00:03:57.480and the inability on the part of the liberal elites
00:04:02.340to recognize and name the social inequality that they helped orchestrate,
00:04:10.580I find frightening because it fosters a non-reality-based belief system, i.e. Trump is a
00:04:24.420product of Russian bots or the Podesta emails or Comey or whatever without addressing
00:04:33.720the core issue. And they engage in the same kind of demagoguery, attacking Putin
00:04:42.720in the way that Trump will attack Muslims or undocumented immigrants. But they're both
00:04:51.300non-reality-based belief systems, and that failure on the part of the liberal establishment
00:04:57.540to understand how we got here and their role in how we got here, and their relentless personalizing
00:05:09.300of our decay in the figure of Trump means that the rupture of the social bonds that
00:05:22.080have been caused by de-industrialization and austerity and neoliberalism
00:05:27.860that gave rise to a demagogue like Trump are not going to be fixed. We're not going to deal
00:05:35.260with the fundamental issue that has distorted our democracy. And we're not going to reverse
00:05:43.740the corporate coup d'etat that's taken place. And therefore, things are only going to get worse
00:05:49.240because, first of all, we're headed towards another financial crisis. Even the New York
00:05:56.220Times is writing this. But we're also barreling towards catastrophic climate disruption.
00:06:02.800And so I find these or this inability on the part of the mainstream establishment to name and address the real problems really scary.
00:06:16.580Thank you for being so blunt with your response. It's really helpful to hear truth in these times when there's so much misinformation and myths swirling around in the media.
00:06:28.680And I remember you said that a revolution is not possible in the span of an election cycle, but I can't help but wonder about whether or not there is even hope for reviving democracy at this point. Do you think this is possible through the election of grassroots leaders?
00:06:47.380no um i'm not opposed to the election of grassroots leaders but they will be utterly
00:06:54.880ineffectual until we build powerful movements that put pressure on the centers of power
00:07:01.080um and and history bears this out obviously we want politicians or elected officials who are
00:07:10.960more enlightened than most of those who hold office. But nothing will change until we organize
00:07:19.760and carry out sustained acts of civil disobedience, whether that's around issues of labor or around
00:07:30.860establishing a rational policy to deal with the climate crisis, which means the halting of all
00:07:40.180carbon emissions by 2025 at the latest. And, you know, there are, there are groups, uh, in
00:07:48.100particular extinction, uh, rebellion in Britain, um, that I think have figured this out, uh, pretty
00:07:56.580well. And, uh, they of course blocked the, um, many of the roundabouts and roads and, and bridges
00:08:03.300in London and have called for sustained nonviolent acts of civil disobedience in capitals around the
00:08:15.140world to reverse what they call our one-way track to extinction. But they're right. This is the only0.65
00:08:22.500mechanism we have left, and we better start employing it very soon to somehow think that
00:08:29.440you know, electing a progressive or a liberal politician is going to deal with the gravity
00:08:37.180of the crisis before us is naive. Now, I know much of your work emphasizes how neoliberalism
00:08:44.860is a calculated project necessitated by corporate capitalism. It was never intended to be a rational
00:08:51.360project. It was intended to solidify class power. In a recent article of yours published on Truthig,0.78
00:09:10.340Workers were well organized and were beginning to push back.
00:09:14.120Like any ruling class, they needed ruling ideas, end quote.
00:09:18.380Harvey clarifies that neoliberalism was so successful
00:09:21.160amongst the emerging generation of the time
00:09:23.460because it appealed to a broader cultural desire for freedom.
00:09:27.620But instead of acknowledging that desire in context of social justice or change, the capitalist class channeled it into the marketplace.
00:09:36.560So do you think this message has stayed the same today, or has it adapted to the wants and needs of this generation?
00:09:43.780Like, how have we been duped again through, say, the notion that the gig economy is our generation's entrepreneurial saving grace?
00:09:52.640Right. Well, the gig economy is part of the con.
