In this bonus episode, Matt takes Sam on a tour of his native state, Pennsylvania, where a number of key primaries were held this week. The results brought some hopeful news: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman handily defeated State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta and (even better) Manchin-backed moderate Rep. Conor Lamb in the contest for the Democratic senate nomination. But it also revealed the madness that continues to grip the GOP: State Sen. Doug Mastriano, a January 6 marcher and election-fraud true believer, will be running for governor in November, and Dr. Oz, as of this writing, was clinging to a narrow lead in the race to take on Fetterman. Don't worry, though, it's not all punditry: the cuisines, strange regional dialects, and curious folkways of the virtuous commonwealth also are discussed. Then the episode turns to the fortunes of the Thiel tools: J.D. Vance and Blake Masters, both of whom are running for the Senate (Vance in Ohio and Masters in Arizona). The former won the Republican nod, and in come-from-behind fashion—how did he do it, especially after months of woke pundits dismissing his campaign? And what are Masters chances in August, when the Arizona GOP primary will be held?Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Hope for the American left is at a fairly low ebb, at the moment, but our counterparts in Latin America are on the march and succeeding at beating back repressive right wing governments across the region. What can we learn from them? And given extremely volatile global conditions — and the continued role of the US in defending the interests of capital in the region — what can these new left-wing governments hope to accomplish?Sam is joined by political scientist Thea Riofrancos and David Adler, the General Coordinator of the Progressive International, to discuss left populism in Chile, Colombia, Brazil, and elsewhere. Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Sarah Weinman's new book—Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free—is a gripping true crime story, and perhaps the tale of an ill-fated love triangle.  It also is a story about William F. Buckley, Jr., who defied expectations to show mercy to a death-row prisoner, Edgar Smith, after finding out that he supposedly read National Review. In this episode, Weinman joins Matt and Sam to talk about this fascinating, half-forgotten episode from a key period in Buckley's life and career—how Smith and Buckley met; what Buckley did for him; the role played by Sophie Wilkins, Smith's editor at Knopf, in what happened; and the sad ending toward which it all careened.Sources:Sarah Weinman, Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free (Ecco Press, February 2022)Sam Adler-Bell, "The Conservative and the Murderer," New Republic, March 7, 2022Christopher Buckley, Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir (Twelve Books, May 2009)Garry Wills, "Daredevil," Atlantic, July/August 2009Sophie Wilkins, trans., The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil (1930, 2017)Alexander Chee, "Mr. and Mrs. B," Apology Magazine, Winter 2014...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Since Donald Trump was elected president — partially on the strength of white working class support in the Rust Belt — we've heard that the GOP is a working class party; that liberals sold out American labor to globalized capital; and that American workers are too socially and culturally conservative to remain within the increasingly progressive Democratic tent. According to the populist right, the culture war is itself a class war, waged on behalf of real workers against a secular, libertine professional elite who control the commanding heights of the economy, government, and media. What's wrong with this story? Labor historian and essayist Gabriel Winant joins Matt and Sam to answer that question. Using Gabe's award-winning book The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America as a guide, we tell a different story about working class formation in this country, about the forces that led to the decline of America's industrial base, and about the prospects for renewing labor's power relative to capital. Along the way, we take on figures of the newly labor-curious right — Oren Cass, Sohrab Ahmari, and others — explaining how their vision is based on ideologically motivated elisions that seek to resolve rather than energize class conflict.  It's a hot one, folks! Further Reading:Gabriel Winant, "We Live in a Society," n+1, Dec 12, 2020— "Professional-Managerial Chasm," n+1, Oct 10, 2019— "Coronavirus and Chronopolitics" n+1, Spring 2020.— "Strike Wave," New Left Review, Nov 25, 2021.Sohrab Ahmari, "How America Kneecapped Its Unions," Compact, Mar 31, 2022.Julius Krein, "The Real Class War," American Affairs, Nov 20, 2019.Alexander Riley, "Labor Betrayed by the Progressive Left," Chronicles, Mar 2022. Landon R.Y. Storrs, The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left, Princeton U Press, 2012.Melinda Cooper, Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism Zone Books, 2017.Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America, 2001. Oxford U Press. 2001.

Did this week's one-on-one debate between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen change the race in any significant ways? Why is Le Pen drawing notably more support this time around than she did in 2017? How much is Macron's strategy of pivoting to the right on issues of culture and identity to blame for her rise? What about Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftwing politician who nearly made it to the runoff? And why did the far-right candidate Éric Zemmour fade? Listen for the answers to these questions—and more! You can do so by subscribing to Know Your Enemy at Patreon. 

Matt and Sam are joined by Georgetown University historian and co-editor emeritus of Dissent, Michael Kazin, to discuss his new book, What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party. They discuss the origins of the Democratic Party, the alliance between its urban North and segregationist South, the party's turn toward using government to help ordinary people, and the eventual crack-up of the New Deal coalition—and the rise of the right, and the Republican Party, that followed. Why did people whose relative comfort and prosperity had been made possible by policies championed by Democrats turn against them? How did Democrats respond to Ronald Reagan winning 49 states in 1984? Did it have to turn out the way it did? Sources:Michael Kazin, What It Took To Win: A History of the Democratic Party (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2022)                                   A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (Anchor, 2007)Michael Kazin, "Whatever Happened to Moral Capitalism?" New York Times, June 24, 2019Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Earth's Holocaust" (1844)Sam Rosenfeld, "What Defines the Democratic Party?" New Republic, February 15, 2022Matthew Sitman, "Tribute to Michael Kazin," Dissent, October 6, 2020...don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Matt and Sam are joined by KYE all-star John Ganz to discuss Compact: A Radical American Journal, a new publication founded by Sohrab Ahmari, Matthew Schmitz, and Edward Aponte. It's launch coincided with a profile in the New York Times—and a party that Sam attended. What are the ideas behind Compact? How should the left approach the perspective it offers? Your hosts answer these questions, and more, drawing on Ganz's excellent Substack post on these topics, "Compact Magazine's Unholy Alliance."Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Matt and Sam are joined by Ari Brostoff, author of  Missing Time: Essays, to explore David Horowitz's 1996 memoir, Radical Son. Like a number of prominent conservatives, Horowitz is a convert from the left. But he's younger than most of the first neocons, and his journey to the right went through Berkeley and the New Left more than the alcoves of City College. Radical Son is his account of that journey—an evocative, angry, revealing text that takes the reader from his red-diaper baby childhood in Queens's Sunnyside neighborhood to his involvement with Huey Newton and the Black Panthers in Oakland to his break with the left and turn to the right. What does Horowitz's trajectory reveal about the rightwing politics today? Sources:Ari Brostoff, Missing Time: Essays (n+1, 2022)Vivian Gornick, The Romance of American Communism (1977, reprint Verso 2020)David Horowitz, Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey (Simon & Schuster, 1996)Fran Lebowitz, "Speaking of New York," Commonweal, February 7, 2019Ronald Radosh and Sol Stern, "Our Friend, the Trump Propagandist," New Republic, May 5, 2021Cole Stangler, "David Horowitz: 'Conservatives are So F**king Well-Mannered," In These Times, December 12, 2013Reinhold Niebuhr, "Augustine's Political Realism," from The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr (Yale University Press, 1987)..and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Matt and Sam talk to Gillian Branstetter,  press secretary for the National Women’s Law Center, about the spate of anti-trans laws sweeping the country: What do these interventions do? Who is pushing them? And why? The American right has long been invested in policing gender boundaries, but its fixation on trans people — and trans children, in particular — has  become more acute in recent years. Over 100 anti-trans state-level measures have been passed this legislative session alone, including athletics bans, curriculum/book bans, religious refusal laws, and bans on access to health care. Perhaps most alarmingly, states like Texas are instituting policies that equate gender-affirming care with child abuse, terrorizing  trans kids and their families. With Gillian's help, we explore the conservative forces behind these bills and reveal the ideological fixations, misapprehensions, and contradictions driving this panic. It's a difficult but necessary conversation.If you'd like to help fight the right's anti-trans onslaught,  consider donating to The Trans Justice Funding Project.  Further Reading: J David Goodman, "How Medical Care for Trans Youth Became ‘Child Abuse’ In Texas," NY Times, March 11, 2022Melissa Gira Grant, "The Groups Pushing Anti-Trans Laws Want to Divide the LGBTQ Movement," The New Republic, Feb 17, 2022. Jeremy W Peters, "A Conservative Push to Make Trans Kids and School Sports the Next Battleground," NY Times, Nov 3, 2019. Judith Butler, "Why Is the Idea of ‘Gender’ Provoking Backlash the World Over?" The Guardian, Oct 23, 2021.Jules Gill-Peterson "The Anti-Trans Lobby’s Real Agenda," Jewish Currents, Apr 27, 2021.— Histories of the Transgender Child, UM Press,  2018. ...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to all of our bonus episodes!

In the first half of this conversation with Buzzfeed’s Joe Bernstein, Sam asks: What is “disinformation?” Who gets to decide? And does it explain what's wrong with our politics? And in the second half: why is Trump’s favorite venture capitalist, Peter Thiel, funding New York City’s downtown arts scene? And what are the political stakes of "anti-woke" art? This was a fun conversation with one of our favorite journalists! Enjoy. Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy