WEIRD: the podcast
This podcast offers a global, unconventional perspective on the US election and is hosted by anthropologists Vito Laterza & Louis Römer. Engaging commentary on what Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, Donald Trump, JD Vance and other political players say, but also how they say it - the vibes, the emotions, the drama.
WEIRD: the podcast
Democrats vs Republicans: two styles of populism compared
We discuss two different styles and visions of populism - the Democrats vs the Republicans. Kamala Harris accepts the nomination as presidential candidate at the Democratic National Convention, Tim Walz is a "man of the people", Trump and Vance's weird politics focuses on doom and gloom and how to save Americans from catastrophe. Lack of engagement with the Gaza protesters is a missed opportunity for Democrats. Robert F. Kennedy jr endorses right-wing Trump with leftist rhetoric.
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And every day in the courtroom,
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I stood proudly before a judge and I said five words,
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Kamala Harris for the people.
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And to be clear, and to be clear, my entire career, I've only had one client, the people.
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And so,
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on behalf of the people,
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on behalf of every American,
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regardless of party,
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race,
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gender,
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or the language your grandmother speaks,
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on behalf of my mother and everyone who has ever set out on their own unlikely journey,
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On behalf of Americans like the people I grew up with,
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people who work hard,
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chase their dreams,
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and look out for one another,
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on behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on earth,
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I accept your nomination to be president of the United States of America.
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There was Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention last Thursday as she
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accepted the nomination as Democratic presidential candidate for the 5th of
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November U.S.
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election.
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She entered the stage only a month ago,
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but her brand of progressive,
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inclusive and common sense populism has been infectious.
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She replaces Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.
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Biden unprecedentedly dropped out of the race and endorsed her,
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bound to pressures from his own party after a pretty bad performance in the 27th of
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June debate with Donald Trump.
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Kamala, the underdog, has surprised everybody, is now leading the presidential race in most polls.
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even though her advantage, we should say, is only within the margin of error.
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Thanks to her,
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Democrats now have a fighting chance against the Republicans and Americans,
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but also those of us in the rest of the world that follow closely American events,
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have found again hope in the midst of internal and global turmoil.
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As Michelle Obama put it at the same convention a few days ago, hope is making a comeback.
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This is the first episode of Weird, a global take on the US election.
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My name is Vito Laterza.
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I'm an anthropologist and political analyst,
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and I'm based at the University of Agder,
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where I'm an associate professor.
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The university is in Kristiansand,
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a small city in the southern tip of Norway,
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from where I'm talking now.
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From New York, we have my anthropologist colleague and friend, Louis Römer.
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We're providing a different perspective on the US election,
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informed by our backgrounds spanning several countries and continents.
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I'm Italian and I've spent many years of my life living and researching in Southern Africa.
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I have family in Zambia, and I've also recently started long-term research in Argentina and Chile.
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I've been living between Norway and Sweden for more than eight years now.
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Louis, would you like to introduce yourself?
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Sure.
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My name is Louis Römer.
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Raised in Curacao,
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born in Curacao,
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lived in the Netherlands,
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Great Britain,
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and have also family in Pennsylvania.
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And I've been working at Vassar College for a number of years here in New York in
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the Hudson Valley,
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where I do research and teach in
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on matters such as political rhetoric,
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discourse,
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talk radio,
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populism,
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and I have a special interest in unconventional and post-ideological political formations,
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which certainly we're seeing plenty of this election cycle.
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Louis and I have been following US politics for quite some time now,
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so the analysis we are offering on this election really takes into account the last
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decade or so.
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In other words, the era that has seen the rise of Donald Trump and right-wing populism.
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In parallel, of course, with similar trends and patterns in Europe, but also other parts of the world.
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With our show, we will provide engaging commentary on what Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, Donald Trump, J.D.
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Vance, and other political players say, but also on how they say it.
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the vibes, the emotions, the drama.
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The name of the show,
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Weird,
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is a term that went viral when Tim Walz,
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the vice presidential candidate for the Democrats,
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a few weeks ago,
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used it to describe the ideas and policies of his Republican opponents.
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In the last weeks, it has become almost the defining term for the anti-Trump Democratic messages.
