Writing and Revolution: Cultural Production vs. Neoliberal Aesthetics with Sudip Bhattacharya

How does ruling-class hegemony quietly dictate the boundaries of our creative imagination? Can art still serve as a weapon for genuine political transformation, or has it been entirely neutralized by capitalist realism? In this episode of Varn Vlog, regular guest Sudip Bhattacharya returns to dissect the profound relationship between literature, cultural production, and power.

We begin the conversation by addressing contemporary cultural blockages before zooming out to analyze the structural landscape of modern storytelling. Drawing from deep Marxist theory, Gramscian notions of cultural hegemony, and literary criticism, Sudip maps out how the contemporary publishing industry and academic creative writing spaces systematically steer writers away from systemic, macro-level critiques. Instead, modern narratives are frequently flattened into hyper-individualized, therapeutic accounts of trauma that accommodate—rather than challenge—the status quo.

We also dive into the concept of "combat literature" and revolutionary writing. Together, we examine how radical movements historically utilized the novel, the essay, and the poem to construct counter-hegemonic worldviews. Sudip shares insights from his own work on writing and revolution, parsing how artists can break free from neoliberal aesthetic traps to revitalize an art form capable of genuinely imagining alternative futures.

Whether you are an aspiring writer, a student of critical theory, or someone deeply invested in the intersection of radical politics and art, this wide-ranging dialogue offers an indispensable framework for navigating cultural production today.

✨ Read more of Sudip Bhattacharya’s essays on his Substack, featuring deep dives into combat literature and the mechanics of writing and revolution!: https://sudipbhattacharya.substack.com/

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Transcript

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Welcome And What’s At Stake

C. Derick Varn 0:49

Hello, I'm welcome to Von Blong, and I'm here with Houdip Badacharya, regular guest, and we are here to talk about a couple of things. I think we're gonna talk about literature and its relationship to cultural production and hegemony. But we are gonna take a detour before we get to that and talk about the situation with Maduro and what is going on in Venezuela because you've recently written about that with Tony Ballas of the Cold War Cinema podcast and a bunch of other things. He writes with Gerald Horn, he does all kinds of things, but so the Venezuela situation, you know, in hindsight, seems to have taught taught Trump all the wrong lessons, like let's try to treat every war like it's a regime change conflict and start ones that you can't get yourself out of. But also, I think it's kind of been dropped from the leftist consciousness to some degree because of the Iran war. And you have insisted that keeping Maduro in our minds is important. What is the situation with him right now as you understand it, and what do you think leftists can even do about it?

SPEAKER_03 2:24

Yeah, so the article that me and Tony wrote was around the time when Maduro was first taken, along with his wife, Celia Foras. What I understand right now is that he is still obviously in detention. I think pretty much he's not allowed to really have the Venezuelan government help pay for his defense. I'm not really sure what's happening with his wife. I know that the last time he was seen, which

Maduro’s Detention And Why It Matters

SPEAKER_03 2:52

is also in the article, seen in court, his wife, I think, had I think someone had said, either in the articles we cite or in some other publications, that she had seen she had had visible injuries. So that's kind of where it's been. So for me and Tony, when we wrote this, co-wrote this, really the intention wasn't just even to place light on Maduro, of course, but it was also to again argue how essential it is to make sure that Venezuela and Venezuelans don't fall into a neocolonialism that ultimately will serve fascism on both sides, from South America to the US. And to answer the other question about what leftists could do, I mean, to be fair, I think that's a really big question. I think individually, people could still call their congressperson and place pressure on them to make this a point of contention, given with everything that's going on in Iran. There has been some energy that way to critique Trump on his so-called excessive force. So that could be useful. But other than that, individually, I think it's also important for people to get into organizations again, if they aren't in any, that deal with these sort of issues, like Black Alliance for Peace is one of them, and the DSA, of course. So those are the first few things I could I could think of, other than the fact that, you know, it's just a very, I don't want to say depressing scenario, but just a very bewildering one, because literally a head of state is suffering and his wife is suffering. And yeah, I don't think anyone, I don't think even any of our so-called elected, the ones who are supposed to be a bit more progressive, not blaming them because Trump keeps doing crazier and crazier things, but I don't think anyone right now is even bringing it up anymore. I believe when Munda when I was saying Hugo Chavez, when Maduro was taken the first, you know, taken, I think Mamdani did say that he'd call Trump and and I guess told him that he disagreed. But even then it was very, I don't know, it just wasn't enough. So that's that's all I could think of from the top of my head.

C. Derick Varn 5:00

I mean, yeah, I mean I think it's one of the the hard places that we are in as uh people in the United States today, is that we don't have that much influence over foreign policy even by voting, and we can put pressure on politicians, but we have to hopefully override other counterpressures. And it just seems like for the Democrats, even you know, DSA-aligned ones, this is not a high priority if it is a priority at all. And to be fair, it does feel like everything is on fire. Uh, as we write today, the Civil Rights Act has finally been completely gutted, so you can expect massive gerrymandering in the southeast. You probably expect counter-gerrymandering towards the Democrats in the in the Northeast and maybe on the edges of the West Coast, and any constitutional bourgeois norms will continue to be eroded. So I think what is interesting uh for me about Maduro is that even from a right-wing bourgeois perspective, this actually is more out of the norm than it seems like. For example, in the case of Saddam Hussein, even the Bush administration, as reckless as it was, and as much terror as a global war on terror actually unleashed, and we shouldn't ever you know forget that. I I hate the softening of the image of the GOP of the aught today. But I do think that they even they had to set up a sh uh, you know, an internal sham trial and go by the legal structures of the country that they were in, at least nominally. And you also saw this to some degree with Gaddafi in Libya, whether or not it was, you know, of any legal purchase. With both the Iran and Maduro situation, I mean, we're charging Maduro under US laws if it applies to him, which is crazy in and of itself. And I mean, because effectively that is saying that US law has jurisdiction over the entire planet.

SPEAKER_03 7:20

I mean, why? I mean, the thing is it's just sort of I kind of I agree and disagree. I mean, yes, I the with with could with Saddam Hussein, there was that sham trial where he was yelling at at his uh captors right at the end when they put the noose around him. He was, I think, still yelling and saying this was a sham trial and and people should be ashamed and whatever. But but I mean Qaddafi was brutally murdered, but but with but with the laws that are happening now, it's almost like, to be quite honest with you, and I think this has been said ad nauseum, it's just the quiet part set out loud.

C. Derick Varn 7:52

Right?

SPEAKER_03 7:53

So there's always been this sort of belief, anyway, from Reagan to Clinton to, you know, from from anti-war communism to so-called humanitarian intervention, this idea that the US or at least its allies should be the ones to govern. So this is just it's very difficult to parse out how to even describe Trump because there is reality in the sense that he hasn't, you know, God willing, he doesn't, he hasn't reached the the the the amount of people killed yet, as we had under Bush, for instance, George W. Bush, yet. But but at the same time, he is in some sense qualitatively, like you're kind of saying or or suggesting, he is different in some of his approaches, and it's true. Like the back-to-back nature of it too is quite bizarre, you know, like hitting one of these major countries would be enough for one administration for a while, let alone two of them, especially and then threatening to do a third, right? Cuba, yeah, yeah, and also hitting all these hot spots, like for instance, under Bush, I think Rumsfield and well, Dick Cheney, obviously, God rest his soul, they were all trying to go into Iran. I mean, that was the big game plan anyway, and they wrote those reports that everyone likes to share, which is a really, you know, global American hegem, you know, hegemony, hegemony, which was more explicit with you know, with the 2000s, with the aughts, but they didn't do it, not not giving them credit, like you're saying, but just they didn't do it. But here it's like Venezuela and then Iran, and then maybe possibly still invading Iran, or who knows, allowing the Israelis to nuke Iran. And then I think the biggest thing for me is just Israel, right? The fact that from Biden to Trump, Israel has been virtually unleashed, and to such a degree that it is arguably one of the most dangerous elements now here, variables here, where you're not even sure where American support ends or begins and Israeli independence or autonomy begins and ends, right? Because like with the latest reports, right, there's also with the the negotiations in Pakistan, I believe J.D. Vance, I think JD Vance had called in Yahoo, or they had a you know back and forth about how to approach it, I guess. It just those are things that are quite bizarre. But again, that's also a paving of like we've reached this point paved with you know so many different administrations playing this game, sort of, right? But with Israel, it to me that's the big qualitative shift, starting with Biden. Because even with George W. Bush, even though of course he was an evangelical and he must have, in his heart of hearts, believed in Israel being an only Jewish state. He also, I believe, was against some of the settlements in the West Bank, right? Like he wasn't necessarily he actually think, I think, threatened at one point, whether or not he actually wanted to do it, or maybe other people told him not to do it. He actually did put pressure on the Israeli government saying we won't support the expansion into the West Bank. I know that's really a low bar, but that bar is gone now, starting with Biden. I want to say, like with Biden, he opened that, like as Arun Dati Roy has talked about with COVID, he opened that portal to almost not a totally different timeline, but to an accelerated timeline, right? That the the nature of this of this of this whole conflict and the fact that Israel is going around also wanting to create greater Israel, and by any means, the fact that Israel has ceasefires allegedly, but still gets to mow down Lebanese people left and right. I do think other American administrations would still want him to do what they're doing, but maybe space it out a bit more. I know it sounds extremely brutal the way I'm saying it, but that's how I'm assuming they are. But that's the that's the part where it's

What U.S. Leftists Can Do

SPEAKER_03 11:32

getting me extremely like confused, right? Because that you know, one day Trump is also saying, uh, you know, I don't trust Israel or something like that. And another moment he's just basically being like, you know, we're never gonna remove our our uh warships from the Strait of Hermoods. It that's where it's getting a little bit wild, so to speak.

C. Derick Varn 11:53

Yeah, I think it's interesting to think about Trump as a demagogue, but as a manifestation of everything prior in the American conservative tradition, that in such a way in his transcending of the various internal divisions within the right, which he kind of does. I mean, like Trump has even managed to get paleocons and neocons on the same side, which is you know, for the neocons who didn't join the the Democratic Party, that is a special gift that only a nouveau riche A Nubo Reish Boomer could do. I I almost said pay petit bourgeois, but Trump is in this interesting scenario, although he's no longer petit bourgeois president because he's like what doubled or tripled his actual net worth uh within the first year of his second presidency. Oh well, good for him, though. I think that's fair. He's like, I don't draw a salary. I'm like, no, you just demand payouts.

SPEAKER_03 13:01

But what is interesting or his son gets contracts all of a sudden, so like the Hunter Biden kind of uh demonstration of that, too.

C. Derick Varn 13:10

Well, I mean what's interesting is like the corruption is endemic to American politics, the strong arming is endemic to American politics, but it is telling you something about where the American Empire is, that they no longer have the power nor even the want to hide that fact. I actually think it is a sign of American imperial decline that they're not politic about it anymore. Because even when you mentioned Libya, they uh like Libya is actually the weaking of this. But what happens to Gaddafi is he's brutally murdered in the streets by his own people, and I'm putting that in quotation marks. I don't really know the nature of who murdered him. But it was not done by like the West bombing him personally, and I laugh because it's horrifying because that's what we're doing now. I mean, they didn't do it to Maduro, but they did do it to the Iranian Alatola, and you do have some factors on the left who who you know talk to me about these people aren't perfect, they're problems. And to me, at this moment, that is somewhat irrelevant. What I'm trying to understand in the case of Maduro is what is going on with the with the representatives of Chavismo, like Delcy Rodriguez, etc., where they're okay with with sacrificing Maduro like this, and why? I don't some people when I ask that sometimes people think I'm justifying what happened to Maduro. I don't think we can justify just going in and arresting a head of state. Whether or not you think that head of state was legitimately elected is actually kind of beyond our scope and responsibility in terms of like international law. We've not been tasked with that. And as leftists, I think we should be worried that this won't stop. In fact, we know it won't. That's what I mean. Like we we saw immediately this this kind of logic of do regime change everywhere and try to pretend like everything can be this kind of easy one-off military action. And we're now in a global economic quagmire because Trump didn't understand the nature of Iran. And we also have big problems with our own you know legal prerogatives with this point. I mean, I think everybody, even fucking normie liberals, know that the constitution's broken uh in the United States, but I think leftists need to be a lot more explicit about that.

