Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael

On this edition of Parallax Views, can music change the world? Joining us to tackle that question as well as outline the rich history of protest music is Brad Schreiber, author of Music is Power: Popular Songs, Social Justice, and the Will to Change. As Schreiber shows in the fascinating new book, available now from Rutgers University Press, protest music, or as he prefers to call it "socially conscious music", goes far beyond the antiwar anthems and can even be traced back to the early 20th century with class conscious musicians like Joe Hill, a labor activist associated with the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World). In this conversation we discuss artist ranging from Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger to artist you may not have ever considered as political before like bubble pop icon Lesley Gore and the founding fathers of heavy metal Black Sabbath. We also discuss such musicians as the obscure but talented satirist Tom Lehrer, counterculture legend Frank Zappa, "The Godfather of Soul" James Brown, R&B pioneer Curtis Mayfield, and the punk rock of the Sex Pistols as well as specific songs like Janis Ian's "Society's Children" and Peter Gabriel's "Biko". We even talk a little bit about Pink Floyd and their politically outspoken co-founder Roger Waters. All that and more on this edition of Parallax Views. SUPPORT PARALLAX VIEWS ON PATREON! FOR BONUS CONTENT AND ARCHIVED EPISODES!

On this special bonus edition of Parallax Views, legendary progressive radio host and New York Times bestselling author Thom Hartmann took a little bit of time out of his busy schedule for a half hour discussion of his fascinating and important new book, The Hidden History of the War on Voting: Who Stole Your Vote And How to Get It Back. In this concise, and easily-digestible book, which follows from The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America and The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment, Thom lays out the Republican Party, backed by the ultra-wealthy, have waged a decades-long all out assault on voters, specifically women, people of color, and the working class through voter purges, gerrymandering, and other tactics. However, in addition to laying out this immensely under-discussed history, Thom also offers solutions that will re-empower voters and, in the process, aid in expanding our shared values of Democracy. In this conversation we discuss some of the main points of Thom's book as well as recent debate about the Electoral College Vs. the Popular vote in light of the 2016 Presidential Election and Thom's thoughts on what another 4 years of a Trump Presidency would mean for the United States of America. It is my hope that this conversation proves timely and vital during this election season. SUPPORT PARALLAX VIEWS ON PATREON! FOR BONUS CONTENT AND ARCHIVED EPISODES!

On this edition of Parallax, New York Times reporter David Enrich's new book Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump and an Epic Trail of Destruction has received much press lately for casting a light on the subject of the Trump family's relationship to the scandal-prone Deutsche Bank and potentially shady financial transactions involving Russian money. Although opinions vary on the matter of the purported relationship Trump and the Russian government, even on the left, the investigative news website Forensic News has recently published two pieces on the subject of Trump, Deutsche Bank, and the Russian-based VTB Bank and Gazprombank. Joining us to discuss these recent articles, "Trump Deutsche Bank Loans Underwritten By Russian State-Owned Bank, Whistleblower Told FBI" and "Russian Government Bank Deposited $500 Million into Deutsche Bank Subsidiary as it Lent to Trump", and to discuss Enrich's book are investigative journalist Scott Stedman and whisteblower Val Broeksmit. Val, who is in large part the subject of Ernich's Dark Towers, is the son of William Broeksmit, a high-ranking Wall Street executive who committed suicide in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. After the suicide, Val came into possession of a treasure trove of his father's emails and documents related to Deutsche Bank. He has since taken those documents to the FBI is currently collaborating with Forensic News on the Trump/Deutsche Bank/VTB Bank/Gazprombank story. In this conversation Val gives an unfiltered background on his life, how he came into possession of his father's documents, his rocky relationship with David Enrich, and much more. Scott discusses the documents Val has shared and why he believes they are relevant as well as summarizing the Trump/Deutsche Bank/VTB Bank/Gazprombank stories and why he and Forensic News believe they are worthy of consideration. Additionally, Scott explains why he defends the credibility of Val. Regardless of your take on the issue of Trump and Russia, I hope this is fascinating conversation. I can assure you that Val is definitely never boring and Scott is a fount of knowledge. All that and more on this edition of Parallax Views. SUPPORT PARALLAX VIEWS ON PATREON! FOR BONUS CONTENT AND ARCHIVED EPISODES!

