Sydney Sweeney and ‘Phantom Lib Syndrome’

Episode Summary

Right-wing Republicans have lost in the marketplace of ideas. Their policy views that evolution never happened, that tax cuts increase revenues, and that science is a big left-wing conspiracy are laughable. Whenever reactionaries attempt to debate progressives and liberals, as they recently tried against Mehdi Hasan, they fall flat on their faces.

The millionaire grifters you see talking to themselves on YouTube or talk radio are too afraid to debate actual progressive pundits, so instead, the reactionary right picks battles with imaginary Democrats. I know this because I used to do it in my former career as a right-wing activist. It’s a dead-simple method: Find an obscure person you can say is “on the left” and then make that person’s little-viewed TikTok video somehow representative of everyone on the center-to-left.

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox cable channel pioneered this tactic decades ago with its infamous “War on Christmas” lies. In actuality, celebrating Christmas was popularized by the liberal cultural Christian Charles Dickens. The original right-wing Protestants, the Puritans like Oliver Cromwell, hated Christmas and banned it from being celebrated for its supposed pagan and papist origins.

But truth does not matter to reactionary authoritarians. Only power. And we saw that most recently in the recent hoax generated by right-wing media over actress Sydney Sweeney’s decision to do an ad campaign for a jean manufacturer that we won’t name.

Most people didn’t care about the Sweeney spot. It was one of thousands of celeb paid endorsements. A handful of people noted that using “jeans” as a play on the word “genes” had unfortunate echoes of eugenics, but mostly it was ignored—until far-right extremists like Libs of TikTok and Charlie Kirk seized on a handful of scattered online comments and inflated them into proof of a massive “woke” meltdown. In reality, the outrage they claimed to be responding to didn’t exist; they had manufactured it, using a well-worn tactic called nutpicking to pretend that Democrats nationwide were outraged by an ad they had never even seen.

In this live Theory of Change episode, Noah Berlatsky of Everything Is Horrible joins to talk about the right’s history of lying about the left, the center’s falling for it, and why Donald Trump is desperate to have Americans talk about anything but his failed administration and cover-up for Jeffrey Epstein.

The video of this episode is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.

Related Content

* The right-wing freakout about sorority dance videos is more disturbing than it looks

* How 1970s right-wing college students invented canceling people and many of today’s political consulting tools

* Inside the cult of Turning Point USA

* It’s not just schools: Reactionaries are targeting public libraries as well

* The fact that Ghislaine Maxwell is being considered for a Trump pardon reveals his absolute desperation

* Trump’s many broken campaign promises

Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

05:33 — Right-wing envy of progressive cultural influence

09:53 — History of manufactured controversies

14:25 — Beauty standards and eugenics

19:01 — Trump's comments on minorities

23:49 — Republicans love canceling people

28:41 — History of Christmas celebrations

32:36 — Trump's failed campaign promises

36:46 — Economic policy failures

40:21 — Right-wing media tactics

44:36 — Online harassment campaigns

48:43 — Trump and Epstein connection

55:55 — The importance of distraction for Trump

Transcript

The following is a computer-generated transcript of the audio. It is provided for convenience purposes only and is not proof-read.

MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: ​[00:00:00] This is Theory of Change. I'm Matthew Sheffield. Thanks for joining me for another episode. And we're doing a live one today with Noah Berlatsky to talk about one of the most absurd and stupid fake controversies cooked up by the right wing in a number of years. And I'm talking of course about Sydney Sweeney and American Eagle and the ad campaign that she did for them, featuring some her wearing a jean jacket and pants, and which it was. Basically kind of a play off of a very kind of infamous Franklin, ad from the, nineties, I guess it was the nineties. Yeah. Featuring Brooke Shields when she was 14 years old and, that was kind of creepy. And they were trying to basically do an edgy, quote unquote, type of ad and, get controversy, but it didn't work initially, and like people weren't really paying attention to it. and, there, there was a little bit of commentary here and there of people talking about beauty standards and euro, euro centra and that sort of thing.

But overall, people are just like, oh, Sydney Sweeney did an ad. and a lot of people had never heard of Sydney Sweeney. Like, I think that's the thing that I, when I, have [00:02:00] posted about a, thread about it, a couple of, or yesterday I've gotten so many replies from people saying, who the hell is Sydney Sweeney? Have you have people said that to you, Noah?

NOAH BERLATSKY: Not, I mean, I haven't talked about it a ton, but I haven't uhhuh, I mean, I kind of know who she is. I don't know that Oh, you do? Yeah.

SHEFFIELD: You're, a, you, are a media and political writer, so Of course, so,

BERLATSKY: yeah. But, yeah, I mean, I'm not that surprised 'cause she's, she's a relatively new, her, stardom is relatively new and she, I don't think she's been in any huge kinda blockbuster hits quite yet, so,

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So I'm not sure. It's not surprising that people wouldn't know necessarily, I think. but, I guess before we get further into it, so, Noah just give, people a little background of your site and, and how you got into all this, if you would

BERLATSKY: please. Sure. I'm a freelance writer. I write about politics and culture.

my site is Everything is Horrible, which is a newsletter on Substack. and I've written about Sydnee Sweeney a couple times. most recently I talked about this ad a little bit. and, yeah, I've talked about her movie Immaculate. And, she's kind of been a figure who the right's been interested in for a while.

sort of both positive. I mean, they've kind of both praised and attacked her. She's kind of a figure that the right thinks about, so I've talked about that a little.

SHEFFIELD: yeah. Well, let me, yeah, that's right. and, she's interesting as a figure for the right, because, they, they were trying to make Taylor Swift, their mascot, a few years ago, and I think after that didn't work.

Now they're [00:04:00] trying, they've tried to make Sydney Sweeney as sort of their avatar, which is really bizarre because like, that's the, one of the funniest. And the most absurd things about right-wing cultural commentary, is that, or cultural output is that they can't make anything artistic. and so, these people who have these avatars of, Greek sculptures and, Renaissance paintings, et cetera, et cetera, and they're talking about, oh, I'm here to protect the culture from the ravages of the left.

Well, guess what? The left runs all of these museums. and they're the ones, you know who, well,

BERLATSKY: I think that's right, and I think that there's, I think that the left and Democrats don't really think about that as an advantage or don't necessarily capitalize it on it the way they could. I mean, I was kind of thinking about this with, kind of, people are like, who's the Joe Rogan of the left?

Right? Are, because Joe Rogan's kind of has a big audience and people think, oh, well, he's. Got this direct line to a lot of young men, even though his audience is not that young. and I was thinking about that. And the truth is, I mean, there's a lot of cultural product that is made by people on the left, whether you're talking about museums, whether you're talking about like Taylor Swift, who's, a Democrat and who is endorsing Democrats or Beyonce.

The right’s envy of progressive cultural influence

BERLATSKY: I mean, there's just a lot of culture that comes from sort of the broadly progressive side of the spectrum. and, but you know, there's not a, what there isn't is there's not a lot of effort to people are willing to spend a lot of money to find the [00:06:00] next Joe Rogan, but like less money to do things like fund alternative weeklies, which help cultivate this kind of.