SPEAKER_03 15:49

And I think it's I disagree. I think it's working fine. Because, you know, like I think there's a lot of amendments you can pull from to feel uh to be honest, I just wanted to add a point. It is about Trump putting together his it's also the manifestation of a coalition and a constituency that has become a result of all these crazy policies and other politicians, right? So if you read Trump's State of the Union, as I had to do, because I I had my students read it, you know, not watch it. Some did, but I said try not to watch it because it can be I mean, that's the point of it anyway, to be jarring, but I just wanted them to see his words point of view. And in that speech, he talks about Venezuela. Of course, he had that moment when that one soldier, I guess, stood up because, you know, he was injured, but it was like, yeah, well, you were invading a country, so I don't what what do you do you want them to roll a red carpet out for you and like yes, yes, welcome? So it was just I didn't watch it, but I read it. But what's in what's so interesting and intriguing and about the coalition he's put together, like you're saying, in that description of Venezuela, he also put to he also said some interesting things about how I believe the something about the badges or something that the men took with them, not the bullets maybe, but the badges or something, they those were blessed by that one soldier's really, really Christian wife. So there you go. There's the there that that's the manifestation of the last 30, 40 years of American politics, too. This really right-wing aggressive evangelical politics you have in that side of Trump's coalition who is getting increasingly what they want, right? And then you have the other side, which you're kind of mentioning, the interventionist side, who are not evangelical but are highly interventionist, John Bolton-esque, even though he's been thrown out here and there. So I think that's the other indication of why this is so bizarre. It's not just about this one man, it's about all these different constituencies

When U.S. Law Claims The World

SPEAKER_03 17:42

that have manifested around him, but have been allowed to grow over the last few decades, right? There's been many moments too where so-called moderates in both parties, whatever that means, tried to cater these folks in their own ways, right? Like, for instance, with the evangelicals, right? There was a really interesting time when Democrats, like Hillary Clinton, said we should have a defensive marriage, you know, sort of, you know, institution, right? Like we shouldn't be allowing gay marriage to happen. So that's the other thing that's so interesting about this moment. It's not even just about Trump, of course. And and when you look back on all the different sort of cultural artifacts of the 90s and 2000s, I mean, Trump himself was feeded by many groups because he was seen as a good businessman, right? Until he started to talk about Obama's, you know, background, obviously in a very white supremacist way. But his constituency has been here with us too for a few decades as well. And now they've manifested into such a weird, onerous blend that even he is having a little issue of keeping together. Like obviously, he does very other Trumpian things that I don't think George W. Bush would have done, which is you know, portray himself as Jesus. But uh at the same time, what's very interesting to me is that he is melding together a Christian crusade element that was there in George W. Bush, but heightened and more explicit, because even George W. Bush said repeatedly, Muslims can be good, which is a very low bar, but nonetheless, mixing in with this very craven economicism, right? Because he's out there, the first thing he did after Maduro was taken along with his wife was to do what? Hold a meeting with the oil executives for the public to watch, right? So it's a very interesting blend of exposure to all the little nooks and crannies of American politics. But to your, to your to your trying to assess it, I too am a little bit lost as to like how to figure this out. And I think that's gonna be okay because usually it's gonna take a little while, like say 20 years after hopefully the falling of the American Republic and something better comes out, where we can actually look back and really define it well, right? Where it needs to matter, right?

C. Derick Varn 19:48

Well, what I find interesting about this to kind of push back a little bit, but also still in the main agree with you. The evangelical coalition hasn't been getting bigger, it's been getting more powerful. In fact, it's been getting smaller as a portion of the population. When I grew up in the 1980s, Christian nationalism wasn't discussed because it was pretty much default, particularly in the southeast and the mountain west. But even in like California, you had Peyoncy evangelicals. And I think what you what I find interesting that you point out here uh about the evangelicals, and I want to tie this into like more Marxist ways of thinking about the where the bourgeoisie's at, but but is that Clinton and Co. were making four ways into them at a time period when evangelicals started declining as a proportion of the population for the first time since the middle of the 20th century. Because from the 1950s to basically the Bush administration, actually, but the George W. Bush administration, not the George H.W. Bush administration, the evangelicals were increasing as a proportion of American religious life. But actually, when Clinton and even Obama were reaching out to them, they were declining. And they were also concentrating. So this thing that I see that Trump has really mastered with these coalitions, is this concentration effect where you push off all the people who are soft religious or are, you know, maybe you were a Protestant, but you weren't all that attracted to the GOP, and so you left the Southern Baptist Convention, and now you've left the church altogether because you see it as a political scenario. But that means in the church itself, all you have is the most dedicated Yahoos. What is interesting though is what has capital done? Because what changed from Trump one and Trump two that I find fascinating is that the tech oligarchs switch sides. But it's the non-obvious ones like Zuckerberg and Bezos, who even if they find this tacky, are you know the various heads of Apple who have all and also Satya Nadella, I think, from Microsoft too.

SPEAKER_03 22:09

He was at that he was at the inauguration. I think recently there was a piece about this, and you could see Priscilla Chan, uh, Mark Zuckerberg, and him as well.

C. Derick Varn 22:17

Right. That all this has happened very, very quickly. And yeah, I suspect if Bill Gates was still in charge of Microsoft, he would be part of this too. Just I think he spared this embarrassment by not being actively in charge of a company. But we've seen we've seen the economic coalition around Trumpism actually fundamentally change, and they were still like making peons to it. In the beginning, like they were talking about reindustrializing America, but it took them six months to just admit that they weren't gonna do that. Like they're still doing the tariffs as if they're gonna do it, but there's they're not doing that at all, and now they're like, you know, helping Alice Carp say that we're going to remove the jobs of most of the American public.

SPEAKER_03 23:08

And while you have Sam Altman coming up, not to cut you, Melania Trump had that bizarre, yeah. To your point, she did have that runway with that robot. Where I actually, when I watched snippets of it, I thought that was that was also AI. That whole video. I was like, this is this can't be real. But exactly, that's one that's one way to admit to the American public what you really think about the future.

C. Derick Varn 23:31

Right. That we're gonna get rid of the white-collar jobs, we're gonna automate them like the blue-collar jobs, and there just isn't anything else to replace it. It is not like in the past where there's a massive job market that opens up, even under Marxist conditions. Now, as a Marxist, and I'm a pretty hardcore economic Marxist, although I'm not economistic, so I want to make a clear uh clarification here. I I don't see how this continues. Like, for one thing, the productivity gains in A and AI are very limited in where they can happen, they're not actually leading to general productivity, general productivity games, profitability is down for everything, but AI infrastructure, and I'm very I'm gonna be very clear here that I'm talking about AI infrastructure because AI as software companies is not profitable hardly at all. I mean, if you look at like open AI or are some of the other independent ones, they are drowning in debt leverage. And they I predict, for example, that probably Chat GPT will just be eventually absorbed by Microsoft whole clock before it's all said and done. But and then the others we don't know because they're part of these massive conglomerations like Google that you can hide where your offsets are. But it's interesting because

Regime Change Logic Goes Global

C. Derick Varn 24:57

if you think back to Trump one, they were the enemy, the primary enemy domestically for MAGA in the case.

SPEAKER_03 25:08

It was the cancel, it was deep, it was the deep, not deep seek. What's that thing? The deep state, and it wouldn't be deep seek, deep state, and then it was yeah, cancel culture, which was related to all these, you know, I'm being soft cancel. Well, although that's what Bill Maher is now saying on his weirdly lit show, built bizarre dimly lit.

C. Derick Varn 25:28

Yeah, how just Bill Maher, who I don't even understand who his audience still is, it seems to be.

SPEAKER_03 25:32

I don't under, but that's very Trumpian, is it not? Like you don't like things are kind of cratering, you know it's not gonna go anywhere good, but you're also still like it's still wild how it keeps churning. Because exactly that, I think whenever I see clips of him, and obviously being people being upset with him, there was a day and age when I used to watch him and with my parents back in you know the early days of the Bush administration, but even then my parents and I got really bored with him. But now I have no clue. And the same thing with Trump, like but even people like that in the in the Hollywood sector, however famous he is, they've also realigned some of them with with Trump at times, right?

C. Derick Varn 26:07

I mean, they're unrealigning now, but it's weird because they jumped on and jumped off very quickly. It seems, you know, Trump is now actively trolling the entire American public with like inviting King Charles to speak to Congress and then posting on the White House page like two kings. But at the same time, it's like other than people who don't understand math, the like 40-year Trump reck isn't possible because he's 80. So I am very confused as to where they all think this is gonna go. Even today, with the gutting of the Civil Rights Act, you say the House gains like 14 to 30 seats in the South. You're I don't know how much that's gonna matter ultimately, it's just gonna sort things even more extreme between areas of the country and going to lead to more balkanization, which has already happened. Another thing that Trump has done is well, the SCOTUS has done really to protect Trump, they have made regional federal court rulings only binding within the region. So you now have not just different state laws, but different regional federal laws too. And I it's just like when you think about this from the standpoint of the bourgeois, this seems like a bourgeois that is like that doesn't really for see itself having a future. This seems like a get out and grab and go scheme, and then like letting some try trying to hope you set up some new feudal overlords.

SPEAKER_03 27:43

Yeah, I mean, Doug Henwood wrote this really great piece a few years ago about how the elites have also gone stupider. Like it doesn't have to always be not saying you're saying this, but it doesn't always have to make complete sense. I mean, if you think about it, it's still materialism that explains a lot, right? We're talking about echo chambers that were created, like the same Ivy League schools, the same business schools they go to. After a while, after successive decades, the people who at least built those institutions are gone. Their kids are in there, or their kids' friends are in there. And those kids' friends have very little to do with building anything. Like one example I keep using, even with my students, not to give credit to this idiot, Andrew Carnegie. When Andrew Carnegie was around, though, at least he was like, Okay, I'll I'm gonna dupe the working class population, a the white working workers, to say the the scabbers, the people who are African-American, they're your main enemy, right? That's one thing. So I'm gonna hire them from the deep south, right?

C. Derick Varn 28:36

People who are dwarf and yeah, and like in fact, it forced groups that didn't identify as white to identify as white. I mean, yes, the Manx and Cornish didn't identify as white until that happened.

SPEAKER_03 28:47

So do that very, very, you know, in that same project. And also I'm gonna donate a bit to public institutions at least a little bit, because you know what? It's no big penny, it's an investment for for a long-term salving uh salvation of my name. But now we have, you know, Elon Musk, to be honest, hemming and hawing on stages, not able to say one line properly. And we also have, again, like you said, I mean, look at the look at the way we even see the Silicon Valley types. I mean, I don't want to be so blunt, but they're pretty much monsters, but they don't really do anything that creates actual societal value, right? Like there's nothing, yeah, there's nothing really working there. So it's again a dumbing down of not just maybe people, which is intentional, because you know that that's that's what's intentional about everything. But materially speaking, it's also just the echo chambers that were created a few generations ago now producing their offspring, which are people who have no idea. They really don't. You and I are speaking from some vantage point that is actually connected to what's real, too, like bottom up. They're also in such an echo chamber, they don't even know how things cost or you know how things actually work or what people are concerned about. They they probably do think that you know a large section of the so-called MAGA base is living large and is is happy. Who knows? But Stephen Miller, this is another person I just want to quickly touch on because I think he's also a great example of this, what I'm talking about, because he's not bright. He's extremely craven, he's very explicit, he's off with the birthright citizenship, another case that SCOTIS well hopefully won't gut, which is you know going to relate to a lot of people in the future. Stephen Miller, unlike maybe some of his previous uh people in his shoes, even if they were fighting for this, he goes out there and says immigration, mass immigration is the biggest, costliest scam in America's history. Like saying things that are also just completely bad for your project, right? Like like what we talked about in previous episodes too, you and I, Latinos, Asian Americans, for a period of time were split between Democrat and Republican. And I really do believe a business section of each would have turned Republican again. And they kind of fli flirted with that, right? Yeah. Now, I don't know. Like, what's there to it's off the table. Yeah, it's off the table. It's so dumb. That's that's what I mean. There's nothing that it it's all materially based still. They just create their own echo chambers, their own magazines, their own podcasting, and then this is all materially based on the elite schooling, right? Like they're just going in the same milieu and being like, oh, I I I happened upon one Asian guy who still likes them and then thinks that's you know, that's the main Asian constituency they've been hitting on, right? So that's also what's going on. It's still a material answer. It just speaks to, but I just want to add, they're completely irrational, too. There's nothing that makes sense, even in terms of Israel. If you're an American policymaker, you'd want to have Israel on a tighter leash because

Israel’s Leash Comes Off

SPEAKER_03 31:42

you really don't know what the F they want to do next. I really don't know what the F they want to do next, right? Like them just mowing down Lebanese is insanity. Just doing that after a so-called ceasefire is insanity. And then there's also a real legitimate concern of the nuclear war, because I Nenanyahu is a war criminal and should be buried under layers and layers of dirt. But Project Samson exists. Yes. Exactly. And and the people in his group are even more insane than him. So it's like they're working on a so, materially speaking, really quickly, materially, the answer is still connected to settler colonialism and decades and decades of shoveling money, right? It's not like an idea just launches someone's head and they're just uber Zionist, if that makes sense. So the the constituency that's there, that's materially shaped. The the leadership that's now there in the Kanesta, that's materially shaped. But now the rationality comes in with the actual people's thoughts, which they think is not shaped by material. They just think it's divine, right? So you have Netanyahu, who is probably like a secular person, but is like just a straight up white supremacist and racist. Now he's contending with forces along his far right and far right who are just like, I'm down with going with the ship. Like, I believe this is divine. If the Arabs want any of this land and they won't let go, then no one's gonna have this land. That's what I really believe could happen next, you know.

C. Derick Varn 33:08

I I so there's a couple things I want to parse out that I want to get your take on. I've been thinking about materialist Marxism, but the areas in which Marx and even Lenin didn't really go into, although Lenin started to, I'm gonna like talk about Lenin. Talks about the the fragments of the subjective consciousness of elites, doesn't really go into what material reasons drive it. He just talks about a subjective and objective conditions. And I started pairing Marxism with something from outside of Marxism, admittedly, which is come which is complexity theory from Joseph Tainter, which talks about not just the overproduction of elites like Peter Turchin, but that there's a real energy problem with elites. So what we mean by that is elites tend to, and I'm using elites here on purpose because it's not just capitalist, elites tend to build glass floors for their children and in doing so remove competition, but they also tend to hyper-specialize as generations go by. So it is not just that these people are stupid, they are proper like the the the I'm gonna get to what I think is going on with with like Musk and Co. But it's also that like the people that we broadly call the PMC, they're super invested into very particular projects of which they know and understand, but they don't have the capacity to deal outside of those projects, like they've specialized to an absurd degree, and you have this glass floor, which means they don't have competition from comp people coming up. Because another thing we can talk about the early American bourgeoisie is that for all their bullshit, a lot of them were actually from the laboring classes initially. That's not true anymore. There's like nobody really from the laboring classes that gets all the way to the top tier. It does not have hold up.

SPEAKER_03 35:08

Sorry, I have to disagree. You don't think the guy, Alex Carp, playing with his swords is part of you don't think that's a blue-collar trick? I've seen men on the side corners playing with swords and being like, look at me, you know, look at this sword I got is like, oh wow, you're so blue-collar. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to erupt. I just asked.

