Diabolical Lies - August 24, 2025


Can the World Force Taylor Swift to Speak Now？


Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

176.71

Word count

2,691

Sentence count

180


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.520 Today's episode of Diabolical Lies is brought to you by Boogie Baby, George Wright, Amma Kananaski, Dills Delicious, Marta Zett, Mama Mialts Kia, Daniel Elizabeth, and every other TikTok user who has come into my comments and DMs to say that I have not sufficiently held Taylor Swift accountable for her war crimes. Their words, not mine.
00:00:19.740 None of those words were in the Bible.
00:00:21.500 Katie, less than five days ago, I proclaimed publicly that I had no interest in talking
00:00:28.180 about Taylor Swift on Maine. And now here we are. Who says online bullying isn't effective
00:00:34.060 in getting extremely hot and famous women to do what you want?
00:00:38.300 They have officially extracted concessions. Here we go, baby.
00:00:42.980 Been a long time coming. Can you imagine if I showed up to this episode and just went
00:00:49.980 10 toes down Swift apologist. It's like you guys are just being like really mean and you're really
00:00:55.740 jealous. I was going to screenshot a comment from TikTok that was like, you and Katie are
00:01:00.440 serious Taylor Swift apologists. But then I was like, this is going to make smoke pour out of
00:01:04.060 Katie's ears. So I'm glad that you acknowledged that first. Anyways, the discourse that has
00:01:09.260 inspired us to have this conversation today is some version of air quotes, Taylor Swift has not
00:01:16.120 done enough. She has not done anything as it pertains to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
00:01:21.440 Now, this is an accusation that has been leveled at her in the past for other topics. I would say
00:01:26.260 climate change is an example, private jet usage, other man-made atrocities, and she has yet to
00:01:32.420 speak about almost any of them. So I want to start this conversation by doing like the I
00:01:37.560 condemn Hamas version of like celebrity statements about Taylor Swift. I would personally love if any
00:01:44.460 person with any global level of influence, Taylor Swift included, would speak on behalf
00:01:49.340 of Palestinian liberation. I'm not really interested in celebrities speaking on a ceasefire. I guess
00:01:54.900 that's better than nothing. I think that would be really lit. Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lawrence,
00:01:58.480 Barack Obama, Greta Gerwig, Beyonce, Tom Hanks. If anyone wants to Bueller Bueller speak up on
00:02:02.900 behalf of Palestinian liberation, I would fucking love that. I would also love for them to give
00:02:07.460 tens of millions of dollars to Food Aid and Reconstruction support. That would be awesome.
00:02:12.500 Katie, can you just pause for a second and go online to CNN and see if that worked?
00:02:17.760 To see if it worked?
00:02:19.620 Yeah, are they doing it now that I've said that?
00:02:22.220 Hold on. Yeah, let's see.
00:02:23.800 Oh, Target's CEO is stepping down as customers turn away.
00:02:27.280 That's kind of interesting.
00:02:28.540 That's kind of lit.
00:02:29.380 It must be because of when you charged your car there and everyone got mad about it.
00:02:35.180 Yeah.
00:02:36.740 Yep. Scrolling, scrolling.
00:02:40.320 Yeah, it doesn't look like it worked.
00:02:42.900 Okay, so I guess we'll have to continue the conversation then.
00:02:45.980 We have a lot of discourse right now online about the notion of could, okay?
00:02:51.680 Could and would.
00:02:52.940 And it's about Taylor Swift, but I've also seen it about Beyonce.
00:02:56.000 A lot of people talk about what these people could do.
00:02:59.480 And right now, it's in relation to Palestine, of course, what they could do for Gaza.
00:03:04.080 But this is basically the general rhetorical framework of any conversation about celebrity influence. It's what they could do and could exist in the abstract, okay? It's a really effective way to generate fury because I think it reminds everyone of the insane financial disparities that exist between celebrities and normal people.
00:03:22.980 Yeah, I was thinking about this this morning because I was trying to reflect on why their silence feels so uncomfortable and personal to us. And what I landed on is I think it's because it's a reminder that they just don't share the same reality that we do.
