Infrared debates Jolah

all right

he's here okay joella what's up

hey what's up how are you i'm fine how

are you

i'm doing pretty well today um yeah so

i've been messaging you in a very

aggressive tone i

actually not like that i could tell dude

i could tell don't worry

great chill yeah this conversation

should be uh pretty fun

um i know you're a big like jimmy dora

fan

and that which right away i can tell is

going to be a very very big difference

because i am very vehemently against

jimmy dore and his politics okay

yeah so basically my concern is with

your method of political change

i think the ideology and are you like a

fan of like glenn greenwald and jimmy

dore

and um uh like that class of people

i guess so yeah also the gray zone type

of people you know

mm-hmm so even yeah yeah so my big

concern is that you guys hate liberals

more than you actually want to improve

people's material conditions

okay a few things um

to me politics is about power

politics is war now to me

we look at and want to learn from

socialism with chinese characteristics

according to which yes ultimately the

purpose of a people's

state or any type of people's politics

its content

is to fulfill the needs of the people

and improve people's living standards

but this cannot be confused for the

struggle

uh for power and in this struggle for

power

um the

uh a politician's goal who especially

one who is not in power

to the extent that they are improving

people's lives it is ultimately for

power

when they're not already in power it's

not to do charity politics and charity

are very different things

so the reason why we hate liberals

is not so much that we just have a

personal problem with them and hate them

it's that we find it necessary to

establish ourselves

as distinct from liberals despite being

leftists we want people to know that

there's an alternative

to the people who are kind of

monopolizing what it means to be a

leftist in america

but um when it comes to power

don't you need to convince enough of the

populist to actually come along to your

ideology

and if you look at people in america i'd

say america is pretty

right-wing leaning so if we look at who

is going to be more susceptible to like

progressive

ideas i would say that would be

liberal-minded people

um economically they are more for

the stuff that i would talk about um

like in reforming the system but i'm not

sure if you'd even be

for reforming this system right you want

to just totally take it down right well

before we talk about that whole issue i

just want to make a point

of clarifying that it's only

superficially true

that liberal-minded people currently

would be more more interested in

left-wing politics

than the i don't know if you would call

it a majority but at least a substantial

portion of the american people

who are right wing in our view the

american people and this liberal class

this metropolitan urbanized

we in our terminology we call them the

professional managerial class

there it's only this analysis only holds

if we regard politics on the basis of a

superficial political spectrum

and regard the content of political

ideology

as basically itself as just ideas but we

don't think

political ideologies merely represent

ideas they also represent

material realities and this

contradiction can give rise to apparent

paradoxes

such as the fact that people who appear

to be

right wing and republican voters which

they are right now don't be wrong

can be more disposed to a

more populistic left than

liberal-minded people were because

people hold the political beliefs they

do and the views they do

not because of abstract ideology but

because of the way in which it reflects

and relates to their material and social

position

but um right now in america if you look

at conservative minded people although

you may think they respond to populist

messages

it's not that of economic populism trump

voters respond heavily to

messages about uh you know hating

immigrants um

for example white voters the more rich

they become the less likely they are to

vote for the democratic candidate

um so it's not like you know poor white

people are simply um

you know sure sorry to cut you off go on

yeah you're good no you could no you

okay okay

uh two things um i agree that

trump didn't really lean in heavy on his

the economic aspect like bernie did

although to be fair trump did allude to

that

i mean he was alluding to you know

health care and all this kinds of stuff

to his supporters

but in general you're right the primary

means by which populism is manifested

in trump's case is this type of uh

uh anti-immigrant and all that kind of

stuff these kinds of

more racial dog whistles or whatever but

it also must be understood that even

this

is a proxy for uh

material and institutional

differentiations in america now to

condense that simplify it

uh what i mean to say is that

currently progressive politics in

america

whether we like it or not uh whether

we're progressive or not we have to

accept the sober reality that

only a small minority of americans

are initiated and properly

institutionalized

enough to fit the criteria of being

so-called progressive

okay so progressive views in a sense

are a proxy for some type of stratum of

society distinct from

trump's masses so trump's anti-immigrant

stuff

and his extreme non-political posture

non-politically correct posturing and

all that kind of stuff is also a dog

whistle to say

hey guys i am more like you i'm not like

these elites i speak and think and talk

like you

um the second thing regarding voters who

are more rich

i'm interested i'm not questioning your

the the data or anything i'm just

genuinely curious

when when is this data from because you

i i to my extent of my familiarity

during the during the uh

the biden educated sorry during the

biden

uh sorry i haven't had like two hours of

sleep

during the recent general election the

democrats

the decisive element in giving the

democrats bringing them to power

were the more wealthy white suburban

uh classes so it seems to me there's an

uh uh opposite trend that's happening

right now which is that the more rich

white people are

um the more they're going to lean on

so-called progressive and democrat now

actually wealth is not that much of a

reliable indicator though in my

experience

it just depends on what type where are

