“Woke” Is An Elite Plot To Undermine Class Solidarity! w/ Christian Parenti
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medium speeds and jumps the medium and hits them head on it's the jimmy tour show first up as our guest today is uh dr christian parenti a professor in the department of economics at john j college previously i haven't kicked him out previously as a journalist he reported from all over the world for publications including the nation fortune the london review of books and the new york times

He's also the author of a number of books, including his latest Radical Hamilton, Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder. Please welcome back to the show, Christian Parenti. Good to see you. Good to see you too, Jimmy. Thanks for the invitation. I'm surprised that you haven't been canceled, is all I'm saying. I'm sure I've been canceled, but I didn't lose my job recently.

Last time I was on here with you was because of COVID stuff. I actually didn't quite have tenure yet, but I managed to get tenure. Really? It was, you know, to the right of the administration on COVID in terms of pushing...

vaccine mandates on the students and on as many staff as they could. And they even then ended up suing the custodians union and the security guards unions because those unions were like, well, you can our members can test or vax whatever they want. But yeah, Manchester survived that bottleneck.

So it's great to be with you. It's they're bringing back man mask mandates in California. I don't know if you saw that bit of news until the spring, but that's for just for health care workers and all kind of settings and places like that. So nursing homes and what have you. And again, this is all based on not one study.

Not one study. Just to let people know, that's not based on, there's no science behind it. Just like Dr. Fauci said when he was testifying in front of Congress and they asked him about the six foot rule and they said, where did that come from? He goes, it just appeared. He said, not based on it. No, it just appeared. Okay.

But I want to talk today quick about your article, The Cargo Cult of Woke. So I just want to – it's a fascinating look at woke culture. We've talked about it at this show a lot because it seems like it's being used to divide people. And let me just –

Give a little quip from your article. How did the Anglophone, which I looked that up, that means English speaking for all the people in my audience. Thank you. How did the English speaking left become the cargo cult of woke in which participants believe that social justice and perhaps even revolution can be achieved through the performance of safety orientated rituals and political etiquette?

So, let's just talk about that. How did the left become the cargo cult of wool, and what do you mean by safety-orientated rituals and political etiquette?

Well, I mean, you know, wokeness is not just synonymous with identity politics. I think some people think that that's what it is. But identity politics, reductive identity politics are part of it. But woke subculture is this self-consciously left oppositional culture, which –

oddly right has spread even into corporate America but it you know if you're woke you see yourself as changing the world its methodology is not some sort of horizontal struggle against political and economic elites but very much a I mean vertical struggle but like a horizontal struggle against

very often people of your own class, your coworkers who violate certain cultural norms, certain norms of etiquette. They don't speak correctly. They don't, you know, they don't show pro they don't use the right pronouns or politically pronouns, um, land acknowledgements, these kinds of things. Right. And the belief behind all this is that you're going to actually totally transform social reality with this. Um,

It also has at its heart a very intense concern with psychological well-being. So it's rooted in that whole post-World War II psychological turn that becomes really pervasive in the 60s and 70s. And...

Yeah, I mean that's what woke is. I mean what it does is it divides the working class. It obscures the real power relations in the society, which are fundamentally those of a super-rich owning class that calls the shots within the economy and allied to them but also somewhat distinct from that, a super-powerful

state apparatus with at its heart totally unaccountable secret intelligence entity services that aren't just involved in gathering intelligence on foreign wars for bombing runs, etc. But we have well documented, have since the 50s been involved in nudging and coaxing and participating in trying to shape indirectly and gently domestic political culture.

and a kind of crucial connective tissue in all of this.

is the philanthropic foundation scene because that's where the capitalist leads the ruling class the ultra-rich convert their wealth their personal well into political power not only you know it through you know they they also do it through donations to politicians but in a more cultural fashion foundations play a very important role in our society and the US left

is increasingly shaped by and beholden to foundations. And to some extent, that's a very old relationship. Foundations helped fund political movements prior to World War II. You know,

but not that much you know you look at the the politics in the nineteen twenties and thirties the role the foundations was not that large the foundations in those days tended to try and legitimize capitalist wealth by building libraries and symphony orchestras and stuff like that but you know in in I'm in WB de Bois his struggle with I'm book to Washington you know Washington got

foundation funding, but it wasn't decisive. After the war, the CIA starts reaching out to and collaborating with, and also the foundations actually reach out to the CIA. A relationship develops in late 40s and 50s around managing the left because it becomes clear to the, uh,

the military intelligence the leads in Europe that they cannot get rid of the European left the Communist Party is very very strong in Italy very very strong in France all over Europe a communist and socialist are strong the Soviet Union for all its faults and authoritarian features has global goodwill from people because it has done most fighting its nazism and it becomes clear to the American

policy elite, particularly in the foreign policy establishment, that you're going to have to manage the left. The left is going to be a chronic problem that you never get rid of. So they start trying to nurture, they're of course repressing the communist left, but they also try to nurture what they call a non-communist left. And this was so open and common in the 50s and 60s that they just called it the NCL, the non-communist left, also known as the compatible left.