Art scene, which is often quite progressive and, is interesting to people who are progressive and gets them interested in culture and in politics. the le I mean, the left doesn't really have an arts policy. I mean, that used to be, there was one of those in the thirties, right?

I mean FDR was like, we're gonna fund, well that's, yeah. We kind of don't do that and Then they're like, well, why don't we have Joe Rogan? And it's like, you've got this large infrastructure, which you could do more to fund if you want it. And the right kind of knows that, which is why they're defunding it.

Right. the, right is like attacking arts funding. And they're doing that because a lot of the arts are, sort of broadly progressive and they want, don't want people to be able to like, make a living doing that or communicate.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, it's true. And and, essentially what they're trying to do is so, so mainstream culture, the reactionary, right.

and I think it's important not to call them conservative because, conservatives want to keep things how they are. and Donald Trump is anything but conservative. conservative is somebody like Joe Manchin or Ki or, ki Sinema, that's a conservative. or like George will, or like those are conservatives.

Donald Trump is a reactionary and authoritarian, fascist, whatever those words we want to use, I think. but like, they're, against, they are anti-American. Literally. They hate this country, how it is. And, the people that are in it, like they want to go back to, pre Jim Crow, they want to go back to the Jim Crow South.

Like that's, and they say that frequently, like they, they [00:08:00] talk all the time about, oh, well, black people were better off, during segregation. There was less crime, there was less murder, and there was more opportunities and more capitalism. So they say these kind of, so they're letting us know what they want.

They're anti-American. And, and we can see that I think with all of these fake controversies, that the right wing has been gin up for such a long time and for decades. And, the, and a few years ago, the folks at Media Matters did a clip, that talked about what I think the, set, what set the template for all of these fake controversy like Sydney Sweeney and the Genes is the war on Christmas.

And so I'm gonna roll this clip that Media Matters put together of Fox News people making everything up about the war on Christmas.

Fox News clip: Well, the war on Christmas is not real. They tell you all the time. It's totally fake. And if you believe in it, you're dumb. You watch Fox News or something. Isn't it amazing?

The, attack, the assault, it's just unbridled and seemingly unprecedented against Christmas. It has to do with, at the root of It, it has to do with two things. Abortion and, the gay rights agenda. today we're talking a lot about sexual harassment. Well, cases like this are examples of spiritual harassment.

And look, this is a part of the larger, not just war on Christmas, but the war against Christianity. Look, I'm tired of, we talk, we're gonna talk about this all the way through Christmas. You name one person who's said that Obama's waging a war on Christmas. I've heard many people on these airwaves talking about it.

I've been on panels talking. Is this really happening? Yeah, I mean, I haven't said it. We've talked, I don't remember anybody saying Obama's changing. I talked about Christmas. Who's war on Christmas? Obama is Obama. I think we won the War on terror. I mean the war on Christmas already hostile toward Christmas and hostile toward Christians.

History of manufactured controversies

Fox News clip: The war on Christmas, heads to Sin City because there wasn't anybody else fighting this war on Christmas. I'll take kudos for that. [00:10:00] War on Christmas. And John, you've got a book for that title? Yeah, I did write a book about it and it, I thought maybe we'd be done with it. And the war on Christmas may be worse than ever.

There is an attack on Christmas, which is kind of the tip of the spear when it comes to, and even greeter, battle brew.

SHEFFIELD: and that video actually goes on for two more minutes. Like, this is the kind of b******t that the right wing has been shoveling for decades. as we saw in that clip. I mean, bill O'Reilly, that was Guy, hasn't been on Fox in a long time since he, got hired for harassing women.

and, like, and there, there's a reason that I'm calling this, this attitude or this PR strategy, phantom Lib syndrome. And, I have to give credit to, one of my, Twitter followers who came up with a phrase, very excellent phrase. And, the reason it's phantom lib is that when you look at right-wing policy outputs, they don't exist.

They literally don't exist. And in terms of like po they don't write policy papers that are coherent. and, the things that they do essentially amount to. The, what's your policy on next? Cut the budget. That's it. Like their model for how to respond to natural disasters is Katrina, their model. Like, and we saw that during COVID, when they had this, the policy that the Trump White House desperately wanted to do was just let people die.

let it rip and let you know, kill grandma. And some of them even explicitly said that. so, so their policies are so dumb and so abhorrent. No one except for the most psychotic people, like, who run the Republican party would want to vote for that. and so they have to, so they can't argue for their policies or against, [00:12:00] more even centrist or liberal progressive.

They can't argue against any of the other ones. So instead they make up liberals to get angry at, I think. And that's the phantom lib 'cause who, who better to argue with than someone that you meet up?

BERLATSKY: Yeah, I mean, I think so I guess I think two things. I mean, I know you, there's a, you were talking about this New York Times article, which looked at who was actually talking about the, Sidney Sweeney.

And it was, it's not democratic leaders or even mostly big accounts. It's mostly been, there were some smaller accounts and they kind of get cherrypicked and then the right kind of works itself up to yell at them is kind of your take. and I think that's true that they do that a lot.

I think it's also, I mean, I think with Sidney Sweeney in that ad, they're not, I mean, like I said before, the right's been Richard Hanania especially touted Sidney Sweeney as a kind of, like at that she was an attack on the left just by existing. Because she's, conventionally attractive white woman, and he thought that that was somehow triggering for the left to ha as if there aren't any other, conventionally attractive.

SHEFFIELD: Which is so absurd because like they also complain that Hollywood is filled with liberal leftists. So the, leftists are either controlling all of the women or none of them.

BERLATSKY: Well, they also, I mean, the rights also vary anti-sex. So, there's, I mean they're, trying to censor, they're trying to censor pornography.

They're trying to censor basically anything they see as talking about sexuality. So, yep. So there's that contradiction. But the point is that she's kind of somebody who is on the rights [00:14:00] radar before as somebody who they felt they could rally around. So, I mean, and I think this ad, I mean the, what I wrote about is, I mean, like, I don't think, I don't think personally that it's like that the ad was like intended to be this kind of like, white supremacist cheerleading statement or anything.

Beauty standards and eugenics

BERLATSKY: Yeah, not at all. I mean, it's, but I do think, what I do think is that there's this, what I call kind of common sense eugenics. I mean, the idea that there's good genes and that good genes mean something like being, like, looking like Sydney Sweeney, which means, basically thin, white, able bodied.

The idea that there is some sort of like good genetics to have and that Sidney Sweeney would embody that is sort of like conventional wisdom. I mean, people talk about good genes, people it's it's just a. Like people aren't, when people talk about that, they're not like, really thinking about being white supremacist.

It's just kind of, there's this kind of default idea that to be white and thin is better. Right. And so, I mean, I think the Right, although

SHEFFIELD: we should be clear, it doesn't actually say that.

Unclear: well,

SHEFFIELD: yeah, it says, I think they were playing into it says that they made to her the mascot. I think, they knew that to some degree.

BERLATSKY: Right. But I mean, she says, I mean it's, her standing there and saying, I have good genes. And what I'm saying is that's that, I mean, just like there's kind of like a lot of ambient, sexism and racism in popular culture just by virtue of the fact that, most [00:16:00] movie protagonists are white men, right?

I mean, like, there's these kind of messages you get from pop culture. Which are not exactly intended, but which kind of like default to sort of like common sense and about like what people think is attractive, who people think is important, so on and so forth. So, I mean, so I think that the right saw this as something to rally around because they felt spoken to and then they kind of, so they want to make it an issue because they feel like it's a way to sort of like rally around ideas that they, think the ad is supporting in which they like.

So yeah, and it's, and a

SHEFFIELD: lot of it's projection though, like in a, in the sense that I think that, so like you look at RFK Junior, like his solution for health is everyone needs to live exactly like me. and if you don't live my lifestyle, then you're not healthy. and if we magically just stop eating certain things that I don't like, then you'll be perfectly healthy.

You'll never get sick. And, in the same way, like they were saying with COVID, it, you won't die from COVID. You won't get COVID. it will be nothing if you just, go and lift weights and run. And it's like a lot of people got sick from COVID, that were perfectly healthy, quote unquote.

And it's, this individualization of, virtue as they see it, that there's no such thing as community, that everything's about the individual. And I think that's what they really latched onto with her, is that they see her as an archetype in some sense, even though they're just a bunch of losers.

BERLATSKY: Well, right. I mean, it's the same. I mean, RFK Junior is big into eugenics and it's kinda [00:18:00] like the same 'cause it's not just, Live like me and you'll be great. It's also, I mean, it's like I'm a white, I'm a, I'm a white guy and we kind of don't care. Like, I'm a sort of able-bodied white guy, and if people who are less able bodied or less white get sick and die, maybe that's a good thing.

Right. I dropped, in

SHEFFIELD: fact. Yeah. Said that with, when he was asked recently about, why, do, why are these farmers, why do they need to have, the, A worker Visa program? Well, it's because these people who are, Hispanic, that they are coming over and they work just so much. They work, they live to work, and if they break, their arm or something, then they die.

They die because that's the natural way. Trump was that right. Trump was saying that. Yeah, Trump

Trump's comments on minorities

BERLATSKY: was saying that. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean the, so I mean, that's kind of this idea that, that there are some kinds, that there are ideal bodies that, there are, ideal genetics is something that the, and that, certain people are suited to rule and then certain people are suited to be off in the corner and not visible.

You know what I mean? Those are things that the right is rallying around right now and they really believe. Yeah. What's, what I'm saying is it's not like with the Sydney sweetie, I mean, they're making up like they make up liberals to be mad at. Right. But also there is something in the ad that they're responding to that they like and that's not necessarily something that Sydnee Sweeney, I mean, like, I don't like the one.

we don't really know what Sidney Sweeney's politics are. I mean, she didn't write the ad, she [00:20:00] just showed up there and did the performance. But I mean, the one, the her one Passion Pod project was Immaculate, which is a film about how patriarchy is evil. And it's like, women should control their bodies.

It's, it's quite pro-abortion, right? Yeah. I mean, it's, but her

SHEFFIELD: character on White Lotus also is kind of in that same vein that, oh, she, yeah, because like, she's like a, gen Z, girl with her friend who are constantly criticizing neoliberal parents, for being hypocrites, and pretending to be, virtue signaling with social issues and then, promoting inequality.

I got it right.

BERLATSKY: yeah. Yeah. But, so. So I don't know that she's, I mean, somebody said she registered Republican, which can mean, a variety of things. It doesn't necessarily mean that she's like, on board with Trump. but anyway, the point is kind of no matter what her particular politics are, and really the kind of like, even though, the, ad is just kind of, I mean like ads are just meant to be trivial and maybe edgy and make you buy jeans, But pop culture does have kind of different messages and some of those are things that the right is finds congenial or, wants to promote or talk about and, so I think that there's, they kind of frame it as like, the left wants to take away these things. But what they feel the left wants to take away or what they're claiming the left wants to take away is this [00:22:00] idea that, white people and thin people, able-bodied people are better than everybody else and deserve more space and, kind of more power than everyone else.

And, the ad doesn't exactly. I mean, the ad doesn't, the ad is not a programmatic statement saying that, but it, it picks up on these tropes, which are in pop culture. And I think seeing those is why, seeing those makes the right say, we like that, we want more of that.

So, so anyway.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, it's, and, it's interesting also to, to, place that in the larger context. So, when we look at the, right wing is constantly claiming that they're for free speech, right? Like they, they're against cancel culture. Right? But the reality is Donald Trump is the king of cancel culture.

Donald Trump has literally banned hi, using the power of government, banned historians from saying certain things that he doesn't like. He has literally banned the Smithsonian Institution in its museums from promoting improper ideology. Like there is nothing remotely similar to what any democratic president in modern

BERLATSKY: history has done in that all, I think there's kind of this confusion about like, like criticizing an ad is.

Canceling someone. I mean, that's, it's not an attack on free speech. It is free speech. Like, saying, I don't like this ad for this reason. I think it, promotes bad ideas. Like that's dialogue. That's not canceling speech. That's not, you're saying

Cancel culture and free speech

SHEFFIELD: someone's a jerk.

BERLATSKY: It's more, speech and like private entity is kind of not, well, Gina Carrano, right? I'm not sure I'm pronouncing her [00:24:00] name right,

SHEFFIELD: but she,

BERLATSKY: Disney,

SHEFFIELD: the actress. Yeah,

BERLATSKY: the actress. Disney stopped working with her because she made offensive statements about the Holocaust. I mean, she kind of compared, having to get a COVID vaccine to, Auschwitz, which is like, that's, like that's the sort of thing where people say, geez, that's, that's messed up.

I don't know that I want to work with somebody who's, doing that. But now Disney has decided, because the Trump administration is pressuring people to work with people on the right, kind of whether or not they want to, and, forcing private entities to hire your ideological, friends as, that's not, that's the opposite of free speech.

it's like saying that you have to print government propaganda in your paper, right? I mean, people generally think of free speech as like, oh, you're not, centering speech. You're not preventing us from saying something. But, control, like government control of speech can also be forcing you to say things that you don't really agree with or don't want to say.

Right. And there's a lot of that now where, Trump is saying, well. you can't, if you print things criticizing me, I will sue you or I'll withdraw funding. But also, you have to hire at these universities, you need to hire people. I like you need to basically, which is quotas.

Yeah,

Like quotas, ideological quotas for conservatives. That's, that's forcing speech. that's censorship of speech, that's government controlled [00:26:00] speech. and all these, basically all these, like the war on, I mean the war on Christmas too, like, I mean the war on Christmas, like on the one hand it's ridiculous, right?

I mean, like nobody is trying to like prevent you from celebrating Christmas. But what people do sometimes ask is that you recognize that there are people who are not Christians, right? Yeah. I mean, that's what Happy Holidays is, people are saying, well. I understand that, saying Merry Christmas to everybody doesn't necessarily make sense.