C. Derick Varn 35:24

No, no, but uh you also bring another interesting point, though, is that a lot of blue-collar people, JG Vance, uh are brought up as a kind of smoke screen. The same reason why the Ivy League, you know, will make peons admit meritocracy by letting people color in, you know, it's the same kind of thing. And but what you see from those people is like I I hate like I hate to tell people, but until you have working class politics in which working class people control, you know, like communist movement or at least a labor party, a true one, not whatever exists in the West now. Blue-collar people need patrons to get there, they can't get there on their own. And which also means the blue-collar people that repr that represent us are some of the most craven elements of class traders within our ranks that you could find. I think about JG Bance, I think to some degree, I mean, John Featherman was never really blue-collar, but he did put on a good game about it.

SPEAKER_03 36:28

I was can I just add really quickly, I was gonna mention him because when I mentioned the swords, there is also the aesthetics of blue collar that's also very identitarian now. Like, oh, you know, I don't like to read. I I'm just in the muck. I like to sign my names on bombs, or John Fetterman, what's his main thing? I wear sweatshirts everywhere because I'm even when I'm wearing a tie, like yeah, it's like and I'm wearing shorts. It's like it's it's it's it's you know, it's rad, it's cool, it's tubular. It sounds like almost like, and it's just like even back then, even though I was like, all right, it'd be kind of cool if he wins. I'd I was thinking, oh, class politics has become estensized, has become aesthetics, you know. I didn't mean to cut you up.

C. Derick Varn 37:06

No, no, but that's a good point. So if we look at the trend here, we have a lack of competition, we have over specialization, we have the aestheticization. I'm gonna talk about the last thing technological change has gotten out of control for the created construction to even be brought reined in by the bourgeoisie itself, which also means the people who can survive those changes tend to be people who actually offer very little, which is bullshitters. And I'm gonna sound like Ed Citron here, but I'm being very serious. That, like, if you're a company and you have technical expertise, once that technical expertise develops past a certain point, you are no longer useful. But a bullshitter that's always useful for the public, particularly if part of your job is just to rein in more investors. And we see what we see now in this casino-like economy that we exist in the US now, and I mean, like even liberals talk about this, but I think it's interesting. People are like, Oh, well, why isn't the stock market responding? I'm like, the stock market responds to when the president overtly plays it, because even though they know, they know, right? Like the the the traders know what's going on, they're not they're not unaware that the play the president is playing them, but they know this is the only way the juke to do pump and dump schemes, and that's all that's left. Like, because profitability in general is really low.

SPEAKER_03 38:27

It's the end of history and the end of history and the end of history. It's the end of what history should have ended. You know, it's it's like it's no, but it's like it's like brute what's this guy's name again, Jim Carrey in that movie Truman Show. It's like when that's you know, it's like the scene he's on the boat and he's finally reaching the fake. Sorry, spoilers, I know it's like freaking tw 30 years, but when he when he finally touches the what he thought was the horizon that was real, but it's just a freaking cardboard thing. Except unlike him, they would just stay in the boat, right? And they would just like go around and be like, oh, there must be another way out. So it's like, you know, it's like the people are reaching the end. That these people never want they well, the thing is they thought the alternative all along would be a kind of neoliberalism that could be occasionally benevolent to particular constituencies who've proved their merit, right? And to your point, with JD Vance's, I think it's an X example, excellent example. He not only is a class traitor, he is a a craven one, right? He didn't just do the bare minimum. He threw his family under the bus, he threw his community under the bus. He got a net and also the other interesting thing about the back and forth between liberals and conservatism, the Netflix special, Amy Adams, I believe, was in it. I think Merrill Streep was in it too. So there was this moment where he was also feeded a little bit by Hollywood slightly. Not saying he got into any, you know, award shows, but having those two actresses, they're big name actresses, they're not just anybody, right? So they played his family, and then and then over that time he also did what? He did say he was anti-Trump. He called him a fascist. But then I think he also became Bruce, or became, I'm confusing Bruce Almighty with this movie, he became Truman, where he began to touch the horizon and he realized, oh shit, it's cardboard. And that's where it becomes scary for them. They don't want to punch through and create a big hole because they don't have the wherewithal, nor are they socially trained, to your point. They're not politically, economically, socially trained to think beyond the wall. If you punch through that cardboard wall and they get exposed to whatever's on the other side, which is just pillars and more cardboard, I think it would freak their minds out. So they they've trapped themselves. Like you to your point about skills, they've trapped themselves, right? Into this sort of paradigm where they're not ready for the alternative either, nor do they want it.

C. Derick Varn 40:49

That's an interesting point. I mean, like, I think this is why the first Trump administration led to so much resistant liberals, whereas today that just doesn't feel like it's the case. In fact, if you like look at where the passion is of the non-leftists who oppose Trump, it's weirdly in like liberalized neoconservatives like Bill Crystal. And I think that's because they were I mean, I seriously believe this. That's because that's because in the they hit this wall with with the beliefs of the American Empire, and they still really want to believe in the nobler vision of the American Empire, and so they're even willing to like go against their own. So if you like look at like former neocon world, it is like split almost down the middle between those who become like never Trumpers and those who and like are on MS MS now all the time. Excuse me, MSNBC is gone, and those who become

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C. Derick Varn 42:02

complicit with the regime, and it's cut in weird ways, like you know, Bolton being opposed to parts of the Iran War, which I'm like, what you were one of the architects of this, bro, are Bill Crystal being opposed to the unitary executive. I'm like, Yeah, you helped build the intellectual apparatus that you're opposing now, but they won't really like and look, I I if people want to, you know, who am I, a former right winger myself, actually. If if you want to come over, you know, and you want to be a class trader and all these other things and fully embrace it, we'll welcome you, but statistically, they're not likely to do that. Because I think they're too invested in the in the so and like what I would say the ideological apparatus and social reproduction of the late American imperial state and its republic.

SPEAKER_03 43:00

To be, I'm not gonna give Bill Kristol that much credit, but I do I want to say one thing. Either way, these men are well. John Bolton is like I've seen him al Jazeera still saying we it's a good thing that killed Ayatollah, and I'm glad he did it. So he himself is different from I think Bill Clistrel's actually gone even more woke, I guess, but they're still ab he's still an aberration. He's still a fervent aberration aberration. Most of them, like Mitt Romney, just simply lurk in the shadows and don't say much, except for the occasional time when Trump is really rude, I guess, and then they pop up and say, This is not correct. Not what my father would have said. It's like, okay, great, thanks for chiming in. But I wanted to add some other things about the liberal side, which I find fascinating, because I think a couple of factors play in to why we see maybe not as much of a robust institutionalized response. One, I think we're in the shadow of also the two, to be honest, failed Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns, right? That that did add a flavor of pressure to existing liberals to pretend at least. I mean, there was a time when Kamala Harris even pretended to care about Medicare for All, even though if you look into the details, it wasn't really Medicare for All she wanted. But they still pretended. And I think that's what pushed them for that first Trump administration because you just had AOC. I think she got elected in 2018. Bernie Sanders was still like, you know, gearing up to run in 2020. Now, hopefully, some people would want Mandani to be that case. And I do like enough of him, but he's not that either right now. He also is very like, you know, not on good terms with Trump all the time, but it's a bit of more of a bizarre situation. So he's not, it's still different to be the mayor of a, of course, a major city in the world, but still be a presidential campaign and have others coming up around you. Because ever since that time, Corey Bush rot lost her race, unfortunately, to the you know APAC-backed candidate. Talib has been securely, she's been in the safer spot because she's you know done her job, I guess, to to run well. But there's been, you know, Jamal Bowman lost. So there has been a deflation of actual pressures, right, on the liberal side to do something. So that is what happened. And AOC has also changed her tune. Like, as much as I still would personally, I think I would still support her if she ran. But having gone to the DNC and having lied for a genocide, that is a very different AOC, however, many critiques you could have had when she first ran than the first time she ran. Because it's just a wholly different energy, right? This was a different AOC in 2018 versus just two years ago, right? Who's basically saying, yeah, there is a peace process in the way that Biden and Kamala are doing. And of course, we find out there was none. Biden was basically warning Netanyahu not to kill anymore, and then he was like, Yeah, I'm gonna kill more. And he's like, Oh, that's too bad. And that was it. That's the end of the conversation. So I think those material factors have changed. And then finally, Israel. I think Israel, Israel, Israel has also been the fissure, even among some Democrats, right? Like, for instance, Corey Booker, as much as he's been able to now so-called be Cory Booker provocative and write his new book Stand, right? He won't answer anything about Israel. I mean, he still hides the fact that he shook hands with Nanyahu, but he still, you know, he still holds back some of his energy because I think it's for Israel. And also, when you think about other members like Kirsten Gillibrand, Chuck Schumer, who's the head of the US Sen, you know, the Democrat Senate for now, unfortunately. Like, that's the other thing that I think was unleashed through Biden's administration. This this weird fissure that also exists on the Democratic ticket. And also you can see that in some of the big donors, right? Whether they be Christian evangelical or not Christian, but you know, Zionists who are not Jewish or Jewish Zionists or liberal Zionists or whatever, they've also been sort of hemming and hawing about who to support, who to support at times, right? So I think that's what's also been unleashed. So A, you have less momentum for the progressive wing, however you want to define it. That's just true. B, Israel has honestly fucked up and mucked up a lot of the different constituencies, like you said. As much as there's been bizarre fissures on the right wing, there has been some between the left and liberal based on this really important issue. And then finally, you have instances of resistance, like the No Kings protests, to be honest. But, and I'm actually someone who believes you should go to these protests rather than just completely mark them off. Like, you know, if you want to get some people on your side, you have to organize. But I also very much sympathize with those who get easy who get frustrated because I have not joined any of these protests. I I have I have some disabilities now in the last three years where I can't really walk well. So I'm not gonna waste, say, the two hours a day I have without pain going to a protest where people still, in some cases, don't want to mention the wars, or if they do, to your earlier point, they want to mention it in a way where it's just illegal, right? Which is fine rather than imperial. And in some cases, like with Chuck Schumer, that brilliant, brilliant man, his issue with the war is that we don't do enough sometimes, like the taco thing. Like Trump is a coward, you know, Trump is not going far enough. So I think with all those factors together, you have a really weird soup of apathy, distraction, and frankly, a very miltosed resistance, institutionally, I mean, right? Ver but then you compare it to all the things we've seen on the ground from like Minnesota to LA, right? So there's this interesting thing where you have literally the fissure between before us, right? The the the embers of something more that's kind of desperate to get out, but doesn't yet have all the momentum to make it a national movement legitimately. And then you have the institutional powers who want to claim that and again swing it back into the Democratic wing. But that time has changed too. That time has changed too. That was 2020. And if you look at the numbers in terms of like the George Floyd protests that happened around his murder, there was some evidence showing that voter turnout for Biden increased in some sectors where protests happened. That's not going to happen again. There's way more apathy and disgust with the Democratic Party. They'll probably win the midterms, but in terms of presidential or other things, I actually don't know what else they can do. Momentum is lacking on both sides.

C. Derick Varn 49:24

Yeah, I mean I am sort of interested in the electoral calculus of this because I do think it's going to be very hard for any progressive force, even when aligned with the Democratic Socialists, to do a whole lot. There's not enough open leftists to support them, even though we are growing in numbers, you know. If you think about it, there's probably I don't know, let's say 500,000 leftists uh that can vote in the United States. Let's say 110 of them are in the DSA. You have probably 30,000 open communists at most. What are what are we gonna do? You're asking me that? I mean, like, how do we how like when people are like we should do something with the electeds, I'm always like, well, the electeds are acting somewhat rationally given the constraints they exist in politics, given where we are at. Yes, that's true.

SPEAKER_03 50:20

I guess I guess what we well, the we has to be, you know, sometimes, you know, specify. So if you are a New York City voter, you should still be putting pressure on Mamdani, right? For instance, those like that's important. I think Mamdani's future, political future is very important, just building cadre, at least, not necessarily whether or not he himself runs for something more, even though I do think he would. I think at the end of the day, you know, for instance, when Mamdani won what Mamdani proves in his running was that a certain measure of anti-Zionism does work because he was attacked earlier on as a very anti-Zionist character, and that actually helped him because if you look at some of the polling around South Asians, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, I'm assuming, and secular, people voted for him a lot. Like he got a lot of new voters out. And if you could he also, of course, got a lot of new Latino voters out, right? And that's not for nothing. And also, I had the pleasure of interviewing, I think I did. No, I don't well, I know some of the organizations that did build his base, some of the local Dacy organizations, South Asian organizations. So if you're in New York City or in the tri-state area, metropolitan area, definitely you should still apply pressure to him to say more and do more. This is not a time to wait. There's always that mistake of people say you gotta, you know, there's always that waiting game. Like people say, wait till he wins, then you can have him do what he wants. Wait till the years pass, and then you can have him do what you want. Or wait till I guess one term is one. It's like, no, it's now because the the pressure is now to get him to speak up and do like with with Maduro, he could people should pressure him, call his office and say that statement you had about Maduro was laughable. It was not right. And he's gone out of his way to call Cuba and Venezuela dictatorships. Like, I have never liked how he talks about South America and other countries in the global south, as people say. Now, in terms of we, in terms of where we are, I think frankly, there's really not a strong answer I have at the moment, because I'm also at a loss, you know, to be really honest with you, because the same vehicles that existed 30, 40 years ago are not are just not there, right, internationally. Like there's no international, you know, main communist movement or comintern or anything like that. There's obviously still connections between groups, right? I'm not arguing there isn't, but people have to rebuild those connections too. And we're having to rebuild it in a time when the United States itself is a rogue stake actor. Like to your earlier point, the United States is just becoming more and more irrational. Like it's not even trying to co-opt anyone anymore as much internationally, it's just trying to shovel money to some allies and then have those allies kill the other people and be part of their deranged plans. Like Kenya, for example, right? Kenya sent people, I think, over to Haiti. I mean, Kenya is our vassal state too. Like these are things that are just wholly insane, but also scary to deal with, right? And then the other thing, just as another element, which I think you talk about a lot, is frankly, it's scary to also just organize in this country, let alone be an active communist. Like, not saying in terms of scary as in like overwhelming, but you could lose your job.