00:09:55.480what the gig economy is, it's just a new name for temporary contract employment with no benefits and
00:10:05.100no job security. Yeah, Harvey's right. I like his book on neoliberalism. It was written a while ago,
00:10:11.560but I think it's probably the best explanation of neoliberalism and how it functions as an
00:10:20.160ideology. It was designed by the ruling elites after the 1960s to cope with what the political
00:10:29.560scientist Samuel Huntington called our excess of democracy. As an economic theory, it was always
00:10:36.680an absurdity. It drew from these very marginal, discredited figures like Friedrich Hayek.
00:10:48.720I mean, they'd even go around and quote the third-rate novelist, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman.
00:10:55.120It never made any economic sense, but it was used as an ideology to discredit mainstream
00:11:02.800Keynesian economists within the academy, within the IMF, the World Bank, and within government,
00:11:12.080and sold to the media, and essentially, as an ideology, was promoted to carry out deregulation,
00:11:25.880the destruction of labor unions, government oversight, austerity, and you're right,
00:11:32.360it was conflated with freedom. And that's, of course, after the revolutions in Eastern Europe,
00:11:40.320which freed themselves from communist control, the neoliberal economists from the Chicago School
00:11:48.040came in and gave them the same talk, that freedom of the market was about individual liberty and
00:11:57.660freedom of choice. And of course, what it really was about, which we are now experiencing,
00:12:04.700is corporate tyranny. And I think that what we're seeing at this moment in history
00:12:11.900is what Gramsci would call the interregnum. And that is when the ruling ideology
00:12:21.500has lost its credibility and no longer has any currency across the political spectrum on the
00:12:33.740right or the left. Remember, Donald Trump was running around saying he wouldn't take money
00:12:39.880from Goldman Sachs. And that is a very dangerous moment for the ruling elites, because once a
00:12:51.760population no longer buys or believes in the ideology that justifies the ruling elite,
00:13:02.080then the institutions that buttress the ruling class inevitably begin to deflate and ultimately
00:13:10.900collapse. And that's what we're watching now with the Trump presidency. So at that moment,
00:13:17.600and Alexander Berkman writes about this in his essay, The Idea is the Thing. At that moment,
00:13:24.400you have a battle of ideas that begins to percolate almost below the surface. And it's a
00:13:31.340battle that the corporate state is losing. And that's why they are becoming much more draconian
00:13:37.720in terms of their control. They're turning more to coercion. But we haven't yet, I think,
00:13:44.600articulated an alternative vision. And so there is political ferment within the United States
00:13:54.300as the ruling ideology loses credibility. But as long as the ideas that are rising to take
00:14:04.500its place are inchoate, the state can maintain power. Otherwise, opposition is just chaotic or
00:14:13.560even anarchic. And I think that's where we are, that we're struggling to articulate a new
00:14:19.660vision. But we all have recognized that the ideology that's peddled by the ruling classes
00:14:29.540is a con. And I think that that comes from every aspect of the political spectrum.
00:14:38.520now i want to expand a little bit further into this conversation on the gig economy
00:14:44.740because i know so many are forced to hold multiple low-paying part-time jobs in all sectors that are
00:14:51.400totally devoid of security and growth or benefits and it's perhaps one of the most glaring examples
00:14:58.140of wealth inequality in today's society when an uber driver in detroit makes around nine dollars
00:15:03.420an hour, while the former CEO and co-founder of Uber has a net worth of $4 billion. So what is
00:15:10.980the fate of the working class should we continue to buy into the gig economy as a functional system?
00:15:17.020And I wanted to also mention this quote that American productivity, as the New York Times
00:15:22.100pointed out, has increased 77% since 1973, but hourly pay has grown only 12%. If the federal
00:15:30.940minimum wage was attached to productivity, the newspaper wrote, it would be more than $20 an
00:15:36.180hour now. So how do we shatter through this fantasy of the gig economy and see it for what
00:15:42.380it really is? Right, well, it's just a form of neo-feudalism, because you're not covered,
00:15:51.520protected by labor laws. You're often working for the minimum wage or below the minimum wage.
00:15:59.120You don't get benefits. You don't have job security. And these companies are unregulated.