'cause other people exist and we want to be inclusive.

SHEFFIELD: Yep.

BERLATSKY: And the war on Christmas is people saying, you are not allowed. Allowed, you're not allowed. We don't, we want, to use government force power and harassment to prevent you from, acknowledging that everybody isn't a Christian, that everybody isn't even religious to, we, feel that like everybody should be forced to basically promote Christianity.

Yeah. Whether and they just, Trump just passed this thing where. Trump has this kind of anti-Christian bias task force, and he's just passed this. He's just put out, which run

SHEFFIELD: only by Christians, of course.

BERLATSKY: Right. Which he's put out a memorandum saying that, far right ones supervisors are allowed to proselytize, their employees.

and, pe it's like, oh, we want free speech. But I mean, like, what you're doing is you're saying, if you're not Christian and you speak up, you may lose your job. Right.

SHEFFIELD: And that's, that's essentially Yeah.

BERLATSKY: Yeah. I mean, and that's what the war on Christmas is. The war on Christmas is a, it's a war for Christmas against [00:28:00] non-Christians, against anybody who's, and even against some, even against some Christians who like, have different faith traditions or whatever.

I mean, it's, it's, you have to, if you have to be part, you have to. You have to speak for the ruling elite, and if you don't, we'll punish you.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and yeah, and on that point, with the war on Christmas, the, original war on Christmas was launched by right-wing Protestants. Like they, that was what Oliver, one of the things Oliver Cromwell did when he took over England was he prohibited people from celebrating Christmas.

History of Christmas celebrations

SHEFFIELD: and like the, the entire idea of celebrating Christmas as a cultural tradition for Christians was made up by the liberal Christian Charles Dickens. It was literally the left that came up with Christmas as a public, spirited holiday. And like, so all of their history is just completely backwards.

Like early Christians weren't interested in celebrating Christmas, as a thing, but Easter was the primary tradition, not, Christmas. and, and, as, the Puritans and many other, or, right-wing Protestants frequently pointed out, like a lot of these, the Christian. ideas and the timing were very related to, ancient pagan, festivals and whatnot.

So, it was always absurd.

BERLATSKY: Maurice, I mean, most Christmas, like a lot of the big Christmas songs are

SHEFFIELD: written by Jewish people. that's the other thing. Yeah. So, yeah,

BERLATSKY: I mean, it's not, yeah, it's absurd. Lots of people like, who, lots of people who aren't necessarily Christian like Christmas, you know?

'cause kids like it. That's kind of the big thing. Yeah. It's appealing, but people in Japan love it. Yeah. But I mean, but forcing people to take part is, it's censorship and its government coercion.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And that's, and, that really [00:30:00] is a point that these guys don't. Like the, base I think doesn't understand any of this stuff.

The, elites, they're, deceitfully manufacturing, all this stuff that they love, elevating things that are not significant. and they've done this for years. I mean, whether it's, yeah, I mean, I think the red scares, like imagining the communists under your bed everywhere and the black, like, again, all of the things that they talk about and the claim to that they're against, they're the ones who started cancel culture like William f Buckley's.

First book God and Man at Yale is literally him saying for the entire book, professor doesn't believe in Jesus. Professor so and so said the resurrection never happened. Professor, what's her name says that, socialism is better than capitalism. Alumni, you need to not give them money until they fire these people.

They need to be stopped. We have to have Christian supremacy, right-wing, Christian supremacy in this nation, because that's what we need to do. And they've been doing this ever since. Yeah. So I mean,

BERLATSKY: I think one way to look at that is sort of what you're saying is like, it's hypocrisy, right?

I mean, they're, saying one thing, but the truth is the opposite. And I don't exactly know that it's hypocrisy, and I don't know that the base is necessarily confused. Oh, it's not hypocrisy. I wouldn't say that. Yeah. I mean, it's, I mean it's, it's, like just they believe certain people deserve all the rights and everybody else should be crushed.

Right? I mean, it's fascism and fascism is not about sort of saying, well, the playing field should be equal for everybody. Everybody should be able to speak. Everybody. I mean, like this liberal idea that, you know. Everybody should have rights. Everybody should be able to speak, everybody should be equally for the law.

And think that's a terrific, right? I mean the Nazis didn't think that the, the founders didn't really think that, right? I mean, they thought [00:32:00] that equality should only be extended to people with certain characteristics. Who, if they were men, if they were sort of like relatively affluent, if they were white.

And that was kinda, and that's kind of the fascist ethos. The idea that certain people have rights and that those rights are in large part the right to crush everybody else. the right to subjugate everybody else. And that's what a lot of this is. And I mean, like that's, again, that's why the Cindy Sweeney ad resonates.

Trump's failed campaign promises

BERLATSKY: 'cause it's got this idea that, certain people are better. or that's how they interpret it. That's, I mean, I think it's there, I mean, I think it's a joke, but again, it's kind of like playing on this kind of, this folk wisdom that certain genes are better. but Donald Trump certainly says things like that.

Donald Trump says things like that. Right. and that, that kind of relates to like, being able bodied, being thin, being white, which

SHEFFIELD: I guess he's not, he's neither thin nor able-bodied. Right. Which is ironic and has the brain of a sixth grader. Yeah. I mean, he says he has both those

BERLATSKY: things.

I think that's unfair to sixth graders, but, but yeah, I mean, so that's, kind of, I mean, that's where the impetus for the, I think that's where the impetus for embracing that it comes from, and, and that's also the impetus to find people online. this kind of constant cultural churn where you're constantly looking for people like one to be mad at.

Right? So you're looking for people to be angry at, but you're also looking for people to target. Right? I mean, that's what Libs of TikTok does, right? I mean, she sort of scrolls through social media and finds [00:34:00] people to send, that her mob will send death threats to. And so that's a, it's kind of ridiculous.

Like it's a way to like drive traffic and get money, right? So that's why the right wing media likes it. 'cause you want to get, keep people revved up and angry. 'cause otherwise they

SHEFFIELD: actually start thinking and you can, yeah,

BERLATSKY: right. I mean, they're not, and they won't necessarily tune in. But you know, it's also a way to like, I mean, it's also like a way to organize, right?

I mean, you kind of have these constant, you kind of have this constant roving harassment campaign. Which you can then point at anyone, right? I mean, and, you can try to, like, if somebody like tries to, if somebody like pops up and becomes a rallying point for progressives or if somebody, like, or if some judge rules against you, right?

You have this kind of like roving harassment campaign, which is ready to go after that or even to assassinate them, right? I mean like this woman got assassinated in, in

SHEFFIELD: Minnesota, in the uk somebody did, as well. Minnesota, yeah. A couple years ago. yeah, A member of parliament.

BERLATSKY: Yeah. And that kind of constant harassment and terror, is a mechanism in itself of silencing free speech because, I mean, anybody who's been, anybody who kind of like is on the left and has any visibility at all has been targeted for these harassment campaigns.

I mean, you get death threats, you get people writing your employer. I mean this just, this is just what it's like being a left writer.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, I do want to go back to my own personal experience here as somebody who, was heavily involved in right wing media for a number of years.

So, like, that's the hilarious thing to me is that when I, when right wingers [00:36:00] on Twitter, see the things that I write, and they're so ignorant about their own belief system, about their own culture, about their own history. They don't know any of these things and they're just sheep that Donald Trump tells what to do.

They, and so the thing that they, is that basically right wing. Policy arguments are defective, they're stupid. So like they believe that tax cuts increase revenue. They literally believe this, and yet there is zero evidence for this belief. and, they, never admit that. And so, like, they, were constantly, every, budget cycle, when they control Congress and the presidency, they were always driving up the deficit.

Economic policy failures

SHEFFIELD: They do it all the time. It is literally since Ronald Reagan came along, the Republicans have driven up the deficit more than the Democrats have. and they always do it. And so they've done it for so long now that when the CBO says, Hey, look, this budget's gonna, increase the deficit. They always say, no, it won't.

We need to have dynamic scoring of the budget. and, so, and it will show that it doesn't increase it as much as you said, and then, but they never go back and look at their previous dynamic scoring of the budget because it never maps out. And all the things they do, they just don't care, are driving it up.

So like, yeah, no, well, they don't, no, the elites don't care. But I'm saying the grassroots Twitter users, the brainwash masses, they actually believe the nonsense. They actually think that it's real. and I can say that because, when I was in right wing media, I had colleagues who believed this crap.

and I, and and I would ask them sometimes because like, supply side nonsense is one of the first things that for me was, a crack in the dam. Because I would ask people who were, economics writers, some, self-proclaimed economics writers like Steven [00:38:00] Moore and other people like that.

I'd say, okay, well what's the, can you gimme some evidence for this? 'cause I was an editor, I would say, well, let's have some evidence for this statement you made. And they would never give it to me. And I would say, okay, well I'm gonna take that out of your calling then, because you can't say something if you can't provide any evidence.

Well, no

BERLATSKY: wonder you weren't able to make a living.

SHEFFIELD: You weren't able to. That's right. Well, I couldn't stand it. No. Like I was making a great living because they don't care about truth. and they'll throw money at anyone, with who's, who will repeat the talking points. But they don't want you to think for yourself.

Like that's the, that is the awful irony of right-wing, reaction is, that they censor constantly. Like if you were somebody like, and, as, another example, like town hall.com, and red tech.com were owned by this Rightwing Christian radio company called Salem. they fired people who were anti-Trump Republicans.

People who thought that Donald Trump was a rhino, Republican in name only. and if you thought that you would, you were shown the door because they censor anyone who disagrees with him every time they had power. And that was another thing that really kind of stuck in my cr, used the idiom that.

they don't believe at all in free speech and they never have.

BERLATSKY: Yep. Let me just, and it's unfortunate that they are now, in complete control

SHEFFIELD: because Yeah. Well, well, let's go back to though, to the Sydney Sweeney, graphic though, if we would. So the New York Times, they put out a report, and these are, these are indisputable numbers here, that, our right wing friends on Twitter and elsewhere, they, they love using anecdotes.

Well, I saw this thing here, so therefore, blah, blah, blah. Well, sorry guys. The actual data, this is hard data. This is math, and it [00:40:00] shows that when the ad campaign. For Sidney Sweeney's jeans had started. There weren't very many posts about it. and it was only when, so basically there were some people that were making kind of aesthetic, sort of philosophical points like you were saying about, beauty standards and, that sort of thing about what, what constitutes good jeans.

Right-wing media tactics

SHEFFIELD: Like the, and as a, just as cultural commentators, these, are things that people can, are, expected to make comments of that nature. But you, no one was saying, oh, this ad needs to be pulled down and removed from the internet. Sidney Sweeney needs to be fired. Nobody said anything like that. and, and, but what we saw is that there was just kind, and it, the publicity for Sydney Sweeney, as we see on the graph, started to go down, as the, end of July approached.

but then it dramatically picked up because of right wing media, because they need somebody to be the object of the two minute hate. Because Donald Trump is a failure. he needs to talk about literally anything besides Jeffrey Epstein. I mean, that's really what this is about, is he doesn't want you to talk about Jeffrey Epstein and his coverup.

BERLATSKY: I, I'd also point out, I mean, kind of, I mean, there have been various cycles of Sydney Sweeney discourse on the right. one of them was about the right, trying to cancel her, basically, or harassing her. she posted some, I think some photographer, got kind of candid pics of her in a bikini, and so these pictures were not as staged as usually like publicity shots of her are, or as, they weren't as, they weren't even as staged as like her selfies, I mean, she was not in control of these images. And so she looked, I mean, she looked [00:42:00] like, a very attractive human in a candid shot that was not, designed to like, optimize her appearance. And, a lot of people on the right were like, oh, she's mid, I feel like there were all these, there were a lot of posts about how, she wasn't really attractive and, basically how, dare she appear in public without being, sufficiently attractive or whatever.

and that's kind of been memory hold now that, the le the right has decided, oh, she's on our side. But, I mean, I think that's also this kind of like,

this idea that, women exist in public for men to evaluate

SHEFFIELD: and comments about. Yeah.

BERLATSKY: Yeah. This idea that, the whole, point is. Basically like who has the best genes and who looks the best or whatever. And, I mean, that's, and people don't, that's not necessarily something people think of as censorship, but of course, like, being a woman in the public eye and having, men constantly attack you for what you look like, even if you're Sidney Sweeney.

it just makes it very difficult, it makes it more difficult for women to speak in public and, to Yeah. To have their voices heard. And, that's, much more of an issue in terms of like free speech and who gets to speak than, some people criticizing Sydnee sweetie had.

SHEFFIELD: Right. but you know, yeah, just ask any woman who's been on Twitter for Yeah. More than a few months, like. How much do you get in your direct messages, like just rape threats, murder threats, [00:44:00] go kill yourself. Threats, those are, they happen every day to many women. And the right just wants to pretend that doesn't happen.

Like, that is the ultimate cancel culture.

BERLATSKY: Yeah. And again, the, I mean, the thing about, this sort of body image with the jeans ads, I mean, the thing about Sydnee Swee is, like, I mean, like, she gets accused of not being perfect enough to, I mean, it's, like when you have this idea that the whole point of women, like existing is to be rated by men, everybody is targeted.

Online harassment campaigns

BERLATSKY: Even somebody who s you know, who fits most of the beauty standards supposedly, like Sidney Sweeney.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, No, that's a good point. And, but, this idea though, and, again, I'm just gonna put the numbers on the screen, so, the, because, it, so many people now that the right wing discovered my Twitter thread on this topic, they're all replying with anecdotes.

and it's like, no, guys, you're the ones that have driven this. and so, right wing republicanism, they don't have arguments in favor of anything. Like, I, want to go back to that because this is really important. Like Friedrich Nietzche is the, archetype of, today's Republicans.

