Know Your Enemy

Matt and Sam talk to two esteemed guests, Rick Perlstein and Leon Neyfakh, about why U.S. politics took a right turn in the 1970s. “We organize discontent,” as one New Right activist put it—and they did. Fierce battles over desegregation, gay rights, abortion, and the meaning of America itself all paved the way for Ronald Reagan's smashing victory in 1980.

Over four books and two decades, historian Rick Perlstein has chronicled the rise of movement conservatism in America, starting with its renegade beginnings in the 1950s and '60s. Now, with Reaganland  (2020), his extraordinary tetralogy is complete—taking readers on a journey through Jimmy Carter's doomed administration,  the culture wars of the 1970s, and Ronald Reagan's campaign for the presidency. Perlstein's sweeping narrative is paired in this episode with the brilliant work of journalist Leon Neyfakh, who just finished the third season of his podcast Fiasco. It's a deep-dive into the battle over integration in Boston public schools during the 1970s (colloquially but inaccurately known as the Boston "busing crisis")—a vivid and compulsively listenable portrait of a pivotal episode in recent American history.

In this conversation, Rick and Leon  disinter forgotten figures from a decade crucial to the rise of conservatism—the 1970s—while discussing how they tell stories we know the ending to, the problem of contingency and political agency, and issues such as American innocence, white backlash, right-wing rhetoric, and more. Don't miss this one!

Further Reading: 

Rick Perlstein, "I Thought I Understood the American Right. Trump Proved Me Wrong," NYTimes,  April 11, 2017

Richard Sennett & Jonathan Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class, (1972)

Jesse Curtis, "'Will the Jungle Take Over?' National Review and the Defense of Western Civilization in the Era of Civil Rights and African Decolonization,"  Journal of American Studies, November 2019

Jefferson Cowie, "Is Freedom White?" Boston Review, Sept 23, 2020 

Tom Wicker, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream (1995)

... and don't forget to support Know Your Enemy on Patreon to hear all of Matt and Sam's bonus episodes!

We released this bonus episode on depression and politics in July, and it quickly became a favorite of our Patreon subscribers. A number of them asked us to make it available in front of the paywall so they could share it with friends and family who have experienced depression and other mental-health issues—so that's what we decided to do. Topics discussed include: Matt's review of George Scialabba's memoir about depression; how left and right understand moral desert; and the struggle to build a society based on human frailty, our vulnerability to bad luck and bad breaks, and how much we need each other. 

Further Reading:

Matthew Sitman, "Muddling Through: A Depression Memoir Like No Other," Commonweal, July 14, 2020.

Johanna Hedva, "Sick Woman Theory," Mask Magazine, January 2016.

Gabriel Winant, "Coronavirus and Chronopolitics," n + 1, Spring 2020

And Listening:

Steve Earle, "My Old Friend the Blues" (1986)

From the never-ending culture war over the New York Times's 1619 Project to arguments about the Black Lives Matter protests to President Trump's promise to Make American Great Again, today's political conflicts reflect, to an extraordinary degree, disagreements over the meaning of American history. Jamelle Bouie's New York Times column is one of the places where these lively debates are most effectively narrated and clarified. 

Bouie joins Matt and Sam to help make sense of how history, historiography, and politics relate to each other—or at least, how they should. Along the way, the conversation takes up slavery and capitalism, Afro-pessimism and Marxism, and (a frequent preoccupation of the podcast) what left-wing patriotism might look like.  

Further Reading:

Jamelle Bouie, "Beyond White Fragility," NY Times, June 26, 2020.

Jamelle Bouie, "Why Juneteenth Matters," NY Times, June  18, 2020.

Sam Adler-Bell, "The Remnant and the Restless Crowd," Commonweal, Aug 1, 2018.

Vinson Cunningham, "The Argument of Afropessimism," New Yorker, July 20, 2020

Nikole Hannah-Jones, “Our Democracy’s Founding Ideals Were False When They Were Written. Black Americans Have Fought to Make Them True.” New York Times, Aug 14, 2019. 

Sean Wilentz, "A Matter of Facts," The Atlantic, Jan 22, 2020.

John Clegg, "How Slavery Shaped American Capitalism," Jacobin, Aug 28, 2019.

