll at the time of posing Ron Reagan's policies in Nicaragua.
• 34:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, and so like the, uh, so there's a whole tradition of like people who I think basically just joined the DSA so they can quit, but the trade, it's principles, but the
• 34:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think, you know, if one looks at the search trajectory, you know, the DSA under Michael Harrington, you know, had like, you know, like 10,000 members or whatever, and now has 120,000, so I'm not actually sure that this meaningfully makes a difference.
• 34:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And also, I mean, like to the extent that there was debates within the old, within the sort of socialist groups, you know, like to what degree they can work with communists.
• 34:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this was
• 34:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: in the context of a cold war where the Marxist line of this party is that we're aligned with the actual Soviet Union and I mean like I don't want to like celebrate Cold War liberalism but I think it's worth mentioning the you know the philosopher city hook who's a very hard
• 35:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: in his sort of defense of, like, purging communists.
• 35:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wrote a book called, Harris' E.S.
• 35:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Conspiracy No.
• 35:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Our argument was that, like, any sort of heresy, like saying, like, you know, we need a revolution to overthrow the United States and change the constitution.
• 35:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's all acceptable.
• 35:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is within the, of my judgment consensus that we have to have total free debate.
• 35:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: What is he, Sydney Hook was saying was objectionable is if you have a faction that is like conspiratorally working with a foreign power, which is he has, you know, exaggerated sense of what the Communist Party was and that's what you should be wearing young.
• 35:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, I think like someone like Johnson Chatey on the one hand is trying to revive the Cold War logic, but he's not even saying like there's a conspiracy, right?
• 35:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's saying he ever seen him.
• 35:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can't even, like, right, that's a really good point.
• 35:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I also, you know, I do, again, to sort of recur to the stronger elements of Cold War liberalism.
• 36:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I do think, you know, the anti-communist laugh was pretty straightforward on the idea of like, look, if you believe, you know, that,
• 36:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: America is this, you know, sort of, last best show of democracy, this founder of civil liberties, you should embrace it from a position of strength and not have this idea that, you know, even at its peak, the communist parties
• 36:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this is a radical tendency in the American system, but
• 36:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: The way to defeat it if you're going to defeat it is to engage with its ideas, right?
• 37:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not to suppress it, not to sort of say that it is this sinister element that has to be purged from the shores of the country.
• 37:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is all troubling for anyone who actually believes in civil liberties in free to debate.
• 37:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: That should not be the go-to position for anti-communists.
• 37:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
• 37:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: to the United States, you know, they're the ones that, you know, famously, published a reporting that they were like military leaders in the United States who would, you know, like, where the Trump was a fascist and who, like, are openly admired Nazi ideology, if that's your position, then,
• 37:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: you're, but you're also saying that we want to like empower Trump, the Trump is right that there's a communist threat.
• 38:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that, and that in doing so, you're empowering him to use the full force of the state and it's like, you know, it's totally, most of the process to go after to send.
• 38:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: But like, what exactly is your position?
• 38:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's, I think it's important to know that,
• 38:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: the Republicans now, the, you know, what we might call the Atlantic strain of democratic discourse.
• 38:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: is emerging out of a position of fear.
• 38:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's, you know, they're afraid that, you know, the DSA movement is in the Democratic Party, represents, and I think they're right.
• 38:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: It represents something real.
• 38:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: That you have a, you know, sort of younger electorates that is, as you were saying earlier, anti-system, and is specifically disenchanted with the Democratic parties, like I see,
• 39:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: on key issues like the Gaza war in Israel and, you know, failure to deliver, you know, for all the rhetoric about kitchen table issues, it's not delivering plausible affordability,
• 39:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: measures and and someone like mom Donnie it's right the difference with the old cold words of is actually worth a making clear on this point because the old cold or liberal you know we wouldn't be critical on many grounds like who as we have been a human.
• 39:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson.
• 39:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: But their position was like communism is a real threat.
• 39:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: So therefore the United States has to offer like a valuable alternative vision of the future, which means reform at home.
• 39:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have to have civil rights.
• 39:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have to have like strong unions.
• 39:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have to have a strong middle class, you know backed up by a strong welfare state and also we have to invest in the peoples of the world and to spend a lot of money
• 40:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: on like development in the third world so that people can see that the American system is superior to communism and what these sort of new Cold War liberals like you know the Atlantic crowd like what exactly are they offering they think there's a communist threat
• 40:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, we could actually like offer people anything as adults.
• 40:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: We could never have any things to do.
• 40:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the sort of iron law of neoliberal Washington.
• 40:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so even as a form of Cold War, liberalism, it's a failure.
• 40:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like it's like matching the earth.
• 40:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that, you know, I mean, from a sort of, you know, 30,000 foot perspective.
• 40:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like I do think,
• 40:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I meant, I should stipulate, I am in no way nostalgic for Cold War or liberalism, but I do think, you know, the kind of dis-temperers of the American state we've seen since the collapse of communism are, you know, a failure to own up to the post Cold War historical moment.
• 41:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: We never had a piece of dividend because we have a permanent war economy here.
• 41:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we've had a regress of a search for enemy, right?
• 41:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: We had 9-11 we had, you know, the sort of effort to, you know, create Islamo fascism as an enemy, we know how that went, I hope.
• 41:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, we've seen under the Maga, Trump regime, and effort to make immigrants here, anime, and effort to make, you know, DEI's critical race theory, left lunatics, you know, and you know, they're, look ideology.
• 41:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, woke ideology, woke capitalism, you know, the list is continuing to multiply, and
• 42:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: one would hope.
• 42:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know where we get this momentum in our political system for, you know, our recognition that like, while the old enemies just are gone.
• 42:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
• 42:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: stuff is a way of avoiding that and I think I mean it's interesting that the more served intelligent centrist understand that I'm reviewing the forthcoming memoirs of Francisco Kiyama and one interesting thing that he says is like you know he regrets signing onto the project for New America century and he claims that at the time he thought that it was just the way for Bill Crystal to sort of you know trumpet that Chinese threat as a way to help the Republican party because they needed enemies.
• 43:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: That was true of the late 1990s, basically supports, you know, your attention that there's with this constant search right at me.
• 43:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, and, you know, it's strike, I'm not even sure that Bill this Bill Crystal would endorse that, that'd be you anymore.
• 43:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's against the Democrat now.
• 43:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
• 43:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I was like, you did it to this, you know, like the recipes of the almost psychological for your explanation of like a way of, you know, like avoiding real problems is through this constant, uh, you know, creation of boogeyman, but, uh, but we will see like, so, so, uh, for all you nostalgia fans, uh, the boogeyman of, you know,
• 43:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can look for a few up, you know, invasion of the body snatchers on their Netflix queue, I guess.
• 43:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's right, that's it.
• 43:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I want to thank Chris Leewood for being on the program just as a pleasure to talk.
• 44:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Likewise, thanks for having me.