Like, he was a nihilist, he was against everything. and he was an authoritarian. And these guys, they literally have no policy platform other than cut, everything. And, and we saw that also with Doge. Like when you look at. What Elon Musk and all the propaganda that he was pushing, he didn't actually care that at all, that all the, work that U-S-A-I-D does in terms of like, if you actually are concerned about wasteful spending in the United States, U-S-A-I-D actually is far [00:46:00] more beneficial from us in the return on investment than it is.

Yeah. I mean, I

BERLATSKY: think, I think that Elon Musk, when he made a Nazi salute, I tend to believe him when he says that, if you make a Nazi salute, I, you're self-identifying as a Nazi. And I will, say, okay, if you're saying you're a Nazi, I believe you. And I think when somebody who like makes a Nazi salute goes out and passes policies, which, kill millions and millions of non-white people in the global south, I mean, I, think that.

I don't think that's just like,

SHEFFIELD: an accident. Yeah,

BERLATSKY: an accident. I mean, I think that he wanted to kill people. I mean, that's, that's, well because they're

SHEFFIELD: not fit. They, don't fit. Yeah. In his, and it's notable Yeah. With the, that he's, in his obsessive desire to impregnate women, doesn't, do it with any black women as far as I've ever seen.

and, and I think there might be one Asian woman, but overwhelmingly it's white and, and, we see that at, is bought into the, supposed white genocide of South Africa again. Like they, they keep running into all of these factual problems, like the whole, again, going back to Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump.

Is trying desperately to tell Maga to move on from Epstein because he inflated this in their minds. He was the one who told them in many ways, so many ways, this is what you need to be obsessed with, that the Democrats are a secret pedophile network. And, and we're, gonna, that, that's, the entire point of Q Anon, which he said was, was this is people who love their country and has repeatedly boosted QQ Anon propaganda on his, untruth social website.

like, so they've told their followers the true believers, and [00:48:00] again, the leads are like, like they don't believe anything they say. or if they do, they'll, they are willing to drop it just outta the drop of a hat. Like they have no consistent real beliefs other than that they deserve power and that everyone else deserves jail.

and so, but the masses, the people that they have lied to and brainwash. They did believe that Q Anon was real. They did believe all the things about, Jeffrey Epstein supposedly having all this massive stuff and everybody being in on it. But now, it's, now that's become obvious that Donald Trump was a very, I mean, it was obvious before, but now that everybody knows it, it's undeniable that Donald Trump, according to Epstein himself, was his best friend.

Trump and Epstein connection

SHEFFIELD: Donald Trump was Jeffrey Epstein's best friend, according to Jeffrey Epstein. Like, and so of course Donald Trump is going to suppress this information, and of course he doesn't want you to talk about it. And like that's. That's the message that I would give our maga people who are tuning into the live stream here.

You guys are loving the hate watching. very clearly. Donald Trump has manipulated you and gaslit you. Donald Trump literally cut off funding for flood victims in Texas and took five days to respond to them after their lives were crushed. He refused to help them. And, took he, Christie Noam said, I'm not gonna approve the funding for this hotline for flood victims.

'cause it's too expensive. These people's li their own voters. Like, that's the most horrible thing about Republicanism, in this day and age, is that they don't, they, don't even care about the people who voted for 'em. Like they hate everyone else, obviously, but they don't even care about the people who voted for 'em.

Like, that's what's so sick.

BERLATSKY: Yeah. We're all, gonna be miserable. I mean. And, [00:50:00] as as the recession hits and, we have pandemics and disasters that, there's no fema. So it's, that's the goal. Yeah. It's gonna be bleak,

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and that's, but it, fits within this Nietzsche and tragic worldview because in this worldview that they all have, the base and the elites community doesn't exist.

Shared responsibility, shared care for each other and other people. It's not real. It's not even possible. Gov like Ronald Reagan's infamous phrase, the two mo, the, most scariest phrase in the English language are, I'm from the government and I'm here to help. do Right, right-Wing Republicans really think that when FEMA's calling to help them recover from a hurricane, would they say that, would they believe that?

No, they wouldn't believe that, but they ultimately believe it for other people. So other people, not them, deserve to have to live in pen and poverty and homelessness. They deserve it, but not me. Like that's, that is the self-centered, egotistical epistemology that they've got and. And it's, and we see that every day, and we certainly see this with the Sydney Sweeney story.

But, they just, they have to have an object of two minute hate, because, and they have to change it because people get bored. They need a new hate, like the, green m and m. Remember that one? can you remind our, the audience about that one? I mean, I apparently remember,

BERLATSKY: yeah. I don't know. Do you remember if you It was something, yeah, it

SHEFFIELD: was, yeah, it was that.

So they were mad that M and Mss had given the green m and m lower heels. [00:52:00] Yes. And, they, talked about it for months. They were upset about that, and like they, they have to blow up these, things that don't affect anyone. and and, they even do this with like, and we can even see this on the issue of trans athletes, so like trans athletes, there are basically none of them in this country.

and according to the NCAA president, Charlie Baker, he had testified before Congress that, so the NCAA has more than 550,000 athletes. And according to Charlie Baker, the NCAA president, there were fewer than 10 trans athletes. So this is, this is the Sydney Sweeney jeans. This is Warren Christmas.

This is green m and m. That's actually what the tran anti-trans discourse is that trans people existing in public, they don't affect you. If you're like a rural Republican who lives, in, in, the middle of nowhere in Idaho or Arkansas or North Dakota, trans people are not affecting you in any way.

so. Just leave them alone. Let them live. But they can't do that. Like, that's, that is the paradox of right wing of, fascistic, authoritarianism, other people existing differently cannot be allowed.

BERLATSKY: Right. Well, I mean, and, attacking trans people is also a way to attack other queer people.

It's a way to attack gender non-conforming people. And gender non-conforming people include, black people, especially black women, in their view. I mean, 'cause the, 'cause at the Olympic level efforts to ban trans people mostly ended up targeting black women. yeah. Ana, who's a, they decided that her hormone levels were wrong and [00:54:00] banter.

And she's a cis woman, not a trans woman. But I mean, that's kind, I mean, the same thing with the, like, I. It's kind of the same thing with these like trans sports bands or trans bathroom bands. I mean, it's like, again, it's like a way to organize. Like it's not that these people are bothering you, but it gives you an excuse to target them and to target lots of other people too.

I mean, the main people who get targeted using, using bathrooms or often other queer women or non gender nonconforming women, and I mean, people often know that they're not trans, I mean, if somebody like, if you, but it's an excuse. It's a sort of like, yeah, it's just an excuse to target trans people, queer people, and like just lots of people who might, look different or be gender non-conforming or be wearing the wrong thing or whatever, I mean, like these like. On the one hand, it's ridiculous and, silly. And it's a way to like, get people excited about stuff that isn't really affecting them. But again, it's also a way to justify and encourage and co-sponsor mob violence against a whole range of people, who, might be trans, might not be trans, but who are just like, somebody who you feel like is different.

That's a way to build fascist power is to have these constant enemies to attack. and to Oh, and to distract. And to destroy, yeah. And distract well, and

SHEFFIELD: to distract. 'cause like, I mean, you wrote earlier about that Trump hasn't fulfilled his campaign promises. Like he has not go into that, if you would please.

