The “Terrorist Connection”

On Friday, four activists from the group Palestine Action will learn if they will be branded as terrorists for the rest of their lives. This decision will not be made by a jury, but by a single judge. Regardless of what the judge decides, the railroading of these four young conscientious citizens is yet another crime added to the British Empire’s bloody rap sheet.

In August of 2024, a group of Palestine Action (PA) activists broke into the Elibt Systems weapons manufacturing plant in Bristol. Once inside, they used sledgehammers and crowbars to destroy machinery used to make bombs for the Israeli Army. At trial, the defendants admitted their guilt and said they were proud to stand on the right side of history. The jury acquitted two members and found four guilty of criminal property destruction. One received an additional charge of grievous bodily harm without intent for striking a security guard during the raid. Though they might have broken common British law, the PA members were following international law and upholding the United Kingdom’s commitment to the 1948 Genocide Convention by “preventing and punishing” the crime of genocide. Yet again, we see how the law is weaponized to protect the powerful and punish the powerless, regardless of their behavior.

So, how did the jury go from minor charges to terrorism? Well, they didn’t. The jury was never told that finding the defendants guilty on simple property destruction could result in them spending the rest of their lives behind bars. The jury fulfilled its duty under the impression that the defendants would be sentenced as first-time offenders. Criminal property damage is usually punished with a fine and three months in prison in the United Kingdom. However, the British government always planned to charge the accused as terrorists based on a cynical interpretation of the Terrorism Act of 2000. When this law was being debated in Westminster decades ago, lawmakers promised parliament that the Terrorism Act wouldn’t be used to “target domestic activists” and would be used “only when absolutely necessary.” That’s why the only other time this unjust, post-trial terrorism label has been used was against an ISIS bomber who planted explosives on the London Underground train in 2017. When the government announced it would be sentencing the Palestine Action activists under this act, the United Nations accused the United Kingdom of violating the prisoners’ human rights to a fair trial.

Even more egregiously, whether or not these four young Brittons, who are rightfully horrified by their government’s murder of the Palestinian people, will spend three months or three decades behind bars is to be decided by a biased judge. The High Court of Appeals already found Justice Jeremy Johnson acted maliciously against the defendants and their lawyer during the trial. Yet, Johnson refused to recuse himself from the sentencing when asked, a dark omen indicating the British government’s steadfast commitment to branding these activists as terrorists as part of a larger crackdown on the anti-genocide left.

Founded in 2020, Palestine Action has been the leading anti-genocide direct action group in Britain. Its portfolio includes everything from sabotaging weapons manufacturers to common street protests. This has been a thorn in Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s side, as crushing the left is his most cherished hobby. The British government has been openly planning to brand PA as terrorism for a long time. And it looks like this sentencing will be the circular logic they use to do it.

As defense counsel raised during an abuse of process hearing last year, the Counter Terrorism Police and the Crown Prosecution Service collaborated on a report outlining that their resources would greatly expand if Palestine Action were “declared a terrorist group.” After Palestine Action activists graffiti-ed RAF planes last July, the Home Secretary accused the group of having a “terrorist connection” when she moved to outlaw the group. She also wrote an op-ed accusing PA of having a terrorist connection, part of an obvious, cynical media campaign to establish the terrorist narrative during an ongoing trial.

“The clear advice and intelligence given to me earlier this year from the UK’s world-leading counter-terrorism system, based on a robust assessment process, was that Palestine Action satisfies the relevant tests in the Terrorism Act 2000 and should be proscribed.” - British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, August, 2025

Since Palestine Action was outlawed, protestors have made a mockery of this declaration by simply showing their support. The hypocrisy of the British government is clear to all when the peelers throw grandma in jail for wearing a t-shirt, while Keir Starmer walks Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend into Downing Street.

No sane actor can look at this group of youthful activists and elderly protestors and think “terrorist group” is an accurate depiction. This kangaroo court is not to keep Brittons safe. It’s to silence Palestine Action so the British government can continue aiding Israeli imperialism without being criticized for it. To say this is authoritarian is an understatement. It is political repression against those who bravely stood on the correct side of history. Regardless of what is decided tomorrow, the United Kingdom has once again shown its true face to the world. Not to be outdone by our former rulers, the American government has trampled every civil liberty in the Constitution in pursuit of a bogus terrorism charge.

Imagining Antifa

While the Bristol Four await their fate, the Trump administration is using the same playbook to suppress the American left.

Read more

Last week, The New York Times published an exposé interviewing several of Graham Platner’s ex-girlfriends. The Times spoke to two dozen people, six of whom were former romantic partners of the presumptive Democratic senatorial nominee. Three of the six described Platner favorably, and they remain friends to this day. The others tell a different story. One, Ms. Racicot, says she felt he didn’t respect women. An anonymous former partner who dated Platner in 2016 described him as a heavy drinker and infidelotous. The word “toxic” is used frequently.

The article focuses on Lyndsey Fifield, who dated Platner in 2013 when they both lived in Washington. Fifield makes some serious allegations against Platner that deserve our undivided attention. Though Fifield admits Platner “never hit me, never punched me,” she accuses him of grabbing her hard enough to leave marks. During one argument, Fifield claims Platner twisted her arm behind her back, causing “pain but no injury,” and locked her in a bedroom until the following morning.

Like any accuser, Lyndsey Fifield deserves the benefit of the doubt. Anyone who comes forward with an allegation of inappropriate behavior (especially a woman accusing a larger, trained soldier of battery) should be heard out. Fifield has given her account, and all should listen. Here is a gift link for you to read her side before I share my thoughts on this affair.

After the Times story was published, Platner appeared on Chris Haye’s show to discuss the allegations. As he has before, Platner admits he struggled with PTSD, addiction, and depression after leaving the military. He doesn’t deny saying unsettling things or drinking too much during the years he was dating Fifield. But he does unqequivocally deny that he was ever physical with any partner.

In the interview, Platner describes Fifield’s claim as “politically motivated.” Though we can never know someone’s true motivations, it’s difficult to believe Lyndsey Fifield’s allegations are being made in good faith. After all, she is a conservative political activist with a history of smearing women who accused prominent Republicans of rape.

Ladies For Brett Kavanaugh

Lyndsey Fifield is a Republican Party operative. The Times describes her as being “affiliated” with the conservative group, the Independent’s Women Forum. But that only scratches the surface. Fifield began her career working for the GOP Super PAC American Action Network, then spent seven years at the Heritage Foundation before joining Nikki Haley’s 2024 presidential campaign. Being a Republican is not grounds to disbelieve any accuser. However, when the accuser is caught lying about their political activity, red flags rise. Here’s how The New York Times describes Fifield’s relationship to the Independent Women’s Forum:

“Ms. Fifield said she had no connection to the campaign of Senator Susan Collins, Mr. Platner’s likely Republican opponent. She acknowledged that Independent Women had been supportive of Ms. Collins but said she had not been active with the organization recently.”

This is a lie. On April 15th, 2026, the Republican Study Committee (RSC) released the following press release supporting President Donald Trump’s “Working Families Tax Cuts.” The RSC describes itself as “the conservative caucus of House Republicans and a leading influencer on the Right since its original founding in 1973.” To support the Republican President’s agenda, the RSC published statements from so-called Real Americans affirming the need for this bill. One of the statements came from Lyndsey Fifield, a self-described “Stay-at-Home Mom” and representative of the Independent Women’s Forum.

Right out of the gate, Lyndsey Fifield is shown to be a liar. She claimed she was no longer active with the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF). Yet less than two months ago, she was speaking on behalf of the group to advance the Republican Party’s agenda. The Times printed her claims without criticism. But I find it extraordinarily hard to believe that the paper of record would not have discovered Fifield was an active IWF member during its source verification. If you google “Lyndsey Fifield” with a date set before the Times story, the top result is an active page on the Independent Women’s Forum website describing her as a “Visiting Fellow.” You can even fill out the form to request her as a speaker.

To be blunt, I don’t think the Times missed this. I think they were well aware that Lyndsey is an active Republican agent, but didn’t want to disclose it because it would call her motives into question. So, they didn’t disclose it, thinking we’re all dummies who wouldn’t connect the dots. Fifield lying about her recent political activity isn’t disqualifying on its own. But working for the Independent Women’s Forum, which has an infamous reputation when it comes to political sexual assault allegations, raises even more questions.

The Independent Women’s Forum gained notoriety in 2018 for leading the defense of then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. During his confirmation hearing, Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. The credible allegations roiled the Republican Party and left GOP politicians scrambling for a solution. The Independent Women’s Forum stepped in to feministly* defend Kavanaugh and provide embattled Republicans with talking points. Unfortunately, it worked. The Republicans rallied around Kavanaugh, called Blasey Ford a liar, and got him appointed to the Supreme Court. Here is IWF president Heather Higgins bragging about her group’s role in protecting Kavanaugh by drafting a talking-points memo. Higgins says the “most important” result of that memo was empowering Susan Collins to give her infamous floor speech, which greased the wheels for Kavanaugh’s nomination.

This is not Fifield’s only connection to the Brett Kavanaugh affair. A 2018 New York Post article identifies Lyndsey Fifield as one of the founders of “Ladies for Kavanaugh,” co-founded with an IWF staffer. According to Fifield, the group was created to defend the Supreme Court nominee from “baseless” allegations. As the article notes, they were doing this on their own time. No paychecks, just slandering rape survivors for love of the game.

Fifield was one of Kavanaugh’s most ardent defenders. She repeatedly accused Blasey Ford of lying, and wanted her “false allegations” to follow her for the rest of her life. For the record, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford didn’t want to go public and first gave her testimony in secret. As the Kavanaugh affair grew, pressure built, and she came forward at great personal cost.

Though they succeeded in getting Kavanaugh on the court, conservatives still carry a grudge about the allegations to this day. Just as it’s not enough for the wealthy to be wealthy but insist their wealth is altruistic and a benefit to others, it’s not enough for Republicans to hold power. They demand we treat them as respectable opponents, ignoring the bodies they step over on their quest for a reactionary agenda. As soon as questions about Lyndsey Fifield’s account surfaced, prominent conservatives raced to point out that Democrats were hypocritical for believing Kavanaugh’s accusers but not Platner’s.

The difference was that Blasey Ford had substantiated evidence of the assault. She had told friends, family, and medical personnel she was attacked by Kavanaugh, which was confirmed by an FBI polygraph test. Comparatively, there is no evidence to back up Fifield’s claim. As the authors admit (twice), there is no corroborating evidence for Fifield’s claim that Platner grabbed her. The reporters read “texts between Ms. Fifield and Mr. Platner, along with Google Chat exchanges, texts, and Facebook messages between Ms. Fifield and her friends during and after the relationship.” As Fifield later said, she gave them the names of people to talk to who could confirm her claims. The reporters talked to those friends and even read Fifield’s diary. Yet, on two separate occasions during the story, the Times admits their was no evidence she was telling the truth:

“Mr. Platner ‘strongly disputes’ any claims of physical intimidation or altercations, his campaign said. The Times could not independently corroborate Ms. Fifield’s account of the altercations.”

“The Times reviewed texts between Ms. Fifield and Mr. Platner, along with Google Chat exchanges, texts and Facebook messages between Ms. Fifield and her friends during and after the relationship. The Times also reviewed some of Ms. Fifield’s diary entries from after the relationship had ended, and spoke with two of her friends who confirmed that the pair had an emotionally volatile relationship but could not corroborate the physical altercations or the most controversial comments she described.”

This is a story without double-sourcing, which goes against the most fundamental rules of journalism. But the Times went ahead and published it anyway, for reasons I’ll explain later.

It is worth noting that, while reading Fifield’s texts, The New York Times found one incriminating message. But not from Platner. In a message to a group chat last year, Fifeild said she would “personally go campaign for Collins.” Take from that what you will.

We should also note that Fifield is an ardent Zionist and anti-Palestinian racist who has spread lies to support the Trump administration’s illegal incarceration of Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk. Khalil was arrested for organizing the Columbia Solidarity Encampment, and Öztürk wrote an op-ed critical of Israel. Fifield accused them of “organizing violent actions” and “distributing material funded by state-designated terror groups,” claims even the Trump administration didn’t make. The government’s basis for both attempted deportations was their advocacy for Palestine, not actual crimes. It’s also hard to dismiss Graham Platner’s criticism of Israel as a motivation, given Fifield has stated: “whoever curses Israel will be cursed.”

Attempting to vouch for Fifield, her former podcast co-host Bethany Mandel confirmed Fifield was the source behind the unsubstantiated story from last October, alleging that Platner knew his tattoo was Nazi iconography. That story, published in Jewish Insider, which has launched bigoted campaigns against Hasan Piker and Abdul El-Sayed, cited an anonymous “former acquaintance” of Platner’s who claimed he knew the tattoo’s origin. I’m not sure if or when Platner knew what his tattoo was. But as Bethany Mandel admits, Fifield worked with Jewish Insider to “disqualify” Platner; not to give Maine voters all the relevant information about a candidate, but to circumvent the democratic process and disqualify him.

With an attempt to hide Lyndsey Fifield’s career as a political saboteur, her disregard for female sexual assault survivors, and her friend’s admission that she tried to manipulate the media to disqualify Graham Platner once already, I’d say this person is far from honest. I thought her account might be plausible. That is, until she began attacking The New York Times for “helping” Graham Platner. Whatever one thinks about Platner, Fifield, or the Maine Senate race, no one with a functioning frontal lobe can read The New York Times story and think it was aiding the Platner campaign.

Once readers began calling her credibility into question, Lyndsey Fifield took to social media to accuse the Times reporters of orchestrating a “set up” to “give a gift” to the Platner campaign. She claims she gave the Times reporters more evidence and corroborators to talk to. But what she fails to understand is that the reporters did talk to those people. They just didn’t corroborate Fifield’s account.

Conservative propagandists have followed Fifield’s lead, telling their audiences that the woke social justice libs at The New York Times are protecting Graham Platner from accountability. (Sure, guys. Whatever you say.) Fox News is echoing Fifield’s claim that this article was to help the Platner campaign. Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller called the story a “soft catch-and-kill” operation, alleging the Times is trying to get Platner elected. Whatever the people defending the Epstein President say.

Given that even the conservatives are saying the Times story is bogus, I see no reason to put much stock into it. After all, there’s nothing new in it. Two women said what we already knew, that Graham Platner has a history of drinking and cheating. (Am I supposed to believe U.S. Senators are chaste and sober as nuns?) Fifield was the only one to claim physical abuse, and the Times couldn’t corroborate it. But they printed her allegations anyway, packaged as “Multiple women.” Basically, they hoped to create the impression that Graham Platner was a serial abuser, despite no evidence to say so. Why would The New York Times do this? Well, to answer that question, let’s refamiliarize ourselves with The Times’ history of anti-left slanders and the reporters’ clear favorability of Israel.

Subscribe now

Old Dog, Same Tricks

As a staunch critic of Israel and the foreign policy establishment, Graham Platner is the exact type of politician The New York Times has a history of seeking to discredit. The paper, which has self-described as Zionist, recently debased itself with the below sub-heading associating Dr. Adam Hamawy with the Blind Sheik. Hawamy is a combat surgeon who has saved American lives at ground zero on September 11th. He also treated American servicemen in Iraq, even saving the life of Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth. Hamaway recently put his life on the line to volunteer at the Nasser hospital in Gaza, bravely refusing to leave even when the hospital was besieged by the Israeli Army. Yet, because he criticizes established American foreign policy, the Times is ‘jUsT aSKiNg qUeStions"‘ about Islamophobic allegations dredged up by the racist right.

We also cannot ignore the historical biases of the reporters who wrote this story. One of the authors on the byline is Katie Glueck, who has a history of collaborating with pro-Israel interests. In college, Glueck was the co-president of Northwestern University’s Students for Israel chapter and received an award for “AIPAC Activist of the Year.” (At least the school newspaper was ethical enough to disclose Glueck’s political biases, something The New York Times declines to do.) While working for The Times, Glueck’s fondness for Israel has severely impacted her coverage. It’s no coincidence that the Platner story is written by Katie Glueck and Lisa Lerer, the same reporters who wrote the infamous July 2025 story saying Zohran Mamdani’s victory was a threat to Jews. By interviewing known pro-Israel activists such as President Biden’s anti-semitism czar and prominent Zionist rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, the authors legitimized the racist hallucination that a Muslim mayor was a threat to Jewish safety. Glueck and Lere even included a quote from an anti-Muslim bigot calling Mamdani’s primary victory a “Spiritual Kristallnacht.”

There are also serious problems with the way Glueck and Lerer presented certain information in their story. For example, the reporters found one text on Fifield’s phone from a friend saying, “Do Not Call Graham.” Glueck and Lerer use that text as evidence of Platner’s problematic treatment of Fifield. They even made it a heading, indicating the gravity they placed on that statement. But the day after the story was published, Fifield said that the text was an “out of context quote from a friend joking ‘do not call Graham’ after I called off my wedding.” This is extremely suspect. The Times admits to reading Fifield’s messages. So if it was a joke, Glueck and Lerer would have known it was an attempt at gallows-humor, joking that she shouldn’t call the ex, whom she has a history of contacting. And if it wasn’t a joke, why is Fifield saying it is?

This is all very strange and very confusing. Before I explain what I think happened, we must address the question of Graham Platner’s character. I’ll be the first one to say, I don’t love it. A former Army soldier and mercenary is far from my cup of tea. But by all available evidence, this story is not about Graham Platner, the man. It is about Graham Platner, the politician. And I find myself compelled to defend him from this smear campaign for the same reason it’s being launched against him.

The Establishment Strikes Back

Graham Platner is a controversial figure, to say the least. The Times story transports us back into his troubling past of post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism. All available witnesses to that period, himself included, speak of a highly troubled man grappling with his post-war conscience.

When I first learned about Graham Platner, I instantly recalled William “Billy” Lavigne, the main character in Seth Harp’s excellent book The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces. Harp’s book details how Lavigne went from a scrawny nerd who enlisted in the Army for free cosmetic eye surgery to a coked-out killer who ran an international drug trafficking ring and shot his best friend in front of their young daughters. Fort Bragg follows Lavigne and his Delta Force comrades from North Carolina to Afghanistan and back again, with an illuminating account of drug use and trafficking propelling the War on Terror, both as a financial source for the American empire and a personal stimulant for the soldiers carrying its banner. Whatever moral justification the country and its army believed they had for the War on Terror, it quickly devolved into amphetamine-fueled violence for the sake of amphetamine-fueled violence. One line from the book remains permanently in my mind. When describing Billy Lavigne’s Delta Force unit, an acquaintance said, “All they know how to do is kill people.” This summarizes the United States of America as much as its soldiers. The War on Terror broke America’s national mind, just as the military ethos of constant violence does to soldiers. Humans aren’t made for never-ending conflict. Military training seeks to break down the moral barriers in a soldiers’ mind, until all they do is follow orders and kill, kill, kill. As a result, suicide is the leading cause of death for American soldiers, overcoming disease and combat casualties. I see Graham Platner as a Lavigne-like figure, who, either by luck or knowledge, attempted to wrench his soul back from the vile demon that is American militarism. The word “redemption” is thrown around a lot when discussing Platner. I do believe he is seeking redemption for his past offenses. But simply seeking redemption does not mean one gets a pass on every transgression. Forgiveness is a relationship between the offender and those they hurt. You don’t get to mumble “sorry” and expect a clean slate. Platner is attempting to amend for his dark past, as is the United States of America. And I do believe that his anti-genocide, anti-war platform is some sort of penance for his role in American imperialism. (There’s a reason disgruntled soldiers have consistently formed the vanguard for left-wing movements.) I can look at a man like Platner, understand how America’s violent culture turned him into something he doesn’t want to be, and give him grace as he seeks redemption. As a Marxist, I also recognize that the War on Terror was not the product of poor individual choices to enlist, but the result of clashing forces on the world stage — namely, a hyper-militaristic hegemon looking to justify its excessive Pentagon budget and seek revenge for 9/11. And though I played a far less significant role than soldiers such as Platner, as a tax-paying American citizen, my hands are not clean from the blood of nations pillaged by the American government.

However, it’s not my place to forgive or condemn Graham Platner. That is the role of his ex-acquaintances and the people who were oppressed while serving in an occupying army. Some will, some will not. To me, the moral question of Platner’s redemption is not one I am fit to give. I cannot forgive him for his trespasses when I am not the one he harmed. Nor can I condemn his quest for absolution when I, like every American, have benefited from the spoils of living inside a global hegemon. As for the political question, politicians are not our friends. Would I want to go to the bar with an alcoholic? No. And I wouldn’t want my friends dating him. But I’m not looking for a buddy. I’m looking for Senators who will vote to embargo any weapons from entering Israel. You don’t need to be the best guy ever to do that. And, as he stands, Graham Platner is a far better person than the current Senators sending Netanyahu 2,000-pound bombs every week.

That’s how I see Graham Platner. Many others on the left have reached more critical conclusions about the former soldier. My view isn’t The Right One, it’s just a different one. Though we disagree, I would urge anyone sympathetic to anti-establishment, Israel-critical politics to support Platner, at least against these latest charges. Because this isn’t actually about Graham Platner. The New York Times’ attack against the oysterman has nothing to do with his past behavior. Rather, what we are witnessing is an outburst from the country’s political elite who recognize they are no longer able to gatekeep the halls of power. Though Lyndsey Fifield was the subject of the New York Times story, since she accused the Times of helping Platner, the bipartisan political elite have pushed her into the background as they complain to all who will listen that they’re no longer able to choose candidates from a roster of Israel-loving Ivey Leaguers.

The days after the Times story, the usual suspects climbed up the moral grandstand to state winning the Senate wasn’t worth a Graham Platner. (Mind you, this is after two years of them lecturing us that we must throw abortion and queer rights under the bus so Democrats can pick up a single congressional seat in Arkansas.) The Atlantic columnist and known Jeffrey Epstein associate, David Brooks, who left his wife of twenty-eight years for a research assistant twenty-three years younger than him, called Graham Platner a “moral degenerate.” Van Jones is urging Democrats to take the high road and ditch Platner. As if the guy who told jokes about “Dead Gaza babies” on Bill Maher has any leg to stand on. Iraq War architect and Benjamin Netanyahu speech writer, David Frum, compared Graham Platner to 2017 Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, a literal pedophile. As if we needed more proof, the media elite are clutching pearls, The New York Post wrote an entire article sourced from conservative political activists about how Graham Platner was a bad bartender at the political class’s favorite bar in Washington, D.C. As if that’s a knock against him.

The mainstream media is also clearly trying to keep this baseless story running. Reporting on the impact of the Times story in Maine, CNN interviewed one woman whom they identified as a “Maine Democratic voter.”

“Beth Dindas, a Maine Democratic voter, told CNN that Platner lost her when he denied knowing about the origins of his tattoo. She said Platner now “has no credibility whatsoever.” She added that she supports Janet Mills ‘all the way.’”

Beth Dindas is not just some random Mainer. She is a Zionist political activist who has worked for Birthright Israel, American Friends of Tel Aviv University, and the Democratic Majority for Israel, as well as consulting for pro-Israel politicians Richie Torres and Jake Auchincloss. CNN’s attempt to hide Dindas’ political bias speaks to the level of deceit the media and political class are willing to engage in to sink Graham Platner’s candidacy. Not to be outdone, Katie Glueck returned to the scene of the crime to peddle more falsehoods about candidate Platner. Here’s how Glueck described the mood at a post-story Platner rally:

“It was one of the strongest responses from a supportive but relatively sedate crowd that included attendees who said they were anxious about Mr. Platner’s candidacy and still getting to know the candidate.” — Amid Mounting Democratic Concern, Platner Says His Past Is Being ‘Weaponized’

And here’s a video from that rally after Graham Platner thanked Maine for having his back after the politically-motivated story. The words “sedate” and “anxious” are not what I’d use to describe this crowd.

Democratic strategist Kaivan Shroff, a long-time supporter of known sex pest Andrew Cuomo, gave the game up when he took to Twitter to admit that the whole Platner affair wasn’t about Platner, but “pulling back from the desperation that has led Dems to embrace leftist slopulism.” Shroff speaks for the entire liberal establishment: they would rather lose the Senate to Republicans than win with a candidate who challenges Israel and the oligarchy.

Though the Democratic and Republican elite are trying to ratfuck Graham Platner (I apologize for the language, but that’s the term we’re given), their motivation isn’t wrong. For the first time in my lifetime, the political establishment is being threatened. A socialist thrashed the Cuomo dynasty to rule New York City, the heart of the Democratic political machine. The majority of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Israel, as does the world. Progressive, populist, and leftist candidates are winning elections where pundits once said it was impossible. More and more Americans are turning to alternative media, diminishing the wealth and prestige of the mainstream media. So they lash out against figures like Hasan Piker, while Bari Weiss turns the most historic American news programs into broadcast Breitbart. The criticism of Graham Platner does not come from a place of morality or concern. Rather, it is a reactionary tantrum, a desperate attempt to resecure their once-ironclad grip on what can be said and done in the political realm.

This is why I think it's important for the left to defend Graham Platner from The New York Times smear campaign. Not because Platner is a great guy, but because conservatives, zionists, some liberals, and the media will keep slandering anyone who criticizes Israel and the oligarchy. There are differences between the Republican and Democratic establishments. But as we can see, when their shared interests of Zionism and capitalism are threatened, they unite and attack to discredit critics and preserve the political status quo. Remember, the head of the Democrats’ Senatorial Committee called Zohran Mamdani a “jihadist.” The Times implied decorated Army surgeon Adam Hamawy was a secret terrorist. Jake Tapper let his panelists compare Mahmoud Khalil to literal Nazis. College kids who protested for a ceasefire were slandered as Iran-linked terrorists, blacklisted from employment, and harassed by psychotic billionaires like Bill Ackman. Even now, congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier is being criticized for making the moral decision to attend an anti-genocide protest on October 8th, 2023. Last week, a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago was suspended for assigning work that mentioned Palestine. But when two Israeli filmmakers joked about the dogs the IOF uses to rape Palestinian hostages at the Tribeca Film Festival, the best the festival could muster was a weakly-worded letter. And who can forget “Screams Without Words,” a propaganda campaign so fraudulent it was debunked by the NYT’s own podcast. All of these oppressive, tainted actions against pro-Palestine voices are the result of a dominant, pro-Israel political class that can silence and defame opponents at will.

The attack on Graham Platner is yet another message sent by the pro-Israel corporate establishment: “If you criticize Israel or the oligarchy, we will ruin your life. We’ll call you a rapist, a terrorist, an abuser.” I say, enough is enough. They’ll only stop when the price of lying outweighs the benefits. Americans are becoming increasingly aware of the deceptive nature of the media and the political elite, which is currently being directed at Graham Platner. Regardless of what we think of the candidate, we should call it out. I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind about Platner. Nor am I saying concerns about his character are without reason. Rather, we should sternly condemn this clear-as-day hit job by the political elite and use it as an opportunity to inoculate Americans against future influence campaigns. Because no matter what we believe the future of anti-establishment politics should look like, the forces attacking Graham Platner will soon be attacking us.

If you appreciated this essay, please click the ❤️ to help it rise in Substack’s algorithm. Don’t forget to subscribe so future articles are delivered to your inbox. If you’re a returning JoeWrote reader, consider supporting my work with a premium subscription. For the cost of just one cup of coffee a month, you can help me keep creating content like this. Plus, you unlock everything JoeWrote has to offer.

Thanks in advance!

Subscribe now

In Solidarity — Joe

Running in a red state, typical political wisdom would encourage Oliver Larkin to avoid the socialist label like the plague. As the last three decades of Democratic politics show, the establishment always pushes candidates to become Republican Lite — the Diet Coke version of conservative Coca Cola. But this doesn’t work. Certainly not in Florida, where the state’s Democratic Party has run former Republican Charlie Crist for governor twice out of the last three election cycles. Just like when choosing a soft drink, voters chose the real thing and went with the Republicans.

But Oliver Larkin isn’t listening to the political consultants. Not only is he endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, but he’s also letting voters know he’s a proud member. In the clip below, Oliver articulates the theory of democratic socialism. Socialism isn’t just winning Medicare For All or a higher minimum wage (though those are crucial). It’s about giving people control over the economy, the government, and our lives.

The benefit of the socialist worldview is that it’s correct. The pain voters are feeling across the country — high gas prices, ridiculous healthcare costs, another foreign war — is downstream of America’s undemocratic political and economic system. South Florida isn’t typically where we hear the socialist solution. But it’s the area where it is most needed.

There’s no denying Oliver Larkin has a tough race ahead of him. After the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, Republicans redistricted his race from a Harris-voting to a Trump-voting district. And he is challenging Jared Moskowitz, arguably the most pro-Israel Democrat, who will be flush with AIPAC cash. But being the underdog is a familiar spot for the left. He’ll need our help to win. But with the Iran War dragging on and the progressive left winning more and more victories, Larkin’s chances are looking better and better.

I’m extremely thankful for Oliver Larkin’s time. I suggest you watch the interview above. It’ll show you why I’m excited to support him.

In Solidarity — Joe

Subscribe now

Share

My criticism has not gone unchallenged. The last time I wrote about AI, someone left a comment asking how I could judge AI if I didn’t use it. That was a fair point. So, over the last three months, I’ve been forcing myself to use Claude and Perplexity for basic tasks. Though I see why this technology is preferred by the typical user, I still don’t think artificial intelligence is worth the enormous social and financial costs — and America agrees with me.

Lacking Benefits

While tech executives and Wall Street investors tell us that artificial intelligence is a revolutionary technology, the actual applications paint a different picture. The most common use of artificial intelligence is to cheat in school. Four out of five high schoolers use generative AI for schoolwork, and Brookings found that the most common use for AI is for higher education. User data from ChatGPT confirms this theory. In the chart below, we see ChatGPT usage from May to July in 2025. The dips in May are weekends (when there’s less homework). Once summer break comes, ChatGPT use plummets by 70%.

Look, I’m in no position to throw stones about educational delinquency. High school Joe got pretty good at SparkNotes-ing my way to a B minus. And Einstein’s famous saying, “I’ll never remember anything I can look up in a book,” applies equally to more advanced systems of information storage. If there’s an easy way to access info, people should use it. But that’s not how AI is being used. One Purdue computer science professor recently caught half his class cheating with AI, triggering a campus-wide panic as students threatened to unenroll. Under the instruction of California Governor Gavin Newsom, San Jose State University adopted an A.I. Everywhere strategy. Soon, professors saw no reason to give long writing assignments and asked students to submit their ChatGPT logs instead. I’m not one to police the learning strategies of higher ed. But I doubt that asking a computer questions prepares American students for the modern world.

Behind school, America’s second most common use for artificial intelligence is as a search engine. Brookings found that besides school and search, all other applications plummet. As it stands, there’s a chasm between how AI is presented and how it is actually used. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang recently said AI can autonomously start and run a billion-dollar business. (Life Hack: tell ChatGPT to make you money.) In reality, AI is useful for looking up recipes, settling debates, and misdiagnosing medical conditions with answers pulled from WebMD. Hardly the paradigm-shifting technology we’ve been promised.

During my time in my self-imposed AI reeducation camp, I came to see AI search as a slightly better version of Google Search.

Read more

Inside the barbed wire and concrete walls at Delaney Detention Center in Newark, New Jersey, ICE tortures prisoners with maggot-infested food, overcrowded cells, and freezing temperatures. The captives aren’t just being starved. They’re forced to maintain the facility for $1 a day, which they’re seldom paid. This is slavery. Those inside Delaney have not been duly convicted of a crime, meaning even the 13th Amendment’s back-door permission for carceral slavery doesn’t apply. Families of the incarcerated were the first to let the world know about this heinous crime, which was quickly confirmed by visiting politicians. Even those most reluctant to criticize state agents are speaking out. A year ago this week, New Jersey congressman Frank Pallone voted to express gratitude for ICE agents. Now, he’s condemning ICE’s brutality and calling for Delaney to be shuttered. Pallone’s opportunism is gross. But the fact that those most eager to apply their tongues to the fascist boot cannot defend them shows the gravity of ICE’s depravity.

Taking matters into their own hands, hundreds of Delaney prisoners launched a hunger and labor strike to protest their barbarous treatment. Aghast at the actions of their ‘democratic’ government, concerned Americans from within and without New Jersey rushed to the detention center to stand in solidarity with the strikers and condemn the state violence. While the citizenry exercised their 1st Amendment rights to criticize their government, the federal agents chose violence. On Friday night, ICE agents launched a riot. Driven by savage rage, masked federal thugs charged peaceful protestors with the weaponry of an occupying power. In the video below, agents target a specific protestor with a brutal barrage. Another agent rushes in and kicks a bystander under the wheels of a moving semi-truck, crushing his leg. This American will likely walk with a limp for the rest of their life — yet another citizen maimed by the federal government for daring to dissent.

These protestors pose no threat to public safety. Their only offense is defying Donald Trump’s blackshirts by challenging the fascist hierarchy with signs and chants. In an effort to expand the President’s personal militia, ICE hiring requirements were lowered from an already pathetic standard. Now, what is called ‘immigration enforcement’ is conducted by state-armed anti-social sadists. The media has captured numerous episodes of ICE agents threatening individuals. “You’re a dead man,” one masked agent warned after bystanders heckled him for pepper-spraying himself. These are not empty threats. ICE uses Palantir technology to identify and track protestors and observers. And guns to execute them in the street. For every death threat caught on camera, likely a dozen go unrecorded. If this is how ICE acts in full view of news crews, imagine what they’re doing to the prisoners behind concrete walls.

Subscribe now

The liberal state responded as expected. Despite acknowledging that Delaney Hall is an ongoing human rights violation — what one might call a concentration camp — New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill betrayed her constituents by sending in the New Jersey State Troopers. This was as immoral as it was illegal. In March, Sherill signed legislation banning local cops from partnering with ICE. Less than two months later, she activated the New Jersey troopers and local cops to establish a “protest zone,” the latest tactic local governments are using to suppress the speech rights of anti-fascist Americans. All Sherill did was embolden the fascists. Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin celebrated the Democratic Governor’s reversal by thanking her and calling the police-ICE cooperation a “win for law and order.” Former Border Patrol leader Greg Bovino, who oversaw the occupation of Minneanopolis and has a fondness for fascist iconography, supported the Delaney ICE rioters with a full Heil Hitler salute posted across his social media.

The cops did not give Mikie Sherril the “peace” she claimed to want. Instead, they joined the ICE rioters in assaulting Americans and suppressing their speech rights. On Sunday morning, Sherrill blamed “masked individuals” for attacking the protest barrier and triggering a clash with riot police. This was immediately disproven by video evidence showing the police knocking over the barrier and attacking the protestors.

As always, the governor and other politicians tried to discredit the protestors by saying they were “out-of-state extremists.” This means nothing. ICE is a federal agency, and those incarcerated in Delaney Hall were brought there from across the country. The protestors are Americans horrified by the depravity of the federal government. Sherill’s victim-blaming is also disproven by her own Senator. While the governor was helping the cops suppress speech rights, Senator Andy Kim was assaulted and pepper-sprayed after telling ICE commanders they couldn’t drive through a crowd of protestors.

The New Jersey Attorney General, Jennifer Davenport, dropped all pretense of honesty when she announced a curfew. Davenport blamed the violence on protestors who came “armed with helmets, shields, and gas masks.” These are not weapons, but protective equipment to protect protestors from police batons, tear gas, and bullets. “Orwellian” is overused. But it applies here.

The political attempts to lay blame for the chaotic scenes at the feet of the protestors are part of the police playbook. There is extensive video evidence, such as below, of the cops ‘kettling’ the crowds. As the name implies, kettling is when police force crowds into tight spaces with barricades and riot shields. Like pressure building in a tea kettle, once crowds begin to feel the deadly crush, they push back. Then the cops claim they are being attacked, and crack down with extraordinary violence. Here we see the New Jersey police, not ICE, kettle protestors with barricades.

Here we see New Jersey police start their kettling with a “go” order from the commanding officer. The cops rush to enclose protestors, entrapping them for arrest. These are not the actions of a peacekeeping force, but one looking to escalate the violence for reasons far beyond the maintenance of public order.

To further the narrative of “violent rioters,” state agents are directly targeting journalists to create a media blackout. Multiple journalists have reported that ICE and New Jersey police purposefully destroyed their equipment. The local NBC affiliate, WNBC, was forced out of its marked press vehicle and into tear gas clouds by armed riot police. The WNBC reporters were driven a third of a mile away from the detention center, preventing them from covering the violence unleashed on the remaining protestors.

Share

The police violence and political lies are not separate, but two tactics in a cohesive project to create what called a “false peace.” By reversing the roles of the offending and defending parties, Sherill, ICE, and New Jersey troopers are trying to create the appearance of domestic tranquility by repressing and discrediting those trying to stop the most violent crime in the history of Newark, New Jersey. Peace is not the absence of violence, but the presence of justice. If there were justice at Delaney Detention Center, then there would be no protest outside. If there were no state repression, there would be none to resist it.

When Hakeem Jeffries called for Delaney to be shut down, he naively stated, “This is not America.” What is happening at Delaney is especially American. For centuries, our government has exported fascist violence throughout the world. There’s only so much you can deal out before it returns to your shores. It is impossible for those familiar with the Israeli Army’s colonization of Palestinians not to see the direct parallels between New Jersey and the West Bank. In both cases, the authoritarian state incarcerates and tortures the vulnerable community for the crime of existing where a settler colonial entity says they shouldn’t. Then, when others rush to defend the victims, they are branded as violent extremists and crushed with military force.

As The Wolfe Tones once sang, “How dare you call me a terrorist as you look down the barrel of your gun.”

If you would like to donate to the Delaney Hall protestors and detainees, you can do so here. More than that, I would encourage you to get involved with your local immigrants’ defense network. While the most spectacular ICE activity gets a lot of attention, the truth is, ICE is quietly active in every state. Last night, I was trained by the Colorado Rapid Response Network to identify ICE activity. (I should’ve done it a long time ago.) Similar organizations exist across the country and need your help. And if there isn’t an immigrant protection network in your area, consider starting one.

If you appreciated this essay, please click the ❤️ to help it rise in Substack’s algorithm. Don’t forget to subscribe so future articles are delivered to your inbox. If you’re a returning JoeWrote reader, consider supporting my work with a premium subscription. For the cost of just one cup of coffee a month, you can help me keep creating content like this. Plus, you unlock everything JoeWrote has to offer.

Subscribe now

In Solidarity — Joe

While the Abundance Movement predated the book, Klein and Thompson’s title helped transform the libertarian-esque project into a useful political weapon for powerful liberals. The book launched in March, 2024, right when the Democratic establishment was searching for its future. Having let Donald Trump stumble ass-first into the White House for the second time in a decade, the establishment old guard of the Democratic Party was embarrassed, defeated, and losing factional power to the party’s progressive wing. While minority leader Hakeem Jeffries was flying to Silicon Valley to apologize to donors, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were energizing the Democratic base with their Stop Oligarchy tour. Having lost the American government to the right and at risk of losing the Democratic party to the left, the liberal establishment looked to Abundance as the excuse and answer it needed. The book blamed environmentalists and progressive interest groups for social delay, which fit nicely with the establishment’s claim that Trump won because progressives pushed the Harris-Walz ticket too far left. Ezra Klein aided this theory in more ways than one. Weeks after the election, he went on Pod Save America and scolded the ACLU for asking Kamala Harris about healthcare rights for trans prisoners in 2019 because the Trump campaign clipped her answer and used it in an attack ad.

At the same time, the ‘Abundance Agenda’ became the get-out-of-jail-free card for politicians looking to quiet the Democratic base’s demand for a bolder, progressive political program. The catch-all ‘Abundance mindset’ became the Democratic establishment’s political vision, urging the cutting of regulations so that private businesses could deliver goods and services that voters cared about. But there was only one problem. Abundance was never supposed to be a political program. And it certainly wasn’t a guide to mobilizing Americans against the violent state repression of Donald Trump’s second term. admitted this during an interview with last year, in which he said he believed Kamal Harris would be in the White House when the book launched. Speaking candidly to Silver, Thompson explains that Abundance was one of the potential messages circulating in the Democratic Party. What he doesn’t say is that Abundance was the only one not critical of corporations and capitalism, making it appealing to Democrats with deep-pocketed donors.

Despite not providing political answers to the political questions of the second Trump era, Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein were happy to go along and pretend that Abundance was the solution to stopping fascism. During an interview with Lex Friedman, Thompson stated that their book was “trying to win a certain intra-left coalitional fight about defining the future of liberalism in the Democratic Party,” an explicit admission that he saw himself, Klein, and their Abundance ideology aligned with the corporate establishment.

So, the authors wrote Abundance expecting it to be published under a milquetoast Democratic president. But when things didn’t go to plan, their book served a different purpose. Like shipwreck survivors grabbing any debris they can, the centrist establishment seized Abundance as a life-saving buoy and declared it as the Democratic Party’s path forward. And for the last year, that is what the establishment has been doing. There have been Abundance conferences, collegiate groups, think tanks, Substacks, policy papers, and anything else the political elite can slap “Abundance!” onto. But that’s all the Abundance craze has delivered. A year after the Abundance Movement was bolstered by a book written by household-name pop-politics bloggers, it has failed to gain traction outside the Democratic elite. According to a recent Times/Sienna poll, 94% of Democratic voters haven’t even heard of Abundance. Of those that have, it’s equally liked and disliked. By comparison, Democratic voters are keenly aware of socialism and very fond of it. [Chart courtesy of ]

This isn’t surprising, given how the Abundists presented their movement. In their closing chapter, Klein and Thompson detail a top-down strategy to bring the Abundance Movement to life:

“[The Abundance Agenda] requires deep-pocketed donors (and political action committees) to invest in promising candidates over the long term; the establishment of think tanks and policy networks to turn political ideas into actionable programs; a rising political party able to consistently win over multiple electoral constituencies; a capacity to shape political opinion both at the highest levels (the Supreme Court) and across popular print and broadcast media; and a moral perspective able to inspire voters with visions of the good life. Political orders, in other words, are complex projects that require advances across a broad front.”

This paragraph is a window into the worldview of the liberal elite. Klein and Thompson are focused on convincing the upper strata of political society: the Supreme Court, donors, think tanks, and political action committees. The only time they mention everyday people like you and me is to say that they must “inspire” us. Not listen to us, but to help us see what the elite Abundists have decided is in our best interests. Let me just say, I trust think tanks and “deep-pocketed donors” to do what’s best for the working class about as much as I trust the Israelis to honor a “ceasefire.”

But even if I did share Klein and Thompson’s trust in the elite institutions, the Abundance worldview would still fail to deliver the results it seeks for one simple reason. As liberals, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson fail to account for the power of private capital. This oversight was obvious from the minute Abundance was launched. But as a recent one-year anniversary conversation between the authors shows, the liberal ideology behind the Abundance Movement still fails to address the most important component of American society. As a result, the authors seem out of touch, and even as they admit, their program is failing to deliver.

Abundance: Year One

To celebrate their book’s first anniversary, Ezra Klein invited Derek Thompson on his podcast for a conversation on the state of the Abundance Movement. They were joined by Marc Dunkelman, who published Why Nothing Works a month before Abundance was launched. The authors discuss how their books have held up in the year since publication, what they got correct, and where they went wrong.

While Klein and Thompson do admit their movement’s shortcomings, they fail to recognize that these shortcomings are not isolated mistakes but consequences of the liberal worldview behind Abundance. Specifically, Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein still don’t understand the unprecedented power of the American capitalist class. Sure, they say we must “get money out of politics” and “increase taxes on the ultra-wealthy.” That’s all well and good. But coming from a liberal perspective, in which private businesses are the owner’s property the same way the phone you’re reading this article on is your property, they view oligarchs as on equal footing to other sources of power, such as unions, community organizations, and interest groups. Abundance argues that because corruptive power can arise from anywhere, governments should eliminate opportunities for disruptive influence so that socially necessary housing, technology, and energy projects can uplift the American quality of life. This means eliminating. Sorry, “streamlining” projects by reducing the number of environmental reviews, building regulations, and community vetoes so Democrat-run governments can deliver the goods.

Here’s Ezra Klein describing his view in the anniversary conversation:

“I think that’s one other reason I’ve always said that the theory of power in ‘Abundance’ is liberal, in the sense that it believes power can concentrate poorly anywhere. It can concentrate poorly among corporations, in government, among unions, in neighborhoods. There is no safe concentration of power.”

To be fair, Klein isn’t wrong. Power can concentrate poorly anywhere. And sometimes it can concentrate in places where the interests of the few outweigh those of the many, causing problems for progressive projects. For example, during the 2020 Democratic Primary, Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All plan was opposed by some labor unions who didn’t want to lose their union-negotiated health plans. This led to a brief row between organized labor and the most pro-labor candidate.

However, the potential for capital to misuse power is far greater than that of all other social groupings (especially progressive ones). There are two reasons for this. First, capital has considerable (if not all) social power. Because billionaires and oligarchs control society's productive forces, they have leverage over important decisions. Numerous studies have found America is an oligarchy, not a democracy. The small percentage of people who own damn near everything greatly overpower people like you and me, who don’t own very much. The working class (i.e., people who don’t own businesses) can increase their power by uniting in unions and other groups to advocate as a single voice. But, as evidenced by the fact that wealthy corporations still control America, the working class's unified power still doesn’t match that of the oligarchs. (Which is why we must organize!)

Second, capital has no interest in using its power for the public good. Private businesses exist to create profit. When capitalists use their power, it is 100% for their own benefit. Sometimes what benefits the private company can benefit society. As I’ll explain below, directing capital’s profit motive can advance the public good. But the Abundance view that the God-like power of the capitalist class and the much weaker power of the working class deserve equal weight and condemnation is a departure from reality.

Are there occasions where a local community group stops a necessary power line from being installed because they don’t want the eyesore? I’m sure it’s happened. But are unions, environmentalists, and every other pesky obstructionist conclave the Abundance authors point to equally as powerful and at fault as the unbridled corporate power dominating the United States? Of course not. The Abundance authors should have learned this during their book launch, when they incorrectly blamed excessive environmental reviews for sinking President Biden’s public broadband program. Ezra Klein went viral for triggering Jon Stewart with a story of how unnecessary environmental reviews and equity initiatives prevented low-income Americans from receiving free public broadband. In reality, the program never got off the ground because internet providers used their lobbying connections to destroy the bill from the start. All of the potential “misuses of power” from well-intentioned activists that Klein warned about didn’t matter. Because the power of private internet companies to protect their future profits was greater than all others combined. Klein later admitted he got the “facts wrong” about the 14-stage process he explained to Stewart, as shown below. But he didn’t retract his claim.

Believing that private capital, the most powerful force in human history, has equal power to the local school board or transportation workers’ union is wilfully naive. And if your understanding of the political situation is wrong, then your suggested political solutions will be the same.

Housing Collapse

Though they don’t reach the conclusion in their conversation, Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson, and Marc Dunkelman come so close (yet so far) to recognizing that their misanalysis of capital’s power and purpose is why their Abundance Movement has yet to deliver the results the book promised. While discussing the shortcomings of housing, arguably Abundance’s most central policy, the authors admit that their program has lagged in outcomes. But because they don’t course-correct by questioning Abundance’s core assumption that private business interests are the best way to reduce housing costs, the authors fall short of offering a helpful solution to the housing crisis.

Here’s Klein:

“I think a good critique of the book that I’ve heard is that we don’t talk very much about financing. One thing that has been hard is that even as a lot of yes-in-my-backyard bills are passing, as you mentioned quickly, the financing environment has gotten much worse, because interest rates went way up after the inflationary period.

And the second is that the cost of construction in a place like California is a very fraught topic because nobody wants to see wages go down. There’s a big deportation agenda happening under Donald Trump, which, as you mentioned, is making labor more expensive.

But even as there have been a lot of victories on zoning and exempting things from environmental reviews, the financing side has gotten harder.

I’ve definitely talked to mayors and others who say: Look, I’ve got all these projects I want to see go forward, and we’ve made it possible for them to go forward. But the financing of the projects is not penciling out, and we don’t have an answer to it.”

Klein is admitting what many critics of Abundance said a year ago. And though he’s saying it now, he aggressively disputed claims that non-regulatory issues were slowing housing construction during the 2025 Abundance launch tour. Just because you eliminate regulation does not mean for-profit developers will build. It might be a bad time to invest, or investors may see higher rates of return elsewhere. So though the Abundance Movement has succeeded in eliminating building regulations, apartments still aren’t being built. This is because private for-profit developers are interested in making a profit, not helping Democrats reduce rent rates. To put it in Klein’s words, “the financing isn’t penciling out.” Independent congressional candidate said something similar during our recent interview: It’s not profitable for developers to build new housing in certain parts of Nebraska, so many evicted Nebraskans end up in trailer parks.

Derek Thompson picks up where Ezra Klein left off and agrees with his co-author:

“I’m picking up the criticisms that I heard about financing, about the fact that if you want to build this level of housing, you need to be obsessed with the question of: How do we actually finance that construction? How especially do we make loans to developers, at a time of high interest rates, possible for them to keep up with the level of housing construction that you want?

Those are really, really strong critiques. I think they click into the story that we were telling, the 50-year story. But I do think that it is fair to argue that our book missed that very important ingredient.”

Even though the Abundance authors acknowledge the limitations of their housing program, they still fail to address them. They leave the question of housing financing open, something they’ll have to “circle back on.” But it’s not an open question. We already know how to ensure there’s funding for new housing projects: public funding. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently announced plans to address the housing crisis by building 200,000 new apartments funded by municipal bonds and City capital investments. Mamdani’s plan was announced after this conversation was recorded. And the Abundance authors have positive things to say about the New York City mayor. However, they have failed to address how the many real estate developers backing the Abundance Movement, who are hostile to publicly funded housing because it reduces their profit potential, can be integrated into a political program aimed at reducing rents. As Klein and Thompson admit, the for-profit interests of building developers and society’s need for more low-rent housing are often opposed. The Abundance authors argue that these interests can unite in a Democratic political program. But neither they nor the Abundance Movement can answer how this contradiction will be resolved.

Artificial Misintelligence

The other policy area where the Abundists greatly misunderstand the power of capital is artificial intelligence. takes the lead here, given that he has made AI a core topic on his Substack. To be honest, I was surprised at how little substance Thompson has added to his thoughts on this emerging technology. Here’s Thompson:

“[In Abundance] We first imagine that the profits of artificial intelligence — because it is a technology that is built on human achievement and human intelligence — are taxed and redistributed to the public. Second, we envision that the workweek has shrunk, and implicit in the idea that artificial intelligence allows the workweek to shrink is the idea that to the extent that it reduces labor, that reduction of labor is not borne on the backs of a dramatic increase in unemployment but is rather distributed among a stable set of fully employed labor force that is working a bit less and earning more because of higher productivity.

If I were crafting an abundance A.I. message, I would say that it is rapidly looking like it’s going to become a multi-trillion-dollar industry. We have to restore the ability to tax corporations that could be among the most profitable in the history of capitalism. That’s part one: We want to tax these companies and redistribute their income to the people.

But we also need to think about what kind of labor market policies we can begin to build to ensure that there isn’t a displacement of workers, and so that if this technology makes people more productive, it results in something that looks much more like a four-day workweek than the equivalent 20% of the economy just being shunted onto unemployment.”

There are two parts to Thompson’s suggestions about AI. First, he suggests that AI companies be taxed at higher rates so their profits can be "redistributed to the public.” Second, he calls for “labor market policies” to ensure that advancements in AI technology translate into gains for the working class (“a four-day workweek”) rather than the capitalist class (“20% of the economy just being shunted onto unemployment”). This is where Derek Thompson’s liberal worldview fails to meet reality. If we take the classical view of economics — that artificial intelligence is simply any other industry — and a liberal view of American politics — that problems can be best solved through civic participation in the existing political systems — then Thompson’s idea would work. Congress could impose higher taxes on OpenAI, Anthropic, and other tech companies to fund schools, hospitals, and other public goods. Or, Congress could shorten the workweek to four days, spreading the gains of AI productivity throughout the economy. And that would all be well and good. But this is not how the world works. And it’s certainly not how the United States of America works.

Take the suggestion for a shortened workweek, for example. The current five-day workweek didn’t come about because capitalists and congresspeople read books that convinced them workers deserved Saturdays off. No, the five-day workweek came to be because militant labor unions fought and died for it. The campaign for a five-day workweek was a brutal and bloody struggle that spanned the 19th and 20th centuries. Socialists recently celebrated May Day, the international commemoration of the Haymarket Affair. During a 1886 rally for an eight-hour workday and five-day workweek in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, a bomb went off, and the police fired into the crowd. Authorities used the bombing to indict eight labor leaders on murder charges, despite only two of them actually being present in the Square. Such violent episodes were common in the multi-century fight for better working conditions. It wasn’t until the eve of World War II, when their labor was especially crucial to the war effort, that the struggle was peacefully resolved and a five-day work week was established.

Though modernity is less violent than the 1800s, capitalists are just as protective of their profits. Tech companies aren’t going to allow their wealth to be redistributed. If we want the benefits of artificial intelligence to go to the common good, we’ll need to fight capital. A recent landmark labor deal between Samsung and worker unions shows what this takes. After months of struggle and threats to strike, Samsung workers ratified a contract with the electronics giant, granting them a share of the profits generated by the AI boom. Semiconductor workers will now receive about 10.5% of the company’s operating profit, equivalent to a bonus of $400,000 per worker. If Derek Thompson truly believes the profits of artificial intelligence should be socialized, then he should be steering the Abundance Movement towards full-throated support for American labor. Because that is the only way we’ll get the social-democratic redistributionism he’s advocating for. Without a militant labor movement, tech companies and politicians will say they’re addressing the AI crisis, but won’t actually lift a finger to help American workers. How do we know this? Because they are profit-seeking companies, not the benevolent actors Abundance misunderstands them as.

has an excellent story in The New York Times about how tech oligarchs are fighting back against negative public perceptions of AI with fig leaves and PR statements. The mass displacement of workers is far from an inevitability, but Sun’s reporting shows that AI oligarchs are preparing for it. Keenly aware of the public’s distrust of them and their product, AI companies are publishing “radically progressive” white papers to give the appearance of social progress, but are stopping short of making these pledges a reality.

From Sun’s report:

This spring, as fears of A.I.-induced job losses were becoming impossible to ignore, OpenAI started to share solutions. In April, the company released a white paper outlining an “Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age” that declares the necessity of ambitious New Deal-style policies to combat the concentration of wealth and power in firms like OpenAI. In Mr. Lehane’s telling, industrialization “really threw off that relationship between capital and labor” and facilitated the rise of “fascism and communism.”

Many of the ideas listed in OpenAI’s white paper are radically progressive: a 32-hour workweek, higher taxes on corporations and capital gains and a “public wealth fund” that provides all citizens an equity stake in A.I. companies. Others more clearly cohere with company interests, such as accelerating energy grid expansion and establishing a national “right to A.I.” that would give foundation models to schools and libraries.

Still, the document is vague on implementation mechanics and whether OpenAI will advocate the policies listed. In an emailed statement, an OpenAI spokesperson declined to provide examples of specific legislation the company supports, but said that it has talked to members of Congress and the Trump administration about their intent to contribute to a public wealth fund, among other ideas. — Silicon Valley is Preparing for a Permenant Underclass

(Here’s a gift link to Sun’s essay.)

OpenAI’s whitepaper is the corporate equivalent of Derek Thompson’s politics. Unless there is an actual movement forcing companies such as OpenAI to deliver on these promises, then the statements and whitepapers aren’t worth the gallons of water ChatGPT used to write them. Much like on the housing question, the Abundance Movement won’t be a helpful vehicle for delivering these gains because it is openly antagonistic to the labor movement required to force tech companies to share profits. As Abundance-pilled writer has stated, “Abundance will require fighting labor unions,” a sentiment shared by the many libertarian, conservative, and business interests who fund the Abundance Fest that Klein and Thompson were paid to speak at.

While the liberal Abundance authors are hesitant to admit Republican-aligned interests back their project, Barro has further expanded on this point, saying Abundance is a joint liberal-conservative project that goes beyond Klein and Thompson’s book. As expected, suppressing the labor movement necessary to make Derek Thompson’s proposed shortened workweek a reality will be an easily agreed-upon policy priority for the bipartisan neoliberal consensus that Barro celebrates.

“Yes, Abundance, the book, written by liberals Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, espouses a vision of abundance that is premised on liberal values, and primarily aims to influence intra-coalitional policy arguments among liberals and Democrats. But abundance, the concept, does not belong to Klein and Thompson (or anyone else). And because abundance, the policy project, aims to alleviate scarcities that matter to conservatives and liberals — like our insufficient production of housing and energy — it presents a great opportunity for conservatives and liberals to work together.” — Abundance Is a Bipartisan Project

Thompson and Klein suggest roads to nowhere because their liberal worldview leads them to misunderstand capital as a thing—a collection of tools, software, and infrastructure owned by very rich people. This misunderstanding prevents their Abundance ideas from addressing reality and solving the problems they correctly identify. A more helpful understanding of capital is the Marxist view, which sees capital as a series of relationships that are ever-expanding in pursuit of higher profits. Capitalists and non-capitalists can’t be evaluated as equally powerful forces, with their wishes sometimes benefiting and sometimes harming the public. By nature of being a capitalist, one owns the productive elements of society, giving them considerably more power over non-capitalists. And that power will always be used to increase and protect profits, no matter the cost.

Shareholders and oligarchs don’t just sit back and let their dividends be turned into extra days off or redistributed to workers. They fight back. Politically, economically, and sometimes, violently. This is why neither Abundance, the book, nor Abundance, the movement, can serve as an effective anti-Republican political program. As Trump’s second term devolves into all-out domestic oppression and continuous foreign war, anti-Republican politics needs a program that can energize Americans and defeat Trumpism electorally, while also changing the disastrous over-empowerment of capital that caused Trump’s political rise. That program needs to be based on the on-the-ground American reality, in which capitalist exploitation and social power are growing out of control. In Delaware, a judge recently ruled corporations can vote in elections, the latest and most troubling sign of America’s descent into naked oligarchy. Meanwhile, energy shocks driven by the Iran War are decreasing real wages. In April, wages increased only 3.6%, while U.S. annual inflation increased to 3.8%. While consumers are struggling, American oil company stocks are raking in cash hand over fist. Some oil stocks are up almost 45%. This is because American oil capitalists are reaping higher profits due to reduced supply, at the expense of American consumers. If Abundists want energy costs to remain low, they’ll need to advocate for price controls, something the oil lobby has a history of aggressively lobbying against. In other words, the path to low electricity bills runs through disempowering Exxon and Shell.

Despite what the Abundance authors claim, there is no equivalent to this level of power misuse from local unions or environmental groups. The foremost driver of the desecration of America’s democracy and the cause of economic stress is private capital, with the unsavory political elements capitalism creates coming in a distant second. Just as Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein admit that their Abundance view, which sees private business as equal to any other social force, is a liberal view, I admit that my analysis of capital as the dominant force in modern America is a Marxist view.

I doubt Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein will adopt Marxism any time soon. But ideological labels shouldn’t stop them from recognizing the limitations of liberal analysis on a world that, whether you want to admit it or not, is determined by the clashing interests between those who own America’s productive forces and those who don’t. This conclusion isn’t buried in the second version of Das Kapital. It’s right in front of the Abundance authors, who come so close yet remain so far from recognizing it in their recent conversation.

Until the Abundance Movement addresses the undeniable power of capital, it will remain limited to the liberal elite. Perhaps they don’t mind that. But as for the future of anti-Republican politics, that would be a disaster. Much like the Biden Administration, historians will interpret any short-lived Abundance political project that seizes power as a slight deviation from the Trump political era. It will inevitably not curb capital’s unparalleled power, and as a result, will fail in its ultimate goal of creating a more hospitable, dare I say, abundant society.

If you appreciated this essay, please click the ❤️ to help it rise in Substack’s algorithm. Don’t forget to subscribe so future articles are delivered to your inbox.

If you’re a returning JoeWrote reader, consider supporting my work with a premium subscription. For the cost of just one cup of coffee a month, you can help me keep creating content like this. Plus, you unlock everything JoeWrote has to offer.

Thanks in advance!

Subscribe now

In Solidarity — Joe

If you’re as inspired by Austin Ahlman as I am, please consider donating to his campaign here.

Joe: I’m here with Austin Ahlman. Austin Ahlman, how’s it going?

Austin Ahlman: I’m coming off the most poorly timed episode of bronchitis, perhaps in human history. So if I sound a little raspy, it’s not because I’m just playing it up to seem sexy. Unfortunately, this has been my life since about 7 PM on Thursday, 12 hours after a lot of really cool stuff. So not great.

Joe: So it sounds like you put out your campaign video, which got a lot of attention. I’m sure you got a lot of media requests, and then you immediately got sick, which prevented you from speaking eloquently. Am I understanding the timeline correctly?

Austin Ahlman: Pretty much. However, we have a lot of things in the works for this week. People were gracious enough to wait, and we did plenty of print work in the interim.

Joe: That’s the real power of print journalism right there.

I’d like to start by asking about what I mentioned: a lot of people became aware of your recently announced campaign through this incredibly powerful campaign launch video you just put out. And I just want to read a quote from it that I have here. “My dad got cancer, and my mom’s employer collapsed. The executives got paid, and the workers got screwed. She didn’t have the heart to tell us, even when the bank took the house. And when she took her own life, the eviction notice was in her pocket.“

That really stuck out to me. One: it’s an experience that many people can relate to. But mostly because you were willing to share such a personal story. Not only as part of your candidacy, but right out of the gate. Can you tell us specifically why you are running for Nebraska’s 1st congressional seat? And then also, what is it about your personal story that has helped you make this decision to run for Congress?

Austin Ahlman: When it comes to sharing the story, I went back and forth a lot. And as I worked with my team about a launch video, there was a lot of discussion over how much we wanted to share. And eventually, what the way it was put to me was that if you don’t share this stuff, nobody will. Because there is, especially in areas like mine, there’s so much shame that’s foisted on you for the struggle. And that’s part of the reason why my mom really had a hard time telling us about what was happening. We didn’t find out. Piecing together what had happened after the fact was really painful. And I think that a lot of people have that experience of having to piece together where things went wrong and why, and why they couldn’t tell you, and why people can’t express what’s happening. And so I think I was persuaded because it is important.

It is important for people to understand how much people are struggling, especially in places like mine, in communities like Norfolk, that have just had one hit after another after another. The pride that we have in carrying on is phenomenal, but it shouldn’t be this hard. And I think if people were willing and able to talk about it a little more, you could start to build the political momentum and community necessary to change it. And so that was the thinking.

And then, in general, why I’m running is exactly what you see. I am tired of seeing this amount of pain in my community. And the current representative just could not be more different from me. I grew up the son of meatpackers, first in my family to go to college. He grew up with a silver spoon. I have made my career doing my best to break up monopolies — particularly media and tech monopolies. He is the local media monopolist, right? Like, while we were going through all of this in the house, and this is all recent, I think most people can intuit that it’s fairly recent, everything that happened, but it was really just January that we lost my mom.

And while everything was happening and I was fighting the bank tooth and nail to get the house back, you had Mike Flood sitting in Congress, doing his best to thwart Donald Trump’s own bill that would stop big banks from owning single-family homes. And all of those things together just boiled over to me to the point that somebody has to do it. And right now, right here in this state, given that it’s a district that Osborn won, given that the Republican has so many vulnerabilities that have never been exploited by a real, credible challenger, given that the Democrat frankly doesn’t come close to being a credible challenger. I was like, damn it, let’s do it. Like somebody has to. And if you put your money where your mouth is, it’d better be me. So here we are.

Joe: Yeah, that’s amazing. It’s weirdly refreshing when people are willing to talk about politics in human terms, right? Because it’s very easy to say, Mike Flood went against this bill preventing BlackRock from owning single-family housing and stuff like that. And we forget about what that actually looks like when we think about those policies on the American people, which is families being evicted. And so I do think, at least from my perspective, it was really powerful to see somebody who is just saying, I’m coming from a place of experiencing the hardship of this broken political system rather than someone speaking about hypotheticals.

I’d like to ask you about what you touched on there: this is a very unique race, right? So you are running as an independent, not as an insurgent Democratic primary challenger. The Democratic primary is over. So you are one of 3 candidates in this race. There is the Democrat, the Republican incumbent, and then you, the independent candidate.

And you tell us a little bit about why you chose to run as an independent rather than try to win the Democratic primary. Yeah. And what do you think is going to be your biggest challenge in a three-way race, which is very different from a two-way race?

Austin Ahlman: The long and short of it is, I’m not a Democrat. I have not been. But when I first registered to vote as a wide-eyed 17-year-old, I registered as an independent. I’ve never had any strong identification with the Democratic Party. There have been a few times in my life when I have voted in Democratic primaries, mostly as an artifact of those who determine who gets to have a seat in many places where I’ve lived previously. But I wouldn’t run as a Democrat ever for any race because I’m not one. And, currently with the party in the shape that it is, I don’t see myself changing that philosophy anytime soon.

And so in Nebraska, independents have a different structure, a different window. So the primary phase, if you want to call it one, for an independent goes till August, when you can submit petitions to be on the ballot. And so I sized up the race, took one look at this Democrat who seemed likely to win for a little while, and thought, this guy is never gonna do it. He is absolutely never going to do it. He had enough money to buy the primary and some from unsavory interests, to say the least, but not nearly enough to actually run a competitive general election.

The place where he got the money is thoroughly corrupt. And then his background is not great. We can get into that a little bit later, but it’s not great. Not great morally, but then also just politically. Like, it is an albatross around the neck of a candidate out here to have the experience that he is touting as his reason to be the nominee.

Austin Ahlman: So all of those things together just, it was like, well, somebody has to do something because Mike Flood has to lose this year. He has to lose. This is a year you can beat him. People are very upset with Republican incumbents. He has voted and rubber-stamped the war. He has voted and rubber-stamped all the cuts to necessary programs that are really hitting hard out here. And so, you’ve got to do something. And so I did something, and here we are doing the something.

Joe: I do want to kind of stay on that one. Obviously, you’re not a Democrat, which makes a lot of sense. But also, you know, there is kind of an element of the Democratic Party that thinks that what we should be doing is running Democrats who are just more like Republicans in these red states, right? Kind of like the abundance-moderation mindset we hear from prominent liberal journalists. And I’d like to kind of hear like why, in your opinion, not even as a candidate, but as somebody who is from this community, like why you think that doesn’t work for putting aside all your stuff about not wanting to be associated with the Democrats, of like why you’re not wrecking a good chance of a Democrat winning.

And I, yeah, before I ask you, I want to share kind of like some of the stuff I read, which is the one, it was interesting to see this district has been represented by a Republican since the 1930s, with this lone exception of, I believe it was 1964, which was like LBJ’s huge blue wall, right? So like, this is a very Republican district. And then, I believe the Cook Political Report said it would take anemic GOP turnout and a very strong Democratic turnout for the Democrats to even have a chance. So that is why I think you're the best shot at bringing progressive politics to this red state.

But I’d like to hear from a kind of on-the-ground perspective of just a Nebraskan, like, Why is the Democratic brand failing to, you know, replace the Republicans who, as you have said, are doing nothing to help the people struggling? It’s depressing.

Austin Ahlman: Well, I think a lot of it is that the meaning of terms like centrist, moderate, progressive, they’re all filtered through like the D.C. bubble, like the D.C. media brain, which is incredibly, incredibly detached from real life, especially real life out here, right? And so what is the centrist view, as in like what does the median person actually think, is very, very different than the types of candidates that the Democratic machine churns out. They churn out the DC centrist view, which is like, we love the national security state, we should fund all these wars, absolutely moderate on everything, or not moderate, but trim down any of your ambitions for what we should do about the economy. Or the economic order. People love the power of elites. They just can’t get enough of the elites and their power.

Like, that kind of brand of politics, it’s not the center anywhere, but especially in the middle of the country out here, it is so unbelievably detached from reality that it drives you nuts, right? And so you were mentioning that this district has always been Republican, or has been for a long, long time. True, but it has also always been populist. Nebraska’s history is of— and again, this is different. The word— this word means a different thing than it means now, but the progressive Republicans, the populist Republicans, for decades and decades, their stronghold was districts like this one. And it is that, as both parties have become corporate, identity has become meaningless, and people here are adrift and persuadable. And that is why Osborn won this seat in 2024. And that was when he had to share a ballot with Kamala Harris, which is an impressive feat because I don’t think that many people around here are gung-ho about her, to be clear.

But if you are willing to go into a ballot box, click Donald Trump, then Mike Flood, and then Dan Osborn, it says you’re looking for something different. And if you don’t see that, what you’re going to do is you’re going to go with the devil that you know. And so I wouldn’t necessarily even say that what I’m doing resembles progressive politics, especially not if I’ve seen it. But it is populist politics. It is the politics embodied by the Republicans of the New Deal era, like George Norris, our most famous senator, who helped build the New Deal and did it by putting the culture war bullshit aside and looking at what people need economically and seeing what elites are standing in the way and being willing to actually name them and take them on.

Joe: I want to talk about the actual policies that you’re running on in a second, but it was so shocking to me when I was researching, you know, your opponents and the Democratic opponent. I’m going to pronounce his name wrong. Chris Bachmeier. It sounds like his leading endorsement on his website is from Foreign Policy for America. And if you look at it, like he’s, this is like the top one that he’s most proud of. And it seems like you turned the State Department into a political organization and then started endorsing people. So I’m not surprised to hear you say that that version of politics doesn’t work.

Austin Ahlman: So you say that about the State Department. What’s really funny is that the man has been funded, quite literally, by large donations from Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken, Ned Price, and so on. His donor list is basically a Rolodex of every discredited foreign policy leader. And it is just bizarre to think that one of the few issues that unites the base of the left, the base of the right, and independents is being fed up with the foreign policy of the last two decades. And now we have the avatar of the foreign policy of the last two decades being muscled into a winnable seat, and it’s just enough to make your, make your damn head explode, right? But that’s the thing, right? Just try the same thing over and over again.

Never admit any mistakes. Never admit that, you know, something different might actually work. Just muscle through and then call the new guy who’s gonna try something different a spoiler for spoiling a race that you were very obviously never going to win.

Joe: Yeah. I mean, it’s like they’ve been trying the same thing for a century at this point, right? And like, Oh, you got lucky once in the 1960s. And you know, it’s just baffling to me.

I do want to talk a little bit about, you know, the policies you’re running on and how you’re going to help everyday Nebraskans and Americans, you know, get by. And I’d really like to start by talking about an issue that I’m under-informed on, which is agriculture, right? So I was reading on your campaign website, and one of your policies is to champion family farms and ranches. Corporate agriculture consolidation is the slow death of rural America. We’ll crack down on big ag’s market manipulation and endless cost squeezes, making sure that people who feed this country can afford to feed themselves.

And so I’d like to, one, ask you about, you know, what are these dynamics that you’re seeing, you know, in affecting rural Nebraskan farms? And then I’d also kind of like to, you know, ask like, okay, like how does that, you know, help people who aren’t working on these farms as well? Because correct me if I’m wrong, I imagine that what is bad for small farmers is also bad for, you know, people in Lincoln, Nebraska, who don’t work on a farm, but like to eat food from farms. Yes.

Austin Ahlman: I think all of us do like to eat food from farms, right? No, the dynamic right now is that whether you are a farmer or a rancher, this is one of the hardest years you have ever had. A lot of it is just the growing pressure from big ag to consolidate. And then there’s also market manipulation among the middlemen, right? So then you have things like Tyson, the big 4 meatpackers that are just doing everything that they can to squeeze you. And then on top of that, you have the war in Iran, which is just skyrocketing fertilizer and fuel prices. And between all of those things, we’re probably on track to have the most family farms turned over or consolidated as a percentage of any year in recent memory. And it’s horrible.

It is horrible. It tears apart the identity of communities like this when a family that has been there for generations, that has been giving back to the community, that has been a stalwart of their hometown has to sell, right? It rips apart people’s feelings of place and self. And it is why so many people feel like their way of life is being taken away from them out here. And it’s because it is— it is being taken away from them.

And so one of the things we are really conscious of is revitalizing and actually enforcing some of the laws we have had on the books for a long time to address issues like this. So I mentioned in my video, I’m the son of meatpackers. I watched my parents, you know, endure horrors. Meatpacking is one of the hardest jobs in the world. My mother worked on the chuck line, where you cut specific pieces of fat off a chuck of beef. And she would come home, her hands stuck, because if you do that all day for days on end, you literally can’t move your fingers.

But it was one of the better jobs that exists in this sort of community in terms of benefits, in terms of wages. And Tyson took it all away at once. That plant closed in a matter of, I think, a month or two. And it was purely a price manipulation move. What they did when they closed the plant in my hometown they stripped it bare. They took all the machinery out, and you can’t easily sell this machinery, right? There’s no actual benefit to the producer of stripping all the machinery out.

And then they poured concrete down the drains, and then they set up a shell LLC with a restrictive covenant. And they made sure that nobody could ever buy this plant and run it as a meatpacking plant again. And so now, 20 years later, a quarter mile from my house, you can still see the plant. It is still sitting there completely inoperable, this monument to what rural America used to have. The things that used to sustain us.

Austin Ahlman: And the only change they’ve made is that, after they did the same goddamn thing in Lexington, Nebraska, last year, they sent somebody over to take down the signs from this plant that had been sitting there for 20 years in either December or January. That’s the only thing that’s changed on that property. And so we have laws on the books, like the Packers and Stockyards Act, that make price manipulation in agricultural markets illegal, and we literally do not enforce them. We just don’t enforce it. We have decided, since the Reagan and Clinton eras, that there’s no such thing as price fixing. These corporations can do whatever the hell they want. And we’re not going to be doing that anymore when I’m in Congress. I tell you that.

Yeah, that is— I mean, you know, talking about not only does that affect food prices and stuff like that, but I imagine, you know, hearing that story reminds me a lot of what I heard from autoworkers in Michigan in the Rust Belt who were just like, our entire town, my entire family has lived by working on this auto plant. And then it got sent away and, you know, our town died. So I can’t imagine, you know, how devastating that is for people.

Joe: And also, you know, you were talking about like there’s, you know, mentioning the Iran War, something that like the base of both parties don’t like. And I kind of think that there was almost like a Republican interest in Lina Khan. And, you know, business interests hated Lina Khan and would always call her a radical communist and stuff like that. But what she was actually doing was just saying we should enforce the antitrust and market manipulation laws that have been on the books for over a century. So I’m not surprised to hear that that’s, you know, an effective and much-needed political avenue.

Austin Ahlman: Yes. And not to say that we don’t need some new laws too. Things like the big tech companies, you need some new structures, right? The people who crafted these beautiful laws that do a lot of really good things when you actually enforce them, you know, they didn’t know that Google or Facebook would come up to exist and swallow our whole damn economy. So there’s a lot to be done, but you can get a lot of headway by just enforcing the laws on the books.

And what’s crazy is if you say that the post-Roosevelt laws should just actually be enforced again, people like Fox News are gonna swarm around you to call you a progressive or a crazy socialist. Meanwhile, JD Vance will secretly copy your homework but not actually submit it. It puts you in such a weird place, as far as the DC discourse goes, that makes it difficult to message some of this stuff to a national audience. But anybody out here, it just sounds like common damn sense.

Joe: Yeah, yeah. JD Vance will go on Fox News and call you a radical leftist and then leak to the New York Times that he actually, like, really likes your campaign. Right. I wanted to talk about immigration because, one, you know, it tends to be a more important issue in red states. They tend to prioritize immigration more. And I was really impressed by how you’re approaching the immigration issue. Reading from your campaign website here, secure the border and end corporate exploitation. It’s time massive corporations stop exploiting illegal immigrants in order to drive down wages for American workers. We’ll secure the border, send violent criminals back, and make sure those looking for a chance to be an American are given a fair shot at earning the privilege.

And what immediately stuck out to me is that you are talking about immigration as a labor issue, which— honestly, thank you so much for doing that, because I feel like that is what labor-minded people have been trying to do for so long. And immigration constantly gets wrapped up as a cultural issue. If you look at immigration and things like NAFTA, or how we didn’t really start asking workers for documentation until they started trying to unionize, right? It’s very clear that immigration policy is, at least in my opinion, an extension of labor policy.

And so I would like to hear your view on the ground in Nebraska. One, why are you approaching this as a labor issue as opposed to how Democrats and Republicans approach immigration as a cultural issue? And then also, you know, what is it about this that is different from like, you know, this is a very different statement from like a typical Republican statement, you know, what is it that you think that about this district that is willing to hear and willing to accept like, oh yeah, like this is a, a labor issue that affects all of us.

Austin Ahlman: I think of it as a labor issue, because it is one, especially out here, given what has happened to jobs and the economy in rural America. People do have a lot of resentment towards immigrants. Now, I’m not going to say that’s all correct, but there are ways in which people on the coasts and in large cities don’t understand how that resentment has been bred and who is responsible for it.

So again, going back to Tyson Meats, I want to say December. I was out in Dakota City, Nebraska, which is where Tyson has centralized all the jobs from the closed regional facilities. And I was speaking to a former line worker who now works as a Walmart greeter. And he was telling me about the working conditions at Tyson, and why he had to quit, even though he made twice as much money.

He was not that old. He was in his 50s, but he had to quit. And the reason was that Tyson has an incredibly well-tuned system of bringing refugees in, pretty much treating them like slaves, using that to lower working standards and conditions, and then driving out any worker that doesn’t— that would not stand for such a thing, right? And that leaves everybody in the equation worse off.

And I asked this man, I asked him, I said, well, do you ever, like, wonder if maybe Tyson is purposely pitting you against one another in a race to the bottom. And he said, you know, for a long time I really, really resented— and he particularly talked about the Somali community that has, you know, come into some of these working plants— resented them.

He’s like, but then I realized they have no power. They can be made to do anything. And so the fact that they will work overtime for no pay, that they will break their backs, that they will endure literal and, you know, metaphorical abuse at the hands of supervisors. How can I blame them for that? It is Tyson’s fault.

But so many people, though, have not had the time to process that. All they see is their factory closed, their town dying, and immigrants who are now in the new factory working those jobs. And they do feel like their way of life is being taken. And so you have to talk about it on the terms that people know are true.

Which is that there are forces, big corporations like Tyson, that are utilizing that resentment and actively feeding into it in order to, one, pad their bottom line, but two, also insulate themselves politically. Because if you can activate people around that, then they become the enemy, and nobody is going to pay attention to you and what you are doing, and they’re not going to be able to mobilize to take you on.

Joe: Yeah. Very well said. We have almost the same dynamic here in Colorado. To the north of me, up in Greeley, there was just a huge meatpacking strike at the plant. And you know, the organizers talked a lot about how the workers spoke over 50 different languages because this meatpacking plant was specifically designed to attract refugee populations. And I’m not a lawyer, but I believe all those visas are tied to employment. So people are much more likely to say, oh yeah, I’ll work for less or something like that, just so I can stay in the country. I think that’s like, I’ve heard Grant Platner say some stuff up in Maine around the same time, where, like, if you just kind of take the time to say like, yeah, you’re being ripped off along with the immigrants, like people will come around to that, you know? Yes. Because it is the truth.

Austin Ahlman: Yeah, absolutely.

Joe: Always, always good to have the benefit of the truth on your side. I do want to touch on a little bit about foreign policy, right? And so I know we were talking about Bachmeier, your Democratic opponent. In your interview with the Nebraska Examiner, where you kind of launched this campaign, I believe this interview came out the same day as your announcement video. Right as you got sick, you know, you were talking a lot about his time at the State Department, and you specifically mentioned, you know, his work on Yemen and then also the Iran deal. And I’d like to hear just, you know, from your view, like, why are those two things where you, I believe you also said Israel was a reason that he was running as well. What is it about, you know, Israel, Yemen? Iran, that, you know, is relevant to the people of Nebraska?

Austin Ahlman: Well, people here are sick and tired of paying for foreign wars that they can’t explain why we’re fighting them, or even worse, why somebody else is fighting them, and still we’re paying for them. It doesn’t make sense to anybody around here. It never has. It has always been deeply, deeply unpopular, and there’s starting to be just a tiny bit of understanding of that fact.

But I say that because it is so frustrating to see somebody who has sat in the State Department for 20 years in various positions, rubber-stamping 20 years of failed bipartisan policy. I’m talking about going all the way back to Bush, who has been in the position of power, greenlighting 20 years of policy that people around here just loathe. They absolutely loathe it, and it does not matter their party identification. It does not matter their background, their income. Nobody here can understand why we’re doing it.

You look at my side of town here in Norfolk, the side that the meatpacking plant was closed on, which still looks like a war zone 20 years later, and try to explain to somebody that’s driving through there why we’re dropping million-dollar-a-piece bombs on some country they can’t find on a map. It doesn’t go very well. So I think that each of those policies that you mentioned, Yemen, Iran, Israel, is a piece of it, but it is the overarching feeling more than anything of being screwed, of being exploited, of the fact that the only people that are struggling that we seem to care about are abroad, and we’re not helping them. We’re just bombing them into more struggle for some reason.

It is not necessarily because people around here have deeply held views about— I promise you they don’t when it comes to Israel and Gaza and the contours of that conflict. They don’t. They just know that we’re paying for it for some damn reason, and they don’t understand why. And I’m not going to try to explain to them because I don’t think we should be either. And to put a nominee out there who will try to explain why we’ve been doing it, up against a representative incumbent who keeps voting for it. It is so naive when it is one of the biggest wedge issues of our time, and it needs to be activated. And unfortunately, we just refuse to nominate candidates on any party line that is willing to activate it.

Joe: Yeah, you know, I’ll go one step further. It sounds like Chris Bachmeier was not only supporting these policies but was actually instrumental in them, right? Like, you talk a little bit about how he flip-flopped on the Iran deal, which, you know, I have many criticisms of the Obama administration’s foreign policy.

I do think the Iran deal was like kind of the crown jewel of his of at least his second term, you know. And I think losing that is one of the reasons we’re back at war, and all this is going on. But yeah, it seems like it’s like, okay, do you want the guy who’s voting for it or do you want the guy who created all of it and is now like pinky promising that he’s really— I guess he’s not even apologizing for it. He’s just saying, We need it. Yeah.

Austin Ahlman: So, yeah, no. So, I mean, yes, I have been willing to give him the narrow bit of credit for playing a serious role in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal under Obama, which I think was good. Diplomacy is good. Anytime that we are not wasting our blood and treasure on places thousands and thousands of miles away, but instead of just having conversations and figuring it out, that’s great.

Then Trump 1.0 comes in. And he turns around and is immediately signing off on talking points, new sanctions, all these things that ripped apart the deal. And then under Biden, obviously, there was just a total failure, total, total failure to put that deal back together. And then, as far as I could tell, he was back on board with full maximum pressure with Iran until he took a doge buyout in May.

And so what this says to me is that this is not somebody who has sincere or strong beliefs about much of anything. It is somebody who is a rubber stamp, which means that when you have another rubber stamp who’s already sitting in Congress, you’re not going to get anything meaningfully different. And I don’t think anybody out here expects to. And that’s why it’s impossible for the guy to win.

And in fact, when we did our polling on this, we pretty much copied and pasted from his website. And when you copy and paste from his website, you get his own description of his own work over the last 20 years. And then you do the same thing with Flood. The starting head-to-head between the two, his own description of his own career, makes him drop like 6 or 7 points because people hear that and they’re like, what the hell? You want me to— a State Department official who’s been doing— you’re telling me Middle East policy? And you said he’s been doing it since Bush? Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah.

Joe: That is, it’s so wild, man. Like, just the hubris of like, they must not— I wonder if they’re actually testing that stuff or if they’re just like testing it and being like, we don’t care, you know, these red state voters, they— what they really want is you know, the Foggy Bottom policy, like brought to Lincoln, which is so crazy.

Austin Ahlman: Elite impunity is a principle that must be defended at all costs.

Joe: You know, Democrat and Republican members of the elite class, as they bicker with each other. But I think as we’ve seen with a lot of the Epstein stuff and how Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are protecting each other in the open, you know, they have unwavering class solidarity. And I think it’s a long time since the rest of us started to, yes, take note of that.

Joe: I do want to talk about affordability, right? Because that was, you know, a big topic of your campaign launch and, you know, just it’s one of your leading issues, which I think is awesome.

And I’d like to ask about something that I’m uneducated on, which you mentioned a little bit further earlier, which is how the Iran war, you know, is driving up food prices for farmers? And by extension, I assume, you know, the rest of the economies that are centered on that, right?

I think you mentioned fertilizer prices are going through the roof, and correct me if I’m wrong, but if I remember correctly, there’s, I believe, a lot of, maybe it was nitrogen, that comes from that area of the world. And like a lot of people have been saying, like, yeah, gas prices are going up, but our agricultural industry is about to be hit by a ticking time bomb, where even if we reversed everything right now, it would still take us years to get back to.

So I’d love to hear, like, you know, bringing that off from the Iran War, like how is that making life just so much harder for the people you’re trying to represent?

Austin Ahlman: Well, so people, you know, everybody understands that a bunch of oil comes through the Strait of Hormuz, right? But it is not just that. It is, as you said, nitrogen-based fertilizers. A huge share of the world’s supply is shipped through there, and it has been ground to a halt just the same.

And it is that on top of fuel prices, right? It’s like you have to use a lot of fuel just in this part of the country generally, because everybody has to, you know, drive. But specifically, farmers have to use a lot of fuel and a lot less fertilizer, and both of those input costs, which they have to, they have to try to map or plot out well in advance, right? When you are planning your year’s harvest, you have to make many of these projections way in advance.

And the thing that is so devastating is when you have big, sudden, explosive things like this that blow your budget for one part of your input calculation, it will be years and years and years and years before you catch up. And so you have to then build into future projections the costs of paying back and recouping all the extra costs from the prior-year loss. And so we can’t— that, I mean, in general, like, a lot of that is unfortunately that, that ship has sailed. A lot of that cake is now baked. We will just have higher food prices for several years that we did not need to have because of this pointless, stupid war.

And what we’re going to do, I’m sure, is the same thing that we’re doing with beef now, where we’re importing this horrific, like, beef supply from Argentina in order to give another dumb leader a favor. We’re going to relax our import restrictions and further undercut the farmers that we keep screwing over. It is going to keep the cycle of resentment going and keep tearing apart rural communities.

And honestly, I wish— I wish that you could say if we ended the war tomorrow that you could— that you could seriously do something about that. But you can’t. That ship has now sailed largely. And it is a damn shame. The only thing that we can do now is put relief packages in place, try to offset some of those extraordinary costs that should have never been shouldered by those farmers and, and again, you know, end it, end the war so that next year their projections actually pan out instead of being tossed aside by somebody in the Oval Office who just doesn’t seem to care at all about real people’s experiences and what happens to them when we start shooting missiles willy-nilly everywhere.

Joe: Yeah. I— one thing you mentioned was the Argentine credit swaps, beef deals, and similar things. And I remember this was actually when I started to learn a little bit more about how this stuff just ruins rural communities. Like, a bunch of— I believe it was farmers in Alabama, maybe, who were, you know, self-described Trump voters who, it was really sad, were like describing how, you know, this was going to undercut their family business, that they had gone into so much debt to, you know, make their profit for the season, which they all lived on.

And it was like a really revealing, really saddening story that all these people were telling because I was unaware that, you know, these farms are going into huge debt and, you know, if something as simple as soybean production falls, like there goes all their money for the next 3 years and stuff like that, which is, you know, it’s really easy just to be like, oh, soybeans are 1 cent more expensive. But then you actually look at how very similar it is to how you brought your personal experience into, yeah, this campaign, like how that actually impacts people.

Austin Ahlman: Yeah. I mean, and it is from all sides. Farmers and ranchers are just getting it from all sides. During the pandemic, a lot of farmers really had to cull their herds, right? Like, we got to a place where we have some— right now we have some of the lowest cattle herd— supply isn’t the right word, but, you know, probably by a hedge, some of the lowest herds in a long, long, long, long time.

And theoretically, that should be a good thing for the cattle ranchers. They now have some market power. Hopefully, they can get some better prices and have a few good years of windfalls. But instead, we are undercutting that. We are now bringing in all this beef from Argentina, destroying those cattle ranchers and farmers’ ability to actually recoup and rebuild their enterprises. And it’s going to leave them long-term just totally insolvent.

And what happens then, of course, is consolidation, right? Like those ranches, they will get sold. They will be one big player that owns them all. And then, because it is now a big corporation, of course, they’ll be treated favorably in future considerations. And it is, it’s just killing people from all sides.

So I mean, there are a lot of things that we need to do about it. One, we just need to stop favoring other belligerent world leaders who can’t seem to manage their economies by letting them flood our market with their imported beef products. But then there are a lot of things just on our side that we need to be doing, right? Like I was saying earlier, enforcing the Packers and Stockyards Act, stopping price manipulation at the middleman level, which is so damn consolidated.

We do need standards for country-of-origin labeling. I think most Americans, when they walk into a supermarket, would be quite happy if they could just tell automatically what steaks that they were buying, what burger they were buying, were born, raised, slaughtered, and processed in this country instead of all these different pieces. But it’s going to— it’s getting scary.

We’re going to get to the point soon: if we don’t open our eyes, we’ll have a few mega meatpacking facilities that largely process cattle from other countries, and our domestic supply will no longer exist. And the people who have kept that domestic supply going for centuries will have nothing left.

Joe: Really scary. I think that’s the right word. I do want to kind of end by asking you about housing. I will say we’ve got a few questions in the chat that I’ll get to at the end. So if anybody has any other questions, throw them in. What I was really interested in was your housing policy, you know, and I think you even said earlier here with us that we need to stop Wall Street, private investors, stuff like that from owning single-family homes. And there has been, going back to, you know, how out of touch Washington, DC, is with districts like yours, there has been a, what I would consider, a concerted push over the last couple of years to say, oh no, it’s not BlackRock buying your homes and stuff like that.

That’s the problem. Overregulation, stuff like that. And I’m not saying that, you know, there isn’t overregulation, but I am hesitant about anybody who tries to paint with a broad brush on housing because I came from Boston, and the reason why Boston is in a terrible housing crisis is that there’s literally nowhere to build, right? And then when people try to apply that lesson to a state like Colorado, where there are tons of areas to build, I feel like it just doesn’t really fit. So I’d like to hear, you know, what some of the housing-related issues are that are driving up rents and home prices in your district? And what are some of the ways that you think as a congressperson you would be best to, you know, combat that and protect people and keep them in their homes, and honestly avoid the terrible foreclosures that, you know, you, one of the reasons you’re running for Congress.

Austin Ahlman: Yeah. So, to zoom out, largely the problem here is the structure of the economy. Consolidation is happening at the corporate level, but that also means it starts at the community level. So a town like Norfolk, which is where I am right now, where I was born and raised, is the central hub of a small, you know, broader community.

We have towns like Madison and Hader, and other things like that, all around. And what happens more and more is that, as consolidation occurs in economics, it also occurs at the community level. So more and more, as the real industry gets ripped out of these communities, everybody centralizes into the one micropolitan hub, as it’s called, if you were gonna use the census terms for it, right? And then costs are driven through the roof, while wages don’t come anywhere close to matching them.

So after the Tyson plant here closed, you saw this huge flattening of the middle class in this economy. There was an upper class that still owned all the new franchises. Right? But then the lower class just ballooned. And then you have housing shortages because there’s still not really enough building going on, but that is because it’s not really profitable enough. And it’s not— it has very, very little to do with regulation, right? It’s not profitable enough because very few people are earning wages high enough to buy a new house out in these parts anymore. And so a lot of it is just structural in the economy.

Beyond that, there, there, there’s just not nearly enough investment in affordable housing at any layer of our economy, right? Things like trailer parks, which are looked down upon, are actually one of the key ways people get ahead out here. I know that because I have lived in one. And without having that type of housing available, you don’t have the ladder upwards towards success.

And there’s a lot of controversy here because just a couple of months ago, there was this, there was this development that was slated, pitched as it was going to be affordable housing. And then you turned around, and when it finally got built, it was, I think, one floor of affordable housing and the rest were like luxury condos. And people talk about that as in like, oh, well, that just happens all the time. No big deal. Well, of course, it happens all the time because we’re not actually investing in affordable housing.

And then, very little of it has to do with land-use regulations. We have lax land-use regulations compared to just about anywhere in the country. There are all kinds of places to build. But our economic structure is built around making sure there is no ladder up for the lower class, that they stay in their place, that they work their service job, that they pay for their overpriced apartment, and that is the only life they’re ever going to have.

And then now even the homes that are left are being bought up by Wall Street. It is happening, and people deny it. They deny it right up until you try to ban it. And then they say that it’s essential for the future of the damn housing market, right? And then, Mike Flood, who again is the key person standing in the way of the bill that Trump and Elizabeth Warren worked on in the Senate, which actually meaningfully restricts this, says he’s doing it on behalf of the build-to-rent sector. Are you familiar with the build-to-rent sector?

Joe: I’m not. And I feel like it’s about to be just some draconian nightmare you’re going to tell me about.

Austin Ahlman: So the build-to-rent sector, which is the most, the worst people that you know with the globe, you know, little emojis and all that shit. They will tell you it’s just, oh, well, one of the few places where we’re building new housing. And that is because, after the Great Recession, Wall Street realized, oh, we have an opening to turn houses into an asset class. And what if neighborhoods, instead of being these organic things that pop up as people sort themselves out and try new frontiers, what if we got to control when, how, and why they were built, right?

And so now you see, and not here, right? Again, this is not happening in my district. There’s not enough. Economic mobility for people renting entire subdivisions of new homes. But the reason he is allegedly holding up the bill is on behalf of this enterprise, which is quite literally Wall Street centrally planning the development of new homes and making sure they can never actually be owned by families.

It is blocks and blocks and blocks of identical houses designed by some damn boardroom in New York meant to keep the population there captive forever. And we call that a market. And it is, it’s insane. It is absolutely insane.

And I, I just cannot believe that a guy like Mike Flood cares so deeply about Wall Street’s ability to centrally plan new communities in Phoenix, Arizona, that he feels the need to stand in the way of Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren, shockingly enough, teaming up to try to get something done about Wall Street’s entries into the housing market.

Joe: Man, that stuff is so crazy because every, like, I’ve been trying to listen to different people who are familiar with housing in each different section of the country, right? Like, I hear a lot from people in LA, and they tell me the problems are different from those in Houston. But one of them is that they all kind of say, like, yeah, private equity and stuff like this should not really be involved in housing. It seems to be unanimous, except for, like you said, the people who will deny it until you try and ban it, and then they’re like, actually, this is really good. You know? Yeah. So crazy.

I also really appreciate you talking about housing as an issue driven by wages and stuff like that, because people will say, like, oh, we need to cut regulation. It’s supply and demand. And a big part of that factor is whether or not people have enough money to live in the apartments that you’re building. And I feel like that gets really brushed aside all the time.

Austin Ahlman: Yeah.

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. The big question in the chat is, people want to know about your relationship with Dan Osborne. Have you talked to Dan? Are you guys, you know, in touch? And I guess like, not even outside that, but, you know, I, correct me if I’m wrong, I assume his independent bids were a reason why you kind of were like, I think I can make this work. So I’d love to hear, you know, what your relationship is with Nebraska’s most famous independent?

Austin Ahlman: I have a lot of respect for Dan Osborn. He has blazed the trail for an independent to run in a seat like this and be taken seriously. Right. I have spoken with Osborn’s team and him in the past. Right now, we are each running our own races. Ideally, you know, I would love to, at some point, become simpatico and jibe. But right now he is focused on a, frankly, a more important race, taking out Pete Ricketts. I’m still here proving my viability. I’ve been in the race for all of 5 days. I think it would be a little crazy for him to have already endorsed me.

Joe: It would be cool.

Austin Ahlman: I’m not saying that he shouldn’t. So Dan Osborne, if you’re listening, I would happily, after much pondering, accept your endorsement. And of course, offer mine back. But that’s a conversation that’ll have to develop. I think a lot of it will come down to proving viability, seeing where the Democrat ends up in the race, seeing how Flood handles this all, and then seeing what the pathway is. Because I think all those things are there, those pieces are in place, but an operation like that that has already been through the wringer is laser-focused on their race the same way that I’m laser-focused on my own right now. Yeah.

Joe: Awesome. Austin, you know, how can people support your campaign? I’m pretty psyched about it. Just, you know, when I shared a lot of your stuff, I got huge levels of engagement from, you know, take everything with a grain of salt, but people saying like, never voted for a Democrat in my life, like would absolutely vote for this guy and stuff like that. So how can people, whether they’re in Nebraska or outside Nebraska, you know, support you and help you get elected?

Austin Ahlman: Share our stuff. And pitch in. It is incredibly difficult to run a campaign like this, frankly, without small donors, because you’re not going to get any of the big donors. We, one, we wouldn’t take most of them anyway. We’re not taking any corporate PAC money. We have blacklisted every lobbyist and said, “ Do not donate to us, which is frankly where a lot of the candidates that say that they’re not taking corporate PAC money get a lot of their money. We’re not doing any of that.

We were incredibly fortunate to have a launch that just popped off, and we are in a much better position than I think any independent House campaign has probably been in decades. But we can’t rest on our laurels. Seizing on that momentum requires significant investment from many people. And the go-to line that my campaign people tell me I gotta keep saying, which is absolutely true, is that if you want to send one of us to Congress, it’s going to take all of us.

And so chip in, keep sharing our message, keep helping us get out there, keep helping us defy the odds, because it is crazy that we got this much attention and support out of the gate. And we’re doing everything we can to capitalize on it, including—we already have yard signs and all kinds of cool printed materials, things an independent campaign usually doesn’t have for months. We have gotten out of the gate because of the outpouring of support.

But to keep it going and to keep up with two candidates that are just absolutely bought by elites, we need people’s continued buy-in. So anything you can do to help, pitch it in, and know that we’ll appreciate it, and we’ll spend every dollar on local vendors here in the state, just like we did with the launch video and the signs, local union printers. The bank account is even at a local bank, Elkhorn Valley Bank. All of our values are being lived, and we are doing our best to honor every dollar. So know that if you decide to be a part of this movement, it will not be taken for granted on any level.

Joe: Awesome. Thank you so much. I’ll put all of that information in the episode description. And then, yeah, Austin, thank you for your time. Incredibly grateful to get to talk to you. Good luck. I’m pulling for you. Good luck with your worst time illness in human history, which is— I almost wanna laugh cuz it’s just so, so poor timing. Yeah.

Austin Ahlman: My, my thinking is everything else went so fortuitously about the launch that, of course, there had to be something. Like, it would be ridiculous if just every single thing weren’t right. And so I’m taking it with a grain of salt, rolling with it, and I think it’s gonna be fine. We’ve got lots of things lined up, and it was a pleasure that you were one of those things. Thank you, Joe.

Joe: Of course. I’ll talk to you soon. Take care.

If you appreciated this essay, please click the ❤️ to help it rise in Substack’s algorithm. Don’t forget to subscribe so future articles are delivered to your inbox.

Typically, this is where I ask returning readers to support my work with a paid subscription. Instead, I’ll ask you to support Austin’s campaign. Candidates like him are how we break duopoly control and return politics to focusing on everyday people. Not just in Nebraska, but across the United States. Thanks!

Support Austin

In Solidarity — Joe

A former progressive journalist, Ahlman is attempting what many leftists have suggested as the path to red-state political power. By ditching the Democratic brand, traditionally Republican voters will be more open to his ideas on ending Citizens United, breaking up the military-industrial complex, and ending arms deals for dictators. This gives Austin Ahlman a leg up over Democrats in Nebraska’s 1st congressional district, which has been dominated by Republicans since the New Deal. Recent polling shows that once Nebraskan voters learn about Ahlman, they prefer him over both the establishment candidates.

While Ahlman’s potential looks promising, his campaign won’t be easy. The duopoly isn’t going down without a fight. Which is why I wanted to talk to Austin and learn how he plans to take on the political establishments and emerge victorious.

Join Austin Ahlman and me on Substack Live on Wednesday, May 20th at 2:00 p.m. MST. We’ll discuss his insurgent campaign, his moving personal story, and how truly independent politicians can avoid party politics and focus on uplifting the working class.

Click the button below to RSVP. Or, subscribe to receive an email when the video starts.

Join The Conversation

See you soon!

In Solidarity — Joe

This becomes clear when we look at Americans’ falling trust in media institutions. Americans had the most trust in the mass media in 1976, following principled, critical coverage of Watergate and the Vietnam War. But then the media grew closer to the political establishment, adversarial coverage decreased, and trust collapsed. This is why we see large drops in public trust in the media in 2003, 2018, and 2023.

Independent media has been a massive net-positive for America. However, just like mainstream media, independent media is not immune to biases and conflicts of interest. Just because an outlet or spokesperson is detached from, and even hostile to, the establishment forces that corrupted mainstream media, does not mean their interests align with those of progressive political movements seeking to end the capitalist exploitation and American imperialism that the mainstream media protects.

Recognizing that the goals of independent left-wing media differ from those of effective political action is necessary to navigate the tricky, perilous path to a better world. It is crucial to understand when the motivations of online talking heads align with serious political activity and when they are counterproductive to it. (We should also note that these tendencies are not mutually exclusive.) A clear example of this counterproductivity can be seen in the recent push from some left-wing media figures to claim former MAGA congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is more progressive than Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This is a ludicrous critique in its own right. But most maddening is the claim that the Christian Nationalist is a more principled critic of American imperialism, or that she is a greater friend to Palestine. Such claims are laughable and clearly motivated by these outlets’ personal enrichment and grievances.

Pursuit of a Left-Right Audience

The episode started after Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she didn’t trust Marjorie Taylor Greene on “the issue of what is good for Gazans and Israelis. I don’t think it benefits our movement to align with white nationalists.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s distrust of Greene is well-warranted. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a lifelong Zionist who voted to sanction the International Criminal Court for indicting Benjamin Netanyahu and condemned anti-genocide college protestors. After Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian in Congress, supported a Capitol protest demanding that the Biden Administration enact a ceasefire weeks after October 7th, Greene introduced legislation to censor Tlaib, claiming she was “taking orders from Hamas and Hezbollah.” If you rank Marjorie Taylor Greene’s voting record, she’s voted with the Palestinian cause 29% of the time. That’s far lower than even the most Zionist Democrats, such as Nancy Pelosi, who scores an abysmal 34%.

It’s true Greene has lightly criticized Israel recently. But this is blatant opportunism rather than a principled commitment to human rights or anti-imperialism. As one of the most popular Republican politicians, Greene wanted to leave the House and run for the Senate or Georgia Governor. Not wanting to lose a winnable election in a purple state, Donald Trump discouraged Greene’s ambitions by commissioning a poll in May of 2025 from his long-time pollster, showing that she’d lose in a landslide. With her political ascension blocked and her House seat at risk, Greene started soft-launching her Trump-critical media career. We should note that Marjorie Taylor Greene only accused Israel of genocide and voted to release the full Epstein Files after Trump stopped her from climbing the career ladder. Seeking to join Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes in the White Nationalist media space, Marjorie Taylor Greene surrendered her power and quit Congress, timing her resignation just long enough to receive her taxpayer-funded lifelong pension. Not a bad exit strategy on top of the $25 million Greene made from insider trading and selling MAGA merchandise.

While Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s distrust of the opportunistic fascist is well-substantiated, her comment angered many left-aligned podcasters.

Cenk Uygur, the host of The Young Turks, seized on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s statement to accuse her of “rejecting Marjorie Taylor Greene’s help.” Valorizing himself and his co-host Ana Kasparian for “taking a chance” (by which he means they said things on their podcast), accused AOC of turning her back on a growing anti-war, Israel-critical “movement.”

Cenk provides no evidence for this “growing anti-war movement.” He doesn’t point to a tangible display of this unified left-right coalition working to stop the genocide of Palestine, the Iran War, or any of the other American crimes he claims Marjorie Taylor Greene now opposes. The Young Turks founder doesn’t name any rallies, political demonstrations, or candidates to show how this united front is decreasing the American empire’s bloodshed. Instead, Cenk lists some podcasters who went from MAGA die-hards to measely mouthed criticism of Trump within the last fifteen minutes: former Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly; comedians Tim Dillon, Dave Smith, and Theo Von; and Shawn Ryan, a proud former CIA contractor.1

This is not a political coalition. This is a list of media figures that Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian can use to cross-promote their podcast. When The Young Turks implore leftists to unquestioningly accept far-rightists into the “movement,” they’re not talking about a political movement as you and I understand it. Uygur and Kasparian aren’t interested in building a multi-tendency political coalition that cohesively engages to end American militarism through every available channel, from street-level protests to supporting the furthest-left candidate in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary. No, when Uygur and Kasparian talk about “building a coalition” with Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene, they are talking about inviting those figures onto their podcast to convert the disaffected young Republicans into paying subscribers. This is a calculated business strategy to profit from the current turbulent, shifting media landscape.

While Trump still has high approval ratings with Republicans, the largest GOP dissatisfaction has come from younger conservatives. Among Republicans aged 18 to 29, fewer than half support the war in Iran. The real age division in the GOP is over Israel. 57% of Republicans under 50 have an unfavorable view of the Zionist State, while only 24% of those over 50 view it negatively.

Policy is driving young conservatives away from Trump, but their distrust of the media is why The Young Turks and other left-coded media are bending over backward to roll out the red carpet for them. Republicans of all ages hold low trust in the mass media. But older Republicans are more likely to watch Fox News or Newsmax, while younger Republicans tune in to podcasts and YouTube, which is why Trump’s 2024 electoral strategy smartly prioritized podcast appearances. This is why independent, left-leaning media is whitewashing far-rightists like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson. They are the figureheads for an emerging audience of young, podcast-watching rightists who don’t like Israel, the exact audience The Young Turks and other anti-establishment voices are trying to convert to Patreon subscribers. Some might find my accusations against TYT to be mere allegations. I feel confident making them because this is the second time Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uyghur have tried to build this red-brown podcast audience.

Veteran JoeWrote readers will recall my essay on ’s rightward pivot. After years of criticizing her former colleague, Dave Rubin, for “leaving the left” and chasing conservative cash, Kasparian, quite shamefully, followed Rubin’s footsteps and attempted to replicate his sell-out success. This was one of many cash grab attempts by The Young Turks leadership, who previously busted their workers’ union and entered into sponsorships with the Polymarket betting site.

However, Kasparian’s sell-out strategy failed. She couldn’t bring herself to ‘Pull A Full Rubin’ and become a lickspittle for Trump, nor was she skilled enough a commentator to build a left-right alliance (often called a “red-brown alliance”). After the Young Turks contributor criticized the network’s MAGA turn, Kasparian and Uyghur fired her. In January of 2026, Kasparian finally apologized for supporting Trump by admitting she was “a fucking idiot” for denying he was a fascist, saying she “felt guilty every day” for supporting him. Of course, the veteran commentator attempted to excuse herself by claiming she felt for Trump’s lies, as if she were an impressionable swing state voter who started paying attention to Trump a week before the election. She is not. As a veteran political commentator with fully working eyes and ears, Ana Kasparian knew full well that Trump is a fascist and a war monger. That conclusion was undeniable because he was already the President of the United States.

In his first term, Donald Trump assassinated Iranian general Qassem Soleimani while he was traveling on a diplomatic passport to meet with the Iraqi leader of the anti-ISIS Popular Mobilization Forces, who was also killed in the strike. Trump also unleashed America’s brutal special forces on the global south, setting a record by deploying special operators to 75% of the globe. First-term-Trump was the most anti-Palestinian President to date. Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, closed the Palestinian Liberation Organization mission in D.C., and directed the State Department to unrecognize the Palestinian Territories. His first term ended with a violent coup attempt in which his supporters came dangerously close to raping progressive politicians to death on Instagram Live. There is no world in which an honest actor, whose job it is to analyze politics, can look at Donald Trump’s first term record and justify supporting him from an anti-fascist or anti-war position. Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur weren’t duped by Trump — they tried to make money by duping their audience for Trump. They got caught, and less than five months after publicly apologizing for their scheme, they’re attempting to do it again by lionizing Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson.

However, The Young Turks can’t give full-throated support to fascists of the blue. If they started adoring rightists like Tucker Carlson or Marjorie Taylor Greene uncritically, the remaining fragments of their left-leaning audience would rightfully revolt. So, TYT and other opportunistic media voices need to first convince their existing audience that, despite all evidence to the contrary, these far rightists can be politically useful to the anti-imperialist left. As Cenk put it, he’s trying to whitewash these figures as part of a movement to “stand up to Israel, fight against the war, and reclaim American sovereignty.” This logic is as hollow as it is cynical.

Red-Brown Alliances Don’t Work

Independent media might be able to build a paying subscriber base by attracting the disaffected conservatives who listen to Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Megyn Kelly. But there’s no evidence this group has any interest in engaging in the mass politics needed to actually end wars or “stand up to Israel.” For Cenk Uygur “anti-war movement” to have any effect outside the limited world of Substack and Twitter, it will need to translate into effective political action. That means electing the most Israel-critical politicians possible, while engaging in protests, strikes, boycotts, and every other extra-political activity necessary to build pressure for anti-war votes and legislation.

Now, are any of the prominent Leftist Podcasters who are clamoring for this red-brown alliance willing to say with confidence that Tucker Carlson’s audience is going to vote for Ro Khana in 2028? Or Chris Van Hollen? Or any other Democrat who pledges to withhold arms sales from Israel? Or, are they willing to climb out on a limb and assure the people who have been opposing American imperialism for decades that Marjorie Taylor Greene’s fans will soon be joining the anti-genocide, anti-war protests across the country? Is Meghyn Kelly urging her audience to phonebank for any of the dozens of anti-genocide candidates currently running insurgent campaigns in Democratic primaries? Will they vouch for these ultra-rightists and promise these Republicans who learned bombing children is bad sometime between 2024 and 2026 will put aside their conservative beliefs to be effective partners in a multi-racial, diverse coalition building momentum for a full arms embargo on Israel? Of course not. Kelly, Carlson, and Greene are podcasting and posting to attract a very specific Christian Nationalist audience that hates Israel as much as it hates immigrants and Black people. They’re going after the Nick Feuntes audience, just like The Heritage Foundation attempted to. This is why Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Meghyn Kelly all began their Trump-critical pivots by claiming demons and witchcraft are real. This is a Batman signal to the far right, indicating they’re aligned with the young Christian Nationalists who don’t think Donald Trump is far right enough.

To reiterate, I’m not saying progressives or leftists should not form coalitions with conservatives or Republicans. Politics requires ever-shifting tactics to defeat opponents and achieve power. But the disaffected Christian Nationalists Tucker Carlson and Meghyn Kelly are speaking for are not interested in joining the existing anti-war coalition, because it opposes ICE’s oppression of immigrants as much as it opposes the IOF’s oppression of Palestinians. Unlike this hypothetical red-brown coalition, the truth is, there is a growing anti-war, Israel-critical coalition that has a real shot at seizing political power and decreasing the bloody footprint of the American empire. Led by the leftists who have earned credibility by advocating and voting for Palestine over the better part of the last decade, this coalition comprises liberals, independents, and even a handful of Never Trump Republicans who recognize the modern American right is actively hostile to multicultural democracy, at home and abroad. If these commentators were seriously interested in ending the genocide of Gaza, they would be doing everything in their power to support the actual anti-war coalition by supporting candidates like Abdul El-Sayed and Chris Rabb, who are facing vilely racist attacks from their Zionist opponents. There would also be an effort to reach Israel-critical independent and liberal Americans and educate them on the need for principled anti-Zionism, steering them away from the establishment line that “Netanyahu needs to go.” Instead of doing this, they’re creating an imaginary anti-war coalition by riding the coattails of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s new media career, which aims to monetize a small but profitable audience. Even though young Republicans are Israel-critical, the largest groups of Israel critics are still Democratic voters and Independents. Republicans overwhelmingly support Israel, 70% to 13%. However, independents and Democrats are less likely to listen to podcasts, making it difficult for The Young Turks to convert them into paying listeners. This is why these ostensibly left voices are not arguing that their new rightist listeners should expand their critiques of Israel into a principled criticism of the overly militarized, overly policed United States, and join the existing progressive anti-war movement. After all, the participants of that movement are unlikely to start paying Cenk and Ana for discombobulated audio shit posting.

Instead of pulling a right-wing audience left, these commentators are moving right and attempting to sanitize the more racist elements of the conservative political project. They’re not attempting to pull rightist elements into the left-led anti-war coalition. They’re attempting to excuse the racism held by their right-wing listeners so they can ensure the subscriber dollars keep flowing. Here’s Ana Kasparian, fresh off her apology for supporting Trump, ‘jUsT aSkInG qUeStIoNs’ if affirmative action “solved anything.”

I’m not Black, so take what I say with a bath of salt. I don’t believe anyone thought affirmative action would solve racism. But it did lead to increased Black activity at universities, a small band-aid on the centuries of exclusion that have prevented Black people from joining the upper ranks of American society. It’s impossible to hear Kasparian’s comments and not draw a line between the Trump Administration’s ongoing attempt to crush affirmative action for Black people.

Unfortunately, the Young Turks are not the only ones pushing this line. During a recent episode of Bad Faith, Briahna Joy Gray weirdly tried to sanitize Trump’s anti-Mexican racism by claiming, “It’s obvious the media lost credibility” by saying his 2016 “Mexico isn’t sending their best” speech was racist. (Of all the ways the mainstream media lost credibility over Trump coverage, calling this racist spade a racist spade wasn’t one of them.)

Later in the episode, the guest, claimed that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “carried more water for the genocide of Palestinians than Marjorie Taylor Greene ever did.” (Gray said she “completely agreed.”) There’s much to critique about the New York Congresswoman’s relationship to the genocidal Biden Administration, specifically on her repeating the Harris campaign’s lie that they were “working tirelessly for a ceasefire.” But pretending that Marjorie Taylor Greene, who helped re-elect the president who codified Israel’s hasbara that Palestinians don’t exist into American state policy, is better than the Congresswoman who has A and B ratings from the Palestine-focused advocacy groups is a joke.

Just like The Young Turks, Briahna Joy Gray has a financial incentive to delegitimize existing effective anti-war movements. She is a spokesperson for the Green Party, which relentlessly attacks more effective left-wing parties to build party support and funnel donations to the Greens’ already wealthy internet celebrities. Rather than running for something, the Green Party’s 2024 presidential ticket explicitly ran against AOC. As Federal Election Commission disclosures show, the Jill Stein campaign was paying Briahna Joy Gray, Vice President candidate Butch Ware (who received $10k a month), and Peter Daou, a multimillionaire former Hillary Clinton strategist who received thousands of dollars. (This strategy was a disaster, as it led to Jill Stein getting less than half the vote share she did in 2016.) Meanwhile, local Green Party candidates (you know, the ones who actually had a chance to win) were told the Party was broke and were ordered to purchase their own campaign materials. This lucrative strategy is still in motion, which is why Butch Ware, now running for California governor, decided to attack the other left-wing California parties, specifically the Party for Socialism & Liberation, out of the blue.

Gray also has existing financial connections with Zionist, reactionary capitalists linked to the Central Intelligence Agency. In 2021, the current Trump crypto czar and CIA contractor, David Sacks, announced that Gray would receive funding from his “Get Callin” podcast network. Get Callin was quickly acquired by Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Palantir Technologies. (Sacks is also a Palantir investor.) Thiel is the current conservative kingmaker, dealing out billions to politicians and media figures behind the scenes. He’s also a freak who thinks the anti-Christ is real, which is one reason Meghyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson launched their new media careers by announcing demons exist.

To say Palantir is a military contractor would be an understatement. The surveillance giant was founded by two investment firms: Thiel Capital and In-Q-Tel, the Central Intelligence Agency’s investment firm. (Yep! You read that right. The CIA has an investment firm.) Palantir isn’t so much a CIA contractor as it is a CIA asset. The same can be said for Langely’s investment partners, Peter Thiel and David Sacks. Working with both ICE and the Israeli Army, Palantir has designed some of the most insidious weapons in use, such as IOF’s AI-targetting technology used to bomb civilians in Gaza.

Thiel and Sack’s investment in Briahna Joy Gray was well spent. Much like Kasparian, Gray frequently gave credibility to the idea that Trump was an anti-war candidate in the 2024 election. Here’s Gray in September 2023 saying Trump, the man who ended Roe v. Wade, is “dragging the Republican Party to the left on anti-interventionism and abortion.”

In summary, the CIA created Peter Thiel’s weapons contractor Palantir, which sold Palestinian-massacring weapons to the Israeli Army. Then Sacks and Thiel turned around and gave that money to Briahna Joy Gray so she could podcast about how Republicans are actually better for Palestinians than progressive Democrats. Given that the Palestinian liberation movement is fully committed to the tactic of Boycotting, Divesting, and Sanctioning companies that do business with Israeli colonizers, I don’t know how anyone can excuse Briahna Joy Gray (or Glenn Greenwald, for that matter) for taking Peter Thiel’s blood-soaked money — or view them as credible voices for anti-genocide politics.

Now, if this were just some opportunistic podcasters making noise, I probably wouldn’t be writing about it. The problem is, these figures are letting their personal vendettas and desire for enrichment replicate the 20th-century mistakes and sabotage that destroyed the American left and birthed the current fascist project genociding Palestine, bombing Iran, and handing the economy over to billionaire oligarchs.

Been There, Done That

The most frustrating part of this nonsensical discourse is that what Briahna Joy Gray, Cenk Uygur, and Ana Kasparian are advocating for has been tried before. Now, this might surprise you, but the attempt to unite fascists with dedicated human rights activists in a coherent political coalition didn’t work. Shocking!

The attempt to make far-right elements acceptable to the anti-imperialist left is yet another failed attempt at LaRoucheism, the 1960s movement that combined left-wing anti-imperialism with Neo-Nazi-inspired domestic elements. For example, movement founder Lyndon LaRouche criticized the Iraq War on the grounds that it was driven by Israel (not entirely untrue), which was created after the made-up Holocaust (entirely untrue). Unsurprisingly, LaRoucheism has a terrible track record. Every time they run for office, they get their clocks cleaned by Republicans. In street-level activity, LaRoucheism’s Neo Nazi elements divide leftist anti-imperialist projects and give fodder for conservative elements that seek to discredit the movement for Palestinian liberation. LaRouchites criticize Israel, but only because they believe Jews have an “ancient” desire to kill Christians. LaRouche was also a strong believer in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the antisemitic conspiracy theory used to incite pogroms in Tsarist Russia. Incorporating this element into the modern pro-Palestine movement would be a disaster, as it would validate Zionists’ current lie that Palestinian liberation is driven by antisemitism. Furthermore, it goes against everything I’ve heard from Palestinians, who have repeatedly expressed that their opposition to Israel comes from a “stop killing my family” place and not an ancient religious feud. Unfortunately, the attempt to regalvanize LaRoucheism as an alternative to ongoing progressive organizing efforts is not hypothetical. Jose Vega, a self-described LaRouchite running for Congress, has recently been invited on both Bad Faith and The Young Turks.

The other historical mistake these podcasters are repeating is letting their personal vendettas against the Democratic Party and leftists who work within it be the animating factor of their political decisions. It is impossible to listen to the ultra-leftist elements of the Green Party, who endlessly complain about effective organizations such as DSA while advocating for abortion policies to the right of Donald Trump, and not be reminded of the misguided vendettas of 20th-century American Trotskyists. After Leon Trotsky was exiled from the Soviet Union, he and some of his followers became paranoid anti-Soviet critics. Their advocacy for the working class soon took a backseat to their personal gripes with the more Leninist American communists who supported New Deal Democrats. While the Communist Party USA was working to build the New Deal as a much-needed antidote to fascism, the Trotskyists spent their time writing articles (the 1930s version of a podcast) relentlessly attacking them as “fascists,” “reformists,” and “sell-outs.” (Sound familiar?)

“The New Deal policy, with its fictitious achievements and its very real increase in the national debt, leads unavoidably to ferocious capitalist reaction and a devastating explosion of imperialism. In other words, it is directed into the same channels as the policy of fascism.” — Leon Trotsky, 1939

Led astray by their personal vendettas against the Soviet Union, Democrats, and the leftists who supported them, many (but not all!) Trotskyists sided with Republicans and the American intelligence agencies during the Cold War. In fact, neoconservatism, the imperialist ideology that dominates the modern Republican establishment, grew out of the ultra-left Trotskyist movement. Irvine Kristol, the “Godfather of neoconservatism” and father of the Iraq War architect Bill Kristol, started his political journey as a militant Trotskyist. Confused and misguided, Kristol let his personal hatred of the Communist Party USA, which subscribed to the Marxist-Leninist ideology and acknowledged socialists sometimes needed to support capitalist parties such as the Democrats, overcome his progressive instincts. He soon joined the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a CIA-backed front that criticized the Soviet Union and promoted American imperialism from the left. From there, Irvine Kristol went on to codify neoconservatism, the ideological justification Republican and Democratic administrations alike have used to make a mockery of the United Nations charter and invade any and every country they could. The combination of ultra-left tendencies and self-focused leaders was a death knell for the American left. Trotskyists eventually took control of Eugene Debs’ Socialist Party and ran it into the ground by giving implicit support to Republican Richard Nixon over the Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 presidential election. By the time Nixon was up for re-election, the Socialist Party's rightward turn had destroyed the once-iconic organization, fracturing it for good.

It is impossible for those familiar with the pitfalls and mistakes that led to the ineffectiveness of the 20th-century American left to listen to these left-sounding, right-curious podcasters cite their personal vendettas against a leading member of the existing anti-war coalition as a reason we should listen to far-right Republicans — who, for the record, have not apologized for the rampant dehumanization of Palestinians and Muslims they built their careers on, or even said how they plan to stop the genocide they set in motion. (Perhaps Marjorie Taylor Greene could run for Congress!) Both Briahna Joy Gray and Ana Kasparian have been open about their personal hatred for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In the Bad Faith episode mentioned above, Gray criticized AOC for not backing “Force The Vote,” a 2020 idea from (you guessed it) obscure leftist podcasters urging the progressive Squad to call a pointless floor vote on Medicare For All. Elected politicians correctly dismissed this podcaster’s stunt as not worth their time, for which Briahna Joy Gray and Jimmy Dore accused them of being “sellouts.” Gray has held this grudge for a while, and, as evidenced by her still talking about it over half a decade later, her inability to let go of her silly idea is a driving factor in her newfound openness to reactionaries.

As those familiar with the history of American leftism can tell you, the re-emergence of an ultra-left contingent sanitizing far-right Republicans with funding ties to the Central Intelligence Agency is too coincidental to ignore. Because, don’t kid yourself. This “anti-imperialist right” is nothing but a tactical retreat by fascist capitalists to preserve their multi-decade project from going down with the sinking ship of Trump 2.0. Marjorie Taylor Greene (who is also an investor in the CIA company Palantir) and Tucker Carlson (whose father was a CIA asset and is likely funded by CIA asset Peter Thiel) are 100% going to use their credibility to get young, Trump-critical Republicans to vote for J.D. Vance, who is, drumroll please, the favorite politician of CIA asset Peter Thiel. What a coincidence! All these political and media figures with financial connections to the Central Intelligence Agency want you to hate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and think Peter Thiel’s favorite Zionists are the true left-wing friends of Palestine! It’s almost an exact replica of the playbook the CIA ran to destroy effective American and international left-wing movements throughout the Cold War. So weird this is happening again, right as the American left is reorganizing and winning political power!

Though left-wing independent media is useful, leftists, anti-imperialists, and progressives must be careful not to replicate the mistake liberals made with mainstream media. Too often, American audiences let mainstream media talking heads with no connection to actual political movements dictate what those movements should do. This is how we ended up with the Democrats optimizing Kamala Harris to run for President on perfect “centrism,” an ideology that didn’t exist except inside the minds of out-of-touch liberal bloggers. Similarly, it would be a mistake for progressively-minded audiences to let independent media talking heads with no connection to actual political movements dictate what those movements should do. This is how we end up with The Young Turks and Bad Faith urging Americans distributed by our nation’s imperialist crimes to put their faith in LaRouchism II, an ideology that didn’t exist except inside the minds of out-of-touch leftist podcasters. When we recognize the established links between the Central Intelligence Agency and the voices driving this ultra-left wrecker project, no one with a functioning frontal lobe can believe this is in good faith.

Are the politicians leading the actual existing anti-war coalition above criticism? Do they have all the answers? Of course not. If they did, we wouldn’t be in this mess. (I’ll publish my full thoughts on how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should have handled the 2024 Palestine issue shortly.) But with a sober view of the struggles, failures, and saboatges of the historic American left, as well as a grounded understanding of how we can actually end the unspeakable horror our government inflicts on foreign nations — instead of just virtue signaling online about how we’re Good Americans who are Very Sad we’re murdering entire cultures, but won’t lift a finger to actually stop it — there is no question that the actually existing movement currently uplifting anti-war candidates is the best chance we’ve got. And if you think that the movement or its leaders need correcting, then you should join it and do so. Because the podcasters who told us to leftistly support Donald Trump and are now telling us our revulsion to American slaughter should be directed into supporting Marjorie Taylor Greene are not on the level.

Before I close, I’d like to clarify that everything I accused these other Substackers and podcasters of equally applies to me. If I ever start jUsT aSkInG qUeStiOns if Marjorie Taylor Greene is a friend of Palestinians, you should call out my bullshit and immediately unsubscribe from JoeWrote. Commentators are supposed to inform and explain political movements, not wreck and mislead them for financial gain.

If you appreciated this essay, please click the ❤️ to help it rise in Substack’s algorithm. Don’t forget to subscribe so future articles are delivered to your inbox. If you’re a returning JoeWrote reader, consider supporting my work with a premium subscription. For the cost of just one cup of coffee a month, you can help me keep creating content like this. Plus, you unlock everything JoeWrote has to offer.

Thanks in advance!

Subscribe now

In Solidarity — Joe

Though I’ve been critical of The New York Times’ coverage of Israel’s colonial crimes in Palestine, credit where credit is due. On Monday, the paper published a column by Nicholas Kristof detailing the systemic sexual violence against Palestinian captives held in Israel’s draconian prisons. Well-sourced with survivor testimony and expert reports, Kristoff sheds light on the most barbaric practices I’ve ever heard. Men, women, and children are brutally raped with batons, carrots, penises, and even dogs. Though the perpetrators take sadistic pleasure in their acts, this widespread sexual abuse isn’t spontaneous. As Kristof shows, it is part of an Israeli strategy to turn informants, delegitimize the image of defiant Palestinian prisoners, and terrorize the Palestinian community. If the survivors are ever released, Israeli officials warn them to keep quiet. Otherwise, their family members will be kidnapped and tortured as well.

Kristoff also deserves praise for covering the “right to rape” protests in Israel, which mainstream media has ignored. After a video of Israeli soldiers raping a Palestinian at the infamous Sde Teiman prison camp leaked, nine soldiers were charged by the authorities. But the Israeli public revolted and sided with the rapists, so the charges were dropped. Some of the assailants were even welcomed on Israel’s most popular television shows to thunderous applause (see below). The only person to be prosecuted from the Se Teiman rape scandal was the soldier who leaked the video.

The American press has largely avoided this story because it reveals an uncomfortable truth about Israel. The country’s persecution of Palestinians is not driven by the lone actor Benjamin Netanyahu or even the fringe far-right, but by the general Israeli public. As polling shows, the everyday Israeli is comfortable with — if not supportive of — the genocide of the indigenous population. Though it is the first time being covered in a prominent publication, allegations of Israeli prison assault are not new. When Nicholas Kristoff asked former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert if he thought systemic sexual assault existed, Olmert’s response was unequivocal: “Definitely. There are war crimes committed every day.”

The real threat Kristof’s column posed to Israel was its challenge to the post-October 7th narrative that has justified the genocides in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. Kristof frames his story as a moral calling upon those who condemned the alleged sexual violence against Israeli civilians on October 7th to speak up against those same atrocities being inflicted upon Palestinians. The claims of systemic mass-rape on 10/7 stem from The New York Times’ “Screams Without Words” story, which relied on false claims and fabricated evidence to make the case that Palestinian militants used mass sexual assault as a weapon of war. Despite “Screams Without Words” being debunked by the outlet’s own The Daily podcast and the Times firing the author after she was caught bragging about “establishing the Israeli narrative” on Twitter, the story still hasn’t been retracted. Though I disagree with Kristof’s framing, he does conclude his essay by pointing out the hypocrisy of Israel’s defenders, writing: “The horrific abuse inflicted on Israeli women on Oct. 7 now happens to Palestinians day after day. It persists because of silence, indifference, and the failure of American and Israeli officials alike…”

This point has been made repeatedly by those sympathetic to the Palestinian plight: Israel does October 7th every day, all day. And if powerful figures actually cared about human life and dignity as they claim, then their concerns would lie with the Palestinians, who endure the overwhelming majority of the violence and criminality in this one-sided “conflict.” This view, which has the benefit of the truth, is incredibly dangerous to the Zionist project. Just look at the top NYT comment on Kristof’s story, pasted below. The New York Times Editorial Board describes itself as Zionist, and the newsroom has been repeatedly criticized for supporting Israeli crimes. So, if this is how readers are responding to Nicholas Kristof’s story, that’s a huge blow to Israel’s collapsing public support in the United States. This is why the Israeli government immediately mobilized its propagandists to leverage their allies in American media to distract from and discredit Nicholas Kristof’s reporting.

The day after Kristof’s story was published, an Israeli group named “The Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children” (CCOC HAWC) issued its own report accusing Palestinian militants of systematic sexual violence on and after October 7th. Just like “Screams Without Words,” the report relies on wildly unsubstantiated claims that would not be accepted in casual conversation, never mind a court of law. Most disturbingly, the CCOC HAWC report calls for drastic changes to Israeli and international criminal proceedings so that accused Palestinians can be tried for crimes prosecutors can’t prove. Though Israel has justified its many military campaigns on alleged sexual atrocities from October 7th, Israeli prosecutors still have not received any allegations of these crimes. The lack of cases creates a giant hole in the Israeli narrative, which this report aims to “solve” by laying the groundwork to strip Palestinian prisoners of their already-weak trial rights.

Additionally, reports like this give Israel’s defenders ammunition to fight back against anti-Zionists who will cite Kristof’s reporting to criticize Israel. This is a well-established practice of Israeli hasbara, the especially deceitful propaganda that Israelis describe as “an explanation of Israel’s actions, whether or not they are justified.” In March 2025, a United Nations independent commission accused Israel of mass sexual violence and genocidal acts. A few months later, the pro-Israel Dinah Project released its own counter-report, accusing Hamas of mass sexual violence and genocidal acts. As soon as it was published, the Israeli government used the report to attack the U.N., claiming they were antisemitically ignoring alleged violence against Israelis. For the record, the U.N. did try to investigate those claims, but was prevented from seeing the site by Israel. The U.N. representative issued a “non-investigative report” that disagreed with Israel’s characterization that sexual assault was a pre-planned, coordinated, or war strategy.

I believe this new report, which essentially just repeats the same claims made over the last three years, was prewritten and reserved until it could be deployed for maximum effect in Israel’s propaganda war. I suspect the Israeli government was embarrassed by the March 2025 U.N. report and felt that the months it took to write a counterreport cost it crucial support in the U.S. So, they worked with a prominent hasbarist to craft this one and held it until necessary. When a prominent reporter such as Nicholas Kristof appeared in the West Bank to interview former prisoners, the Israeli government likely knew what was coming. (No one goes in or out without their approval.) Not only does this report give Israel’s defenders new ways to turn the conversation back on Hamas, but it steers the discussion away from Nicholas Kristof’s well-sourced reporting and back onto a topic more favorable to Israel. This theory is supported by the timing of its release and examination of the propagandists involved, who have established links to the Israeli government, as I will show shortly.

Of course, simply releasing a report isn’t enough. You have to make sure Americans see it. And who better to help Israel fight its propaganda war than the Cable News Network?

Stenographers For Genocide

COCC HAWC announced its report by sending it to CNN, which published an article entitled “First on CNN: New report details ‘systematic’ rape and sexual violence during Hamas’ Oct 7 attack on Israel”. The article was written by Ivana Kottasová, a London-based journalist with a history of submitting herself to IDF censors and reporting the Israeli Army’s propaganda claims without question.

Right away, the purpose of this article becomes clear. If someone heard about Nicholas Kristof’s story on the systemic rape of Palestinians and wanted to read it, they’d search terms like “Israel” and “systematic rape.” And this CNN article would appear at the top of their search results.

With such a loaded name, it’s no surprise CNN chose not to identify the authors as The Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children. Instead, they chose the simpler “The Civil Commission,” which hides the group’s political motives and gives it the impression of impartiality. CNN also describes the report’s author, Cochav Elkayam-Levy, as a “human rights expert.” Calling Elkayam-Levy a “human rights expert” is like calling Harvey Weinstein a “crusader for women’s rights.” She is objectively a liar. In the months after October 7th, the Biden White House and Israeli government looked to Elkayam-Levy as the go-to expert on alleged sexual crimes. This made Elkayam-Levy a media celebrity. She received glowing media profiles and millions of dollars in donations. Though it’s not clear where that money went.

The only problem? Many of Elkayam-Levy’s claims of sexual violence on October 7th never happened. In November 2023, Elkayam-Levy circulated a photo of what she claimed was an alleged Israeli girl raped to death at the Nova Music Festival. The picture was actually of a deceased Kurdish soldier taken in May of 2022.

As Elkayam-Levy continued to spread blatantly false allegations, even some Israeli officials were growing tired of her. Speaking to the Hebrew language outlet YNet, one anonymous Israeli official explained how Elkayam-Levy’s claim that Palestinian militants cut the fetus out of a pregnant Israeli during a gang rape was a bridge too far:

"For example, the story about the pregnant woman who had her stomach ripped open — a story that was proven to be untrue — and she spread it in the international press. It's no joke. Slowly, professionals began to distance themselves from her because she was not credible. There are researchers who sit for hours in archives and analyze videos. This is the work of historians, lawyers and gender experts. Everyone who deals with this aims first and foremost for professionalism and credibility. After all, if there are inaccuracies, within a minute they claim it's fake news, and therefore we have to be as accurate and as faithful to reality as possible. She also wanted to prevent the visit of Pramila Patten (the UN Secretary-General's envoy on sexual violence in conflict) to Israel.” — “Inaccuracies, donations to a non-existent commission: The Israel Prize winner - and the questions behind the winner”

With a proven liar being the lead author of this report, Ivana Kottasová debased herself to whitewash Elkayam-Levy’s past and make her seem like a good-faith actor. Here is how the CNN reporter explains away Elkayam-Levy’s disregard for the truth. Kottasová writes:

“Some of the first responders [on October 7th] were volunteers with no formal training on how to handle evidence. Many were overwhelmed and traumatized, and some gave accounts of things they had seen that later turned out to be false – but not before they were widely circulated in the media, by Israeli officials and, in one case, by Elkayam-Levy herself.”

First, Cochav Elkayam-Levy was not a first responder, so her lies cannot be chalked up to “trauma.” She made multiple false statements in the post-10/7 period, so she wasn’t misremembering details about “one case.” Elkayam-Levy was serving as a propagandist to build support for Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, which the Israeli Army justified by saying they were “human animals.” In typical mainstream media fashion, Ivana Kottasová tries to claim the duplicity of Zionists is actually an indictment against anti-Zionists. She continues, writing:

“[Elkayam-Levy] was criticized publicly by some colleagues as well anonymous government officials who were quoted in Israeli and international media questioning her motives. These incidents were later used by some critics to discredit other claims, even when evidence was clear and corroborated by multiple sources.”

If a de facto government official is caught lying about an event, and then people question the government’s other claims about it, that is not the fault of the questioners. It is the fault of the Israeli government, which has put out more lies than truth. This is the moral of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, which most people learned in kindergarten. Yet, Ivana Kottasová has no problem dismissing these concerns and promoting the Israeli narrative without question, as she has done many times before.👇🏻

Unproven Claims

As for the report, it’s even flimsier than its author. In the opening paragraph, Ivana Kottasová and CNN effectively endorse the report by repeating its findings without investigation. For example, the article opens by stenographing Cochav Elkayam-Levy’s conclusion that Palestinian militants had a “calculated strategy” to impose gender-based violence on Israelis to “maximize pain and suffering” that was “integral” to their battle plan. Like “Screams Without Words,” this is not just an accusation that sexual violence happened on October 7th, but that it was intentionally ordered by leaders in the Palestinian resistance. Hasbarists have tried and failed to establish this intentionality for years. Intent is what separates war crimes from genocide, and Zionists desperately want to accuse Palestinians of the latter. Though CNN prints this claim without challenge, the report provides no evidence that sexual assault was ordered or integral. Instead, the report says there was a “recurring pattern” that proves Palestinians conducted “genocidal” acts against the Israelis.

“[This report] identifies recurring patterns of sexual violence across sites and phases of the attacks. By examining recurring themes and modes of operation, the report demonstrates that these crimes followed identifiable patterns and methods, rather than constituting isolated acts of brutality.”

To prove this “pattern,” Cochav Elkayam-Levy violates every principle of basic honesty, never mind reporting. And CNN helps her do it. Here’s a jaw-dropping paragraph written by Ivana Kottasová:

“To counter potential deniers, Elkayam-Levy said every piece of evidence included in the report had been carefully cross-referenced and fact-checked. Each case cited has been corroborated by witnesses, including first responders who attended the scene. She said the team behind the report – comprising some 25 experts and contributors – had also worked with a group of researchers who geolocated photos and videos from the scene, pinpointing the location of each victim and cross-referencing it with other evidence.”

Notice how Kottasová isn’t saying, “every piece of evidence has been fact-checked.” She’s saying, “Elkayam-Levy said it’s been fact-checked.” Why wouldn’t this internationally acclaimed journalist do actual journalism and validate Elkayam-Levy’s claims? Because, as she admits, CNN hasn’t seen the evidence behind the report. In fact, no one has!

“Elkayam-Levy said the goal of the report – and a digital archive that contains all the evidence the team collected – is making sure that the suffering endured by the victims could not be ‘denied, erased, or forgotten.’ Like other archives of this kind, the material will not be accessible to the public for a set period of time to protect the privacy of the victims. CNN has not been able to verify all of the contents of the archive, but it has seen many of the visual materials included in it.”

This is not journalism. It is stenography. Ivana Kottasová isn’t investigating facts to help her audience understand the truth. She is writing what she is told by known hasbarist Cochav Elkayam-Levy, who has close ties to the Israeli and American governments. Which are arguably the biggest liars on planet earth.

The COCC HAWC report claims to have found “new evidence” and to be making “previously unknown allegations.” But when we examine the report, there’s no evidence that these crimes occurred. For example, here’s how CNN presents the “new” findings:

“The report also includes previously unknown allegations, including a case of two minors who, while held hostage in Gaza, say they were sexually abused and forced by their captors to perform sexual acts on each other.”

That is a strong and disturbing charge. Here’s how it’s explained in the report:

“Two returning hostages, minors, who were family members, reported that they were forced to perform sexual acts on one another. They were reportedly compelled by their captors to take off their clothes, and their captors then touched their private parts and whipped their genitalia.”

Now, here’s the citation showing the evidence of this predation:

“Case anonymized due to the victims’ age and privacy concerns. Meeting with Senior Medical Expert (Sep. 2, 2025). Minutes on file with the Civil Commission.”

It is normal to anonymize sexual assault victims, especially when they are minors. But what is not normal is to publish these claims in a political report based on hearsay. The citation “Meeting with Senior Medical Expert, Minutes on file” means that Cochav Elkayam-Levy talked to a doctor and took notes. She doesn’t say who this “Senior Medical Expert” was, if these minors were patients of that “Senior Medical Expert,” or how the “Senior Medical Expert” even knows about these alleged crimes. She also has not released the notes. Anonymize the victims, sure. But there’s never any need to anonymize the source of this allegation, and saying “we have unreleased notes proving this happened” is a joke.

In essence, a known Hasbarist with a history of peddling egregious lies to promote Israel’s military objectives is saying, “I talked to someone, and they told me about this. I put it in a report calling for the end of due process for Palestinian prisoners.” Then, she passed it off to a reporter with a history of collaborating with the Israeli Army, who ‘coincidentally’ published it the day after a well-substantiated report on systemic Israeli sex crimes. And the media wonders why Americans don’t trust them.

Given that bad-faith actors will inevitably use this article to malign me (as they do every time I dispute the Israeli narrative), I feel the need to clarify what I am critiquing. I am not denying that sexual violence occurred on or following October 7th. I once heard a veteran war crimes investigator say that, in her decades of experience, she had not seen any case in which angry men with guns intermixed with civilians, and sexual assault didn’t occur. If no Palestinian militants ever committed such acts, then the Palestinian resistance would be the first active military force in human history to avoid what has been a terrible but predictable result of every war ever fought. This is not an excuse for any perpetrators, but an analysis of the context. But this is why we have international law.

Recognizing we won’t end warfare anytime soon, humanity established the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice to try, prosecute, and punish war criminals. There is an established process to handle war crimes allegations. But Israel and the U.S. have rejected the civilized path in favor of barbarism. They do not want to bring charges against alleged assailants in court. Mostly because they cannot prove them, but also because they have no interest in honoring international law. (Shortly before the Iraq War, Congress passed the Hague Invasion Act, giving the U.S. the right to free any American or Israeli troops being prosecuted for war crimes.) Nicholas Kristof’s reporting ended by charging Israel’s defenders with hypocrisy. But they are not hypocrites. A hypocrite believes one thing and does another. Israeli society isn’t opposed to sexual assault or murder. They are opposed when it happens to them, yet support the rape and murder of Palestinians. Zionists are not hypocrites. They are colonizers.

What I am denying is that Cochav Elkayam-Levy and the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children found evidence that the Palestinian resistance planned and premeditated sexual assault as an integral part of their combat operation. That is what this report claims, but there is no evidence to support it. COCC HAWC claims newfound events establish a “pattern” that proves sexual assault was intentional. But the only allegations it has rely on unproven claims and anonymous testifiers who say they “heard” something. Compare this to the genocide charge Israel is facing in the ICJ, which is well-supported with statements from Israeli officials declaring genocidal intent against Gaza.

Because Elkayam-Levy and her fellow hasbarists cannot prove their accusations, the report demands alterations to Israeli and international law. Using the overly social justice terms favored by hasbarists who think they can wokely trick college kids into supporting apartheid, the report calls for “specialized prosecutorial structures” so they can prosecute Palestinians whom they feel are guilty, but can’t actually prove it. The report says:

“Based on its investigation, the Civil Commission’s findings conclude that these crimes constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocidal acts under international law. Therefore, the report establishes a clear roadmap for the prosecution of the crimes committed on October 7th and during captivity. The report presents a clear evidentiary and legal foundation for the investigation and prosecution of those responsible. It also highlights the need for specialized prosecutorial structures and gender-competent frameworks to effectively address these crimes.”

This is frightening. Essentially, Elkayam-Levy is laying the groundwork for Israeli courts to throw out what little rights Palestinian hostages have, so it is easier to “prove” resistance groups carried out systemic sexual assault. This would only exacerbate the already racist prosecutorial procedures Israel uses to turn their hostages into “criminals.” The Knesset recently passed the death penalty, but for only Palestinians, and criminal proceedings in the West Bank are still segregated. A Jewish man accused of a crime in a settlement will receive a civilian trial, while a Palestinian man will be given a military tribunal with a 98% conviction rate.

Talking to The New York Times about her report (which unfortunately regressed to its old ways), Elkayam-Levy said her work should be used by prosecutors, and suggested that she and her team could serve as expert witnesses. She also told the Times that she didn’t know how many sexual assault cases she documented, because it was too difficult to quantify with certainty. I’ll remind you that the supposed purpose of Elkayam-Levy’s work was to create a database of sexual assaults, which this report was supposed to draw from. But the lead author doesn’t know how many entries there are in her own database, and she won’t let anyone see it. The most information she’s given us from that database is citations saying, “Some guy told me this happened,” and “These anonymous accounts claim to have heard something.”

Enter Israel

Apparently, a shocking-low standard of proof from a proven liar is fit to print in America’s largest media organizations. Well, at least if it’s sympathetic to Israel. If the reporting is sympathetic to Palestinians, then it is ruthlessly attacked. While CNN’s coverage of the COCC HAWC report sought to distract from Kristof’s story, Zionist groups are going on the offensive. The first attack came from the Israeli government itself, which denounced Nicholas Kristof’s essay as “blood libel.” But that wasn’t all.

On Wednesday, an essay appeared in The Wall Street Journal written by Rachel O’Donoghue. O’Donoghue is the head of HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based “media watchdog” that’s stated mission is “combating ideological prejudice in journalism and the media, as it impacts Israel." It will come as no shock that HonestReporting (HR) has established links to the Israeli government and repeatedly serves as its propaganda arm. Days after October 7th, HR accused Reuters, The New York Times, CNN, and The Associated Press of having advanced knowledge of the operation, not so subtly implying that these outlets are Hamas. The group was founded by Joe Hyams, a registered speaker for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. Its CEO is Jacki Alexander, a fifteen-year AIPAC veteran, and top staff includes Executive Director Gil Hoffman and editorial director Simon Plosker, both of whom served in the Israeli Army’s Spokespersons’ Unit. Here’s Hofman admitting that HonestReporting works hand in glove with the Israeli government, even saying they coordinate messaging in Signal chats.

Upon reading Rachel O’Donoghue’s critique, it’s clear she is taking cues from the Israeli government. Her leading charge is that Nicholas Kristof cited the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which O’Donoghue says is unreliable because the Israeli government accused it of being Hamas in 2013. (Lol) She also tries to say the fourteen Palestinians Kristof interviewed are lying by pointing out earlier interviews in which some of these survivors didn’t say they were sexually assaulted. But Kristof addressed this, detailing how survivors are shamed into silence to avoid further retribution and social consequences. But the real kicker, and why I’m confident the release of the COCC HAWC report was timed to undercut Kristof’s work, is in this paragraph:

“Sexual assault in prisons is an unfortunate reality worldwide, and sexual violence in war is well‑documented. Hamas used systematic rape and sexual violence during its attacks on Israel on Oct. 7 as detailed in a comprehensive report released this week by the Israeli Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes. Such allegations are grave and demand proper investigations and rigorous reporting.

Mr. Kristof’s column doesn’t meet that standard. Instead, it relies on a patchwork of omissions, dubious sources and ever‑more lurid allegations, serving more to demonize Israel than to clarify what actually happened.”

First, it’s very weird for O’Donoghue to say Kristof’s accusation of widespread sexual assault is false, but that they are also “an unfortunate reality worldwide.” Did they happen or not?

Second, we see the obvious intent to suppress Nicholas Kristof’s story exposing the systemic rape of Palestinians by pushing the COCC HAWC report. For reasons we have covered above, O’Donoghue’s claims of “dubious sources” apply far more to Cochav Elkayam-Levy’s work than to Nicholas Kristof’s. But what the hasbarists cannot deny, and which they never try to address, is that Nicholas Kristof got the former Prime Minister of Israel to say, on record, “Oh yes. Israelis rape Palestinian prisoners all the time.” Who knows, though. If there’s anyone who will accuse Ehud Olmert of being Hamas, it’s Cochav Elkayam-Levy and Rachel O’Donoghue.

Just The Begining

At the begining of the week, I started writing about Nicholas Kristof’s column and how it signified America’s changing political landscape. But when multiple suspiciously sourced stories appeared within 72 hours, the pattern was obvious. First was the COCC Hawk report, which tried to change the narrative with unsubstantiated claims from the proven liar, Cochav Elkayam-Levy. CNN aided this effort by tapping Ivana Kottasová, a reporter with a history of stenographing for the IDF, to present the claims without question. When The Wall Street Journal published an anti-Kristof essay that directed readers to the COCC HAWK report and demanded other Western media “rigorously report” on that nonsense, the conclusion was undeniable. Do I have a smoking gun that the Israeli government used its American media connections to drown out and undercut Nicholas Kristof’s story? No. But the preponderance of evidence, the reputation of these actors, and the immediate attack on a well-sourced story indicate the direct work of the Israeli government’s propaganda arms. And this will only be the begining. An article on CNN.com and an op-ed in the WSJ aren’t the most high-profile spotlights. But they are useful in signaling to other Israel supporters in the media that this is the story the hasbara network is pushing — just like how Gil Hoffman spoke about the Israeli government announcing what stories they wanted covered.

If the past is prologue, the COCC HAWC report will be featured on CNN, Fox News, and other national broadcasts within the week. Viewers will be misled and think, “Oh, this is the Israel mass-rape story I heard about.” The terror Israel inflicts on Palestine will suddenly become a mark against the Palestinians. That was the intention behind this fake report, as well as every other smear campaign launched against those who defy Israel.

Before you go, I want to thank you for taking the time to read this article. Sexual assault is a heavy topic, so I’m grateful JoeWrote has become a place where we can have serious, honest discussions about topics such as this. The goal is not to excuse any crime or deny any victim, but to create a more harmonious world where such heinous acts are mitigated and eventually eliminated.

If you appreciated this article, please tap the ❤️ and subscribe for free to receive new articles in your inbox. If you’re a returning JoeWrote reader (or you just really appreciated this article), consider supporting my work with a premium subscription. It costs just one cup of coffee a month and ensures I can keep creating content like this. Plus, you unlock everything JoeWrote has to offer and gain access to exclusive bonus content.

Thanks in advance!

Subscribe now

In Solidarity — Joe

Tim Hernández led the fight to pass the landmark Agricultural Workers’ Rights Bill in 2021. As the Colorado legislature rolls back these protections, such as forcing farm workers to work 56 hours a week before qualifying for overtime, Tim will be sharing how workers are organizing to stay safe and protected.

A longtime veteran of the labor struggle, it’s an honor to host Jose La Luz. From organizing against the Vietnam War to winning collective bargaining rights for over 120,000 public sector workers in Puerto Rico, La Luz has done it all. He’ll be sharing the lessons learned from organizing under colonialism and other forms of repression.

As well as discussing ongoing organizing efforts here in Colorado, we’ll discuss how to build progressive, democratic unions that stand up to ICE, oppose imperialism, and give voice to the unheard working-class.

I’m honored to be hosting this panel. Will I do well? Will I fall on my face and embarrass myself? There’s only one way to find out. Come join us this Sunday, May 10th, at the Washington Street Community Center — 809 S Washington St, Denver, CO 80209.

See you there!

In Solidarity — Joe

In its current form, conservatism is not a coherent political ideology, but a collection of feelings. Conservatives are aggrieved for themselves, but reject empathy for others. However, once a systemic issue personally affects a conservative, they adopt the progressive view, often contradicting their own ideology. Not because their eyes have been opened to the need for collective solutions, but because they are, often for the first time in their lives, forced to deal with the reality of their political beliefs.

Intellectual openness and the willingness to change your mind should always be encouraged. And no one is required to follow their ideology’s political position to the letter. However, this is not what prominent conservatives are doing. The conservative figures detailed below are not engaging with opposing viewpoints and questioning their conservative worldview. Instead, they are expressing frustration that a systemic problem has personally impacted them and are asking for help solving it. Many people call this “complaining.”

In the video below, conservative activist Riley Gaines expresses her frustration with exploitive medical bills from the delivery of her child. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Riley Gaines is 100% correct. It’s absurd that healthcare companies bill new mothers thousands of dollars for “vaginal birth” and “hospital discharge day” while they’re increasing CEO pay by 30% in one year. Gaines finishes by calling on Congress to “protect patients and taxpayers from a system designed to exploit them.”

And what “system” would that be, Riley? Does this “system” have a name? Would it happen to be the for-profit system that compels medical companies to squeeze every cent of profit out of patients? Because that system is called capitalism, and you routinely defend it.

Riley Gaine’s postpartum Marxism reveals a lot about the intellectual rigor in the modern conservative movement — it has none.

Gaines became a conservative activist during her college years by leveraging her 5th-place swimming title into a cozy position with Turning Point USA. Collecting fat checks from Hungarian taxpayers just for saying things like, “What’s a woman?” and “Debate me, AOC!” seems like a sweet gig. But it’s not a real job. Though she swears fealty to the capitalist system, Riley Gaines has never actually lived within it. She’s never had to sell her labor for a wage and endure the cruelties of unemployment driven by the perpetual cycle of booms and busts. According to all available information, giving birth is Gaine’s first real experience with capitalism. Everything else has been a thought experiment. Upon first contact with the system she defends, Riley Gaines doesn’t like the personal cost capitalism demands, so she asks the U.S. government to “end the system that is exploiting us.” Oh, sweetie. You’re new here, so it’s cute you asked nicely. But you have a lot of catching up to do.

“‘Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains! — Karl Marx’, — Riley Gaines”

Speaking of Turning Point USA, they are doing a poor job carrying the flame lit by the late founder, Charlie Kirk.

Earlier this year, long-time TPUSA staffer Aubrey Laitsch posted the video below explaining how she was unfairly fired from the conservative interest group. According to Laitsch, she was let go because a TPUSA executive heard a rumor from an Uber driver that Laitsch didn’t like Erika Kirk. Begrudingly, I must admit that, yet again, this cookie-cutter conservative woman from Turning Point USA is 100% correct. Workers don’t deserve to be fired over unsubstantiated gossip. At least, that’s the position of labor organizers and socialists such as myself. The conservative right, which Aubrey Laitsch supports, takes the opposite view. Conservatives believe a business is the owner’s property and they can fire anyone for any reason — including something as stupid as “A guy on the subway said you’re talking crap.” This is called “at-will employment,” one of many ways that conservatives preserve capitalism by disempowering workers and overempowering bosses. Currently, 49 of 50 states have at-will employment structures. (Glory to the People’s Democratic Republic of Montana! 🫡)

At-will employment is a staple of American conservatism. The Trump administration’s proposal to reclassify federal employees under at-will employment was widely celebrated by prominent conservative organizations. Which is why I was so surprised to hear Aubrey Laitsch say this:

Read more

The most common argument centrist Democrats make against progressives is that they lose support outside of deep-blue districts. As the establishment claim goes, Zohran Mamdani-style leftism works in the progressive bastion of New York City. But in any race outside a D+20 district, the “far left” policies of Medicare For All, abolishing ICE, and criticizing Israel will scare off moderate voters, causing Democrats to lose close races and win by less than they should in unconstested ones. As Adam Jentelson, the founder of centrist thank tank, The Searchlight Institute, told The New York Times, “The folks who are most to blame about Trump are the ones who pushed Democrats to take indefensible positions” — i.e., the left.

There has always been strong evidence that this wasn’t the case, and I’ve routinely pointed out how pro-establishment voices like Jentleson bash the left to preserve an unpopular corporatist agenda and their careers within the Democratic Party. But with an unapologetic progressive winning a recent special election in the New Jersey suburbs, the truism that leftist candidates cost Democrats votes can be put to rest.

On April 16th, Democrat Analilia Mejia defeated Republican Joe Hathaway in a special election for New Jersey’s 11th congressional district. The outcome wasn’t a surprise. NJ-11 went for Kamala Harris by 8 points, and Democratic enthusiasm is at an all-time high. It was highly likely that the Democratic candidate would win, regardless of where they stood on the intra-party spectrum. What makes Analilia Mejia’s victory interesting is not that she won, but how she won.

Formerly a top staffer to Senator Bernie Sanders, Analilia Mejia is the most radical person to represent the quiet suburbs of New Jersey’s 11th congressional district. NJ-11 is far from deep blue. It leaned Republican prior to some 2021 redistricting, and its demographically similar neighbor, New Jersey’s 7th district, elected Republican Thomas Kean Jr by a healthy margin in 2024. NJ-11 was previously represented by centrist Democrat Mikie Sherill, who vacated it last fall after winning the governor’s election. While the conventional Democratic wisdom published in slopified publications such as The Atlantic and Slow Boring would have urged Mejia to moderate in this light-blue area, she did no such thing. Instead, Mejia ran on the socialist wishlist of Medicare for All, national paid sick leave, abolishing ICE, universal childcare, free community college, and a moratorium on the construction of AI data centers. She also accused Israel of genocide and rebuked Zionism on the debate stage. According to the centrist theory of politics, these “far left” positions should have scared off the mythical “moderate swing voters,” causing Mejia to win by less than her centrist predecessors. But that did not happen.

In 2024, Kamala Harris won New Jersey’s 11th district by 8 points. That same year, Mikie Sherrill won the NJ-11 congressional seat by 15 points, the same margin she received during the 2025 gubernatorial election last fall. Five months later, Analilia Mejia ran to their left and won NJ-11 by 21 points. Outrunning Kamala Harris by +13 points and Mikie Sherill by +5 points, there’s no denying that Analilia Mejia ran an impressive campaign. But when we dig into exactly where and who she won, her victory goes from impressive to spectacular.

Running on a bold working-class program, Analilia Mejia won back many of the communities that centrist Democrats lost to Trump. She won majority-Hispanic Dover by 44 points, a 30-point improvement over Harris’s 2024 margin. Mejia also flipped ten towns that voted for Trump in 2024, and possibly more as the final 6,500 votes are counted. In 2024, Mikie Sherrill won Essex County by 35 points, Morris County by 4 points, and lost Passaic County by 8 points. Eighteen months later, Analilia Mejia won Essex by 43 points, Morris by 9 points, and flipped Passaic to the Democrats. Because NJ-11 only encompasses parts of these counties, it’s difficult to directly compare Mikie Sherill’s 2025 gubernatorial performance to Analilia Mejia's 2026 congressional performance on a county-by-county level. However, local-level analysis shows working-class, populist messages outperform those written in the belly of the Democratic establishment. In 2025, the traditionally Republican towns of Wayne and Woodland Park voted for the Republican gubernatorial candidate. This year, they voted to send a Bernie Sanders acolyte to the House of Representatives. As one local reporter put it to his New Jersey audience, “Analilia Mejia’s strength extended into areas that, just a few years ago, would have seemed completely unwinnable for a candidate with her ideology.”

Of course, Mejia’s progressivism doesn’t come without its trade-offs. Compared to Kamala Harris, she lost ground with high-income and Jewish neighborhoods. This isn’t surprising given Mejia’s message resonates more with common Americans, and her opponent relentlessly fear-mongered that she posed a “threat to Jewish safety.” (lol) Still, Analilia Mejia won the majority of Jewish voters in NJ-11, once again disproving the anti-semitic political truism that all Jewish Americans are some sort of hive-mind dedicated to a foreign state.

To be fair, Mejia’s loss of high-income voters shows there’s a grain of truth in the centrist argument. Going too far left does cost the Democrats some votes. Richer New Jerseyans turned away from Analilia Mejia’s economic populism and went for the Republican. But the fact remains that Mejia’s platform of Medicare For All, strong unions, and accusing Israel of genocide brought far more voters into the Democratic tent than it pushed out. As a result, the unapologetic progressive outperformed centrists Kamala Harris and Mikie Sherrill by impressive margins. The lesson is clear: if Democrats want to prioritize winning high-income communities, they should run candidates like Kamala Harris. But if they want to maximize the amount of votes they receive, they should run candidates like Analilia Mejia

The Democratic Party can follow establishment zealotry or build strong electoral majorities. But it can’t do both.

Now, does this mean Sanderite progressives are about to sweep every district across the country? Of course not. There is no political commentator worth their salt who will tell you moderation and regional-specific pivots are unnecessary. One difference between the progressive left and establishment corporatists is that the left believes moderation is a campaign tactic while the corporatists believe it’s the Democratic Party's message. The New Jersey 11th special election doesn’t prove Sanders-style progressivism is universally a winner. But it does prove the Democratic establishment’s anti-left narrative is false. The centrist claim has always been that going too far left would cost votes outside of deep-blue areas.

After DSA-associated Aftyn Behn came within single digits of winning the Trump +22 Tennessee 7th special election last December, the centrist interest group published a prewritten analysis erroneously claiming a moderate would have won. According to The Welcome Party, Behn’s association with Bernie Sanders and DSA turned away moderate voters, costing the Democrats the seat. If Analilia Mejia won by five or even ten points, then we would have heard the same post-election argument from The Welcome Party and other centrists. Something like, “Analilia Mejia won, but her far leftism scared off moderate suburban voters. Democrats should run more moderate candidates if they want to win back the House.” But Analilia Mejia didn’t win by single digits. She won by 21 points, overperforming the centrist president and current governor, including in Republican areas where they lost — which is why The Welcome Party still hasn’t mentioned Analilia Mejia more than two weeks after her victory.

And it’s not like Meija’s progressive ideology was unknown. The pro-Hathaway Super PAC American Counterpoint closed the New Jersey 11th special election with $183,000 worth of ads directly equating Analilia Mejia to Zohran Mamdani. And voters chose her anyway.

Speaking of Mamdani, the New York City mayor addressed the limits of socialist politics during a recent interview. As America’s Mayor said, political opponents keep moving the goalposts on the limits of progressive success. First, it was “You can only win in Queens,” then it was “You can only win in New York City.” The mayor’s experience is a perfect representation of the ever-moving goalposts centrists keep shifting to discredit the left. After establishment darling Janet Mills dropped out of the Maine Democratic Senate primary last week, Center for New Liberalism founder Jeremiah Johnson tried to downplay the significance of Graham Platner’s left populist victory by saying Maine was an “odd” state and that the lessons from this race weren’t applicable elsewhere. (Okay, man. Sure.) Whatever one thinks about Maine’s peculiarities, Janet Mills is the sitting governor. She won a hotly contested Democratic primary and then a statewide election just four years ago. The same voters who sent Mills to the governor's office overwhelmingly rejected her in favor of Graham Platner’s anti-imperialist, pro-worker politics. It’s also not like Maine is a far-left state. It hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988. Yet, Platner blew Chuck Schumer’s hand-picked candidate out of the water and is polling ahead of Susan Collins. His primary victory speaks volumes about the current state of the Democratic Party. And if he can do what the Democratic establishment has failed to do and unseat Susan Collins, it will trigger a political sea change.

While critics will find ways to write off Analilia Mejia’s landslide as an anomaly, they do so at their own peril. Progressive politicians who were once deemed unelectable are surging in Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, and countless other areas across the country. Deluded by their self-importance, our factional opponents will keep moving the goalposts. Let them. The left has no trouble scoring.

If you appreciated this essay, please click the ❤️ to help it rise in Substack’s algorithm. Don’t forget to subscribe so future articles are delivered to your inbox. If you’re a returning JoeWrote reader, consider supporting my work with a premium subscription. For the cost of just one cup of coffee a month, you can help me keep creating content like this. Plus, you unlock everything JoeWrote has to offer. Thanks in advance!

Subscribe now

In Solidarity — Joe

Tomorrow is May Day, or as it’s known outside the U.S., International Workers’ Day. In 1889, the Second Communist International designated the first day of May a holiday to commemorate the Haymarket Affair. Three years earlier, labor organizers held a rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square calling for an eight-hour workday. Someone threw a bomb at the police, who fired on the crowd, killing or wounding dozens of protestors. Eight anarchists, most of them immigrants, were tried for the bombing and sentenced to death on flimsy evidence. With most of the accused being foreign-born, Haymarket set off a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment that laid the groundwork for the first Red Scare.

While May Day is celebrated everywhere from India to Canada, its connection to international communist, socialist, and anarchist movements (which predated both the Haymarket Affair and the Communist International declaration) has kept it from being recognized in the United States. Ironic, given the holiday memorializes an American event. Not wanting to bolster the socialist movement, President Grover Cleveland designated the first Monday in September as Labor Day instead of May 1st. By removing the American working class from its international context and placing it in a patriotic container, the anti-communist political class greatly limited the effectiveness and imagination of the American labor movement. While workers around the world will get a day off to celebrate their martyrs, champions, and campaigns, all American workers will receive on May 1st is an iPhone reminder to observe Law Day, the American Bar Association’s annual celebration of the rule of law.

Though it is not a federally recognized holiday, May Day will still be celebrated in the United States. May 1st is to socialists what Christmas is to Christians: a reminder of the heart of our ideology. If you’ve read my work or that of any other Marxist, you’ve probably noticed that workers’ rights take priority over other left-wing issues, such as feminism, immigration, or healthcare. Comparatively, progressive pundits and politicians from a non-socialist background present workers' rights as one part of the left-wing agenda. Pledges to “Protect Workers’ Rights” and “Support Unions” appear on the “Issues” page of left-wing Democrats, equally as celebrated as commitments to restoring reproductive justice and gun safety legislation. The difference in prioritization is not because socialists don’t care about these issues, nor is it because progressives aren’t seriously committed to labor rights. Instead, socialists are most focused on workers’ issues because we believe labor relations are at the heart of capitalism. As capitalism reaches across every geographic and identitarian boundary, so too does its exploitation.

Because it is the basis of American life, everything and everyone is impacted by capitalism. Both pro-capitalists and anti-capitalists agree that capitalism works because workers — the people who do not own capital, and therefore have to sell their labor to survive — don’t receive the full value of their labor. Every day, workers go to work. There, they create value by making goods and delivering services. The value of their work is measured in a business’s net income, the total amount consumers pay. But workers don’t receive that full value. Instead, they receive only a portion of it, called a wage. The difference between workers’ wages and the net income (minus other operating expenses) is called profit. Under capitalism, profit is the property of the business owner. Karl Marx coined this the Surplus Value Theory, but it was first identified by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations. Whether you agree with Marx’s conclusions that the wage structure is exploitative or you are more sympathetic to Milton Friedman’s argument that profit is necessary for capitalists to invest in new businesses, there’s no denying that the extraction of value from the working class is a core feature of capitalism.

To evolve beyond this exploitative system, socialists focus on building class consciousness. Class consciousness is simply workers realizing that the system I detailed above exists and that they are on the short end of it. The best way to achieve this consciousness is through labor organizing. Fighting for a union and a contract reveals the true nature of capitalism by making clear that the bosses and workers are not on the same team. The bosses want to extract as much profit as they can, which requires paying workers less. The workers want as high a wage as possible, which requires reducing profit. Winning a union contract is fantastic, but simply helping working-class Americans witness this dynamic instills them with class consciousness. This is why socialists, anarchists, and communists have led union efforts in every age and country in which capitalism has existed.

Not only does the wage system harm workers personally, but it also harms our entire society by leading to antisocial and destructive outcomes. Because capitalists want to maximize profit, there is always an incentive to cut workers' pay, offshore jobs, and lobby for laws that enrich the wealthy at the expense of the working class. Let this system continue long enough, and the working-class life will become so miserable that they will look for a political alternative — even if it’s a bad one.

Unless there is a socialist movement ready to channel their frustration into effective labor movements, the disaffected working class will turn to fascists and reactionaries who scapegoat their problems on immigrants, Jews, women, and other vulnerable communities. This outcome is inevitable because capitalism is contradictory. It requires both the worker's consent and exploitation. Contradictions can exist in political ideologies, but only if there is a plan to resolve them. As I wrote recently, liberal Zionism is collapsing because it couldn’t reconcile its contradiction between liberal democracy and Israeli ethnosupremacy. That’s the thing about political contradictions — they are going to resolve. The only question is whether they resolve beneficially or destructively. As socialists, we want to be well-positioned to lead society through the transition from capitalist decline to a more progressive, fairer world. If there is no socialist movement ready to speak to this need, then capitalism will collapse into fascism, as it has done, is doing, and will continue to do.

It is commonly said that men don’t die of prostate cancer, but die with prostate cancer. As the original cancer and chemotherapy destroy the body and weaken the immune system, new diseases appear. These secondary malignancies, as they’re known, can often be more harmful than the original ailment, and are frequently the official cause of death for the patient. As is cancer, so is capitalism.

The great flaw of liberalism is that it fails to account for the power capitalism creates. Liberal economists and theorists seldom examine how the private ownership of business, which they support, creates the oppression of minorities, which they hate. Sure, the Walton Family owning Walmart doesn’t make people racist or start foreign wars on its own. But the need to protect the interests of the private ownership class and give it access to new markets undoubtedly creates destructive secondary effects such as racism, misogyny, and imperialism. Why wouldn’t these issues stem from our capitalist structure? I’m always baffled when people dismiss the connections between capitalism and social issues by saying, “Not everything has to do with capitalism.” Of course, certain human behaviors have existed for millennia and will persist regardless of our mode of production. But claiming the operating system of all modern life bears no responsibility for worsening our problems is like saying monarchical feudalism isn’t responsible for the quality of life in the 13th century. Nothing happens in a vacuum.

When proto-capitalists set up shop in 17th-century America, they imported slaves to provide the cheap labor needed to grow tobacco, cotton, and other cash crops. Chattel slavery is gone, but its legacy isn’t. Black families have about $15 for every $100 that White families have. And even when working-class wealth increases as a whole, the racial wealth gap still widens. Socialists support ending police violence and delivering reparations as valiant causes unique to the Black experience. But in our view, the oppression of Black Americans won’t end until the economic system that gives them a smaller share of the national wealth is replaced with one that distributes wealth equally. That is why communists were early champions of civil rights, long before Northern liberals lent the Black struggle their attention.

I disagree with Vladimir Lenin’s claim that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism. (Capitalism has not ended, so how do we know what its most advanced form is?) But the Russian revolutionary was absolutely correct to show how capitalism drove foreign wars. Capitalists are sharks. They must swim or die. Stagnation is not an option. So, capitalists use their enormous power to pressure governments into conquering new territories for them to sell to and exploit. In centuries past, this drove the westward colonization of the American continent, leading to unspeakable crimes. Today, Donald Trump does my job for me. Why is America warring with Venezuela and Iran? “To take the oil,” the President admitted.

As socialists, we understand that immigrants aren’t crossing the Southern Border because they “want our freedom.” In our view, immigrants are being pushed into America, often against their own will. The North American Free Trade Agreement decimated the Mexican agriculture industry, driving millions of unemployed Mexican farm workers north. Known as “The Northern Triangle,” the nations of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras generate a significant number of undocumented immigrants currently in America. While Mexican immigration is a direct result of capitalists’ conquest for cheap, cross-border labor, immigration from the Northern Triangle is largely due to the multi-generation cycle of violence that began with the 1954 American coup of the democratically elected Guatemalan government. Why did the CIA overthrow the Guatemalan president and begin a genocide? Because the United Fruit Company (now known as Dole) didn’t want the government redistributing their land. The case of Guatemala is the Marxist view of contemporary American politics in a nutshell: Capitalists drove American imperialism, which drove a wave of undocumented immigration, which Donald Trump used to win power, so he could launch wars on Iran and Venezuela to enrich his friends in the oil industry. Need I say more?

Even seemingly unrelated identitarian struggles can be traced back to capitalism. The feminist movement has fought for equal treatment of the sexes for centuries. Why do men earn an average of $300 more than women during the typical work week? Because capitalism requires the unpaid labor of homemaking and childcare, which has traditionally fallen to women. Even the highest-performing women workers will likely take time off to have a child and raise it. Though this is the most important job in human society, homemakers are neither compensated for their work nor for the risks they face in childbirth. Instead, patriarchy teaches that women “naturally” belong in the home. It’s interesting: The gender stereotypes of social conservatives just happen to support the capitalist system, which requires men to expend all their productive energy in workplaces making profit for bosses, while women prepare the home so men can comfortably rest for their next shift. What a weird coincidence!

Now this is not to say capitalism is the sole cause of racism, immigration surges, sexism, or war. All of these existed before capitalism, and will likely outlive it. But, just like previous stages of human development, such as feudalism, tribalism, and slave empires, capitalism has worsened these issues far beyond what they need to be. Will a post-capitalist war end racism and war? Of course not. Will it greatly reduce them? Undoubtedly.

Though it is unfortunate that the ailments of capitalism reach every element of American life, we are fortunate that this makes the fight for labor rights one of the most universally appreciated political messages, regardless of partisan identity. As I wrote after the 2024 election, red state voters consistently voted for pro-worker referendums that would be considered “progressive,” while voting overwhelmingly for Donald Trump.

“While polls are helpful, the strongest indication that voters want worker-friendly economics is the 2024 election itself. Six states held voter referendums on economic issues in 2024. All of the states that took the labor-friendly position voted for Trump. Arizona strongly rejected a decrease in tipped-worker pay, while Alaska (Trump +13.1%) and Missouri (Trump +18.4%) approved a $15 minimum wage and required paid sick leave. Nebraska (Trump +20.4%) voters also passed a requirement for paid sick leave.” — Centrists Shrank the Democratic Tent. Only the Left Can Expand It.

While it’s false to say that Americans outside of major metropolitan centers don’t care about marginalized communities, labor politics have a much wider appeal than identity-specific politics in rural areas. By centering the working-class struggle, the left has a foothold for building coalitions to advance other progressive causes in conservative areas. As Alabama coal miner Braxton Wright told New York Times correspondent Michael Corkery, he feels abandoned by the radicals in both parties. This leaves him in the political center, right next to the Democratic Socialists of America.

Michael Corkery: “When we put always sort of labels or how we identify Democrat, Republican, do you identify most primarily as a union worker?”

Braxton Wright: “Yeah. I mean, I consider myself a union worker. That’s what I am. And if possible, that’s what I’m going to stay.”

MC: “So where does that leave you politically?”

BW: “Kind of in the middle of the road. You know? We’ve had a lot of support from local and state DSA chapters. The Birmingham DSA chapter has showed tremendous support for us.”

MC: “What’s that, the DSA?”

BW: “The Democratic Socialists of America. They’re very pro-worker. You know what I mean? They support workers. It doesn’t matter the industry. To them, we’re still a worker. We work in fossil fuel. But at the end of the day, we’re still a worker that is important as a worker in another industry.”

Workers from traditionally conservative environments like Braxton Wright might not support the full progressive agenda of anti-war campaigns, immigrant rights, and gender equality. But because the socialist movement can reach these Americans with concern and advocacy for their daily struggles, that is the principle the American left should unite around. Once unity around the labor struggle is established, it is much easier to promote equitable causes. Not only because working-class Americans trust socialists, but because, as we have seen, the wars we aim to stop and the oppression we seek to end are consequences of the same system exploiting workers like Braxton Wright. There is no better time for the American left to make this case. As each of America’s two capitalist parties has strayed from the economic concerns of working-class Americans, they’ve fallen out of favor with their constituents. In the 1990s, the Democratic Party turned away from supporting unions in search of mystical moderation, leading to a cataclysmic fall-off in public approval. The Republican Party experienced an uptick in support during the Biden years, as Donald Trump spoke to the economic concerns of millions of Americans that were going unnoticed by the Democratic President. Yet as soon as Trump took office, Americans realized he was all talk. More concerned about ideological issues such as anti-wokeness and supporting Israel, Trump and the GOP’s popularity has crashed as well. America is waiting for a working-class movement, and we should give it to them.

Political movements are often referenced as “tents.” Whether the coalition under the tent is big or small, all tents need a tentpole; something to unite around that holds up the tarp protecting your political coalition from the rain. Socialists believe that this tentpole should be the labor struggle. Not only because the exploitation of workers is the foundational crime of capitalism, but because all other problems, as well as the solutions to them, grow out of it.

By showing all working-class Americans that their struggles are linked, we unite them in pursuit of a universal solution — socialism.

I’ll be teaching a May Day workplace organizing training at the Colorado People’s Center in downtown Denver this Saturday! Come stop by and check out all the other May Day celebrations we have going on this weekend.

If you appreciated this essay, please click the ❤️ to help it rise in Substack’s algorithm. Don’t forget to subscribe so future articles are delivered to your inbox. If you’re a returning JoeWrote reader, consider supporting my work with a premium subscription. For the cost of just one cup of coffee a month, you can help me keep creating content like this. Plus, you unlock everything JoeWrote has to offer.

Thanks in advance!

Subscribe now

Happy May Day — Joe

Subscribe now

Compared to our European counterparts, American air travel is a uniquely terrible experience. Cramped seats. High fares. Stale pretzels. Unless you can afford the luxuries of business class, nearly every American enters the airport accepting that the next twelve hours will be miserable. Flying will never be a day at the beach. But it doesn’t have to be this bad. There’s nothing unique about American geography that would make our air travel experience so much worse than that of our peer nations. That is a product of runaway market consolidation and profiteering. Those are uniquely American problems, caused by the free-market zealotry that drives our political class to choose ideological purity over improving the lives of their constituents.

Last week, Donald Trump announced the American government would support Spirit Airlines through its latest financial troubles. Bankrupt for the second time in twenty months, Spirit blamed its latest crisis on rising fuel costs driven by the Iran War. But analysts have cast doubt on that claim, pointing out that Spirit has been in jeopardy well before the joint Israeli-American intervention in Persia.

In typical Trumpian fashion, the more the President said, the less we knew. When asked by a reporter if the government plans to buy Spirit, Trump blamed the airline’s woes on Barack Obama for blocking a merger between People Express Airlines (which closed in 1987) and Spirit (which was incorporated in 1990). The President was equally confused about Spirit’s future as he was about its past.

“We’re thinking about doing it, helping them out, meaning bailing them out, or buying it. I think we’d just buy it… then sell it for a profit when the price of oil goes down.”

Conservatives grumbled at the prospect of a state-owned airline, but their distaste was unnecessary. Trump’s plan to profit from Spirit is far closer to a libertarian view of government than a socialist one. As Spirit’s lawyers told the bankruptcy court, they are in “very advanced discussions” with the government to “create an appropriately capitalized, fierce competitor in the airline space.” In normal person speak, that means Spirit plans to remain a for-profit company.

It’s a shame the United States government isn’t interested in buying Spirit Airlines and running it as a public option. Because that’s exactly what America needs.

Market Failure To Launch

I’ve previously written about how airline market consolidation has led to a worse flying experience and to an industry-wide monopoly. Basically, airlines meet once a year at the International Air Transport Association meeting and conspire to keep ticket prices “disciplined” — an agreement to charge you high prices so profits aren’t undercut by one airline trying to out-compete the others. It’s an open violation of every anti-monopoly law on the books, but no one seems to care.

The air travel industry can do this because its market is uniquely consolidated. The Big Four Airlines of American, Delta, United, and Southwest account for 80% of all domestic air travel, while smaller carriers such as Spirit, Frontier, and JetBlue squabble over the remaining 20%. The Big Four are big for a reason. Over the last half-century, 46 airlines have merged into these four companies. It’s much easier to fix prices with four competitors than forty, which is why airlines can charge you more and more for smaller and smaller seats. You simply don’t have anywhere else to go.

The harms of runaway airline consolidation extend far beyond the passenger experience. Spirit Airlines is a single company and only a minor player in the market. But its bankruptcy speaks to a much larger problem, one that raises questions about the for-profit model of privatized air travel, and by extension, the entire capitalist economy.

Read more

It’s impossible for me to talk about Yesteryear without kissing Caro Claire Burke’s ass.

I’ll be honest. I doubted the Yesteryear hype. With a parade of 5-Star pre-launch reviews and comparisons to the greatest American novels, I got the sense the literary world was caught up in the moment. I always thought the book would be good. But the universal acclaim created the creeping suspicion that the publisher had found a marketable bestseller and thrown the entire Q2 marketing budget behind it. It’s not like my concern was unfounded. Hype and quality are often uncorrelated in the publishing world. The last six months of 2025 were a full-court press for American Canto. Every magazine, talk show, and podcast in America told me that Olivia Nuzzi’s love affair with the worm devouring RFK Jr.’s last brain cell was the greatest political tragedy since Princess Dianna. When I picked up Yesteryear from Barnes & Noble, a pile of dusty American Canto copies under a “50% Discount!” sign reminded me that booksellers are as sensationalist as they come.

So, when I opened Yesteryear, I was optimistic for an enjoyable satire of American patriarchy. After a furious weekend reading marathon during which I ignored every responsibility in my life, I set Yesteryear down. Stunned. The reviews were wrong. Giving Burke’s debut novel a meager 5-star rating is an insult. (As I said, it’s impossible to talk about this book without kissing Caro’s ass. Before you call me a sycophant, read it for yourself. You’ll see)

Yesteryear is the defining cultural product of contemporary America. Through the time-traveling life of trad wife Instagram influencer Natalie Heller Millls, the book captures what it’s like to live in a society burdened by the social media paradox: As the hyper individualization of American capitalism separates each citizen into an isolated unit of consumption and production, we Log On, hoping digital connections will fill the hole of human camaraderie the profit-driven world tore out of our evolutionary psyche. Only once we’re immersed in the world of follows and likes and friends and trolls do we realize our mistake. The more time we spend online navigating algorithms to maximize our disconnected connections, the less human we become and the more alone we feel.

At first glance, Yesteryear appears to be about the pitfalls of patriarchy and America’s genetic hatred of women (The only time the Constitution mentions “women” is when it gives them permission to vote after 150 years of codified second-class citizenry). There’s no denying that misogyny is Yesteryear’s home-grown bread and hand-churned butter. But the novel speaks to social dynamics far beyond the scope of gender relations. Or at least issues that seem gender-agnostic.

In both her glamorous present and dystopian past, Natalie considers everyone and everything bullshit. From the well-rehearsed script for her social media posts to the old classmates she runs into at Target, every interaction of Natalie’s seemingly perfect life is fraudulent. No one knows this better than the protagonist, whose vicious inner monologues skewer anything caught in her path. Including herself. The self-loathing runs between her thoughts and drips off her every word. The only thing Natalie sees as real is her religion. God is always a certainty, whether Natalie is thanking Him for gifting her a million followers or begging Him to free her from the horrors of life on the antebellum frontier. When I asked about Natalie’s unwavering faith during her author event here in Denver (well, asked her on my behalf), the Yesteryear author challenged my framing: Natalie might be religious, but does she really have faith? After all, her relationship to God is transactional. As is common in Evangelical and Protestant sects, Natalie’s religion is purely Old Testament. She believes she is in covenant with God. She glorifies Him, and He gives her followers. She accepts His “test,” and she expects Him to free her from the unbearable past once she passes it. She does X, so He should provide her with Y. Faith is trusting even against the unknown. Natalie trusts no one. She is certain, to a fault.

“Now if you will obey me and keep my covenant, you will be my own special treasure from among all the peoples on earth; for all the earth belongs to me. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites.” — God comands Abraham about his covenant with anceint Israel, Exodus 19:5-6.

Not every American shares Natalie’s transactional Christianity. But all of us can relate to the frustration of being handcuffed to a voided social contract. Whether through God or government, the powers that be have offered every American a deal. We were required to go to school, get a job, start a family, and follow the law. As a result, we were promised that Star Spangled capitalism would carry us into the joy and prosperity of a middle-class, white-picket life. Like Natalie waiting on divine deliverance, we plebeians did our part. But the higher powers never delivered. Income inequality skyrockets. Politicians ignore us. Life gets harder. Opioids and booze become more appealing. Instead of proving themselves to be honest partners, the powerful laughed at us for being foolish enough to trust them.

Americans from all walks of life played by the rules and have little to show for it. Now, they’re left asking the all-powerful deity — Uncle Sam or Father Yahweh — why he’s not holding up His end of the bargain. Grappling with this betrayal is sure to drive us into psychosis. Not because we lost our grip on reality, but because the reality we were promised was waiting for us was revealed to be a lie. Like the despondent Natalie Heller Mills during her first days in 1855, much of America wallows in pitiful deterioration. Need a way out? Why not log on to the internet? Speaking from personal experience, it’s the perfect place to accelerate your mental breakdown into stage five Computer Madness.

Though Yesteryear satirizes the domestic side of a collapsing misogynistic nation, I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between the tradwife and the cowboy, each a romanticization of America’s brutal history. Much like Natalie’s idea of 19th-century homemaking is a far departure from historical reality, so is America’s silver screen view of the Western vigilante. Historically, cowboys were the American proletariat — wayward young men lured to the frontier by promises of gold and adventure, a much more tempting offer than working in the deadly factories that gave rise to European labor movements. While real cowboys were too broke to even buy a gun, the Hollywood gunslinger has rewritten national history, and by extension, our modern self-image. John Wayne and Clint Eastwood thrilled generations by giving Manifest Destiny a handsome face and a chiseled jawline. In the process, they helped American audiences forgive themselves for our nation’s sins, much like how predators manipulate religion to self-foregive for their transgressions. (Why would Pete Hegseth need to ask the women he raped for forgiveness? God already forgave him. After all, He is God. They’re only women.) Rescuing white women from savage Apaches and masked gunmen wasn’t just entertainment. It was a permission structure for American audiences to move past the guilt of the genocidal project that we all benefit from.

If a tradwife is the misinformed rosey face of America’s domestic past, then her counterpart, the cowboy, is the handsome and daring personification of American imperialism. Much like the bearded, grizzled cowboy gunslinger was used to humanize and justify America’s 19th-century westward expansion, the bearded, grizzled special operations soldier is used to humanize and justify America’s 21st-century global expansion. No one has done more to connect the past and present of Hollywood misrepresentation than screenwriter Taylor Sheridan. With a world-renowned collection of neo-Western titles such as Yellowstone, Sicario, Hell or High Water, Wind River, Landman, and 1923, Sheridan has repurposed the classic cowboy aesthetic to justify every social failing conservatives love to love. From beneath the sun-tinted brims of prop cowboy hats, Sheridan’s male characters lecture woman characters (who represent the liberal audience) on the need for unregulated oil drilling, drone strikes in Afghanistan, CIA intervention in Mexico, and, most importantly, male dominance in the household. In the scene below from Landman, good ol’ boy Tommy Norris drives the uptight, coastal elite lawyer Rebecca Falcone into the Texas desert just to lecture her about how windfarms are wasteful and she’s stupid for thinking otherwise. To a male audience, this is an enjoyable, Emmy-worthy scene: the American Hero tells the Lib Lawyer Lady how it is. (You woke dumb bitches don’t understand REAL America!) I imagine this scene is experienced very differently for the female viewer, who likely assumes a visibly angry, half-drunk 60-year-old man carrying a young woman into the wilderness is the start of an unsolved murder.

The entire time I was reading Yesteryear, I couldn’t help but equate the fictional Natalie Heller Mills to the very real Taylor Sheridan. With Natalie’s father-in-law, Doug, a classic MAGA senator, Burke expertly draws a parallel between the hyper-masculine world view of American reactionaries and the feminine, domestic face of their political project. The two characters have a mutually beneficial relationship, exchanging money and electoral support. If Senator Doug represents the conservative worldview Taylor Sheridan seeks to promote with the modern retelling of American cowboys and special forces operators, then Natalie represents the homemaking foundation on which that worldview rests. Both then and now, protecting white women has often been the justification for America’s most heinous acts — slaughtering Natives, enslaving Blacks, and deporting immigrants. (Except the ones that work on Yesteryear Farm, of course.)

Like Natalie, Sheridan’s western bona fides are aesthetic, not material. Natalie purchases Yesteryear Farm in pursuit of a lifestyle reset. Sheridan’s mother bought her family a farm to “have an opportunity to learn firsthand about the peaceful feeling of freedom in nature.” He visited on “holidays and weekends,” playing cowboy part-time while his real life was that of a theater kid, starring in Grease and Piaf at his well-funded high school. Still, he projects the Western Way of Life to his audience, frequently appearing on-screen as the sun-weathered cowboy he very much is not.

While Sheridan’s modern cowboys lionize modern capitalism and imperialism through American television screens, Yesteryear gives a more honest look into the domestic hellscape this bipartisan project has brought us. Not just the subordination of 51% of the population, but soulless consumerism, social isolation, a pathological need to be liked by those we despise, and the greatly mistaken belief that if only we were someone else, somewhere else, our problems would be better. And, of course, it’s all monetized.

In my experience, no show, movie, album, or book embodies the 21st-century American experience as well as Yesteryear. Succession came close, but its focus on the inept, oligarchical class failed to convey the madness experienced by those of us subject to their whims. It’s a unique comparison, but I haven’t felt that a media project has captured its moment this well since The Sopranos. Decades after it aired, the ballad of Tony Soprano remains a widely watched show because it conveys the unique malaise of 1990s America through a compelling story. Strippers and shotguns are foreign to middle-class suburbanites. But Tony Soprano’s struggle to protect the dying empire of organized crime from modernity’s crushing persistence reflected the anxieties of Americans coping with life inside the dying empire of the United States of America. When the series debuted in 1999, the end of the Cold War had left the militant nation without purpose. For so long, the American identity centered on defeating communism. Like a star high school athlete after graduation, America didn’t know what it wanted to become now that the Soviet Union was gone. After 9/11, the metacommentary of a declining empire within a declining empire broke the fourth wall. When the greatest military defeat on the American homeland since Pearl Harbor knocked down the Twin Towers, the showrunners removed the iconic shot of American Prestige — a representation of the powerful New York mafia families that Soprano’s New Jersey empire sat beneath — from the show’s famous theme song. From there, The Sopranos created an unforgettable yet significantly heightened representation of the struggle to balance family, work, and happiness in a world in which the old rules, the ones every character believed would exist in perpetuity, no longer applied. What The Sopranos did for the uncertainty of turn-of-the-millennium America, Yesteryear does for the 2020s. Only it’s better.

For a book review, I’ve talked very little about Yesteryear’s plot or the overarching theme of the persecution of women. I’ve steered clear of both these topics simply because I cannot do them justice. More adept feminist reviewers than I have spilled considerable ink and typed many a key on the book’s wonderful satire of the harms of patriarchy. (Which hurt the male characters as well as the female ones.) And I have little interest in mansplaining patriarchy’s gender penalty to those who understand it better than I do. As for the plot, I have nothing to say other than you should go buy Yesteryear and read it. At a time when every piece of entertainment is a product of AI and capitalist slopification, Yesteryear feels like the first original, dare I say human, major American cultural contribution in a long, long time.

Things used to be better back in the day, huh? If only I could go back there…

Thanks for reading JoeWrote! If you’re a new reader, remember to subscribe so you receive new emails in your inbox.

As the economy is going down the drain, I’ve reduced the price of annual premium subscriptions to $25. Hopefully, this allows readers to continue accessing exclusive content amid tightening budgets. But if it’s not enough, shoot me a DM, and we’ll work something out. Thanks in advance!

Subscribe now

In Solidarity — Joe

In her 1969 book On Death and Dying, psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross introduced the five stages of grief experienced by terminal patients: denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance. Though Kübler-Ross’s work focused on humans grappling with the end of their lives, grief and the strategies for coping with it appear whenever there is loss. That loss can be physical, mental, or ideological, as is the case with liberal Zionists struggling to rationalize the slow death of their namesake ideology.

The demise of liberal Zionism was inevitable. Liberalism believes in democratic equality regardless of race, religion, or other protected traits. Alternatively, Zionism is the belief in a Jewish supremacist ethnostate, a direct violation of the liberal belief in legal equality. Liberal Zionism is an inherently contradictory ideology, no different than being an anti-racist segregationist or a MAGA socialist. Political projects can exist and thrive with contradictions, but only if the contradictions are acknowledged as temporary. If there is no plan to resolve the contradiction, or if it is ignored, the project will implode. Slavery was the prominent contradiction for 19th-century liberal democracies. The British Empire resolved this contradiction by prioritizing liberty over bondage and legislatively abolishing the slave trade in 1837. Because the United States refused to address the contradiction and kept kicking the can down the road, the lack of a resolution led to the bloody Civil War.

“In the [liberal Zionist] view, Jewish history shows that Jews need and are entitled to a nation-state of their own. But they also think that this state must be a liberal democracy, which means that there must be strict equality before the law independent of religion, ethnicity, or gender.” — Carlo Strenger

“Liberal Zionism is an ideology that provides cover for and advances the settler-colonial conquest of Palestine in the name of rationality, progress, equality, tolerance, democracy, and even anti-racism.” — Muhannad Ayyash

Much like the slave states that tried to hypocritically justify slavery by pointing to the Bill of Rights’ guarantees of liberty, liberal Zionists’ refusal to address their ideological paradox has led to its demise. As support for Israel craters in the United States, with the largest drop-offs among left-leaning and younger Americans, liberal Zionists see the writing on the wall. Their belief that Israel could exist as a liberal democracy for one ethnicity and a racial caste system for the rest is nearing death. So, they are grieving. Not just for the loss of liberal Zionism as an acceptable political belief in the United States, but also for the loss of their place as political thought leaders directing the national Democratic Party.

As support for Israel began dropping in 2023, liberal Zionists went through the anger and denial stages to cope with their loss of stature. Throughout the Biden presidency and into Trump’s second term, aggressively defended Israel as waging a “just war” and denied that the Gaza genocide was a political liability for Democrats. (May, 2024: “Is Gaza hurting Biden in the eyes of the public because voters are pro-Palestinian? No.”) Liberals have always been sour that the pro-Palestine left opposes Israel. But the post-October 7th reaction went from annoyance to psychotic fury. In August of 2024, Jonathan Chait spewed his rage at anti-genocide protestors across the pages of New York Magazine, accusing them of wanting to genocide Jews.

“The [Palestine liberation] movement could not be any clearer on this point. Its members will not stop harassing and intimidating Jewish people. Nor will they adopt any standard of behavior. When they say they believe they are part of the Palestinian liberation movement, and that the movement is entitled to use any means necessary, that is exactly what they mean.

What Democrats and progressives need to decide is whether to treat these groups as noble idealists broadly on the right side of history or as the fanatic adherents of an illiberal and unjust program. In the Middle East, that program calls for endless war until the Jews have been expurgated from a soil on which they unnaturally reside. In the West, it means imposing social norms that make most Jews feel alien and unwelcome.

To advance justice for Palestinians and Jews does not require placating, forming alliances with, or ceding “leverage” to followers of this hateful program. The morally just response is to meet this ideology the way liberals meet other forms of hate: by calling it what it is.”

Even well-mannered Ezra Klein has previously struggled to contain his distaste for critics of Zionism. Not long after the start of the “Israel-Hamas War” (his framing), Klein made explicitly religious arguments for Israel’s ethno-nationalism, derisively saying:

“When people read [the Torah], it is an account of the Jewish people being expelled violently, repeatedly, from Jerusalem, which was not located at that time in New Jersey; it was there in the same place. There's a very ancient connection for the Jewish people to that land. When did the statute of limitations on Jewish expulsion run out?”

(Though Ezra Klein believes a 3,000-year-old religious history should determine modern Israeli politics, he’s also argued that Ta-Nehisi Coates’s incorporating the legacy of Jim Crow into modern politics is “too wide a historical scope.” Ezra Klein’s body of work shows that Zionism cannot be separated from its racist underpinnings, even if the Zionist believes they are fighting for social justice.)

While anger and denial still linger in the liberal Zionist psyche, the complete collapse of Americans’ sympathy for Israel has forced these prominent pundits into the bargaining stage of grief. As more and more Democratic politicians call to end funding for all Israeli weaponry, and the party opens up to anti-genocide voices such as Hasan Piker, liberal Zionists have filled the pages of America’s most prominent newspapers with their inner negotiations, attempting to convince their readers and themselves that Israel can still be a peaceful democracy — if only we ignore all evidence to the contrary. Each of these attempts to strike a bargain makes concessions to the anti-Zionist left. With Israel critics racking up wins in Democratic primaries, liberal Zionists are bargaining for a tactical retreat within the Democratic tent. Not because their morals compel them to stop Zionism’s century-long killing spree, but to ensure Israel maintains some relevance in the Democratic Party.

In a recent essay, Jonathan Chait implores his fellow liberal Zionists to make concessions to the “Hasan Piker extremist wing” of the Democratic Party. Otherwise, Chait warns, the establishment won’t be able to “hold on to the party.”

“A debate over American policy toward Israel is likely to divide the party in the next presidential-primary cycle even more clearly than Medicare for All divided it in 2020—even as many voters aren’t invested in the debate at all. The Democrats’ establishment opposes terrorism and backs a two-state solution; Piker and his allies want to cast that position as de facto support for the status quo, which is a single state controlled by Israel. If the establishment has any hope of holding on to the party, rather than surrendering it to the Piker wing, it will need to defy that characterization by recognizing that facts on the ground have changed. Political morals and public opinion are pushing in the same direction: ending American financial support for Israel.

The most essential task for liberal Zionists is to separate their ambitions from the stubborn realities of Israel’s government. Liberal Zionists can say that they oppose the status quo and favor two independent states, but as Israel’s willingness to trade land for peace recedes further into historical memory, those pleas sound detached from reality. The traditional Democratic posture is becoming outright impossible as long as the party continues to support sending billions of dollars to Israel every year.”

Conceding to pro-Palestine Democrats is a massive shift for Chait, who just two years ago demanded Democrats shun the anti-Zionist “hate movement.” His complete heel turn isn’t because Chait is concerned for Israel’s victims, but because he’s concerned for Israel — specifically, the flow of American weaponry it relies on. I’m sure this was a hard pill for Jonathan Chait to swallow. Which is why he’s being extremely honest with the like-minded The Atlantic readership by telling them that if the Democratic establishment continues supporting Israel uncritically, the progressive left will defeat them and transform the party into a fully anti-Zionist organization. To be fair to Jonathan Chait, he’s right. Democratic voters hate Israel almost as much as they hate Donald Trump. AIPAC-backed Senate candidate Haley Stevens was recently booed at the Michigan Democratic Convention. Staying the course is political suicide for Democratic Zionists.

Chait tries to make his message more palatable to his audience by offering them the easy way out: criticize Netanyahu. He is warning them that either liberal Zionists must retreat and concede the battle, or they risk losing the war.

“Liberal Zionists can win an intra-Democratic argument against anti-Zionist radicals, but they can’t win it while burdened with support for subsidizing settlements and a strategy of endless conflict. The most extreme anti-Zionist activists won’t be satisfied with anything short of committing the Democratic Party to Israel’s demise. But the most left-wing position in recent Democratic primaries—on Iraq in 2004, on health care in 2016—has rarely been adopted by the candidate who emerges as the party’s eventual nominee. The decisive bloc of Democrats includes those who are disgusted with Israel’s policies and ready to wash their hands of American support for its maximalist strategy, but wary of going full Piker. Either mainstream Democrats will give up any illusions they have about the ugly nature of Israel’s current government, or they will no longer occupy the mainstream of their party.”

To a rational observer, Jonathan Chait’s quick change from “pro-Palestine voices should be shunned” to “we must give in to their demands for our own survival” shows that his original ideology was extremely flawed. Someone with sensible control over their beliefs would stop and ask, “Two years ago, I said these people wanted to kill me. Now I’m saying we must admit they’re right. What else am I wrong about?” But in the liberal Zionist mind, which has psychologically invested in the worldview of Zionist founder Theodore Herzl that Israel is “a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism,” it is too difficult to admit they were fooled. It’s important to remember that liberal Zionists don’t consider their beliefs contradictory. Instead, they subscribed to Zionism’s racist belief that Arabs cannot accept pluralistic democracy, which justifies the suppression and expulsion of Palestinians and the Lebanese as a necessary step to spread Israel’s “liberal values.” Essentially, liberal Zionists think it's okay to have Jim Crow apartheid if the oppressor also hosts an annual gay pride parade.

Rather than resolve this contradiction plaguing his beleaguered mind, Jonathan Chait is watching liberal Zionism disappear before his eyes. Too late to stop it, all he can do is bargain with the Democratic Party, his fellow liberal Zionists, and most obviously, himself, to maintain a shred of credibility as liberal Zionism falls into the historical dustbin alongside segregation and colonialism.

A more polished episode of liberal-Zionist bargaining appears in Ezra Klein's recent work. Arguably the most prominent liberal Zionist in mainstream media, Klein deserves credit for criticizing Israel more than his peers. Still, that criticism always ends with him throwing up his hands and saying, “Nothing we can do!” instead of calling for international pressure to stop the slaughter he claims to oppose.

In a recent episode of his podcast, Ezra Klein discusses Israel’s colonization of Palestine with the editors of The One State Reality. The conversation centers on the West Bank, the arena in which liberal Zionists are most likely to criticize Israel because its apartheid policies are the least defensible. (When I reviewed Alan Dershowitz’s book for Jacobin last year, even he admits the West Bank segregation is indefensible.) Like Chait, Ezra Klein goes out of his way to argue that making concessions to the anti-Israel forces in the Democratic Party is a painful but necessary tactic to preserve long-term American support for Israel. Here’s him saying so in the episode prelude:

“I am not someone who wants to see the state of Israel cease to exist. But what Israel is choosing here — a one-state reality, which already is and will continue to be understood the world over as apartheid — endangers that state, too. The cost of Israel cannot morally be the permanent subjugation of millions of Palestinians.

In February, Gallup found, for the first time, that more Americans polled sympathized with the Palestinians than the Israelis. Among Democrats, among young Americans, it is not even close. Israel maintains support among older Americans, and it has benefited from the advanced age of the last two presidents, whose views of Israel were forged in another time, around another Israel. American politics has not yet fully grappled with what Israel has chosen to become. But it will — and soon.”

Throughout the conversation (which is worth listening to), Ezra Klein attempts to delicately walk what I previously called his “genocide tightrope.” On one side, Klein strongly criticizes Israeli settler terrorism and apartheid in the illegally occupied West Bank. On the other side, he tries to protect Israel by arguing that this violence is something new, a deviation from the “true” version of Israel. He also cynically suggests that the victims of Israeli violence bear some of the blame for their condition, saying the “wars” in Lebanon and Gaza are justified — they are not, and have been internationally condemned as illegal and immoral.

To give himself plausible deniability that he’s supporting radical religious militarism, Ezra Klein uses the framing of “Israeli Jews say” to advance the Zionist argument. It’s a cop-out that I’ve never heard Klein use for any other demographic, the media version of “i’M jUsT aSkInG qUeStIoNs BrO!” Here’s Klein using the “Israeli Jews say” framing to advance the argument that Gazans must be concentrated for Israeli “security.”

“When I speak to Israeli Jews about this, their view is that they did not have control of Gaza. They had withdrawn from Gaza, and after they withdrew, Gazans chose Hamas, a group dedicated to Israel’s destruction. And eventually the result was Oct. 7. And so to many Jewish Israelis, the lesson of the Gaza withdrawal is not that they had too much control but that they had too little — that they had offered too much autonomy and more than a thousand of their citizens paid a terrible price for that.”

Klein uses “Israeli Jews” again to argue that West Bank aggression is the result of the Palestinian refusal to accept earlier peace accords:

“I was doing a bunch of reporting before we had this conversation, and one of the things I found myself talking about with a number of Israelis was the collapse of faith among Israeli Jews in simply the idea of political deals. This was true with their views after the peace process: ‘We tried a peace process, and we got the second intifada.’ This was also true, to some degree, in what you’re saying about Hamas and Gaza. There was a sense that they were letting in more money and trying to stabilize [Gaza].”

And once again to suggest that Israel’s invasion of Lebanon is to keep Israelis “safe.”

“I’ve talked to Israeli Jews who live in the north, and they say: ‘Look, I can see Hezbollah members from my home. How am I supposed to allow my family to live there?’ During the Gaza war, there was rocket fire. You had the evacuation of the Israeli north. The people I spoke to felt completely failed by this.”

By claiming he’s speaking for “Israeli Jews” and not himself, Ezra Klein is arguing for his Zionist beliefs without compromising his liberal ones. He doesn’t want to say, “Israel might need to occupy Lebanon so that Israeli Jews feel safe,” because that directly violates liberal values. Instead, he pretends Israel is like any rational actor, then uses the framing of “Israeli Jews” to argue for the specific violations of democratic values. He further tries to protect Israel by claiming that the current Israeli government and military are somehow a bastardization of real Zionism.

“One of the things that we were looking at when we were preparing for this episode was the way the composition of the Israeli military, Israeli cabinet officials, but also Israeli military leadership, has changed. The Israeli military leadership used to be highly professionalized, often very centrist. There’s been a rolling purge, replacement, under Netanyahu, as he’s tried to put people who are more loyal to him into senior positions. In order to sustain itself, his coalition has had elements — like Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich — who in Israel had been seen as much more extreme.”

Of all the excuses liberal Zionists make for Israelis, the attempt to portray the Israeli government and its military as separate from the Israeli people is the most pathetic. Israel is an ethnic democracy. If you are Jewish, you have full democratic rights. Israeli Jews have repeatedly elected Likud and Benjamin Netanyahu. By passing race-based execution laws, massacring Palestinians, and cleansing Shia Muslims from Lebanon, the Netanyahu government is not acting against the wishes of the Israeli people — it is fulfilling them. Polling shows Israelis overwhelmingly support the IDF’s cleansing of Lebanon, as they did with the ethnic cleansing of Gaza at the height of the genocide. If the Israeli people were unhappy with the Netanyahu government, the Israeli Knesset could vote to dissolve itself and trigger elections. It has not, because Israelis support their national violence. It is also disingenuous of Ezra Klein to imply that a more “centrist” Israeli political coalition would be less imperialist. His conversation is about the West Bank and Lebanon. Leftist, centrist, and right-wing Israeli governments have occupied the West Bank since 1967. As for Lebanon, the pre-Netanyahu government shelled the civilians of Beirut back in 1982. With the October election looming, Netanyahu’s centrist opponents are attacking him for being too soft on Israel’s enemies. The opposition leader, Yair Lapid, condemned the ceasefire in Lebanon (which Israel immediately broke) and stated the only way to end the “war” is the “permanent removal of the threat to the northern settlements.” By which he means a permanent Israeli occupation of Lebanon. The far-right, hyper-militaristic government of Benjamin Netanyahu is not an affront to Israeli society, its citizens, or their values. It is a product of them.

What’s most striking about this episode is how clearly the contradictions of Ezra Klein’s politics are. Well, they’re clear to everyone but him. At one point, Klein explicitly details the reality of what Israel is, accusing it of “building illegal settlements at a record pace,” “protecting a terrifying rise in settler violence,” and “using the war in Iran as cover to invade Lebanon, displacing more than a million people.” And yet, in the very next sentence, he retreats into the Zionist safe space of saying Israel has to do something about Hamas and Hezbollah.

“I do not want to underplay what Israel is actually dealing with here. I have immense sympathy for Israel’s war against Hezbollah. They’re defending themselves in a way any state would. But this is collective punishment. Those million Lebanese are not all Hezbollah.

Israel’s security challenges are very real. Its horror, its fear, its trauma after Oct. 7 is very real. Its determination to make sure that never happens again is what any state and any people would do. Its right to reprisal against Hamas and Hezbollah is undeniable.”

Ezra Klein seems to honestly think Israel is invading Lebanon for any reason except to cleanse and occupy it. It is a truly revealing admission, considering he has previously suggested Democrats abandon trans rights and reproductive rights to win elections. It appears the Zionist belief that Israel is a perpetual victim that should always be given the benefit of the doubt is one of the only true values Klein holds.

The jumping back and forth between accusing Israel of war crimes and saying the context of those crimes is justified shows that Ezra Klein has yet to reach the acceptance stage of grief. He claims Israel is “defending itself” from Hezbollah. But Hezbollah was only created to defend Lebanon from Israel. He also says Israel has a “right to reprisal.” It does not. International law specifically rejects the right to reprisal by targeting civilians, which none can deny Israel has done over the last two and a half years. As for the claim Israel should defend itself from paramilitary resistance groups, in 2004, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel has no right to claim “self-defense” in areas it illegally occupies. Despite his willingness to criticize specific actions of the Israeli state, Ezra Klein is unwilling and unable to accept the reality of what Israel is, of what it always has been. Not yet ready to accept the death of liberal Zionism, Ezra Klein bargains with himself by promoting blatant lies about Israel’s nature or its violations of international law. But he is also putting forth another offer to Israel’s critics, one that the anti-Zionist left should reject.

It is clear that Ezra Klein believes the path to peace is through Israeli goodwill. It is not. Palestinian rights are not contingent on whether the “Israeli Jews” Ezra Klein loves to center feel like giving it to them. Rights and safety are often inversely correlated. I would be “safer” if every person except me were put in prison. But my “safety” is of far lesser importance than the right of everyone else to be free. While Chait and Klein’s encouragement for concessions is aimed at their fellow liberal Zionists, they are attempting to reach an agreement with the anti-Zionist left that Palestinian rights must be agreed to by the Israelis, and their “security concerns” are valid. They are not. The truth is that the Israelis are not good-faith actors. They bombed seven countries in 2025. A new U.N. report shows Israel killed forty-seven women and girls every day during the Gaza genocide (which is still happening, despite Israel’s agreement to the “ceasefire”). Disturbing reports from Israel’s infamous Sde Teiman torture camp show IDF guards are using dogs to rape detainees. All of this on top of the valid charge of genocide, which the international community has a duty to prevent.

There is no deal to be struck with the Israelis or the media allies that defend them. The Palestinians want equal treatment. The Israelis want to deny it to them. That is the situation. Much like apartheid South Africa, the Jim Crow South, or Nazi Germany, the solution to genocidal Israel is for those of good conscience to use economic, cultural, and political leverage to impose a transition to democracy and dignity for all, regardless of whether the Israeli people want it. If Ezra Klein and Jonathan Chait had wanted a different outcome, they should have resolved the contradiction of liberal Zionism long ago. They chose ignorance, so this is the solution they’re getting.

There is no bargain to be made. So liberal Zionists should hurry up and get to acceptance. Your ideology was always wrong. Time to take it off life support.

Thank you for reading JoeWrote! Please tap the ❤️ to help this article rise in Substack’s algorithm. If you’re a new reader, remember to subscribe so you receive new emails in your inbox. If you’re a returning reader, consider upgrading to a supporting subscription — which is 50% off for a limited time. That’s just $25 a year to support my work and ensure I can keep creating progressive content such as this.

Subscribe now

Thank you!

In Solidarity — Joe

We also covered how JD Vance is freaking out that this war is destroying his chances of becoming president. He’s been leaking to The New York Times repeatedly, trying to show that he’s really against this war — but not willing to say so publicly.

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Get more from Joe Wrote in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

When Donald Trump reentered the White House in 2025, he had far more international allies than he did in 2017. From Buenos Aires to Budapest, far-right politicians and their movements were winning democratic elections on explicitly reactionary platforms. In each case, the national conservative agenda was the same: cut social programs, scapegoat immigrants, persecute queerness, and defend “Western civilization” (whatever that means). The timely ascendence of fascist leaders was no coincidence. It was a meticulously planned political project that crossed oceans and traditional geopolitical divisions. Covering this phenomenon in 2023, The Institute for Policy Studies warned 2024 was the far-right’s “greatest opportunity since the 1930s to push the needle towards fascism.” This sentiment was echoed by the fascists themselves. At the conclusion of one international rightist gathering in 2024, the keynote speaker announced that “An international coalition of national forces has been established.” When Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, it seemed to confirm that this international nationalism was shaping the future of geopolitics, replacing the liberalism in the post-World War II liberal order with an illiberal substitute. Writing in Jacobin days after Trump was sworn in, international relations scholar Somdeep Sen warned that this movement was nearing global hegemony.

“From Rome to Buenos Aires, and from San Salvador to New Delhi, right-wing leaders are similarly optimistic that, with a friend like Donald Trump at the helm in Washington, an illiberal reconstruction of global politics is within reach.” — Far-Right Leaders Are Forging a Gobal Alliance

Sen was foresightful. When Trump was inaugurated for the second time before an audience of oligarchs, he had friends in every corner of the map. Libertarian Javier Milei held the Argentine presidency, Mussolini-praising Giorgia Meloni was prime minister of Italy, Salvadorian Nayib Bukele fancied himself “the world’s coolest dictator,” and anti-feminist Prime Minister Yoon Suk Yeol welcomed Trump’s return from South Korea. These newly emerging international nationalists were supported by long-standing fascist icons such as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have long shared Trump’s disdain for Muslims and other religious minorities. From the perspective of January 2025, it also appeared that this national conservative network would quickly expand. With Trump-inspired far-right political movements surging in Britain, Romania, Canada, and Australia, the speaker, who predicted an “international coalition of nationalist forces,” appeared to know what the future held. Which is no surprise. After all, this was his project, the lifelong work of the fascist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Trump Before Trump

While many have referred to Viktor Orbán as a Trump-like figure, a seeming Hungarian clone, this framing misunderstands the order of events. It was Orbán who first pioneered the quasi-populist far-right blueprint in 2010, which The Apprentice host borrowed to create the MAGA movement during his 2015 entry into electoral politics. The Trump-Orbán connection wasn’t personal, but ran through conservative strategist Steve Bannon. After Orbán won the Hungarian presidency in 2010 by railing against immigration, social justice, and other progressive causes, he became the shining beacon of reactionary conservatism, turning heads across the rightist world. As Bannon said in a speech in 2018, Orbán was “Trump before Trump” and “the bridge between the United States and Europe.”

The American and Hungarian far-right quickly strengthened their ties and laid the foundation for the international nationalist coalition they hoped to build. Conservative influencers such as Tucker Carlson flocked to Hungary and praised Orbán’s “defense of Western civilization,” as if the former Soviet satellite was some kind of White Boy Wakanda. By 2022, the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), known for its outlandish right-wing conventions, expanded to Europe and began holding annual events in Budapest. Running for five consecutive years, CPAC Hungary is home to the longest-operating CPAC outside of the United States. As is the case with most conservative projects, the spectacle of American conservatism was far from organic. It was recently revealed that Viktor Orbán was funding CPAC Hungary with taxpayer money. As the old conservative saying goes, “What’s good for the goose is good for the grift.”

With American conservatives so heavily invested in Victor Orbán’s project (both financially and ideologically), it was no surprise to see the Trump Administration supporting him in the recent Hungarian election. Trump promised to give Hungary the “full Economic Might of the United States” if Hungarians re-elected Orbán, and J.D. Vance flew to Budapest to stump for him. (Don’t worry, J.D. It’s not like your country is at war or anything.) It’s also likely that Vance’s international campaign is only the tip of the iceberg, the only visible part of the Trump administration’s support for the Hungarian despot. Recent reporting shows that the State Department’s Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, Sarah Rogers, was bolstering fascist and reactionary programs across Europe, with particular focus on uplifting the Hungarian regime. With the U.S. State Department openly shaping American foreign policy to protect the President's ideological allies, one can only imagine the illicit support the United States government provided Viktor Orbán behind the scenes.

However, whatever Trump gave, it wasn’t enough. Despite the American government’s full-throated support for the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party were resoundingly defeated in the recent elections. In the highest-turnout election since 1989, Hungarian voters delivered 137 parliamentary seats to the opposition party, while only 55 went to Fidesz. With his rivals winning over two-thirds of the majority, Viktor Orbán conceded to his opponent, Peter Magyar.

The architect of the international nationalist coalition had fallen.

The Coalition Crumbles

As the creator of the global rightist alliance, it’s not surprising that Viktor Orbán was one of its last surviving members. With the Hungarian fascist ousted, Trump’s once dominant coalition of far-right and fascist international partners has been scattered to the wind.

Across the globe, Bannonite candidates have suffered landslide defeats, legal losses, and major setbacks. Within the first year of Trump’s second term, both Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and South Korean Prime Minister Yoon Suk Yeol were jailed for coup attempts. Javier Milei’s chainsaw austerity ran the Argentinian economy into the ground, forcing Trump to save his government with $40 billion in credit swaps: an embarrassing display for two men whose ideology centers on effective economic management. As a result, Milei’s disapproval rating has skyrocketed.

While the conservative ideology has always done well attracting voters (Republicans’ two favorite presidents, Trump and Reagan, are actors for a reason), its Achilles Heel has always been governing. (Which is kind of important.) Just a few months of far-right governance in America was enough to make MAGA-curious voters across the world sprint in the opposite direction. Pointing to the glowing dumpster fire that is the United States of America as an example of what Trumpist politics would bring to their countries, centrists and liberal parties pull off major upsets against Trump-like nationalists in Romania, Australia, and Canada. The Canadian result was particularly shocking, as Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party was expected to be wiped out by the same North American rightward wave that defeated the American Democrats. But with a front row seat to MAGA madness, Canadian voters backed the Liberals, reversing the Conservatives’ 20-point lead and handing the prime ministership to Mark Carney. The reversal was so stark that, in just a couple of months, conservative leader Pierre Poilievre went from the frontrunner for Prime Minister to losing his seat in Parliament.

While Trump’s Italian ally, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, is still in power, she’s suffered a series of notable recent defeats that have forced her to break with Trump. Last month, Italian voters rejected Meloni’s motion to overhaul the judiciary, and she was forced to fire multiple members of her cabinet for corruption and sex scandals. As the global support for MAGA-style politics has cratered, Meloni has effectively severed her relationship with Trump. She rejected Trump’s request to send the Italian Navy to the Strait of Hormuz and rebuked his attacks on Pope Leo. Trump didn’t take kindly and denounced Giorgia Meloni, saying she is “no longer the same person, and Italy will never be the same country.” Considering Giorgia Meloni was the only European Prime Minister invited to Trump’s second inauguration, and once said she would work with him to “make the West great again,” the reversal of position from close ally to opponent in one year shows the rapid pace at which the international nationalist coalition deteriorated.

Broken. Not Gone.

While Viktor Orbán’s loss shows his coalition of international nationalists is no more, this does not mean the ideology is defeated. Or even that this break is permanent. Rightists may have lost the battle, but the war is far from over. Like after any climactic battle, the forces of global reactionaryism have been scattered. They are disunited on the international stage, but 21st-century fascism has not been obliterated.

After J.D. Vance traveled to Germany last summer to stump for the Nazi-adjacent AfD, the party secured the second-most votes in the election. Fortunately, the center-right honored the German firewall (a gentleman’s agreement not to build coalitions with the far-right) and formed a government with the center-left. While they are still barred from power, the AfD is not unpopular, and the firewall will not hold forever. In France, the most recent elections went to the socialists, who maintained control of the nation’s four largest cities. But the far right also showed signs of increased support, building on previous gains by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party. Meanwhile, the British far-right party Reform has seen a meteoric rise since 2024, largely driven by Keir Starmer’s Labor Party cratering to Liz Truss-levels of disfavor. Reform’s position remains troubling, but recent elections show the eco-socialist Green Party is beginning to challenge the xenophobic narrative and give Britain a better alternative.

As the national conservative projects are retreating around the world, now is the time to step on their throats. Trump is deeply unpopular, and his legacy will likely kneecap the GOP in upcoming elections. But as his reelection shows, Americans have short memories. Steve Bannon and the architects of Project 2025 are not viewing the end of Trumpism as the end of their project. And if liberals and centrists around the globe insist on returning to the broken order that gave rise to Viktor Orbán’s project, they will only return. That is why it’s so troubling to hear DNC Chair Ken Martin refuse to release the party’s 2024 post-election autopsy on the grounds that the Democrats are winning elections, so there’s no need to look backward. This is like a football coach saying there’s nothing to learn from a 31-30 win in which the opponent fumbled five times. If return to disorder is the only response to fascists coming within striking distance of establishing a global reactionary order, then it’s only a matter of time before they’ll be back, stronger and harder to kill. If the problems that created the Trumpist movement are not addressed, then it can never truly be defeated. Unless there is a serious reckoning with capitalism and the inequality, imperialism, and individualism that it creates, then it’s a matter of time before there’s another Jair Bolsanaro, Donald Trump, or Viktor Orbán — or God forbid, someone much worse.

Thank you for reading JoeWrote! Please tap the ❤️ to help this article stand out in Substack’s algorithm. And if you’re a new reader, make sure you subscribe to receive new articles in your inbox.

Subscribe now

For a limited time, annual premium subscriptions are 50%. That’s an entire year of exclusive content for just $25. Financial contributions are crucial to supporting my work and ensuring I can keep creating content like this. With this offer, you can help my writing continue (and unlock everything JoeWrote has to offer) for just $2 a month. Thanks in advance for your support!

Access 50% Off

In Solidarity — Joe

I’m incredibly grateful for the support and encouragement you all give me, day after day and year after year. This temporary offer is a token of my gratitude. As the economy takes a turn for the worse, I’ve had a few longtime subscribers tell me they need to cut costs and apologize for unsubscribing. While I appreciate it, I don’t want anyone to feel bad for prioritizing your financial stability. It’s crucial. Hopefully, this discount helps some of you access all my work at a more affordable rate.

You can access this discount below. Don’t hesitate, offer expires soon.

Click for 50% Off!

In Solidarity — Joe