The Not Your Grandmother's Book Club Podcast

This week, we cover something that is probably long overdue for this show given the subject matter we deal with. We take a look primarily at the question of what is fascism? And how fascism plays out in our modern world. Make no mistake, while the number of actual nazis or phalangists walking around may be few, the world has no shortage of fascists in prominent places of society. We first talk about what fascism even is, and the difficulty in defining it that scholars have had despite the right’s insistence that fascism is when you moderately increase the top marginal tax rate. We then move on to the obvious question, is the modern republican party a fascist party, to which the answer is emphatically yes. Regardless of which set of characteristics you believe best describe fascism, the republican party can easily be said to meet most of them. We then discuss the man who most obviously (but far from solely) brough fascism into the White House, Steven K. Bannon, whose fandom of fascist philosopher and Nazi collaborator Julius Evola show that shame truly is dead on the right. Finally we close out the episode talking about a component of fascism Kevin finds fascinating, the real world incarnation of Eco fascism as a hatred of modern architecture. Thanks as always for listening and enjoy the show! Become a patron at patreon.com/NYGBCpod Find this episode on our website at NYGBCpod.com Follow us on twitter at @NYGBCpod Episode Links: Why Secret Empire Was Great – Jose – Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lU3H3S7wuA Ur-Fascism – Umberto Eco – The Anarchist Library: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism Pharos Blog - Vassar University: https://pharos.vassarspaces.net/ The Far Right’s Obsession With Modern Architecture – Failed Architecture: https://failedarchitecture.com/the-far-rights-obsession-with-modern-architecture/ America is Now in Fascism’s Legal Phase – Jason Stanley - The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/22/america-fascism-legal-phase Republicans have dropped the mask — they openly support fascism. What do we do about it? – Chauncey Devega – Salon: https://www.salon.com/2022/02/14/have-dropped-the-mask--they-openly-support-fascism-what-do-we-do-about-it/

This week we continue our review of “American Marxism” by Mark Levin, the platonic form of old man shouting communism at a tree. This time we read chapter 6 “Propaganda, Censorship, and Subversion” in which Mark desperately tries to present the same complaints the right has held for years about actual journalism in a way that appears to the uneducated reader as something other than the same old tired screeching. In this chapter we got such gems as “Marx was a journalist, so… eh… you know” and people have always complained about the media, so I must be correct. Mark spends the portion of the chapter we read complaining of a lack of “neutrality” in media, while conflating that with “objectivity” since no reasonable observer could remain neutral in the face of the right’s absolute lunacy and attacks on the fabric of reality itself. Thanks as always for listening and enjoy the show! Become a patron at patreon.com/NYGBCpod Find this episode on our website at NYGBCpod.com Follow us on twitter at @NYGBCpod Show Links: This Week’s Mark Levin Clip – Media Matters: https://www.mediamatters.org/mark-levin/fox-news-host-mark-levin-attacks-judge-steve-bannon-case Edward Bernays and the “Torches of Freedom” March – University of Ottowa: https://biblio.uottawa.ca/omeka2/jmccutcheon/exhibits/show/american-women-in-tobacco-adve/torches-of-freedom-campaign Young America’s Foundation Fascist Reading List - https://www.yaf.org/yafpublications/books-every-conservative-should-read/

This Week!   Kevin has Covid, which sort of threw everything out of whack so instead of the planned episode we decided to do a Prager U episode so you wouldn't have to listen to me the entire time. This week we got clips from Dinesh D'Souza, Alex Jones, Prager U, and the John Birch Society.   Thanks as always for listening and enjoy the show!   Become a patron at patreon.com/NYGBCpod   Find this episode on our website at NYGBCpod.com   Follow us on twitter at @NYGBCpod

This Week we dive back into our lunatic fringe series about how the far right has become the center of the modern republican party with a look at the second great harbinger of American conspiracy theory, Alex Jones, and the era of the commercialization of conspiracy. Today we talk about Jones, and the man who arguably paved the way for the success of InfoWars, Bill Cooper. Without Bill, and Bill’s rather fortunately (for Alex) timed demise, the world may not know about chemicals in the water that turn the freaking frogs gay, or interdimensional alien-demon hybrids that want to make everyone merge with machines. While laughing at Alex Jones may be fun, and often is, the obvious farce he puts on belies a darker side. The reality that Jones’ way of thinking, and many of his conspiracies has bled into mainstream right-wing culture, where it is possibly the dominant mode of thought for a significant portion of the United States population. Mothers, Fathers, Sisters and Brothers of we ourselves have fallen prey to the allure of conspiracy theories as a convenient solution to issues that otherwise would be difficult to discern. Today we provide an overview of Alex Jones, the man, and the impact, discussing some of his many connections to other figures in the far-right politics that make up the current American right. I also want to make sure this week to give a special shoutout to Dan Friesen and Jordan Holmes of the Knowledge Fight Podcast who are the true authorities on Alex Jones and the source through which I have learned the vast majority of everything I know about him. You can find them on Twitter @knowledge_fight or at their website at knowledgefight.com Thanks as always for listening and enjoy the show! Become a patron at patreon.com/NYGBCpod Find this episode on our website at NYGBCpod.com Follow us on twitter at @NYGBCpod Show Links: Alex Jones Extremist File – Southern Poverty Law Center: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/alex-jones Jean Paul Sartre - Antisemite and Jew: o http://abahlali.org/files/Jean-Paul_Sartre_Anti-Semite_and_Jew_An_Exploration_of_the_Etiology_of_Hate__1995.pdf Bill Cooper “predicting” 9/11 – Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubHGIAwc_Tg Alex Jones v. David Duke – Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRF1r2pwggk&list=PLO6JQFqA2Sh3iLlfpOgFVjq-v7Bm93xq5&index=1 Pale Horse Rider: William Cooper, the Rise of Conspiracy, and the Fall of Trust in America – Mark Jacobson: https://books.google.com/books/about/Pale_Horse_Rider.html?id=fbfsBAAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description Gofundme for Marcel Fontaine: https://www.gofundme.com/f/well-never-forget-you-funeral-service-marcel Alex Jones’s Legal Meltdown – Dan Solomon – Texas Monthly: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/alex-jones-legal-circus/  