00:16:03.240This is how Bezos, the head of Amazon, becomes worth $140 billion. And you have people working
00:16:13.320in these 12-hour shifts living in camper vans, often whom are elderly, because they'll hire the
00:16:21.500elderly who've lost their homes. There was a book about this called Nomadland that was pretty good.
00:16:29.120So that's the gig economy. I mean, look, they've always got some term to kind of sell you on the very old system of the abuse of labor.
00:16:40.940And you can see in all of these enterprises, whether it's Amazon, whether it's Uber, whatever it is, that these workers are totally stressed out, have no protection.
00:17:00.560You know, for instance, if they're injured, if you're injured while working in an Amazon warehouse, before you leave, you have to sign a document that says that the injury was not work related.
00:17:13.740And it's Jessica Bruder who wrote Nomadland, Surviving America in the 21st Century.
00:17:18.800She does a really good job of just painting what the conditions are like in this gig economy, in these warehouses where you get a job for a few months and then suddenly you're tossed out, oftentimes with disabilities or injuries, and then you can wait months before you find something else.
00:17:50.200Yeah, I see it growing more and more and constantly get ads for these types of live, work, always
00:17:58.640work, but somehow it's creative, like you're in creative control or something.
00:18:03.680We should be clear that, you know, with the gig economy, those sectors, you see it in the taxicab industry in New York, that those sectors of the economy that were once organized are destroyed.
00:18:19.720And that's why you have all these taxi cab drivers in New York committing suicide, because Uber is taking their business, and they are regulated.
00:18:34.400The yellow cabs are limited in terms of numbers. They have to adhere to safety codes. A lot of the drivers are in unions, and they have to buy medallions, which are quite expensive but have dropped in value.
00:18:55.060So what you're doing is unleashing desperate drivers onto the streets who are pushing rates below operating costs and forcing professional cab drivers out of business.
00:19:12.340So suddenly, in order to survive, you're working 100 or 120 hours a week.
00:19:18.640And it's brutal, and it's making, as you pointed out, figures like the CEO of Uber, extremely rich, worth $4.8 billion, or Logan Green, the CEO of Lyft, has a net worth of $300 million, while the serfs who work for them are living in tremendous distress. That's what the gig economy is.
00:19:48.640When I go down that funeral road, Lord, I'm going to be dressed up fine
00:20:01.320I'm going to hand me a nice new suit and tie like I never could have afforded when I was alive
00:20:07.080Well, I ain't dead yet, let me wear that suit right now
00:21:09.160Now, as a war correspondent, I know you are much more familiar with both the concept and
00:21:26.880reality of war. Something that I often think about is how disconcerting it is that the vast
00:21:32.880majority of us really have no idea about the armed conflicts the United States is currently
00:21:38.540involved in. And while the White House is required to update Congress every six months
00:21:43.980on where the U.S. is using military force, this is barely given coverage in the media.
00:21:50.840Rarely do we hear about our current military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya,
00:21:57.260Nigeria, Syria, or Yemen. And so while I'm interested in sort of looking at the bigger
00:22:04.380picture surrounding these quote american-led interventions i'd also like to have a conversation
00:22:11.500on how these practices will inevitably turn inwards at some point um i think of m.a cesar
00:22:19.480saying quote no one colonizes innocently no one colonizes with impunity either that a nation which
00:22:27.000colonizes that a civilization which justifies colonization and therefore force is already a
00:22:34.020civilization, a civilization which is morally diseased, which irresistibly, progressing from0.83
00:22:41.100one consequence to another, one denial to another, calls for its Hitler, I mean its punishment, end0.91
00:22:48.080quote. So how can we apply this sort of understanding to the rise of American mercenaries
00:22:57.240and private contractors? And maybe to take it a step further, I'm wondering what kind of threats
00:23:03.900to the public, to private military companies like Academy, posed during natural disasters,
00:23:09.560which are inevitable to happen. Right. Well, that's part of the whole
00:23:14.540neoliberal project, which is to privatize every aspect of government. And if you look at
00:23:23.920Karl Marx's description of what he defines as late capitalism, what he says is that
00:23:33.900That capitalist entities unable to achieve the kind of profits that they had in the past because they have impoverished the consumer base, as has happened in the United States, inevitably turns on the very institutions that sustain a capitalist society and cannibalize them.
00:23:57.660And that's, of course, what we're seeing across the board. That's what the privatization of education is about. 70% of our intelligence is done by private firms like Bose Allen Hamilton. 99% of Bose Allen Hamilton's budget comes from the federal government.
00:24:18.780And that's also true with military contractors. It was interesting, I was reading the other day
00:24:26.120about the casualty rates in the war in Afghanistan, now the longest war in U.S. history, 18 years,
00:24:33.080and the casualty rates are actually higher for contractors than they are for soldiers and
00:24:39.360Marines. So every aspect is being privatized. If you look at the book that I just wrote,
00:24:46.100America the Farewell Tour, I opened it in Scranton, Pennsylvania, as the city has, in essence,
00:24:53.360struggling not to go bankrupt. And it's reduced all of its municipal employees, including the
00:25:01.680mayor, to minimum wage. But it's in order to save itself, and it had lost, I think, 40% or something
00:25:08.720of its city pension funds because of the financial fraud of 2008. Nobody's bailing them out, of
00:25:15.980course. But what it is doing is selling off what few assets it has left. So it's selling off the
00:25:23.800sewer system, its utility system, the parking authority, and private corporations are buying
00:25:29.700up those utilities and jacking up the rates. So you ask about private contractors, that's part
00:25:36.420of this much wider privatization of public institutions so that corporate entities can
00:25:44.900extract this money. And that, at least according to Marx, is an indicator of kind of the twilight
00:25:51.180stage of the capitalist state. Because in essence, they're hollowing these institutions
00:25:56.420out from the inside. You see it in the prisons. It's not just that we have private prisons.
00:26:02.300It's that every function within a prison, a state or federal prison, is being privatized. The money
00:26:08.160transfer service, J-Pay, the telephone service, Global Telink, the food service, R-Mark, the
00:26:18.060medical services, the commerce. It's all privatized. It's now a multi-billion dollar
00:26:24.400industry. So unable to extract the kinds of profits because they've destroyed the middle class
00:26:31.340and dispossessed the working class, which has very little disposable income. And in fact,
00:26:36.600The only way they extract money from them is through debt peonage, by forcing them into debt. They eat away at the very institutions that make the system possible, and that's true in the military as it is in almost every other aspect of public life.
00:26:54.540I'm really interested in asking a question about how our internal controls are based off of our actions and military interventions abroad.
00:27:05.280Especially thinking about this with the news from Haiti last week of several Americans who were previously in the Navy SEAL,
00:27:12.280or employed by Blackwater in the U.S.'s Diplomatic Security Service,
00:27:16.240were found in Haiti on a, quote, government mission, armed with rifles, drones, and pistols,
00:27:22.260driving around in an unmarked car. And this just happens to be happening right as protests
00:27:29.000are mounting in Haiti, as their president refuses to step down.
00:27:34.120Yeah, that's, there's a kind of fusion between corporate power and government power.
00:27:42.320So, you know, if you go back to Occupy, it came out, I think it was in the New York Times,
00:27:46.580that there was a kind of command center set up by the New York City Police Department
00:27:51.400that was jointly run with corporate security. I mean, I was, Cornel West and I did a People's
00:28:00.920hearing of Goldman Sachs in Zuccotti Park, and then several of us marched on Goldman Sachs to
00:28:06.340shut it down, and we were arrested. What was interesting is that during the arrest,
00:28:12.260there was no differentiation between the Goldman Sachs security and the NYPD.
00:28:18.460Many of the people being from formerly police officers or from the security apparatus or the military apparatus.
00:28:29.380And so the incident that you just described is an example of this, the blurring of the lines between the security services of corporations and the security services of the state.
00:28:44.520I mean, the fact that 70% of intelligence work is carried out by private corporations means that those corporations are hardly limiting their surveillance and monitoring of American citizens to solely government issues.
00:29:00.640We know that corporations follow quite closely activists and dissidents and use the same tools that the state uses to do so because they often administer those tools for the state.
00:29:17.200thank you for going into that detail chris it's really scary to hear about the privatization of
00:29:25.500the military abroad and here but it's so important for us to be aware of so thank you for that i'd
00:29:33.360like to move on to another topic and as i understand it both neoliberalism and christianity
00:29:40.720are equally susceptible to fascism at this point in time and to some extent it's largely
00:29:46.880inevitable. But I'm curious to learn more about how the rise of religious fundamentalism
00:29:53.460coincides with the ruling of corporate forces and the elite. And additionally,
00:29:59.040how is the Christian right emboldened by the left's failure to address the ills of American society?
00:30:05.880So I wrote a book 10 years ago called American Fascist, the Christian Right,0.65
00:30:11.000and the War on America. And I didn't use the word fascist lightly. I come, I'm a seminary graduate.
00:30:16.440I grew up, my father was a minister, my mother was a seminary graduate.
00:30:20.200So I grew up in a religious tradition.0.99
00:30:22.980These people are Christian heretics.1.00
00:30:25.400They have perverted and deformed the Christian religion to acculturate it with the worst1.00
00:30:31.420aspects of capitalism and American imperialism and white supremacy.0.97
00:30:37.160The megachurches function like little tiny dictatorships invariably run by white men
00:30:45.000who prey on the despair of those people in those churches to become quite wealthy in that they're0.80
00:30:50.360very similar to Trump. And in the book, and I spent two years on it, and I spent a lot of time
00:30:57.740in these churches and in creationist seminars and pro-life retreats, etc., it's clear that the
00:31:05.640de-industrialization and economic stagnation and despair that has gripped, in this case,
00:31:15.060in particular, the white working class, has pushed them into the arms of these charlatans,0.53
00:31:20.240and they have embraced this magical thinking, magic Jesus who watches out for them and is
00:31:26.140going to reward them and make them wealthy and protect them and cure them of cancer, etc.,
00:31:32.500because the real world just crushed them. And I couldn't, you'd have to be heartless not to
00:31:38.600feel a great deal of empathy for what, I think the movement's dangerous, but what the followers
00:31:44.520went through, constant stories of sexual and domestic abuse and a struggle with addictions
00:31:52.360and including opioids, evictions, unemployment, underemployment, homelessness. And finally,
00:32:01.240they couldn't deal with the reality-based world, and they were captured by those peddling this form
00:32:10.480of magical thinking. And part of the deep hostility they have to those of us who remain
00:32:18.680rooted in a world of science and verifiable fact is that they're terrified of being pushed back
00:32:25.380into this world that almost destroyed them. I was in Detroit for the book with Tim LaHaye,
00:32:30.660who wrote the End Times series, and there was these gruesome descriptions, none of which are
00:32:35.160in the Bible, the rapture is not even in the Bible, gruesome descriptions of the end times
00:32:40.080and how non-believers would, their blood would boil and their eyes would pop up. I mean, it was0.92
00:32:45.020quite graphic. And I realized, I think, sitting there that part of their lust for the apocalypse
00:32:53.080or these apocalyptic stories is that finally that world out there that almost crushed them
00:33:00.560is destroyed. And so you ask how neoliberalism, well, when you distort a society to the extent
00:33:09.320that ours has been distorted, when people have feelings of entrapment and rage, then inevitably
00:33:18.700you give rise to movements. I mean, Hannah Arendt writes, all totalitarian movements
00:33:24.660peddle their own form of magical thinking. And that's what's happened. It's been given
00:33:32.480the veneer of Christianity, this Christianized fascism, and it is organized quite effectively0.95
00:33:40.360through mega churches and Liberty University and Patrick Henry Law School and this huge radio and0.91
00:33:48.840television empire. And what we're watching is it's filling the ideological vacuum of Donald Trump
00:33:57.300because Trump has no real ideology. But the Christian fascists, they've been organizing0.95
00:34:03.820and preparing now for power for decades. So what I fear is another economic collapse,1.00
00:34:10.080which I think is inevitable, or maybe another catastrophic terrorist attack or a new war or
00:34:15.940another climate catastrophe, usually economic dislocation or crisis, is what brings these
00:34:23.120people to power. But they're ready. And of course, as Noam Chomsky points out, you can get rid of
00:34:29.580Trump. But because Michael Pence comes out of this Christianized fascism, Chomsky argues,
00:34:37.280I think correctly, he'll be worse. I think about this magical thinking.0.95
00:34:42.840Another word for it that I've used is the prosperity gospel, which is what I've seen
00:34:48.340a lot in megachurches, this idea that Jesus wants you to have a new Cadillac.