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Let's see it straight from the horse's mouth in an interview that Tim Walz had on
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MSNBC at the end of July.
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we do not like what has happened where we can't even go to thanksgiving dinner with
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our uncle because you end up in some weird fight that is unnecessary and i think
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bringing back people together well it's true these guys are just weird and it is
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you know they're running for he-man women haters club or something that's what they
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go at that's not what people are interested in
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We want to zoom in a bit more into Tim Walsh.
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So let's see also how he presents himself as a man from rural Nebraska.
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I know a little something about that commitment to people.
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I was born in West Point, Nebraska.
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I lived in Butte, a small town of 400, where community was a way of life.
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Growing up, I spent the summers working on the family farm.
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My mom and dad taught us, show generosity towards your neighbors and work for a common good.
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Here he is,
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a rural white American,
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as white as he gets,
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speaking common sense,
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telling us that we should be generous and work towards a common good.
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Not talking about the dangers of immigration,
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closed borders,
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hating people or so on,
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not winking at some kind of conspiracy about why rural whites might be under extinction,
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but doing straight talk about being nice to each other.
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Am I missing something here, Louis?
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What's happening?
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Well,
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I think we should just start out by saying that Tim Walz really is a living,
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made-into-flesh embodiment of populism as a concept.
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He is identifying himself as a common man who lives and breathes common sense.
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as opposed to some other entity, usually some establishment or some elite somewhere else.
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He is honing in to himself as an everyman, just an ordinary guy with common sense values.
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So that's how he defines himself.
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So this is a key element to populism in general.
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So the key thing that he is doing in this segment is repositioning what common sense,
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what everyday ordinary folks
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uh are like he's saying well you know in where i'm from as a real common man as a
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real every man we do this as and what that is is we look out for each other but we
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don't uh but we're not um scared of difference
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He actually, again, even that, he presents this in a positive term, right?
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He doesn't say we're not scared of others.
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He's saying we mind our own business and we don't get in other people's business.
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So he is being very, very, very strategic in defining the everyman in that.
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in a positive way, right?
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So not beleaguered, not under threat, not in need of defense by a strong man, and so on and so forth.
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He's saying, we are ordinary people, we believe in helping each other out, we believe in
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also leaving each other alone sometimes.
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And so in that way he can really put what are otherwise seen as progressive or
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radical or coastal elite positions,
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he can then reframe them as being common sense,
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ordinary American
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moderate positions let's hear him on freedom exactly on these parts of on freedom
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just just another small bite i see those old white guys some of us are old enough
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to remember republicans who were talking about freedom it turns out now what they
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meant was the government should be free to invade your doctor's office
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In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and their personal choices that they make.
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Even if we wouldn't make the same choice for ourselves, there's a golden rule.
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Mind your own damn business.
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I think that's a very good example of what you were talking about, Louis.
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We should say that actually the issue of freedom,
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it's been a really smart inversion of the whole Harris-Walls campaign.
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In fact, it started before even Walls got there on the ticket.
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It basically launched Kamala Harris.
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Let's listen for a minute to Kamala talking about freedoms.
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We fight for a future where we defend our most fundamental freedoms.
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The freedom to vote.
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The freedom to be safe from gun violence.
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The freedom to love who you love openly and with pride.
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And the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body,
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not having her government tell her what to do.
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So what's happening here, Louis?
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I mean,
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usually we've heard right-wing populists,
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also anti-establishment populists,
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talking about freedom.
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I mean, it's been years and years of this.
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Now it's like a centrist Democrat using the word big government.
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I mean, a Democrat using the word big government.
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What's going on?
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yeah um from some of the right-wing commentary that you can hear about this i think
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peggy noonan in the in the wall street journal and some others they were they're
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not happy they're like those are our things the democrats are stealing our things
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things like patriotism things like um
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Even one commentator was complaining, like, camel, that's ours, right?
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So what's happening is an appropriation of certain buzzwords,
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I guess you can call them,
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certain forms of terms of phrase that are usually used by the right but are being
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taken up here but given very different meanings,
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very different content.
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And freedom is being redefined in a way that centers what are considered to be
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progressive liberal values.
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So things like freedom to choose and so on.
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But I also want to say that in both cases,
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it's not just,
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in both Kamala and Walsh's cases,
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it's really not just the accent.
