Know Your Enemy

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In the week-and-a-half since we last offered you, our beloved subscribers, the highest quality election punditry around, a lot has happened: on the Democratic side of the ledger, "The Podcasters' Coup" succeeded and Joe Biden has stepped down as the party's presidential candidate; at least for now, the nomination appears to be Kamala Harris's to lose. Republicans, meanwhile, just wrapped up their carnivalesque Convention, where Ohio senator J.D. Vance was unveiled as Donald Trump's running mate. And, of course, looming over it all was the assassination attempt on Trump in western Pennsylvania only days before the GOP gathered in Milwaukee.

Did Vance impress, and Trump charm? Did the assassination attempt change the race, or—as some credulous journalists ludicrously asserted—Trump himself? Where does the presidential race stand? Are Democrats in disarray? It doesn't seem that way, now, but does Harris have a real chance? Your hosts take up these questions and more!

Read:

Josh Boak, "Biden’s legacy: Far-reaching Accomplishments That Didn’t Translate into Political Support," Associated Press, July 22, 2024.

Ruth Igielnik, "How Kamala Harris Performs Against Donald Trump in the Polls," New York Times, July 21, 2024.

Tim Alberta, "This Is Exactly What the Trump Team Feared," The Atlantic, July 21, 2024.

Ian Ward, "The Seven Thinkers and Groups That Have Shaped JD Vance’s Unusual Worldview," Politico, July 18, 2024.

Matthew Sitman, "Will Be Wild," Dissent, April 18, 2023.

Susan Sontag, Against Interpretations and Other Essays(1966).

Listen:

The Ezra Klein Show, "The Trump Campaign's Theory of Victory" (w/ Tim Alberta), July 18, 2024

Last week, as Israel continued to prosecute its eliminationist war against Palestinians in Gaza, an eclectic group of right-wing bigwigs gathered in Washington, DC for the fourth iteration of the National Conservatism conference — convened by Yarom Hazony, an Israeli-born writer, activist, and former speechwriter for  Benjamin Netanyahu. As our guest, historian Suzanne Schneider, explains, Hazony aspires to export Israel’s model of illiberal democracy and dispossession to the nations of the world. And if the embrace of NatCon by American conservatives is any indication, he is succeeding. 

Nations, for Hazony, derive their legitimacy not from the consent of the governed (which, for Israel, would include disenfranchised Palestinians in the West Bank) but from God, who designated the land of Israel as the home of the Jews. All nations are born of divine covenant, not consent; political community is based on unchosen and inherited obligations extending outward in concentric circles of coercion, from the nuclear family, to the clan, to the tribe, and so on. This slipshod political theology authorizes a world of sovereign, militarized ethno-states, intensely protective of patriarchal prerogatives, and with no obligation to international law, human rights, judicial interference, or constitutional guarantees for religious or racial minorities. If Israel is the God-given home of the Jews, why shouldn't America be the God-given home of white Christians? 

It’s not difficult to perceive the appeal of this vision for NatCon’s attendees, including Trumpist senators like Josh Hawley and Mike Lee, Catholic integralists like Gladdin Pappin and Chad Pecknold, racist nativists like Stephen Miller, or Viktor Orbán propagandists like John O’Sullivan. These figures may not all acknowledge or recognize their debt to Israeli Zionism, but they all look with admiration on the impunity with which Israel has treated its Arab subjects, seeing in Israel’s contempt for liberal norms, universal rights, and human dignity an aspirational model for America and the globe.

Further Reading:

Suzanne Schneider, "Light Among the Nations," Jewish Currents, Sept 28, 2023

— "How Israel’s Illiberal Democracy Became a Model for the Right," Dissent, Spring 2024. 

— "Beyond Athens and Jerusalem," Strange Matters, Spring 2024.

— "A Note on Means and Ends," Dr. Small Talk (Suzanne's Substack), Feb 4, 2024.

Yoram Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism (2018).

— Conservatism: A Rediscovery (2022).

Sarah Jones, "The Authoritarian Plot (Live from NatCon 4)," New York Magazine, Jul 14, 2024.

Further Listening:

KYE, The Rise of Illiberal Right, Jul 2019.

KYE, Return of the National Conservatives, Nov 2021.

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to all of our extensive catalogue of bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Just about two weeks ago, we gave a nearly real-time reaction to Joe Biden's catastrophically inept performance in his first presidential debate against Donald Trump. The fallout has been swift but not certain—a flood of stories in the press were unleashed, giving the impression that Biden has been worse, for longer, than most of us knew, all of them filled with cringe-inducing details that gave the impression of a man in rapid decline. Still, Biden has stubbornly insisted that he will remain the Democratic nominee, and the party seemingly has not yet coalesced around a strategy to force his exit.

