The author Naomi Klein is probably best

known for her scathing critiques of

corporate power in books like no logo,

the shock doctrine, and this changes

everything. But in 2023, she published a

pretty different kind of book. During

the pandemic, Klein noticed how much she

was being confused online with a

different Naomi. Naomi Wolf, who in the

'90s was known as a feminist author and

journalist and Al Gore adviser, but who

had in the co era become one of the most

prominent right-wing conspiracists. Mass

murder has not just taken place, it's

still taking place, disabling people

into the future, sterilizing the the

next generation.

>> That experience and the interest in Wolf

that it created for Klein became the

foundation of Doppelganger, a trip into

the mirror world. This is a hard to

summarize book in a way. Books I really

like often are. Uh it could only have

been written by one person at one moment

in their life. But what Klein was

interested in was the ways of the

pandemic was scrambling traditional

political coordinates. Creating a

political coalition that didn't seem, at

least by the logic that most people

understood, of politics like it could

continue to exist. How could somebody

like Naomi Wolf, a pro-choice feminist,

become political allies with Steve

Bannon? How could RFK Jr., the founder

of Riverkeepers and attorney for the

natural resources defense council become

a core part of the MAGA coalition. So

Klein began following Wolf, her

doppelganger, into this mirror world of

the new MAGA right. She began to sense

its rules and its concerns and its power

and the way it was seducing people, its

allure. She saw it a lot more clearly

than most liberals and leftists did

because at least in 2023, if you weren't

choosing to follow it, very easy to miss

it. And even easier if you're an

institutionally minded liberal leftist

to convince yourself that it didn't

matter, that it didn't have power. But

now that world, the mirror world, it's

our world. Now its leaders are our

leaders. So I want to have Clan on to

talk about her book and about what she's

observed over the first year of the

Trump administration as that new

coalition has tried to hold together

while governing. Clown of course is a

columnist for the Guardian and a

professor of geography at the University

of British Columbia. And she's a

forthcoming book co-authored with Astra

Taylor called End Times Fascism and the

Fight for the Living World. And I want

to note we recorded this before the war

with Iran. As always, my email, Ezra

Kleinshowny Times.com.

>> Naomi Klein, welcome to the show.

>> Thank you.

>> So, your book revolves around two

concepts, doppelgangers and mirror

worlds. And I thought maybe good to

start by just defining them.

>> Sure. Well, so a doppelganger, um, it's

a it's a German word that means like

literally translated like a a double

goer or a double walker. Um, and it's

the idea that out there somewhere um,

you could bump into somebody who looks

just like you um, and isn't you. And

it's that sort of um that that that

uncanny vertigo um that that addresses

the the strangeness of that which is

most familiar, which is yourself. Um,

mirror world is a term I use um to

describe the relationship between the

sort of liberal left world and the kind

of far-right world and the ways in which

when people are ejected from our world,

they end up in a world that is sort of

the ex exact mirror of of where we live

in in sort of like replica social media

platforms. the same but different kind

of doppelgangers, doppelganger

publishing worlds, doppelganger

narratives of the narratives that we

tell ourselves. And um I was trying to

uh find language for a discomfort I I

had in myself in noticing the ways in

which we'd become incredibly reactive in

the communities in which I live where we

were sort of defining ourselves against

what was happening what they were doing

over there as opposed to being guided by

legible values and beliefs.

>> How did you get interested in the idea

of the doppelganger?

>> A few different routes took me there. It

was deep in the pandemic. Um, and I was

feeling kind of speechless, like I just

didn't want to write the same kind of

thing that I have written over and over

again. I think I was politically sad.

And I realized that for the first time

in my life, I had time to kind of

experiment with writing in a way that I

haven't had time in my adult life. Um so

I started working with a writing teacher

and was just sort of playing with form

and in the back like in the background I

was having this strange experience where

um in this time when we were all being

represented exclusively by our avatars

in the digital sphere I started being

confused on a massive scale with another

non-fiction writer named Naomi Naomi

Wolf and it sort of became the one of

left Twitter's favorite jokes at the

time and So every time I would like go

online to get some simulation of the

friendship and community that I missed

years, you know, this was like sort of

well into the second year of the

pandemic. Um, what I would be confronted

with was all these people sort of

screaming at me about something that

another Naomi had done. And at first I

was very frustrated by this and I didn't

think it was related to this writing

work that I was doing. But then I

realized that this destabilization of

the self was a really interesting and

fruitful mechanism to explore a bunch of

ideas that I've been obsessed with,

including the ways in which the idea of

having a personal brand is basically

destroying everything in our culture.

And I've been wanting to return to that

theme, which was actually the subject of

my first book, you know, that I wrote in

the late 1990s and came out in 2000, No

Logo. Um, I've been wanting to come back

to it, but I couldn't find a way to to

write about it that didn't feel sort of

hectaring and lecturing and I didn't I

wanted to write about it from inside.

Like I wanted to write about it from

like being implicated because I don't

think people can hear the critique if

they just feel like you're just

lecturing them as if you are not in the

same polluted waters of um, you know,

self-performance and self-p protection

that we're all swimming in. So I

thought, wow, I have a branding crisis

here on my hands. This is really funny.

and also maybe interesting. So, it

started as an essay and then it just

grew.

>> Let's do a minute on No Logo because I

think probably a lot of people listening

haven't read that book because that book

was a big deal. I mean, I I remember

that book and it being kind of left

cannon as I was growing up and becoming

a writer. So, so what was the argument

of of No Loggo? What were you sensing

then and what were you trying to

pull up into visibility about the world?

It was, I think, first and foremost, an

attempt to understand the rise of these

multinational corporations that were

more powerful than governments and a

shift that was going on in politics. I

was sort of doing an end run around

governments and it was going directly

for the multinationals, you know,

whether Nike because of sweat shops in

Indonesia, you know, or Shell because of

oil spills in Nigeria. And it was it was

um so as a young reporter I was

following these stories and I was

interested in that but I was also

looking at another element which was the

way that these multinationals were

divesting themselves from the world of

things um where they were all just

declaring that they were no longer in

the business of making products. They

were they were selling a brand an idea.

They were sort of transcending. And what

that meant in practice was that they

didn't need to own their factories.

their factories were all outsourced.

There were contracts and the real work

of production was the production of

image and that was affecting um youth

culture. We were all being told that we

should be our own brands. Um, which

didn't really make any sense in the

1990s cuz this was pre social media. It

was pre pre iPhone. You know, it was

clear like we had the in no logo I wrote

about the first um celebrities who were

themselves lifestyle brands like Michael

Jordan and Oprah. And this was like a

new concept that that an individual

could be a brand. But the idea that a

non-famous person could be a brand made

no sense to us because we didn't have

marketing firms. It it also feels to me

like it's of a of a politics that has

really

weakened. I mean, I think of that era

and adbusters

and you go back earlier in the 20th

century and fear about what advertising

is going to do to our minds is very

present in the '60s and the '7s.

And so this sort of anti-advertising,

anti-branding,

anti-consumer politics that was very

very strong I feel like in the '90s

feels pretty absent today.