they getting their wealth

now people whose primary way of getting

wealth

can bypass institutions they are

probably going to be

more trump supporting but people who are

uh

wealthy and who get their wealth through

uh

through the middleman of some type of

institution i think you will see an

opposite

effect an example of this is the fact

that trump

wins across the board among the less

educated i know liberals like to kind of

laugh oh they're all stupid but

it is a proxy uh to measure the extent

to which

trump voters are institutionalized

it's a very reliable proxy okay i just

want to

um sort of pick it apart like so right

now in this country

where we are right now so you want to

make yourself very

distinct from liberals you don't want to

work with them whatsoever so when you

criticize bernie

sanders for how he works within the

system right now yeah

okay so if you want to cut off liberals

so that is at least

um i would say like 30 of america's

voter base um

and then we take like independence maybe

some of them are more liberal-minded you

take away conservatives

what base are you planning on pulling

from if these people are already set in

this mindset

are you looking to work with other

anti-liberals

and on like the right side yeah yeah i

think the confusion kind of arises when

our proxy for who we want to who we want

our base to be and stuff

we don't measure that based necessarily

on etiology although etiology sometimes

is a reliable proxy

we do it based on social and class

differentiations

so to translate the whole we don't want

liberals

in our translation wheat means we do no

longer want to cater to the professional

managerial class

we want to move from catering to

the language and ideology understood

only by the professional managerial

class

who are we view them as gatekeepers of

the left

and we want to make the left more

accessible and

more sensible um

to people who whose means of living

is outside of urban metropolitan and so

on institutions

uh people whose means of uh making a

living

uh making a living is not

is not um how should i put it does not

have a

private sector safety net of some kind

like

they're not in these cushioned insular

institutions that guarantee them

a minimum of stability i guess actually

salaried is a good word we don't want

we don't want to appeal to people who

can have the guarantee of a salary we

want to appeal

to people who are used to having heavy

industry jobs or who's

who have lost those jobs because of uh

because of sorry my brain is foggy i

have two hours of sleep

jobs are shipped overseas or that those

jobs are outmoded because of technology

those weak in marxist terms i know we

don't want to get into this

ideological stuff we would call this

more or less the working class

well let me just give you my basic

framework of how i view your movement

versus what i do

so throughout history i basically

measure

movements who are very ambitious and

what their um

changes to society are i see these

movements trading

stability because stability is very slow

moving and everything

um they trade that in incrementalism for

something that will be very

um accelerated i'm not saying you're a

full-on like accelerationist

but what i'm saying is a lot of times um

the liberals will be hated

um regular like conservatives will be

hated and a lot of times the extremes

will come together

and the only line that people agree on

is we need to come together to take down

uh take down this liberal government um

and what happens when that government is

finally taken down and this is why i

criticized jimmy dora for talking to

that one boogaloo

boogaloo boy um when that government is

taking down uh taken down

there's a process of fragmentation and

and uh rightful and it comes back up and

it

comes back uh back up in a different

form right um whenever that government

is torn apart especially in america

any revolutionary ideology that is

solely anti-liberal

um in america i see the military i see

the police they i see the suburbs i see

how these places are skewing

um to the right wing there has never

been a point in which this chaos

actually ended in a better material

condition for the people

um is that all or yeah sure okay sure

yeah this regarding this thing about

stability and accelerationism

i actually think we can sum up the

controversy in a more simple word

volunteerism

i actually don't think the question of

whether things

are accelerating or not or whether

things are destabilizing

is because we voluntarily wish them to

in my view um we

recognize that the liberal order is

objectively breaking down

and is objectively becoming

delegitimized in the eyes of

the masses in the eyes of the american

people now i've observed

among many liberals what i think is some

kind of

psychosis they want to blame russia and

they want to blame

foreign interference and they want some

kind of scapegoat but i think this is

just a kind of denial of the fact that

liberalism is collapsing

under the weight of its own

contradictions so to me i wouldn't say

i'm an

accelerationist because that assumes

that i have to initiate

this transformation i think rather as

proven by the very election of trump

which is

very well outside of my own hands and

outside of the hands of people who think

like me

we merely no longer we merely refuse to

partake in

this kind of liberal psychosis which is

in denial of the trend of reality

we want to embrace this new reality

and be worthy of it own up to it

and uh seize hegemony over it

so you're right that there is no

guarantee that the collapse of the

establishment

will lead to the success of the

progressive forces

uh actually what we would i mean that's

a loaded term to clarify i consider

us populistic communistic whatever type

people to be the progressive forces

um but uh oftentimes it can lead to an

even more violent reaction

on be on behalf of the establishment to

save itself

that was the example of fascism for

example in germany

a lot of people think this was an over

the establishment collapsed there it

didn't collapse

uh hitler was appointed by the german

establishment and backed by the

uh the german establishment i don't want

to get into a history thing but um

whether this leads to an i kind of also

disagree that it doesn't lead to an

a benefit of the people uh

per se i i guess i would have to

uh ask you what examples you have in