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It's not,
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oh,
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we're delivering progressive talking points in a folksy manner,
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right,
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with a Midwestern accent or anything like that.
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And with Kamala also, she's doing an interesting and here,
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This is a reference to my dear friend and colleague Nicole Holliday's analysis of
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Kamala Harris's accent.
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She's doing a mix of California English and also a little bit of African American vernacular.
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She's doing some code switching there.
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So it's not just that.
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It's delivering these progressive talking points in a style that's indexes.
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common people.
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It is redefining what those terms involve,
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like the center,
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what even the center refers to,
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what moderate means,
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what reasonable means,
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what common sense means.
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It's really reframing that's happening here that I think is interesting to think about.
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So talking about this reframing so that we can kind of,
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I mean,
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okay,
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what we now know,
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I mean,
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if you want that the Democrats are becoming quite good,
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they're using populist styles.
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So probably that was,
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I mean,
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I don't know if it was a necessity,
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but definitely given the winning of the populist rhetoric in America and Europe,
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it seems that there's very little escape in that.
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But can you tell us about the two visions?
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I just put there, you know, in the background, a very good piece by Matt Bay on the Washington Post.
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He talks about Tim Walz and J.D.
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Vance in particular, but he's really talking about two visions of America.
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You know, if you had to summarize, what are the two visions at stake here?
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If you put the Democratic ticket versus the Trump Vance ticket?
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What we're looking at are two different ideas of what the future is, two different kinds of futures.
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Notice that in Kamala's speech, she started with a future where, a future where X, Y, Z.
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As old as classical rhetoricians like Aristotle,
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they define political rhetoric specifically as being oriented around the future.
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So defining what future you want is really the...
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contest or the argument of every political debate,
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especially around elections,
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where the voter is choosing the future they want.
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So I guess the Vance version of this is to say, this is the future liberals want.
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This is a popular meme on the internet.
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Some of you might know, this is the future liberals want.
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And it's, I don't know, you'll see
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a trans woman and a hijabi sitting next to each other in the New York subway.
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And supposedly, this image should scare the audience, or at least that's the premise.
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But then many liberals have made fun of this being like, yes, this is the future we want.
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This sounds like really nice,
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really pleasant that people of different backgrounds can just get along and mind
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their own business on the subway,
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right?
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So that is really the argument is,
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is what kind of future, what kind of freedom matters?
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Is it freedom for people of different backgrounds,
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with different languages,
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with different sexual orientations and different identities to be able to do their thing,
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help each other out when they need to,
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but also
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be left alone when they want to or is it a different kind of a notion of a freedom
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that's under threat by outsiders undeserved people or by by traitors in amongst us
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that are trying to take away our freedom right so there's there's a different sense
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of freedom or something that has to be defended from them right and i i think and
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Vance's case.
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Yeah,
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I think my impression also from what we've been following is that,
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I mean,
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Kamala and Tim are really pressing on the future,
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right,
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that they are forward-looking,
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while we're hearing a lot of this defense,
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exactly what you're saying,
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their vision of the future is not really the future,
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it's more clinging to the past,
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right,
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and I think that the Democrats have been quite effective,
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you know,
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your thing is old,
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it's not just that we disagree with you,
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but actually you're kind of done,
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this vision is very old,
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and
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I think that Trump and Vance, now to move a bit on the other side, seem to be struggling a bit.
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I mean,
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not to,
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of course,
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you know,
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we're clear here that we don't really,
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you know,
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like what Trump stands for in any way.
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But if you had to be a bit more detached as communication specialists,
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I mean,
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2016 still had something new.
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You know, this guy was new on the scene.
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He could still play the new kid on the block.
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And there was something about that white working class that somehow
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you know, still at least was new.
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It wasn't necessarily correct.
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We know how much of, you know, derailing was there.
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But what's your feeling now?
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How is Trump doing on the other side?
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You know, especially since Biden dropped out of the race?
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Well,
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I think there's something...
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There's something...
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There's a disorientation that happened around the Trump campaign.
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A couple of things.
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Yes, there is a...
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The future that was in the Trump campaign,
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even all the way back in 2016,
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was make America great again,
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which is a kind of interesting temporal inversion.