>> Yeah. because because we really could be

our own brands, right? So, you know, I

think it's important to understand that

there's a kind of a desperation in the

fact that we have all embraced this. And

this is why, you know, I was saying that

I wanted to find a way to write about it

that was from inside of it because I

think we all feel really attacked if we

point out that um, you know, it's why

online everyone's constantly accusing

each other of being performative, which

I think is today's version of selling

out, right? Um, but everybody knows that

everybody's else is being performative

as well. So, I think we have to find

compassion, you know, in this discussion

because people are just trying to pay

the rent and it's not working. like it's

not enough to pay the rent.

>> So, I want to bring in the back in the

other character here, which is Naomi

Wolf. Intellectually, politically, who

is she?

>> Her sort of heyday was was um the 1990s

with a breakthrough book called The

Beauty Myth. It came out when I was uh

an undergrad and it was a book about uh

you know it had a thesis that young

women um were being forced to add a

third shift to the work of there's

already like the the shift at work and

then the shift at home. But on top of

that there's a beauty shift. And so it

was about how um women were being held

back from advancing in um the workplace

because they were having to put so much

work into being beautiful.

>> Why has the conflict on the sexual

battlefield suddenly come out into the

open? And can the long fraud fears about

date rape and harassment ever resolve

themselves? Joining me now, bestselling

author Naomi Wolf. Um, I think that men

are in crisis because women are not

sitting passively as the evil backlash

hits us over the head where it's hard

for us to understand the nature of our

immense power. But I believe that since

the Hill Thomas hearings, we've seen a

kind of spontaneous uprising among women

in this country that is shifting the

balance of the power between the sexes.

>> She was the face of what was called at

the time third-wave feminism. It's a

controversial term, you know, whether it

actually was a wave or not. Um, and you

know, she wrote a bunch of bestselling

books. wrote a book called Fire with

Fire. Um she I think one of her high

high low points was advising Al Gore's

presidential uh campaign on how to reach

women voters because she was very

prominent feminist at the time. Um and

yeah, so that's that's who she was and

now she is someone quite different.

She's one of these people. I mean, this

is one of the reasons why I wanted to

write about her because I think there's

so many people, it really accelerated

during the pandemic where we would sort

of say, "Whatever hap, what happened to

that person? Like, they used to be this

and now they're something else or what

happened to my uncle? Like, he's fallen

down the rabbit hole and he has all

these extreme views." So, at a certain

point, Naomi Wolf, you know, really

went, you know, just started posting a

whole lot about different kinds of

conspiracy claims. Won't call them

theories. I think that does a disservice

to theories.

>> Hi everyone, it's Naomi Wolf here at

Daily Cloud and um I'm doing something

that I uh have been promising for a

while.

>> Um so you know it was everything from

like taking pictures of clouds and

claiming they were cloud seated.

>> I began to notice a very distinct

pattern that um these emissions these

trails would I'm not going to say be

lame down because I don't know for sure

what the motivation is. I've got some

hypothesis, but they would clearly stay

there, not dissipate, spread, and create

cloud cover. Um, and block the sun

>> to uh claiming ISIS beheadings were

crisis actors.

>> They're not yet independently verified.

The only source for them early on at

least was this very questionable site

called site site which gets half a

million dollars from the United States

government a year and is run by these

Islamophobe establishment types

>> like kind of um Alex Jones type of

stuff. And then during COVID, she went

all in on a range of COVID related

conspiracies from the virus itself as a

bioweapon. The market for the CO

injections has kind of come and gone

because people are aware now that it's a

deadly and sterilizing injection, but

the side effects live on

>> to the vaccine as a bioweapon to the

vaccine verification apps or a Chinese

communist plot to subdue the West. The

vaccine passport platform is the same

platform as a social credit system like

in China that enslaves a billion people.

So she um you know at a certain point

during the pandemic she was on Steve

Bannon's show almost like every day for

a couple of weeks and she has become a

really big star on the on the right. you

described when you were defining mirror

worlds, the the mirror world in in a way

I found interesting, which is that it it

exists partially for when you are

ejected from one world into the other

and you find many of the same concerns

just somewhat

perverted, distorted, warped. And I

thought that word ejected was

interesting because one of your thesis

about Wolf is that there was a moment of

ejection and disruption in who she was

before that required her to reinvent

herself even if just for psychological

recovery. What was that moment?

>> Yeah. So the year year before the

pandemic in 2019, she published a book

called Outrages. Um, and she very

famously made um a a a basic a

foundational factual error uh in that

book where she misinterpreted a phrase

in the historical record. The the book

dealt with um uh persecution of gay men

in England. Um and she misunderstood the

term death recorded um where she thought

that it meant that they had been killed

by the state. And so this was exposed

live on the BBC.

>> Death recorded. I I was really surprised

by this and I I I looked it up. Death

recorded is the is what's in I think

most of these cases that you've uh um

you've identified as executions. It

doesn't mean that he was executed. It

was a category that was created in 1823

that allowed judges to abstain from

pronouncing a sentence of death on any

capital convict whom they considered to

be a fit subject for pardon. I don't

think any of the executions you've

identified here actually happened.

>> Well, that's a really important thing to

investigate. What is your what is your

understanding of what death recorded

means?

>> It became one of these moments of mass

online ridicule. Um just public shaming.

It's like I hate telling the story

because it's like every writer's worst

nightmare. Yeah. Um, and yeah, so you

know, every time she something like this

would happen to Wolf, I would, you know,

people would say thoughts and prayers to

Naomi Klein or like they would be sort

of part of the joke that I would get

blamed for it. So I would had a sort of

front row seat on it. I saw and and it

was really ugly. And I do think that

that happens a lot with with the people

who we ask that question of of like why

did they change in the that way we'll

often find some kind of public shaming

um you know or something that they

something really wrong that they did

right like it's not just that we were

mean to them. It's it's that they did

something maybe unforgivable um and then

got really shamed for it and then they

were embraced in this in this other

world where facts matter a lot less.

Well, well, this is where I want to

follow you into the the other world as

you follow her into the other world. And

and you have a a line in the book I

thought was a really sharp description

of something. This is about what is

going on after Wolf is banned from from

Twitter for conspiracies. And you write,

"This is the irony of liberal Twitter

celebrating Wolf's seeming

disappearance, at least until Musk

welcomed her back. Since most liberals

and leftists don't watch or listen to

Bannon or the other shows where she wolf

has become a regular, they thought she

had evaporated as a cause for concern.

RIP death recorded.

This is a bit like kids who think the

world disappears when they close their

eyes.

Tell me about that other world you walk

into.

>> Well, first of all, I should say that

world runs our world now, right? So this

is a little bit, you know, I don't think

that that we have the same questions

about it

>> now as we did then because we can't

ignore it now, right? And I remember

when the book first came out, I was

interviewed and the interviewer asked me

why I was giving these people attention

and it was such an arrogant question

like as if like we control all the

attention and you know and and we were

just blessing them with our attention by

by looking at them and writing about

them. And I really felt as I was

listening to Vannon that I was watching

a a a new political coalition cohhere.

Um he was calling it MAGA plus at the

time. This is you know 2021 2022. Um and

you know I had seen Bannon in 2016 peel

off part of the Democratic coalition

particularly white unionized men um who

were angry at the Democratic party over

free trade deals and bring them over to

Trump. And I was watching him do this

with, you know, suburban white women who

traditionally voted Democrat. And he

understood that Wolf as, you know, he

would wind up the introduction.

>> Okay. Our guest is Naomi Wolf. Naomi,

you you came you started as a feminist,

a huge writer, um, best-selling author,

public intellectual, lionized by the

left and the established order and the,

you know, the the the conventional

thinking. Uh, and now you're you're kind

of a renegade and everyday a rebel.

>> She used to consult for Al Gore. She,

you know, she consulted for Bill

Clinton. And that was part of, you know,

that was that was part of her appeal was

that she could she that I think it was

central to to to her appeal was that she

could potentially deliver this

constituency that Trump really was weak

with. And I think Bannon understood that

these sort of angry co moms were

potential like potential um new a new

part of his coalition the the plus one

for MAGA and she was very important

during the pandemic. There was a study

that I think NPR commissioned to try to

understand one particular piece of

medical information that spread early on

which had to do with this idea that

vaccinated people shed particullet onto

unvaccinated people and endangered their

health and possibly made them infertile.

And there was this whole thing about

how, you know, women were bleeding

between periods from being around

vaccinated people. And you know, the

women were making videos on Instagram

saying that that they'd kicked their

husbands out of their beds because they

weren't going to sleep with vaccinated

people anymore. I mean, things were

going wild. And so there was this um

sort of data study that was done to try

to find the kind of ground zero for this

particular piece of medical

misinformation. And they found they

traced it back to to a lot of it back to

Naomi Walsh. She was a real vector for

this piece of misinformation because she

is associated with women's health and

women's bodies. And then I started

listening to all her talking to Tucker

Carlson and talking to to Steve Bannon.

And when I would mention to a friend

like I heard this on Bannon like you

know I was there were things that were

happening that were making me very

worried about elections. You know I was

watching the whole show. Instead of

saying like what like asking like what

did you hear? They would say like why

like why are you listening to that? Like

why would you do that? Like almost like

I had transgressed. One thing I found so

interesting about this book that I

didn't expect when I opened it up is how

much it is a book in the background

about the practice of politics and

certain kinds of political engagement.

And something I felt came up again and

again was

in different ways liberals and the left

became very powerful in institutions

over the past 20 years. And you know

this is before the mirror world

basically took over our world but

powerful in the media, powerful in

academia. And so this uh powerful in

government and so this idea that you

could just shun people out right that

that that would be an effective way of

creating social change in politics took

hold. And it wasn't a crazy idea. And

there are ways it has worked in the past

and and ways it it worked even then. But

it it missed

how much is happening outside the

institutions and how the they had become

their own institutions and networks and

media structures and that kicking

somebody out of your institutions meant

you couldn't see them anymore but it

didn't mean they were gone. I feel like

so much of this is just about social

media and I know that it's sort of

slightly hackneed but all of this is

playing out on platforms right and I I

even think that something like the mute

button or the block button uh has a huge

amount to answer for just in terms of it

being almost habit forming like we get

used to this idea like this person's

annoying me I'm going to just press a

button and make them disappear right and

I think that that idea that this is how

we relate to people spills offline as

well

>> it created a tremendous space in which

power could be built sort of in private

with different rules

and then I feel like it exploded

into dominance

after the election and you see how much

it's became a a legible network that is

now arguably the default network in in

American life. I mean, this is the thing

about doppelgangers. In doppelganger

literature and film, the storyline,

usually what happens is like you've got

a protagonist and then somebody comes

along who's a double of them. Um, and

they're so good at performing you, like

so much better at performing you that

they eventually overtake you. So, at the

end of at the end of Dustki's The Double

is protagonist gets getting cartered

away and sent to an asylum while the

double just takes over. So, I think

that's kind of happened in our culture

is that the the the the doppelganger is

doppelgangers at the wheel like the

doppelganger won and they usually do um

in most of these stories.

>> The one thing that I have kept thinking

about and that I feel like your book

gets at really well is the unnerving way

the unnerving relationships

between things that are really happening

and things that we sort of pushed away

or wanted to ignore is ridiculous. I

think the one happening right now is

Jeffrey Epstein, which I have found it

disorienting

how much it tracks

the vibe of QAnon. Not every claim of

QAnon, it's not, you know, John F.

Kennedy Jr. is still alive somewhere and

but you are dealing with a like a very

powerful person with a

incredibly powerful and broad elite

network and child sex trafficking at the

center of it.

And for everybody who dismissed QAnon,

which I think, you know, again, I don't

believe in QAnon, but there it is eerie

how there was this thing that was like a

mirror world or QAnon was a mirror world

version of Jeffrey Epstein or something.

How have you thought about that?

>> I I'm really interested in in the work

that conspiracy culture is playing like

in in how it distracts from conspiracies

that are real. And I never doubted that

there was that that that there was a

conspiracy that that that Epstein was

involved in. That's been clear for a

long time. You know, I say that in the

book that is that the reason why people

are being drawn to conspiracy culture is

that we we all feel that this world is

rigged against us. Um and power has

concentrated and wealth has concentrated

so much um over the past half century

and the impunity that follows from that

is so extreme. Like I think it's really

important not to just dismiss it as a

conspiracy theory just because it has

the structure of QAnon. I think KQanon

has the structure

of

it's sort of like it's it's why

anti-semitism was called and is still

called is the socialism of fools. It's

it's sort of like it kind of explains

how capitalism works except for it

twisted and it's just a cabal of rich

Jews. Um, but you know, we need stories

to explain our reality and we need them

and so do the super elites need them.

Um, and you know, one of the things that

the files do is is provide a window into

the stories that elites are telling

themselves to justify how much wealth

they have, how much power they have, you

know, and that brings us to their

obsession with eugenics and this idea

that they are sort of better stock than

everybody else. That's a story that can

explain why you have so much so much

wealth and power. And you see Epstein

talking about that quite a lot in the

emails.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Um so I think it's

inextricable from the fact that we live

in a time where

um you know if you're rich enough you

think the rules don't apply to you. You

know whether that's Elon Musk just sort

of laughing when journalists ask him for

any accountability and he used to send a

poop emoji and now he sends an auto

reply that says mainstream media lies.

like it's just this defiant I don't have

to answer anymore. I don't have to be be

accountable to any rules. Trump embodies

that. Um, and I think Epstein really

embodied that for a lot of very powerful

people, including people like Bill Gates

who presented himself as, you know, the

one of the more progressive um, caring

billionaires, right? I think it seems to

me that like Epstein was like the after

after party for Davos, right? Where it's

just like he was the guy who could who

who could make it all happen. Um,

>> and it is clear to me that his impunity

was an object of envy.

the the way he lived.

>> Yeah.

>> That

maybe they didn't all know

that there was child sex trafficking at

the center of his world,

but the way in which he didn't play by

the rules. He had this huge house. He

had this island. He had this wealth. He

had all these connections. He seemed to

be completely living in this unabashed

way was what made him an object of envy

to other rich and powerful people

>> and and part of the attraction of Trump,

right? I mean, Trump is that he's the

80s guy, right? Who always had the

beautiful women around him um and never

took part in any of that woke

capitalism, quote unquote, you know? I

mean, he never pretended to care about

any of the things that these guys were

publicly claiming that they cared about.

Um, and now don't even bother claiming

to care about, whether, you know,

climate change or, you know, equity,

diversity, and inclusion. And so, I

think that, but I I see these things as

really interrelated because I say the

past 50 years because this is this is

the sort of counterrevolution against

the New Deal era, right? This is sort of

what I've wrote about in the shock

doctrine. This is the the revolution

against regulation and and and it's the

era of privatization and unmaking of the

state and it really produces the

oligarch class, right? So, it's

important for the people who are the big

winners in this to present themselves as

a kind of a replacement for the for for

the state, right? And and that's where

it's really interesting that that that

Maxwell was central in launching the

Clinton Global Initiative, for instance,

because I think the Clinton Global

Initiative was a place for many years

when the Davos class got together and

said, "We're going to fix it. We're

going to fix I'll fix schools. You fix

poverty, you know, um and you fix

malaria and and we've got this. You

don't really need governments anymore

because we are so socially responsible,

right? and we're going to we're going to

use our wealth to uh to fix the world.

But I think that what we what was

actually happening is is that you know

power is for using. Um and the whole

point of becoming this rich is is to not

have to play by these types of rules.

And I think what what Trump has unlocked

and what what Epstein always was, right,

was you don't really have to play by the

rules. Like here, come to the island and

and and we'll actually do whatever we

want. We're rich and we're keeping it

and we're not going to pretend anymore

and our workers can suck it and welcome

to the new world.

>> What have you made of

Steve Bannon's closeness to Jeffrey

Epstein? So here here you have somebody

who certainly presents himself as the

populace, a person trying to break and

destroy the elite conspiracies, but

Bannon was very close to Epstein after

functionally everything was known.

There's this text message where Bannon

sends Epstein a link to a Daily Beast

story about Epstein's quote alleged sex

ring and the information coming out

about that. And Bannon sends this to

Epstein

and Epste doesn't answer and a couple

hours later Bannon's like, "So my guy's

going uh to Israel. Can you meet with

Aud Barack?" Right. They just like move

right on. So here you have this guy

who's like populist,

you know, in in in the front stage and

backstage

>> is very I mean this is happening in

2019. This particular text message I'm

talking about. How do you think about

that?

>> Yeah. So I guess I should have made this

clear earlier like I think Bannon is a

terrible fraud. Um, and I think he

performs being the voice of of the

little guy and even the sort of way in

which he, you know, took on Musk early

in in this Trump administration. Um,

and claims to be taking on like the tech

oligarchs who are supposedly kind of

polluting MAGA. You know, he has been in

with his own tech oligarchs from the

beginning like with the Mercers. Um, I

like what I think about Bannon is that

he is a strategist. I think he like all

the things that we were talking about

before. I think this is just about

power. This is just about winning and he

understands that how to build a

coalition and he's strategic about that.

I I think he platforms conspiracy

theorists because he understands that it

is very useful um for people to believe

outlandish things in part because it

distracts them in in very large part

from the conspiracies that can be

proved. And so I think that the bannon

world is really in crisis right now

because of the Epstein files. It's it's

really interesting

kind of checking in on his show in this

whole period because he seems to be

largely ignoring it and flooding the

zone with other conspiracies like you

know the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to

hijack the elections in this state and

that state. I mean he's talking about

everything but the biggest conspiracy in

the world that he is himself,

you know, centrally implicated in and

implicated in ways that are really about

rearranging the political map. I mean,

he's interested in Epstein because he

thinks Epstein can help fund um the

populist international, which is weaving

together these far-right often, you

know, um fascist, openly fascist parties

in Europe and Latin America with the

United States and and you know, he he

needs a funer for this. Um so, yeah,

it's it's and so this is what we're

seeing in these files is part of how the

world that we're in right now is built.

Um, and

I mean this brings us to like what what

is I don't know how you feel about the

like is this fascism, is this not? Where

are you falling on that?

>> I think it's pretty fascist.

>> Like if you want to call it neoascis,

I'm fine with that, too. But I I don't I

don't shy away from the

>> at some point the word doesn't have any

meaning if we can't apply it to things

in the modern world. I think sometimes

you end up with words that people have

decided are so beyond the pale, racist,

fascist, etc. that they become people

stop being willing to use them because

it feels like you've moved outside of

ordinary discourse.

>> But these words describe things.

>> Yeah.

>> And I don't think you can understand the

aesthetic of Trumpism. I don't think you

can understand some of its impulses

without at least some connection to

fascist movements of the 20th century

which were, you know, everyone is

different in its own way.

>> Exactly. Yeah.

>> But I mean they there's a reason they're

all very interested in Schmidt.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think part

of the hesitancy has to do with like

really exceptionalizing

um Hitler and that like it sounds like

you're saying like if if he is fascist

he is Hitler. Um and that's that's not

what the term means. Um and there have

been plenty of fascists who weren't

Hitler. Um and you know history doesn't

repeat on a loop. It it changes. It

iterates. It compounds. Um, so but I the

reason I ask if do you think it's

fascist is is that

you know fascism is a it's a pathology

of injured power, right? Like I mean we

like it it emerges in in in Italy and in

Germany in the injuries of the of of the

first world war, right? It's it's it's

soldiers and generals and industrialists

who who are hurt, right, by the

sanctions, but but it's it's it's

powerful people who are hurt, right?

whereas like left revolutions are are

are powerless people um who are hurt and

it's these vertical coalitions that that

get built with people you know who had

sort of relative power and are losing

power. Um, but the other but one of the

things that we see in the Epstein files

are these concerns about me too about

accountabil like you know a lot of talk

about me too people going to Epstein

um because he is a sex criminal and and

and they know that and they're asking

him for advice about what to do about

the fact that you know the movement is

coming for them and and they might be

held accountable. So if we are in a

fascist moment right

then it is a counterrevolution like that

we have to understand like what are

elites revoling against like what what

who hurt them what hurt them um and you

know I think part of what they are

revoling against is that there was

starting to be some accountability like

their impunity was there there there

were a few chinks in the armor and some

of that was women who were beginning to

hold powerful men accountable

Um, and so this unleashing of the far

right is partly them protecting

themselves.

>> Well, and nothing was more radicalizing,

I think, to the techright CEO and

venture class than the feeling that

their corporations were being taken over

by the staff.

>> Yeah. that I mean Mark Andre has has

talked about this directly that the the

sense that on any given day you might

almost have a riot of your own employees

and you had lost power.

>> You know the employee bases going feral.

U you know there were cases in the you

know in the in the Trump era there were

companies multiple companies I know that

felt like they were hours away from

full-blown violent riots on their own

campuses by their own employees. He's a

bit of an exaggerator, I've noticed.

Like he

>> Well, he's he's describing the way he

things felt to him. And at the very

>> least said he was being terrorized by

the Biden administration because they

tried to regulate crypto

>> and then they just came after crypto

absolutely tried to kill us. I mean,

they just like ran this like incredible

basically terror campaign to try to kill

crypto and then they were ramping into a

similar campaign to try to kill AI and

and that's really when we knew that we

had to really get involved in politics.

This is related like the fact that Mark

Andrean sees the most mild

accountability

as an existential attack. I mean the way

he talks about you know basic regulation

for crypto or AI as terror terror I

think speaks to the fact that these are

men who came up in the 1990s you know

when I was writing no logo Mark Andre

was on a throne on the cover of Time

magazine a golden throne I believe um

you know and he was I think 23. I think

that may have gone to their head. You

know, I think that the kinds of

depravity that that that that we see in

the files is related to the it's

dangerous to lift people up and and and

treat them as gods and kings. And I

think we did that as a culture just

because people were rich. You know, the

other place where we see pedophile rings

is, you know, in in the Catholic Church.

And you know, survivors talk about the

kind of unique um horror of being abused

by somebody who has God on their side,

right? And you know, I I think that we

all we did treat well we wealthy people

as if they were gods for a while. And I

think they're angry that they no longer

get treated like gods. And that feels

like being terrorized to Mark Andre.

It's all relative, right? But this is

why I think at the heart of this is

impunity is a feeling of impunity. And

we have to start holding people

accountable. We're starting to see that.

But not in the United States. And these,

you know, these women who have come

forward, I mean, they are heroes.

They're absolute heroes. And this the

solidarity that they show one another,

the support that they give to one

another, um, you know, up against

Congress, uh, you know, up against the

most powerful men in the world. Like,

it's so moving to me. um and the you

know women journalists who believed them

when nobody else did. And this a

beautiful story. I mean it's a horrible

story but it's there's also there's

beauty in it.

>> Let me try a thought on you because I

know you're working with Astra Taylor on

a book about fascism and I was thinking

as you were talking about what kinds of

injuries create fascist movements. there

is the there's often an injury that

unites in a certain way the kind of

fascist elites you're talking about and

at least portions of the masses because

fascism is also a mass movement in many

places at many times and it's often a

loss of story. It's an injury to your

story. So you're describing the way we

told we told the tech titans a story

about them.

>> Yes. But what is the bottomup side of

Trumpism

is and is often the bottom-up side of

fascism is the

feeling that many people have, ordinary

people at times of rapid change.

>> Yeah.

>> That they are losing the story. They're

a part of the story of their own history

and how that they are the good guys in

history, not the certainly not a

checkered history. the story of their

nation and how great their nation is and

and what its destiny is. And I mean,

you're this is also a pandemic book and

to some degree 2024 era Trumpism is a

pandemic era phenomena. Uh you know,

people are very very angry about all of

a sudden being told that they're the bad

guys for not getting vaccinated or not

wearing a mask or this is a big part of

what you're describing in there. And

that was very very effectively

weaponized inside this movement.

because I know you're working on some of

these issues. I'm curious how you think

about that.

>> I mean, just to stay with the the

pandemic thing for, you know, one more

minute. This relates to the work that

Astra and I are doing and what we're

calling end times fascism, which is

really about how

there is a consciousness that we are in

what the Pentagon once called the age of

consequences, right? Like that the

forecasted

existential global crisis are now

hitting, right? It's not just like this

may happen. It's this is this is

happening and co the fact that we

experienced a global pandemic that shut

down the world simultaneously was an

extraordinary event right I think there

was a period where we didn't want to

look back at it and now we're less like

whoa like that really did happen like

New York shut down like you could walk

through time square and I was in it and

and

the I think that that shifted something

in in our brains a lot of us including

very powerful people who realize that

actually the stuff's going to happen.

Like it's it we're now in the in the age

where where it happens. And so I think

what we saw during during CO was that

that presents us with a pretty stark

choice about what kind of society we're

going to have where we we will either

have a have a much stronger state that

takes care of people. And we saw a more

robust social state during COVID. Not

enough for me. But um you know we had

governments pay people to stay home. You

know we had periods where where there

was eviction moratorum there. We um you

know had free masks and and testing like

kind of a taste of universal healthcare

in the United States. A and there is

another option and that option is screw

them. Like like this is nature taking

its course. This is callulling. this is

you know some like survival of the

fittest and I think a lot of that coming

that diagonalism of that came together

of people on the kind of new age well

wellness world who are saying I have a

powerful immune system I don't need your

vaccines coming together with like the

Steve Bannon world underneath it all was

this like I'm comfortable if this is a

cleansing if this is like the world

correcting maybe we'll have fewer people

and that'll be better for the

environment that was one story

but it really is a stark choice and so I

think you when it comes to Silicon

Valley and these sort of tech elites and

and the moment that they're in, I don't

I think even though they co was really

good for them in just in terms of their

bottom lines, I actually think that what

freaked them out more than anything was

the quiet quitting was people actually

not needing the jobs as much and and

losing that sort of boss worker power

for a while or work and workers saying

during a pandemic you better pay me more

if you want me to risk my life. So I

think that that choice of like either

we're going to have a much more activist

state and it's going to be regulating a

lot more or we're going to embrace a

world where we're okay with mass death

and the genocide in Gaza happens and you

know a lot of people showed that they

could live with it.

I think that those two events, I think

it was co in Gaza that produces the the

Trump moment and it really was about a

fear of this sort of like this fork in

the road moment and it's like either

it's we're just going to harden our

hearts and it's going to get a lot

uglier or it's going to get a lot more

activist in in terms of an activist

state and more of a kind of a New Deal

sort of state and they don't want that

because that will regulate them. you

used a term in there that I want to pick

up on which is diagonalism.

>> What is diagonalism?

>> Well, diagonalism is a term um Quinn

Lebidian and William Callison who are

both scholars of um European history.

They used that that term in a in an

essay about the German um anti-lockdown

movement early in the pandemic which is

sort of a rough translation of a German

word um which seems to be coming up

called Kurdunkan which means like

outside of the box thinking which is how

these sort of wellness influencers and

entrepreneurial kind of uh like not

traditional right-wingers made alliance

with right-wing parties. And so it just

speaks to these kind of unlikely

bedfellows like my doppelganger and

Steve Bannon like people meeting a it's

not it's kind of an alternative to the

horseshoe theory I suppose because the

horseshoe theory sort of assumes that

it's like far left and far right but I I

think a a more significant shift are

sort of liberal wellness California

types um who very focused on kind of

bunkering their own bodies um making

alliance with people who are bunkering

their national borders

What's interesting to me about about

this theory of diagonalism and and this

goes back to to pick up on our fascism

conversation to fascist movements that

there does seem to me to be a sorting

not just around religion. Reese's

religious sorting in in politics but

around a certain kind of spiritualism

back to the landism which both I think

substantively and aesthetically used to

be at least associated with the left but

RFK Jr. I think emerges as like a

central figure in a realignment and it's

something you're attentive to that you

see happening around you uh in the book

is I I guess the the role of

spirituality and mysticism and a kind of

sense of bodily integrity and wholeness

playing into this.

I think that's underplayed in its power.

So, I'm curious how you've thought about

it then and since

>> it it's true that the sort of organic

green, you know, world is more

associated with the left these days, but

it's also true that there's a fascist

lineage to it. Um and you know European

fascists um you know in the 1920s and

30s were very interested in all kinds of

you know new age health fads and but I

think in our version of it it's it's

really related to the kind of optimized

self and and you know the way in which

we can just protect ourselves in a world

that in which we don't have very much

control by purifying our bodies and um

and and optimizing ourselves in every

way and and and

yeah, I mean I don't think it is very

left. I think it's highly individual. I

you know I think I think leftists

generally survived the pandemic

without becoming conspiracy theorists

for the most part. But I but where you

really saw it was like yoga studios and

um people who you know not not to say

that so I think that they kind of coded

leftish but I don't think that they were

that political before I I agree with

this. I'm not trying to say that it's

about um hardcore communists becoming

QAnon members. I guess maybe the place I

I don't totally agree is that I think

this is more than optimized self. I

think you get optimized self types

across the political spectrum. I do

think there's something here about ways

of knowing and trust in institutions and

the the left which I'm describing here

very broadly kind of democrats leftists

liberals etc. It it becomes more

institutionalized technocratic it

believes science it believes experts but

what it ends up ejecting is people who

have profound distrust

um you uh talk a lot in the book about

RFK Jr. who is a, you know, goes from a

kind of fringe presidential candidate as

a Democrat um and is now of course HHS

secretary. But I want to play a clip

from his presidential campaign

announcement because I think it's

interesting from this perspective.

>> I'm here to join you and making a new

declaration of independence for our

entire nation.

We declare independence from the

corporations that have hijacked our

government.

>> And we declare independence from the

Wall Street, from big tech, from big

pharma, from big egg, from the military

contractors and their lobbyists.

And we declare independence

from the mercenary media that is here to

>> to fortify all of the corporate

orthodoxies from their advertisers and

to urge us to hate our neighbors and to

fear our friends.

and we declare independence from the

cynical elites who betray our hope and

who amplify our divisions.

>> What do you think when you hear that?

>> I think he's I think he's quite similar

to Bannon in that he is really good at

identifying these sort of vacuums, these

political vacuums that need to be filled

and sort of speaking into them.

I mean, one of the things I think is

just that um a lot of the people in

these coalitions can be pulled out of

them because the world that they're in

now is just non-stop grifting. Um you

know, and that goes for Bannon as well.

I mean, one of the you know, in addition

to his Epstein problems at the moment

and people realizing that the guy who

was supposed to protect them from the

oligarchs is has been, you know, trading

emails with w with with Epstein and is

part of this um whole world that they've

supposedly been taking on. you know, he

also is being sued for a memecoin that

you know, he he which I write about in

the book actually, F um FJB memecoin. Um

I won't say what it stands for. Um but

you know, it's a scam. So they're

getting scammed all the time. And the

same is true of a lot of these wellness

people, including you know, everyone's

selling supplements, everybody's selling

these seminars, and you know, the people

that RFK Jr. has amassed around him.

They're just not all of them are are are

trying to sell you something. And people

are getting ripped off. Like they're

getting ripped off all the time, but I

think he's really good at speaking to

this very deep longing

for a deeper connection with nature. You

know, he speaks really poetically about

the natural world.

>> When I was a little boy, I used to visit

the White House and there were a pair of

eastern and Adam paragan falcons nesting

on the roof. And I was a falconer from

when I was a little boy. I was

fascinated with hawks and I used to

watch those birds. It was the most

beautiful predatory bird in our country

and it was salmon pink and a white sear

on it. So it could fly 240 m an hour and

I could watch them come off of the coupe

of the post office and come down

Pennsylvania Avenue at those speeds and

pick pigeons out of the air 40t above

the heads of the pedestrians on the

sidewalk on Pennsylvania Avenue in front

of the White House. For me, seeing that

site was much more exciting than

visiting my uncle at the White House or

my father at the Justice Department, but

that bird went extinct in 1963

from DDT poisoning.

>> I mean, people feel alienated from the

natural world. And you know, all the

jokes about the bear carcasses and all

of that. I mean, it's funny, but the

reason why it has traction is I think

people like the idea of somebody who has

connections with wildness, right? I

mean, that has a powerful appeal. And so

I think this speaks to what you were

talking about before about people losing

stories, right? And

it's hard to lose a story. I, you know,

I don't feel too sorry for for Mark

Andre losing his story about the cr

about the about the um not the Did he

have a crown? Um

>> what a question to have to ask

>> the throne. I don't think he had a

crown, but he lost the throne. But when

you when you lose a story of what your

nation was, you know, I think the there

is

I think we have to interrogate these

stories, but the onus is also on us to

come up with new stories, right? And if

you just yank the story away and say

like, you know, you're an idiot for

having ever believed it and now you're

on your own, people are going to get

angry. And I, you know, that can be a

painful thing to hear, but I think we

really have that responsibility. And I'm

really moved by the fact that I see that

happening on the left. Like you know

there's a pretty harsh critiques in

doppelganger of the left. Like um

harsher than anything I've ever written.

Maybe not harsh enough for some people.

But you know a lot of it is trying to

look in the mirror. I mean this is the

thing about doppelgangers is like

they're telling you there like in

literature they're always a message

telling you a warning. Like you have to

look at yourself. There's something

about yourself that you're not seeing if

if if reality starts doubling. You talk

about your critiques of of the left in

the book and and uh and so I'll offer a

critique of liberalism which is that

liberalism has become very erid. It has

become in its

ways of knowing and ways of relating

very very technocratic and I say this is

a bit of a technocrat and it doesn't

have um I think it has really lost

something in being over time more

severed from religion but the desire for

I think politics to be able to speak to

how alienating it often feels to be

alive right now.

>> Yeah. when you're looking at your

screens and you're often very separate

from nature and and it's hard because

there's not always an easy political

answer to any of this. And I think that

liberalism in particular doesn't really

know what to do with issues that it

can't offer a policy on.

>> If something is can simply be if we

could just give you a tax credit, well,

we know what to say. But if what you're

talking about is a kind of spiritual

unease,

a sense that something is lost in

modernity, then it struggles much more.

I think it's a reason you see people

like James Telerico taking off so much.

I think there's a real hunger for

religious language again.

And but but but that one thing you're

very attentive to throughout this book

is the way that uh movements will often

abandon issues that the other side picks

up. It's like they they they they treat

the other side's embrace of something as

>> it makes that whole issue area toxic

>> as opposed to saying like there's energy

there's some yearning here.

>> How do I connect to that?

>> Yeah.

>> Yearning. How do I answer what might be

beneath that? Because often people

aren't coming to the issue because they

know what the policy solution is.

They're coming because

>> they feel something and they are looking

for somebody who helps them articulate

that feeling.

>> Yeah. It's interesting what you're

saying about liberalism and these policy

the policy solutions I mean when it

comes to the environment

the that the policy solutions often

obscure the nature beneath

what is being addressed right so if you

think about how much of the climate

discourse focused on carbon trading

right and carbon markets I mean it's the

most bloodless way to talk about the

natural world it's like taking something

that is alive and animate and that we're

all connected to and just being like how

can but how can we make it um totally

disembodied uh so you know I have a

whole critique of carbon markets but be

just beyond the policy critique there's

also an emotional critique like it makes

sense when when when we're trying to

motivate people to act in the face of

the climate crisis to start with our

connections to the natural world like

start with the fact that you know maybe

you love trees or oceans or just like

and you know That's one of the things

that I, you know, I always thought

people needed to take RFK Jr. more

seriously than they were because, you

know, I knew him from before, like when

he was a riverkeeper and and that

ability to speak for the wild, right, is

it's very powerful. We don't have many

people in public life who are able to do

it anymore. It's one of the reasons why

FDR was such a great politician. And

it's just that he he had that sort of

love of nature and you the speeches he

would make about the Civilian

Conservation Corps and how good it is

for the spirit to be out in nature and

to be and and for the you know the right

of people in cities to like experience

the forest and you know national parks

like that is really powerful stuff and

it's really healing. I mean reaccessing

that kind of politics is incredibly

important. It's one of the things I

think we did wrong during COVID. Why

didn't we like have a resurgence of

outdoor education um as opposed to just

zoom learning um that's also pretty co

safe. Where I see you know what what

you're talking about most clearly is in

the uprising against data centers

actually. It is one of those issues that

you know was being discussed more to a

degree on the right than the left. um is

one of the things that that that worried

me most when I became a you know a

regular Steve Bannon listener was that

he was always talking about

transhumanism and he was talking about

um AI and the sort of war on the human.

Um he was talking about it more from a

kind of a of a religious perspective. Um

but I think this is very fruitful

because I think there is a war on the

human going on a war on the animate

world. I think it's absolutely untenable

the amount of electricity that is being

consumed by this really wasteful way

that US tech companies are engaging in

the AI arms race where everybody's

building duplicative data centers that

they know they don't have a market for

and they're consuming um just

>> well they think they have a market for

it.

>> Well, they think someone's going to win

at the end. They don't actually think

that there's a market for all of them to

win. They're in the race stage, right?

And so they kind of believe there'll be,

you know, one or two companies left

standing, but they all sort of seem to

admit from what I'm seeing is that there

isn't like a 13 trillion dollar market

that's going to that's going to win. So

they, you know, Open AI is worried

Google's going to be the last one

standing. So they they all have to at

the same time build out these massive

data centers. And so in the communities

that are facing the you know this

industrialization

this kind of spirit like I I've

interviewed people who describe it as a

spiritual war you know that that they

you know like Amazon wanted to build

this huge data center in Tucson called

project blue of all things and people

started organizing

you know across partisan lines because

they you know when you live in a desert

you know about water and you know how

scarce it is and um it was so hard to

get information out of these companies.

and the fact that this has been, you

know, pushed by the Trump administration

so aggressively and um I like I I'm

seeing this as a really like the way

people are organizing in the face of

this is it goes beyond the data center.

It's like what is what is what is

economic development for?

>> Well, I think there's the the great

question that AI is going to pose across

functionally every level of society is

what is the human for?

>> Yeah.

>> Right. So we have trained people to act

in ways that are useful to the economy.

>> Then we create then we trained AI models

on the output of those people.

>> Yes.

>> And now we're like, hey, we got these AI

models. It can act like people acting in

economically useful ways. And

that's going to like to me there are two

very very profound and dueling questions

here. One is what are humans for?

What do we value? What do we value in

education? What do we value in in

people? And what happens if we have

under capitalism, the structure of a

society,

like spend a long time valuing something

that we're now about to take a lot of

the value away from?

>> Work,

>> work.

>> And then I was just talking with Jack

Clark from Anthropic about this.

There is this very unanswered question

of what AI itself is for. I mean, if all

it's for is replacing white collar

workers, then that's not a profoundly

inspiring vision. There's been like no

public agenda for AI. There's been no

sense of how do we orient all this

investment towards things we actually

want as a society as opposed to how to

automate a call center.

>> And both of those questions like what

are humans for, what is AI for, I think

are going to be definitional to politics

in the coming

>> 5 10 maybe beyond that years.

and right now are very very illans

answered.

>> Yeah. And I I just don't know

like who is asking those questions and

who has power to answer them because

they're they're so fundamental but it

assumes that there's any role for the

public in this discussion. Like I don't

think I don't like these data center

battles, right? And partly what they're

doing is trying to have the debate that

you're describing and they're being told

you have no role in this. That

Washington has decreed that you know

everyone's going to take their data

centers and you don't have a right to

regulate it. But the fact that they have

as much energy as they have I think is a

reflection of the fact that this is

being rolled out with absolutely no

public input. And you know a company

like OpenAI

it was such a bait and switch right? But

I mean they they said trust us. We're

you know we're we're like Wikipedia.

Like we're a public interest company.

No, you can't let the profit motive

determine such an important technology.

Oh, we changed our mind. You know,

>> so what I, you know, I think, you know,

what Bernie Sanders has been saying is

like why would we trust these companies

who, you know, don't even let their

workers have a bathroom break, you know,

to to think about not like what does it

mean to be human, but how are you going

to eat when your job is replaced, right?

like like the the the basic question of

you know caring for people like I don't

think people have the capacity to think

about what their lives are for if AI is

replacing their jobs because they're

worried about how they're going to eat

and pay their rent and they have

absolutely no indication that they live

in a society that cares at all about

that question. So until that question is

answered, I don't think we can have the

other questions.

>> Although I think we're going to need to

have them all at the same time because

I'm not sure it's going to be answered

first. Well, I think that this is a

broader question about whether this

belongs in the private sector. And I

think that that's why I don't I don't

think it does. I mean, this is much too

fundamental. Um, and these are

technologies that exist because they fed

off of the accumulation of all of human

knowledge and output. I I believe we own

them already. I used to talk to some of

the people who are now in charge of the

the AI labs and I would talk to them

about well what happens if we're living

in the world you're describing to me and

you're you're building the thing you are

telling me and it becomes that powerful

and all the things you tell me come true

like well at some point they would say

to me at some point we'll have to be

nationalized and I would scoff at them

I'd say if you get to that point there

is no way you will allow yourself to be

nationalized and I think that bet is

proving pretty true right now as you

watch people from Open AI dump money

into super PACs to fight AI regulation.

I mean, it was people from these

companies who would say to me like, "Oh,

if we ever got there, well, you know,

we'd have to become some kind of

public." But then you get there and you

have the money and you have the power,

and you don't want to become public in

that way.

>> I look, I think there is a way of

understanding the Trump administration

as a revol like a tech revolt against AI

regulation like that that that was a

major driver of the decision to bankroll

him. Um, you know, and it wasn't just

Musk, it was, you know, the crypto

regulation.

>> Yeah. The two.

>> This opens up a question, I think, about

the Trump administration and the the

MAGA movement. One of the reasons I

think this book is so interesting for

thinking about the world we're in is, as

you say, it's a book about how

this movement was built and the way

Trump and the people around him

were sensitive to issues that had a lot

of power in them, but maybe were not

already well represented politically.

And that goes for everyone from the Maha

moms to the reactionary techright

oligarchs. And so it's this movement

that is highly internally contradictory.

>> It absorbs RFK Jr. with that

aggressively anti-corporate speech and

Elon Musk at the same time. And

now we're here and it's actually an

administration and so it is making

choices. It can't be in the same way all

things to all people. And like for

instance, her choice on AI has been let

it rip, right? Try to unwind even the

ability of states to regulate it.

>> So unpopular with a base,

>> which is in many ways unpop

>> and there are a lot of things like that.

It's having to make these decisions. And

so I I guess one question about Trumpism

and and MAGA and I mean Bannon gets to

say what he wants because he's on the

outside, but is whether or not it can

sustain what are it can sustain support

given that it is now truly beset by

contradictions. And so Trump isn't it

was amazing to me how many things he was

to how many people by October of 2024.

But now it's like his sort of quantum

superp position has like cohered a lot.

>> Yeah. And he's also starting a lot of

wars because

the other thing he was to a lot of

people was somebody who wasn't going to

do that. I think what the book tracks is

how they how they cobbled together an

electoral coalition

>> that they have

>> since detonated in lots of ways. Right.

I mean, um, including the the,

you know, Latino parts of the coalition

who are really angry, like not not

everyone, but a lot of people are

disgusted by by what's by what ICE is

doing and the fact that it's just

straight up racial profiling. So, they

may have thought that it was going to

just go after certain people, but it's

going after everybody. So, it's I mean,

part of me I think it's a huge

opportunity for the left. Um, you know,

I say the left, not the Democratic

Party, because I don't think I think

it's possible to blow the opportunity.

And I think the Democratic Party's

really good at that. Um, but the other

reason why it's wor it's worrying is it

it's worrying when an autocrat who wants

to be a dictator doesn't seem to care

about re-election. So, it's, you know,

you can't just

>> Well, hopefully he can't get reelected.

>> No, I know. But he's his

>> despite his musings,

>> his own party, right? I mean it it it's

worrying going into the midterms because

he's being reckless with his coalition

and I think that should worry us.

>> One of the things that seems like an

opportunity in that is diagonalism on

the left. It opens up questions about

what is out there that has been

abandoned that at least some of its

energy can be pulled in. You were

mentioning data centers a minute ago. I

think that there's no doubt that there's

a tremendous energy in AI populism right

now and that that some amount of that is

going to have to be actually spoken to

and people are going to have to get much

more thoughtful and sophisticated in in

speaking to it. But what else is there

that you know as you've sort of thought

about this critique and thought about

what you wish had been done differently

and what you wish had been paid

attention to, you know, okay, this is

the opportunity, but it maybe requires

going into some uncomfortable

places or building new coalitions. I

think that we know, I'm not going to

speak on behalf of the entire left, but

I believe that a lot of people on the

left understand and understood,

particularly after Trump won, that we

must have been doing something wrong if

this many working-class people went to

Trumpism and if this many people felt

alienated enough by what they were

calling woke culture

um to to turn to this nihilistic

politics. And so, you know, my friend

Kiang Yamata Taylor um you know was a

professor at Princeton um historian you

know one of the things she said

immediately after the election is we

have to build a more welcoming left and

I think about that phrase a lot like

welcoming what does it mean to be

welcoming you know and I look at what's

happening in Minneapolis um and the sort

of um you know what Adam Surro called

neighborism describing that movement I

mean neighborism is such a welcoming

idea like and it's just this it's not

jargonfilled, you know, it's not a

you're not throwing a whole bunch of

isms at people and like creating a sort

of huge litmus test for how you can join

the movement. You're just saying we're

all neighbors here. Wherever you're

from, if you're if if you're here, we're

gonna we've got your back, you know, and

we're going to express that in all these

different ways, whether it's like doing

laundry for people who who who can't

leave their homes, you know, or or

dropping kids off at school, you know,

or the, you know, the images we've all

seen of people trailing ice and and

filming them. I mean, these are just

acts of like neighborliness and

welcomingness and just a sort of there's

a simplicity to it. And then when I look

at this the campaign that Mum Donni ran

here in New York, you know, I think that

it had the best of what we of what we

saw in ourselves during CO of just like

I want to see the people who make this

city run, you know, that and I want to

valorize them like you know and he made

this wonderful video um about the night

shift, but it was like he just like went

out in the middle of the night and just

like talked to taxi, you know, went went

talk went to LaGuardia and to the taxi

line and just interviewed um uh cab

drivers.

>> For for South Asians growing up in New

York City, taxis were one of the ways we

would see ourselves as part of the

fabric of the city.

>> Thank you, brother.

>> Thank you. As much as taxis have been

celebrated, as much as they've been

woven into the most prominent

>> examples of what it means to be a New

Yorker or the films and the books that

we all love about the city,

>> I watched as did many New Yorkers as

driver after driver was trapped.

>> Thank you, brother.

>> Thank you.

>> Debt page and their struggles were

simply overlooked by politicians early.

>> It's time to also speak to New Yorkers

for whom the work day starts at night.

Yeah,

>> it was just like let's remember like

it's not just during a pandemic that the

working class holds up New York City.

You know, everyone is so cynical about

those early co days where people clapped

for healthcare workers, but

I'm going to just be very corny like I

actually think there was something

really beautiful about what was being

expressed and like insisting on seeing

the people who make the world work, who

hold the world up. Now clapping is not

enough. They also deserved wage

increases and sick days and all kinds of

things they didn't get. But this is what

I mean by like that fork in the road

that CO represented. Like there there

could have been a breakthrough for labor

rights, you know, and all of the

discussion about who essential workers

were and all of that. And I think that

was very threatening to a lot of people

and that's why we're in this fascist

alternate timeline. But what you see

with the Mamani campaign is that didn't

go away. You know, 100,000 volunteers.

That is incredible. And it was all just

people talking to their neighbors. It

was another expression of neighborism,

right? And that kind of work, that kind

of just talking to your neighbor. Like

you you you've got it's it's not the

it's not the work of jargon. It's not

the work of it's it's like what can we

find to bond over? Like what's our

quickest fastest bond? And this is the

other kind of doppelganger that I try to

get at the book is like we all contain

doppelgangers in ourselves. Like we are

both this and that. Like the thing about

politics is that it can light up

different parts of ourselves. you know,

you can have a politic that encourages

the worst parts of yourself and you can

have a politic that says like, "Hey,

let's be that other part of you, you

know." Um,

but I do think that what Mum Donnie

showed was one way of doing that, one

way of of I think he got 10% of of

people who voted for Trump. Um, 10%'s a

lot in in a federal election, but you

have to do it with economic populism.

You know, Trump promised to bring the

jobs back. He promised to address cost

of living and if Democrats aren't

credible in making that promise

themselves,

then I don't think that they will be

able or or they'll be able to harvest it

in one election cycle and then it'll

backlash again. I I mean I think climate

action has to come back. You know, it's

nowhere in the political discussion and

that's not tenable because we are in a

climate crisis. So, we have to find a

way of talking about climate. You know,

I've used the phrase eco populism to

think about, you know, like even

something like free public transit,

though that's a municipal issue

points to the fact that the climate

movement made so many mistakes. Like why

didn't we make free public transit a

climate policy, you know, it is a

climate policy, gets people out of cars,

get, you know, we can have electric

electrified transit. Um, and it

addresses cost of living and it makes

life easier, right? And so I think that

we need to have, you know, we need to

focus on those types of policies. But

the other thing I see happening

is

we are becoming afraid of our phones.

And it's really scary that this is like

the the merger like the Silicon Valley

merger with the Trump administration

means that these devices and these

platforms that sold themselves as our

liberation, you know, first we found out

that they were tracking us to advertise

to us. But now we find out that they

have integrated with the Trump

administration all kinds of ways that we

don't fully understand in terms of what

data was taken, you know, through Doge.

um you know what Palunteer is doing but

what is emerging in real time is that

there are profiles of us um and AI is

superpowering this and I guess what I'm

saying is that people like are deciding

to touch grass both because they like

grass and also because they're af

becoming afraid of these devices that