mind because

for me an example of some type of threat

to the american establishment

was that there actually is a history of

populism in america there was the

populist party and the farmer's alliance

in the early 20th century in the late uh

19th century

and these actually culminated into what

we now know as the new deal democrats

and of course this wasn't a you know

full-on collapse of the establishment

but fdr did shake up

uh the american establishment well let

me clear something up really quick when

i say um

populist in this sense i'm sort of

leaning into the definition of illiberal

um too and by liberal i mean you know a

society that plays by these

i guess norms of governing that

stability

and building off of that stability is

what i'm saying is necessary like you're

talking about

um us at the most a social democrat

building up a big welfare state

which is characteristic of like a social

democrat liberal um that wasn't an

actual like revolution

yeah i would disagree with that

characterization i think that it

it it wasn't a social democrat just

implementing gradual ideas it was in the

context of a rising populist momentum in

america

under the backdrop of the russian

revolution as well a rising labor

movement an acceleration of the clash

struggle

and the imminent threat of some kind of

actual political revolution

being being taken seriously by the

uh the governments of the west uh across

the board including america

but that's the thing that's the thing

though like i think we should keep

this main uh structure in place and

also allow these populist movements to

gain steam so that

the top um the reaction of the ruling

class their reaction is always to say we

need to prevent some type of revolution

we need to prevent

uh you know prevent an uprising what i'm

saying is

for example this election biden versus

trump i was very strongly for voting for

biden because i do see populism on the

rise

and i think that populism is going to

force the people who are in power to

create

actual change because i don't want

illiberals to be in charge people who

don't believe in any governing

whatsoever

because that leads to a complete

societal collapse so i'm not saying

that these aren't populist movements

what i am saying is we need this

structure

um that can be moved by these populist

movements because i don't think

if we want things like universal health

care universal child care universal

education

that isn't possible without a full

government um working in

you know together well i consider this

stance in my view it falls victim to a

certain paradox which is

it and i don't want to con you know

throw curveballs and confuse so i'm

going to

try to clarify everything i'm going to

say um it confuses

what it takes to be the objective

reality we merely have to recognize and

accept and the subjective one what do i

mean by that

if it was within our power even if we

determined that it was necessary

to preserve the establishment of some

kind i don't want a straw menu like

basically what you were saying

we need to keep the stability if we even

had that power

that also assumes we have the power

to create the alternative if we had that

power

why has it why wasn't bernie the

candidate and the reason bernie wasn't

the candidate is because

we don't even have that power but the

threat of bernie being the candidate

does help change what the eventual like

policy outcomes are like for example

amazon right now

they don't want workers to unionize the

reason that they have a 15

wage now and the reason they have

benefits is because for a long time now

there's been a threat of workers

unionizing so that threat was enough to

move the establishment in a way

um that would be better for people

overall um

whenever there is a collapse of society

i typically see the capital owners

always

maintaining their positions in that

society so if they had to pull the

strings if the capital owners are

in charge of the military they are going

to be protected as property owners by

the police state

um if a society actually collapses and

we don't maintain a

civil a civil structure of government

when that society does collapse the

rolling class makes sure

it falls in one direction and it's never

to the left because that'll actually

hurt their material

would they always make it fall to the

right what examples do you have of a

societal collapse just so we can be more

clear about what we're talking about um

when i look at like the uh the og

fascist

uh movement the market class working

with like mussolini when they're talking

about like we don't want

um a socialist revolution right they

didn't want something on the left

they wanted a revolution that'd be more

like um use social

uh aesthetics um while at the same time

maintaining authoritarian power

right um with these rolling classes but

um

i wouldn't actually consider that a

collapse of the establishment i think

that was the establishment's emergency

security measure

uh against precisely that and that's why

to me

those uh revolutions and quotes

were actually well that's where i think

we're going now though i think that is

the default i don't think there's ever

going to be another chance of something

like

the french revolution or something well

as an analogy

in the modern there's two a few elements

that would

would make it comparable first uh the

probably the most important one is the

the backing of the military-industrial

complex a newfound chauvinism

against some kind of rising or rival

power

like china for example and to me the

liberal

status quo and establishment are just as

culpable

in com com comprising

these same establishment elements which

giving the if we compare them to the

analogy of germany we're precisely the

ones

who in their hour of need uh turn to

hitler

now before we can prepare ourselves

against the threat of something like

that

i think as capital c communist which is

where we're coming from i know it's kind

of

you know curveball it's doesn't make

much sense right now but um

our view would be that we should learn

from the mistakes of communists back

then i think i have a pretty solid idea

of what their mistakes were

and the way in which one prevents

this last emergency ditch of the

establishment is first and foremost

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before you can worry about preventing it