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Our future is in the past.
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right?
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So our future is where we need to go back to.
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Whereas here, what we're now hearing 2024 is we're not going back, right?
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That's the slogan.
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We're not going back.
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So this is a direct rebuttal to the temporal inversion that Make America Great Again stood for, right?
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So in that sense, we're dealing with
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that argument on that very core level of like what future we want.
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Trump was saying we want a future that looks like the past.
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And Harris and Walls are saying we're not going back.
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And what about Trump as a performer?
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How is he doing if you had to compare, especially to 2016?
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Yeah,
(00:18:40):
so another point there is that one key way in which Trump was able to really
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consolidate an image of himself,
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to really stay on his message as a kind of
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vanguard or as a kind of protector of the authentic,
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real people of America is by often using quotatives and by transposing his own
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arguments in the forms of dialogues and quotative speech.
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So he'll often have these anecdotes where he'll say,
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he'll mention probably some fictional person,
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usually reaching out and grabbing him.
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This person is often really strong and his arms are strong and his fingers dug in my right.
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So there's often this kind of conversational narrative style that he uses where he
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will quote certain people,
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people reach out to me and they literally are touching him.
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So he's literally in touch with the people because they literally touch him.
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And then they tell him, Donald Trump, you got to build that wall.
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And that's when the crowd cheers.
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They love this kind of aesthetic,
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which is something that I think Trump probably learned from Rush Limbaugh.
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There are some interesting scholarship that actually looks at this style and how it
(00:20:06):
has emerged over time,
(00:20:07):
and Trump is definitely situated in that tradition.
(00:20:10):
But when we look at...
(00:20:14):
at Trump in 2024,
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at least what I've noticed,
(00:20:19):
I was looking for those conversational,
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dialogic digressions.
(00:20:24):
And it's not that they're absent.
(00:20:27):
It's just that they are not as frequently there.
(00:20:32):
His speeches become more monologic.
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And the times when he launches into those conversational,
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dialogic,
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or quasi-dialogical narratives is when he's talking about his,
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and now it's the assassination attempt on him.
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That's when he does it the most frequently.
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Yeah,
(00:20:55):
and I think just to add on that,
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I agree with you,
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it's the balance in this Trump speech between this kind of skits,
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if you want,
(00:21:02):
almost comedy-like,
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with impersonations,
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and it's very dramatic even the way he moves his body or makes the voices of this
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fictional person he talks to,
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and these moments that I call flow of consciousness,
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right?
(00:21:14):
So he just rambles.
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So I want to say that perhaps as a bit of a counterpoint, I agree with you that I think
(00:21:21):
this flow of consciousness moment are less effective.
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But I think there's still something of the charmer there.
(00:21:26):
It's almost telling you a really dystopian lullaby, kind of speak.
(00:21:29):
There's something there where you're just speaking and speaking,
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you know,
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charming you almost as if it's like playing to a snake,
(00:21:35):
you know,
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those kind of snake charmers.
(00:21:37):
I think there's still something there.
(00:21:38):
It might not be very expansive in terms of voter base.
(00:21:40):
It now looks like more and more he's got his own church and preaching to the converted,
(00:21:45):
but it's still there.
(00:21:46):
But I wanted to show one of those skits that actually I thought was quite telling,
(00:21:50):
almost a moment of truth,
(00:21:51):
when he still does those Trump impersonation moments.
(00:21:56):
Just recently in Glendale, Arizona.
(00:21:59):
Let me just play this one.
(00:22:01):
And they said, Joe, you can't win.
(00:22:04):
You're getting out of the race.
(00:22:05):
No, I want to go and give it a shot.
(00:22:08):
No, Joe, you're getting out of the race, Joe.
(00:22:13):
And if you don't do it the nice way, we'll do it the tough way, Joe.
(00:22:17):
And he said, OK, and now I have a new opponent.
(00:22:20):
This never happened before.
(00:22:22):
We spent a hundred million dollars and a lot of time on defeating him.
(00:22:27):
And as soon as he was gonzo, it all started with the debate.
(00:22:33):
The debate.
(00:22:35):
All that time, all that effort.
(00:22:37):
A friend of mine said, you did a terrible job in the debate.