Broken political promises

SHEFFIELD: That's

BERLATSKY: right. Oh yeah. Well, I mean, there are the, some, [00:56:00] sort of like spineless mainstream media who. We're saying that Trump had fulfilled his campaign. like why are people upset with Trump? 'cause he has fulfilled his campaign promises. but of course he hasn't fulfilled his campaign promises.

His main campaign promise was to lower prices, to actually lower them. Like he wasn't just saying, I'm gonna, decrease inflation. He was saying, oh, I'm gonna get an office and prices will actually go down.

SHEFFIELD: He literally had signs of that Trump lower prices, common and higher prices.

BERLATSKY: That would be terrible.

Like, you don't actually want deflation. That's a sign of a horrific re recession, which we may well get to, but, but yeah, I mean, he hasn't, lowered prices. I mean, he's put huge taxes on consumer goods, which is gonna raise prices. Inflation has been up anyway. so yeah, I mean, prices are up, inflation is increasing.

it's gonna increase even more now that he's put these tariffs in place. So that's a big promise that he is done the exact opposite of what he said he'd do. he also, I mean, like, he said he'd be, he, I'm trying to think what else I talked about. he said another big promise he made is that as soon as he gets into office, these wars would end.

The war in Ukraine would end the war in Gaza would end. Right. And he basically said, as soon as I get in office, within 24 hours, I'll have a negotiated settlement in both of those places. And of course, that, that did happen. the, war in Ukraine is worse. I mean, Russia has increased its aggression.

There's more, deaths, there's more bombing. Gaza is obviously, a complete nightmare, and, Trump himself has kinda like, sort of half admitted both those things. I mean, even he has admitted that children are starving in Gaza. He is like, oh yeah, that looks kinda bad.

And yeah. even he, I mean like he's kind of. Oh, I was [00:58:00] joking when I kept saying over and over that I could solve Ukraine. Yeah. Four hours. he said it was a joke. I was exaggerating. But you know, I mean, he did, he wasn't joking or exaggerating. He was. No, he was, making a campaign promise and pe you know, which people were supposed to vote on.

So that did happen.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

BERLATSKY: and he also, he said, I mean, even the things where he's sort of like sort of doing stuff, he said like, he said, obviously he said, I'm gonna deport, basically he said, I'm gonna deport criminals. Right. Yeah. And that's what people heard.

People heard him say, I'm gonna deport criminals. And they will, we, he is claiming that there are lots of dangerous criminals. Lots of dangerous immigrant criminals and he needed to deport all of them. So that was a lie. there weren't, there aren't lots of dangerous criminal immigrants.

That's just not true.

SHEFFIELD: They commit crime at a lower rate. In fact, they commit crime at a

BERLATSKY: lower rate. Like the numbers he was talking about deporting, like, there just aren't that many people. I mean, he was talking about deporting 30 million people, Yeah. So what, so what you have instead is you have, going after, they're going after the exact opposite of criminals.

'cause criminals are hard to find, right? I mean, you have to prosecute them. You have to identify them. So instead, he's going a, after people who are law abiding. 'cause it's easy to find them, they show up to their court dates, right?

Unclear: Yeah.

BERLATSKY: They show up to work. So it's all these people who are like, so he's deporting the exact opposite of the people.

He said he would be deporting. He's, and these are, yeah. Exact opposite. So, so I mean, there are all these promises, he also was like, oh, pros, I mean his, maid promise was put me in office and. There'll be widespread prosperity, but instead unemployment is up. inflation is up.

We're looking at a, like, horrific recession. Like we'll probably have stagflation. he's also like decimated particular industries. Tourism, is like destroyed in this country. 'cause nobody wants to come [01:00:00] here because Trump is like arresting tourists and throwing them in prison. People are like, I don't wanna do that.

there's, he's wrecked the government sector, right? Cancer research. He's fi right? He's fired, like cancer researchers. He's firing all these people in government. Those are workers, like unemployment statistics are gonna go up. Would you like fire all these workers?

He's stop, he's not funding education. He's refusing to fund healthcare. Like healthcare. He's refusing to fund it, both, lower ed and higher ed. so these are all, I mean, like he's, done all these things which are like designed to direct the economy. Which is not what he promised.

he didn't promise people, I'm gonna come into office and wreck the economy. So, like there isn't really like, a confusion about why many of his voters are like, we didn't ask for this. I mean, I'd argue like, like in some sense they did, they voted for white supremacy.

I think it was pretty clear that's what he stood for. And people were like, well, I'm okay with white supremacy as long as like, prices come down or something. But, he hasn't brought prices down. I mean, that's the thing, people, he said he was gonna do a list of things that he has that not done.

And he's also, of course, he's like rated a lot of people, I mean, people are,

SHEFFIELD: and he took away people's healthcare like he promised he wasn't going to take away Medicaid. that's correct. he said,

BERLATSKY: I'm not gonna take away Medicaid or Medicare. And he put a big, he took a lot of people's Medicaid away, so

SHEFFIELD: a trillion dollars of it.

BERLATSKY: Yeah,

and the way they're handling that is that, he could, if he wanted his poll numbers to go up, he could reverse those policies, I mean, he could add the tariffs, prices would go down. That would be easy. It's an easy fix. You just say, okay, this isn't working. We're gonna, we're gonna take away the tariffs so that we can keep prices down.

he could stop arresting people, you know what I mean? Like, there's [01:02:00] all list of things he could easily do. He could, start funding, healthcare, again, it's all this stuff that you could do if you actually cared. But instead what he's doing is he's trying to rig the election right. By through gerrymandering, yeah, through targeting candidates, right?

Through censoring the media, so it's all this, it's all this effort to cheat basically, rather than trying to actually do what his voters want him.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

Republican policy evolution

SHEFFIELD: Well, and, he, he ran on saying he was a different kind of Republican, but in fact he's, basically his first term he was Paul Ryan's, Aaron boy, and then in his second term he's Russell Votes Aaron Boy.

Like, that's essentially how it's, well, Stephen Steven Miller and Steven Miller. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I he doesn't have the intellectual capacity to have his own policy agenda because again, this is a guy

BERLATSKY: he has kinda weird, he has weird grievances, which are, like, like he hates windmills.

He hates

SHEFFIELD: tariffs.

BERLATSKY: Yeah. And loves tariffs.

SHEFFIELD: those are, that's not a policy. Again, those are both

BERLATSKY: really stupid ideas, but, like, basically, so he like goes ahead on those. And then, Steven Miller gets to like, run a, to create his death camps, run a genocide idea.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it's, and again, and I, that's why, this is why they have to invent these ima liberals like picking, like, one of the other things in my evolution outside of the Republican party is, again, I used to pay people to, to highlight random people on the internet, just like, libs of TikTok did.