On this edition of Parallax Views, black metal, with it's Satanic lyrics, blasphemous imagery, and history of bands engaging in acts like church burnings and even murder, has cemented itself as the most extreme and transgressive genres in the varied world of heavy metal. And, perhaps due to it's deliberately confrontational nature and explicit anti-social aesthetic, black metal also happens to be a genre infested with out-and-out Nazis and white supremacist who openly rail against immigrants, Jews, and other common targets of far-right wing hate and bigotry. The most famous of these is, without a doubt Varg Vikernes, who, through his project Burzum, became one of the most seminal (and deadly) key players within 90s Norwegian black metal. Since then an entire genre of black metal has arisen known as NSBM, or National Socialist Black Metal. And now there is a new phenomena of NSBM arising, in a strange twist, out of Latin America that can only accurately be described as "Aztec Nazi Black Metal". Returning guest and writer Alex Gendler joins us to discuss his article "Aryan Aztlán: The Bizarre World of Aztec Nazi Black Metal" for the newly relaunched No Recess magazine. Alex takes us into the unusual new music phenomena and argues that, although its appearance may seem out of left field at first glance, is not as surprising as one may initially think. All that and more on this edition of Parallax Views. SUPPORT PARALLAX VIEWS ON PATREON! FOR BONUS CONTENT AND ARCHIVED EPISODES!

In light of a recent piece by Der Spiegel, one of the largest news magazine publications, on the legacy of controversial Barrett Brown and the early 21st century "hacktivism" of Anonymous, Barrett Brown returns to Parallax Views for a jam-packed two-hour conversation addressing Barrett's criticisms of the article. Specifically, Barrett takes issue with Alexandra Rojkov, the author behind the piece, using a tweet by Claire Lehmann, founder of the equally controversial Quillette magazine (which has promoted writings related to "race realism" as well as, at one time, the work of Andy Ngo), accusing Brown of "harassing women in tech". Within said tweet Lehmann offered, as evidence, a retweet ofBrown asking for "anyone with information about [Peter] Thiel associate Riva-Melissa Tez" to "please email me". In this conversation, argues that a call to potential sources interested in offering him information on Riva-Melissa Tez stretches the credulity of the term harassment and would require a concrete definition of harassment to be laid out. Additionally, he says, Lehmann's tweet inadvertently gave Brown the information he sought from sources who saw it. From there we begin to delve into the larger failures of the press through a multitude of examples, from the Dallas press's employing a white supremacist radio host who went by the psuedonym Spectre to the recent report by Jared Holt, Angry White Men, Right Wing Watch on Michael J. Thompson, a figure within the conservative movement who moonlighted as the alt right personality "Paul Kersey". Why are these figures allowed to exist within the institutions for so long while Barrett Brown and a whistleblower like Val Broeksmit are smeared for pasts involving drug use? This leads us into a discussion Peter Thiel and his software company Palantir. Brown explains what he sees as the relationship between Thiel and the press. In addition, he argues that there are connections between Thiel and magazines like Quillette as well the infamous hacker Andrew Aurnheimer aka "weev". Moreover, Brown says the the story of Thiel's rise, the advent of the alt right, surveillance, and other issues are interrelated and not yet fully known to the public. In addition, Brown discusses the nature of Thiel's agenda and whether it is, as the mainstream media presents it, libertarian in its nature or rather, as investigative journalists like Corey Pein have alluded to, is connected to "The Dark Enlightenment" of neoreactionary philosopher Nick Land. Moreover, Brown says that Palantir is at the center of much more than normally recognized and that Thiel and his agenda is the most dangerous in the world. At this point Brown delves more deeply into the ideology of this "Dark Enlightenment", the premises it is based on, why it is capable of making an argument in a persuasive fashion, and why it must be opposed. Particularly, he notes that "The Dark Enlightenment" persuades by pointing out, often correctly, the failures of institutions within Democracy currently. Brown, however, says that we must find an alternative to counteract this ideology, which he says will manage to become a strong attractor for those with inherited wealth and spreading out from that point. We wrap up the show with Brown announcing the hiatus of the Pursuance Project and a possible Hollywood collaboration with Alex Winter in the future. Then, for what may be the first time, the life, legacy, and mysterious death of journalist Michael Hastings as well as his relationship to Hastings. Hastings was a journalist who gained much recognition for his work on the Iraq war. After the death of his fiancée, Andrea Pahramovich he wrote a book about her passing and his relationship with her in I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern Love Story. Hastings wrote for both the Rolling Stone and Buzzfeed. During the Obama years Hasting becase very critical of what he saw as a state-sponsored war on journalists. He won the George Polk award for his Rolling Stone profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal entitled "The Runaway General" Unfortunately, Hastings passed away under controversial circumstances (many alleged conspiracy/foul play) on June 18, 2013. In this portion of the conversation Brown outlines his relationship with the late journalist, their shared concerns, and Hastings' treatment by the media. All that and more on this edition of Parallax Views. SUPPORT PARALLAX VIEWS ON PATREON! FOR BONUS CONTENT AND ARCHIVED EPISODES!