you have to you have to pose such a

threat to that establishment in the

first place

that they would resort to that last

emergency so i just feel like

first you have to actually pose that

threat

then you can and have an alternative

vision and so on and so on

then you can worry about what their

response and their reaction is going to

be but when you're doing that

you're already going to be

distinguishing yourself in such a way

that you are not going to be aligned

with what we're today we

think of as liberals okay who would you

rather

be allied with right now in your goal to

make this

change happen would you rather work with

forces like the boogaloo boys

um or would you rather work with um i

guess

liberal organizers what would your goal

be would you agree

with with uh certain people who say like

we should be working with proud boys and

boogaloo boys

um in order to make sure this populist

energy because of course whenever

there's

um energy in the streets do you think

that line of thinking

uh works for you well i think a lot of

those people

i'm not too familiar with them actually

i just know vaguely you know

they're militia type people but i think

a lot of those people are swept

up in those trends um

in ways that don't necessarily

um reflect

uh every uh their possible uh

their po all the range of their possible

actual

uh political positions i think people

join boogaloo boys and uh

all these people you're talking about

for lack of a better better alternative

so if the question is would we want to

create

a and a better alternative for those

people

and engage in a dialogue with those

people not

they're not um pander to their beliefs

but just create an alternative that

appeals to people who come from their

class background and can speak their

language and

can present uh one's position in a way

that's sensible to them

i think that is far more likely and

viable than winning over people who

whose class interests who have no class

interest whatsoever just based on how

they make a living

to align with what i would consider

left-wing populistic or communistic

forces i guess the way i'd sum it up

since that was pretty long just simplify

it

um it's not about pandering to those

people's beliefs

it's just about not writing them off as

inherently bad people

just because they may have misguided

views

so do you think um class is the center

of all of this

i mean as a marxist of course but what

we mean by class

and what class means and how it

expresses itself

and uh and all those kinds of things

that cannot be taken

taken for granted and actually our show

the infrared show

does pose a unique view of

for example class that you won't find

among many other

uh marxists sure

um the best way i could sum it up is

basically that uh one important thing

uh what is in the workplace um

it's defined by how you make a living in

this world

what is your means of making a living

how do you

support yourself and your family

um and how do people in your community

do

that and how does the world make sense

to you

based on that um

so i think that that's that's how i

would sum it up how do you approach

somebody who is who grew up in a suburb

right now um they feel populist because

they believe in like uh

the jewish question they believe that um

q anon is going to be

something important they believe that uh

donald trump

has completely got the election stolen

from him and they also are very leaning

towards white supremacy

um so they're pretty wealthy but you're

saying that that doesn't matter if

they're wealthy or not

well um it's the wealth is not

the only measure but to answer your

question

um suburb i would have to pose the

following questions

um how do they

i don't know if they're living with

their parents so it'd be a question of

how their parents but

if it's them their own house how do they

make a living and

are they downwardly mobile and what what

is this suburb is it the suburb from the

20th century

is it the dying middle class uh of the

20th century

or is it the new um kind of

digital age amazon era

suburbs that we see propping up

which in fact do lean more towards the

democrats now admittedly

a lot of people from the alt-right did

come from

silicon valley type suburbs like

in san francisco in silicon valley

specifically

so there are alt-right people there but

in terms of their class character

notwithstanding apparent contrast in

their beliefs

these are the same backgrounds that are

your bread and butter liberals

many in other words the pipeline from

being a

bread and butter type of liberal

progressive

technocrat type of person to becoming a

red-pilled alt-right person

um is not that short

it's not that short um another thing

another example an example of this i

think is that i think richard spencer

represents this type of person you

probably have in mind

but spencer was advocating for voting

for biden and he correctly saw that

biden does represent

some kind of new reinforcement of

the interests of the new white suburban

elites

and he explicitly has been saying as

much

now but not all

right wing people are the same

uh the this type of person richard

spencer type of person is very different

than your random trump uh supporting q

anon

you know q anon type of person

um i guess that that to be my answer

yeah just um

overall um i just think the ideology is

hating liberals and when i talk about

like material conditions right now if i

wasn't involved in

uh liberal politics as you would say if

i wasn't involved in making sure like

body got elected if i wasn't involved

and democrats being elected to um the

senate and congress and local

house and the uh state senate state

house and all that stuff

um like biden versus trump biden winning

over trump

was the difference between like 30

million americans having health care

um and an array of other things when it

comes to community health programs

community

educational programs uh so many things

that it's not perfect it's not universal

uh not universal

but a lot of people would have been hurt

um from like

biden losing to trump so not being

involved in that fight is something i

simply cannot

um do whatsoever and i'm not sure why

you see

fit to let that trade-off happen unless

if you think that's part of your plan

well again it's part of this whole issue

of volunteerism and

confusing objective realities with this

what is within the sphere of our

subjective intervention i think a flaw

in the harm reduction argument

is basically again goes back to this

issue of

um why do we limit how we define

our power if we had the power you're

talking about

why couldn't we have gotten bernie like

elected i think

we leftists if you're a leftist i'm not

sure i'm not gonna make assumptions i

just think leftists like myself

are not actually the ones decisive in

elections like biden versus trump

if we were not just your tiered chat

like literally it's just the differences

on the policy between biden and trump

but i know

that your chats your chat will not like

policy whatsoever because they don't

care about actual policy

but like just the difference on medicaid

expansion alone is the

is the difference between like 20

million americans having health care

sure that's how the policy works

like i don't care about their emotions

my issue with

harm reduction is twofold when we're

dealing with a scale of

tens of millions of people like you're

saying we can't pick and choose our

morality

there are instances in which you can see

that biden's reign

could very plausibly lead to more deaths

for example overseas

than trump an example of this is korea

trump was much more

um conciliatory towards north korea

than biden and the democrats appeared to

be so

we can't pick and choose when we want to

be harm reductionist when we're dealing

with

a a very impersonal scale of people

um we cannot account for what's going to

happen to

to millions and tens and tens of

millions of people because we can't say

in one instance it's okay of biting

drones people and kills people