So where are we? To help us answer that question, we had on Josh Cohen, the proprietor of the must-read Ettingermentum newsletter, one of the most essential reads on U.S. electoral politics, especially the presidential race. We tried to figure out just how bad of shape Joe Biden is currently in, why the age and infirmity issues will not go away, the possibilities for replacing Biden, what the upsides of his various replacements (especially Kamala Harris and Gretchen Whitmer) could be, how Democrats should attack Trump, and more!

We took the holiday week off,  so we're sharing an episode from behind the paywall. Coming soon: new episodes on The Biden Problem, SCOTUS, and Israeli illiberalism as an inspiration for the global right. 

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In this episode, from January 2024, writer Osita Nwanevu joins for a rip-roaring conversation about legendary prose stylist, "new journalist," and novelist Tom Wolfe. Reviewing a new documentary about Wolfe ("Radical Wolfe" on Netflix), Osita writes, "Behind the ellipses and exclamation points and between the lines of his prose, a lively though often lazy conservative mind was at work, making sense of the half-century that birthed our garish and dismal present, Trump and all."

Answered herein: is Tom Wolfe a good writer? What kind of conservative is he? How does his approach compare to other "new journalists" like Joan Didion and Garry Wills? And what's the deal with the white suit?

Further Reading:

Osita Nwanevu, "The Electric Kool-Aid Conservative," The New Republic, Jan 5, 2023

Tom Wolfe, "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby," Esquire, Nov 1963.

— "The Birth of ‘The New Journalism’; Eyewitness Report," New York Magazine, Feb 1972.

— "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s," New York Magazine, June 1972

— The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987)

— A Man in Full (1998)

— The Kingdom of Speech (2016)

Peter Augustine Lawler, "What is Southern Stoicism? An Interview with Professor Peter Lawler,"  Daily Stoic, March 2017

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to all of our extensive catalogue of bonus episodes!

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this premium episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy 

We watched it, and you probably did too. Here is our analysis of the incredibly depressing, even shocking first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. While the topic of this episode is self-explanatory, it's worth making a few comments about our conversation. We recorded this on the afternoon of Friday, June 28, the day after the debate (thus, you'll often hear us refer to "last night"), and you can tell we're still somewhat processing what happened—in particular, we'd have a clearer sense of what could, and could not, be done in the weeks ahead to find an alternative to Biden if we were to record it now. Even more, in the past 24-36 hours new reporting has emerged that portrays Biden's capabilities in bleak terms, from the claim that Biden has about six "good" hours a day to damning portrayals of his confused, stumbling performances at key international meetings with foreign heads of state. Because that reporting largely confirms an off-the-record story shared with Matt, we thought, especially given the circumstances, it was worth including here. And because of the seriousness of Biden's apparent decline, your hosts' positions to continue to evolve. Matt, for example, has called for Biden to not just step aside from the campaign, but resign from office.

Sources:

Daniel Schlozman, "Elder Statesmen," Dissent, Spring 2024

Alex Thompson, "Two Joe Biden's: The Night America Saw the Other One," Axios, June 29, 2024

Annie Linskey, Laurence Norman, & Drew Hinshaw, "The World Saw Biden Deteriorating. Democrats Ignored the Warnings," WSJ, June 28, 2024

Matthew Sitman, "The 'Weekend at Bernie's' Primary," Commonweal, March 3, 2020

We're joined by two experts on European politics to explain the EU parliamentary election results: David Adler, general coordinator of the Progressive International, and David Broder, historian of Italy and Europe editor at Jacobin.

What do the results say about the strength of the far right in Europe? And why has Emmanuel Macron of France called snap parliamentary elections in response? Is Macron welcoming the far-right into power in France, or is there some other explanation for his gamble?

Further Reading:

David Broder, "Giorgia Meloni’s Europe," Dissent, Spring 2024.

Cole Stangler, "France Is on the Brink of Something Terrifying," NYTimes, Jun 13, 2024.

Something happened to America — and to American conservatism — in the early 1990s: an unspooling, a coarsening, a turn from substance to symbol and from narrative to fragment; prevailing political myths ceased to make sense or have purchase, and nothing sufficiently capacious or legible emerged to replace them, leaving only a dank, foggy climate of conspiracy, bellicosity, and despair. Victorious in the Cold War, America was supposed to be riding high; instead the whole country was experiencing a crisis of confidence.