Just in time for Valentine's Day, Greg Belvedere of the RebelBass Youtube channel joins us to discuss his upcoming video about the online right's "Fear of a Cucked Planet". Around 2015 the term "cuckservatives" began cropping up as an insult employed by the alt right against conservatives they believed were not right wing enough. The term cuck quickly became an insult to contemptuously refer to men seen as weak or servile. The term, however, originates from a fetish in which a man likes to watch his wife or girlfriend having sex with another man. Additionally, the kink usually has an interracial element to it. As such, the alt right's use of the term "cuck" seems to clearly come from their own racial paranoia. Greg promises expands on this angle while also attempts to tie it to the other anxieties of the alt right in his upcoming video on the subject. SUPPORT PARALLAX VIEWS ON PATREON! FOR BONUS CONTENT AND ARCHIVED EPISODES!

On this edition of Parallax Views, crackerjack journalist JP Sotille aka The Newsvandal returns to unpack the spectacle of American politics in 2020. From the failure of the anti-climatic ending of the Impeachment trial and the chaos the Iowa Caucus "App-Ocalypse" to Rush Limbaugh winning a Presidential Medal of Honor and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi tearing up Trump's speech at the State of the Union, the political landscape has already proven to be wild since the start of the new year and will likely only get crazier leading up to the elections in November. JP has been on a roll lately with his three most recent pieces, "The Impeachment Blunder", "The Irony of Iowa's Caucus Crack-Up", and "SOTU: The Reagan Reboot Strikes Again". In this conversation he took on a noticably grimmer tone than in previous appearances and I suspect his takes on current matters ranging from the failure of Impeachment to the Democratic Party's split between progressives and its centrist establishment will have a little something for the left, right, and center alike to get a little angry about. All that and more on this edition of Parallax Views. SUPPORT PARALLAX VIEWS ON PATREON! FOR BONUS CONTENT AND ARCHIVED EPISODES!