that might have not been drowned under

may or may have not been droned under

trump

and then in the other instance say well

at least biden saved tens of millions of

people because i think this is actually

a race to the bottom

and this is going to be a super extreme

example i don't want to throw a

curveball at you

um i'm just using this example because

it's like the most extreme

so it's easy to understand you know the

consequences of this logic i think when

it's taken

sufficiently as far as it is this could

also be applied

if we were living under some kind of i'm

not saying we are but

if we were living under nazism we can

also use this logic

you could be a harm reductionist if you

were living under nazism

but i think at a certain point if you

have

an independent political position you

have to draw a line

somewhere and to me uh bernie is the one

who successfully drew that line in 2016

in his in the primary there well i think

bernie is smarter

um because he understands what it takes

to keep people um above

water in general i think he has studied

and i studied enough revolutionary

history to note that isn't the route to

go i think that's why he does what he is

doing right now

with joe biden playing coy with all of

these establishment politicians trying

to

influence politics as much as possible

and trump over obama

he had more airstrikes than yemen over

his first two years than obama had

had his entire first two terms like

there's areas like we could look at

different situations and do we could

play this game all over the place but

like domestically speaking

the policies nowhere near as similar and

populism

isn't exclusive to left or right when

we're competing over who's going to be

taking over whatever the current liberal

establishment is so if we have somebody

who is a

very right-wing populist i'm not going

to say fascist i know you don't like

that word but he is an ultra-nationalist

or a nationalist um if we have that

person having the bully pulpit and

getting people along with that kind of

populism

that is hurting your cause too having

trump in office over biden sort of hurts

your cost does it

because you need to radicalize people

anyway so i'm not sure um because i saw

you

had a debate um on why you would uh not

be supporting

biden because trump having that reach

and being able to radicalize people in

that sense

uh through that megaphone is detrimental

to everybody i think

um a few things you have to forgive me i

oh the first thing you said was about

bernie uh well

i actually don't uh my interpretation of

bernie's actions have not been that

generous i think bernie created a point

a line

in the sand that he himself crossed

because he

too was swept in into this

and i don't blame him personally i know

the ideological and

even material reasons but he fears

the dissolution of the liberal not only

liberal establishment but the liberal

world order

that's my issue with bernie is that um

but uh bridging us off to the second

point

because we can establish a bridge about

populism and liberal establishment and

that

populism isn't necessarily right-wing or

left-wing again i think we're

confusing too much volunteerism

subjectivism and the objective realities

to me populism refers to a phenomenon in

reality it refers to the dissolution of

establishments

and the rousing of proportions and

masses of the population who for a long

time have

been directly or indirectly excluded

from this establishment now

of course it's true that it's not

necessarily left wing or it's right wing

and that's because left wing and right

wing

are more on the subjective side of

things but this is a kind of objective

reality so to me

it just depends on how you're going to

react to this objective phenomena we

cannot

premise the phenomena with some kind of

normative position of whether it's good

or it's bad

we must either we must either

say that we must side with we must

either side with the establishment

and uh rain down upon the people and

some kind of vendi

or um we can accept the inevitability of

this liberal establishment's dissolution

and its collapse now i think your last

point was

whether biden would would be better or

worse

for leftists trying to be radicalized um

it's actually tough honest to god it's

tough to it's tough to

i think one of the upsides of trump's

victory in 2016

was the way in which he absolutely not

only humiliated

uh the american establishment but he

proved

that he proved that it there are kind of

paper tigers he proved that something

like that

could happen uh he proved

he uh he completely he completely

uh led to the collapse the final nail in

the coffin to the population's

confidence

in the legitimacy of the american

establishment

and this is very favorable to people

like

us people like us who are completely

outside of uh ideological academic and

political establishment

we are putting forward extremely

heterodox

ideas in society which i don't think

would have even

been seen the light of day had it not

been for trump

basically exposing the fact that um

things which appear

fringe things which appear heterodox and

against the mainstream

can indeed in america become a mighty

force

just as a principle are you willing to

trade

um societal suffering uh to sort of

well is your goal to accelerate um the

process or is it just to pick up the

pieces

really i don't think i can accelerate

the process or quell the processes

acceleration i think i can only make

peace with an acceleration that is

simply

happening and again my biggest proof

of the fact that it is happening is the

way in which

liberals to me find it necessary to

invent

pathological responses to

reality with this new paranoia about

russia

and among many other things it seems to

me that they are the ones attempting to

control

something that cannot be controlled all

we're doing

or what i'm doing if i'm speaking for

myself

is refusing to be

in denial anymore refusing to um

refusing to enter into this uh

psychosis i said so yeah but

basically i'm trying to like what i'm

saying is

are you willing to trade like for

example it's objectively true

all the health care stuff um if 30

million less people are gonna have

health care

um if trump's president overbite him is

that a trade-off you're willing to take

for

simply like washing your hands of the

process and you know your strategy of

like so that's you're willing to take

that

i think my point though is that i cannot

be held accountable for that because

in order for me to be responsible for

that

i have to i have to be the one

um who's in control and if i had that

level of control

america would look very different in the

first place like we are

taking for granted what we consider

objective realities that we simply must

accept

and subjective ones and when we

confuse those things it becomes a race

to the bottom at what point

do we say at what point are we just

going to accept

like trump gets in power and someone

worse than trump comes along

you know first trump was the big threat

now this other person makes trump look

good

so at what point does one draw a line in

the sand but

again the harm reduction argument simply

doesn't

it couldn't be sustained from a moral

perspective

um again uh maybe there was more drone

strikes

under trump but biden

yeah it's there are many indications

that

biden biden is bringing all these hawks

into his administration who are

responsible for the

cataclysmic destruction of iraq

suffering inflicted upon them so when

we're dealing with a scale of millions

and millions of people i don't think you

can hold someone like me accountable

as a moral agent these are realities

that

are outside of our hands well no but i

can call you defeat us in a sense if you

don't want to try to contribute to

the possibility of this system surviving

because i mean after the system falls

apart especially globally with how

um globalist our global uh globalist

economy works with china and russia and

everything that we're seeing

on all these geopolitical interests are

going to collide especially if something

like america would collapse

um and our you know structure fell

whatever comes after that is complete

bloodshed um there's no chance

anything would come out better than it

is right now with you know

unconsciousable amounts of bloodshed and

turmoil so i mean

are you just saying you're sort of

defeatist about it well if i'm

defeatist that assumes i have had a

power

that i deny uh one has uh if this stuff

is inevitable then it's inevitable that

you're saying

um i don't think i think it's a cope to

just

do your best as an individual uh

and then say well i tried my best and if

the worst happens at least i feel good

about myself

to me what one can do as an individual

who is outside of the elite

and outside of the establishment is use

what energy and power you have

to build alternative forms of to

strengthen the bulwark

of anti-establishment political power

and

movements because

uh that you can make a huge difference

by doing that

as an individual you can make it but i'm

doing more to do that than you are as

i'm organizing labor movements as i'm

organizing local legal like i'm getting

people who are anti-establishment just

because they're not willing to wash

their hands off the process completely

i'm reaching more

because your ideas are very against what

the american public would even be

somewhat

receptible to like just with pure scale

um it's a failing mission i think you

can do more

building an anti-establishment

alternative

as an individual then you can working

uh as you're saying with inside of the

democratic

party as of now um

and the simple the simple reasoning i

have for that

is that as an individual let's say

voting for biden

you're only acting as a citizen one

citizen among many millions

when you put your foot in the ground and

establish a true alternative

um you're no longer one citizen among

many

you're somebody who is participating in

the creation

of an entirely new current and trend

um which amplifies the extent

to which your actions actually do make a

difference because

your actions no longer have to passively

accept

the arbitrary subjective position of the

establishment in the elites as

set in stone and objective you have more

freedom

to uh to platform real change

uh for the simple reason that you don't

have to preserve

this monstrously uh

inert uh establishment

now um i'm sorry i forgot i was gonna

say secondly

so go ahead yeah

i mean yeah we're not going to get

anywhere on this discussion because

obviously

you see it as the system is done i'm not

taking and you already said you don't

take any moral responsibility or you

don't feel it's necessary

um to help people as much as possible

right now you would rather

you would rather prepare for the end

right i think you will be helping

more people by doing what i'm saying um

then by simply trying to feel good about

oneself

uh because one is incorrectly

uh overestimating the extent to which

this establishment is set in stone and

ultimately necessary

um so if one places themselves with

is a moral agent with such high stakes

you

also yourself would have to take

responsibility

for the inevit if it is inevitable the

inevitable

uh apocalypse that will follow when the

liberal order does

dissolve and by the way you also have to

think in terms of time frames

um if one can speak in terms of a scale

of millions of people one can also

speak in terms of a time frame of

decades now from the time frame of

decades

being outside of the establishment may

in the short term correspond to

not helping as many people

but in the long term i argue it will be

helping

more people now i the reason we are

optimistic and infrared

isn't because we're denying that all

this war and stuff you were alluding to

is not going to happen i think immense

suffering is inevitable but we want to

establish

some type of courage and hope

and perseverance in the face of this um

but so it's i guess you can say from

your perspective

that i'm a defeatist but from our

perspective

we believe in a newfound perseverance

bravery

and struggle in the face of this

apocalypse

too personally i do know somebody like

you i am an organizing group and

somebody uh they are very with the same

mindset

um which i obviously disagree with um

and i think bernie sanders kind of

proved even you know going through the

democratic platform being on that stage

um like he exposed more people to these

anti-capitalist anti-you know liberal

sentiments than i think anybody

um really through that platform if

bernie sanders doesn't work within

the democratic party um one he can't

influence policy in a positive way

and two he can't prepare more people to

see this collapse of the system because

what he's doing is

not only is he i think bernie sanders i

don't know

i think he would agree with this i think

bernie sanders says candidacy

is sort of like his warning to

the rolling class that things are

getting to a point

that they need to act now or something

bad is gonna happen

um but at the same time he is alerting

people

like this is happening people are

getting their eyes open so he is

affecting positive change within the

system

while at the same time accomplishing the

goal of getting people ready for when it

does inevitably

um collapse and i'm you know in my goal

my goal is to work so it doesn't

collapse um and i would rather

uh you know as good as incremental

change could be i'd rather

um the best form of form of that

oh is that all there is regarding bernie

um

i actually disagree on this account i

think many of the people who became

socialists as a result of bernie sp i

think bernie basically dropped the ball

after 2015 2016. i think the democratic

socialists who were influenced by him

afterwards kind of became an insular

group and didn't actually succeed in

reaching out to the decisive populations

for whom

it would have mattered i think they just

reinforced

their distinction as a some kind of

elite some kind of special marginal

group of society against the majority

for whom words like socialism and

democratic socialism i think

to this very day are extremely alien

and um frightening and so on and so on

so i don't think bernie succeeded in

giving a platform to a real

uh real uh

uh perseverance in the face of this

inevitable collapse of the liberal

establishment i think what i would say

is that he more so

established himself as a type of

lorax-like

conscience for the

establishment but this lorax remember

is not someone they really at the end of

the day are going to respect they keep

him in the back of their minds

but ultimately in the final instance

he is shafted and marginalized um

to me bernie has become that meme of him

just sitting

during the uh the inauguration

and he represents just this impotence

you know just this kind of cute guy

sitting on a chair

he can't do anything he's completely

shafted and marginalized but

at the same time he is our he is our

conscience

well yeah i see him as doing that

because he knows

i can't push more or i'm gonna push too

far and i hear this sentiment repeated

from marx's professors i know

mostly economists like we want to push

more but the system won't survive it

and that's really what i'm thinking

about and i mean if and you you can

obviously tell i'm not one of these

performative people

that i'm not a debate bro i don't scream

at you but if i wanted to

this could turn into a conversation

where i'm like you would rather let all

this bloodshed happen you would rather

let all this death happen

for your political fantasy like i could

uh you know turn this conversation into

that if i was one of them

where were you during the iraq war and

it's not enough that you opposed it

how did you meaningfully stop that war

and if you failed to stop that war

it's not enough to say you were against

the war we're talking about the results

if your actions were not powerful enough

to stop the war

that would be aiken to saying that you

failed to prevent the bloodshed of

hundreds of thousands of

if not millions of iraqi people well

what i would say is

um my view of it is political power so

if that war happened and i was against

it i would say

um i did not do enough or my movement

didn't do enough

to get enough politicians elected into

these positions where they can have a

meaningful

um effect on this vote but of course we

know there are are some things that will

prevent politicians of a certain

ideology from getting elected

um to these positions but that's what i

would um end up saying but it's not

really

power but by your logic i would say that

wouldn't be

enough you stood by and watched these

millions of people die because you were

not

willing to take more risks would be my

perspective

but what risk could i have taken to help

stop it

um admittedly uh i'm just going off of

your logic

admittedly i think maybe there's nothing

you could have done to stop the iraq war

but in the same way it's more than

possible that there is nothing

someone like me can do to stop the

calamity

that does await america in my view

yeah but i still do my work i you know

do what i can

uh to make sure the system and i

understand what is that

ultimately for and what time skill is

that for is that ultimately to make you

feel good

specifically within your own lifetime or

are you doing work that

will uh will actually succeed

in persevering through this apocalypse

because i am not satisfied with doing my

best and feeling good about it i

actually

want results i want to succeed in

producing results

well sure like something like climate

change i don't think that can be

tackled um like let's say

the us dissolved somehow um i don't see

any other power any other power in the

world taking steps to

properly address that crisis i think it

would take an effort between

countries because i i do think

neoliberal countries when it gets pushed

to

gets pushed to the limit they do end up

doing something um to try and stop these

crises i'm not saying they're going to

fix it completely

but i'd make an argument that these

structures in place right now are the

best

bet um that society has and just in

terms of overall suffering

i would say overall suffering and i will

be saying this from a privileged

perspective i don't think what the us

does with like foreign policy or

anything i don't think that's going to

be resolved i think no matter which

superpower is in power in the world

i think the outcomes are going to be

pretty similar when it comes to

colonialism and everything

well a few things regarding climate

change i completely disagree on this

point

i think it's precisely the inert liberal

establishment specifically

we see with coronavirus in an exact and

pretty concretely

evident way why liberalism

is an impediment to facing something

even like this

um china was able to deal with the

coronavirus

with great ease uh systemically speaking

because it is precisely post-liberal

liberalism as we know is based on uh

the individual as the supreme political

subject

and when we are in the face of

collective catastrophes like

viruses and like climate change the

liberal establishment which is

entrenched

deeply deeply entrenched

is an impediment to even having a chance

to

mobilize the whole of society uh in the

face of it

regarding climate change more

specifically though

i don't actually think climate change

can be prevented i think it is

inevitable i think it just is a question

of

which countries will be more equipped

in being able to prepare their

populations

to weather it somehow and i think china

has

easily easily the best the best chance

uh right now and well

and yeah but my question is that i'm not

here for these conversations typically

but why are these countries

why do these countries if you do not

assume they are completely authoritarian

why do they have political leaders who

never leave

office um throughout their entire

duration and um

like if people are barricaded in their

house as a result of the state's power

um that doesn't seem like a better

solution even if they did deal with

the pandemic better that wouldn't be a

country i would want to live in versus

um the uh the united states or anything

yeah

well i think many people would disagree

with you i think many people would say

that

china's actions have allowed life to

resume to normal

even now when here in america we still

are

facing this pandemic now almost a year

late more than a year later so regarding

this issue of leaving office though

there is a meme that xi jinping is going

to be president for life but

the only thing that's happened is that

um

some articles was removed in the

constitution that necessitates

term limits but china's leaders have

come and gone

uh throughout the past two decades so

we'll see but even

if g lasts for more than a decade a lot

of people look to the example of putin

but what about merkel

because merkel's been in power to my

knowledge almost for just as long and

no one seems to raise an issue over that

um but regardless i think that's kind of

a side conversation unless you want to

explore nah yeah um yeah i like domestic

stuff

sure yeah well again um

that's pretty much why i think the harm

reduction argument

is not sustainable uh because

we would have to pick and choose the

extent of our accountability

and if you can be responsible if

you can be okay being resp and i don't

think you are by the way i wouldn't say

you are responsible but

by this logic of harm reduction if one

can be okay with

a million people dying then what

what is so bad about being okay or

sleeping well at night

while you know that uh 30 million people

won't have health insurance like where

do you draw the line because i want less

people to die

and if the the entire society dissolves

then more people

die but i think this from a moral

perspective is unsustainable

because again

it's an issue of time scale it may seem

like

what you're doing now is leading to less

people dying

but because you did not necessarily use

your time your finite time and i not

want to attack you specifically this is

all hypothetical

but because you didn't use your time and

energy to build

something new you are doing something

now

which is ultimately leading to more

suffering and death

when we introduce the variable of time

uh time scale then were you to have used

your energy and effort

uh to build it's almost like a

logic of a capitalism right an

entrepreneur

you can invest your money in a

small business and take that risk and

you won't get returns immediately but in

the long term you'll be good

or you can spend your money on something

with minimal risk

uh but which in the long term won't get

you anywhere

and i think this applies in the same way

when it comes to

politics all of history

is harm reductionist though like that is

how

life functions it's trying to have the

best outcomes there won't be a perfect

utopia out of any of this and even if

the us

let's say the us dissolved today and

became like a complete communist utopia

let's say

it was perfection another country would

easily come in

because this society here wouldn't be

playing by the global rules another

country would easily come in

and take this over um and if the

military is not becoming communist

um the police state isn't becoming

communist if our society

if our society does fall it's over for

90

i mean for a lot of people a lot more

people than

you know harm reduction will ever um

produce uh and

the power structures all lean all go far

right

there's no way if you know everybody who

is a socialist

democrat communist all these people

would be gone if our society actually

dissolved

that alone to me is enough to fight to

keep

this system uh somewhat stable and

trying

and i'm mostly like closer to to like a

social democrat

um to a system like that yeah well just

that alone

a few things uh i really disagree that

history is a

harm reductionist i don't think this

is what the logic that propels

specifically the history of political

struggle

now i think in principle a state which

exists

for the sole purpose of benefiting

uplifting and improving the livelihoods

of its people is to me uh

superior and i think china is one such

state

um in contrast to for example liberal

states like

united states but as far as we're

speaking about the war

for political power is concerned um

it has nothing to do with charity it has

nothing to do with uh

harm reduction whatsoever uh

now the second thing you were talking

about which is um

that the police and the military won't

be

become i agree they won't become

soldiers or communists

but um i don't have a magic

ball to look inside to be able to say

what will happen

in the face of the collapse of america

honest to god i

i'm very limited in my ability to know

will it be a balconization

of different territories splitting up

regardless

though i i simply do not believe

in the perseverance of this american

state as a

as strongly as you do i don't i

kind of believe it's a paper tiger i

think

these institutions can lose their power

and if they don't lose their power

at this point we're talking about uh

science fiction right

when we're imagining a revolutionary

situation in which

the broad masses of the people on the

one hand

people's militias on the one hand and a

new police state on the other i think

this is kind of the realm of science

fiction at this point but

in so far as you are speaking about a

new type of

reinforced police state i can counter

pose that with

a new uh a new type of

uh new people's army or something but we

are

entering the realm of science fiction

when we talk about it

um yeah i mean

um i'm honestly trying to find a way to

yeah you could go

the way i would put it is that we we

want to be optimistic about

the ability for progressives to face to

confront

and to persevere in the face of the

worst possible

scenario i really dislike the argument

that

we have to do everything we can to just

prevent the worst

outcome i think we should always accept

that the worst outcome

has passed and that the aim must be

to draw a line in the stand sand

establish some type of independent

ground

that will allow you to persevere to at

least have the chance of persevering

in the face of the worst

yeah well i think this conversation i'm

just trying to

this conversation for me is trying to

get an understanding of what your

guys's ideology is um i still obviously

think

from my perspective that we should be

doing whatever we can to make sure the

system doesn't fall apart i think

actively plotting for it to fail

um is really sort of a defeatist and

even if something did happen to make

something fall apart in our society

i believe i'm doing more work to help

the goal

uh you know that that transition works

better just by spreading these

like the ideas of and the principles

of uh you know a community working

together

making sacrifices um in a way that

benefits

their fellow man um and you know seeing

past

the propaganda that we are told from the

top of how this capitalistic system

needs to act

the way i'm spreading it just by virtue

of how it'll be accepted by more people

um it will be much more effective than

what y'all are doing and i feel like

it's sort of like

you know you have your uh your gorilla

gang down there and i would love to see

those emojis down there it's very very

comical very funny i love it by the way

if they're in your chat i didn't tell

any

i never you know they're they're they're

being nice they're being awesome

yeah they're being nice i want to see it

in your chat though

uh yeah well um regarding i don't think

we're necessarily plotting for it it's

just that we're trying to give

meaning to it we're both accepting its

reality and also trying to

discern what it means how can we

instead of entering into a psychosis and

just going crazy how can we really

establish some type of meaning in the

face of

uh this collapse regarding so is it more

of a religion than a is

like a social cult um

well you know it's interesting because

people critique us for on the one hand

not cracking down hard enough on the

diversity of ideologies in our discord

and then on the other hand people think

we're a cult but

we i don't have the level of control a

cult leader does over their community i

just don't have that control

they list they are here some people

like some of the things i say many

people disagree with some things i say

uh some like what i say but i'm just

trying to give you what i think

i am trying to discover how to make

meaningful

this this um

this collapse and how to persevere in

the face of it

regarding whether more people will be

accepting of

um i guess the tried and tested over

where we're coming from which appears to

be out of nowhere

i think this is only superficially true

but i think what we're doing is a big

risk but it's doing it's doing something

that's informed

by the history of america by the history

of its traditions

and by some type of concrete analysis of

the current american

political situation so we are taking a

bigger risk i guess than just

identifying with the established uh

political currents and by the way

i'm not proposing that i'm going to

create anything from scratch

i don't i don't uh think of myself that

highly

or i'm not that delusional um there's a

reason why we're marxist leninists and

we're communists and all this kind of

stuff

we're very sympathetic to people like

jimmy dore

and the barrier to entry to someone

agreeing with jimmy dore

and watching him and listening to him is

much much lower than someone accepting

my

personal utopia or anything like that so

we're very attuned

to concrete and material realities but

all i would argue is that

those realities are themselves full of

contradictions

it's not just accepting the

establishment

there are contradictions against the

establishment

um which do not require ideological uh

delusions

do you share the same kinsmanship when

you see someone like steve

bannon talking or something like that do

you do you find yourself agreeing with

what they say about our society being

fragmented

it depends on what he's saying if steve

bannon is making a

well very common observation that

the liberal order is collapsing and yeah

he's right i would say he's right

but do i think do i agree with bannon

when he says

um western civilization we we must

defend western civilization against

china and all this kind of stuff of

course not

but it just depends on is his claim

normative or is he is it descriptive and

when it's descriptive

steve bannon is often right when he's

descriptive

i just wanted your um take on one more

thing uh did you see the

glenn greenwald take when he said tucker

carlson donald trump with them are all

socialists

i believe so yes yeah um i just wanted

your take on that real quick before we

end this

um if you would agree with that

otherwise i would be very calculating

about what i'm going to say

but my views on socialism are so

unfamiliar to many people i would just

say this marx and the communist

manifesto

wrote about over seven or nearly

half a dozen types of socialism some of

which he called reactionary socialism

conservative socialism

christian socialism so to me socialism

to my extent of my knowledge greenwall

is making the observation that socialism

is an objective phenomena in reality

there's no true socialist or false

socialist and i even made the

observation that

trump's aesthetic is very his aesthetic

superficially it's very socialistic

um maybe he's more a reactionary

socialist but

um it does prove that the phenomenon of

socialism

is something inevitable and objective

well all right um i hope you have a good

rest of your uh

uh night this was a a nice and calm

conversation it was more similar to him

i saw your one with uh xander hall

um that was i think that is that your

only comp conversation with somebody

no no uh there was one with kevin logan

that was very calm kevin logan all right

all right well thank you for your uh

your chat and everything uh yeah yeah

i'm trying to run no i have to go to bed

it's understandable

all right see you later man all right