00:34:53.780Jesus wants you to have, you know, that four-bedroom house in the two-car garage, you know, and
00:34:58.480if you just keep following this path, then you will be rewarded with these material goods.
00:35:05.100And I do think it makes sense when people have been up against so much hardship that
00:35:11.840they are looking for a way out. And they do want the system that has oppressed them to collapse.
00:35:18.900And I know that it's been suggested that one way to curb the rise of Christian fanaticism
00:35:24.680is to reintegrate disenfranchised right-wing communities back into the economic system.
00:35:32.600Well, that's how I conclude my book. I mean, I said the only way you're going to break this
00:35:35.920movement is to reintegrate them into the economy. Trying to argue them out of creationism isn't
00:35:40.760going to work. But what exactly does this mean when our economic system is clearly broken and
00:35:46.180the dollar might implode altogether in the next decade or so, or, you know, the next economic
00:35:50.620crash will happen? Well, then it means they'll be empowered even further and become more fanatic.
00:35:56.340So, I mean, this is, you know, the Nazis, and I'm not telling you that Trump is Hitler or the
00:36:03.360Christian right or Nazis, but we do learn from history. So the Nazis are polling in the single0.71
00:36:10.400digits in 1928, then you have the 1929 crash, and you have Ebert and the Social Democrats in the
00:36:17.840Weimar Republic imposing draconian forms of austerity, including abolishing unemployment0.87
00:36:23.120insurance, and the Nazis' popularity explodes. So the danger is that the longer the liberal elites
00:36:30.720remain ineffectual and refuse to address in a meaningful way the root causes behind the
00:36:39.000disintegration within society, the more these fanatics and charlatans and con artists and
00:36:45.600demagogues are empowered. And I watched that in Yugoslavia with the economic meltdown of Yugoslavia
00:36:51.200in the late 1980s. And you vomited up figures like Radovan Karic and Slobodan Milosevic and
00:36:57.860Franju Tuzman for the same reason. So by welcoming them back into the economic system, meaning
00:37:04.780into a like a unionized economic system or you know maybe the economic system of our dreams
00:37:11.240you know something that isn't so um gosh just corrupted um because i'm wondering like if
00:37:18.520welcoming them back into a corrupted economic system what does that how does that support what
00:37:24.740i guess support the health of our societies or what i don't know if i'm just kind of looking for
00:37:29.760the devil in the details here. Well, but you can't welcome them back into a system that doesn't give
00:37:35.860them economic stability and a sense that they can find a place within society and that the society
00:37:45.040is a form of meritocracy. In essence, it really boils down to having a sense of hope. I mean,
00:37:51.720this was, I covered Yitzhak Rabin and the Oslo Agreement, and Rabin understood, number one,
00:37:57.560that the occupation was poisonous to Israel itself, but also more importantly, that if the
00:38:03.580Palestinians had a stake in the Israeli economy, if Ahmed could find a good job in Tel Aviv and go0.89
00:38:09.020back and buy a refrigerator in Gaza for his family and send his kids to school, you would do far more
00:38:15.620to mitigate fanaticism and even terrorism. And that's correct. So if we don't pretty radically
00:38:24.860reconfigure the economy into a form of socialism that protects and provides services to the working
00:38:34.880class and the working poor, then these problems will only get worse. That it's, you know, all of
00:38:43.140the kind of theorists of revolution have been quite clear about, you know, what it is that
00:38:52.700uh, causes a revolution. Crane Brinton, uh, in anatomy of a revolution, uh, is, you know,
00:39:01.500one of the best books on this, but one of the, um, most important elements is a sense that
00:39:09.720you can, uh, find a place within the society where you have the possibility of advancement.
00:39:20.300And when that is taken away from you, and when you know it's taken away from your children, then this creates huge distortions that give rise to these kind of radical or fanatical movements that we're seeing within the United States.
00:39:50.300I want my son to have this when I'm dead
00:40:06.760It's a book I always start but I'd never read
00:40:12.240I was born to follow the steps my dad tread
00:41:45.120now this next question that i want to ask is really very deep in my own personal life right
00:41:59.380now especially as i'm analyzing movements and millennials involvement in them and we've spoken
00:42:06.700about the rise of the christian right but i'd also like to look at the opposite side of the coin
00:42:12.520Now, reflecting on your own religious identity and the radical teachings of Christ, I'm curious
00:42:18.100to hear your thoughts on religion and spirituality as a moral compass and means of accountability.
00:42:24.140And I ask this question thinking about those of us who have been raised in secular households
00:42:29.520or cling to the titles of agnostic or atheist as identities, but then find ourselves without
00:42:35.380faith in a world that has reinforced individualistic and capitalistic behaviors.
00:42:41.940So I'm wondering, do you think we need a religious or spiritual background as we navigate these very tragic times?
00:42:49.200And if so, what must our religious or spiritual beliefs be grounded in?
00:42:55.400So we do have to distinguish between institutional, you know, the institutions, religious institutions, and what it means to have religious faith.
00:43:06.220because all institutions, as the theologian Paul Tillich wrote, are inherently demonic,
00:43:11.540including the church. And we see that with the abuse of power and the pedophilia within the
00:43:16.580Catholic church, but the Catholic church is not alone. So yes, we need an element of faith,
00:43:22.540not necessarily grounded in any religious orthodoxy. I asked Daniel Berrigan, the great
00:43:29.540radical priest once, how he defined faith, and he said it was the belief that the good draws to it
00:43:35.660the good, even if empirically all the evidence around you proves otherwise, that that's ultimately
00:43:43.580what faith is. And I think that we need to have a vision of a just society, which may be impossible,
00:43:55.540it may be completely unattainable, but we hold it before us as a kind of goal, and we strive
00:44:03.340towards it. I mean, Max Weber wrote the great essay, Politics as a Vocation. In it, he argued
00:44:10.940that, you know, one had to be constantly vigilant against power, that as soon as movements achieved
00:44:19.460or built a more equitable society, ruling elites would begin to work assiduously to dismantle
00:44:26.120whatever gains had been made, that it was a constant struggle. And I think that that act of
00:44:35.260resistance itself is, in many ways, at least for me, empowering. Especially those of us who follow
00:44:48.340the climate catastrophe, to do so without resisting just increases our despondency and
00:44:57.020our feelings of helplessness, even paralysis. And that by acting out, by saying no, by pushing back
00:45:06.520against, I mean, I don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I talk about the fossil fuel industry and
00:45:12.900these corporations pushing back against this culture of death and the bleakness, because
00:45:19.760we've already done so much to destroy the ecosystem, even if we stopped all carbon emissions
00:45:26.660today, the climate disruption will be catastrophic.
00:45:31.340Finally, in the end, it's not, or it's about more than winning.
00:52:39.280Why is it so important that we implement intersectional resistance
00:52:42.500and begin to think in revolutionary terms rather than representational?
00:52:48.060Well, because the whole nature of identity politics
00:52:51.840is a game played by the elites. So, you know, you have the first woman running for president
00:53:00.180or you have an African-American president. This is just branding because they're still serving0.87
00:53:05.560these oppressive economic structures. You see it within institutions, academic institutions
00:53:11.520and identity politics, multiculturalism. And I'm not against any of this. I mean,
00:53:16.840we need these people to be empowered, masquerade as politics. They don't address the rising
00:53:23.100social inequality. They don't address the unchecked militarism. They don't address
00:53:28.320the evisceration of civil liberties or the omnipotence of the security and surveillance
00:53:33.880apparatus. Corporate capitalism is not going to be reformed, although it's constantly rebranding
00:53:41.500itself. It has to be destroyed. And the longer that the left or the liberal classes seek
00:53:48.700to work within this system by beautifying it with people of color or whatever, women,1.00
00:53:57.620the system can absorb it. It doesn't affect the system. And that noose will still continue to be1.00
00:54:04.940tightened around our necks. We either rise up to bring these government and financial systems
00:54:13.280under public control, and that means nationalizing banks, the fossil fuel industry,
00:54:18.700the arms industry, or we'll be its victims. And I think that identity politics and
00:54:23.180multiculturalism has been used quite effectively by the forces of oppression0.61
00:54:27.340as a kind of cover to continue out the activity that they do. You know, there's a huge difference
00:54:33.420between Thurgood Marshall, who was real and courageous, and Clarence Thomas. Yeah, they're
00:54:41.000both black. And so I think oftentimes we hear how many women are in the House, which is great. I'm1.00
00:54:47.240glad that there are a lot of women in the House of Representatives. But how many of them, I think1.00
00:54:51.540it's 25 percent, are come out of the security state or the military? How many of them espouse
00:54:58.340neoliberalism? How many of them are bought off by corporations? That's the more important
00:55:03.300question. And so, yes, we certainly need to elevate and amplify those voices that have
00:55:12.220traditionally been marginalized. But this has to be accompanied with a fierce commitment to
00:55:20.560destroy corporate power. And is that where civil disobedience then fits in?
00:55:25.260That's all we have left. We don't live in a functioning democracy anymore. It's what Sheldon Wolin calls inverted totalitarianism. Either we rebuild movements and carry out militant acts of sustained civil disobedience, or, I mean, we talk about climate alone, we're finished. And I'm not naive enough to tell you it's going to work, but it is the only mechanism we have left to save ourselves.
00:55:52.840and civic civil disobedience isn't just showing up to a protest it's not just going with your
00:55:59.620signs that's not civil disobedience correct civil disobedience means breaking the law
00:56:04.540means disrupting the system non-cooperation it's like extinction rebellion shutting down
00:56:11.420capital cities that's you know we don't do civil disobedience on their terms we do it on ours so i
00:56:18.180did the climate, I called it the march to nowhere before the climate summit in New York, and
00:56:23.980everybody peacefully marched between barriers set up by the New York City police to the West Side
00:56:30.000Highway, which is on the opposite side of the UN. That's not going to work. But we actually have to
00:56:35.940organize together and create movements that are willing to break the law. More of us, not just put
00:56:43.240you know a few leaders out but actually everybody stand behind each other and and get and get real
00:56:49.940like actually actually cause a ruckus instead of because i do see that a lot i mean not that i'm
00:56:55.800against um i think organizing for marches are you know it's important and it's a good place for
00:57:02.180people to get together and get to know each other but i don't see it actually moving the needle
00:57:06.860anywhere and with all the resources it takes to have like the women's march and the climate march
00:57:11.100but what's actually happening from them it's not civil disobedience it's just a no it's almost like
00:57:16.460a photo wash mobs i mean they make people feel good i mean you want an example of what's real
00:57:21.380it's standing rock which was led by indigenous communities and had a deep spiritual element that
00:57:26.240we need. Thank you for listening to another episode of For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna
00:57:54.140Young. The music you heard today was from Charlie Parr. I'd like to thank our podcast production
00:58:00.860team, our podcast audio producer Andrew Storrs, Francesca Glassbell, our media researcher and
00:58:07.620writer, Aaron Wise, social media coordination, Hannah Wilton, guest coordination, and Carter
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00:58:21.360spread our message and build our community of earth tenders and defenders.