Know Your Enemy (Matthew Sitman )

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We watched it, and you probably did too. Here is our analysis of the incredibly depressing, even shocking first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. While the topic of this episode is self-explanatory, it's worth making a few comments about our conversation. We recorded this on the afternoon of Friday, June 28, the day after the debate (thus, you'll often hear us refer to "last night"), and you can tell we're still somewhat processing what happened—in particular, we'd have a clearer sense of what could, and could not, be done in the weeks ahead to find an alternative to Biden if we were to record it now. Even more, in the past 24-36 hours new reporting has emerged that portrays Biden's capabilities in bleak terms, from the claim that Biden has about six "good" hours a day to damning portrayals of his confused, stumbling performances at key international meetings with foreign heads of state. Because that reporting largely confirms an off-the-record story shared with Matt, we thought, especially given the circumstances, it was worth including here. And because of the seriousness of Biden's apparent decline, your hosts' positions to continue to evolve. Matt, for example, has called for Biden to not just step aside from the campaign, but resign from office.

Sources:

Daniel Schlozman, "Elder Statesmen," Dissent, Spring 2024

Alex Thompson, "Two Joe Biden's: The Night America Saw the Other One," Axios, June 29, 2024

Annie Linskey, Laurence Norman, & Drew Hinshaw, "The World Saw Biden Deteriorating. Democrats Ignored the Warnings," WSJ, June 28, 2024

Matthew Sitman, "The 'Weekend at Bernie's' Primary," Commonweal, March 3, 2020

This conversation is a little different. We thought that exploring the life of, say, Russell Kirk might not be the best way to spend the weeks before such a consequential election, so this is the first of a few episodes that won't be about a text or a life, but about the 2024 elections—hopefully digging a little deeper than most, and with a special concern for the themes and topics of Know Your Enemy. To help us get started, we had on a great friend of the podcast, playwright and screenwriter Dorothy Fortenberry, to talk about a presidential campaign that "smacks of gender," from declining sperm counts to abortion to the lives of moms, dads, and children today. In short, it's an unguarded discussion of how we can better care for each other in a world that's making it harder and harder to do just that

Sources:

Dorothy Fortenberry, "The J.D. Vance sperm cups were probably a troll. But they got me thinking," Slate, Aug 23, 2024

— "'One of Those Serious Women': Andrea Dworkin's Radical Feminism," Commonweal, April 29, 2019

Mollie Wilson O'Reilly, "When Abortion Isn't Abortion," Commonweal, Mar 21, 2022

Listen again:

"Suburban Woman," Oct 29, 2019

"Living at the End of Our World" (w/ Daniel Sherrell), Sept 2, 2021

"'Succession,' 'Extrapolations,' & TV Writing Today" (w/ Will Arbery), May 4, 2023

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to all of our bonus episodes!

In this unlocked bonus episode, Matt is joined by historian Eric Rauchway for a deep-dive into his new book, Why the New Deal Matters. It's Rauchway's latest effort to recover Franklin Delano Roosevelt as an anti-fascist political leader who sought to expand the meaning and practice of American democracy—that in a robust democracy, people don't just need enough to live on, but something to live for. Topics include: Herbert Hoover's and FDR's different responses to the Bonus Army's march on Washington; why Hoover is the true founding father of modern conservatism; how FDR understood the New Deal as more than just a pragmatic series of experiments; the importance to the New Deal of public art and projects like building libraries and theaters; why, despite its compromises with white supremacists in the Democratic Party, the New Deal continues to inspire; and more! 

Further Reading:

Eric Rauchway, Why the New Deal Matters (Yale University Press, 2021)

Eric Rauchway, Winter War: Hoover, Roosevelt, and the First Clash Over the New Deal (Basic  Books, 2018)

Jamelle Bouie, "F.D.R. Didn't Just Save the Economy," New York Times, April 16, 2021

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

An atheist, a radical for capitalism, a caricature of a greedy libertarian, a best-selling novelist, a difficult partner and passionate lover, and the self-proclaimed greatest philosopher since Aristotle: Ayn Rand was many things, and we talk about almost all of them in this epic episode. To do so, we called upon historian Jennifer Burns, whose intellectual biography, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right , is enormously helpful in trying to understand an idiosyncratic writer who, both then and now, fits ambiguously into the "fusionist" post-war conservative movement. Rand remains a controversial figure whose ideas permeate our culture and continue to inspire some of the most consequential (and least appealing) political figures in the United States. To understand Rand and her influence, we examine her family's experiences during and after the Russian Revolution, her journey to the U.S. and early success in Hollywood, the arduous path she trod to become a writer, Rand's involvement in anti-New Deal politics in the 1930s and 40s, her ideas, philosophy, and scandalous personal life, and much more.

Sources:

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead  (1943)

— Atlas Shrugged (1957)

— We the Living (1936)

Jennifer Burns, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (2009)

— Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative (2023)

Whittaker Chambers, "Big Sister Is Watching You," National Review, Dec 28, 1957

Murray Rothbard, "The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult," (1972)

Mary Gaitskill, Two Girls, Fat and Thin (1991)

Lisa Duggan, Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed, (2019)

— "Ayn Rand and the Cruel Heart of Neoliberalism," Dissent, May 20, 2019.

Adam Curtis, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, (2011)

Listen again:

"Milton Friedman and the Making of Our Times," Dec 3, 2023

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This is a conversation we've wanted to have for a while, and it seemed like there was no better time than now, as many people on the broad center-left are asking tough questions about Donald Trump's strength in rural America—according to one post-election analysis, he won 62 percent of rural voters. To unpack what's happening in these parts of the country, we talked to Luke Mayville of Reclaim Idaho, a grassroots organization that, among other things, helped win a ballot referendum that expanded Medicaid in the state. Why, when an initiative like that can succeed, or voters in red states reject school vouchers or approve hikes to the minimum wage, does the party that opposes these measures tend to clean up in such places? What can be gleaned from talking to voters from all over a state like Idaho about how they view the two major political parties, understand the role of government, and explain the problems facing them in their lives? We take up these questions and more! 

Sources:

Luke Mayville, "Do Something Big," Commonweal, Sept 22, 2020

— "The Battle Against School Vouchers," Commonweal, Dec 11, 2023

— John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy (Princeton University Press, 2016)

Paul Demko, "The Ballot Revolt to Bring Medicaid Expansion to Trump Country," Politico, Oct 19, 2018

Daniel Nichanian, "How Organizers Are Defending Direct Democracy," Bolts, Aug 16, 2023

Dana Goldstein and Troy Closson, "Voters Poised to Reject Private School Vouchers in Three States," New York Times, Nov 7, 2024

Keith Orejel, "The Political Economy of the Urban-Rural Divide," Law & Political Economy Project, Nov 11, 2024

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to access all of our bonus episodes!

The first National Conservatism conference was convened at the Ritz Carlton in Washington D.C. two weeks ago. It was a coming out party for the rising nationalist wing of the conservative movement, with attendees laying the groundwork for a more intellectual version of Trumpism. Many mainstream conservatives were in attendance, along with paleoconservatives, figures from the religious right, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, and a popular Fox News host. In the era of Trump, mainstream conservatism is making room for hardcore nationalists, economic populists, illiberal theocrats, and others—this conference was a chance for them to find common ground.

Matt and Sam discuss the conference, what it means for the present and future of conservative politics, and how the left can combat the nationalists' appeal—which is, in many ways, much more powerful than that of the dying Reaganite consensus.

Here's what we read and watched:

• Video and text of Senator Josh Hawley's speech
• Alexander Zaitchick's profile of Hawley in the New Republic.
• National Conservatism 2019 YouTube channel (videos of many but not all speeches)
• Zach Beauchamp's original write-up at Vox.
• NYT's write-up.
• Osita Nwanevu (New Yorker), Conservative Nationalism is Trumpism for Intellectuals
• Jacob Heilbrunn (NYRB), National Conservatism: Retrofitting Trump’s GOP with a Veneer of Ideas
• Daniel McCarthy's (TORY ANARCHIST) take.
• Damon Linker's contrarian take.
• David Walsh's take on the conference and fascism
• Douthat's NYT column.
• Daniel Luban's profile in the New Republic of Yoram Hazony.
• Criticism from the right: The Federalist and Jacobite takes.

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Know Your Enemy Latin America correspondent David Adler returns to breakdown the (terrible) election results from Argentina, where Javier Milei, a deranged disciple of Murray Rothbard, Milton Friedman, and Austrian economics, who consults his cloned dogs for political advice and promises to tear down the Peronist state with a chainsaw, has won the presidency.

David is the General Coordinator of the Progressive International, and despite what he tells people at parties, unrelated to Sam.

Further Reading

Quinn Slobodian, "Monster of the Mainstream," New Statesman, Nov 20, 2023

Murray Rothbard, "Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement,"  Rothbard-Rockwell Report, Jan 1992.

John Ganz, "Murray Rothbard's America," Unpopular Front, May 30, 2022.

Manuel García Gojon “Will Argentina’s Next President Be a Rothbardian?” The Mises Institute, Jul 4, 2022. 

Philipp Bagus, "Javier's Milei's Populist Strategy in Argentina Is Working," The Mises Institute, Sept 14, 2023.

There's been no shortage of commentary on the rise of the "nones," those Americans who claim no religious affiliation, a trend especially notable among younger people. But that doesn't mean we live in a secular age. Matt and Sam talk to Tara Isabella Burton about her new book, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World, and the way our search for meaning and the need for ritual has met our neoliberal economic order.  What does this spiritual churn mean for our politics? Why do reactionary ideas find a ready audience among those disillusioned with modern life? We take up these questions and more in a wide-ranging conversation about the way we live now.

Sources and Recommended Reading:

Tara Isabella Burton, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World

Tara Isabella Burton, "Christianity Gets Weird" (New York Times)

Daniel José Camacho, "The Racial Aesthetic of Burton's 'Weird Christians'" (Sojourners)

Michael Anton, "Are the Kid Al(t)right?" (Claremont Review of Books)

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy

We wanted to offer something of a palette cleanser for our subscribers, so we decided to watch the recent movie, Reagan, with our intrepid producer, Jesse Brenneman. Even better, it's based on the 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, by Paul Kengor—who just happens to have been Matt's close mentor as an undergraduate student. Reagan clocks in at over two hours and twenty minutes, and it's a wild, even fantastical ride that offers a revealing glimpse into the conservative psyche and a faithful rendition of the most hagiographic version of the Reagan mythology, especially his personal responsibility for ending the Cold War and finally putting the Soviet Union on the ash heap of history.

Sources:

Reagan (2024)

Paul Kengor, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism(2006)

— God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life(2004)

— A Pope and a President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century(2017)

Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (1999)

In this episode, Matt and Sam welcome the Nation's Jeet Heer to the podcast to continue their journey into the work of Garry Wills—in particular, Wills's under-appreciated 1982 masterpiece, The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power. The book might be thought of as a sequel to his earlier Nixon Agonistes (1970). As Wills puts it in his introduction to the most recent edition of The Kennedy Imprisonment, "I had written a book about Nixon, and it was not a biography, but an attempt to see what could be learned about America from the way Nixon attracted or repelled his fellow countrymen. Why not do the same thing for the Kennedys?"

The result of Wills's efforts is a devastating portrait of an Irish-Catholic family who strove to be accepted at the most rarified heights of American society—and then, when they weren't, relentlessly pursued political power. Along the way, the family patriarch, Joseph Kennedy, used his money and influence to create a series of myths surrounding his sons, most of all the son who would become president, John F. Kennedy. It is these myths at which Wills takes aim, showing how Joseph Kennedy bought his second son good press, a heroic war record, and even a Pulitzer Prize. And it was Joseph Kennedy who taught his sons what was expected of them as men: to use and dominate women (many, many women), to valorize virility and daring and risk, and to understand power as enlightened leadership by the best and brightest (most of all, the Kennedys), not as harnessing the popular energy of mass movements. What begins as a book exposing the Kennedy men as wannabe aristocrats bent on conquest, both sexual and political, ends as an indictment of the liberalism they came to represent.

Sources:

Garry Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power (1982)

Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (1970)

Garry Wills, Bare Ruined Choirs: Doubt, Prophecy, and Radical Religion (1972)

Joan Didion, "Wayne at the Alamo," National Review, Dec 31, 1960

Hugh Kenner, The Mechanic Muse (1988)

Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era (1971)

Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan (1960)

John Leonard, "Camelot's Failure," New York Times, Feb 25, 1982

Norman Mailer, "Superman Comes to the Supermarket," Esquire, Nov 1960

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Matt and Sam—in a rare, just-the-two-of-them episode—look back at what a bad year revealed about a number of bad people, especially the coterie of rightwing intellectuals and politicians who have downplayed the pandemic, exacerbated anxieties about the uprising against police violence, and played along with Donald Trump's conspiracy-fueled attempts to steal the presidential election. What holds these efforts together, and what do they say about the state of conservatism? It turns out that 2020 confirmed the anti-democratic, revanchist character of the Right in the United States.

Sources Cited:

Matthew Sitman, "Why the Pandemic is Driving Conservative Intellectuals Mad," New Republic, May 21, 2020

Matthew Sitman, "Time in the Eternal City," Commonweal, December 24, 2020

Sam Adler-Bell, "Conservative Incoherence," Dissent, Summer 2020

Bret Stephens, "America Shouldn't Have to Play by New York Rules," New York Times, April 24, 2020

"Trump’s Focus as the Pandemic Raged: What Would It Mean for Him?" New York Times, December 31, 2020

"Pence Welcomes Futile Bid by G.O.P. Lawmakers to Overturn Election," New York Times, January 2, 2021

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In this special Pride Month episode of Know Your Enemy, Matt and Sam talk to historian Neil J. Young about his new book, Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right. His absorbing account picks up in after World War II, when neither party made for a good political home for gay people, which helped make a libertarian approach to sexual politics—getting the government out of their private lives—compelling, a feature that would mark the gay right for years to come. The conversation then turns to some of the gay, often closeted architects of the postwar conservative movement, the hopeful years between Stonewall and AIDS, Ronald Reagan's embrace of the religious right and the growing partisan divide on LGBTQ rights, and goes on through the very campy Trump years—and more!

Sources:

Neil J. Young, Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (2024)

Neil J. Young, We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics (2015)

Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality, (1996)

James Kirchick, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, (2022)

Marvin Leibman, Coming Out Conservative: An Autobiography, (1992)

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to all of our extensive catalogue of bonus episodes!

The second Trump administration hasn't started, but it's already proving chaotic, disturbing, and downright bewildering. (Not unlike the first!) Trump's picks for key staff and cabinet positions display a discordant, if not altogether surprising, mix of ideologies, experience, and scandalous baggage. (Indeed, one of his picks, Matt Gaetz for Attorney General, withdrew from consideration between the time we recorded our interview and when we recorded the intro.)

For this episode, we're focused on Trump's national security team, which is shaping up to be divided against itself: neoconservatives like Marco Rubio (State) alongside quasi-isolationists like Tulsi Gabbard (Director of National Intelligence) alongside bellicose TV personalities like Pete Hegseth (Defense). To make sense of it all, we're joined by Curt Mills, a longtime foreign policy reporter and executive director of The American Conservative.  A semi-enemy, Curt hails from the paleoconservative school of foreign affairs, which prioritizes realism and restraint. (That is to say, he's not thrilled about Rubio...) Based on Trump's appointments thus far, we ask Curt to assess, from his perspective, the relative strength of various factions of the Trump coalition: Will Trump listen to the warmongers in his midst? Will he side with the America Firsters? Or will he ignore everyone and just make some deals? Listen to find out. 

Further Reading: 

Curt Mills, "What a Trump Cabinet Might Look Like," The American Conservative, Oct 18, 2024.

— "What Trump Could Do in Foreign Policy Might Surprise the World," NYTimes, May 13, 2024.

Patrick Smith & Peter Alexander, "Police report details alleged sexual assault by Trump's defense pick Pete Hegseth," NBC News, Nov 21, 2024. 

Baker, Haberman, Swan, "Gaetz’s withdrawal follows revelations in a sex-trafficking inquiry." NYTimes, Nov 21, 2024. 

Dave Phillips and Carol Rosenberg, "The Metamorphosis of Pete Hegseth: From Critic of War Crimes to Defender of the Accused," NYTimes, Nov 21, 2024. 

David Frum, "Unpatriotic Conservatives," National Review, Mar 25, 2003.

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

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 pick up where they left off in their recent mailbag episode and keep answering listener questions. Topics include: KYE merchandise, the existence of Hell, Francis Fukuyama, Mormonism, gun violence, and more. 

Sources:

David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved (Yale University Press, 2019)

John G. Turner, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (Harvard University Press, 2012)

Francis Fukuyama, "Still the End of History," Atlantic, October 17, 2022

Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (Free Press, 1992)

W.H. Auden, "In Memory of Sigmund Freud" (1940)

Christopher Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1976)

Sohrab Ahmari, "Urban Jeremiah: Mike Davis, 1946-2022," Compact, October 26, 2022

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this premium episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy 

Matt and Sam return to some historiographic questions from our episode with Kim Phillips-Fein — especially how to think the relationship between "right" and "far right" — and then discuss the troubling return of scientific racism to mainstream conservative thought. 

Further Reading:

James Alison, "Facing Down the Wolf," Commonweal, June 10, 2020.

Matthew Sitman, "Time in the Eternal City," Commonweal, Dec 24, 2024.

Samuel L. Popkin, Crackup: The Republican Implosion and the Future of Presidential Politics, Oxford UP, May 2021. 

Joseph E. Lowndes, From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism, Yale UP, June 2009

John S. Huntington, Far-Right Vanguard: The Radical Roots of Modern Conservatism, Penn Press, Oct 2021.

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy

In the week-and-a-half since we last offered you, our beloved subscribers, the highest quality election punditry around, a lot has happened: on the Democratic side of the ledger, "The Podcasters' Coup" succeeded and Joe Biden has stepped down as the party's presidential candidate; at least for now, the nomination appears to be Kamala Harris's to lose. Republicans, meanwhile, just wrapped up their carnivalesque Convention, where Ohio senator J.D. Vance was unveiled as Donald Trump's running mate. And, of course, looming over it all was the assassination attempt on Trump in western Pennsylvania only days before the GOP gathered in Milwaukee.

Did Vance impress, and Trump charm? Did the assassination attempt change the race, or—as some credulous journalists ludicrously asserted—Trump himself? Where does the presidential race stand? Are Democrats in disarray? It doesn't seem that way, now, but does Harris have a real chance? Your hosts take up these questions and more!

Read:

Josh Boak, "Biden’s legacy: Far-reaching Accomplishments That Didn’t Translate into Political Support," Associated Press, July 22, 2024.

Ruth Igielnik, "How Kamala Harris Performs Against Donald Trump in the Polls," New York Times, July 21, 2024.

Tim Alberta, "This Is Exactly What the Trump Team Feared," The Atlantic, July 21, 2024.

Ian Ward, "The Seven Thinkers and Groups That Have Shaped JD Vance’s Unusual Worldview," Politico, July 18, 2024.

Matthew Sitman, "Will Be Wild," Dissent, April 18, 2023.

Susan Sontag, Against Interpretations and Other Essays(1966).

Listen:

The Ezra Klein Show, "The Trump Campaign's Theory of Victory" (w/ Tim Alberta), July 18, 2024

In a 1991, William F. Buckley, Jr. dedicated  almost an entire issue of National Review to an essay entitled  "In Search of Anti-Semitism." In its pages, Buckley attempted to adjudicate a conflict that was then roiling America's right wing intelligentsia — over whether two of its leading lights, Pat Buchanan and Joseph Sobran, were guilty of antisemitism in their syndicated columns and speeches. (Never one to miss an opportunity to antagonize an enemy or blame the left, Buckley threw in Gore Vidal for good measure.)  The article, despite its meandering prose and fuzzy-headed conclusions, sparked an enormous response from NR's readership, some of whom felt Buckley was too hard on Pat and Joe, others who thought he was not hard enough. 

The following year, Buckley combined the essay, several of the responses, and a few new thoughts of his own... and sold it as a "book." And thirty-one years later, we read that book — carefully — and recorded a podcast about it with our friend John Ganz, author of the forthcoming book, When the Clock Broke, about the derangement of American politics in the 1990s. (You can pre-order it here. It's sure to be excellent). 

Unfortunately for us all, In Search of Anti-Semitism is not a good book; it's hardly a book at all. But it is a fascinating artifact of a fleeting post-Cold War moment in which conservatives furtively faced their own demons — before turning right back around. 

For those interested, here is the link mentioned in the episode's introduction for tickets to Dissent's 70th anniversary event later this month.

Sources:

William F. Buckley Jr., In Search of Anti-Semitism (1992)

John Ganz, "The Year the Clock Broke," The Baffler, Nov 2018

Joshua Muravchik, "Pat Buchanan and the Jews," Commentary, Jan 1991

Matthew Sitman, "There Will Be No Buckley Revival," Commonweal, July 2015

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"What is best and weakest in America goes out to reciprocating strength and deficiencies in Richard Nixon." It's difficult to think of a more electric meeting of author and subject than Garry Wills and Richard Nixon, a meeting that produced what might be the best book ever written about American politics, Wills's Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man. What begins as reporting from the campaign trail during the 1968 presidential contest—where Wills introduces us to Nixon, George Wallace, Nelson Rockefeller, and more—eventually becomes a profound meditation on the fate of liberalism in the United States. Wills found in Nixon the key to unlocking the reigning—but by then faltering—myths of their country's history and self-understanding, and what they reveal about each other. 

Along the way he discusses the complex psychological dance between Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower; takes us on a tour of Nixon's hometown, Whittier, California; describes the Republicans' "southern strategy"; examines the roiling anger and protests over the Vietnam War; and offers on-the-ground reportage from the 1968 conventions (the GOP's in Miami, the Democrats', infamously, in Chicago). Matt and Sam try to make sense of it all and ponder what Nixon Agonistes might say about how we got here and where we're going. 

Sources:

Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (1970)

                           Confessions of a Conservative (1979)

                           Outsider Looking In: Adventures of an Observer (2010)

Kevin Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority (1968)

Tom Wolfe, The New Journalism (1973)

KYE, "Joan Didion, Conservative,  (w/ Sam Tanenhaus)" Jan 13, 2022 

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Every June it happens: conservatives get all hot and bothered by Pride celebrations, and this year has been no different. Why do banal corporate expressions of support for LGBTQ+ rights drive them so mad? How does religion factor into their opposition to basic protections for LGBTQ+ people? What part do these culture war flareups play in their broader political strategy? In this bonus episode, Matt and Sam offer a survey of hyperbolic rightwing reactions to the start of Pride month and break it all down. 

In this follow-up episode to "Democracy and Its Discontents" (listen here), historian Joshua Tait joins Matt and Sam for a conversation about the intellectual origins of the American Right's hostility to democracy—from John C. Calhoun's invention of the filibuster in the nineteenth century to the writings of conservatives like Russell Kirk, James Burnham, Willmoore Kendall, and others, in the 1950s and '60s. 

Sources and Further Reading:

Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy (Liveright Books, January 2021)

James Burnham, Congress and the American Tradition (Regnery, 1959)

Willmoore Kendall, The Conservative Affirmation (Regnery Publishing, 1963)

Willmoore Kendall & George W. Carey, Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition (Louisiana State University Press, 1970; reprint, The Catholic University of American Press, 1995)

Saul Bellow, "Mosby's Memoirs," The New Yorker, Jul 12, 1968

John A. Murley & John E. Alvis, eds., Willmoore Kendall: Maverick of American Conservatives (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002)

Harry V. Jaffa, "Equality as a Conservative Principle," Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, June 1, 1975

Joshua Tait, "Why Willmoore Kendall and James Burnham are the Prophets of Modern Conservatism," National Interest, April 30, 2021

Joshua Tait, "The Long History of Fighting Over the Term 'Conservative,'" The Bulwark, April 2, 2021

Matthew Sitman, "Farewell to a Constitutional Conservative," The American Conservative, June 27, 2013

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After several trying months, Matt and Sam can finally discuss the lawsuit against KYE and Dissent magazine filed by Young Americans Foundation , the successor organization to Young Americans for Freedom. (We prevailed, for now anyway.) 

Then we turn to three SCOTUS rulings from the end of the session: (1) Biden vs Nebraska  (the student debt ruling); (2) Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (the affirmative action ruling); and (3) 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (the gay wedding website design ruling). Each of these rulings represents a victory for the conservative legal movement, an exercise of raw power by the court, and a blow to dignity and decent policy for millions of Americans. Taken together, they help us understand  the workings of the conservative intellectual pipeline — at law schools, fellowships, and well-endowed non-profits — to change federal policy. 

How do conservative institutions work together to (in the eyes of the law) turn victims into oppressors and vice versa? Listen to find out. 

Sources:

Jennifer Schuessler, "Conservative Group Withdraws Lawsuit Against Left-Wing Podcast," New York Times, July 12, 2023

John A. Andrew III, The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics (1997)

Sarah Posner, "The Legal Muscle Leading the Fight to End the Separation of Church and State," Washington Spectator, April 1, 2007

Emma Brown and Jon Swaine, "Amy Coney Barrett, Supreme Court Nominee, Spoke at Program Founded to Inspire a 'Distinctly Christian Worldview in Every Area of Law,'" Washington Post, September 27, 2020

Melissa Gira Grant, "The Mysterious Case of the Fake Gay Marriage Website, the Real Straight Man, and the Supreme Court," New Republic, June 29, 2023

Thomas Sowell, "The Day Cornell Died," Weekly Standard, October 30, 1999

Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (2020)

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A bunch of you requested that we un-paywall this recent bonus episode, which features some highly practical insights for organizers, volunteers, and public servants. So we have! (All the other bonus episodes are good too; please subscribe.)

—

Right wing movements thrive by cultivating fears of disorder. Conservatives depict blue cities as sites of rampant crime, chaos, and iniquity. And often enough, it is progressives — with their overdeveloped empathy and concern for the poor and criminalized — who take the blame. Recently, a rising chorus of voices on the center-left, including figures like Ezra Klein, have embraced the thesis that perceptions of disorder in cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco have contributed to America’s rightward turn. But is that accurate? And can anything be done about it?

In this episode, Sam is joined by organizer, writer, and podcaster Hayes Davenport to discuss his experiences fighting against this sort of backlash in Los Angeles. As soon as Hayes had helped his friend Nithya Raman get elected to the LA City Council in 2020 and joined her staff, conservative forces in city government mobilized to thwart her pro-tenant agenda and blame the tiny faction of progressives on the council for rising crime and homelessness. How did they respond? What can the past few years in LA politics teach the American left? And can we imagine a leftist politics that short-circuits the right’s effort to use disorder to undermine our efforts to address its underlying causes: government neglect, poverty, and exploitation. We discuss! 

Further Reading:

Hayes Davenport, "Ezra Klein is wrong about this," Big City Heat, Dec 9, 2024.

— "Violent crime is down. Why are so many people mad about it?" Big City Heat, Dec 16, 2024.

— "Sects on the Beach: The 2024 Santa Monica City Council Race," Big City Heat, Nov 1, 2024.

—  "The Last LA Election When Crime Was Going Up For Real," Big City Heat, Nov 11, 2024.

Emily Badger & Alicia Parlapiano, "Is the Urban Shift Toward Trump Really About Democratic Cities in Disarray?" NY Times, Dec 6, 2024.

Jill Cowan, Serge F. Kovaleski, & Leanne Abraham, "How a New City Council Map of L.A. Turned Into a Political Brawl," NY Times, Sept 3, 2023.

Koko Nakakjima & Phi Do, "California and Los Angeles County are getting tougher on crime. Here are the maps that show it," LA Times, Dec 30, 2024.

Jay Caspian Kang, "Who Really Controls Local Politics?" NY Times, Oct 11, 2021.

— "How Homeowners’ Associations Get Their Way in California," NY Times, Oct 14, 2021.

— "A Leader They Didn’t Choose," NY Times, Oct 18, 2021.

Subscribe to Hayes's podcast: Hollywood Handbook and Friends.

At long last, an episode about baseball—America's national pastime, and a sport that conservatives in the United States seem to especially love. To understand baseball's appeal, both to conservatives and the rest of us, Matt and Sam are joined by David Roth of Defector Media, a brilliant, funny writer who also is a long suffering Mets fan. Topics include: the start of the MLB playoffs, baseball's interesting place in American history, varieties of conservative baseball fans, and more!

Sources: 

George F. Will, Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball (Macmillan, 1990)

                                  "Foul Ball," New York Review of Books, June 1991

Donald Kagan, "George Will's Baseball—A Conservative Critique," Public Interest, Fall 1990

Tim Marchman, "Did George Will’s Men at Work Anticipate Baseball’s Statistical Revolution?" Slate, April 27, 2010

David Bentley Hart, "A Perfect Game," First Things, August 2010

Greg Hillis, "Quit Trying to 'Fix' Baseball," Commonweal, March 27, 2018

David Roth, "Replacement-Level Billionaires," The Baffler, March 2020

Leander Schaerlaeckens, "Was Donald Trump Good at Baseball?" Slate, May 5, 2020

Michael Serazio, "The GOP hates baseball now. But it has always been a conservative sport," Washington Post, April 7, 2021

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Gillian Branstetter (of the ACLU's Women’s Rights Project and LGBTQ & HIV Project) returns to Know Your Enemy for an episode on the strange case of Ron DeSantis: what is his ideology and vision for America? And why do his political aspirations involve inflicting wanton cruelty upon LGBTQ children and adults in his home state? For our sins, we read DeSantis's new book — a campaign book, though he has not yet formally announce his presidential run —  The Courage to Be Free: Florida's Blueprint for America's Revival. (You heard it here: it sucks.) 