This Week, with Benedict away on vacation we have another pre-recorded show for you. While the subject matter this week is famously unfunny, we hope it helps distract you from the death spiral of the fascist nation from which Benedict and I send our dispatches.   I would write more this week but I would prefer you check out the links below than read my words.   Thanks as always for listening and enjoy the show!   Become a patron at patreon.com/NYGBCpod   Find this episode on our website at NYGBCpod.com   Follow us on twitter at @NYGBCpod   Show Links:   National Network of Abortion Funds: https://abortionfunds.org/   National Lawyer's Guild Know Your Rights Guide: https://www.nlg.org/know-your-rights/   Half Hour News Hour Clips: https://www.youtube.com/user/HalfHourNewsHours

This week, we return to Mark Levin’s Magnum Doofus, American Marxism, to finish off the second half of Chapter 5 “Climate Change Fanaticism.” In this half of the chapter, nearly 30 pages in, Mark decides to finally make the lame attempt at denying climate science by presenting fake experts funded by stacks on stacks on stacks of oil and gas money who conveniently support his position while not having to present any evidence of their own against the consensus. Mark’s lazy response to climate change could be summed up essentially as, “Climate change is fake, but if its real it’s a good thing, and AOC is a Marxist so environmentalism is bad.” Against such magnificent logic as Mark’s what hopedo we truly have? Whenever it comes to climate change chapters in our reviews I like to recommend any interested listeners check out DesmogBlog, a site that has been tracking disinformation about environment and climate since the early 2000s. With the many bad actors Mark brings up in this chapter as well as innocuous sounding front-groups pushing bunk arguments against the science of climate change, I relied heavily on Desmog in looking into all of them. Thanks as always for listening and enjoy the show! Become a patron at patreon.com/NYGBCpod Find this episode on our website at NYGBCpod.com Follow us on twitter at @NYGBCpod Show Links: Margarita Declaration on Climate Change – Social Pre-CoP How Much Would the Green New Deal Cost – Factcheck.org Cost of new power plant production – National Resource Defense Council Letter signed by “500 scientists” relies on inaccurate claims about climate science – Real Scientists Review Claims of pseudo-science group – ClimateFeedback.org That ’70s myth—did climate science really call for a “coming ice age?” – Ars Technica – Scott K. Johnson The real cause of Texas’ Power Grid Failure - Reuters This week’s Levin Clip: Fox News host Mark Levin calls on Republicans to launch an investigation of the January 6 committee – Media Matters

This week we return to our “Lunatic Fringe” series covering the core of the modern American Right, the hard right extremist base. This time we begin what will be at least a three-episode series covering conspiracy theories among the right. This week we focus on the “Classical” conspiracy theories of the pre-Alex Jones era. In this time period, no matter what the conspiracy was, or who was pushing it, you could be pretty sure that the evildoers supposedly behind it were “The Jews.” In more recent times, while antisemitism still makes up the core of conspiracism, and open white supremacists often play a more active role in crafting and spreading conspiracies, these forces have gone away from explicitly naming the Jews as the perpetrators of their conspiracies, opting instead to posit more vague villains to allow the believer to insert their own boogeyman.   Many of the conspiracy theories you hear today, if not their roots or components of them can be traced back directly to antisemitic conspiracy theories of yore, and today we talk about the grandpappy of most of them, the Russian Antisemitic Hoax Document, the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. This document is not necessarily an origination point, but an amalgamation of many of the long-running anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that have run through Christian societies since the Dark Ages. The main difference with the protocols is that they were seized upon and distributed widely, even being re-printed in the U.S. by Henry Ford, and being taught in school to children living under the Nazi regime in Germany.   Thanks as always for listening and enjoy the show!   Become a patron at patreon.com/NYGBCpod   Find this episode on our website at NYGBCpod.com   Follow us on twitter at @NYGBCpod   Show Link:   The Paranoid Style in American Politics Revisited: An Ideological Asymmetry in Conspiratorial Thinking - Political Psychology   Conspiracy mentality and political orientation across 26 countries – Nature Human Behaviour   The Paranoid Style in American Politics – Richard Hofstadter – Harpers Magazine   Protocols of the Elders of Zion – HOAX DOCUMENT   Glenn Beck on Tucker Carlson