Ever since the shockingly gruesome Tate-LaBianca murders of August 1969, The Manson Family have cast a long shadow over not only the 60s counterculture and its images of free loving, acid-dropping, Establishment challenging, hippie flower children but also American culture as a whole. Rather than ushering in the fabled Age of Aquarius where peace and love would reign supreme, it appeared that the promise of "The Psychedelic Sixties" had ended with an unimaginably wanton act of violence and bloodshed. The clarion call of Dr. Timothy Leary and the Woodstock Generation to "Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out" seemed to take on a much more sinister meaning as Charles Manson and those who lived by his side in the desert mountains of California became popular culture's de facto avatar for evil in the latter 20th century. Coupled with the January election of President Richard Nixon, who successfully campaigned under on "Law and Order" platform that promised reaffirm the Establishment status quo, the saga of the Manson Family spelled the grim end of an era and its dashed hopes for the so-called Age of Aquarius. Perhaps that is why, a half century later, the faint echoes of the Manson Family and the Tate-LaBianca murders reverberate within popular culture. Through the decades there's been endless documentaries, movies, TV shows, books, and more either inspired by, based on, or seeking to make sense of it all. There's even been alternative theories proposed to challenge prosecutor's Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter telling of the whole twisted affair. Some, such as the controversial Nikolas Schreck, have argued that the Tate-LaBianca murders were a drug burn gone awry. Others, most notably the late conspiracy-minded radio host Mae Brussell, have speculated that the murders were a plot to crush the counterculture and that the Manson Family were products of the CIA's Cold War-era mind control experiments with the now infamous MK ULTRA project. Ed Sanders, the poet and counterculture icon of the seminal hippie folk-rock band The Fugs, attempted to draw a connection between Manson and a little-know cult with the ominous name The Process Church of the Final Judgment in his 1971 chronicle of the case THE FAMILY. And, of course, there are those who believe that Bugliosi's account of the events, as detailed in his 1974 best-seller HELTER SKELTER, remains the definitive final word on the whole matter. After all these years one could be forgiven for thinking that Charles Manson's death on November 19, 2017 from a cardiac arrest would be the nail in the coffin for his and The Manson Family's hold on the popular imagination. And yet multiple major motion pictures since have been based on, inspired/influenced by, or involved the Manson saga including the Hillary Duff-starring THE HAUNTING OF SHARON TATE, heavy-metal-rocker-turned-horror-filmmaker Rob Zombie's gory 3 FROM HELL, American Psycho director Mary Harron's CHARLIE SAYS, and, of course, Quentin Tarantino's ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD. Additionally, new books continued to be published on the subject including CREEPY CRAWL: CHARLES MANSON AND THE MANY LIVES OF AMERICA'S MOST INFAMOUS FAMILY by Jeffrey Melnick, which offered a cultural study of the Manson Family and its influence on the American psyche to this very day, and CHAOS: CHARLES MANSON, THE CIA, AND THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE SIXTIES by journalist Tom O'Neill. The latter book challenged Vincent Bugliosi's generally accepted HELTER SKELTER by delving into alternative theories related to the Family as well as the murders and became something of a sleeper hit covered by outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian upon its publication in the summer of 2019. What is it the continues to fascinate so many about The Manson Family? Why the continued popularity of alternative theories to explain the murders? What, if anything, does the Family and the Tate-LaBianca murders mean in the context of the peace and love counterculture of the 1960s? Filmmaker Lonnie Martin attempts to address these questions without finding the elusive answers in his fascinating and engrossing new movie THE LAST OF THE MANSON GIRLS. Based on the essay "My Acid Trip with Squeaky Fromme" by late counterculture legend and self-described "investigative satirist" Paul Krassner, THE LAST OF THE MANSON GIRLS follows Krassner's (played here by Elliot Kashner) attempt to investigate and unravel The Manson Family saga after being spurred on by the conspiracy-minded California radio fixture Mae Brussell (Robin Reck). Despite his admitted skepticism toward Brussell's theories, Krassner find himself drawn into chasing the phantoms of the Manson story and, in an effort to find them, decides to spend an acid-tripping day with the three remaining members of Charlie's Family that aren't confined to a cold cell: Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme (Jen Bevan), Sandra Good (Cindy Marie Martin), and Brenda McCann (Sarah Taurchini). Alternately scared and attracted to the trio, Krassner ends up not only chasing phantoms but also getting to know THE LAST OF THE MANSON GIRLS and confronting his own demons in the acid-drenched process. Elliot Kashner as Paul Krassner hanging out with THE LAST OF THE MANSON GIRLS (Cindy Marie Martin, Jen Bevan, and Sarah Taurchini) Cindy Marie Martin as Sandra Good in THE LAST OF THE MANSON GIRLS Jen Bevan as Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme in THE LAST OF THE MANSON GIRLS The director of THE LAST OF THE MANSON GIRLS, filmmaker Lonnie Martin, joins us to discuss the movie, its character-driven nature, the role of gender in the movie, how the male gaze plays into the story, how it started out as a Master's thesis, his correspondence with Paul Krassner, what interested him about "Squeaky" Fromme as a primary subjective for a narrative film, working with the actors and actresses on who starred in it, the film's major themes, the Sixties counterculture, and much, much more. THE LAST OF THE MANSON GIRLS, NOW AVAILABLE FOR STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME SUPPORT PARALLAX VIEWS ON PATREON! FOR BONUS CONTENT AND ARCHIVED EPISODES!

Are we doomed by a coming climate change apocalypse? Patrick Farnsworth of the Last Born in the Wilderness podcast and Alexander Miller, who recently appeared on the You Can't Win podcast to challenge climate doomerism, join us for a debate and discussion based around that very question. Alex requested to have a debate on this matter after hearing a previous conversation between Patrick and I. Alex argues that Patrick views represent what's been called "Doomerism" about climate change and wanted to debate him what climate change and climate catastrophe will entail. Alex does not argue that climate change isn't a major issue, but rather takes the view that it will not be an extinction level event. Patrick takes more or less a bleaker view on what climate change entails. In this conversation they debate the merits of their viewpoints and let the listeners decide. SUPPORT PARALLAX VIEWS ON PATREON! FOR BONUS CONTENT AND ARCHIVED EPISODES!

On this edition of Parallax Views, journalist Joseph L. Flatley joins us to discuss his new investigative podcast series The So-Called Prophet from Pittsburgh exploring a New Age UFO religion, or, as other would argue a destructive cult, operating an eco-village in the desert heat of Arizona and led by a man calling himself Gabriel of Urantia. Following in the footsteps of hit podcasts like Serial, S-Town, and Wonderland, The So-Called Prophet from Pittsburgh will appeal to fans of true crime and cult investigations. Joseph tells us all about the pod, Gabriel of Urantia, Gabriel's follower, and the ex-members who've formed what they call "The Negative Network". All that and more on this edition of Parallax Views!