Along the way, Gillian provides an update on the conservative war on so-called "gender ideology" and "wokeness," how organizations like hers are fighting back, and why superficial expressions of sympathy for trans people by major corporations and banks — which so outrage the right — are themselves a trap and a means of evading real justice.  We also discuss Sam's New York Times piece on DeSantis as an anti-woke technocrat, an embodiment of the twin cults of expertise and meritocracy, even as he disavows and demonizes the "ruling class" and it's irksome cultural mores. 

Finally, we identify the violent underpinnings of DeSantis's political impulses, discussing his alleged involvement in detainee abuse at Guantanamo Bay. As Gillian summarizes DeSantis's worldview, “It’s just cold efficiency and shared enemies. That’s what he’s selling. It’s like getting a moral lecture from a gun." 

Sources:

Gillian Branstetter, "The Gender War Is A Forever War," The Autonomy, Mar 5, 2023.

— "When Biology Needs Some Help," The Autonomy, Feb 9, 2023.

Ron DeSantis, The Courage to Be Free: Florida's Blueprint for America's Revival, Feb 2023

Sam Adler-Bell, "The One Thing Trump Has That DeSantis Never Will," NY Times, Apr 10, 2023.

Adrian Daub, What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley, Oct 2020.

Zack Beauchamp, "Ron DeSantis is following a trail blazed by a Hungarian authoritarian," Vox, Apr 28, 2022. 

Angelo Codevilla, "America's Ruling Class," The American Spectator, Jul 16, 2010. 

Jasper Craven, "The Sunshine Imperium: The militarism of Ron DeSantis," The Baffler, Mar 2023.

Daniel Luban, "The Belligerent: Angelo Codevilla and the ideological origins of the New Right," The Baffler, Oct 2022. 

Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West, Jul 2019.

Joseph Darda, The Strange Career of Racial Liberalism, Mar 2022. 

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, "Identity Politics and Elite Capture," Boston Review, May 7, 2020.

Michael Kranish, "DeSantis’s pivotal service at Guantánamo during a violent year," Washington Post, March 19, 2023.

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

This conversation is a little different. We wanted to take a break from the election-year political jousting to talk to the poet Christian Wiman about Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair, one of the most singular books published in recent memory—part memoir, part commonplace book, part poetry collection. As with his previous My Bright Abyss, Wiman, more than any other contemporary Christian writer, manages to shake off our culture's desiccated religious tropes to write and talk about matters of ultimate concern in ways that are bracing, even exhilarating. How does poetry tap into reality, or, even better, what does poetry reveal about it? How does he think about the relationship between "life and art"? Why does he resist "Saul on the Road to Damascus"-style accounts of religious conversion? Why did he almost not write about his cancer diagnosis in My Bright Abyss? Why might postmodernism be good for religion, actually? How does the love of another person connect to the love of God? And how does any of this matter for how we live? We take up these questions and more.

Sources:

Christian Wiman, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair (2023)

— My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer (2013)

— Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet (2004)

— Every Riven Thing: Poems (2014)

— "The Preacher Addresses the Seminarians" in Once in the West (2014)

Matthew Sitman, "Finding the Words for Faith: Meet America's Most Important Christian Writer," The Dish, Sept 3, 2014

Casey Cep, "How the Poet Christian Wiman Keeps His Faith," New Yorker, Dec 4, 2023

Andre Dubus, "A Father's Story," in Selected Stories of Andre Dubus (1996)

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (1947)

Robert Bringhurst, "These Poems, She Said,"  from The Beauty of the Weapons: Selected Poems 1972-1982. Copper Canyon Press (1982)

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy for access to all of our bonus episodes!

It's impossible to comprehend the state of conservative politics — or American politics in general — without looking closely at the wars we've been waging for the past two decades. The story we've been telling about American conservatism has been incomplete without a deep-dive on the so-called Global War on Terror. Luckily, Spencer Ackerman has written the perfect book to occasion such a dialogue. In Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump, Ackerman provides a richly detailed (and acutely frustrating) account of the perversions of justice, liberalism, humanity, and the constitution wrought by the forever wars. Our discussion with Ackerman goes from the Oklahoma City Bombing to the cancellation of Susan Sontag to the battles among neocons and paleocons to define the post-9/11 era. We also touch on the CIA's torture program, nation-building in Afghanistan, and the hypocrisies of the Trump-era Resistance. In typical KYE fashion, it's a complex and wide-ranging conversation you won't find elsewhere. 

Further Reading:

Susan Sontag et al. "Tuesday, and After: New Yorker writers respond to 9/11." The New Yorker, Sept 16, 2001.

Bernard Lewis, "The Revolt of Islam," The New Yorker, Nov 11, 2001.

Jake Tapper, "Pat Buchanan: America First," Salon, Dec 4, 2001.

Spencer Ackerman, "The CIA’s Outsourced Torture Is Lost To History," Forever Wars, Aug 6, 2021.

Sam Adler-Bell, "How the War on Terror Fuels Trump," Jacobin, Aug 13, 2016.

...and don't forget to subscribe on Patreon to hear all of our bonus episodes!

UNPAYWALLED:

Sam interviews journalist Hannah Gais about (1) the far right's ongoing efforts to infiltrate conservative media and (2) the self-victimizing grift of Quillette anti-anti-fascist Andy Ngo.

Discussed:

• Hannah Gais, Leaked Emails Show How White Nationalists Have Infiltrated Conservative Media, Splinter
• Hannah Gais, The Making of Andy Ngo, Jewish Currents

It seems almost every  big culture-war battle of the moment—from "Critical Race Theory" to COVID mandates—is being fought in America's schools. Meanwhile, Democrats, anxious about a midterm rout driven by angry Republican parents, too often are conceding these battles to the right, adopting their rhetoric and their terms of debate, and have been for a long time—despite supposedly being the party of teachers' unions.  Does it have to be this way? 

We put that question, and many more, to our guest Jennifer Berkshire, the coauthor (with Jack Schneider) of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door and co-host of the education podcast Have You Heard.  Jennifer guides us through the recent history of conservatives' war on public education—fights over desegregation, the Reagan administration's A Nation at Risk, the "parents' rights" movement of the 1990s, Obama-era ed reform, and the CRT gag-orders sweeping the nation today. Along the way we tease out some illuminating contradictions in the right's nationalist coalition, which  seeks to cultivate a shared, sanitized story about American history while simultaneously dismantling the only system by which that narrative can be imposed. We also cast a critical eye on the triangulating, moderate Democrats who have utterly failed to provide a galvanizing, alternative message about the purpose of public education. As Jennifer makes brilliantly clear, the crisis of American education is real; the question is, who will be empowered to solve it? 

Further Reading:

Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door:  The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School (The New Press, November 2020)

Jennifer Berkshire, "The GOP Has Revived Its Obsession With Parents’ Rights," The New Republic, Dec 9, 2021

— "The GOP's Grievance Industrial Complex Invades the Classroom," The Nation, Oct 28, 2021

— "'Corporate Democrat Goes Down to Defeat in Virginia,'" The Nation, Nov 8, 2021

— "How Education Reform Ate the Democratic Party," The Baffler, Nov 17, 2017

Sam Adler-Bell, "Behind the Critical Race Theory Crackdown," The Forum, Jan 13, 2022

Sarah Jones, "We're Having the Wrong Conversation About Schools," New York Magazine, Jan 12, 2022

...and don't forget to subscribe on Patreon for access to all of Know Your Enemy's bonus episodes!

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this premium episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy 

Matt and Sam gab about "The Incomparable Mr. Buckley," a new PBS documentary on William F. Buckley Jr., which features Matt Sitman (!) as a talking head — along with a rogue's gallery of KYE friends and former guests: Perlstein, Tanenhaus, Tait, Gage, Burns, the whole gang... What do we make of the doc? Is it a whitewash? Is it too credulous about the conservative movement? Does it "get" Buckley, the man? (Does anyone?) And what does Buckley have to do with Donald Trump? This was a lot of fun. Good ol' KYE classico.

Sources Cited:

Barak Goodman, "The Incomparable Mr. Buckley," PBS (2024)

Rick Perlstein, "An Implausible Mr. Buckley," American Prospect, April 17, 2024.

Alexander Chee, "Mr. and Mrs. B," Apology Magazine, Jan 1, 2014.

Ross Douthat, "'We're On Our Way Home Now, Duckie!'" Atlantic, Feb 2008

Nicholas Buccola, "The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America," Princeton U Press, Oct 2019.

Sam Adler-Bell, "The Conservative and the Murderer," New Republic, March 7, 2022

Previously on KYE:

Buckley vs. Vidal (2020)

Buckley for Mayor (w/ Sam Tanenhaus) (2021)

The Conservative and the Convict (w/ Sarah Weinman) (2022)

In Search of Anti-Semitism (w/ John Ganz) (2023)

Matt and Sam welcome Yale historian Samuel Moyn to the show for a deep-dive into the Never Trump movement.  Who are the Never Trumpers? How seriously should we take the heroic story they tell about themselves? Did they sink Bernie's campaign for the Democratic nomination? Have they reckoned with their role in paving the way for Trump?  In trying to answer these questions the conversation moves from the baleful influence of Never Trumpers to a discussion of historical debates about over the rise of fascism, the perils of "tyrannophobia," and the possibilities for breaking through the hegemony of neoliberals and neoconservatives in our political life.

Further Reading:

Samuel Moyn, "The Never Trumpers Have Already Won" (New Republic)

Robert P. Saldin and Steven M. Teles, "Don't Blame Never Trumpers for the Left's Defeat" (New Republic)

Samuel Moyn and David Priestland, "Trump Isn't a Threat to Our Democracy. Hysteria Is" (New York Times)

Samuel Moyn, "Interview: We Can't Settle for Human Rights" (Jacobin)

Sam Adler-Bell, "The Remnant and the Restless Crowd" (Commonweal)

Matthew Sitman, "Riding the Trump Tiger" (Commonweal)

Pankaj Mishra, "The Mask It Wears" (London Review of Books)

John Ganz, "Finding Neverland: The American Right's Doomed Quest to Rid Itself of Trumpism" (New Republic)

Marshall Steinbaum, "Guardians of Property" (Jacobin)

Books Cited:

Robert P. Saldin and Steven M. Teles, Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elite (Oxford University Press)

Samuel Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (Harvard University Press)

James Chappel, Catholic Modern : The Challenge of Totalitarianism and the Remaking of the Church (Harvard University Press)

...and don't forget to support Know Your Enemy on Patreon for bonus episodes!

It's been over seven months since pro-Trump protestors breached the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The meaning of the event remains contested. Was it a genuine coup attempt by an extra-parliamentary faction of the Trump movement? Or was it a  disorganized and pathetic act of desperation by Fox News-poisoned rubes? Were the protestors inside the Capitol more like tourists or like terrorists? Was the siege an expression of dangerous anti-democratic forces? Or should we be more worried  about the security state's  overreaction to January 6th than about the event itself?  

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, we try to contextualize the events of January 6th in terms of a longer trajectory of right-wing mobilization in 2020. Conservatives have variously downplayed, ignored, and defended the insurrectionists. Trump and others have begun to treat Ashli Babbitt — killed by a police officer during the riot — as a martyr for the cause. Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson  insists the siege was an inside job, planned and executed by the FBI — an implausible theory gaining popularity among conservatives hoping to absolve themselves of culpability.  Still other factions of the right (e.g. our old friends at the Claremont Institute) dream about a version of 1/6 that would actually have succeeded.

Further Reading: 

Video: Day of Rage: An In-Depth Look at How a Mob Stormed the Capitol, New York Times, June 30, 2021. 

Paige Williams, "Kyle Rittenhouse, American Vigilante" The New Yorker. June 28, 2021.

Ben Burgis & Daniel Bessner, "Trump Is a Threat to Democracy. But That Doesn’t Mean He’s Winning." Jacobin. Jan 15, 2021. 

Micah Loewinger, The Road to Insurrection, WNYC, July 2, 2021. 

Michael Anton & Curtis Yarvin, "The Stakes: The American Monarchy?," The American Mind. May 31, 2021.

Joshua Hochschild "Once Upon a Presidency," The American Mind. Feb 19, 2021.

Andrew Egger, "The New January 6 Scapegoats," The Dispatch, Jun 18, 2021.

John Ganz "Feb 6 1934/Jan 6 2021," Unpopular Front. Jul 15, 2021.

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for all of our bonus episodes!

Finally, a deep-dive on William F. Buckley, Jr.! Matt and Sam are joined by Buckley's biographer, Sam Tanenhaus, to talk about WFB's 1965 campaign for mayor of New York City. Topics include: how Buckley's campaign made him the most famous conservative in America; the importance of his candidacy to the conservative movement's rise; the hardline positions he took on policing and his inflammatory views on race; and more. Along the way, Tanenhaus offers countless details that only Buckley's biographer would know, from WFB dropping LSD with James Burnham to the debate that changed Buckley forever.

Sources and Further Reading:

Sam Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (Random House, 1997)

Sam Tanenhaus, "The Buckley Effect," New York Times Magazine, October 2, 2005

Carl T. Bogus, Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism (Bloomsbury, 2011)

Matthew Sitman, "There Will Be No Buckley Revival," Commonweal, July 28, 2015

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy

The first three weeks of Donald Trump's second administration have seen a flurry of vicious executive orders aimed at the federal workforce, trans people, government agencies, and others—all while Elon Musk and his deranged band of young sociopaths, otherwise known as the "Department of Government Efficiency," have been set loose on the Treasury's payment system and other key functions of the state. In this episode, we talk with John Ganz to try to make sense of it all: how to avoid getting sucked into the political quicksand of debating conservatives about line items in a budget, what Trump and Musk really want, how "presidential" political systems break down, and, generally, how to think about What's Happening Now.