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SPEAKER_03 53:27

You know, the whole the whole Israel and Palestine situation has also led to free speech actually being attacked, right? If you mention Palestine in many instances, you will be attacked, right? Let alone be a communist. So there's a lot of fears about losing your job in an economy like we've just mentioned, it doesn't really offer a lot of hope to get stable employment, and that's dwindling. So sometimes your options are to like go to the other protest or maybe organize or keep to yourself and try to keep keep sane for the next three to four years, right? And hope for the best, I guess. So I guess in terms of organizers, and what we're trying trying to do is like just let people know to join organizations and trying to at least be around other people who feel the same way. This is where it actually helps. Like you shouldn't be isolating at all. You shouldn't because that's the other thing that's happening too. I do think with the shadow of the Bernie Sanders two move two campaigns for the presidential, there has been a little bit of dis disintegration when it comes to like just social, social stuff. But the DSA numbers are going up. That's the other interesting thing. But much of it is also the Mamdani factor, right? Which is good. But I don't know. I actually don't have I I have to think it think it through more. What I tell people right now is like just join a group and make sure that you spend some time in it before you decide to leave. And then also if you have questions about what to actually do as a leftist, I think the first thing to do is just be involved in some kind of campaign. Right? Something that that that also maybe improves your own life, right? That's what I can gather because the other things that we need is a revolutionary party, connections with the international movement to get rid of Israel, Saudi Arabia, whole host of American allies. And though that will take time, unfortunately, but this is where I get really confused. We don't also have time. That's where I don't know the answer is. I don't know how to accelerate the process, right? I just don't know how to do it. And I do think I'm quite fearful of the acceleration because I really do believe Israel is going to cause even more havoc than it already has. Not only to the Palestinian people, which some numbers are now saying hundreds of thousands have been killed, obviously, but to also Lebanon. Like the Greater Israel project is on the board. And I don't I don't know how fast to move to do all the building block things you need a few decades to do sometimes, especially as a as a left movement in possibly the most repressive country, which is the United States. I don't know how to accelerate that. That's why I'm a little bit hesitant. I don't know what else to offer other than to join a group and be with other people because the stakes are rather high. So that's why I'm a little bit like I also don't know, to be honest.

C. Derick Varn 56:11

On one hand, I'm completely with you. On the other hand, I do like to remind people that the Bolsheviks existed under illegal terms where clandestine and even suppressed for most of their existence. So, like, eh, I'm not saying that things are bad means that things will get better for the left. In fact, historically, the opposite is normally true.

SPEAKER_03 56:33

But I didn't I totally agree with you. I think the other factor I'm just mentioning is that the stakes are even higher in terms of international disorder. That's what I mean. I'm fine with working like the Bolsheviks would, and then taking a couple of decades or so, making mistakes and growing and then having a mini revolution and that failing and growing another. I think inevitably, if things are done right, you will always find a way to succeed. My worry, and I think the variable that changes everything, that's that is part of the unknown. I keep saying the unknown and known, is the Israel question and the US question. Like the fact of the matter is climate change, of course, but also there's a really high possibility that greater Israel is possible and a lot of people are more people are gonna die. And that to me is a and also nuclear war, and that to me is a different stakes that I I just don't know how to accelerate towards, if that makes sense. You know, like I don't know, because with Palestine, for instance, right? You we went through three plus years of accelerated genocide, and and it's been it's been crazy, right? Like it's been wild to have seen, you know, the first few months after October 7th be what it was, and then it continuing, and then knowing that a lot of family lines are already obliterated. I know I've mentioned this many times in other podcasts, but I just want to bring it home that entire family lines that had existed for thousands of years are gone. And and reckoning with that is kind of melting my brain, right? It's like it's you're totally right. I agree. I'm never the one to suggest it's over. I I think we will eventually win, but the point is like what kind of world will we end up winning in unless we accelerate? Because that's that's something that I'm just not sure how to do.

C. Derick Varn 58:16

Well, this is actually a very, a very problematic point because I want to put it on the table. When I make the comparison about the Bolsheviks, it's actually in some ways a bleak comparison. Because what did it take for the Bolsheviks to actually finally win? It took World War I and the barbarism, a total profit crisis, the destruction of between two world wars, most of the world's actual wealth, the destruction of 20-30 million people minimum in a world that was lower populated than now. Today, if we were to go through a similar economic and political conjunction, you throw in nukes and drones and AI, I don't know that humanity survives that. And I I know uh you know, I mean, I'm serious, like, so we can't be let's just replicate the war situations that the Bolsheviks won in because the stakes for that were were incredible. And also, if you look at the revolutions that happened between 1911 and 1919, there were four. We only really talk about one of them because the others either became Mexico or they got suppressed entirely. So you have Mexico and Germany, Germany is completely suppressed, the conditions creates the Weimar Republic, which then creates Hitler's Germany, and the left was split on that, and because they were split on that, they had no response to it. And and the other thing that happened in the United States is we had the beginnings of a socialist party here, and the response to the Bolsheviks internally to us, even though weirdly we were one of the few. I mean, this is what's crazy about us, we were one of the few parties that actually the Socialist Party of America took the right side on the war. It was us, Russia, Serbia. That was it. And yet, our own internal uh inability to respond to the Bolsheviks led to the co-optation and suppression and ultimately destruction of the socialist movement. The CPUSA and the SPA couldn't figure out how to relate to one another, they were friends sometimes, enemies the other. I mean, there were times where this where the SPA was encouraging a popular front with the CPUSA while also kicking any dual-card members out and suppressing them and turning them over to the to the democratic authorities before the it's just it's bizarre what actually happened historically here. And I think there's reasons for that. One of them is settler colonialism, it's why our workers' movement developed so late. If you think about it, I mean, even someone as vile as Werner Sumbart, who died a Nazi, but talked about one of the reasons why the American proletariat never became a proletariat, is you could sell you could sell off the most immiserated parts of it with land grabs that they could use to instigate conflicts, but it actually led to more investment in the general society and to bourgeois culture than you had in Germany at the time. That was his comparison. It's some there's a there's a famous essay that was recirculated in the 70s, but that he wrote in I think 1900 or 1905 that talks about this. He doesn't use the word settleralism because it wasn't really a word yet, but he's describing it. So you have all these things that are part and partial of the American working class. You also have the fact that we're racially divided successfully more than any other working class in the developed world, probably more than any other period, with the exception of maybe South Africa. This is also why, though, I don't you like when people like, oh, why don't the the workers of Palestine stand with the workers of Israel? And I'm like, well, systemically speaking, since the 1970s, Israel has made sure that that the workers of Israel don't actually interact with the workers of Palatine and that normal employment of Palestinians is actually offset by even mass immigration for of temporary workers from Southeast Asia. And the reason why they did that is they didn't want bonds of solidarity forming between Palestinians and Israelis, and so it's a bullshit call.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:40

Yeah, it's also quite like just politically again, it speaks to what I think how Palestinians and their question of so of their question of statehood and self-determination still gets oftentimes misread or intentionally warped by non-Palestinians is like, you know, would you ask that question of like can you just imagine someone back in time? Yes, well, saying that about black people and white people in Jim Crow South, I mean, there were those attempts, but even then they had to acknowledge the inequities. Like it would be quite ridiculous to be like, well, you know, just stand together, you'll you know, realize together forever. But also with Jews of Warsaw, get like can you imagine if someone had said to the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, I think it's anniversary, just passed, and said to them, Well, I'm glad you're rising up, but could you just you know think about maybe reaching out to the to the non-Jewish German workers of Germany? It's it would be it would be understandably disgusting to say, like if you're living through a genocide, yes, obviously you want Israel to become a one state Palestine where rights for all and all that, but it would be all it is just not material. Like, you know, before unifying, you still need to survive as a people. So can we first survive as a people and then maybe and also what about the other side? Why can't the Israeli working class prove themselves to the Palestinian working class by stopping

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SPEAKER_03 1:04:08

this goddamn genocide?

C. Derick Varn 1:04:09

Yeah, because if you look at if you look at Israeli, I mean there's there's complicated reasons for this. Uh, I could go into like because yeah, I read Hebrew and can tell you a little bit about it, but like the the general way Israeli society has developed, I mean, one of the things I've talked about is people who think it's just white settlerism by Ashkenazi don't understand the situation. Because one of the one of the interesting things that Netanyahu's been able to successfully parade is two different forms of Jewish supremacy. And it's hard for me to explain this, but like uh Ihub Barak in his in his uh stuff about Epstein was talking about bringing good Jews who were socially liberal, who were white, over from Europe and more white people too, to bring it in to contradict the kind of bad Jews who were the riffraff coming in from Russia, and also the Mizrahi who make up actually the majority of the Israeli population at this point. And the Mizrahi are suppressed by Ashkenazi Jews in a lot of ways, but they also have from things that happened in the religious conflicts around Arab nationalism and the and the pan-Arabist failing, their own reason for rejecting Arab nationalism, etc. etc. etc. And this isn't to justify what they're doing, but it means that a lot of these narratives about who the settler is is hard for Americans to understand because it's not just the European population. In fact, the most virulent are the are the people who are for all extents and purpose purposes the same ethnic group as the Palestinians.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:59

The main just of it is the the means the main thrust of all this is just anti-Palestinianism. Bingo. And then and also to your point, like I think recently they just they just brought in some Indians, I think, who alleged to be a lost tribe as well. But there, you know, and also you have Ethiopians, of course, they went through their own discrimination, they still do, but but nonetheless, it's anti-Palestinianism. Just like with here, you had anti, you know, ne Navajoism and Cherokeeism, like there were some instances of black folks also being the ones to settle. It's not the same exact logic, right? It's not the same exact thing, but nonetheless, that happened. So I totally agree.

C. Derick Varn 1:06:36

Historically, it's interesting. One of the things I I I I'm fascinated about this in the 19th century, and I don't have a completely good explanation for it materially. But even when you met people who were good on black issues, like white people. Who were good on black issues in the 19th century in America, they were terrible on indigenous issues, and actually, usually vice versa. There are some exceptions, but that most of the people who were sympathetic to the indigenous, and again, we're talking from a white perspective, were terrible on black issues, and I don't know why exactly. Um, this is this was one of my things when I was reading Jay Sakai, which I tell people to read actually. I I have my disagreements with parts of it, but I do tell people to read it, and I'm like, one of the things you have to realize is these what we might call nascent, not quite nations. I think my issue, one of my issues with Sakai is like there are indigenous nations, they existed, they meet all the criteria set by a historical Marxist, no matter what side you picked. And there's the Black Diaspora, which was becoming a national subject in the United States in some ways, but never completely did. But they didn't, they were internally divided for a lot of reasons, materially, historically, etc. And I think it's hard for us to kind of understand that that doesn't map on cleanly. I think this is also true for our analysis of settler colonialism in Israel, which has this weird double nature of being Bismarck and settler colonialism, but also historical Jewish supremacy, but also in some ways able to morph back and forth between a white settlerism and a multi-ethnic settlerism, depending on who's leading it at a given time. And that actually is interesting if you think about reactionaries in the United States. Like one of the interesting leadups to Trump is like all these white nationalists pretending that they were willing to have like Latin and Asian people, particularly Southeast Asians, uh, in the forefront. And that's becoming clear, they're not really okay with that. And it's it's an it's been an interesting like bait and switch strategy, but I also find it fascinating because it it actually risked dividing the white subject too and fragmenting the white subject. When you started seeing these people talk about heritage Americans and people wanting to bring back like 19th century forms of of racism, it's interesting because I'm like, oh, you're you're actually into like like you know, I passed in white, but under your framework, I wouldn't anymore. You're actually trying to make your subject smaller.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:30

I'm seeing videos here and there of I don't know, you know, on Twitter or such, which is a great place to learn what reactionary thing, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess I mean why not, right? But it's also like anti-Catholic stuff, which is kind of bleeding in. Like, you know what's really funny to me? Like, what I look, I'm not Christian, I'm Hindu, and I grew up in an area that has Christians and Jews, but a lot of my friends were either Hindu, well no, actually some Christian too, and then of course I had also Jewish friends, and then but mostly Muslim friends too. So I'm saying this all in context, like with our family backgrounds, usually our families are are you know mixing it up sometimes. But I never even understood that there was a difference between Christians until I grew up a little bit and realized, oh shit, there's a Catholic. I thought it was the same thing because my parents would be like, Oh, what is their background? I was like, Oh, they're Catholic. They're like, What? It's like, yeah, Christian. It's like, oh. But now it's like funny to think, like now, you know, now learning more and seeing the big wide world beyond Central Jersey. Now I'm like, holy shit, like that is a divide. Like, you know, like with because they're bringing like when I hear certain, I forget which podcasters were saying this, but they even say things like Christian and Catholic. And that to me is old school when they do make that weird division.

C. Derick Varn 1:10:46

Oh, like yeah, middle 20th century Protestant picture. Yeah, it still exists. One of the things I really used to remind people, and unfortunately, MAGA's doing it to itself, is like, if I was evil, one of the things I would do to break up the conservative coalition is to remind Protestants that they hate Catholics and to remind Catholics and Protestants that they hate Mormons, and they're doing it to themselves. So, like it's interesting because in the American conservative tradition, by and large, the entire legal and intellectual framework is socially produced by Catholics. So them turning on Catholics so profoundly, I think you mentioned this before. Yeah, actually is a kind of interesting problem for them because they don't have an evangelical equivalent. There is no evangelical, no evangelical intellectual movement of any s even on the right, of any significant persuasion. And yet you have Peter Thiel whispering to JD Vance, a convert Catholic, to ignore the Pope on moral teachings, which admittedly, technically is not heresy in and of itself, although Peter Teal is a heretic by any Christian standard, but it's it's crazy to me, and it's a weird proof of what you're talking about, about like of this this kind of weird dialectical nature, and I do want us to like think about this. Evangelicals are dying, they're dying as a culture, and yet they have in their in their dying state, they have really managed through managing their relationship with coalitions to actually finally get everything they want. Now they're gonna ask for too much and probably fuck up, but that's that is what it is a weird position we find ourselves in.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:39

Well, they did the thing that I think a lot of us should think about. Well, not not entirely, because we should have principles, but they did the one thing that they did with Trump, which was we're gonna hitch our wagon to a clearly divisive, monstrous leper of a sort, you know, just like a real leper, like warts and all, disgusting human being. And we're gonna do it because and we're gonna bless him every day in the Oval Office. That was the first Trump, too, because he's gonna do the things we really want, which is keep some of our private schools away from black people and brown people. Obviously, take away the federal right for abortion to be protected, which has been that's the other thing I I really do want to add. Like I was telling my students, Trump did win some things for this coalition. Getting rid of federal, like I think people are understanding it, but it has made America hell even more for anyone who's able to give birth, right? So that is a win for them. So, you know, it's also the other interesting thing, they also reaffirm again when we talk about politics and power, it's not majority

Elite Stupidity And Echo Chambers

SPEAKER_03 1:13:43

versus minority, all these terms I really hate. It's really about power, coalitions, and sometimes a little bizarre luck. Because I go back to Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller is a dumb fuck, but he somehow landed as red and brain as he is, he landed in the right stream, the Peter Thiel stream, that that just flowed through, pushed him ahead with his with his copy of uh Camp of the Saints in one hand into the Oval Office, and now he's having like his own version of a right wing wet dream when it comes to devising you know all these different sorts of horrible ideas, you know.

C. Derick Varn 1:14:18

So Stephen Miller, the weird Jewish extra from the upper middle class to American history X.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:25

Oh wow, okay.

C. Derick Varn 1:14:25

I don't even know because that's even where he's from, like he's from Venice, he's from really yeah, oh shit, like and he's the right age too, like he would have been about 19. Like, like I'm just I point this out to people, and they're like, Oh my god, I'm like, Yeah, do not underestimate dumb fuck California reactionaries. They like they uh they've been a powerful force in American history, they produced a president. Similarly, don't underestimate New York reactionaries because they've now produced a president too. And I I think this is I mean, it for us who are communists, it puts us in a weird bind. Because on one hand, I'm just gonna just say it outright. There is no way for Mondani, for example, to be what I would want him to be. He does not, there is not a large enough movement to support him. I'm actually gonna say to the surprise of some of my left-wing uh listeners, my more left-wing listeners, that I have been impressed that momdani so far has avoided the pitfalls that have taken down every other progressive mayor very quickly, about like stepping into bomb market shenanigans without realizing it or not building coalitions. But I also want to point out that there's a fundamental limit to what he can do because he's still dependent on Hokel and other key members of uh of the Democratic Party upstream from him from from playing ball, and his charisma is basically the only thing that's gonna get him to do it. And so, like, he got his wealth tax, but it was a modified peditaire version of the wealth tax, which only applies to people who don't actually live in the city. And I think it's good. I'm not I'm not like I'm like, boy, that's a great, that's uh actually not a bad policy, however, it's not even gonna fix your budget shortfall, and so you know, and that's not Mamdani's fault. I'm not, you know, for people like, oh, you're criticizing Mamdani. No, I'm not. I think actually he's handling it better than any other progressive mayor I've seen in the last 20 years. I mean, I'm being serious about that. He's avoided pitfalls that have taken out many other progressive mayors. I mean, if you look at Brandon Johnson, who, you know, yes, he wasn't endorsed by the DSA, but he's kind of a writer on in Chicago, he didn't know how to play it. If you look at most of the southern DSA mayors who were endorsed, they often got stuck in traps by Republican legislatures that they could not get out of and lost their popularity and then lost their seat, etc. etc. etc. Which puts us in a real big bind because, you know, um, like I said, if you ask me, would I support AOC? I don't trust AOC as far as I can throw her. I'm gonna be relatively honest about that. But I also don't know what people would have on author if I was going to vote for a major party candidate at all. And like, would I vote for AOC? Maybe. Do I trust her? No. Do I trust any politician in our current system? Not really. I mean, like, my my thing is we're always in a weird relationship. If you're if you're a radical in the DSA, if you're a Marxist Leninist or or you know, even a muggist, or you know, someone like me who's a who's like a a you know a a soft Leninist, etc. You're in a bind, right? Because if you if you don't do electoralism at all, how do you even build an interest in the movement? If you put everything you do on electoralism and refuse to criticize these leaders once they step out of line, you have subjected, you're you know, you're no different than a blue no-matter who democrat just for the DSA. And it's very, very hard to weather that out, which I know this is a weird transition to the other essay I wanted to talk to you about, but one of the things that this hints at is while I don't think culture is the most important thing, I want to remind people I think culture is downstream of economics always. It is almost an expression of economics in some sense, and an expression of power relations within economics. But our leadership class is having a social reproduction crisis. Look at them, they can't produce competent like like and this is liberals too. This is not just the GOP. Like the Biden administration, Mr. Return Us to Normal, four decades in politics. What competent administrators did they put in office? Not that many that weren't very easily undone. That's you could talk Lena Khan, maybe.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:20

I was about to name her, but to your point and to what we're saying, he didn't provide, he didn't really institutionalize enough. And he also destroyed everything, however little it was, like going on the pickets, which was a big deal, by Israel again by supporting this genocide, which hugely affected Kamala Harris's rightly so run. Like if you look at the politics of it, I think a large second. Yeah, caught well, it just yeah, cost him Michigan, it cost them a lot of votes, even in New Jersey, I'm sure, because it also has a large South Asian and Arab population. And if you look at some of the data, it just overall cost them like a large number of Democrats chose to stay home based on that issue. So it was just, yeah, he didn't he didn't put any Lena Khan is great, but he did not protect her. And of course, again, speaking to the Democratic Party itself as a manifestation of its own, you know, material factors, it it you know, it wanted to. I think in some I think in I think I read somewhere where earlier on during the campaign Kamala Harris was also trying to like suggest that she would get rid of her to make amends with the Republicans that they wanted to bring in. Like, who's that Liz Cheney, you know, the person I have a I have a poster of her, you know, because when I you know when I look up in my room, I just want to be like, well, there's Che and there's Liz Liz Cheney next to each other as you know, as the guardians of democracy. Can I just add one really quick thing about AOC? AOC is bizarre because I actually trust her less than I do Mamdanny now, just because of that one action that she took to lie has really soured my taste on her. Which which lie? I mean, when she went to the DNC. There's a bunch, but the biggest one I think was when she doesn't oh yeah, that's true. When she went to the DNC for the first time in the convention and basically said there was a peace, like they were trying to fight for peace, or they were trying to ex they were doing a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, and it it was proven not true. It was proven that you know the Biden administration was not interested at all, that they weren't doing any of it for the entire time, that they were just shoveling money into a genocidal freak show of a country, killing lots of people, and she was up there, I'm sure, knowing this. And even if she didn't know it, why say it if you're unsure? You can name other things, even if you think I think he's despicable, Biden. But if I was, say, being his wingman at the DNC and I was unsure about this and I was a little bit principled, I would just say, I'm I'm just Xing that off my speech. I won't mention that because I don't think it's true. I'll just mention the union stuff, maybe. So she didn't do that. But the one person I do like, I think there are some, like Rashida Talib is great. I do think she's, you know, very principled. I don't think she's obviously perfect. I'm sure anyone could find something wrong with her. But she from the jump had also done the thing that I think a lot of DSA elected, or sorry, Democratic progressive electeds should do, DSA endorsed, which is she took a lot of the umbrage of the Biden administration early on when the genocide started. If you remember, she was constantly, she was also being treated as a constituent rather than an elected member. I believe he had a speaking event at her district, but she was kind of kept off stage or something, and you know, she was talking about her grandmother, but they didn't really listen to her. So I think there are a few examples of this. Well, they condemned her at one point as an interesting. Yeah, they did. Exactly. And they and they did, they with the whole group of that side of the Zionist element of the Democratic Party, they were more kind to Liz Cheney than they were to Rashida Talib. And that just says a lot to me and a lot to other people. And then the one other thing about the cultural thing, which we'll get into, I do also want to reference, I also think exactly that. Like culture is not some sort of it's not whatever we need to do. I think earlier on, like my main issue is how to accelerate the process, but the process is the same. You need to build systemically, materially, from the bottom up. You really do. But you obviously need some adjusting on the elite sector too. It doesn't, you know, it won't, it won't hurt to do that. I I think both and and culturally, yes. But do I think you know, say speaking truth to power is the way to go? No. I think it's actually sometimes a complete distraction and itself a liberal mythology that has kept us in the same rut for the last 40 to 50 years.

C. Derick Varn 1:23:43

Yeah, I mean, I I think to talk about this uh cultural reproduction thing and speaking truth through power. I mean, I always point out that like even Larry Allison allows a lot of left-wing movies to get made because it gives you the idea that this this infrastructure is apolitical, even though he's like actively censoring all kinds of media from TikTok onward to help the Trump administration and the Israeli state. It is interesting, also, however, as you hinted at, that this coalition that Trump has built can't be held together by Trump or by its capitalist interest anymore. The I think the geopolitical tensions around Iran do not cut cleanly for most industry

Democrats, Protest Energy, And Apathy

C. Derick Varn 1:24:27

either. I think more industries hurt from it than helped, although the energy sector is helped by it, frankly, because it can the American energy sector is actually the primary business beneficiary from the Strait of Meuse being closed. It's bad for the American public, it's terrible for the American public, it's terrible for most of the American bourgeoisie, even. But the energy sector now can can sell more, you know, can raise prices by selling by selling more of its supply abroad. And particularly since OPEC is now fracturing with the UAE leaving, and and also so much of the Middle Eastern production being damaged. I laughed at someone, I was like, the funny thing about the Iranians is when they say they're not at war with the American people, they mean it. They're not attacking us. They're attack-I mean, they attack us when we attack them, they're attacking our allies in the Gulf, they're not attacking, they're not even threatening to attack us directly.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:25

And I find that and even prior to this, and even prior to this, they would obviously tell the Americans when tell the US, tell us when they would attack Israel prior to all this. Yeah, right. They would do it, like we're letting you know Israel, which did not do that for them. Obviously, that would be bizarre, but still, we're letting you know your crazy proxy just killed some of our scientists or hit an apartment building full of children and women and men. We're still gonna let you know what we're where we're gonna hit. And it's going to be mostly military targets, but of course, some of those are gonna be nestled in their freaking cities, which they have, of course, projected that everyone else does. So that's the other thing that Iran is, and I want to add one thing about Iran too, and Israel and the irrationality of the moment. This makes me sad too, in a sense. Like it took like the Palestinian people should have been that red line for many, and it has been. It really has globally, it has. It has speaking of the different constituencies that have been scrambled internally in the US, formally in our borders, because we're an empire, Israel has scrambled the brand, the the minds and the hearts of many, you know, in a in a like the Chinese state, to be quite frank, in some other places. Yeah, it's it's been it's been that, but Iran to speak to that a little bit more. Iran, when when a friend of mine and I were talking, and he is he's also South Asian American like me, and we were just discussing this a couple of weeks ago, and we were just saying, like, we obviously are both vote uh vociferously pro-Palestine, but we were saying like how the Israeli leadership is so in its own bubble that it thought it could take it up a notch and attack Iran. Not just a defenseless people who are fighting for a state, but freaking Iran, which has ages and centuries and generations of connections with the surrounding all nations there, Pakistan, even India. Like if you look at Modi, Modi had done that bizarre little genuflication, you know, kissing butt of yahu when he went to Israel, which was completely shameless, and you know, bowing down to a flame or something bizarre. He's just a joke. I hate that man. But he did that, and then Israel and America decide to kill those you know Iranian girls, right? Fast the first thing that they did, and then go on in this whole stupid war and campaign against the I I like to argue the Epstein state against the uh the Iranian state. And even Modi, who had just gone to Israel, had to say, Oh, we we don't want to get involved in this. You know, in a in a in a in a Hindutva in a Hindutva context where you are generating a lot more anti-Muslim feeling, but again, India is a subcontinent, so a lot of the population is not necessarily Hindutva in that same way, but it's happening. Still, he was like, Oh, I don't I don't want to participate in this because this is like this is too much. Like civilizationally, too, like my parents and other South Asians who are Hindu, I mean we're Bengali, they are like, that's Iran. That is a country with civilization on our mind. Like, that's the thing that's so it just speaks to everything we've touched on, which is also the irrationality and the echo chamber. Speaking of skills, right, narrowing. The one skill the Israeli elite really lack from their labor predecessors, and maybe Likud to a sense, or whoever is I I mean, and is. Is their their skill of identifying coalitions, I guess, internationally, because attacking Iran just brought forward even another wave of support for at least the anti-Zionist coalition.