00:03:39.960 It is a really stark confrontation of the fact that we're all alone down here, and they are somewhere else. And I think in the context of, like, you know, an entertainer, a movie star, a musician that you like, a football player that you like, it hurts to think about something that we are very attracted to on a human level and may really respect or admire or appreciate on a human level, like music or sport.
00:04:09.320 and kind of recognizing that these people that have the power to generate that emotional response
00:04:17.520 in us are actually part of that same system that is hurting us. And so I think the silence feels
00:04:25.720 like a reminder of that disparity. Yeah, you have brought up something that I think about a lot when
00:04:32.760 it comes to internet discourse, which is, if I was not online, would I know that this was happening?
00:04:37.140 And I actually think that the fury that you find online is very translatable to the real world. I actually think I would know that fury, the fury that people have over the growing distance between the, you know, the billionaires and the rest of us. Now that can translate into different political beliefs. I think we've seen that, that it's not so simple as that making a person a quote unquote liberal, but it is real. Like this fury is real. And I want to say that it is righteous. Like that is a righteous fury that people are feeling.
00:05:04.280 But I think that what I'm really curious about is how that fury translates into a practical conversation about what role celebrity power plays in our lives, and also in trying to determine how we keep Palestinians safe from the mass extermination campaign that they are facing from Israel.
00:05:20.760 Those are two overlapping conversations, but they are not the same.
00:05:24.020 And then another element of this is how much we think celebrities are people.
00:05:28.060 Do we think of them like people?
00:05:29.760 Do we think of them as fallible?
00:05:31.580 Do we think of them as having obligations that we don't really apply to other people?
00:05:36.380 So what we're not talking about today is Taylor Swift's feminism writ large.
00:05:41.140 We're not talking about Taylor Swift's music quality.
00:05:42.960 We're not talking about her fan relationships.
00:05:44.420 We're not talking about her romantic relationships.
00:05:46.300 What I'm interested in discussing is the question that I had after days of scrolling through so much outrage online, which is, what does the internet want from Taylor Swift in this moment? What do we want specifically beyond being angry at her? What is abstract and irrational in that want? And what is real and pragmatic and useful? Like, are there practical demands that we can make from celebrities? What is their ideal version of involvement? And can you force someone to save the world?
00:06:15.240 Is that a thing that we can possibly do?
00:06:17.780 So there is a lot of chatter and there are a lot of opinions in this discourse.
00:06:21.740 Some of the opinions that I saw, there are people who actually do think that if you put enough pressure, if you make a hashtag go viral enough, Taylor Swift will release a statement.
00:06:31.300 Taylor Swift and Beyonce are generally the two people who have received the most ire.
00:06:35.920 And the idea from some people is that, yeah, no, actually, if we do scream loud enough, they will hear this.
00:06:41.920 Another belief is we need to tell people about this and encourage them to do an economic boycott.
00:06:46.340 Don't buy Taylor Swift's new album.
00:06:48.000 I would say the most common video that I have seen, the most common form of outrage is directed at the fan.
00:06:53.880 It is if you support these musicians, these out-of-touch billionaires, then you are not aligned with Palestinian liberation.
00:07:01.720 Then you are not aligned with the fight against climate change.
00:07:05.460 And what that does effectively and explicitly is pit people in opposition between what they like and what they think they should do politically.
00:07:12.920 And we're going to come back to that.
00:07:14.360 So right now, I think it's very safe to say that Taylor Swift is one of the most powerful people in the world.
00:07:19.420 Maybe the most powerful person in terms of combined financial resources and consumer influence.
00:07:25.100 She is a billionaire.
00:07:26.500 She recently finished her record-breaking Culture-Defining Eras tour.
00:07:30.860 She is releasing a new album in the fall, Life of a Showgirl, as I mentioned.
00:07:34.560 and something I was trying to do over the last, you know, 24 hours that I decided that we were
00:07:39.360 going to do this episode is try to find proof of her actual influence. Because we talk about
00:07:44.520 Taylor Swift's influence all the time, but I was trying to understand what that actually means.
00:07:49.220 It's worth looking at her political influence thus far. Her biggest moment of political influence
00:07:53.440 was, of course, her endorsement of Kamala Harris. This was a massive media moment. I thought it was
00:07:58.880 pretty clever for her to sign off as a childless cat lady. She endorsed Kamala Harris the night of
00:08:03.400 Harris's debate against Trump. She shared an Instagram post with a custom link to register
00:08:07.440 to vote. And this link drove over 400,000 visitors in 24 hours. By comparison, Joe Biden made a
00:08:14.280 similar endorsement of Kamala Harris in a call to action, and that drove around 100,000 visitors in
00:08:18.760 24 hours. So I don't know. Do with that what you can. That's a piece of information that we can
00:08:24.180 look at. We all know how that played out, right? Right. Kamala Harris did not win the presidency.
00:08:28.940 Taylor Swift's endorsement did not move the needle enough to affect the outcome.
00:08:33.860 I am also kind of recalling now, the only other candidate that I am aware of her explicitly endorsing
00:08:42.180 was a Democratic candidate for the midterms in Tennessee, and that candidate lost as well.
00:08:48.620 So as far as I know, she's made two political endorsements, and neither of those candidates won.
00:08:54.160 Something that I'm interested in about Taylor Swift is that there is a whole media apparatus
00:08:57.420 around her, where people know that you are going to read about her. And so one thing I would note
00:09:01.540 is that we don't have comparative examples of other celebrity endorsements. I would say
00:09:06.280 celebrities tend to have bigger social media followings than politicians. So we don't know,
00:09:10.560 first and foremost, if these visitors actually registered to vote. We don't know if they ended
00:09:14.700 up voting. We don't know what, let's say, Chapel Roan or Madison Kline or Sidney Sweeney or Alex
00:09:22.200 Earl. We don't know for any of these people how many visitors they would drive. We don't know
00:09:27.920 if this is a Taylor Swift thing or a celebrity or a politician thing. It's something. It's not
00:09:32.540 nothing. So, Katie, I want you to read this quick summary of Taylor Swift's political involvement.
00:09:38.800 I found this at Wikipedia, and before anyone says anything, number one, shut the fuck up.
00:09:43.440 This is my podcast. Number two, all of you are using ChatGPT, and that is so much worse than
00:09:47.920 Wikipedia. And number three, Wikipedia can rock sometimes, and I double-checked the citations,
00:09:52.200 so. Okay, here we go. Swift voted for the first time in the 2008 U.S. presidential election,
00:09:58.140 won by Barack Obama, and expressed satisfaction with its outcome. In 2012, she refused to discuss
00:10:04.020 politics, quote, because it might influence other people, end quote. It's worth noting she was like
00:10:08.500 20 at this point. Mm-hmm. Journalists criticized her apolitical stance. After the 2017 election of
00:10:15.740 Donald Trump as a U.S. president, Swift made her first political endorsement, supporting the
00:10:20.800 Democratic candidates Phil Bredesen and Jim Cooper for the 2018 U.S. midterm elections in Tennessee
00:10:26.640 via a highly publicized Instagram post. In 2019, Swift claimed that she voted for Obama in the 2008
00:10:34.040 and 2012 elections and was advised to not discuss politics by record label executives who cited the
00:10:40.880 2003 Dixie Chicks controversy.
00:10:45.120 Yeah, pause for a second.
00:10:45.980 The Dixie Chicks controversy,
00:10:47.140 actually someone mentioned this
00:10:48.160 in our paid subscriber chat saying like,
00:10:50.200 celebrities do speak out the Dixie Chicks.
00:10:52.040 The Dixie Chicks criticized George Bush in 2003
00:10:55.180 and essentially lost their careers.
00:10:58.100 You can go read about it.
00:10:59.300 They have since rebranded to the Chicks,
00:11:01.000 not the Dixie Chicks,
00:11:02.040 but they paid the price.
00:11:05.300 And now we have their incredible banger
00:11:07.120 not ready to make nice.
00:11:08.080 So we really won out in the end
00:11:09.700 from that little scuffle, but the Dixie Chicks did not speak out politically without punishment.