Sources:

James Burnham, The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom (1943)

— The Managerial Revolution: What Is Happening in the World  (1941)

George Orwell, "Second Thoughts on James Burnham," Polemic, May 1946

John Ganz, "What Happened Here," Unpopular Front, Feb 4, 2024

Nathan Tankus, "Elon Musk Wants to Get Operational Control of the Treasury’s Payment System," Notes on the Crises, Feb 3, 2024

Karen Yourish, et al, "All of the Trump Administration’s Major Moves in the First 17 Days," New York Times, Feb 6, 2024

Yoni Applebaum, "America's Fragile Constitution," The Atlantic, Oct 2015

Eric Rauchway, Why the New Deal Matters (2021)

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 welcome their intrepid producer and great friend Jesse Brenneman back to the third mic to talk about HBO's The Righteous Gemstones. In addition to being a wildly entertaining entry to the Danny McBride cinematic and television universe, the show perceptively explores the culture of American megachurch, evangelical Christianity—and offers your hosts plenty of fodder to discuss where faith ends and cynicism begins, the relationship between evangelicalism and consumer capitalism, cheap grace vs. real grace, whether or not people can change, the pathologies of evangelical purity culture, and much more. Plus: Jesse takes us behind the scenes of his brilliant, very funny podcast Tech Talk and its surprising connections to Elon Musk, Eli Gemstone, and others.

Sources:

John Jeremiah Sullivan, "Upon This Rock," GQ, January 24, 2004

Austin Considine, "Danny McBride Keeps It Righteous," New York Times, June 14, 2023

Doreen St. Félix, "The Lost Sheep of Danny McBride's The Righteous Gemstones," New Yorker, January 17, 2022

Matthew Sitman, "Speaking of New York: An Interview with Fran Lebowitz," Commonweal, February 7, 2019

This episode is something different: the latest installment of the KYE Film Club, an ongoing series in which Matt and Sam's great friend (and the podcast's producer) Jesse Brenneman guides them through the strange world of terrible conservative movies. The selection this time was "Christmas Cars," a confusing attempt at Confederate nostalgia written and directed by former Dukes of Hazzard star John Schneider.

Watch: Christmas Cars on Vimeo

Peruse: John Schneider Studios

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to all of our bonus episodes!

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this premium episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Journeyman actor Peter Crombie, who appeared in films such as Seven, Born on the Fourth of July, and Natural Born Killers, died earlier this month, on January 10, 2024, at the age of 71. But his most famous, or at least memorable, role probably was his five-episode arc in season four of Seinfeld as "Crazy" Joe Davola, a struggling writer who becomes obsessed with Elaine and believes Jerry is sabotaging his career.

The "Crazy" Joe Davola episodes come at a major turning point in Seinfeld's nine seasons. The grittier, nearly vanished working-class New York City that's depicted in its earliest episodes, filled with dingy laundromats, struggling actors, immigrant relatives, and people who are literally poor, begins to drop out of view as Jerry's career takes off and the settings, references, and concerns of the show becomes more absurd and removed from the day to day life of ordinary people in Manhattan and beyond.

Using the death of Peter Crombie as the thinnest of excuses to do an episode on the politics of Seinfeld, Matt was joined by KYE producer Jesse Brenneman and historian Gabe Winant to explain its "Jewish humor"; how the class politics of New York City in the 70s and 80s informed the show; the deeper meaning of its many references to dictators, Nazis, communists, and others; the Dinkins vs. Giuliani race for mayor; and more!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Right wing movements thrive by cultivating fears of disorder. Conservatives depict blue cities as sites of rampant crime, chaos, and iniquity. And often enough, it is progressives — with their overdeveloped empathy and concern for the poor and criminalized — who take the blame. Recently, a rising chorus of voices on the center-left, including figures like Ezra Klein, have embraced the thesis that perceptions of disorder in cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco have contributed to America’s rightward turn. But is that accurate? And can anything be done about it?

In this episode, Sam is joined by organizer, writer, and podcaster Hayes Davenport to discuss his experiences fighting against this sort of backlash in Los Angeles. As soon as Hayes had helped his friend Nithya Raman get elected to the LA City Council in 2020 and joined her staff, conservative forces in city government mobilized to thwart her pro-tenant agenda and blame the tiny faction of progressives on the council for rising crime and homelessness. How did they respond? What can the past few years in LA politics teach the American left? And can we imagine a leftist politics that short-circuits the right’s effort to use disorder to undermine our efforts to address its underlying causes: government neglect, poverty, and exploitation. We discuss! 

Further Reading:

Hayes Davenport, "Ezra Klein is wrong about this," Big City Heat, Dec 9, 2024.

— "Violent crime is down. Why are so many people mad about it?" Big City Heat, Dec 16, 2024.

— "Sects on the Beach: The 2024 Santa Monica City Council Race," Big City Heat, Nov 1, 2024.

—  "The Last LA Election When Crime Was Going Up For Real," Big City Heat, Nov 11, 2024.

Emily Badger & Alicia Parlapiano, "Is the Urban Shift Toward Trump Really About Democratic Cities in Disarray?" NY Times, Dec 6, 2024.

Jill Cowan, Serge F. Kovaleski, & Leanne Abraham, "How a New City Council Map of L.A. Turned Into a Political Brawl," NY Times, Sept 3, 2023.

Koko Nakakjima & Phi Do, "California and Los Angeles County are getting tougher on crime. Here are the maps that show it," LA Times, Dec 30, 2024.

Jay Caspian Kang, "Who Really Controls Local Politics?" NY Times, Oct 11, 2021.

— "How Homeowners’ Associations Get Their Way in California," NY Times, Oct 14, 2021.

— "A Leader They Didn’t Choose," NY Times, Oct 18, 2021.

Subscribe to Hayes's podcast: Hollywood Handbook and Friends.

"That’s the problem with a lot of things these days," wrote Bob Dylan in 2022, "Everything is too full now; we are spoon-fed everything. All songs are about one thing and one thing specifically, there is no shading, no nuance, no mystery. Perhaps this is why music is not a place where people put their dreams at the moment; dreams suffocate in these airless environs." 

This mournful attitude — for a lost age of artfulness, mystery, and hope — pervades Dylan's 2022 book, Philosophy of Modern Song. In this sense, it's a quintessentially conservative book. But decline and nostalgia are not its only themes.  In short bursts of prose reflecting on sixty-six totemic songs (from Webb Pierce's 1953 hit "There Stands the Glass;" to The Fugs' 1967 proto-punk romp "CIA Man;" to Nina Simone's unimpeachable "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"), Dylan conjures a country — and canon — defined most of all by mutability, motion, and menace.  Dylan's America never stops moving, reinventing itself, or rebelling against its own strictures. Things get better; things get worse; what they don't do is stay the same. 

To help us make sense of Bob Dylan's idiosyncratic vision of America and American song, we're joined by Know Your Enemy musician-in-residence (and Bob super-fan) Will Epstein. Besides providing the music for our show, Will is a song-writer, composer, and improvisor; his latest album, WENDY, is out from Fat Possum records. (Download it or buy the vinyl here.) Music may not be the place where most people put their dreams these days, but it's still where we put ours. And there is no better way to understand America's dreams than by listening — closely — to its music. 

Sources:

Bob Dylan, The Philosophy of Modern Song (2022)

Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One (2005)

Sean Wilentz, Bob Dylan in America (2010)

Clinton Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited (2003)

Martin Chilton, "Bob Dylan and the Great American Songbook," May 24, 2022

Raymond Foye, "Bob Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Song," The Brooklyn Rail, Nov. 2022.

Hua Hsu, "How Nam June Paik’s Past Shaped His Visions of the Future," The New Yorker, Mar 29, 2023.

John Szwed, Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith, coming Aug 2023.

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Last week, televangelist, businessman, conspiracy theorist, and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson died at the age of 93. Though mostly known today for his deranged comments about homosexuality, abortion, feminism, and other "sins" causing everything from natural disasters to 9-11, Robertson had a major influence on the evolution of the Republican Party and the religious right. Where did Robertson come from, and what was distinctive about Robertson's theological and political views? What were the innovations of the Christian Coalition, the group he founded in 1987, in organizing conservative believers for the GOP? How did he respond to the end of the Cold War and adapt his message for the 1990s and the supposed advent of a "New World Order"?

In this episode, Matt and Sam take up these questions and more, plus offer a discussion of James G. Watt, Ronald Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior, who died in late May. An evangelical Christian known for railing against the Beach Boys, his offensive comments about Native Americans and others, and using the supposed imminent return of Christ to justify destroying the environment.

Sources:

Pat Robertson obituaries: NYT, Washington Post

James G. Watt obituaries: NYT, Washington Post

Daniel Schlozman, When Movements Anchor Parties: Electoral Alignments in American History (2016)

Jacob Heilbrunn, "His Anti-Semitic Sources," New York Review of Books, April 20, 1995

Pat Robertson, The New World Order (1991)

James Conaway, "James Watt, In the Right with the Lord," Washington Post, April 27, 1983

John Taylor "Pat Robertson’s God, Inc." Esquire, Nov 1994.

This is episode is a little different. Listeners know that Matt and Sam have been following John Fetterman's Senate campaign in Pennsylvania from the start, doing their first episode about him after his primary win in May. After his victory over Dr. Oz earlier this week in the general election, they talked to the Fetterman campaign's Director of Communications, Joe Calvello, for a behind-the-scenes look at how they did it. Topics discussed: Fetterman's strategy of defining Oz early (and, yes, the origins of some of Fetterman's most popular Twitter dunks), left populism, crime, abortion, why voters have a right to be angry, and how the campaign responded to Fetterman's stroke and turned his very public recovery into one more argument about why he'd fight for Pennsylvanians. 

To hear Know Your Enemy's full take on the midterm elections, recorded earlier this week, listen and subscribe on Patreon here —  you'll also get access to all of our previous bonus episodes!

In episode two of KNOW YOUR ENEMY, Matt and Sam discuss economist Albert O. Hirschman's 1991 book The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy. Along the way, they identify the persistent patterns in conservative rhetoric from Edmund Burke to Friedrich Hayek to Paul Ryan.

They finish off by examining some of the rhetorical tics of the progressive left, and Sam reminisces about the good old days when DSA was comprised exclusive of young nerds and old Jews.

In this episode, historian Nicole Hemmer returns to the show to discuss her new book, Partisans, about the ascendancy of an angrier, more radical strain of conservatism in the Republican Party in the 1990s—a backlash driven by the right's dissatisfaction with the genial, popularity-seeking Ronald Reagan. As the Cold War ended, many conservatives stopped genuflecting to democracy and freedom and used new forms of media—talk radio and cable news especially—to spread their grievances. Topics include: Pat Buchanan's campaigns for the presidency, Ross Perot, Newt Gingrich and the GOP's takeover of the House of Representatives, Rush Limbaugh, Dinesh D'Souza, and the new breed of anti-feminist, rightwing women such as Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter.

Sources:

Nicole Hemmer, Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s (Basic, 2022)

                                     Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics (Penn, 2016)

Kevin Phillips, The Politics of Rich and Poor (Random House, 1990)

John Ganz, "The Year the Clock Broke," The Baffler, November 2018

Know Your Enemy, "The Year the Clock Broke" (w/ John Ganz), March 16, 2020

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy to listen to all of our bonus episodes!

In the third and final episode in their series on the overturning of Roe v. Wade—recorded on the day it happened—Matt and Sam pick up with 1990s, the George W. Bush administration, and eventually take listeners up to the present. They focus especially on way conservative, mostly Christian intellectuals, many of them connected to the religious journal First Things, brought Catholics and evangelicals together to fight against abortion rights, with figures like Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Robert P. George, and Hadley Arkes providing language and arguments in a more elite idiom—a project that deeply influenced Bush's presidency and helped cement the anti-abortion movement's place not just in the religious right but the broader conservative movement and the GOP.

Sources:

"Killing Abortionists: A Symposium," First Things, December 1994

"Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millenium," First Things, May 1994

"The End of Democracy? The Judicial Usurpation of Politics," First Things, November 1996

Damon Linker, The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege (Doubleday, 2006)

Mary Ziegler, Dollars for Life: The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment (Yale University Press, 2021)

Joshua Wilson, The Street Politics of Abortion: Speech, Violence, and America's Culture Wars, (Stanford University Press, 2013)

Richard John Neuhaus, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (Eerdmans, 1984)

Robert P. George, Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality (Oxford University Press, 1993)

Hadley Arkes, "The End of the Beginning of the End of Abortion," First Things, June 24, 2022

Matthew Sitman, "Reading Left to Right" (review of Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square), Commonweal, August 24, 2015

Tara Isabella Burton, "The Biblical Story the Christian Right Uses to Defend Trump," Vox, March 5, 2018

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Matt and Sam continue the 100th episode extravaganza by answering more truly excellent listener questions and hear from more friends of the show. Topics include: leftwing politics and orthodox Christianity, how to maintain hope (especially on the socialist left), learning to love Freud, complicated family politics, and more! Plus: Dissent co-editor Tash Lewis sings "Happy Birthday" to Matt in Welsh.

Sources:

Charles Péguy, Portal of the Mystery of Hope (1911)

Wesley Hill, "After Boomer Religion," Commonweal, April 29, 2019

Herbert McCabe, "The Class Struggle and Christian Love," in God Matters (2012)

Matthew Sitman, "Against Moral Austerity: On the Need for a Christian Left," Dissent, Summer 2017

Dan Walden, "Gender, Sex, and Other Nonsense," Commonweal, March 1, 2021

Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time(1988)

Pat Blanchfield, "Death Drive Nation," Late Light, Nov 1, 2022

Casey Blake and Christopher Phelps, "History as Social Criticism: Conversations with Christopher Lasch," Journal of American History, Mar 1994

Sam Adler-Bell, "Beautiful Losers," Commonweal, Mar 11, 2020

— "Jews in the diaspora must resist the inhumanity being done by Israel in our name," New Statesman, Nov 29, 2023

— "Good Enough," The Baffler, April 2024

Kim LaCapria & David Mikkelson, "Does This Photograph Show Bernie Sanders at a 1962 Civil Rights Sit-In?" Snopes, Mar 3, 2016

With another year of the podcast, the pandemic, and American decline in the rearview, we turn to Know Your Enemy's absurdly brilliant listeners for guidance and intellectual stimulation. That's right, folks, it's a mailbag episode! And thanks to you, our cups runneth over with fascinating questions. Along the way, we discuss the intellectual legacy of one-time National Review wunderkind Garry Wills; why Bill Buckley never wrote a great book; right-wing half-wit propagandists like Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk; conservative feminism; Richard Nixon's role in conservative history; Vatican II; Bob Dylan's artful incoherence; our favorite books; and our favorite bourbons. We also take a few minutes to discuss listener feedback from our last episode with Nate Hochman. We are truly blessed with the most curious, sophisticated, and intellectually voracious listeners in the podcast game. We love you freaks so very much. 

So strap in! Like the year 2021, it's a wild ride, with many twists, turns, and digressions. 

Further Reading:

Matthew Sitman, "There Will Be No Buckley Revival," Commonweal, Jul 28, 2015. 

Garry Wills, "Daredevil," Atlantic, Aug 2009. 

                            Bare Ruined Choirs (1979) 

                            Confessions of a Conservative (1979)

                            John Wayne's America  (1997) 

Sam Adler-Bell, "The Radical Young Intellectuals Who Want to Take Over the American Right," New Republic, Dec 2, 2021. 

Leonard Coen, Beautiful Losers (1966)

Kaya Oakes, The Defiant Middle (2021)

Christopher Isherwood, The Berlin Stories (1945)

Janet Malcolm, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (1982)

Dan Georgakas & Marvin Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying (1998)

Norman Rush, Mating (1991)

..and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Your intrepid hosts watched the first, and possibly only, presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump so you didn't have to—and then stayed up late to talk about it. After a somewhat wobbly start, Harris seized the momentum with a visceral, deeply affecting answer about the consequences of the GOP's assault on abortion rights, then baited Trump into a rambling rant about the size of his crowds. He never really recovered, and spent much of the rest of the debate running his mouth about the debunked story of Haitian immigrants stealing and eat pets in Ohio or claiming that Harris was responsible for every policy of the Biden administration. What did we learn about the candidates and their priorities? Did Harris break with Biden in any significant ways? What does the Trump-Vance obsession with immigrants reveal about their campaign? What firearm does Harris own? And what about foreign policy? Make sure you listen to the very end!

Sources:

Sam Roberts, "Noel Parmentel Jr., Essayist, Polemicist and Apostate, Dies at 98," New York Times, Sept 6, 2024

Watch the entire Harris-Trump debate (YouTube)

Nate Cohn, "New Poll Suggests Harris’s Support Has Stalled After a Euphoric August," New York Times, Sept 8, 2024 

Huo Jingnan and Jasmine Garsd, "JD Vance Spreads Debunked Claims about Haitian Immigrants Eating Pets," NPR, Sept 10, 2024

Mike Catalini, et al, "Trump Falsely Accuses Immigrants in Ohio of Abducting and Eating Pets," Associated Press, Sept 11, 2024

B.D. McClay, "The Taylor Swift Endorsement Fantasy," New York Times, Sept. 8, 2024

"Taylor Swift Derangement Syndrome," Know Your Enemy, Mar 26, 2024

If you're on the left and you've spent time on the internet in the past few weeks, you've probably observe or participated in debates about the strategic value and moral status of voting in the 2024 election: Is it okay to vote for Kamala Harris even though her administration is complicit in a genocide? Is voting an exercise in signaling one's moral convincetions and identity? Or merely a tactical decision calculated to create better or worse terrain on which to organize in the future? Or is it something else altogether?

Perhaps these debates have stimulated you; perhaps they've filled you with despair; or perhaps (like Sam) they've driven you nuts. The intention of this conversation — with three of my favorite writers and thinkers — is to help us see further: past the stale categories and tendentious arguments that leave us, on the left, feeling frustrated and mistrustful, rather than mobilized and oriented toward a future beyond November 5th.

Our guests include: Astra Taylor, filmmaker, writer, organizer, and cofounder of The Debt Collective; author and organizer Malcolm Harris; and Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, author, political philosopher, and co-editor of Hammer & Hope — a new magazine of black politics and culture.

Further Reading/Viewing/Listening:

Malcolm Harris, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, (2023)

Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else), (2022)

Astra Taylor, The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart, (2023)

— "What is Democracy?" (Zeitgeist Films, 2019)

Josie Ensor, "They voted Democrat for years — but the war in Lebanon changes everything," The Times, Oct 25, 2024.

"Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and Progressive Democrats and Community Leaders Statement on Presidential Election," Oct 24, 2024.

KYE, The Uncommitted Movement (w/ Waleed Shahid & Abbas Alawieh), Sept 4, 2024.

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

What is the status of "equality" in the American political tradition? What place does it have in the inheritance that conservatives are trying to preserve? 

Matt and Sam pick up where they left off in their recent conversation with historian Joshua Tait, this time focusing on Harry Jaffa's devastating review of Willmoore Kendall and George Carey's The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition. In it, Jaffa defends Abraham Lincoln against Kendall and Carey's charge that he "derailed" our political tradition by putting the Declaration of Independence, natural rights, and the principle of equality at its center—a move, in their account, that opened the way to Ceasarism, the rights revolution, and more. 

Sources and Further Reading:

Willmoore Kendall & George W. Carey, Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition (Louisiana State University Press, 1970; reprint, The Catholic University of American Press, 1995)

Willmoore Kendall, The Conservative Affirmation (Regnery Publishing, 1963)

Harry V. Jaffa, "Equality as a Conservative Principle," Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, June 1, 1975

Joshua Tait, "Why Willmoore Kendall and James Burnham are the Prophets of Modern Conservatism," National Interest, April 30, 2021

Matthew Sitman, "Farewell to a Constitutional Conservative," The American Conservative, June 27, 2013

Here's something a little creepy. In a bonus episode from August 2022, Matt and Sam were discussing Sam's profile of Arizona Senate hopeful and Peter Thiel-protégé Blake Masters when we found ourselves imagining how a future union of MAGA nationalism and Silicon Valley libertarianism might try to run the government. A listener flagged it for us, noting that the description — which we call "exit from within" — sounds remarkably similar to what we are now experiencing with Trump, Musk, DOGE, and the tech right. We had totally forgotten about this, and thought the rest of you might like to hear it. We'll be back to our regular programming, with the Elon Musk episode, next week. 

The full episode, "Masters of War," is on Patreon. 

Readings: 

Sam Adler-Bell, "The Violent Fantasies of Blake Masters," NYTimes, Aug 3, 2022. 

Albert O. Hirschman, "Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States," (1970)

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to all of our premium episodes!

At last, Know Your Enemy takes on climate change! Kate Aronoff, staff writer at The New Republic and Dissent editorial board member, joins Matt and Sam to discuss her new book, Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet—And How We Fight Back. The conversations traces the history of collaboration between fossil fuel executives and conservative think tanks; then we discuss what comes after climate denial and try our best to imagine a post-carbon world. 

What will it take to avoid a future of eco-apartheid, fortress nations, and "lifeboat ethics?"  Listen to find out.

Further Reading:

Kate Aronoff, "The European Far-Right's Environmental Turn," Dissent, May 31, 2019.

Kate Aronoff, "With A Green New Deal, Here's What the World Could Look Like For The Next Generation," The Intercept, Dec 5, 2018.

Sam Adler-Bell, "Appalachia vs. the Carceral State," The New Republic, Nov 25, 2019.

Sam Adler-Bell,  "Why White Supremacists are Hooked on Green Living," The New Republic, Sept. 24, 2019.

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon!

Subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy to hear this and all our bonus content.

In recent months, French president Emmanuel Macron, once hailed as the savior of mainstream liberalism, has responded to a series of Islamist terror attacks with a sharp right turn—one he hopes will serve him well in a possible run-off election against the nativist/populist Marine Le Pen. KYE Paris correspondent Cole Stangler joins Matt and Sam to explain Macron's increasingly Islamophobic, authoritarian, and anti-leftist policy agenda. Topics include: whether or not his reactionary pivot should have been a surprise; the alarming parallels between France today and America after 9/11; the susceptibility of center-left politics to reactionary forces; the role French secularism (laïcité) has and hasn't played in these controversies; prospects for the French left; and more!

Matt talks to writer Phil Christman about his new essay collection, How To Be Normal. They talk about the meaning of "normal" (especially in these pandemic times), religious fundamentalism, Christian conspiracy theories about rock music, Mark Fisher, love, and much more.

Sources:

Phil Christman, How To Be Normal (Belt Publishing, 2022)

                               "Turning Nothings Into Somethings," Commonweal, Dec 3, 2020

                               "What Is It Like To Be a Man?" Hedgehog Review, Summer 2018

It's been a while since we've had our friends from the 5-4 podcast on KYE, and we thought there was no better time to do so than the weeks before Donald Trump is inaugurated, again, as president. As listeners might guess, we wanted to talk to them about what opportunities Trump might have during his second term to reshape the federal judiciary—and if he can secure the confirmations of Kash Patel at the FBI and Pam Bondi as Attorney General, perhaps a lot more than that. Topics include: President Biden's successes, and failures, when it comes to the courts, and what he's handing off to Trump; what kind of judges Trump is likely to appoint; if there's a MAGA wing of the conservative legal movement now, akin to Project 2025 or the America First Policy Institute; whether Justice Alito is a Fox News uncle or an OAN uncle; and more.

Further Reading:

Myah Ward & Betsy Woodruff Swan, "Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship could be decided by the Supreme Court," Politico, Dec 14, 2024.

Pema Levy, "How Much More Radical Could the Supreme Court Become? Look to the Fifth Circuit." Mother Jones, Oct 8, 2024. 

Michael Hall, "Is James Ho Too Brash for Even Trump to Make Him a Supreme Court Justice?" Texas Monthly, Aug 15, 2024.

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Or give the gift of Know Your Enemy this holiday Season. 

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

We're joined by two experts on European politics to explain the EU parliamentary election results: David Adler, general coordinator of the Progressive International, and David Broder, historian of Italy and Europe editor at Jacobin.

What do the results say about the strength of the far right in Europe? And why has Emmanuel Macron of France called snap parliamentary elections in response? Is Macron welcoming the far-right into power in France, or is there some other explanation for his gamble?

Further Reading:

David Broder, "Giorgia Meloni’s Europe," Dissent, Spring 2024.

Cole Stangler, "France Is on the Brink of Something Terrifying," NYTimes, Jun 13, 2024.

In his provocative new book, Liberalism Against Itself, historian Samuel Moyn revisits the work of five key Cold War thinkers—Judith Shklar, Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper, Gertrude Himmelfarb, and Lionel Trilling—to explain the deformation of liberalism in the middle of the twentieth century, a time when, in his telling, liberals abandoned their commitment to progress, the Enlightenment, and grand dreams of emancipation and instead embraced fatalism, pessimism, and a narrow conception of freedom. For Moyn, the liberalism that emerged from the Cold War is, lamentably, still with us—a culprit in the rise of Donald Trump, and a barrier to offering a compelling alternative to him. 

Sources:

Samuel Moyn, Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times (2023)

Judith Shklar, After Utopia: The Decline of Political Faith (1957)

Lionel Trilling, The Middle of the Journey (1947)

Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (1950)

Matthew Sitman, "How to Read Reinhold Niebuhr, After 9-11," Society, Spring 2012

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

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 recap and analyze the 2022 midterms — as we know them so far. 

Why did Dems do so much better than we thought? Why did the GOP underperform? How cucked were the polls? How happy is Matt that John Fetterman beat Dr. Oz? (Very) What about Blake Masters in Arizona? Was this a bad night for Trump? Was it a good night for DeSantis? How worried should we be about the integrity of American democracy given these results? And how happy should we be that the Democrats managed to stave off the worst possible outcome? Listen while it's hot... 

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

KYE super guest John Ganz joins Matt and Sam for a characteristically spirited discussion of The Claremont Institute's "Sheriff Fellowship," which invites county sheriffs from across the country to California for a weekend of West Coast Straussian ideological programing. 

Drawing on the history of "posse comitatus" movements and recent reports on the role of conservative sheriffs in resisting COVID mandates, propagating 2020 election lies, and cozying up to vigilante militias, we offer a synthesized account of why the mythologized figure of the sheriff — and sheriffs themselves — have such an attraction for right-wing radicals intent on subverting American democracy.

Further Reading:

Jessica Pishko, "Here’s the Secret “Sheriff Fellowship” Curriculum From the Country’s Most Prominent MAGA Think Tank," Slate, Sept 21, 2022.

Alexandra Berzon and Nick Corasaniti, "2020 Election Deniers Seek Out Powerful Allies: County Sheriffs," NYTimes, Jul 25, 2022.

Adam Rawnsley, "MAGA Claremont Institute Honors Sheriffs Who Defy Laws They Don’t Like," Daily Beast, Nov 22, 2021.

Ashley Powers, "The Renegade Sheriffs," The New Yorker, Apr 23, 2018. 

Kimberly Kindy, "Boosted by the pandemic, ‘constitutional sheriffs’ are a political force," Washington Post, Nov 2, 2021.

Christian Vanderbrouk, "Notes on an Authoritarian Conspiracy: Inside the Claremont Institute’s “79 Days to Inauguration” Report," The Bulwark, Nov 8, 2021. 

Michael Anton & Glenn Elmers, "The Stakes: Harry Jaffa’s Philosophy," The American Mind, Sept 19, 2022.

Matt and Sam are finally joined by the show's longtime bête noire, Marshall Steinbaum, for a deep dive into the Chicago school of economics and the wreckage it's supported—from welcoming the birth defects caused by deregulating the pharmaceutical industry to justifying massive resistance to desegregation to being put in the service of Coronavirus truther-ism. Where did this iteration of libertarianism come from, intellectually and institutionally? Who are the key figures in the Chicago school? How have their ideas infected the way we all think about economics and politics? It's a sordid, depressing tale of rightwing money, intellectual dishonesty, and a gleeful desire to discipline the forces of democracy.

Sources and further reading:

Marshall Steinbaum, The Book That Explains Charlottesville, Boston Review,  August 14, 2017

Marshall Steinbaum, Economics after Neoliberalism, Boston Review, February 28, 2019

Isaac Chotiner, The Contrarian Coronavirus Theory that Informed the Trump Administration, New Yorker, March 30, 2020

Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains (Penguin-Random House, June 2017)

Edward Nik-Khah, Neoliberal Pharmaceutical Science and the Chicago School of Economics (Social Studies of Science 2014, Vol. 44(4) 489–517)

A few weeks ago, the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, eagerly joined in a campaign, originating on the far right, to demonize the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a century-old Jewish civil rights organization whose leaders have criticized Musk  for allowing anti-semitic and white supremacist hate speech to proliferate on Twitter/X. To many progressives, it could sound like a simple story of good vs. evil — the righteous vs. the hateful — especially for those who've experienced the palpable flourishing of Nazi and Nazi-adjacent sentiment on Twitter/X since Musk purchased the platform.

But for our guests — Mari Cohen, Alex Kane, and Peter Beinart of Jewish Currents — the story is more complicated. Over the past five years, Jewish Currents  has been perhaps the only outlet on the left aggressively reporting on the ADL, exposing its complicity with the Trump presidency, its attacks on pro-Palestinian activism, and its fraying relationships with Muslim and black-led civil rights groups. In this episode, we explore the central tension animating the ADL's erratic politics: can an organization officially dedicated to securing "justice and fair treatment to all" simultaneously forbid criticism of a state — the state of Israel — whose ethnonationalist social order is an inspiration to right-wing movements the world over? And if that contradiction can't be reconciled, how should we respond to Musk's attacks on the organization? Is the ADL salvageable? And does it deserve to be saved? Listen to find out! 

Further Reading 

Emmaia Gelman, "The Anti-Democratic Origins of the ADL and AJC," Jewish Currents, March 12, 2021

Peter Beinart, "Has the Fight Against Antisemitism Lost Its Way?" New York Times, Aug 26, 2022

Mari Cohen, The ADL's Antisemitism Findings, Explained, Jewish Currents, April 4, 2023

Mari Cohen & Isaac Scher, "The ADL Doubles Down on Opposing the Anti-Zionist Left," Jewish Currents, May 1, 2022

Alex Kane & Jacob Hutt, "How the ADL’s Israel Advocacy Undermines Its Civil Rights Work," February 8, 2021

Noah Kulwin, "The Unbearable Ignorance of the ADL," Jewish Currents, Dec 9, 2022

 Mari Cohen & Alex Kane, "ADL Staffers Dissented After CEO Compared Palestinian Rights Groups to Right-Wing Extremists, Leaked Audio Reveals," Jewish Currents, Mar 8, 2023

Alex Kane & Sam Levin, "Internal ADL Memo Recommended Ending Police Delegations to Israel Amid Backlash," Jewish Currents, Mar 17, 2022

Eric Alterman, "What Does the ADL Stand for Today?" The New Republic, Aug 21, 2023

James Traub, "Does Abe Foxman Have an Anti-Anti-Semite Problem?" New York Times, Jan 14, 2007 

Find our intrepid producer Jesse Brenneman's new record "Modern Life" on Bandcamp,  Spotify, or YouTube. 

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Sam is joined by returning KYE all-stars Jamelle Bouie (of the NYTimes) and John Ganz (of Unpopular Front) for a spirited discussion of the 1984 film "The Little Drummer Girl," starring Diane Keaton — an adaptation of John le Carré's 1983 novel of the same name.

We approach the film — which, it turns out, is not very good — with the same analytical rigor that Jamelle and John bring to their own podcast, "Unclear and Present Danger," which focuses on the post-Cold War thrillers of the 1990s. We wind up talking about why the film doesn't work and about le Carré's ambiguous approach to spy fiction, in particular, how his perspective differs from other British chroniclers of Cold War espionage, like Ian Flemming and Graham Greene.

In what ways does le Carré's approach represent an essentially (small-c) conservative disposition? And why is it so attractive to all of us? Listen to find out!

Recommended Reading:

Sam Adler-Bell, "The Father of All Secrets," The Baffler, Dec 2022.

Laura Marsh, "The Nonconformist," NYRB, Feb 2022.

Nicholas Dames, "Coming in from the Cold," n+1, Spring 2018.

John le Carré, The Little Drummer Girl, Hodder & Stoughton, 1983.

Tim Cornwell ed., A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré, Random House, Jan 2023.

Matt and Sam are joined by historian Lauren Stokes and writer John Ganz to unpack the American Right's ongoing embrace of Viktor Orbán's Hungary, from Rod Dreher's springtime junket there  to Tucker Carlson broadcasting from the country to the adoring attention it receives from an assortment of "postliberal" intellectuals What gives? Your hosts and their esteemed guests break it down, including: what the American Right gets from Orbán, and what he gets from them; the 20th century history of Hungary that provides the backdrop to its current politics; the long history of U.S. conservatives of admiring authoritarians abroad; John's visit to a Nazi bookshop in Budapest; and more!

Sources and Further Reading:

Elisabeth Zerofsky, "How the American Right Fell in Love With Hungary," New York Times Magazine, Oct 19, 2021

Benjamin Wallace-Wells, "What American Conservatives See in Hungary's Leader," New Yorker, Sept 13, 2021

David Baer, translation/Twitter thread of Rod Dreher's interview with Klubradio, Aug 29, 2021

John Ganz, "Anti-Democratic Vistas, Part I: The Right Goes to Hungary," Unpopular Front, Aug 10, 2021

                           "Anti-Democratic Vistas, Part II: Reflections on the Revolutions in Hungary," Unpopular Front, Aug 13, 2021

...and don't forget to subscribe on Patreon.com for access to all of our bonus episodes.

In this episode Matt and Sam discuss Ravelstein, Saul Bellow's roman à clef about the Straussian political philosopher Allan Bloom, who achieved late-in-life wealth and fame after publishing his controversial bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind. Along the way they consider the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought, eros and the intellectual life, love and friendship, Bellow and Bloom's shared Jewishness, and much, much more.

Sources and Further Reading:

Saul Bellow, Ravelstein (Penguin, 2000)

Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (Simon & Schuster, 1987)

                              Giants and Dwarfs (Simon & Schuster, 1990)

                              Love and Friendship (Simon & Schuster, 1993)

Michel de Montaigne, "Of Friendship," from The Complete Works (trans. Donald Frame)

D.T. Max, "With Friends Like Saul Bellow," New York Times Magazine, April 16, 2000

Christopher Hitchens, "The Egg-Head's Egger-On," London Review of Books, April 27, 2000

Patrick Deneen, "Who Closed the American Mind? Allan Bloom, Edmund Burke, & Multiculturalism," The Imaginative Conservative, May 29, 2013

PLUS: Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

To listen to this episode, and all of our bonus content, subscribe here: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

In state legislatures across the country, Republicans are unleashing a fierce assault on voting rights. Hundreds of proposals aimed at restricting ballot access are being considered, and in a few states—most notably Georgia—have already become law. These obvious efforts at suppressing turnout have been justified by the deranged lie that Donald Trump had a landslide victory stole from him in November, along with the usual evidence-free worries about election integrity peddled by conservatives. Of course, the debates all this has generated have been remarkably unintelligent—just more fodder for the culture wars. 

Matt and Sam breakdown where voting-rights bill have been passed, what provisions they include, and how it all fits into both the GOP's current strategy of minority rule and the right's longstanding suspicion of mass democracy.

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Historian Timothy Shenk joins us for a conversation about his new book, Left Adrift: What Happened to Liberal Politics, a timely look at political strategy on the liberal-left as the New Deal Consensus cracked up in the late 1960s and 1970s through Bill Clinton's presidency and beyond. He tells the story of how Democrats responded to class dealignment through the careers of two consultants, Stan Greenberg and Doug Schoen—a story that, following these two men, also takes us to the UK, Israel, and South Africa. We discuss what happened to the New Deal coalition, arguments about how to appeal to working class voters drifting right, the limits—and necessity—of polling and even focus groups, why Bill Clinton's role in the rise of neoliberalism is more complicated than you might believe, lessons for the American left from their being crushed in Israel, and what all this might mean for 2024.

Sources:

Timothy Shenk, Left Adrift: What Happened to Liberal Politics(2024)

Douglas E. Schoen, Enoch Powell and the Powellites(1977)

Stanley B. Greenberg, Race and State in Capitalist Development(1980)

"Explaining McCarthy," TIME, April 18, 1969

Listen again:

"Realignments (w/ Timothy Shenk)," Know Your Enemy, Feb 27, 2023

To listen to this episode, and all of our bonus content, subscribe here: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

At last, Matt and Sam take on  the British royal family. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's recent interview with Oprah set off a firestorm of commentary—not least from aggrieved conservatives who were outraged at the young couple's criticisms of the monarchy. Why was the Right so upset by the interview? Why did the defenders of the American Revolution find themselves siding with our ancient enemy? Then your hosts turn to a documentary that offers an acerbic look at the media coverage of Princess Diana's death—Diana: The Mourning After, by none other than Christopher Hitchens. It leads to a discussion of neoliberalism, what happens when the powerful to share their struggles and appear relatable, and more!

Unlocked by popular demand: Psychoanalytic writer and teacher Pat Blanchfield joins Sam for a discussion of Freud and politics. Together we ask: how can psychoanalytic tools help us make sense of our irrational political moment, our desires and attachments, as well as conservatism, liberalism, fascism, Donald Trump, and even Thanksgiving? 

If we've done our job right, you'll derive many blistering insights from this discussion whether or not you've read a single page of Sigmund Freud — or remotely buy into his theories of mind, culture, or clinical practice. (And hopefully we didn't talk too fast.) Because Freud would disapprove of any injunction to enjoyment, we'll simply say: "have a listen, if you please."

(Originally published on Patreon 12/01/2021.)

Further Reading/Listening:

KYE Episode 7: "Gun Power" (w/ Pat Blanchfield)

Pat Blanchfield, "Kyle Rittenhouse is an American," Gawker, Nov 16, 2021

Adam Phillips, Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst, Yale Press, Mar 22, 2016.

Peter Gay, Freud: A Life For Our Time (1988)

Jacqueline Rose, "To Die One's Own Death," LRB, Nov 19, 2020

...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 Rebecca Traister of New York magazine about sexism and electoral politics. How has patriarchy conditioned the political careers of politicians like Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren? How does the right mobilize anti-feminism to win? And how do conservative women like Sarah Palin use traditional womanhood and femininity to their advantage? Listen to find out! 

Traister is the author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger.

Further Reading:

Rebecca Traister, "Elizabeth Warren's Classroom Strategy," The Cut, Aug 6, 2019

Rebecca Traister, "Leader of the Persistence," New York Magazine, July 23, 2019

Elaine Blaire, "The Power of Enraged Women," New York Times, Sept 27, 2018

Liesl Schillinger "Book Review: Big Girls Don't Cry," New York Times, Sept 16, 2010

In this episode, Matt and Sam are joined by Stanford historian Jennifer Burns to discuss her new biography of Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist whose influence would reach far beyond the academy when, during his last decades, he became one of the most effective popularizers of libertarian ideas—in books, columns, and even a ten-part PBS program, Free to Choose. How did the son of Jewish immigrants in New Jersey come to hold the often radical ideas that made him famous? How does Friedman's variety of libertarianism differ from, say, that of Mises or Hayek? What made Friedman, unusually for the times, someone who valued the intellects and work of the women around him? And what should we make of Friedman now, as Trump and elements of the conservative movement and Republican Party supposedly jettison the "fusionism" of which Friedman's free markets were a part? 

As mentioned in the episode's introduction, listeners might want to revisit episode 16 with economist Marshall Steinbaum for a broader, and more critical, look at the Chicago school.

Sources:

Jennifer Burns, Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative (2023)

Jennifer Burns, Ayn Rand: Goddess of the Market (2009)

Naomi Klein, "40 Years Ago, This Chilean Exile Warned Us About the Shock Doctrine. Then He Was Assassinated." The Nation, Sept 21, 2016.

Tim Barker, "Other People’s Blood," n+1 , Spring 2019. 

Pascale Bonnefoy, "50 Years Ago, a Bloody Coup Ended Democracy in Chile," NY Times, Sept 11, 2023.

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

With the midterms a week away, Sam talked to Aaron Kleinman of The States Project (aka @BobbyBigWheel) about the battle to defend American democracy at the state level — where Trumpist state legislators continue to deny the 2020 election and lay the groundwork for ignoring the will of the majority in the future. How did the conservative movement manage to to take over so many statehouses? Can Democrats still turn back the tide? What is the "independent state legislature" theory?  

Aaron helps answers these questions and more — and gives us a useful rundown of the states to watch closely in the midterms next Tuesday. 

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, 2019

Ronald Radosh and Sol Stern, "Our Friend, the Trump Propagandist," New Republic, May 5, 2021

Cole Stangler, "David Horowitz: 'Conservatives are So F**king Well-Mannered," In These Times, December 12, 2013

Reinhold 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 are joined by writer and editor Shuja Haider to discuss a topic near and dear to all of our hearts: country music. We talk about country's conservative reputation, the problems with (and virtues of) Ken Burns's recent documentary about country music, and the humane politics that arise from acknowledging—as the best country songs do—our collective frailty. Plus, a bunch of great music recommendations for your quarantine listening.

A playlist featuring every song we mention in the episode, plus a few more bangers can be accessed here.

Further Reading:

Matthew Sitman, "E Pluribus Country," Dissent, Winter 2020.

Shuja Haider, "The Empty Jukebox: Johnny Paycheck and the Return of the Repressed in Country Music," Viewpoint,  March 10, 2015

Shuja Haider, "A World That Draws a Line: Interracial Love Songs in American Country Music," Viewpoint, March 1, 2017

Shuja Haider, "Canon Fodder," Popula, Sept 13, 2018

Cole Stangler, "Emotional Archaeology: An Interview With Ken Burns," Commonweal, Sept 13, 2019

Shuja Haider, "The Invention of Twang," The Believer, Aug 1, 2019

Shuja Haider, "Somebody Had to Set a Bad Example," Popula, Nov 14, 2018

Nick Murray, "The Other Country," LA Review of Books, Nov 1, 2018

Jesse Montgomery, "African Chant," Popula, Sept 18, 2018

Four days in Chicago, dozens of speeches by Democratic luminaries and backbenchers, and a spotlight on Kamala Harris, who reintroduced herself to America — your favorite podcast co-hosts endured watching the Democratic National Convention and are here to report on what they saw.

It was, in many ways, a highly successful convention: massive crowds, palpable energy for the Harris-Walz ticket, and orations met with pundits' plaudits. But the Democrats' refusal to feature a speaker from the Uncommitted delegates, and the general lack of evident concern for Palestinian suffering, was profoundly disappointing — and morally grotesque. As were the choices to feature cops and ex-CIA agents on the convention stage, and the broad affirmation, from Democrats, of the right's positions on crime and the border. What to make of it all? We discuss how Kamala tried to define her career and candidacy, what we make of Tim Walz (so far), how Democrats talked about Trump (including the shifts from how they've done so in the past), and the state of the presidential race now that both conventions are, blessedly, over.

Sources:

Watch Kamala Harris's full DNC speech (YouTube)

Watch Tim Walz's full DNC speech (YouTube)

Watch Michelle Obama's full DNC speech (YouTube)

Liliana Segura, "Democrats Abandoned Their Anti-Death Penalty Stance. Those on Federal Death Row May Pay the Price," The Intercept, Aug 23, 2024.

Josh Leifer and Waleed Shahid, "The Uncommitted Movement Is the Floor of What’s Possible,” Dissent, Aug 16, 2024

Noah Lanard, "Here Is the Speech That the Uncommitted Movement Wants to Give at the DNC," Mother Jones, Aug 23, 2024

In this episode, Matt and Sam are joined by political theorist and conservative intellectual Samuel Goldman—a very sensible and polite "enemy"—to discuss his brilliant new book, After Nationalism. Topics include: Goldman's punk-rocker past; the influence of Leo Strauss on his thinking; historical attempts to provide Americans with a coherent, enduring symbol of national identity; why these symbols have failed; what all this means for debates about teaching U.S. history; and what alternatives to nationalism its critics can offer. 

Sources:

Samuel Goldman, After Nationalism: Being American in an Age of Division (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021)

James Ceaser, Nature and History in American Political Development (Harvard University Press, 2008)

Matt and Sam are joined by two special guests, Sarah Jones and Marshall Steinbaum, who return to the show to take stock of where we're at: our failed response to the pandemic, the connections between the pandemic and the protests, and how all this might play out in November.  The four of us range widely—but be warned, this is not the most inspiring conversation. Are there any reasons to be hopeful? Listen and find out.

Sources Cited and Further Reading:

Eric Levitz, "Coronavirus is Killing Our Economy because It Was Already Sick" (New York Magazine)

Sam Adler-Bell, "Conservative Incoherence" (Dissent)

Sarah Jones, "Eugenics Isn't Going to Get Us Out of This Mess" (New York Magazine)

Sarah Jones, "The Coronavirus Class War" (New York Magazine)

Matthew Sitman, "Why the Pandemic is Driving Conservative Intellectuals Mad" (The New Republic)

Know Your Enemy bonus episode: What Are Intellectuals Good For? (with further thoughts on the protests that followed George Floyd's murder)

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Early in Timothy Shenk's absorbing, provocative book, Realigners: Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy, he describes it as "a biography of American democracy told through its majorities, and the people who made them." Looking at American figures from Martin Van Buren to Charles Sumner to Mark Hanna to Phyllis Schlafly and Barack Obama, the book attempts to define the character and conditions necessary for fashioning a durable electoral majority — in those moments when existing partisan and  coalitional structures were reshuffled and articulated anew. In other words: a realignment. 

In this thrilling conversation, Matt, Sam, and Tim talk through the implications of past realignments and argue about whether something similar is possible today. 

Sources:

Timothy Shenk, Realigners: Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2022)

Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton (Harvard University Press, 1993)

Sam Adler-Bell, "The Radical Young Intellectuals Who Want to Take Over the American Right," The New Republic, Dec 2021

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this premium episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Writer Osita Nwanevu joins for a rip-roaring conversation about legendary prose stylist, "new journalist," and novelist Tom Wolfe. Reviewing a new documentary about Wolfe ("Radical Wolfe" on Netflix), Osita writes, "Behind the ellipses and exclamation points and between the lines of his prose, a lively though often lazy conservative mind was at work, making sense of the half-century that birthed our garish and dismal present, Trump and all."

Answered herein: is Tom Wolfe a good writer? What kind of conservative is he? How does his approach compare to other "new journalists" like Joan Didion and Garry Wills? And what's the deal with the white suit?

Further Reading:

Osita Nwanevu, "The Electric Kool-Aid Conservative," The New Republic, Jan 5, 2023

Tom Wolfe, "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby," Esquire, Nov 1963.

— "The Birth of ‘The New Journalism’; Eyewitness Report," New York Magazine, Feb 1972.

— "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s," New York Magazine, June 1972

— The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987)

— A Man in Full (1998)

— The Kingdom of Speech (2016)

Peter Augustine Lawler, "What is Southern Stoicism? An Interview with Professor Peter Lawler,"  Daily Stoic, March 2017

Psychoanalytic writer and teacher Pat Blanchfield joins Sam for the long-awaited KYE "Freud Pod," in which we discuss how psychoanalytic tools can help us make sense of our irrational political moment, our desires and attachments, as well as conservatism, liberalism, fascism, Donald Trump, and even Thanksgiving.

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 stayed up late to record just minutes after the first GOP presidential debate ended on Wednesday night; we did this for you, our beloved subscribers, because we care. This episode (full of blistering insights) is the result of that decision. "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

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy!

In our first episode after the 2024 elections, we briefly considered what the results revealed about how Donald Trump won, and why Kamala Harris lost, before discussing what Trump's first picks for his White House staff and Cabinet meant for his second terms as president. This conversation is different—a proper "post-mortem" of the results and a bit of a group therapy, mixed with wide-ranging reflections on what it all says about the state of Democratic Party, the country, and perhaps even our souls. Topics include: a (long) list of all the reasons that might account for Harris's defeat, the deranged attempt to keep Biden as the nominee despite his obvious decline, the Democrats' decades-long defensiveness on "cultural issues," why Trump's felony convictions didn't seem to hurt his campaign, the lost promise of 2020 and a politics of care and solidarity, the debate over "Bidenomics," and much more!

One small note: we mention the controversy over Harris not appearing on Joe Rogan's podcast, and after we recorded further reporting came out on the decision. Rather than re-recording that section or deleting it altogether, we thought we'd keep it in, with listeners determining for themselves what explanation makes the most sense.

Sources:

Zack Beauchamp, "The Global Trend that Pushed Donald Trump to Victory," Vox, Nov 6, 2024

Shane Goldmacher, Maggie Haberman, and Jonathan Swan, "How Trump Won, and How Harris Lost," New York Times, Nov 7, 2024

Matthew Sitman, "The Morning After," Liberties, Nov 7, 2024

Gabe Winant, "Exit Right," Dissent, Nov 8, 2024

Tim Barker, "Dealignment," Sidecar, Nov 11, 2024

Sam Adler-Bell, "Can Liberalism Stop Being So Darn...Liberal?" New Republic, June 20, 2024

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy

If you're on the left and you've spent time on the internet in the past few weeks, you've probably observe or participated in debates about the strategic value and moral status of voting in the 2024 election: Is it okay to vote for Kamala Harris even though her administration is complicit in a genocide? Is voting an exercise in signaling one's moral convincetions and identity? Or merely a tactical decision calculated to create better or worse terrain on which to organize in the future? Or is it something else altogether?

Perhaps these debates have stimulated you; perhaps they've filled you with despair; or perhaps (like Sam) they've driven you nuts. The intention of this conversation — with three of my favorite writers and thinkers — is to help us see further: past the stale categories and tendentious arguments that leave us, on the left, feeling frustrated and mistrustful, rather than mobilized and oriented toward a future beyond November 5th.

Our guests include: Astra Taylor, filmmaker, writer, organizer, and cofounder of The Debt Collective; author and organizer Malcolm Harris; and Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, author, political philosopher, and co-editor of Hammer & Hope — a new magazine of black politics and culture.

Further Reading/Viewing/Listening:

Malcolm Harris, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, (2023)

Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else), (2022)

Astra Taylor, The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart, (2023)

— "What is Democracy?" (Zeitgeist Films, 2019)

Josie Ensor, "They voted Democrat for years — but the war in Lebanon changes everything," The Times, Oct 25, 2024.

"Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and Progressive Democrats and Community Leaders Statement on Presidential Election," Oct 24, 2024.

KYE, The Uncommitted Movement (w/ Waleed Shahid & Abbas Alawieh), Sept 4, 2024.

Today, we're joined by one of our favorite writers and thinkers, Vinson Cunningham, to discuss his excellent debut novel, Great Expectations, which tells the story of brilliant-but-unmoored young black man, David Hammond, who finds himself recruited — by fluke, folly, or fate — onto a historic presidential campaign for a certain charismatic Illinois senator. A staff writer at the New Yorker, Vinson also worked for Obama's 2008 campaign in his early twenties. (He bears at least some resemblance to his protagonist.) And his novel provides a wonderful jumping-off point for a deep discussion of political theater, the novel of ideas, race, faith,  the meaning of Barack Obama, and the meaning of Kamala Harris. 

Also discussed: Christopher Isherwood, Saul Bellow, Garry Wills, Ralph Ellison, Marilynne Robinson, Paul Pierce, and Kobe Bryant! If you can't get enough Vinson, check out his podcast with Naomi Fry and Alexandra Schwartz, Critics at Large.  

Sources:

Vinson Cunningham, Great Expectations: A Novel (2024)

— "The Kamala Show," The New Yorker, Aug 19, 2024

— "Searching for the Star of the N.B.A. Finals," The New Yorker, June 21, 2024

— "Many and One," Commonweal, Dec 14, 2020.

Saul Bellow, Ravelstein  (2001) 

Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg (1992)

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

— Shadow and Act (1964)

David Haglund, "Leaving the Morman Church, After Reading a Poem," New Yorker Radio Hour, Mar 25, 2016. 

Phil Jackson, Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior (1995)

Glenn Loury, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative (2024)

Matthew Sitman, "Saving Calvin from Clichés: An Interview with Marilynne Robinson," Commonweal, Oct 5, 2017

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon so you can listen to all of our premium episodes!

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

The Grateful Dead Conservative (w/ Sophie Haigney)

Another fun summer-y episode for you, our beloved subscribers: This time, we talked to writer, Paris Review editor, and Grateful Dead super-fan Sophie Haigney about a topic we've long pondered: the phenomenon of the "Grateful Dead conservative."

Why is it that right-wing figures including Tucker Carlson, Ann Coulter, and Paul Ryan count the Grateful Dead among their favorite bands? Isn't there something odd about these social conservative luminaries loving the Dead, such avatars of 1960s psychedelia, libertinism, and hippie counterculture? Or else, have we misunderstood something essential about the band — their Americana roots, their individualist ethos, their reverence for transcendent experiences — which makes them particularly suitable to conservative sensibilities?

And also why do we all love them so much — this band that tests our patience, produces largely forgettable studio records, and often sounds, in concert, as if they're playing their own songs for the first time? The mind reels...

Strap in for a long, strange, improvisational trip to the heart of these bewildering matters.

Further Reading:

Sophie Haigney, "Those of Us Who Love the Dead," Gawker, Dec 3, 2021.

— "The Final Dead Shows: Part One," The Paris Review, Jul 17, 2023.

— "The Final Dead Shows: Part Two," The Paris Review, July 18, 2023.

— "The Final Dead Shows: Part Three," The Paris Review, Jul 19, 2023.

Ann Coulter, "I’m A Grateful Dead Fan For Life," Billboard, Jun 24, 2016.

Noah Eckstein, "'Wave That Flag': Meet the Deadheads Who Stump for Trump," Variety, Nov 2, 2020.

Zachary D. Carter and Arthur Delaney, "Why Do Conservatives Love The Grateful Dead? We Ask Tucker Carlson," Huffington Post, Jul 15, 2015.

Dean Budnick, "Behind The Scene: Jake Sherman on Phish, the Grateful Dead and Covering 535 Class Presidents at Punchbowl News," Relix, May 12, 2021.

Martin Longman, "Why Do Republicans Love the Grateful Dead?" Washington Monthly, July 3, 2015

Nick Paumgarten, "Dead Head," The New Yorker, Nov 18, 2012.

Hunter Schwartz, "Grateful Dead fans: Surprisingly Republican," Washington Post, Jul 1, 2015.

Marc Tracy, "Saying Goodbye to the Dead. (Again.)" NYTimes, Jul 14, 2023.

Andy Kroll, "Jon Huntsman: We Need a 'Grateful Dead Tour' to Save America," Mother Jones, Jan 8, 2012.

For those who want to learn more about the 5-4 podcast, you can visit their website here!

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.

Will Arbery's play "Heroes of the Fourth Turning"—about four conservative Catholic friends arguing under a night sky in Wyoming—feels like it was written to be discussed on Know Your Enemy. An ominous meditation on faith, conservatism, empathy, cruelty, and power, "Heroes" has ignited debate and garnered praise across the political spectrum—from First Things to the (failing) New York Times to Rod Dreher's blog at the American Conservative. Arbery was raised by conservative Catholic professors and grew up imbibing the ideas of the right and the teachings of the Church. He writes from a place of deep love and withering scrutiny. Lucky for us (and you!) Will displays all the sensitivity, intellectually curiosity, and love in this conversation that he does in his remarkable play. Enjoy!

You can buy tickets to see "Heroes" here, which is playing in NYC until November 17. Watch a preview here.

Further Reading:

The New York Times profile of Will, "A Play about God and Trump, from a Writer Raised on the Right"

Vinson Cunningham, "A Play About the Nuances of Conservatism in the Trump Era," The New Yorker, October 14, 2019

B.D. McClay, "Heroes of the Fourth Turning’ is a haunted play about religious conservatives," The Outline, November 5, 2019

Rod Dreher, "Will Arbery’s Heroes," The American Conservative, October 2, 2019

C.C. Pecknold, "An extraordinary play that challenges progressives and conservatives alike," Catholic Herald, October 1, 2019

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this premium episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Former president Donald Trump is currently facing 91 criminal charges in four different jurisdictions — Georgia, Florida, New York, and the District of Columbia. Two of these indictments — Special Prosecutor Jack Smith's in D.C. and District Attorney Fani Willis's Fulton County, Georgia — take up Trump's and his co-conspirators efforts to steal the 2020 election, efforts that culminated with the insurrection on January 6. In this episode, Matt and Sam try to make sense of them and weigh the possible risks and rewards of "breaking the seal" and criminally charging a former president. In particular, they give closes readings to the two January 6-related indictments and discuss what they reveal about the deranged efforts Trump and his team made to overturn the election and a Republican Party that seemed to mostly go along with it, along with some of the problems with the RICO statute Trump and others are being charged under in Georgia. And of course, these indictments came down just as we're entering presidential election season — how will Trump's legal problems effect the 2024 race?

Sources:

Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman, "The Trump Jan. 6 Indictment, Annotated," NYT, Aug 1, 2023

Alan Feuer, et al, "The Trump Georgia Indictment, Annotated," NYT, Aug 15, 2023

Charlie Savage, "The Four Trump Criminal Cases: Strengths and Weaknesses," NYT, Aug 28, 2023

James Risen, "In Trump’s Georgia Indictment, a Tale of Two Election Workers," The Intercept, Aug 17, 2023

Rick Rojas and Sean Keenan, "Dozens of ‘Cop City’ Activists Are Indicted on Racketeering Charges," NYT, Sept 5, 2023

Laurence Tribe, "Anatomy of a Fraud," Just Security, Aug 8, 2023

Matthew Sitman, "Will Be Wild," Dissent, Spring 2023

Damon Linker, "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Trump?" Notes from the Middleground, July 18, 2022

Back in October, before the 2024 election, we had on our friend—and brilliant screenwriter and playwright—Dorothy Fortenberry to talk about gender and the presidential campaign. Amid all the postmortems and Democratic soul searching, we wanted to have Dorothy back on to revisit some of those questions, starting with the difficulties women face in running as "outsiders" or against "The System"—an especially relevant consideration given the prevailing anti-incumbent, burn-it-down sentiment among voters across Europe and the Americas. Along the way we discuss Sarah Palin, Trump's "bad sex" cabinet and administration, how "having fun" is coded in American culture, and more.

Sources:

Dorothy Fortenberry, "The J.D. Vance sperm cups were probably a troll. But they got me thinking," Slate, Aug 23, 2024

— "Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore," Commonweal, Nov 5, 2020

Martin Pengelly, "RFK Jr sexual assault accuser says she chose to speak out after Super Bowl ad," The Guardian, Nov 21, 2024. 

Eric Lutz, "Matt Gaetz Accused of Sex With Minor in House Ethics Report," Vanity Fair, Dec 21, 2024. 

Eric Tucker, "Trump’s Pentagon pick paid woman after sex assault allegation but denies wrongdoing, his lawyer says," AP, Nov 17, 2024.

Tony Tulathimutte, "Our Dope Future" in Rejection (Sept 2024)

Robert Hanley, "Donor Apologized to Sister for Seduction of Husband," NYTimes, Jan 13, 2005.

Damon Linker, "The Bestial Politics of Masculine Self-Assertion," Notes from the Middleground, Nov 22, 2024.

Sam Adler-Bell, "MAGA Misfits vs. Nationalists vs. Reaganites vs. Dorks: The battle of the Trump transition," NY Mag, Dec 14, 2024.

Listen again:

"Suburban Woman," Oct 29, 2019

"Living at the End of Our World" (w/ Daniel Sherrell), Sept 2, 2021

"'Succession,' 'Extrapolations,' & TV Writing Today" (w/ Will Arbery), May 4, 2023

"Boys and Girls in America," Oct 3, 2024

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to all of our bonus episodes!

...or give the gift of a KYE Patreon subscription to your loved on

Listen to the entire conversation by subscribing to Know Your Enemy on Patreon!

On Dec. 31, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died at the age of 95. During his long career as a towering figure in the Catholic Church in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond—especially his decades helming the Vatican's powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then as Pope and Pope Emeritus—Benedict was involved in nearly all of the Church's crises and controversies. He cracked down on liberation theologians, held a reactionary line on homosexuality at the height of the AIDS crisis, and slowly awakened to the depths and depravity of the Catholic sex-abuse scandal—but he also wrote movingly about God's love and took positions on the environment and the economy that would be mostly ignored by his conservative fans. 

To try to make sense of Benedict's life and work, especially his relationship with American Catholics, Matt is joined by Michael O'Loughlin, the national correspondent at America magazine and author of Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear.

Listen to the entire conversation by subscribing to Know Your Enemy on Patreon!

For our final main episode of 2023, we're dipping back into the Wills well to discuss Garry's under-appreciated 2010 book, Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State.  Joining us is our great friend Erik Baker, lecturer in the History of Science Department at Harvard University and an editor at The Drift magazine. 

In Bomb Power, Garry Wills elegantly demonstrates how the imperatives of secretly conceiving, building, and deploying the nuclear bomb fundamentally changed American democracy — massively empowering the presidency, disempowering Congress, and setting the nation on a permanent war footing. At the same time, secrecy and deception metastasized through the American system, enabling the rise of extra-judicial assassinations, coup plotting, domestic surveillance, torture, and clandestine war.  "Secrecy emanated from the Manhattan Project like a giant radiation emission..." writes Wills, "Because the government was the keeper of the great secret, it began specializing in secret keeping.” 

Also discussed: Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer  (2023), Henry Kissinger (RIP), Bush and Obama, Snowden, Ellsberg, and the ways in which Bomb Power is a profoundly Catholic book. Enjoy!

Sources:

Garry Wills, Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State (2010)

Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear Planner (2017)

Barton Gellman, Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State (2021)

Archbishop John Wester, "Living in the Light of Christ's Peace: A Conversation Toward Nuclear Disarmament," Jan 11, 2022

Erik Baker, "Daniel in the Lion's Den: On the Moral Courage of Daniel Ellsberg," The Baffler, June 17, 2023

John Schwenkler and Mark Souva, "False Choices: The Unjustifiable Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki," Commonweal, Oct 14, 2020

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Subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy to hear this and all our bonus content!

From the union-busting, ad-man scion (Brent Sr.), to the fiercely brilliant and troubled National Review editor-turned-Catholic zealot (Brent Jr.), to the insipid media watchdog and Trump apologist (Brent III), and finally, to the ball-cap-wearing January 6 capitol siege participant (Brent IV, aka "Zeeker") — the Bozell epic has all the elements of a great family saga: pathos, intrigue, tragedy, farce, decline, and even a bit of redemption. 

In classic KYE fashion, we over-prepared and over-imbibed to bring you this story. Please enjoy responsibly!

This is a slightly different kind of Know Your Enemy episode—a conversation about hope and despair as the effects of climate change bear down upon us. At the center of that conversation is a brilliant new book, Daniel Sherrell's Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of the World, that focuses not on the facts of climate change or how to stop it, but what it feels like to imagine and live into the future in the knowledge of its existence. Matt and Sam are joined by Sherrell and Dorothy Fortenberry, a playwright and television writer currently working on Extrapolations, an upcoming limited series for Apple TV+ that focuses on climate change. 

Sources and Further Reading:

Daniel Sherrell, Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World (Penguin, 2021)

Pope Francis, Laudato si' ("On Care for Our Common Home"), May 2015

Dorothy Fortenberry, "Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore: What Donald Trump Understands about Politics Today," Commonweal, November 5, 2020

Sam Adler-Bell, "Beautiful Losers: The Left Should Resist the Comforts of Defeat," Commonweal, March 11, 2020

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Historian Tim Barker and editor/organizer Ben Mabie join to discuss a thrilling episode in the history of American labor. Barker and Mabie are two co-hosts of Fragile Juggernaut, a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (or CIO). Along with  co-hosts Alex Press, Gabriel Winant, Andrew Elrod, and Emma Teitelman, they've been telling the story of organized labor in the 1930s, the radical possibilities of that decade, and the eclipsing of those possibilities in the post-war years — with the onset of the cold war, McCarthyism, and anti-union legislation like Taft-Hartley.

In a sense, this episode is a pre-history of the story we tell on Know Your Enemy. If you’ve ever wondered, what was it that so terrified reactionary businessmen about the New Deal era? How did they come to believe that revolutionary upheaval was a real prospect in America, that Communists were everywhere, threatening the social order, and that this peril demanded the creation and funding of a new conservative movement? Well part of the answer is: the CIO. From a certain angle, the right-wing fever dream was real, at least for a time: the CIO really was filled with Communists, labor militants really did take over factories and shut down whole cities, and it really did seem possible, if only briefly, that the American working class — including immigrants from all over Europe, black workers, and women — might find solidarity on the shop floor, consolidate politically, and threaten the reign of capital. That didn’t quite happen. And this episode will partially explain why. 

Further Reading:

Andrew Elrod, "Fragile Juggernaut: What was the CIO?" n+1, Jan 24, 2024. 

Bruce Nelson, Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s, U of Illinois Press,  1988.

Robert H. Zieger, The CIO, 1935-1955, UNC Press, 1995. 

Landon R.Y. Storrs,  The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left, Princeton U Press, 2012. 

Eric Blanc, “Revisiting the Wagner Act & its Causes,” Labor Politics, Jul 28, 2022.  

Rhonda Levine, "Class Struggle and the New Deal: Industrial Labor, Industrial Capital, and the State," U of Kansas Press, 1988.

Further Listening:

The podcast: "Haymarket Originals: Fragile Juggernaut," 2024 

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Modern conservatives have long asked the following questions: how can we live together without God? Is there any substitute for religion in cohering a moral community? And if not, what can we do to revive the old sacred authority that reason, science, and liberalism have interred?

These were also  the questions that preoccupied Philip Rieff (1922-2006), an idiosyncratic sociologist and product of the University of Chicago, whose thought cast a long shadow over right-wing intellectuals, theologians, and other Jeremiahs of the modern condition (like Christopher Lasch and Alasdair MacIntyre). In the two books that made his name — 1959's Freud: Mind of the Moralist and 1966's Triumph of the Therapeutic: The Uses of Faith After Freud — Rieff engages deeply with psychoanalysis, deriving from Sigmund Freud a theory of how culture creates morality and, in turn, why modern culture, with its emphasis on psychological well-being over moral instruction, no longer functions to shape individuals into a community of shared purpose. 

Rieff, a secular Jew, remained concerned to the very end of his life with the problem of living in a society without faith, one in which the rudderless self is mediated, most of all, by therapeutic ideas and psychological institutions rather than by religious or political ones. Less sophisticated versions of this conundrum haunt conservative thought to this day — from complaints about "wokeness" as a religion to the right's treatment of sexual and gender transgression as mental pathology. 

To help us navigate Rieff, Freud, and the conservative underbelly of psychoanalysis, we're joined by two brilliant thinkers and writers: Hannah Zeavin and Alex Colston. Hannah is an Assistant Professor at Indiana University in the Luddy School of Informatics; Alex is a PhD student at Duquesne in clinical psychology. Most importantly, for our purposes, Hannah and Alex are also the editors of Parapraxis, a new magazine of psychoanalysis on the left. We hope you enjoy this (admittedly, heady) episode. If you do, consider signing up for a new podcast — on psychoanalysis and politics, of all things — hosted by beloved KYE guest Patrick Blanchfield and his partner Abby Kluchin entitled "Ordinary Unhappiness."

Further Reading: 

Philip Rieff, Freud: Mind of the Moralist (Viking, 1959)

— The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud (Harper & Row, 1966)

— Fellow Teachers (Harper & Row, 1973)

Gerald Howard, "Reasons to Believe," Bookforum, Feb 2007. 

Blake Smith, "The Secret Life of Philip Rieff." Tablet, Dec 15, 2022

George Scialabba, "The Curse of Modernity: Rieff's Problem with Freedom," Boston Review, Jul 1, 2007.

Christopher Lasch, "The Saving Remnant," The New Republic, Nov 19, 1990. 

Hannah Zeavin, "Composite Case: The fate of the children of psychoanalysis," Parapraxis, Nov 14, 2022. 

Alex Colston, "Father," Parapraxis, Nov 21, 2022. 

Rod Dreher, "We Live In Rieff World," Mar 1, 2019. 

Park MacDougald, "The Importance of Repression," Sept 29, 2021

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In which we answer more of your excellent questions, including: the right-wing panic over children; how to leave grad school; Tillich, Niebuhr, and Dorothy Day; why 21st century Bob Dylan is the best Bob Dylan; how to teach a course on post-war conservatism; and more!

Sources cited:

Matthew Sitman, "Anti-Social Conservatives," Gawker, July 25, 2022.

— "Whither the Religious Left?" The New Republic, April 15, 2021.

Jules Gill-Peterson, Histories of the Transgender Child, 2018.

Kyle Riismandel, Neighborhood of Fear: The Suburban Crisis in American Culture, 1975–2001, (2020)

Paul Renfro, Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State, (2020)

Edward H. Miller, A Conspiratorial Life: Robert Welch, the John Birch Society, and the Revolution of American Conservatism, (2021)

John S Huntington, Far-Right Vanguard: The Radical Roots of Modern Conservatism, (2021)

Kim Phillips-Fein, "Conservatism: A State of the Field," Journal of American History, Dec 2011.

Allen Brinkley, "The Problem of American Conservatism," The American Historical Review, Apr 1994.

Rick Perlstein, "I Thought I Understood the American Right. Trump Proved Me Wrong," New York Times, Apr 11, 2017.

Peter Steinfels, The Neoconservatives: The Origins of a Movement, (1979)

Mike Davis, Prisoners of the American Dream, (1986)

Stuart Hall, The Great Moving Right Show and Other Essays, (2017)

Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump, (2017)

Read Matt's Dissent essay, "Leaving Conservatism Behind"

Read Sam's essay about Jonah Goldberg's Suicide of the West, "The Remnant and the Restless Crowd"

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, 2019

Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Earth's Holocaust" (1844)

Sam Rosenfeld, "What Defines the Democratic Party?" New Republic, February 15, 2022

Matthew Sitman, "Tribute to Michael Kazin," Dissent, October 6, 2020

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With the help of Jane Mayer's essential 2016 book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, your hosts explore the world of right-wing philanthropy and the institutions—from centers at universities to think tanks in Washington, DC—it has funded. What emerges is a startling history of how a small group of incredibly rich families used novel techniques to shelter their wealth from taxation and fund a right-wing takeover of American politics.

Other sources cited and consulted:

• Theda Skocpol, "Who Owns the GOP?" (a critical review of Mayer in Dissent)
• Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism
• Amanda Hollis-Brusky and Calvin Terbeek, "The Federalist Society Says It’s Not an Advocacy Organization. These Documents Show Otherwise." Politico
• Mark Schmidt "The Legend of the Powell Memo," The American Prospect
• Honoré de Balzac, Eugénie Grandet (1833)

The author of several excellent books about the history of American conservatism, including The Invisible Bridge, Nixonland, and Reaganland, Rick Perlstein makes his triumphant return to Know Your Enemy. Drawing on Rick's wealth of historical knowledge, as well as his American Prospect column — entitled "The Infernal Triangle" — we explore the failures of American media elites and the Democratic Party to reckon with Donald Trump and his antecedents on the far right. What are the habits and genres of American journalism that inhibit an adequate accounting of Trump's rise and influence? Why do Democrats tend to adopt "conservatism lite," when faced with a far right opponent? How has Rick's perspective on studying the right changed since he began his work in the 1990s?  And how will future historians make sense of these times? Listen to find out! 

Further Reading

Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, (2009)

— "I Thought I Understood the American Right. Trump Proved Me Wrong." New York Times, Apr 11, 2017. 

— "The Polling Imperilment," American Prospect, Sept 25, 2024.

— "The Election Story Nobody Wants to Talk About," American Prospect, Aug 28, 2024.

— "Project 2025 … and 1921, and 1973, and 1981," American Prospect, Jul 10, 2024. 

W. Joseph Campbell, Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections, (2020)

Isaac Arnsdorf, Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy, (2023)

Phoebe Petrovic, "Right-Wing Activists Pushed False Claims About Election Fraud. Now They’re Recruiting Poll Workers in Swing States." ProPublica / Wisconsin Watch, Oct 16, 2024.

Clare Malone, "The Face of Donald Trump’s Deceptively Savvy Media Strategy," New Yorker, Mar 25, 2024.

Matthew Sitman, "Will Be Wild: Reading the January 6th Committee Report," Dissent, Apr 18, 2023.

Listen Again: 

"On the Road to Reaganland" (w/ Rick Perlstein and Leon Neyfakh), Oct 21, 2020 

"The History of the History of the Right" (w/ Kim Phillips-Fein), Jan 17, 2024

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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, 2022

Christopher Buckley, Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir (Twelve Books, May 2009)

Garry Wills, "Daredevil," Atlantic, July/August 2009

Sophie Wilkins, trans., The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil (1930, 2017)

Alexander Chee, "Mr. and Mrs. B," Apology Magazine, Winter 2014

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