This week, we dive back into Mark Levin’s hasty copy/paste of a book “American Marxism” with the first half of chapter 5, “Climate Change Fanaticism.” In this chapter, or at least in the portion we read for this week’s episode, Mark completely ignores climate change, pollution, environmentalism, and anything having to do with the concept he’s supposed to be discussing in favor of whining about all attempts to preserve our natural environment being Marxism. As we learned from Glenn Beck recently, of course, all “green movements” are really watermelons, green on the outside, and not as refreshing as you expected? For the majority of the chapter we read, Levin pretends that the environmentalist movement, climate activism, and of course, mainstream democratic discourse, can best be epitomized by the “de-growth movement” a fringe movement calling for a reduction of the global population along with according reductions in consumption and production. Mark fails to find any substantial movement actually pushing this idea, so when all else fails he goes back to his old standby, just claim that this fringe idea is actually widespread and pervasive. Of course, despite the fact that Mark block quotes an author acknowledging that the de-growth movement began in the 21st century, he also implies that large block quotes of Ayn Rand lying about the environmentalist movement of the 70s is her addressing this insignificant fringe movement he wants his readers to believe are the reason why they got a paper straw at starbucks. Thanks as always for listening and enjoy the show! Become a patron at patreon.com/NYGBCpod Find this episode on our website at NYGBCpod.com Follow us on twitter at @NYGBCpod Show Links: You can hear this week’s Mark Levin clip where he lies about Peter Navarro from Media Matters. For some government achievements these morons pretend don’t exist, check out this Brookings Institution Piece from 2000.

This week we take a look at another persistent myth of American society the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy, which like “American Exceptionalism” “meritocracy” and the “protestant work ethic” remain strong cultural beliefs despite all evidence directly to the contrary. Indeed, this week we take a deep dive into one of the primary GOP platform positions, that of the glory of the south and the desperate struggler to maintain the mythical white supremacy so many of these people hearken back to. To be clear, the U.S. Civil war was instigated and started because of slavery, and if you believe otherwise you are either an idiot or a white supremacist. The lost cause narrative, however, exists not only to lie about and cloud the reasons for the war, the treatment of slaves, and the reasons why the South lost the war, but also to re-write the ensuing hundred-plus years of racial segregation and terror aimed at African Americans. However, as anyone with a brain could tell you, “Heritage not Hate” doesn’t mean much when your heritage IS hate. This week we look at some of the arguments pushed by the peddlers of the lost cause, as well as some of the modern figures most closely associated with the movement, particularly the “League of the South” a white supremacist hate group founded in the 90s which exists for the purpose of accomplishing the secession of the Southern United states and the establishment of a white supremacist theocratic nation. Thanks as always for listening and enjoy the show! Become a patron at patreon.com/NYGBCpod Find this episode on our website at NYGBCpod.com Follow us on twitter at @NYGBCpod Show Links: You can catch video of the Burkman/Wohl con-attempt from a journalist who was on the scene Ford Fischer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/FordFischer/status/1528770106565840897?s=20&t=hGBIQ3F6KNsqexk9waIUBQ South Carolina Declaration of Secession 1860 Article 8 of the Texas Constitution of 1866 Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy – Southern Poverty Law Center Article on the Slave Renting system in the Old South – Proquest – Courtney Suciu Misconceptions about race, slavery and the civil war – Rex Springston – Virginia Mercury “Did Black People Own Slaves?” Henry Louis Gates Jr. – The Root SPLC Extremist File Michael Tubbs SPLC “Neo-Confederate” SPLC Extremist Profile “League of the South” SPLC designated hate group. SPLC List of other Neo-Confederate groups

This week we jump into second half of chapter 4 of American Marxism by Mark Levin which continues the crazy we have come to know and love from this small shouty man. This week we pick back up with Mark telling us how the 1619 project is CRT, and of course CRT, is Marxism, so the 1619 project is Marxism. He follows that up by complaining that the media talks about issues of race and white supremacy too much, probably because it makes Mark feel sad. Along the way we get such gems as “collecting data on race and gender by the government is the same as that communist social credit score” and “Chuck Todd is a CRT?” Of course, in what is probably the least surprising thing about this book, we find Mark Levin promoting white supremacist great replacement conspiracy theory. Least surprising because of course, not only did Mark already double down on pushing this racist conspiracy after the recent massacre, but also because we know Mark Levin is a white supremacist. Thanks as always for listening and enjoy the show! Become a patron at patreon.com/NYGBCpod Find this episode on our website at NYGBCpod.com Follow us on twitter at @NYGBCpod Show Notes: The Rise of the White Nationalist Hispanics – Axios America’s Enduring Caste System – Isabel Wilkerson – NYT Magazine Read the joke that is the 1776 report Donate to the Human Rights Campaign HRC.Org