Citations Needed

“Science and religion fight over Hawaii's highest point,” one CNN headline puts it. “Desecrating sacred land or finding new frontiers?” BBC asks. "Science, Interrupted: Mauna Kea Observatories ‘caught in the middle,’” Pacific Business News writes.   When tensions arise between native communities and the so-called “pursuit of science,” more often than not Western media presents this point of conflict as a symmetrical and simplistic case of “science vs. superstition.” Science is framed as a morally and politically neutral quest for truth––an objective and innovative good that will unequivocally benefit humanity. But Western “science”––despite its rank-and-file advocates' often best intentions–– has historically been used as the public relations vanguard of colonialism and white supremacy. A Trojan Horse presented as ideologically neutral, followed by an outpouring of exploitation, industry and the erasure of native peoples––both culturally and physically.   While everyone can agree scientific research and progress are good things, the institution of “science” as such––from North America to Australia to Africa to Palestine-–has a long history of serving on the front lines of white, capitalist expansionism. This week we are going to discuss this history, how anti-colonial scientists are pushing back against these forces, and how we can expand human knowledge and understanding without weaponizing the enterprise to serve the interest of power.   We're joined on this episode by Nick Estes, Assistant Professor in the American Studies Department at the University of New Mexico.

“Israel says EU's response on Iran recalls Nazi appeasement,” reported Reuters. “The Biden Plan for Appeasement,” spat a recent editorial in The New York Sun. An editorial in The Washington Examiner pleaded, “President Trump, stop the appeasement of North Korea." New York Magazine tells us, “U.S. Scraps Military Exercise to Appease North Korea,” and The National Review’s Jonah Goldberg has denounced both Obama and Trump's respective "appeasements". This past June, Fox News ran an article, “Rep. Tim Ryan calls Trump’s historic visit to the DMZ an 'appeasement tour.'” The ‘appeasement’ charge is shorthand for the weak-kneed naivety of pursuing peace with an implacable, existential, irredeemable, expansionist, and unequivocally evil enemy. Crying ‘Munich!’ works to obscure rational thought and stigmatizes diplomacy––using the horrors of gas chambers and jackboots marching into Paris to equate the deescalation of a conflict with conspiring with the enemy. We're joined today by Jim Naureckas of Fairness and Accuracy in Media.

We are often warned by conservatives, liberals and even some on the Left that we live in a time where “free speech” is under threat from far-left forces. “Political correctness” and “snowflakes” have shut down free inquiry, specifically on college campuses, and led to a crisis threatening the very foundation of our democracy. But the origins of the label “free speech” — as it’s currently practiced — paint a much messier picture. Rather than appealing to the Vietnam-era Berkeley protest glory days, what one sees when examining the history of the concept is a temporary tactic used by the Left in the mid-to-late 1960s that has, since that late 1980s, become a far-right wedge designed to open up space for racism, eugenics, genocide denial, trans and homophobia and anti-feminist backlash. Defense of the right to keep open this space as an appeal to a universal value hides a well-funded, coordinated far-right attempt to maintain a conservative, largely male and cishet version of political correctness. On this episode, we discuss where the contemporary concept of “free speech” comes from, what its uses and misuses have been and how a rose-tinted time of pristine, perfectly free" speech never really existed. We are joined by journalist and author P.E. Moskowitz and Chair of Princeton University's Department of Anthropology Carolyn Rouse.

Friend of the show and writer at The Intercept Jon Schwarz joins us to review Samantha Power's self-serving, ahistorical memoir.

Nate Silver tell us Joe Biden’s inconsistent political beliefs are, in fact, a benefit. They’re “his calling card” and evidence he “reads the room pretty well”. Venality, we are told, is “a normal and often successful [mode] for a politician.” Insurgent progressive groups like Justice Democrats shouldn’t call Biden out of touch with the base because, Silver tell us, “only 26 of the 79 candidates it endorsed last year won their primaries, and only 7 of those went on to win the general election.” On Twitter and his in columns, high-status pundit Nate Silver, has made a career reporting on the polls and insisting he’s just a dispassionate, non-ideological conduit of Cold Hard Facts, just channeling the holy word of data. Empirical journalism, he calls it. But this schtick, however, is very ideological - a reactionary worldview that prioritizes describing the world, rather than changing it. For Silver - and data-fetishists like him - politics is a sport to be gamed, rather than a mechanism for improving people’s lives. We are joined by Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson.