I have paid a guy that was reading democratic underground.com. and we, but eventually I realized there, there are people with, crazy viewpoints all across the [01:04:00] political spectrum. But the difference is those people have power. Lots of it in the Republican party and on the democratic side, they have nothing.

like there was like Hank Johnson, the, or the congressman who, democratic congressman who infamously was worried about the island of Guam tipping over like. I got that as a response for, oh, well the Democrats are just as dumb. And it's like, you, cited a backbencher from, what was it, eight years ago?

Like, that's the best that you can think of. And meanwhile, Donald Trump is out there on any given week saying that windmills cause cancer or that, I mean, they're, they make whales angry.

BERLATSKY: when people in the Democratic party say conspiracy theory garbage, they tend to be ejected. And then they go over to the Republicans, right?

I mean, that's T Gabo and RFK Junior, right? They were kind of wacko, conspiracy theorist, a******s who were Democrats. And Democrats said, f**k off. And now they're, in the Trump administration, which was their logical home, the home for, Grifters and cranks to, kill us all.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

Essentially. and that's, I mean, yeah, that is a great point. And and this is again, why they have to invent the elevate, the small level TikTok users, like, somebody, some random person posting a thing on TikTok. That person has no power over the Democratic party. They have no, and e even if there were, like, and here's the other thing is even if there were a million people, millions of people on Twitter and Instagram, TikTok elsewhere that were lefties, that were going after, that were condemning Sidney Sweeney.

This is private citizens who are, were upset about a private citizen. Donald Trump literally every week demands that people [01:06:00] be fired as the president says a, B, C. You need to fire Jimmy Kimmel and his own FCC Director, commissioner, Brendan Carr. Has literally said that Stephen Colbert getting canceled by CBS is quote a consequence that comes from Trump.

You can't, like, this is the President demanding people be fired for joking about him, for telling a joke. He wants the president gets you fired for it. and when he was president the first time, rolling Stone reported that he call his, he ordered his people repeatedly to call Disney lobbyists and executives and demand that Jimmy Kimmel be censored because he was telling jokes about him like, this is, what actual cancellation looks like.

He's literally coming for their job and demanding it with someone who has the authority over their boss, like a random blue-haired person on TikTok saying, some guy's an a*****e. That's nothing.

BERLATSKY: but I mean, it's also because they don't have any power that it. That the right is so excited about going after them because you can really Oh wow.

I mean, you can destroy somebody, if you're a small, if you're a small account and you end up in front of lips of TikTok, you know they can destroy your life. And that's, part of the, that's the excitement is like, like it's precisely 'cause they don't have power. Well, that's the fascist dynamic, right?

I mean, you, both sort of like claim to be victimized and claim to be, and claim to be super powerful. And so sort of like elevating these small accounts and claiming that they like control the culture and then, inciting an online mob to sort of destroy their life is like the quintessential fascist [01:08:00] dynamic where you are finding someone who isn't powerful claiming they are, and using that as an excuse to torment them.

Yeah.

SHEFFIELD: And silence

BERLATSKY: them. Yeah.

SHEFFIELD: Well, yeah, exactly. and, I think that's, for, people who have more of a, a liberal centrist type perspective, the, one of the things that I think is, that they haven't understood is that these right wing grifters and authoritarians like Trump, there's literally no policy that you can have that will make them not criticize you.

Literally nothing. You do. So, and like I often hear people say, well, if only the Democrats did this or that thing that I personally believe, then it will magically make them, everyone love them. And it's like, look at the litter box fantasy. Like this is some, like the, so the Christian right invented this idea that schools were putting litter boxes in schools because elementary students.

We're identifying as furries, and they wanted to use a litter box instead of a bathroom toilet. This literally never happened, never anywhere in the entire country. And we have tens of thousands of public schools in this country. Never happened, and yet they still have made it into a conflagration. And even to this day, even though this has been debunked for years, literally years, there are still people.

And Joe Rogan was one of them. Like, he repeated that, that lie like six months or so ago, I think it was, or, I'm getting May beginning of the date wrong. But the, this story has been debunked for years and they still believe that it's real because it fits their priors. And so that's a thing that I, think all sides of the left need to understand.

Impact on minority rights

SHEFFIELD: The problem that we have [01:10:00] is a channel problem

BERLATSKY: because they'll just make up a

SHEFFIELD: guy to get mad at.

BERLATSKY: Yeah, I mean, you can see that, I mean, like, people like Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsom are, circling around the idea of throwing trans athletes under the bus, right? They're like, oh, this is a real concern.

not because it's actually something where it's happening, right? Or there are any trans athletes, not because it's an actual problem, but just because, oh, some people are concerned about it, right? And so, and rather than saying, look, this is ridiculous. This isn't a real problem.

And this, we don't want to be in a situation where school authorities aren't, feel empowered to like, inspect young children's genitals, right? You don't want create a situation where like. People who, like, athletes who are like gender nonconforming or like, have to like, are like, can be targeted, because they're successful, right?

Yeah. Like, it's really bad. You don't want to, like, you need to explain that like, giving into this stuff isn't just hurting, like trans people, which is bad enough. Like it's this tiny, marginalized community. We should be protecting them. We should be standing on their side. We should be refuting this.

But if you don't, if you don't do that, you're gonna hurt a lot of other marginalized people too. because if you, like, if you let the conspiracy, if you say, this conspiracy theory is legitimate, let's take action against it. The actions you're gonna take are things that are gonna like harm.

[01:12:00] Trans people, it's gonna har harm. it's, it's gonna harm like, cis girls and

SHEFFIELD: it will,

certainly harm gay and lesbian people. It's

BERLATSKY: gonna harm, it's gonna harm gay and lesbian, athletes. It's gonna hurt anybody who's gender nonconforming. It's gonna hurt all student athletes because anybody, you're kind of saying, okay, it's all right for basically anyone, any right wing wacko in the school district to to pick, some student and target them and say, oh, they're lying about their gender, and then have like a national pile on where this person's life is destroyed just 'cause they wanted to play sports at school,

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it's also that, that I think they haven't understood that the right wing is using trans people as. A proxy to go after all sexual minorities. Like they've never changed their mind. It's like including

BERLATSKY: women, I think.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, yeah. They've never changed their mind about same-sex marriage and they are not going to, and in fact they will say, they say in their private spaces to each other, our goal is still to repeal, to, repeal it.

And, they've already in fact, launched a lawsuit to overturn Oberg a fail versus Hodges because they're like, well, hey, we've rigged the Supreme Court in our favor now. And so since we got rid of Roe versus Wade and all of these other things, well, you know what? We're just gonna go and get rid of that too.

And like, that's why you have to stand up for people who are, who are not popular, but who still deserve their rights because they are the frontier of freedom ultimately. and if you don't defend that freedom, then they will come for your freedoms as well. Is what I would say. [01:14:00] all right.

Well, do you have any, closing thoughts here? I think, we can, get ready to wrap up.

No,

BERLATSKY: I think I'm, good if you are.

SHEFFIELD: Okay. All right. Well, good. All right. Well thanks everybody for joining us live and we'll have this up, as a after the fact, later today. and so, that will do it for this one.

Thanks everyone. Alright.

BERLATSKY: Thank you. Thank you for having me out.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe