Failed State Update

Mark Laxer is an author and former follower of the cult leader Frederick Philip Lenz. He broke away from Lenz some time ago, only to realize recently that Trump's base is going through the same process that he went through as a member of a destructive cult.

Mark has written about this in two books: Take Me for a Ride: Coming of Age in a Destructive Cult (1993) and his latest, Rama Trauma Trump: I Left the Cult and Now Look What Happened.

Mark Laxer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marklaxer

Read Rama Trauma Trump for free: https://www.ramatraumatrump.com/

Joseph L. Flatley website: https://www.lennyflatley.net

Joseph L. Flatley twitter: https://twitter.com/lennyflatley

Failed State Update Newsletter: https://lennyflatley.substack.com

MUSIC: "(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang" and "Right Wing Pigeons" by the Dead Milkmen

I have a trio of great guests on this episode. And we'll need to talk to a lot of people if we're going to get to the bottom of what's happening in Portland with the feds, and the kidnapping, and that sort of thing. KRISTIAN WILLIAMS is the author of a number of great books, including Our Enemies In Blue. He's also a police abolition activist based in Portland. He's able to give us some perspective on who the feds are in the city, what they're up to, and any broader implications there may be. JUNIPER SIMONIS provides a firsthand account of what it's like to be arbitrarily detained and then released for doing nothing illegal in the general vicinity of the feds. And lastly (but first on the episode) freelance journalist GARRISON DAVIS will give us the skinny on what it's been like to be on the frontlines of the Portland uprising since the beginning. It's a nebulous story, but I think these three individuals will get us a lot closer to what's really going on.

Kristian Williams's website: http://kristianwilliams.com/

Juniper Simonis on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JuniperLSimonis

Garrison Davis on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hungrybowtie

Joseph L. Flatley website: https://www.lennyflatley.net

Joseph L. Flatley twitter: https://twitter.com/lennyflatley

Failed State Update Newsletter: https://lennyflatley.substack.com

MUSIC: "Aftershock," "Wasteland," "Neuromancer" and "Shock to the System" by Billy Idol

Has "cancel culture" hit the UFO scene? Probably not. But MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) has had a few controversies over the years, including a recent one where the State Director of Vermont and Rhode Island lost his position for some really messed up Facebook posts. To shed some light on what's happening there, I spoke with Eric Smith, a MUFON field investigator based in Rhode Island. He says that the UFO scene is getting increasingly younger and more progressive — and that MUFON doesn't seem to be keeping up. We'll also speak to Andy Gittlitz, host of The Antifada podcast and author of I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism, a book about a strain of communism that isn't afraid to incorporate more outlandish ideas into its philosophy. Tune in and find out what "fully luxury automated communism" is anyways,

Eric Smith on Twitter: https://twitter.com/EricJamesSmith

Eric's website, Strange Observer: https://strangeobserver.com/

Andy Gittlitz on Twitter: https://twitter.com/spaceprole

The Antifada on Twitter: https://twitter.com/the_antifada

I Want To Believe available *now* from Pluto Books: https://www.plutobooks.com/9781786806208/i-want-to-believe/

What if Aliens Met Racists? (Newsweek): https://www.newsweek.com/ufo-sightings-mufon-2018-john-ventre-alien-extraterrestrial-905060

NOTE: I've fixed the wonky audio 30 minutes in and updated the file.

I've always been fascinated by the weird, parallel Christian media universe, so for this episode, I figure we'd consult the experts. Boys Bible Study is a podcast known for its hilarious and insightful reviews of faith-based movies (a fair amount of which involve Kevin Sorbo somehow). In this episode of Failed State Update, I will be joined by the Bible boys: Ash, Julian, and Scott, as we discuss The Reliant (2019). This film ostensibly stars Kevin Sorbo and Eric Roberts, but in reality, it's just two hours of kids camping in the woods. Their time is spent cowering from a vague, Antifa-like threat that has taken over the cities and whining about God. It's a look into a parallel reality that's only becoming more prevalent in this country every day.

Special thanks to J.G. Michael of the Parallax Views podcast for the film recommendation!

Boy's Bible Study on the web: http://boysbiblestudy.com/

Boy's Bible Study on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/boysbiblestudy

Boy's Bible Study on Twitter: https://twitter.com/boysbiblestudy

Joseph L. Flatley website: https://www.lennyflatley.net/

Joseph L. Flatley on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennyflatley

NOTE: I've fixed the wonky audio 30 minutes in and updated the file.

I've always been fascinated by the weird, parallel Christian media universe, so for this episode, I figure we'd consult the experts. Boys Bible Study is a podcast known for its hilarious and insightful reviews of faith-based movies (a fair amount of which involve Kevin Sorbo somehow). In this episode of Failed State Update, I will be joined by the Bible boys: Ash, Julian, and Scott, as we discuss The Reliant (2019). This film ostensibly stars Kevin Sorbo and Eric Roberts, but in reality, it's just two hours of kids camping in the woods. Their time is spent cowering from a vague, Antifa-like threat that has taken over the cities and whining about God. It's a look into a parallel reality that's only becoming more prevalent in this country every day. 

Special thanks to J.G. Michael of the Parallax Views podcast for the film recommendation!

Boy's Bible Study on the web: http://boysbiblestudy.com/

Boy's Bible Study on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/boysbiblestudy

Boy's Bible Study on Twitter: https://twitter.com/boysbiblestudy

Joseph L. Flatley website: https://www.lennyflatley.net/

Joseph L. Flatley on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennyflatley

From my other podcast, The So-Called Prophet From Pittsburgh about a UFO cult in Arizona and its leader, Gabriel. Joshua Lilly (spiritual name: VanMon) was brought into the Global Community Communications Alliance as a kid, kicked out as a teenager, and joined again as an adult. Practically his entire family is still in the group. In this in-depth conversation, Josh relates the path that drew him to Gabriel of Urantia (twice). We also discuss cult members' motivations, cult "mind control" techniques, how the group gets its money, and the spiritual elitism in our culture. At the beginning of the episode, I share a little bit about how the GCCA is handling the COVID-19 crisis.

The So-Called Prophet From Pittsburgh: https://anchor.fm/pghprophet

Joseph L. Flatley website: https://www.lennyflatley.net/

Joseph L. Flatley on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennyflatley 

Stuart Schrader is a Lecturer/Assistant Research Scientist in Sociology at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing. In this episode of Failed State Update, we talk about the little-understood facts that the United States is an empire, and that what our police do at home has a striking resemblance to what our military does overseas. Of course, this has some very serious implications for the current resistance movement that's been so busy on the streets of America since the murder of George Floyd.

Stuart Schrader's website: https://www.stuartschrader.com/ 

Stuart Schrader on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stschrader1

"Wanted: An End to Police Terror" by Stuart Schrader: https://www.viewpointmag.com/2020/06/09/wanted-an-end-to-police-terror/

Joseph L. Flatley website: https://www.lennyflatley.net

Joseph L. Flatley twitter: https://twitter.com/lennyflatley

Failed State Update Newsletter: https://lennyflatley.substack.com

MUSIC: "The News" and "The Network's Going Down" by Carbon/Silicon

For this episode, I spoke with two pretty smart dudes. First off, Jared Yates Sexton (a political analyst, associate professor, and author of the forthcoming book American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People) discussed authoritarianism, both in the Trump White House and in the hearts of too many of us. We also covered the role of conspiracy theories in... well, almost everything. After that, my interview with Shane Burley (author of Fascism Today: What It Is And How To End It) covers fascism, anti-fascism, and the George Floyd Protests. This is good content to consume if you want to pretend you've read the above books.

Jared Yates Sexton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JYSexton

Shane Burley on Twitter: https://twitter.com/shane_burley1

Joseph L. Flatley website: https://www.lennyflatley.net

Joseph L. Flatley twitter: https://twitter.com/lennyflatley

FAILED STATE UPDATE (the newsletter): https://lennyflatley.substack.com

Music: "Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos," "Brothers Gonna Work It Out," "Lost At Birth," "Fight The Power," "Party For Your Right To Fight" by Public Enemy

For fifteen years, Jim DeRogatis was the pop music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. It was while there that Jim and his colleague Abdon Pallasch became the first reporters to expose R. Kelly's sex trafficking cult. His book Soulless: The Case Against R. Kelly both exposes what rich people get away with in this country and gives the reader a first-hand account of the work that investigative journalists do. I think it's one of the most important books of 2019.

Jim DeRogatis on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JimDeRogatis

Soulless: The Case Against R. Kelly: amzn.to/32x1MOP

Music: "City of Crime" by Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd

There's an uprising goin' on. But while the oppressed are uprising, and the cops are knocking heads, right-wing thugs are waiting to take advantage of the chaos for their own fiendish ends. And these ain't your daddy's racists: they believe in meme magick and wear aloha shirts.

In this episode of Failed State Update, I talk to two people who have devoted some serious time and effort to understanding Q Anon, the Boogaloo Bois, and other absurd modern manifestations of the radical right. 

Mike Rains is the host of the Poker Politics podcast, for those who want to get into the weeds of Q Anon analysis. 

CV Vitolo-Haddad is a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies the Alt-Right, Boogaloo Bois, and other fascist creeps.

Poker Politics podcast by Mike Rains: https://soundcloud.com/user-961354561

"Make a Whole New Religion: QAnon and the Age of Trump" by Mike Rains: https://medium.com/@pokerpolitics/make-a-whole-new-religion-1a0f0eae3f43

Mike Rains on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PokerPolitics

 CV Vitolo-Haddad on Twitter: https://twitter.com/notcolloquial

Joseph L. Flatley website: https://www.lennyflatley.net

Joseph L. Flatley twitter: https://twitter.com/lennyflatley

FAILED STATE UPDATE (the newsletter): https://lennyflatley.substack.com

Music:

"United" by Throbbing Gristle

"(Every Day Is) Halloween" by Ministry

"Love Missile F1-11" by Sigue Sigue Sputnik