I should say a lot of this is not in the cargo cult of woke, which is in catalyst magazine, but that grew too large. And so there's a second half of it that's forthcoming, maybe in catalyst, maybe somewhere else. So yeah,

that's where this relationship between the foundations and the left first begins and so the foundations fund left-wing politics of all sorts and of course they don't fund the kinds a groups that demand redistribution and if they do fund them they tend to be rock reties them in and misdirect them and they they they're looking for other themes through which

Everyday people's resentments and legitimate concerns about the inequality and the suffering in this society can be channeled. And so, - So what you're saying is that this is this kind of constellation of issues that replaces class politics. - That's it. So that's the part. So some of the foundations, can you name some of the foundations? You mean like the Rockefeller Foundation, foundations like that? - Rockefeller Brothers, Rockefeller, Ford. I mean, the Ford Foundation is enormous.

Catherine Ferguson is the author of a book called Top Down. During the 50s, the Ford Foundation becomes very, very – sorry, the 60s becomes very, very political. McGeorge Bundy, who is national security advisor to Kennedy –

and then Johnson. I think maybe not, maybe it's just a Johnson. He leaves the administration and goes to head Ford. And this is in response to, right, the civil rights movement has been successful. They've got the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in 64, 65. Now the black power movement is gaining momentum and that has much more of a class politics to it. Ford becomes obsessed with investing in black

Not just African-American social movements, but urban social movements in the north in general and steering them towards culture. Right. It's all about people are pissed off in the inner city because they're suffering under slumlords, rising unemployment, et cetera, et cetera. You know, poorly funded services. And so you can either as an elite deny this or speak to it.

and then dole out more money and potentially lose lots of wealth and status or speak to it and divert people. So what Ford was all about was sort of acknowledging the suffering of black people and then steering it all into culture. They're really into theater and all this stuff. This is not to say that like, okay,

any kind of politics of representation and race are wrong or bad. No, not at all. They're real and they're actually important, but they can also be and have been and were used as diversion. So don't think about slum Lords. Don't think about the redistribution of wealth. Like let get involved in a theater program that's designed to make you feel good about being black. Never, never mind the fact that, you know, your neighborhood is a place where the city is,

refuses to clean up the trash as often as it does in wealthier neighborhoods, right?

So, I mean, that's a kind of archetypal example of a massive, and Ford was the biggest, it might still be the biggest of the philanthropic foundations, and it gets heavily involved in funding left political movements. And so, you know, out of this comes all the tropes of wokeness. So you're saying that this is...

Kind of stunning that woke culture seems to me a modern day invention, but you're saying it goes back to after the World War II and the intelligence communities and the combined with the foundations like Ford Foundation, Rockefeller and so on. And they decided to try to decouple.

the left from organizing around economic issues and class issues and funnel them into cultural issues, which is what woke ideology and woke politics is all about. It's completely decoupled from class issues

struggle and issues, and it's all about identity and wokeness. However we're going to define that, I'll show the six ways that you define it in a minute. So you're saying that this didn't start recently, that this goes way back, and it comes from the top down. It comes from intelligence agencies, governments, and non-government organizations like the foundations. And

It was recognized that this was necessary for the establishment to contain control decades and decades ago, a half a century ago over. - I mean, it goes even, I mean, if you really wanna draw this logic back, you can go all the way to Federalist 10, James Madison's Federalist 10. It's not a woke document, but in that,

document, James, which is, so it's written to justify and convince people to, you know, ratify the Constitution. And in Federalist 10, James Madison is speaking to elite concerns at the time of their thinking, like, wait a minute, if you allow anyone to vote, what's to stop them from

up taking all our money basically the and Madison says well that's a risk however it's only risk if the vast majority people who don't have property come together however there is naturally occurring

all sorts of natural faction you've got regions you got different religions you know all sorts of different divisions that that a afflict people that this is a kind of natural condition in people what Simone de Beauvoir later calls othering it's sort of like this this natural tendency we got us and then who are they you know it's like and so Madison says the key to avoiding the dangers

of political democracy turning into economic democracy is to lean into the existence a faction to try and create as much faction which is just to say division in society as possible so that so that the main source affection that's most important which is that between those who own and those who do not write the those who control most to the property in society and those who are dependent on selling their labor

The risk is that those who are the working classes come together as a single group and then they can use political democracy in ways that would be dangerous for economic elites. And Madison's message in Federalist 10 is say the chances of that happening are not zero, but it's pretty hard to do because there's plenty of sources of faction and the trick

to essentially elite class rule within a democracy is to just continually turn up the volume on faction. Just keep faction developing. You want as much faction as possible. And this can even be invigorating and a form of rule and can create all sorts of innovations. Who knows what can happen? That's where you want the social discontent to go.

So, I mean, that logic is very old. Divide et impera, divide and rule. So that's what's, you know, picked up and in the post-war era kind of emerges into wokeness. And I think that, you know, the role of foundations and the intelligence services are important because, you

It's the intelligence services that are dealing with the fact that it starts in Europe, but then it's out throughout the global south. You're never going to get rid of opposition.

In a class society, you're never you're never going to have workers who are exploited and working very, very hard and not making enough to survive. They're never going to be happy with that. Right. So there's always going to be resentment and you just have to live with it. You're going to have to find ways to manage it and channel it into irrelevant, safe distractions. So, you know, that's what what.

That's what woke comes out of. It's not like all of these components in woke are preconceived as like, oh, we're engineering woke. We're here in the late 40s, early 50s, engineering this thing that by the year 2000 will be understood as woke. No. It's like they're nudging, they're intervening, they're responding to conditions as they develop. I mean, to some extent, the turn to foundations, though it's old and begins in earnest after World War II, it really takes off

after the late seventies when there are all these exposés, the church committee, the Pike committee, all these kinds of things that show, that reveal the existence of stuff like Operation Chaos, which was basically illegal CIA involvement in American politics. They're not chartered to do that. They're supposed to be focused abroad, right? And in response to that, you know, little bit of a crisis,

much more of the kind of political influence operations just goes off book. That's when the National Endowment for Democracy is- Right, invented. So the CIA could do their work, their dirty work under the guise of democracy. And there would be- Much more openly where it's just like, yeah, this is the National Endowment for Democracy and this is what they do. What are you going to do about it? Yeah, they-

They fund opposition groups all over the world. I ran up against a bit of this. So a couple years ago, I was involved in an anti-war demonstration called The Rage Against the War Machine. It was mostly about the Ukraine war, and it was in Washington, D.C., wherever they have those things. I can't remember. And

You know, of course, Code Pink would seem like a natural group to be going along. They refused to participate because some of the speakers at the event, they didn't like their stances on LGBTQ politics. I remember this. And, of course, that just revealed Code Pink to be a cosplaying organization that wasn't serious about it. The joke I made was, sure, I'd like to end nuclear war, but not with those people. Yeah.

And, you know, it's it's I always point to Christian Smalls organizing the first Amazon union on Staten Island, who was a black guy who got fired by Amazon at the beginning of COVID. He went on to organize on Staten Island, which if you know anything about it's a bunch of Trump voters.

And so there was a black guy organizing a bunch of Trump voters and I always try to impress upon people that the way you organize isn't the way the Code Pink would organize. You don't go to the shop floor and go, "Who here is on board with trans, who's not on board with trans rights?" Okay, you're right. "Who here is a gun nut?" Okay, you're out. "Okay, who here is against bathroom, you to sex bath?" You're right. That's okay. Who's left?

Now let's organize against the man. That's not how organizing works. Organizing works around a central issue. It's what Frederick Douglass said. I'll join with anyone to do right and no one to do wrong. And so I try to impress upon that. People are like, well, what if there were Nazis? I'm like, well, you know, if we negotiate...

a peace deal in Ukraine, we're going to sit down with Nazis to actually do it. You get this, how this works. No, they don't get how it works. And so I've also tried to impress upon people that

You know, while I'm for I've always been considered an ally of the LGBTQ community because I feel like everyone should be treated equally and no one should be denied the right to work or marriage or housing based on their sexuality. And everyone should treat everybody the same way you want to be treated.

But what people don't realize is that a lot of the trans ideology is not coming from the grassroots up. It's coming from the top down, just like you pointed out. It's coming from intelligence community. A lot of the early wokeness is coming from the intelligence communities and the foundations owned by run by and funded by billionaires.

to keep people away from class issues and focusing on culture issues. The same thing's happening today. When I saw a video of Larry Fink talking about pushing trans ideology, I knew exactly what was happening. This is a way to keep people fighting amongst each other

and to see your enemy as your neighbor instead of coming together with your neighbor to fight your actual enemy, which is the establishment and the oligarchy, because that's what we live in. We live in an actual oligarchy. We haven't lived in a democracy for my entire lifetime. So would you agree with those sentiments?

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's that is the function of this. That's why wokeness has become so pervasive. And, you know, it may be peaking. You get signs that we're sort of hitting peak wokeness, but its utility seems to be.

pretty important to the reproduction of these very unequal class relationships. So I'm not sure it is going to go away so quickly. And it also offers for members of the professional managerial class, it offers them a way to feel like and appear to be doing righteous things without running up against power, right? They can just, you know,

strike laterally rather than picking fights with, with people in institutions who could potentially crush them. You know, it's like, um,

So, yeah, I mean, that's exactly what it's all about. So what I try to point out to people also is, like, of course, you're allowed to organize for, like, for instance, Martin Luther King was allowed to organize to integrate lunch counters, right? Because that doesn't hurt anybody's bottom line. Corporate America is actually going to make more money off of that. But when they turned against Martin Luther King, it wasn't when he was trying to get civil rights and equal and integrate money.