C. Derick Varn 1:29:00

Right. I mean, one of the you want to talk about this, we can be real, real like leftist idealization versus reality here. Like, it's hard to get Russia to do anything about Israel, even when the pal, even though they're generally sympathetic to the Palestinians, regardless of how you feel about Putin. I think I do think we should be careful when treading on Russian politics. But uh this was even kind of a step too far for them, and they have maintained, even while criticizing what was going on in Palestine, economic relations with Israel, with the exception of being shut out by sanctions for the most part, honestly, for a long time. And this blew a lot of people's mind when like China and and Russia they didn't vote for you know the Israeli actions in Palestine, but they weren't they they just bowed out and diplomatically abstained. I don't think that's happening in terms of around Iran. Iran is more of an explicit Russian ally. It is China will help them, you know, and people will you go go like, oh well, you're you know, you shouldn't support Iran because they're not socialists. And I'm like, I'm not here to talk about socialism on this issue. Socialism is for the Iranian people to deal with, frankly. It is not for me to impose on them, and I'm not going to be able to do that anyway.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:23

Um, how can you have a socialism if your country is this decimated? Yeah, I think that's the other thing that I don't understand. I don't mean to cut you off, but I I understand that critique, and as a Marxist Leninist myself, I understand the history of the Iranian revolution that involved the killing of many communists. So this is not from a feeling of romanticization, but how can you even have a socialist Iran if Iran and its people are devastated? Right, right. Yeah, that's what I don't understand. And also, just to add, our side of the things are the crazier side. We literally have the Epstein files, the Gulf states, the Israeli elite, like you said, with Eudak getting jobs. We've alienated NATO completely over this. Yeah, yeah. Spain is yeah, even Trump came out of his way to say, well, Spain's not gonna be involved. It's like, all right, Spain's fine, Spain's Spain's getting a glow-up from this in a way.

C. Derick Varn 1:31:16

Right, I was about to say, and now like NATO allies won't let US planes dock to do their operations. So, like, somebody was like, Oh, would you the United States get in there? I'm like, where are they gonna dock? They're they're gonna march US soldiers from fucking Afghanistan to the other side of Iran through those mountains. That's a good that'll go real well. Are they going to dock in the UAE or Saudi Arabia within within missile fire of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard?

SPEAKER_01 1:31:47

I'm like, what are you talking about?

C. Derick Varn 1:31:50

You know, I was I was like, there's a reason why, and some of it may be US reluctance, some of it's like we probably don't have the ground truth capacity without a draft, and a draft with instant. I mean, it this war is already unpopular, but could you imagine a war that's only like popular with with Republicans being somehow made more popular by instituting the draft back for the first time since Vietnam?

SPEAKER_03 1:32:15

The war right now has 38%, and that's probably putting it at a higher number of who answers their phones, you know. Right.

C. Derick Varn 1:32:22

Right. It's just like 38%.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:24

No I was also surprised that the Democrats have been milli-maffed on this because I'm like more Democrats um uh oppose the Iran war than believe that than believe that the last election was legitimate.

C. Derick Varn 1:32:43

Like, I mean like excuse me, the 2020 election was legitimate. Meaning, like, there's like three percent of like five percent of democrats somehow buy the uh the election was stolen out of the Trump administration, and half of them don't support this war, and I'm just like I'm like you can't even make hay on that.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:10

You you play games over that.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:15

Who do support it? Again, I want to ar the overlap is with this irrational Zionism. Like, I think Josh Gottheimer, Schumer, maybe I don't know if Kristen Gillibrand, I'm not really sure, but a few others who are ahead, and oh again, the problem is Schumer is not is not nobody, he's like literally the leader of the the Senate Democrats, you know. So he should be somebody, and he's a very much deservingly maligned person who has more fondness for Trump than he has for the average Iranian that he wants to apparently liberate through killing them. So the point being, the few people who are into it are also rabid about just their interests merging completely with US imperial designs, first of all. Because I if you remember in the first Trump regime, in the first Trump administration, there was another pseudo-attempt to overthrow Maduro with that fake package of uh of trucks sitting on the border, I I believe between Colombia and Venezuela, if you remember. And even then, some Democrats went to the border. I forgot who this person is. Debbie Wasserman. Debbie Wasserman went to the border and did a video next to the trucks, like a very curated video saying, please, Maduro, accept this aid. So there's always been this overlap, obviously, between Democrats and imperialism, let alone in the White House, right, with drone warfare. But what's becoming very distinct is that these ideas are themselves collapsing into a sense of illog illogical illogics, irrationality again. Because with Schumer, like you're saying, the war is very unpopular. And even if it's not necessarily people are just totally against it, people have no idea what we're doing. Like when I talk to friends or students or whomever, they're just like, I give updates in my class about the war or about our war against the Iranian people. And I like to explain how many people have died, I like to explain what's been going on, I like to cite different places they can go. Even if students are not like, this is messed up, even though all of them probably think that. Some of them are just confused. Like, oh yeah, like Iran. Yeah, what are we? And the draft, I even joke with them. You should know where Iran is in case you're dropped in. And your first thing should be putting your gun down, putting up white flag, and crossing over to Iran and saying, hey, I'm I I don't want to be a part of it, because I'll save you. They they're not gonna, but the point being they joke, they kind of nervously chuckle, but I say that because I mean I might be trying to read too much, but there is a sense of like doom and gloom and confusion that is unleashed also with this stupid ass intervention around something that also a lot of people are willing to sacrifice on. I think Trump does not quite understand either. Again, people's defense of Iran and also people being sick and tired of the US. So I n like again with my friend, I obviously think it's hitting the American people a lot with the gas, but he and I have said, you know what, in order for Iran not to be a neocolony or whatever Israel wants it to be, this for now needs to happen. We do need to hold firm. I really do think more Americans, even those who are not of the same background as me, can sort of understand it more slightly. Not trying to be, but there is a little bit of like drop-down logic where you can just say, well, the Epstein reports were released, so you've read that, or you know about it, and people are like, yeah, that's true. Because he has been he has been losing support over time. Again, I don't care because I think we have many more people who never supported him, or people who just didn't give a fuck about the last election than people who are diehards. But things are collapsing, things are turning away, and things just simply accelerated because of the stupid ass decision to go after a country that is legitimately a a powerhouse in soft power in some ways, because of its cultural

Organizing Limits And Mamdani Pressure

SPEAKER_03 1:37:18

symbolism to the region, right? Like I repeat, Iran, Iran, Iran. Even I think some Bengali, if you look up, I think Bengalis have ancestry to Iran, I could be wrong, but there's a you know, the Persian Empires and all that, it's not for nothing.

C. Derick Varn 1:37:30

That that isn't Sanskrit or related languages, just like ancient like a vested, I mean, like just throw it out there, right? Right, right. There's a reason why like devas are one thing, and anyway, for those of you like I I study one of my side gigs back in the day was I thought I was gonna be an anthropologist, and I was into physical anthropology, but the other thing I was into was the Asian roots of European culture and the Indo-Iranian, the Indo, the Indo-European slash Indo-Iranian branch. Oh, I didn't know that. That was upset with it. Oh wow. Even so far that like I have unpopular opinions, like believing that Pharisee is actually a reference to Parsi and that the oral Talmud is the is actually or excuse me, oral Torah, which is a basis for the for the what's that? I have it around here. Anyway, for the document that which the Talmud is a commentary on is also an absorption of a lot of Persian culture, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Like, so I even like see like Jewish culture as like you know, this weird anti-Persian stuff is like this like shadow reflection of their own influ the own influence that Pulsian cultures had over.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:52

That is really fascinating. I that's a really cool background to have. I didn't know that about you. That's really interesting.

C. Derick Varn 1:38:58

The two the two things I scholarly there are three things I wrote the most papers on in college. I'll tell you because they're weird. It's it's Shakespeare. Well, of course, I was an English major partially too. It is American Korean literature and its response to the col the colony, the colonization of uh Korea by uh by Japan and America's role in that, particularly after the Russo-Japanese War.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:24

I wrote several papers on that, and then it's ancient Indo-European culture and the and the its influence on Greek and ancient Greek culture through Persia, and also because the Greeks were also Indo-Europeans, but like like like the there is like when we talk about East and West, like an ancient culture that's kind of an artificial distinction that's a byproduct of Christianity, and even that's kind of fake because I'm like the the the Muslim world's why we know anything about Greece Greece itself, like the idea of its independence from the Ottomans was then the solidifying of this even Europeann-ness and white identity, too, which is fairly recent when you think about the scope of history, right?

C. Derick Varn 1:40:08

No, I mean, like if you look at Greeks and Persians and even Arabs, they don't look that different.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:15

So well, have you watched the show Mo, the Netflix show? I I liked it and I think the second season is really dope. I think the first season is a little bit up and down, so people should really power through. The second season's quite good. Again, we can talk about the culture stuff. I don't think it's saving anyone, obviously, it hasn't. But one of the sh one of the parts that was so fascinated, because my partner is um is mostly Italian, she was really taken by um how much they love olives and how they make juices. She was like, she she is that person who loves olives during the hology. So again, speaking of these fake divides, right? These these are really, especially in that region, very fake divides. And also with that part of the world with Iran extending into South Asia, again, in terms of the music that people sing, a lot of the ancient types of like almost blues singing from that region, as you probably know, is like all tied into this sort of Persian history as well.

C. Derick Varn 1:41:10

Right. Yeah, I mean, I I'm I'm fascinated with it. I'm you know, I I can't like I'm also fascinated with Islamic history because I lived in the Middle East for a while, about two and a half years, roughly. And my own ethnic background is like I said, I'm I'm white because I'm white passing. I think if you're white passing, you're white, but I don't I don't play the like I'm not really white game. But my ethnic background is like half Scotch-Irish, half North African, a little bit slowly Bulgarian.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:43

Yeah, it could be like you know, Logic, the rapper. You can do that a little bit, be very upset upset when someone mentions that you're well.

C. Derick Varn 1:41:51

That's what people I actually do think that's why people will sometimes think like I got mistake for mixed race a lot, but be like if people will joke that I look like Sean King, which I actually kind of do, but I've heard that from on the show too, yeah. Yeah, it's well, but people who've never watched that show when I was before I got remarried when I was dating would sometimes say, Yo, you look like Sean King, and I'm like, Yeah, but I'm a different ethnic makeup. But what when I move around in the Levant, people always assume I'm just a pale version of whatever the local ethnicity is, which is which is interesting to me. Because I I also think that like we like to pretend that we can tell the difference between ethnicities, but we also like when it gets to find stuff, we really can't.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:41

Well, even other like for me, I get confused, even though it doesn't make any sense sometimes. I get confused for just Hispanic or Latino by other Latinos too, in certain context. Again, the context matters. So if you're in DC, like if I'm in central Jersey, that doesn't typically happen because there's a lot of South Asians there and Arabs there, and other Latinos would know that. So, like, oh, you look a little different. You're definitely, you know, uh Latino South Asian too. But in other contexts, like in DC, when I used to live there, there was this mostly Hispanic area that I live near. One of the I think, yeah, in the Northwest, if I remember. And I think people at the stores and everything just assume I spoke Spanish. It wasn't the first time, and obviously I've gotten the brunt of the uh being seen as Spanish in the wrong way, too, with cops discriminating. So it's really bad and bizarre. But it did happen to me funnily a few weeks ago, too, in Central Jersey for the first time, where I went to this uh gas station in New Brunswick to get my, you know, to get my gas before I drove home from work. And the guy there, he's a daisy guy, I think he's Punjabi, and he's just like, it's a great scene because he's like sitting at the chair. I made sure to park next to the pump that he's at, and he's just casually singing and uming a song on YouTube while he's watching the video, and he just says, Hey amigo. So he just for the first time, I was like, damn, it's hilarious. And I texted my friends, like, this dude just called me amigo. So, yes, you're totally right, even amongst our own. He was just like assuming, oh, it's New Brunswick, because it's very of all the areas in Central Jersey, New Brunswick is also very, very Hispanic. So it was just funny. I thought it was very it was a more benign version of that that I that I enjoy.

C. Derick Varn 1:44:17

Yeah, there's a bad version, which is getting profiled by cops. And I will also say when I go through well, when when I was coming from the Middle East and I would go through Department of Homeland Security screening, which I I should probably be careful, I get specially screened every time I go through for reasons that I don't know. Um, but I would shave my beard and make sure they knew I spoke Hebrew and not Arabic. And they would leave me, they really treated me instantly better the moment and it was and I would like to say it was just white. No, it was not, it was not just white officers, and so it's just something that you know it's it's a weird gift that I have, even though like I would say my my my background's more than half Scotch-Irish, but I do have North African ancestry and and heritage, and I'm also weirdly intermarried into both Korean and black families because of where we are in the south. There's historical reasons for it, but like it is what it is, and I I bring that up for communists because I do think on national liberation, people sometimes think what we're being blood and soil, but I you know, I don't think most of us are at all. And like when it comes to my my always I always tell people about when I stayed in in Egypt, but also I've encountered Palestinians everywhere in the world, even when I was in Korea. And even when they knew I was Jewish, but you know, partially ethnically, I have never been mistreated. I mean, there was some digging around about my opinions about Israel, and I was like, Yeah, don't worry, like I'm not like I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:04

And that's more like it's more like a feeling out of like how what we can talk about, yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, like and also with the whole treat, like Palestinian. I mean, it's a it's a diaspora, unfortunately, for a reason. And just like with earlier diasporas, like Jews and such for a reason, and of course, you have with the Palestinian people, I think they're one of the more highly educated diasporas, too. So every single Palestinian person I've met has been educated in various ways. Other, you know, you have instances where the communities are like business owners, small business owners, and such. But yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't just strike me as also that they would just know their stuff, other than being like, we just want to make sure you're not, you know, uh working for the other side, yeah, and just like you know, actually not really being cool with us when we when you try to be ourselves, I guess.

C. Derick Varn 1:46:51

I say that because I got less anti-Semitic back pushback from Palestinians than I did even from some other Arabs in the region. And I I I don't I'm not trying to like sanitize things here. When I when I was there, you know, I had always cared about Palestinian liberation since probably I understood it in the late 90s when I was in high school. Uh, but I really started to care about it because when I was in Egypt, and this was an upper middle class girl, but I taught many uh kids whose had aunts and uncles die and the silent intifada, the the the silent one, the one that everyone forgets about, and the aughts, and they saw it. And so I had I had a bunch of Palestinian kids who had PTSD that I was teaching in middle school, and so and also Yemeni kids too, who were well off enough to be in to be refugees in Egypt and have the access to a private American school. So I'm these are not poor kids. I don't want to make it sound like I was hanging out with like you know, olive farmers or whatever, but the amount that they could tell me about what they saw, and these were kids who were just were kind of there's they're they're like 11-year-olds, they're not they're not particularly politicized, and it was devastating, and that was before things. I mean, this was right as things were getting really bad in Gaza during that period between the kind of mini Palestinian Civil War and uh the the I I have a sense of where you're talking about now the timeline. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this was these kids would have seen it in like 2008, 2009, 2010, and then I would have been talking to them in 2014, 15, 16. So they saw it as very little kids, and they were very traumatized. And so that and weirdly, also, I dealt with a lot of Palestinian Christians in Mexico because there was a Palestinian Christian diaspora in Mexico uh that's kind of not talked a lot about, which I find it kind of interesting because they're actually kind of a big part of like North Mexican culture.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:05

Also, a decent number. Well, obviously in Chile, which is a large common, but there's also one, I think a friend of mine who I knew a few years ago, he had mentioned I think there were some Palestinians also in DR, Dominican Republic, too.

C. Derick Varn 1:49:22

Yeah, but there's a fair amount of Palestinians here in Salt Lake, which is not a place you would expect to find them. Oh, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:28

Oh, I yeah, I definitely did not know that.

C. Derick Varn 1:49:29

Yeah, like like like I showed up to to Palestinian Solidarity protests, not because I thought the protest mattered. I actually want to be clear on that, but because it would matter to the Palestinians who live here. That's why I showed up. Like it was to support them and help them grieve and show them that they weren't alone. It wasn't because I thought we were gonna do a damn thing about what the Biden administration was doing.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:51

But that itself is kind of useful at the beginning of something because I you know, yeah, I I totally get what you mean. But I did not know there was even a sign, I didn't even know I don't know much about Salt Lake other than my assumptions.

C. Derick Varn 1:50:02

What a weird well, I mean Salt Lake is weird because it's um there's not a lot of black people here, so you're right about that. There's a lot of Latin people, and there's a lot the the Mormons are weird on refugees. So while there's a strong MAGA contingent here in Utah, there's also this weird Mormon anti-MAGA contingent that is pro-immigration. I think partly because they think they can convert certain migrants to the church, but they will let people come in even even if they're not. Like the it the Mormons will help them out even if they're not, out of I think like partly out of PR, partly out of their own guilty history for being white supremacists until the 1970s, explicitly. Which I find funny that they care in the evangelical. don't but it's so there is a large Muslim like like there are several there are several I live up the street from

Acceleration Fears And Nuclear Stakes

C. Derick Varn 1:50:57

a Shia mosque and is mostly Persian like it's like up the street from me and then there's like three halal markets one of which is Arab two of which are Persian and no there's four and there's one that's Somali and so there are Palestinians here too and there's also a lot of Middle Eastern Christians here again as refugees. So it's it's interesting Salt Lake is 60% white 40% other but the other is just mostly Latin but then it's Polynesian and like Levantine and and African I mean our black population here tends to be African not African American and so it's it's just an interesting place to live as far as that goes. You know unlike Portland which is the rightest metropolitan area in the country people sometimes think that Salt Lake is more so uh now I will say we are surrounded by a sea of white but as far as the urban areas we are a whole there's a whole lot of Southeast Asian and a Levantine influence here. And my neighbors are Latin and Asian for the most part like I live in the brown part of town so that's where I can afford I always say like I'm a bad omen sadly if I show up in your neighborhood white people are being pressed out and your property values are about to jump I hope you own because if you're renting your life is about to suck but they just have posters everywhere of like have you seen this man is like you know just making sure and keep track of him he is a he is a bad omen you just you just look through windows sullenly like just shake your head just walk away yeah well I mean it it is kind of sad because every neighborhood I've moved in in the in the Salt Lake Valley has been gentrified and then gentrifies me out of it too so like it's like I can't even afford to live there let's go to the next neighborhood so and it's a very the dynamics here are very interesting for that regard and I I think it's something that people miss about a lot of non-metropole parts of the country like you know we always think of New York and and new and you know California as multi-ethnic but most of the urban areas even in deep red states are super multi-ethnic it's one of the things I like about Mo is like dealing with like the ethnic uh composition of say urban Texas yeah Houston area yeah and I also learn how sprawling it is and how oh god wild wild it is and how like it's sometimes just a large New Jersey in a sense an unyielding sprawl actually Houston and Jacksonville Florida are two of the most sprawling areas in the country.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:49

Jacksonville I didn't know that that's wild Jacksonville is geographically a very large city it's not in population but like an area it's just this large sprawl into the shit swampland of of the of the the Georgia Florida border um I do and I do want to say really quickly to people who haven't watched this show this is not me because there's a lot of good critiques on on media from I Mix What I like Dr. Jared Ball that I go on shows with him often every couple of weeks because we're doing a project together and he has really great guests on his show Samantha Yusuf and others who do obviously also point out that a lot of times these shows existing is also like you said with the Larry Ellison thing is just to also reflect hey don't be so upset we're you know things are still normal enough where diversity is respected. But the interesting thing about Mo and the contradiction of it it it is the second season is a really strong season of a show I think and the and the last episode of second season I really do think it was I think an A24 production is is really excellent and showing some of the ridiculousness also like the dark I don't say dark comedy but the yeah a little bit of the dark comedy of living in the settler colonial state because I think in that and that it's not it's not a spoiler but there's a there's a scene where Mo's brother who they kind of hint has is neurodivergent and he's older he's still he's a an adult he goes off from their ancestral home in the West Bank and he comes back with a little white Jewish child who's also I think neo divergent or something and just like globbed onto him which just shows the humanity of it in a sense but then they're just all freaking out like you would if you're black folks in the south doing like what the how do we deliver this kid back because if we do go to the Jewish side the Israeli side they're just gonna kill us and think we kidnapped him and this boy's not speaking. So the show is good because in the end they so to I just want to give a a little touchstone about the show because Mo does deliver the child back. It's done in a little bit humorously because it's like how do I deliver the kid like hey just go to your dad because but the interesting thing they do show the ruthlessness because in that show in that scene is when the the white Jewish guy who has a very thick Brooklyn accent intentionally comes out with a with an AK instantly holding against Mo's head and being like what are you doing? So the show is good at doing those things but again reflected of cultural and how we've talked about how it's also very limited do not get it twisted writing and art is not is neutral. It is neutral like Roboto Bogliano like uh the famous author who's speaking of Mexican but he's Chilean having fled to Mexico the one of the things he wrote often in his books that I liked and sometimes I took a step back from it is that he would constantly refer to various characters of his who are artists in their own right but who are fascists. Like there's one one book where he focused well there's one character he's Nazi literature in the Americas is just also just about that. Yeah I look exactly on and on and on just profiles of it. But there's also one famous character of his he's written in several stories where it's a a Chilean air Air Force pilot who does I think pretty much Jackson Pollock so it's like a dig on the post a Jackson Pollard esque uh paintings I think from people's like blood or something or or something bizarre but it's accepted in Chilean society at the time because he also shows how degraded it's become where it's not really batting an eye against the psycho. But all to say he's an artist and he does bizarre things and he's in the military so art is not supposed to be just inherently good which I love the fact he did because again there's this whole essence of you know like like Stephen Colbert is like the when the comedians speak up that's when you know it's an issue. No dog Stephen Colbert still sucks. Like he he is right to condemn some things but he's not your answer. And in fact he is always going to be still a stooge for any corporate authority that finally gives him that check. So I think that's a really yeah I just wanted to mention Bullano because that's where a lot of the I think people need to read because he he really attacks that myth really head on. I would if people yeah I mean I yeah how much of Bulliano was aimed at Borges but anyway I mean I I I do have to admit that like some of my famous Latin American authors you dig into them like oh god they're fascist are there are like fascism was the line but they went right up to it etc etc and for Borges like you said like he he well he weirdly condemned Argentina's fascist alignment and he rightfully condemned it as anti-Semitic which they were or anti-Jewish which they were right with their leadership during World War II in post but then he was fine with Pinochet because he himself was you know deeply aligned with some of its Christian mythology and ideas around that too. But I think he also Bogliano did attack because I think Bogliano when he so Roberto Bogliano is Chilean he was Allende a a young man who support Allende and then he was captured after Allende was murdered by the coup and there were two guards who knew him from school who released him because they're like yo dude you're gonna get tortured and shit because you're on the list so he escaped to Mexico where he continued to bird dog various authors' book readings. And I think one of them was Mario Vargas Sosa who himself became a rabid anti-communist and and very arch-conservative so he also took him down notch and he just constantly would bird dog him and and instead read his own poetry. And then eventually he he first was a poet and then he started to write novels to make money. And you know he died unfortunately I think at age 50 from smoking and then cancer but or something like that. But yeah you're right he when you dig far enough which is what exactly he was doing all your not everyone but a large sum of some favorites have very deplorable politics and have more problematic like Naruta has more or less good politics but it's not all good. Like go ahead some of the poetry too is bizarre like I I I read some poetry from him and you know the way like I think of him you know still as a great poet but a lot of his love poetry which people really like usually you know talk about the woman as this girl as this you know very like you know unthinking young person so it's like it's it's it's weird right it's so it's oh yeah I was gonna say like he has decent labor politics but Naruta has pretty terrible gender politics it's not it's not just in his poetry there's some sexual

Bolsheviks, World War, And Survival

SPEAKER_03 2:00:43

in his memoirs it's like oh did he just admit to sexually assaulting someone like it's I didn't know that it's ambiguous oh so yeah I know everybody be careful with authors that you love because you'll find out something disturbing about them sorry um but uh I did not know that okay wow yeah another weird factored into my bizarro I was a I was a lot I was a white collar I'm a blue collar kid in a white collar world so I floated around academia for a while particularly when my job sucked it was just a way to like justify making less than 35k a year but when I got my MFA one of the first things I did was I speak enough Spanish to translate poetry so I started translating Spanish poetry in English and I started with Nicanorpera and then moved through Octavia Paz and I did some border haze but what one of the things I started doing in in and doing these translation works was learning about Latin American authors and literature and and and being like oh this person's interesting they had left in politics oh no there's still something problematic here like over and over and over again um and and I'm sure like people will find such things about me one day if I'm ever that important but I do think you know I want to invite you back to talk to because we've been going for two hours I want to invite you back to talk about literature and the role of of art in social reproduction because I've always struck people as I kind of infuriate both sides of this debate because like I said with you it's downstream of economics. But my my friend Danny Bessner has always said culture doesn't matter and I was like I don't think that's true or no one would be invested in propagandizing it and they sure as hell are so I don't think it's determinative I don't but I do think it matters as part of social reproduction and cultural hegemony I also don't think cultural hegemony cultural hegemony does not overcome economic hegemony I want to be very clear on that no that's the thing to Besner's point if there's because I I really like his work so I'm just assuming here but yeah one is right to argue that because I I if if there's one thing I do get frustrated by is when people start to substitute economic for cultural hegemony which I'm annoyed by but I also like you said when it comes to the CIA after post-World War II they were noticed like Francis Stone Saunder had written about how you know for a considerable few years after World War II you know there was a lot of people also saying we want to have Soviet culture because the Soviets also defeated fascism and they were seen as the more articulate brand of a new cosmopolitan cosmopolitanism. You know so the CIA spent lots of money in devising you know tours of Africa with Louis Armstrong for instance you know like there's a reason they did that because they want to showcase America's democracy as also valuable to the newly decolonized states in Africa and Asia. So I I agree with people like Bessner who would probably say like yeah you shouldn't replace economic control and violence with culture. Like culture does not come first it's first violence and economic control. And then in my view culture not comes later later but it's parallel to that but it becomes a thing that justifies certain systems or keeps people certainly contained or believing in myths right like we're talking about evangelical populations or other groups. But culture does matter right in terms of counter counterinsurgency which is a topic again that millennials killing capitalism has done a lot which is you know the idea of like you you need to create mythologies that divide even those who would actually benefit from an alternative rule. But again I think it's really really complex but I would love to do that because for me I write poetry you know I've I oh I wanted to uh plug this because I think Haymarket is having a sale but like for instance my poetry is in uh uh there's an AAPI anthology of poets published by Haymarket called We the Gathered Heath I think that was published in late 2024 but I'm in it so I I publish poetry I publish fiction it's a big part of also what I do I picture myself as a writer but I'd love to come back and talk more about it because also there's certain books I think we could dissect because there's a book by Brandon Taylor I don't know if you know who that is he's been a focus of mine because he's like this literary star sort of like he's a critically acclaimed person although there have been some very valuable critiques of him from people who've also published reviews of his book but he's usually viewed as a literary darling and he's written some books about his latest book is tackling politics and art. And I've read it and to be quite blunt I think it's bad and it's also very fascinating when you read the reviews of that book how it gets seen as good versus just I think it's terrible. Like I think the writing isn't good what it's trying to do from an aesthetic view. And I also think its messaging is exactly suggesting oh there there's no such thing as black radical art there's only the individual it is very bizarre this book. And when you read the interviews of him because I spent some time watching some of his uh podcasting his pod listening to a podcast he's very defensive about issues around art and race and politics in a way that's quite bizarre. So things like that. It's called oh it's called Minor Black Figures. So it's a book it's meant to be a discussion piece about race and in my opinion it is a book that does it terribly and he's a very famous writer so he doesn't matter it doesn't matter what I say but I'm fascinated by those kind of people and by those kind of uh books if you you know yeah yeah I I am I am being very careful here not to step on the toes of anyone that I literally know because they live in the same city as me.