Anti-poor shaming at Fox News is nothing new. But in recent years, with the rise of Trump and his more explicit brand of white nationalism, their tone on homelessness has grown more aggressive, exterminationist, and urgent. Tales of feces and liberal decay––peppered with immigrants, LGBTQ, and racist subtext––have contributed to a larger US media war on the houseless.   In Part II of our two part episode on media incitement against the homeless, we discuss the ramped up panic at Fox News surrounding the indigent and its parallels with nazi rhetoric.   We are joined by Madeline Peltz, researcher and writer at Media Matters.

“As homeless people turn off visitors, San Francisco tourism senses threat” notes Travelers Weekly. “Seattle Is Dying: Drugs And Homelessness In Seattle,” laments KOMO Seattle. “Austin veteran fights off alleged homeless attacker after offering to help him,” exclaims ABC-affiliate KVUE. As housing costs skyrocket and inequality grows, homelessness is reaching crisis levels in large metropolitan areas. In response, the media––namely local news stations––routinely treat the homeless like an invading species, a vermin to be, at best, contained, and at worst eradicated.  The result has been a slew of stories pathologizing those experiencing homelessness as uniquely dangerous. Panhandlers are viewed as con men out to screw over the working man, chased down by vigilantes with the help of outraged local news “standing up” to the poor. The housing status of those who commit crimes is only mentioned when they’re homeless––never for the housed––and every transgression committed by the homeless is viewed by our media as evidence that the homeless population in general is out to attack us all. But this narrative flies in the face of the evidence, and tracks––like most “crime coverage”––with the needs of real estate interests who set the tone for local media coverage, and who have every reason to highlight and oversell the threat of homeless to pressure lawmakers and police to displace “eye sores” for the yuppie clientele they’re attempting to sell and ultimately serve.  On this first of our two-part episode, we are joined by Steve Potter, an Austin-based artist and homeless activist. 

Freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez taking to Twitter to criticize House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, we are told, “plays into the hands of Trump.” Russians are using Black Lives Matter and anti-fracking activists to “sow discord,” insists CNN. We must “be united” rather than “divided.”   Everywhere we turn we are told by high-status pundits that we shouldn’t air our criticisms of power at this particular moment with any reasonable degree of severity lest our mutual enemies exploit these divisions to empower themselves.    We are told again and again that progressives criticizing party leaders is helping Trump. That fighting Trump’s racism is merely “playing into his hands,” that we shouldn’t attack other democrats in the primary too harshly lest it “give us four more years of Trump.”   But there’s a major problem with this: There’s no evidence that intra-party fighting loses elections or assists the "other side." In many ways, it may actually help engage voters and make them feel heard, rather than viewed as box-checkers for the already anointed.   We are joined by Maximillian Alvarez of the podcast Working People.

"Three Pinocchios!" rates The Washington Post. "Pants On Fire!" declares PolitiFact. “True, but misleading,” assess The New York Times. In a media environment overwhelmed with information, misinformation, disinformation and so-called “fake news,” a cottage industry has emerged to “fact-check” the content coming across our screens. Prestige, corporate media outlets tell us if a viral meme, a politician’s statement or a pundit's controversial claims is indeed “factually correct.” But who fact-checks the fact-checkers? And what do mainstream media’s particular hyper-literal, decontextualized approach to “facts” and “truth” say about how the press views its role as ideological gate keeper? We are joined by writer Andrew Hart.

The term "Western civilization" has long been a staple of the American Right, but with the recent resurgence of white nationalism, it is having something of a comeback. Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly are hosting a two-week Mediterranean "cruise thru history" to "explore the roots of Western civilization." The Intellectual Dark Web's Jordan Peterson tells us “The West is Right,” while The Daily Caller and Fox News are busy “celebrating the West." Neo-Nazi Matthew Heimbach hails “Youth for Western Civilization." Both the traditional and so-called alt-right ground their worldviews in a fictional moral arc of "The West” that bares little resemblance to reality.   Learning from the past and applying those lessons to the present is a good thing. But in pop political discourse, the Classics have been misused and abused to promote an origin story that never was - a white Greco-Roman world birthing our noble, so-called “Judeo-Christian” American empire to gloss over a history of exploitation, imperialism, slavery and conquest.   On this episode, we’ll explore the right-wing obsession with the ancient world, it’s influence on neoconservative empire-building and alt-right white nationalism alike, and how our common cultural understanding of the ancient world has been perpetually white-washed to promote a clash of civilizations narrative and racist pseudo-science.   We are joined by Dr. Sarah E. Bond, Associate Professor at the University of Iowa, and Dr. Cord Whitaker, Associate Professor at Wellesley College.