When they turned against him was when? When he did a poor people's march. Not a black poor people's march, but it did a poor people's march on Washington. They specifically shot him while he was supporting a sanitation worker's strike. Yeah, absolutely. And not to say that there wasn't opposition. I mean, of course he went up against Bull Connor and clubs and all that because, you know, local racist, local clandestine,

cliques were threatened by that movement but the larger context of course was the US government facing the world in which people saying wait a minute why should we follow you a wise that the soviet union's terrible we need to follow you you don't let black people drink from the same water pack fountains as white people and you send dogs against them right so like it that the foreign policy establishment DC they realize

Like this is a problem. So actually it would be better for American power globally, i.e. American empire, if we didn't have to go around the world explaining why local county commissioners in Alabama can get away with this horrible behavior because of the structures of American federalism, blah, blah, blah, right? Because that just – people are like, okay, so what you're saying is –

This is legal. You do this kind of stuff. So but I mean, it's not that the civil rights movement was some sort of, you know, tool of the federal government. It's like it's to say that the civil rights movement was fighting against entrenched southern power structures. But it you know, that the larger power structure of the U.S. was OK with those changes. And then, yeah, as you said, four people's march, not so much. So that and that's.

The irony is the people who focus on, you know, identity and culture issues. You write in here, you say the greatest irony of mass politics based on a universalist demands is that when victorious universal universalist politics disproportionately benefit the most vulnerable among us.

If black trans people suffer disproportionately from inadequate housing, high unemployment, and the lack of healthcare, then universal provision of such needs would disproportionately benefit black trans people. We see this reality at work. So that's what I try to, you know, I try to impress upon my friends who, for instance, are for reparations, which I'm for reparations. I'm for reparations.

I think the United States has the money. We we just took the money we gave to Ukraine. We could pay. We could give reparations to the black people who have a lineage connected to slavery. But I'm saying that will never. It's a it's a much more realistic goal for us to get universal health care for everyone, because that's something the majority of people in the country, people on the right and left agree with.

If you ask, depending on how you ask the question, 70 percent of the country is is a is a supporter of some form of single payer health care, which, you know, more black people have medical debt per capita than white. It would help them just like you said, it would help them disproportionately. So go ahead.

You would get the policy equivalent of reparations really only through universal provision. The other thing that universal provision does is not only does it disproportionately benefit those who are disproportionately suffering the most currently, is that it's politically bulletproof.

FDR knew this. They tried to get him to make Social Security means tested. He opposed it. Not on some sort of like moral grounds, actually. He was very clear. It was political. He said, look,

If everybody gets this, it's bulletproof. They'll never go after my social security. Those were my social security. It had to be universal. Everyone pays in and everyone gets it. Millionaires and the homeless get it right. And this this has proven to be true. It makes it a very, very popular program. It's hard to divide and divide.

and rule with it, right? You can't say these, why are these people getting this? It's like, cause everybody pays anyone who works, sees that, you know, deduction. And so that's another important part of universal provision, universal policies. It's that they're, you know, you're more likely to achieve them and then you're more likely to defend them. Can you imagine, uh,

a law that made provisions or a kind of reparations just to trans black people, it would never go through. I don't think right because there's so many other people who would say, wait a minute, what about me? I might be black, but I'm not trans, uh, you know, or, or, you know, why, why them and why not me? I suffer under these conditions and work the, uh, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. Why should I vote for that? It's unfair, right? But if it's

The net result for everyone is free education, safe housing, provision of work, medical care, et cetera, et cetera. That's very, very popular. And then you potentially create Madison's Nightmare, which is one big faction of the popular classes, of the working classes. So that's why that has to always be

pilloried and destroyed, right? And that's why, I mean, people, there are plenty of social scientists who basically describe the New Deal as racist, which is outrageous, you know, because the New Deal disproportionately

that benefited those who were most oppressed. And I mean, one of the classic things in this kind of attack on universal politics, they say, well, the New Deal exempted agricultural workers from coverage under the Fair Labor Standards Act, right? The reason that actually happened was because the federal government didn't have the means to basically operate at that level of nuance.

And the reality is – and so then people say, well, there was like – and so that was – what that was about was that was about the Dixocrats. The racist Dixocrats didn't want their black rural workers to get these federal provisions. The fact of the matter is there were more white rural workers who remained uncovered due to that than there were black rural workers and that there were also –

hundreds of thousands of African-American industrial workers who were covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Wagner Act. But that's a common, highbrow, historian, social scientist way of attacking the one episode of really successful universalist policies, the New Deal, and trying to paint it as racist. And it's very sad how common that

it is for young lefties to take that up as if it was true, and it's not. I mean, you bring up the example of Social Security. I just actually had a conversation last week with someone about this, and they're like, well, why don't we means test it? Why do billionaires get to have Social Security? And I said, because...

As soon as you start to take it away from some people and only make it available to certain people, now it becomes a welfare program and it's easier to attack and dismantle. But if it's universal, just like you spoke about in your article, it's much more bulletproof to those kind of attacks and it's much harder to dismantle. ♪

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Woke ideology is condemned by the right and supported or tolerated by most of the left adherents of wokeness. Perry criticism of, for example, cancel culture with assertions that there is only accountability culture.

So I that is bullshit. And we've lived through hashtag me too. And the woman who founded the hashtag me too, Rose McGowan's on this show. She was disavowing it about the way it's being implemented and used. Others on the left privately bemoan wokeness and its safety obsession, but in public remain quiet for fear of attack from woke online mobs. Yes. Alas, wokeness is real in many quarters. It is.

It is hegemonic. It is authoritarian and profoundly anti-intellectual. Well, can you can we just talk about this? What do you mean by its safety obsession? Let's start there.

Well, that's part of what the political etiquette turns on, that it's like the safety of people, which, you know, one level of safety is a physical thing. But it's this endlessly receding horizon which lapses into the psychological. Like you might harm people. You might make them feel bad if you don't.

genuflect at the pronouns or the land acknowledgements, this kind of stuff, right? So this, the concern with safety is paramount as opposed to say the concern with getting results, the concern with kind of broader economic fairness, right? So safety very much comes out of the psychological psychiatric subculture.

And it's part of what motivates the development of etiquette, right? And by, you know, the rules about how you do things, what fork you use politically. And yeah, so that's- So I've been turned down-

I've been canceled at venues and they made people feel unsafe. Yes. Yeah. Because they say we, we are, if you look at our mission statement, it says we are committed to creating an inclusive environment for art that is safe for everyone, safe for everyone. What does that mean? I'm not,

You mean I'm going to get rid of the fire code? No. What they mean is I might say something. Say it again. At one level, they can say safe. Okay, all right. Yeah, it's like physical safety. We get you. But then it's like, I mean, where does safety stop? We really don't know because it becomes very subjective, right? And if we're going to honor everyone's subjectivity, then basically dishonest,

wrecking like and mentally ill people can hijack whole organizations and whole meetings. And that happens constantly on the left. Sorry if that sounds. Yes, no, that does. That happens all the time. That's it. It's that safety means I should be safe from having a thought that makes me feel uncomfortable. That's what they mean by safety. That's literally it. We can't have thought. And if and if if that if

if what you say makes a, a straight white male feel uncomfortable, no problem. It's only the thoughts that make people of color or L or of LGBTQ. If you make them feel uncomfortable, then they don't feel safe. And then you, we need to, uh, censor you and we need to cancel you. And that's, that's the, that's, and that's why people have such a, you know,

The logic of political division and wrecking could also turn on, you know, I mean, it would be great if what you want to do is destroy social movements, then it'd be like, Greg, yes, have the straight white men also disrupt the meeting with their concerns about safety. We just want people not to talk about the issue and fight each other over safety and then break up and go away and go back to their private lives. I mean, this has happened. I remember I knew a friend who was president of the Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Against the War movement.

And these non-veteran activists came in to help them and basically destroyed the organization with exactly this kind of stuff. It was early in the pronoun game. And this was the thing. And as he described it, Vince Emanuele is his name. He's now a tattoo artist in L.A. And he, you know, he's.

genuinely solidly left guy, working class guy, committed himself to left politics and basically was just driven out of it by the insanity of the whole thing. As he put it, here's a group of people, veterans, many of them combat vets from these theaters,

who have problems with authority, right? Because authority was like, you're going to go do this thing. And they're like, wait a minute, this is completely screwed up. I don't want to do this. I don't, I don't agree with this. This is wrong. Right. And it's like now bubbling up from below come these well-meaning people.

sanctimonious, moralizing, show-off activists demanding that everyone use pronouns. And it just absolutely, I mean, you know, sorry to use the woke language. I mean, it triggered, as was intended to, trigger these left-back activists who were just like, forget it, man. This is like, I'm done with this, you know.

I'm not going to follow these rules. We're getting into this bullshit. And that's a blueprint for how to break up organizations that are coalescing around class, around economics, around a single idea that they all have in common. That's a great way for the establishment to infiltrate that woke ideology, which is there now almost solely now to split up

any kind of organization against the oligarchy. That's my opinion. And let me just ask you this. So when you say that it is now hegemonic, now, what do you mean by that? I mean, it has like,

pervasive, widespread, and almost total authority in a lot of institutions. Within academia, for example, within the nonprofit sector, certainly, within the staff cultures of many unions, within certain large sectors of corporate America, there are versions of this that hold sway. But particularly in academia, in the social sciences, this is

all important, and it's really kind of deranged. Hiring committees are, even the New York Times actually finally acknowledged this recently with their big article on University of Michigan. We're going to talk about that in a minute. Go ahead.

It's illegal to hire people based on their identities. But that happens all the time within academia to the point where I've been privy to events where it's clear that academics don't know that that's illegal. They don't know what federal law is because the discourse becomes so open where it's like, hey, this hire is going to be illegal.

a woman or is going to be a person. Joe Biden said his Supreme Court pick was going to be a black woman, right? Now that would be illegal if you were trying to do hiring at a college or a corporation, correct? Yeah, except it happens all the time. And it's of course, you know, maybe it should be legal.

You know, maybe there should be quotas actually. And I mean, at the end of the article, I get into that. It's like, but then we have to have a conversation about that. So what we have instead is de facto quotas in some places and this culture, this kind of like schizophrenic culture where the law says we don't do this, but in reality, this is what we do. And you're never supposed to acknowledge this. And you're supposed to pretend this is normal and reasonable. Right. Um,

And that in and of itself is totally anti-intellectual. And anti-intellectualism lends itself to authoritarianism. We saw that in COVID, right? Yes. One of the recent heights of anti-intellectualism

Cited in that article is the the Canadian and American Anthropological Association canceled a panel that was going to happen like Sunday morning at nine and the end of this three day conference. Everybody's hung over and catching their planes home, which wanted to discuss or essentially reassert the importance of biological sex.

as a category within anthropology. And they unilaterally, the executive leadership of this international academic organization unilaterally canceled this committee for fear that it would cause harm, i.e. threaten the safety of certain members of this professional group. That's profoundly anti-intellectual and profoundly authoritarian.

So this is exact. Here's the example. In 2003, annual joint meeting of the American Anthropological Association and the Canadian Anthropology Society executives unilaterally canceled a previously approved panel called Let's Talk About Sex, Baby. Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology. They cancel it on the grounds that it would cause harm.

to members represented by the trans and LGBTQ of the anthropological community, as well as the community at large. That really happened. That was back in 2023. And this is the world, this is what we did. That's what you're talking about. That's anti-intellectual, A, and it's authoritarian, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally insane. And so...

Yeah, I mean, the anti-intellectualism, I came across some example of a preschool recently where they were all into the

Gender pronouns, which is fine. I'm fine with that. But they're like, and we extend this to nature. Oh, God damn it. And I try and teach the kids like basically I forgot what the exact language was, but like to not misgender trees and birds. And it's like, first of all, trees and birds don't have gender. Gender is a cultural thing.

like layer upon on top of biological sex. Biological sex is duality. There's also a maffredism people who have both sexual organs and different, you know, combinations, right? The very small portion, but that's a real thing. So I'm saying it's a binary, but it's not like there's no middle ground there is, but gender is a cultural thing. Gender is the question sort of like, what, you know, what do, what does it mean to be male or female in this culture? Right?

It's about how...

how a culture constructs the meaning of the underlying thing, biological sex. This committee here, sorry, this panel was about trying to just to carve out room to discuss biological sex, which is still where people come from. It's still how nature works, right? And it's like, and here's this preschool, which nothing is preschool, it's actually a good preschool, but where it's like they want to like start extending this into nature. It's like, I'm sorry,

Birds, like robins, don't have gender. They have instincts and they have biological sex. That's it. Trees don't have gender. Trees don't have, on top of their sex differences, they don't have cultural notions about what it means to be a female or a male version of a maple tree, right?

I mean, that's profoundly anti-intellectual. It's kind of deranged, you know? So it is deranged. So let me go back to your article. You say the woke mentality. And this is to me, this is a thing I hammer because I come from the working class. I'm a blue collar guy my entire life. And.

I see how this is used to divide and keep those people down. So you say the woke mentality erases class politics, even as its adherents sometimes present fealty to wokeness as the necessary precondition for class struggle. Thus does the Marxist left edge of woke discourse succumb to an endlessly receding horizon of political preconditions.

The working class, it is argued, will only unite and fight after people of color, trans people, gay people, women and mentally ill people have had their specific issues centered by the left, ignored in this proposition.

is the fact that the majority of problems faced by all subsets of the working class are common to the class as a whole and can only be ameliorated when the working class comes together and fights as such. This is not to say that there are no legitimate concerns other than class concerns, nor is it to say that working class economic victories heal all injuries,

and right all wrongs. But what it is saying is that it is a mistake to

to decouple your fight from the essential class and economic struggles. And to put anything in front of that is also a mistake because when you come together and you do a universalist policy like healthcare for everyone or social security for everyone, it helps, ironically, it helps the people who are most marginalized.

that people of color, it helps them the most. So go ahead. Think about it, a way to think about it that maybe kind of, you know, throws the woke culture that we're so used to kind of habituated to into starker relief is, can you imagine if in a political organization that involved

Protestants, Catholics, Muslims and Jews, if there were activists who were saying, "Hey, we need to know that people in this group don't eat pork." It's like, "Wait a minute, some of us are going to eat pork. Some of us have prohibition against eating pork." And others are like, "Wait, wait, wait. We need to know, you know, we don't feel safe around people who drink." Okay? Alcohol is very destructive.

It's very dangerous. A lot of people have no control over alcohol. And we need, we need this group to acknowledge and condemn the role of alcohol. And then Catholics are like, wait a minute, alcohol, wine is part of our ceremony. I mean, it's like, that kind of shows you how ridiculous it would be. And the correct way to be under such conditions are like, Hey, fine. You hate alcohol, your church, you ban alcohol. You guys don't want to eat pork. Don't eat pork. You guys want to have alcohol as part of your ceremony. Do that. Let's,

like discuss wages let's discuss health care let's discuss these economic conditions that unite all of us and you know if you believe in god great if you don't believe in god great whatever that's all up to you you can have and that's actual diversity go do your thing but right here in this limited

but very important arena of economic reality, we unite as economic actors and we can believe in different gods and have ideas that may in fact be reprehensible to each other, but we can recognize our common humanity and our common interests in these fights that matter so materially, right?