C. Derick Varn 2:06:50

But there is a book that I feel equally maybe more ambivalent than I think it's actively bad by Paisley Rechdal who is believe in Asian American uh author but you don't necessarily know that from looking at her and she works at the U. She runs the the the the uh poetry MFA here and it's a book on appropriation and I was deeply ambivalent about it for reasons that the I mean I'm deeply ambivalent about the category of appropriation in the first place but like even what she was saying I'm like even from even from just accepting as legitimate I was ambivalent about it. I find these I find this interesting one of the things that one of my dirty habits that you might find funny is that I come from the time period where we all like David Foster Wallace and I still have a softbot for him but I always thought that his political writings were stupid just outright stupid and that it because of that his moral critiques like an infinite jest don't land and actually I think infinite like my big thing is I've actually read infinite jest and I think it's not a great book. And I like David Fosteross so it's it's interesting to think about this stuff the role of of art because the one thing that I think we are living in right now is the social reproduction crisis is also like just like the art scene is decimated and you've had a lot of like if you look at a lot of a literature like I don't know if you think about like like the New Sincerity movement or whatever the like the pre-dame square New York hipster literature scene I know a lot of I knew some of those people from my MFA not I don't live in New York but I knew I knew some of those people because they were interested in my poetry and it was amazing how quickly they jumped politics. So they were vaguely you know in the early aughts and the aught teens excuse me they were vaguely lefty and then like three fourths of them as soon as Dime Square came around became reactionaries. And it seemed mostly to get attention um as a way to differentiate yourself in the art scene and I I have been fascinated by that and I'd love to talk to you about it because the other thing I've noticed is reactionary aesthetics actually looks a lot like left-wing aesthetics from 20 years ago now and other people have noticed this too and I would love to talk to you about why that may be what political economic reasons might be driving that.

SPEAKER_03 2:09:35

I know we can talk about it culturally and like oh they're all just posers but like that's kind of true of all artists let's be honest yeah I I agree with you I would love to talk just one there's also the valuable discussion we need to have also just again with the the end of history the end of history the end of history as nauseum when it comes to art because art is now I I can speak from the fact of as a writer the fiction part which I am fascinated like the kind of novels that are coming out so one novel just really quickly people know this one it's martyr have you heard of that one yeah I've read it I did not like it and I find it fascinating how it gets on all these lists and how at the end it also is a Broccoli because the thing that that tick that took me for a loop was when I when the book was sort of shown to me and I mean like advertised I was taken in by the fact that the book it's not a spoiler where the how the book starts with the American shooting down of the Iranian airliner. I thought wow that's a that's a thing they're mentioning in a mainstream book a really popular book it seems and a and a poet turned fiction writer. So I was in love with that idea and I think we should talk about that book too or some other examples I think that book too explains also a little bit of liberal to left politics that also gets trapped because you can talk about this thing that was actually not really I wouldn't say not admitted but basically said no we don't do that stuff and then of course George H. Wush saying we won't apologize for that stuff which is pretty horrendous. So you have a book that apparently has a very radical edge to it but then if you have you read that book by the way actually it's on my shelf I don't you can read no no you should read it because I'll say this that plot point is wasted

Settler Colonialism And Broken Solidarity

SPEAKER_03 2:11:24

it's wasted in a way that I've I personally found quite disgusting in terms of what the book is the book turns from a systemic thing that you think would be there to a a father and son who's you know working class Iranian too to just a self-involved individual story. So forget the plane the plane disappears the plane basically just becomes the background noise. So what I'm fascinating so then explains to me why Barack Obama has been he's blurbed on the book I believe or has talked about the book on many of the lists. Because to me having an American president be like yeah dope book that also admits to us killing innocent Iranians in a plane. But if you read it I no you have to read it it's exceptional it's exceptional in how it did that like I am actually in awe of how he was me how he did that. And I actually find it kind of disgusting he was able to end up where he does in the narrative and it speaks to what I think is neoliberal literature.

C. Derick Varn 2:12:30

You'll see you'll see I would love to I'd love to discuss that with you I often find I mean like I often hit this with Don DeLeo a little bit too when you have these people who scout like big systemic events in a very like direct and open way and then we still end up in like Individual bourgeois subjectivity land somehow.

SPEAKER_03 2:12:51

Mao 2, I think. That's exactly what I'm thinking about. That's the exact. I'm still reading it because I had to stop because I was hitting that wall where I was like, oh, I don't I I think this book is trying to be deeper and subversive, but it's really like the the Don DeLeo, his writing is good. Like his writing is smooth. It it's it's really interesting. But then, like you said, this book is about crowds, right? So it's again about me the mania of crowds, which is again the same stupid liberal critique of anything. The masses, the masses, the masses can't be trusted. Are you serious, Don Delilo? I'm I'm 40 pages in. I'm 50. Oh, I'm 80 pages in. Is this really the message? And there's some weird, yeah, there's some weird airport.

C. Derick Varn 2:13:40

This is that heroic noise, which is yeah, no, it's weird. It's it's one of these things where you start hitting the the limits of bourgeois self-critique because I mean, because that I mean, one, the bourgeois doesn't seem capable of self-critique anymore, so why we don't get as much of this literature. But two, like, if you read Don Delillo, like white noise is a great parody of a lot of Reaganera politics and and self-absorption. But when he tries to do it on a geopolitical scale or anything beyond, he you just end up in the same liberal palms you always end up in. And that's it's super frustrating because with Delilo in particular, I'm like, you're almost there. You're you're almost there, but you you won't go there. I mean, and it's unlike say Pynchon, because Pynchon's actually dealing with the collapse of the new left and the drug war, and he and he actually is not psycho, like he's not even particularly that psychologically interested in his characters, to be quite frank.

SPEAKER_03 2:14:44

As well, they're like, This is Mr. Big Shod Big Suit Fascist Pants or something. Yeah, right.

C. Derick Varn 2:14:50

Yeah, it's it's you you thought if you think PTA was being on the nose, you need to read the source material. Um which actually I think helps uh helps him because he doesn't have a premise of psychological realism at all. But this is a side note. I I I would also talk about how like one battle after another is a liberal's version of a leftist movie, and I like it. I think it's good as that, but it needs to be understood as that.

SPEAKER_03 2:15:22

Because it is the same, the narrative is so fascinating. I've I've watched bits of it, and I know I do this silly thing where I listen to summaries of movies and go to the podcast and listen to people I trust and see what they have to say and blah blah blah. But the movie is exact, I think that's a really amazing description because it goes from the systemic of a radical movement and then some you know fumbling and stumbling from this white man to the daughter, spoiler, going to a protest over ice. Right. So it's it's like it just takes this weird inverted approach about what should be a political evolution to like a de-evolution.

C. Derick Varn 2:15:59

It also can't tell the difference between the 70s new left and the post-Occupy left, it treats them as if they're the same, they're the same, they're the same, it treats them as the same, and it also does this.

SPEAKER_03 2:16:10

Well, the main critique that people have is and rightfully so, is also how it this is the thing that makes me super angry about the film and disgusted, is also how it PTA, you know, I don't like them for this because and also this is also on the actress. I forgot her freaking name. I know who what her name is. The main one who plays the the mom.

C. Derick Varn 2:16:33

Oh, yeah, no, ah shoot.

SPEAKER_03 2:16:35

I forgot her name.

C. Derick Varn 2:16:36

Well, here's the thing about that movie. Yeah, like it basically presents what is a borderline racist stereotype, it has other characters of color who are not, but as as the main character who's a traitor, but then at the very end, she just gets to write a note that may or may not be real to apologize to her daughter and family makes everything okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:16:55

That is exactly so it's like a very inverted liberal-esque dream of the Daniel Patrick Monahan report. But also, also, she oh my god, what is her name? Also, she she, as talented as she is, said, I think at one interview that she based her character on Asada Shakur. Asada Shakur never did any of that and lived. So the other thing about the the the the Pantheon of Revolution, they always have to be miserable, right? All these movies that even liberals want to, you know, say put dipped her toe in, like you said, exactly that. It's a liberal idea of a leftist movie, even if it's as liberal left as you can go, it still says, no, no, the real Asada Shakur, we can't do a movie on her. Because again, if you do a real movie about her, like an actual portrayal, it would be too much for the big wigs to actually accept. Because what is what happens? She actually escapes detention after leading an armed resistance, and then she goes to Cuba and lives to a good age, which is not what the story they want. Instead, they wanted this story with this woman saying, Oh, I'm basing it on her. Are you really? You just literally caricaturize the thing I worry about in some sense is somebody watching that and being in love with the movie because it it touches a nerve, right? And being young enough, because I've done it when I watched Malcolm X from Spike Lee, I was like, I knew who Malcolm X was, but I never seen his entire life. I was like, fuck yeah, this is super cool, right? And fortunately, I grew up fast enough to get more of the internet and realized it wasn't always there was better things he's dead and said than done. But for someone young now, who and there's no revolutionary movement, they could they could possibly be like, oh, so Assange Shakur was a person who slept with uh white nationalists and screwed around, which is not true, which is a complete disgrace to her actual legacy, right?

C. Derick Varn 2:18:41

I mean, it's funny because I'm thinking about liberalish movies that make a radical point by accident, such as Network, which has a critique of like the new communist movement in it. But its critique is a lot more, even though there's obviously a caricature of Angela Davis in that movie, but its critique is a lot more like actually on the nose to like media stunts being pulled by the rather underground, and it's actually accurate that the CPUSA like opposed that shit, but then they're like, But to get views, would you like tolerate it? And it and it puts like that character in an impossible position eventually. That's a smart critique of some of the weirdnesses of left politics in the cul de sacs. And I actually don't think any of what's in one battle after another ends up being all that smart about. In fact, you where I do think the movie's actually smarter is the internal problems of the right, but like I'm like it's actually a good understanding of how the right cannibalizes itself and whatnot, but it is not a good understanding of the left at all, and it it seems to think that it is celebrating it and critiquing at the same time, and like you're not really doing either because the the left that you're presenting is a caricature of two different left periods of left-wing thinking and left-wing activism that you're conflating. There

Culture, Literature, And Liberal Limits

C. Derick Varn 2:20:02

were no Black Panther shenanigans after after Occupy Wall Street. What the fuck are you on?

SPEAKER_03 2:20:10

Well amazing. Also, PTA Paul Thomas Anderson, whatever his fucking name is. He also, when he's asked directly about certain politics on the winning stage, he says, Oh, it's not now's the time to party. Like I think he said that at the recent Oscars. So he's very also himself on the nose of like, I will I am I am also fascinated by this move by this movement stuff because he is legitimately fascinated. And also, again, I'm getting these critiques by people better than me, like again, Jared Ball, uh Matumi Gant within our gates, and also Brianna Joy Gray. She had an amazing panel to talk about because she was also citing the the which I was kind of uh hinting at, which is the complete sexualization of the black women because then the whole image of her shooting AK with her belly out. Again, I'm always connecting to what she said in interview, so it matters, like saying I based it on I was inspired by Asada. Asada, when she was in jail, and she was really sure she would spend the rest of her life hopping from jail to jail in Middlesex County, she was almost like crying herself to vomiting, thinking about her child, right? Like being out there on her own, being with her grandmother, being with her mom. That's not this is not that same person. This is a caricature. And also the other interesting thing is he uses people, Thomas Anderson uses people. I think there's the one woman who goes into the bank and screams and everything. She's not a real actor. He just uses people who are themselves just, you know, happen to be black folks in a certain like milieu of like artistic expression, and he just takes them and puts them in this movie. But it's like, dog, you could still find also black actors. Like, there's a certain kind of ventricalism and aesthetics again that he's fascinated by, which speaks to the blending of the eras. Like, how do you like when I like okay? I'm like, what is going on? So are you saying like if if only two, if there's a Black Panther party that was this rev, this this epically underground? But it just it and and then you you you realize that he's fascinated by it, he fetishizes it, and then when he wins the award, they ask him questions about I think things going on, I forget exactly what. And he says, Oh, we're here to party, like in his sardonic voice. And I'm like, wow, dude, you yourself are a character of a of a person who'd be in a movie but liberal movies. You know what I mean? Like if I wrote a character about a liberal director who wants to be self-involved and radical, I would write a character like him and have a scene where he's asked that question and be like, we're just here to party. Like it was too much of a caricature of the whole expression. And to our earlier critique and what you said, art itself is on fumes in the American context. The people themselves, the bourgeois, are also running on fumes because the next alternative society that needs to happen needs to happen. And until then, they're again like touching their hands against the cardboard scenery and are like, hey dog, I just made this really cool movie where it had some shooting, you know, and some killing, you know, and some armed resistance, you know. But what does it really mean when the main director still says, I just want to party? I know I keep bringing it up, but it's it's devastating. It's I'm like, I didn't even care about the movie, but I'm like, really, dude? You couldn't even say a simple line of like peace or unity. So yeah, it's ridiculous.

C. Derick Varn 2:23:28

It's nuts. Well, I'll have you back to talk about this. We'll talk about your your essay on your substack combat literature on writing and revolution. That's what based off. I'll also read The Martyr between now and then.

SPEAKER_03 2:23:38

And if you can, try to read, yeah, read Martyr and try to maybe read Meyer Black figures if you can.

C. Derick Varn 2:23:43

Okay, I can try to. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:23:45

Because it's a it's a you will love it. It is a fascinating book.

C. Derick Varn 2:23:51

Yeah. I think on that note we'll end and I'll I'll be in touch. We'll try to get you back on the next month or two. Take care, CD.