00:11:14.240 They were actually punished very severely and used as an example for the rest of the
00:11:17.760 music industry. So please keep going in this summary of Taylor Swift's politics.
00:11:21.880 Characterized as a liberal, Swift is pro-choice, an advocate of gender equality, LGBT rights,
00:11:28.180 and gun control, and a vocal critic of racism, white supremacy, sexism, homophobia, and police
00:11:34.900 brutality. Yeah, these are the things that she has spoken about at some point, whether it's in a
00:11:40.240 single post, etc. So I think you could assume that each one is like an Instagram post. Yeah, or a
00:11:45.000 tweet. Mm-hmm. Okay. She condemned Trump's presidency, accusing it of racism and fostering
00:11:51.740 violence during the George Floyd protests, criticized the policies of the Republican
00:11:56.320 Senator Marsha Blackburn and the overruling of Roe v. Wade, and supported the Equality Act,
00:12:01.260 the creation of Juneteenth as a national holiday and the removal of Confederate statues.
00:12:06.200 She endorsed the Democratic tickets of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the 2020 United
00:12:10.780 States presidential election, and Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 election.
00:12:15.940 Subject to media scrutiny, Swift has been praised and criticized by all sides of the
00:12:19.900 political spectrum.
00:12:21.080 In the early 2010s, some neo-Nazis theorized Swift as their Aryan media figure, motivated
00:12:27.220 by her political silence.
00:12:28.840 However, after her open support for Democrats, conservative media outlets alleged she is a Pentagon PSYOP of a Democrat-led U.S. government.
00:12:37.180 Quick cutaway to the CIA being like, um, what rhymes with scarf as they're writing all too well?
00:12:44.500 That would explain all the rhymes of car and bar in every other song.
00:12:50.460 Trumpists in the right wing have derided her woke liberal views.
00:12:54.960 On the other hand, a few liberal commentators downplayed Swift's political activism as either
00:13:00.220 performative or inadequate. Nevertheless, Swift has caused unprecedented increases in voter
00:13:05.700 registration and inspired a variety of legislations dubbed the Taylor Swift effect. According to the
00:13:11.900 Times, even though Swift is left-aligned, a portion of the right wing will covet her. What?
00:13:17.620 making her a unifying entity that could help bridge the political divide of the U.S. by drawing
00:13:26.740 various demographics to her cause. Various surveys have reported Swift's approval ratings to be
00:13:32.380 higher than those of Biden and Trump, attributing her political sway in the U.S. to her status as
00:13:37.800 an anomalous American cultural icon. Trump has frequently criticized Swift after her Democratic
00:13:43.520 endorsements. Some journalists consider Swift a soft power. Her fan base, the Swifties,
00:13:50.160 have been compared to a voting bloc in electoral politics. Various heads of government of the world,
00:13:56.500 such as Justin Trudeau, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer, Lenny Robredo, Gabrielle Boric,
00:14:04.780 Emmanuel Macron, and Ulf Christensen, consider Swift a positive influence on citizens.
00:14:11.300 Chinese state media has consistently praised Swift.
00:14:14.720 What?
00:14:15.400 That's a mouthful.
00:14:16.600 Oh, God.
00:14:18.500 On the other hand, Swifties have been the target of extremist attacks such as the 2024 Southport stabbings.
00:14:26.000 What's that?
00:14:26.940 And the ISIS-assisted Vienna terrorism plot.
00:14:30.280 Jesus Christ.
00:14:31.080 Okay, what's the stabbings?
00:14:32.240 So in July 2024, there was a mass stabbing event in the UK at a Taylor Swift-themed yoga dance studio.
00:14:39.520 Three children were killed.
00:14:40.700 Oh, goodness.
00:14:41.880 Ten others were injured.
00:14:43.840 And then two months later, in August 2024, Taylor Swift had three sold-out concerts in Vienna, Austria.
00:14:50.380 They were all canceled after investigators discovered a terrorist plot to bomb the concert, okay?
00:14:55.540 Multiple suspects were arrested with alleged ties to ISIS and al-Qaeda.
00:15:00.340 So, that's the TLDR on Taylor Swift and politics right now.
00:15:03.840 She has not to date said anything about Palestine or Israel.
00:15:07.980 She has never said anything about climate change.
00:15:10.700 She was accused by the internet, LOL, that phrase,