Why? What happened? And did we ever get over it — or are we still somehow stuck in the "long 1990s?" No one is better equipped to tease out answers to these questions than our great friend John Ganz, whose riveting new book is called When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s. With his characteristic wit and panache, John guides us through a lively discussion of: Sam Francis's middle American radicalism; Pat Buchanan's "culture war" speech; Ross Perot and POW-MIA; Carroll Quigley's influence on Bill Clinton; John Gotti's appeal; and how these figures, and this era, prepared the way for Donald Trump. It's a barnburner, folks! Enjoy!

Sources:

John Ganz, When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s (2024)

— "The Year the Clock Broke: How the world we live in already happened in 1992," The Baffler, Nov 2018

Jen Szalai, "The 1990s Were Weirder Than You Think. We’re Feeling the Effects." NYTimes, Jun 12, 2024. 

Listening: 

KYE "The Year the Clock Broke, (w/ John Ganz)" Mar 16, 2020

KYE "Christopher Lasch’s Critique of Progress, (w/ Chris Lehmann)" Aug 11, 2022

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to all of our extensive catalogue of bonus episodes!

In this special Pride Month episode of Know Your Enemy, Matt and Sam talk to historian Neil J. Young about his new book, Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right. His absorbing account picks up in after World War II, when neither party made for a good political home for gay people, which helped make a libertarian approach to sexual politics—getting the government out of their private lives—compelling, a feature that would mark the gay right for years to come. The conversation then turns to some of the gay, often closeted architects of the postwar conservative movement, the hopeful years between Stonewall and AIDS, Ronald Reagan's embrace of the religious right and the growing partisan divide on LGBTQ rights, and goes on through the very campy Trump years—and more!

Sources:

Neil J. Young, Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (2024)

Neil J. Young, We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics (2015)

Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality, (1996)

James Kirchick, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, (2022)

Marvin Leibman, Coming Out Conservative: An Autobiography, (1992)

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to all of our extensive catalogue of bonus episodes!

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this premium episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy 

Matt and Sam break down the Trump guilty verdict—what happened during the trial, why the jury might have reached the decision they did, how Republicans and the right reacted, and the ways it all could matter, or not, for the 2024 presidential election. It's a wide-ranging conversation, including discussions of low-trust voters, educational polarization, how everything in the United States has become a scam, our doubts about Biden, and more!

Sources:

Trailer for Mitch McCabe's documentary, 23 Mile (YouTube)

Eric Levitz, "One explanation for the 2024 election’s biggest mystery," Vox, May 28, 2024

Michael Brenes, "How Liberalism Betrayed the Enlightenment and Lost Its Soul," Jacobin, May 31, 2024

Matthew Sitman, "Will Be Wild," Dissent, April 18, 2023

Timothy Snyder, "Not a Normal Election," Commonweal, Nov 2, 2020

Historian Tim Barker and editor/organizer Ben Mabie join to discuss a thrilling episode in the history of American labor. Barker and Mabie are two co-hosts of Fragile Juggernaut, a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (or CIO). Along with  co-hosts Alex Press, Gabriel Winant, Andrew Elrod, and Emma Teitelman, they've been telling the story of organized labor in the 1930s, the radical possibilities of that decade, and the eclipsing of those possibilities in the post-war years — with the onset of the cold war, McCarthyism, and anti-union legislation like Taft-Hartley.

In a sense, this episode is a pre-history of the story we tell on Know Your Enemy. If you’ve ever wondered, what was it that so terrified reactionary businessmen about the New Deal era? How did they come to believe that revolutionary upheaval was a real prospect in America, that Communists were everywhere, threatening the social order, and that this peril demanded the creation and funding of a new conservative movement? Well part of the answer is: the CIO. From a certain angle, the right-wing fever dream was real, at least for a time: the CIO really was filled with Communists, labor militants really did take over factories and shut down whole cities, and it really did seem possible, if only briefly, that the American working class — including immigrants from all over Europe, black workers, and women — might find solidarity on the shop floor, consolidate politically, and threaten the reign of capital. That didn’t quite happen. And this episode will partially explain why. 

Further Reading:

Andrew Elrod, "Fragile Juggernaut: What was the CIO?" n+1, Jan 24, 2024. 

Bruce Nelson, Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s, U of Illinois Press,  1988.

Robert H. Zieger, The CIO, 1935-1955, UNC Press, 1995. 

Landon R.Y. Storrs,  The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left, Princeton U Press, 2012. 

Eric Blanc, “Revisiting the Wagner Act & its Causes,” Labor Politics, Jul 28, 2022.  

Rhonda Levine, "Class Struggle and the New Deal: Industrial Labor, Industrial Capital, and the State," U of Kansas Press, 1988.

Further Listening:

The podcast: "Haymarket Originals: Fragile Juggernaut," 2024 

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