Tom Mackaman, "An interview with historian James Oakes on the New York Times’ 1619 Project," World Socialist Website, Nov 18, 2019

PLUS: Check out Jamelle's newsletter, which recently featured a huge list of books on the American Revolution and the early republic, and don't forget to support Know Your Enemy on Patreon for bonus episodes!

Matt and Sam welcome Yale historian Samuel Moyn to the show for a deep-dive into the Never Trump movement.  Who are the Never Trumpers? How seriously should we take the heroic story they tell about themselves? Did they sink Bernie's campaign for the Democratic nomination? Have they reckoned with their role in paving the way for Trump?  In trying to answer these questions the conversation moves from the baleful influence of Never Trumpers to a discussion of historical debates about over the rise of fascism, the perils of "tyrannophobia," and the possibilities for breaking through the hegemony of neoliberals and neoconservatives in our political life.

Further Reading:

Samuel Moyn, "The Never Trumpers Have Already Won" (New Republic)

Robert P. Saldin and Steven M. Teles, "Don't Blame Never Trumpers for the Left's Defeat" (New Republic)

Samuel Moyn and David Priestland, "Trump Isn't a Threat to Our Democracy. Hysteria Is" (New York Times)

Samuel Moyn, "Interview: We Can't Settle for Human Rights" (Jacobin)

Sam Adler-Bell, "The Remnant and the Restless Crowd" (Commonweal)

Matthew Sitman, "Riding the Trump Tiger" (Commonweal)

Pankaj Mishra, "The Mask It Wears" (London Review of Books)

John Ganz, "Finding Neverland: The American Right's Doomed Quest to Rid Itself of Trumpism" (New Republic)

Marshall Steinbaum, "Guardians of Property" (Jacobin)

Books Cited:

Robert P. Saldin and Steven M. Teles, Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elite (Oxford University Press)

Samuel Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (Harvard University Press)

James Chappel, Catholic Modern : The Challenge of Totalitarianism and the Remaking of the Church (Harvard University Press)

...and don't forget to support Know Your Enemy on Patreon for bonus episodes!

Matt and Sam are joined by two special guests, Sarah Jones and Marshall Steinbaum, who return to the show to take stock of where we're at: our failed response to the pandemic, the connections between the pandemic and the protests, and how all this might play out in November.  The four of us range widely—but be warned, this is not the most inspiring conversation. Are there any reasons to be hopeful? Listen and find out.

Sources Cited and Further Reading:

Eric Levitz, "Coronavirus is Killing Our Economy because It Was Already Sick" (New York Magazine)

Sam Adler-Bell, "Conservative Incoherence" (Dissent)

Sarah Jones, "Eugenics Isn't Going to Get Us Out of This Mess" (New York Magazine)

Sarah Jones, "The Coronavirus Class War" (New York Magazine)

Matthew Sitman, "Why the Pandemic is Driving Conservative Intellectuals Mad" (The New Republic)

Know Your Enemy bonus episode: What Are Intellectuals Good For? (with further thoughts on the protests that followed George Floyd's murder)

There's been no shortage of commentary on the rise of the "nones," those Americans who claim no religious affiliation, a trend especially notable among younger people. But that doesn't mean we live in a secular age. Matt and Sam talk to Tara Isabella Burton about her new book, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World, and the way our search for meaning and the need for ritual has met our neoliberal economic order.  What does this spiritual churn mean for our politics? Why do reactionary ideas find a ready audience among those disillusioned with modern life? We take up these questions and more in a wide-ranging conversation about the way we live now.

Sources and Recommended Reading:

Tara Isabella Burton, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World

Tara Isabella Burton, "Christianity Gets Weird" (New York Times)

Daniel José Camacho, "The Racial Aesthetic of Burton's 'Weird Christians'" (Sojourners)

Michael Anton, "Are the Kid Al(t)right?" (Claremont Review of Books)

Matt and Sam are joined by writer and editor Shuja Haider to discuss a topic near and dear to all of our hearts: country music. We talk about country's conservative reputation, the problems with (and virtues of) Ken Burns's recent documentary about country music, and the humane politics that arise from acknowledging—as the best country songs do—our collective frailty. Plus, a bunch of great music recommendations for your quarantine listening.

A playlist featuring every song we mention in the episode, plus a few more bangers can be accessed here.

Further Reading:

Matthew Sitman, "E Pluribus Country," Dissent, Winter 2020.

Shuja Haider, "The Empty Jukebox: Johnny Paycheck and the Return of the Repressed in Country Music," Viewpoint,  March 10, 2015

Shuja Haider, "A World That Draws a Line: Interracial Love Songs in American Country Music," Viewpoint, March 1, 2017

Shuja Haider, "Canon Fodder," Popula, Sept 13, 2018

Cole Stangler, "Emotional Archaeology: An Interview With Ken Burns," Commonweal, Sept 13, 2019

Shuja Haider, "The Invention of Twang," The Believer, Aug 1, 2019

Shuja Haider, "Somebody Had to Set a Bad Example," Popula, Nov 14, 2018

Nick Murray, "The Other Country," LA Review of Books, Nov 1, 2018

Jesse Montgomery, "African Chant," Popula, Sept 18, 2018

Here it is—the mailbag episode. Recorded on 4/20 and celebrating a full year of Know Your Enemy, Matt and Sam answer listener questions about: conservatives hiding in plain sight, our favorite conservative novelists, a George W. Bush counterfactual, the right’s response to COVID-19, and—against our better judgment—some Bernie Sanders campaign postmortem.

We received so many amazing questions for this and recorded tons of material. So much, in fact, that we decided to release another 25 minutes of it as bonus material on Patreon. If you get to the end of this episode and find yourself hankering for more, sign up on Patreon and you can listen to some extra discussion of Bob Dylan and political realignment + our entire back catalog of bonus episodes.

Thanks for your support through all this. Stay safe and (reasonably) sane.

Further Reading:

Matthew Sitman, "Trump's Intellectuals and the Great Moving Right Show," The Bias, April 3, 2020.

Matthew Sitman, "A Time For Politics," Commonweal, April 23, 2020.

Matthew Sitman, "Saving Calvin from Clichés: An Interview with Marilynne Robinson," Commonweal, October 5, 2017

Sam Adler-Bell, "Coronavirus Has Given the Left a Historic Opportunity," The Intercept, April 14, 2020.

Sam Adler-Bell, "Beautiful Losers," Commonweal, March 11, 2020.

John Thomason, "Hope Deferred (on Obama and Marilynne Robinson)," The Point, May 8, 2017.

Matt and Sam are finally joined by the show's longtime bête noire, Marshall Steinbaum, for a deep dive into the Chicago school of economics and the wreckage it's supported—from welcoming the birth defects caused by deregulating the pharmaceutical industry to justifying massive resistance to desegregation to being put in the service of Coronavirus truther-ism. Where did this iteration of libertarianism come from, intellectually and institutionally? Who are the key figures in the Chicago school? How have their ideas infected the way we all think about economics and politics? It's a sordid, depressing tale of rightwing money, intellectual dishonesty, and a gleeful desire to discipline the forces of democracy.

Sources and further reading:

Marshall Steinbaum, The Book That Explains Charlottesville, Boston Review,  August 14, 2017

Marshall Steinbaum, Economics after Neoliberalism, Boston Review, February 28, 2019

Isaac Chotiner, The Contrarian Coronavirus Theory that Informed the Trump Administration, New Yorker, March 30, 2020

Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains (Penguin-Random House, June 2017)

Edward Nik-Khah, Neoliberal Pharmaceutical Science and the Chicago School of Economics (Social Studies of Science 2014, Vol. 44(4) 489–517)

Our rollicking conversation with Know Your Enemy Film Correspondent Jesse Brenneman is now out from behind the paywall! Be prepared: we dive into Darrel Campbell's 2012 war-on-Christmas fever dream Last Ounce of Courage, a deranged film that nevertheless offers real insight into the conservative mind. (If you really love freedom, you can watch the film here, before you listen. But it is not at all necessary.) 

Jesse is a seasoned radio producer and dear friend—and funny. He has his own new podcast you should check out: Tech Talk with Tim and Ted.

WATCH: Last Ounce of Courage (YouTube)

READ: the Ronald Reagan speeches mentioned in the episode: "A Time for Choosing" (October, 27, 1964 ) and "Encroaching Control" (March 30, 1961)

*** As mentioned in the intro, we're doing a mailbag episode next week. Please submit questions you'd like us to answer on air by email knowyourenemypodcast[AT]gmail.com OR by tweet  @Knowyrenemypod ***