By the way, this lady is the CNN foreign affairs analyst. Rina Neenan said she cannot find one Arab American within her social circle in business or personally who has said that they would vote for Kamala Harris. She also said that. Why isn't that something? I think Kamala Harris needs to turn the page from what has been. Did she say turn the page? Maybe that would help.

Well, there goes another major demographic. I mean, but at least the white dudes for Harris are still going strong. And by strong, I mean they'll say whatever keeps the peace in their household. The only thing weaker than white dudes for Harris has got to be the drinks at the Mormon Comedy Barn in Provo. Am I right? Come on. What are they getting paid, though? There's no white dudes for Harris. They're all people being paid by the Harris campaign. And that's what white dudes for Harris is. That is all it is. There's no one that is just part of that.

If you're not getting paid and you call yourself that, you're a chump. You're a chump. Because you should be getting money like the rest. So here it is. Here she is. And I've been talking to people in the business sector, in the Arab American community, and I was really surprised this week to get an earful to hear them say that they would much rather...

Either vote a third party, not vote at all or vote for Donald Trump. And I'm telling you, it's not obviously a significant sample size, but I cannot find one Arab American within my social circle in business or personally who have said that they will vote for Kamala Harris. When you look at the polling, it seems sort of neck and neck what they are saying. And this is not a Donald Trump campaign line that can can I just remind people?

that when they do nationwide polls, those polls mean almost nothing. Why do nationwide polls mean almost nothing? Because we are electing a president on the electoral college. The popular vote doesn't matter. The only polls that should matter are the polls in the swing states. And Trump's ahead in almost all of those.

So when Hillary would go, I won the popular vote. Yeah, it doesn't matter. I would go, what? Why don't you change that system? Because that's how you lost that. No, we're not changing it. No. I think we can win on this one. And guess what? You would think that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats would want to change the system of the Electoral College. They do not. Why do you think that is?

I think that'd be Al Gore's chief issue after he got screwed on that. You would think. You would think it would be Hillary Clinton's chief issue. Nope, don't even bring it up. No. Why do you think that is? Because I think they lose in a popular vote too. I think they can't guarantee they're going to get what they want.

And it's better not to lose than to lose to like, you know, democracy on the ballot. So we can't afford to have democracy. Yeah. Here we go. And I've been talking to people in the business sector, in the Arab American community. And I was really surprised this week to get an earful to hear them say that they would much rather, uh,

Either vote a third party, not vote at all or vote for Donald Trump. And I'm telling you, it's not obviously a significant sample size, but I cannot find one Arab American within my social circle in business or personally who have said that they will vote for Kamala Harris. When you look at the polling, it seems sort of neck and neck.

What they are saying, and this is not a Donald Trump campaign line, that Tiffany Trump's father-in-law, who's a Lebanese businessman, has been successful in kind of converting and talking to people to explain why Trump would be better, even with a Muslim ban, even with everything else that has happened. They feel they do not have any political clout. Yeah, he did a Muslim ban. He banned them, but he didn't bomb them, which is worse. You know who did bomb them? Barack Obama.

Well, also a Muslim ban means Israel can't ship disgruntled Palestinians here that they run off their land. It complicates the plan for the area, you know? Yes. Okay.

They don't have any political operation. The only political power they have is their vote, even if it means the rise of Donald Trump. That's extraordinary. That's extraordinary. Is it? Is it? Is it really extraordinary? That's extraordinary. Oh, wow. It's extraordinary that people won't vote for the person who's currently bombing them. Yeah.

But Trump wouldn't be better. Well, the person who was definitely not better is there now. So you don't think they might want to punish that person? And maybe they'd want to punish Trump if he's not any better. Yeah. I say punish the one that doesn't do what you want. Whoever's been in for four years, that's who you hold responsible, right? You got to go after the person who's currently doing the bombing to you.

So that you can't, well, Donald Trump would be worse. I've heard people say, what is he going to do? Dig up the dead Palestinians and kill them again? Yeah, he would be worse. Okay, but we already have the person who's responsible for failing on this. Well, not really Kamala, she wasn't elected or anything, but...

The people in charge now that got us in this bullshit are there now and they have to go. They have to be cleaned the fuck out. I'd like if Trump to say, and he says so much dumb shit about Israel, but I would like him to say we're not doing BB's dry cleaning ever again. I feel like that would be a symbolic gesture. That would be symbolic. Throw his dry cleaning in the goddamn Potomac in front of him.

I mean, we're hearing about the inroads that Tiffany Trump's husband was making in the spring when the uncommitted, the uncommitted, uninstructed movement in a couple of states in Wisconsin and Michigan were such a big deal. I mean, 48,000 votes for uninstructed in Wisconsin. That's more than twice Joe Biden's margin in 2020. In Michigan, 101,000 uncommitted votes. That's just shy of what Joe Biden won that state by. I mean, this

is important and it could be decisive. And there's 200,000 Muslims in Georgia that no one talks about too. And in the CARE poll which came out several months ago, Kamala Harris was in third place among Muslims in several of those states behind both Donald Trump and Jill Stein. So there is this position that she's in.

Let me play this one more time. And I've been talking to people in the business sector in the Arab American community, and I was really surprised this week to get an earful to hear them say that they would much rather

Either vote a third party, not vote at all, or vote for Donald Trump. And then they said they even like Benjamin Netanyahu better than Kamala. I said, come on, that's mean. And they go, no, at least he's clear about what he stands for. At least he doesn't giggle when he says what he's going to do. So Trump's in-laws, Trump's in-law is trying to exploit Democrats' weakness with Arab American voters. Boy, how dare he?

I can't believe how low Trump will go exploiting the weakness of a rival campaign. Just call them weird like gentlemen. That's weird talking to fellow Muslims. You're being weird. Who writes their campaign hits? Like, they're weird. Who wrote that? A 13-year-old girl that's actually a boy?

Tiffany Trump's father-in-law has been working behind the scenes to persuade a critical group of voters in Michigan. Since earlier this year, a pair of unofficial Trump emissaries, Mossad bullions,

And a Lebanese American businessman and an in-law of Mr. Trump and Richard Grinnell, Mr. Trump's former ambassador to Germany and acting intelligence chief, have been crisscrossing Michigan trying to repackage and sell Mr. Trump to skeptical Arab American and Muslim voters there. In 2020, these overlapping but different constituencies, many Arab Americans are Christian.

largely rejected Mr. Trump, who as a 2016 candidate proposed a national registry of Muslims and vowed a total and complete ban on Muslims entering the United States. But the war in Gaza and Lebanon has strained their support for Democrats, and Mr. Boulos and Mr. Grinnell have set out to exploit this weakness. How could they? They're not talking to regular Arabs. They're talking to people like high up businessmen.

They have held what they estimate to be more than 100 private meetings delivering a range of pitches, according to interviewers with seven people who have met with one or both of them. They have pointed to common ground with the former president on social and economic policies and have helped arrange access to the former president at events.

Mr. Grinnell, who is lobbying to be Secretary of State in a potential second Trump administration, has at least twice suggested Mr. Trump's relationship with President Vladimir Putin of Russia could be useful in pressuring regional leaders. Both men often repeat Mr. Trump's promises to be a peacemaker in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

And despite Mr. Trump's record of solid support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his government, Mr. Boulos and Mr. Grinnell have successfully pursued the endorsements of sharp critics of Israel, including one activist who has labeled Israel's military campaign in Gaza a genocide. Well, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. And keep Israel on speed dial, am I right? Yeah, he labeled it a genocide. I call it a situationship genocide.

The whole thing behind Donald Trump's power over others, it's not that he's good or that he's honest, but instead that he will happily tell you and tell everyone that you are just as crooked as him. Also, he's loyal, though. And if they had just not tried to trash him every five seconds, we could have health care. If they really wanted health care and they flattered Trump and were loyal to him, we'd have health care.

That's a fact. I know what they think is stupid. What the people at the top think is dumb about him is he values loyalty because they don't. Right. So it's going to do with honesty because who's running for president is going to tell the truth to you. Nobody. You know why he didn't release that info that Judge Napolitano talks about? I don't know why. He goes, if you read what I read, you wouldn't release it either. It's because America would experience ego death.

And by the way, America should experience. Yeah. Almost like a trip really hard on too many mushrooms. America's ego has to go. And that's really what the problem is. But nobody's running for president. Sell that to nobody. So what you can have is some loyalty and then maybe some things to get done like that bill that let prisoners out of prison.

John Kennedy is the name of that senator, by the way, because I want to know who Trump was talking about that gave it to him. He goes, oh, really? He was fighting against it. Tooth and nail was John Kennedy.

And he goes, I'm going to give it to you because blah, blah, blah. And Trump's telling us on Patrick Bet Value Show, like it's a nice story. I guess it is in a way. It's disgusting that that's how something that important gets done as a loyalty favor. It's not like that's gross to me. But nevertheless, it got done. So again, there's no good candidates running. There's not one. You don't live in a good country. You live in a Satan country. That's what it is. Whether you believe it's real or not, that's what you live in.

But things like loyalty are viewed as a major weakness and being like, you know, you're not sophisticated that you would have something like that. You're supposed to sell out and you've watched it personally with all your dumb shit Hollywood friends, right? Yes. They view loyalty as not a virtue in any level. They're like, why haven't you sold out someone? No, their only loyalty is to their career.

That's right. That's their only loyalty is to their career. That's the one thing with the establishment. It's not adrenochrome, whatever conspiracy thing. It's that these people are loyal only to their career. And once you have programmed people to be that way, you can make them do any evil you want. And we've seen it over and over again in history. Hey, become a premium member. Go to JimmyDoreComedy.com. Sign up. It's the most affordable premium program in the business.

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