(00:22:40):
I said, why do you say that?
(00:22:41):
Everybody said I was brilliant.
(00:22:43):
They said, no, you got him out of the race with that debate.
(00:22:49):
I thought this was almost a moment of truth.
(00:22:51):
I mean, it's been basically whining about Joe Biden dropping out of the race.
(00:22:55):
But in this moment, there's almost a reflection in the joke.
(00:22:58):
It's like,
(00:22:58):
actually,
(00:22:58):
I did so well against Joe Biden that I'm now in trouble with a much stronger candidate.
(00:23:03):
So that was at least my takeaway from that.
(00:23:08):
But I mean, the other thing is that it's quite difficult to show many clips from his recent rallies.
(00:23:15):
And again, I don't want to say
(00:23:16):
It's hard to say Trump got him worse.
(00:23:18):
I mean, let's be clear.
(00:23:19):
It was really bad.
(00:23:21):
in 2016 too.
(00:23:22):
But it does seem that there is this refrain.
(00:23:24):
A lot of it is really personal attacks against Kamala and the Democrats.
(00:23:30):
A lot of, as you said, very negative thinking, this kind of clinging to the past and all that.
(00:23:36):
So it's difficult sometimes.
(00:23:38):
I think lots of it really borders on hate speech.
(00:23:41):
I mean,
(00:23:41):
I'm not a lawyer and it's not my job to say it,
(00:23:44):
but really things that are quite,
(00:23:46):
especially on immigration,
(00:23:48):
a lot of stuff is quite worrying but i wonder what do you think about this vp
(00:23:53):
ticket the vice presidential ticket you know he's got our age pretty much 40 year
(00:23:57):
old is he is he any better this jd vance coming out on the scene what what are your
(00:24:03):
thoughts on him
(00:24:04):
Yeah, I think, and this applies to both Trump and Vance here.
(00:24:12):
They've definitely maintained that sense of focusing on these personal attacks
(00:24:18):
rather than focusing on their platform.
(00:24:22):
But then again, both of them have this quality of biting and blowing on the wound.
(00:24:32):
Of presenting these extremely dire visions of the future, right?
(00:24:38):
And then where all the bad things are going to happen to the audience.
(00:24:44):
And then presenting themselves as the people who will prevent this catastrophe from happening.
(00:24:50):
getting worse.
(00:24:50):
Exactly, exactly.
(00:24:51):
I think that summarizes a lot of those rallies and speeches.
(00:24:54):
That's basically the routine.
(00:24:58):
And the personal attacks tend to dwell on both Harris and Walls being inauthentic,
(00:25:04):
not being who they say they are,
(00:25:07):
gaming the system.
(00:25:09):
And with Harris,
(00:25:10):
this often is being racialized,
(00:25:11):
like she's not really Black,
(00:25:13):
or she's only Black because...
(00:25:16):
But in any case,
(00:25:18):
all of those are meant to brand them as inauthentic,
(00:25:21):
insincere,
(00:25:22):
also undeserving,
(00:25:23):
right?
(00:25:23):
Because this is a key way in which Trump and Vance define their coalition and their enemy, right?
(00:25:30):
The enemies are the undeserving ones,
(00:25:32):
and they are the righteous ones who have been somehow wronged or betrayed by the
(00:25:39):
establishment or the elite.
(00:25:40):
This is the way they define the us that they're going to fight for and that they
(00:25:44):
are going to punish,
(00:25:46):
basically.
(00:25:46):
I wanted to give an example of what I think is sometimes really quite a stream also
(00:25:51):
political opportunism on really big tragedies,
(00:25:53):
you know,
(00:25:54):
like gun violence or drug addiction,
(00:25:55):
which are real problems.
(00:25:56):
So I'm going to play another little bite by J.D.
(00:25:59):
Vance in a rally in Philadelphia earlier this month.
(00:26:02):
I just want to say,
(00:26:04):
I'm not going to be able to introduce everybody I've spoken to just this morning
(00:26:07):
and early this afternoon.
(00:26:09):
But you've got people who have lost loved ones just in the last few weeks to gun
(00:26:14):
violence because we won't lock up violent criminals in this country anymore,
(00:26:18):
thanks to the policies of Kamala Harris.
(00:26:20):
You've got children
(00:26:22):
who have been orphaned,
(00:26:23):
who have been bouncing around foster homes because Kamala Harris's policies allow
(00:26:28):
this terrible fentanyl into our country that orphaned these poor kids.
(00:26:31):
And you've got parents who have lost loved ones,
(00:26:35):
who have lost children because we keep on allowing the Mexican drug cartels to turn
(00:26:41):
our country into a drug trafficking zone.
(00:26:43):
It is normal people who suffer when Kamala Harris refuses to do her job,
(00:26:48):
and it is normal people who stand to benefit the most when we re-elect Donald J.
(00:26:53):
Trump,
(00:26:53):
President of the United States.
(00:26:54):
And that's what we're going to do, right?
(00:26:56):
That's exactly what we're going to do.
(00:26:58):
I mean,
(00:26:58):
what we've seen just now in the Vance clip,
(00:27:02):
it's exactly what you were talking about,
(00:27:03):
Louis,
(00:27:04):
right?
(00:27:04):
So you first set this catastrophe here,
(00:27:07):
this really big plague of drug addiction connected to heroin,
(00:27:11):
fentanyl,
(00:27:11):
you name it.
(00:27:12):
And then, you know, they blame, of course, Kamala Harris and the Democrats.
(00:27:16):
And then they put themselves, of course, Trump and Vance as the solution to this catastrophe.
(00:27:21):
So I think that was very good advice.
(00:27:23):
example, sadly, of this very cynical, very extreme political communication tactic.
(00:27:30):
What I wanted to also stress for our audience is the context here.
(00:27:35):
He's not just talking about it.
(00:27:37):
Basically, he's in a low-income neighborhood in Philadelphia.
(00:27:42):
He gets on stage, two women
(00:27:44):
to talk about,
(00:27:45):
you know,
(00:27:45):
somebody lost their,
(00:27:47):
I think it was their daughter to heroin,
(00:27:49):
you know,
(00:27:50):
overdose.
(00:27:51):
The other one has a brother who's struggling with addiction.
(00:27:54):
You know, basically living testimonies.
(00:27:56):
So this is very rapacious, you know, in my opinion.
(00:27:58):
I think we should also say it sometimes as it is.
(00:28:00):
It's difficult to, you know, kind of massage it.
(00:28:03):
But that's the kind of communication that we're seeing a lot of these rallies.
(00:28:08):
Anyway, I think we made a clear contrast here between the Democrats and Republicans.
(00:28:14):
I mean,
(00:28:15):
not only about content,
(00:28:16):
but again,
(00:28:17):
our show really wants to focus a lot on styles,
(00:28:20):
styles of communications.
(00:28:22):
But there's something more about... Not everything is well in the Democrats' house, right?
(00:28:33):
So there were some issues at the Democratic National Convention.
(00:28:36):
So I think it's important for us to mention it.
(00:28:39):
You, Louis, have been involved also through your teaching.
(00:28:42):
You are actually in the States while I'm based here in Norway.
(00:28:45):
So you have followed the contestations around Palestine and Israel quite closely.
(00:28:50):
What happened there?
(00:28:51):
I mean,
(00:28:51):
we heard,
(00:28:51):
for instance,
(00:28:52):
the Muslim Women for Iris disbanded and said we can't really support Iris after
(00:28:57):
what we've seen at the Democratic National Convention earlier this week.
(00:29:02):
Can you tell us a bit more about this?
(00:29:03):
What's going on on that front?
(00:29:06):
Yeah,
(00:29:07):
there's a lot that has happened that makes me concerned because as we saw just now
(00:29:13):
in the clip of fans,
(00:29:15):
part of how the communication strategy really works effectively is by taking on and
(00:29:24):
addressing
(00:29:26):
real traumas, people losing loved ones to gun violence, to crime and so on.
(00:29:33):
And then giving that trauma a very specific kind of narrative that points out who's
(00:29:39):
to blame and what's the solution.
(00:29:42):
and also,
(00:29:44):
in a way,
(00:29:45):
the narration itself is meant to re-trigger and re-traumatize those who have those
(00:29:51):
real traumas.
(00:29:53):
Okay, so... I think that's something to... If I may interject briefly, that's a very good point you made.
(00:30:00):
I wanted just to stress something because, again, it's important for the communication style.
(00:30:05):
They're very dramatic in the way they reenact this.
(00:30:07):
It's not just talking.
(00:30:09):
There's something very emotional about it, and I think that's where the
(00:30:12):
dystopian, disturbing aspect comes in.
(00:30:14):
People are really supposed to then feel the anxiety, the trauma, the suffering.
(00:30:18):
It's not a neutral or some kind of glossing over or sanitizing.
(00:30:27):
It really is biting someone and then blowing on the wound.
(00:30:30):
That's the metaphor that I often use to think about that style.
(00:30:37):
But it's good to think about as we think through the Israel-Palestine issue and how
(00:30:45):
this is going to play out.
(00:30:48):
Unfortunately, there is an opening, right, because what's happening in Gaza is so viscerally important.
(00:30:56):
horrible, right?
(00:30:58):
There is an opening precisely for this kind of style to thrive, yeah?
(00:31:03):
Because the violence,
(00:31:07):
the death,
(00:31:08):
the dismemberment,
(00:31:09):
it's all interspersed in people's social media feeds,
(00:31:14):
especially young people
(00:31:16):
whose Instagrams and TikToks have practically been flooded with just images of war.
(00:31:24):
And so that's what I've seen at least where I work is that a lot of what really
(00:31:30):
motivates people,
(00:31:31):
motivates students to take a position on Israel-Palestine is really
(00:31:37):
quite visceral.
(00:31:38):
It's not so abstract.
(00:31:41):
It's not conceptual.
(00:31:43):
It's really just seeing all this bloodshed quite intimately as one is scrolling in
(00:31:51):
their dorms and then being confronted with
(00:31:56):
with what's happening.
(00:31:57):
So if I have to push it a bit there,
(00:31:59):
because I think we saw some of these debates on Twitter,
(00:32:02):
on X now,
(00:32:03):
and other social media,
(00:32:05):
right?
(00:32:05):
So there were some commentators saying,
(00:32:07):
well,
(00:32:07):
you know,
(00:32:08):
if the aim of having Palestinian voices on stage,
(00:32:11):
you know,
(00:32:11):
we know the Democratic National Convention basically refused to have any
(00:32:15):
Palestinian speaker on stage.
(00:32:18):
If the aim is just to shatter the narrative,
(00:32:20):
you know,
(00:32:20):
somebody,
(00:32:21):
I think,
(00:32:21):
used the word of disrupt the festive atmosphere,
(00:32:25):
so to speak.
(00:32:25):
Yeah.
(00:32:26):
But I mean, here we're talking about real suffering, right?
(00:32:28):
We have these massive killings of civilians in Gaza.
(00:32:31):
It's a humanitarian situation that is awful.
(00:32:33):
And of course,
(00:32:34):
the more the war continues,
(00:32:35):
the more the hostages that Hamas has also have very little hope of being saved.
(00:32:40):
So there's a tragedy going on.
(00:32:42):
Thousands and thousands of Palestinians kill innocent civilians.
(00:32:45):
So, you know, yeah, we're...
(00:32:48):
What do you think about that?
(00:32:49):
Was that the right choice for the Democrats?
(00:32:52):
I think there's some observations we can make about the DNC that tell us that the
(00:32:57):
argument about whether mentioning Gaza would spoil the mood.
(00:33:03):
I don't think so.
(00:33:04):
I mean,
(00:33:05):
the applause lines that were often the loudest in many of the speeches were the
(00:33:10):
ones that addressed
(00:33:12):
Gaza directly, ending the suffering in Gaza, right?
(00:33:16):
AOC, UNED, what have you, Reverend Warnock, right?
(00:33:23):
Anytime Gaza was mentioned, and specifically ending the war in Gaza,
(00:33:31):
So clearly, even in the audience there at the DNC, people wanted to hear something about that.
(00:33:39):
So I don't know if not excluding a Palestinian voice was the best choice.
(00:33:46):
And it should be also mentioned that the RNC did feature an Arab American speaker.
(00:33:53):
The Republican National Convention.
(00:33:55):
Yes, the Republican RNC.
(00:33:57):
Yes, that's right.
(00:33:59):
The Republican National Convention did feature an Arab-American voice,
(00:34:03):
although I think this case was an Iraqi-Caldean.
(00:34:08):
And of course, from the progressive side, from the liberal side, you can...
(00:34:13):
dismiss that as tokenism.
(00:34:15):
However,
(00:34:16):
it just shows that Republicans are watching carefully and observing the places
(00:34:21):
where they can insert wedges.
(00:34:24):
Another viral clip that went around on right-wing social media was of a prominent
(00:34:32):
hijabi woman in a Trump rally.
(00:34:36):
Hijabi meaning wearing a headscarf.
(00:34:39):
and with the t-shirt, Muslim women for Trump.
(00:34:44):
So that shows that ideally,
(00:34:48):
one would want to stake their claim on that issue and not leave that terrain
(00:34:56):
uncontested for the other side to define it in ways that are disadvantageous.
(00:35:02):
And I think by not taking the uncommitted movements
(00:35:08):
offer of having a speaker,
(00:35:11):
a Palestinian-American speaker,
(00:35:13):
who would have endorsed the Harris-Walls ticket,
(00:35:18):
right?
(00:35:24):
and made the argument for why she,
(00:35:28):
as a Palestinian American,
(00:35:30):
is endorsing,
(00:35:31):
that would have been a very powerful way to come up ahead of these kinds of wedge politics.
(00:35:39):
But yeah, so that's really a missed opportunity.
(00:35:42):
And I think a bit of context there about the uncommitted movement.
(00:35:45):
So basically,
(00:35:45):
these were the delegates who were not committed to either Biden and then were not
(00:35:51):
still decided about Harris,
(00:35:53):
who basically represent,
(00:35:54):
I think,
(00:35:55):
a few hundred thousand votes in several American states.
(00:35:58):
Then we're putting pressure on Harris to say, you know,
(00:36:01):
We are looking at you.
(00:36:02):
We want to dialogue with you.
(00:36:03):
But, you know, the Palestine issue is really important.
(00:36:05):
Convince us.
(00:36:06):
So this is still a very open contest.
(00:36:10):
The situation is not.
(00:36:12):
This will continue.
(00:36:13):
And we know that in Michigan, Arab-American vote is quite important.
(00:36:17):
So this can make the difference in some of the battleground states.
(00:36:21):
Let me just briefly explain a little bit more that the uncommitted delegates are
(00:36:30):
basically representing registered Democrats who voted in the Democratic primaries.
(00:36:37):
So the fact that they're there at the DNC, this is not the same as the street protests.
(00:36:41):
That's a different phenomenon altogether.
(00:36:45):
that were happening at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
(00:36:51):
The Uncommitted Movement are these delegates that were voted in,
(00:36:57):
basically,
(00:36:58):
to represent a contingent,
(00:37:01):
a constituency of ostensibly loyal Democratic voters who wanted to see some shift
(00:37:09):
in the platform.
(00:37:12):
right so what those uncommitted delegates were doing is really trying to negotiate
(00:37:17):
a shift in the platform of the democratic party um uh in exchange for an
(00:37:24):
endorsement right so these people were putting that on the table as it's like we'll
(00:37:29):
endorse you if we see
(00:37:31):
I think for them it was ceasefire and arms embargo.
(00:37:37):
Some people have also framed it as conditionalities on weapons transfers to Israel, right?
(00:37:43):
So in any case, I think that conversation remains ongoing.
(00:37:49):
But in any case, in terms of just representation, that was – and in terms of –
(00:37:55):
Political communication and rhetoric,
(00:37:58):
that was a missed opportunity to feature somebody who say,
(00:38:01):
I'm Palestinian,
(00:38:02):
I endorse Kamala,
(00:38:03):
right?
(00:38:03):
That would have been,
(00:38:05):
right,
(00:38:05):
that would have added a different context for the conversations that would be much
(00:38:11):
more beneficial for the Democrats moving forward.
(00:38:14):
And of course, I think, I mean, we're talking about United States of America.
(00:38:17):
There is the big issue of US empire and military industrial complex.
(00:38:21):
So we know that no matter what the messaging says,
(00:38:24):
there are clear contradictions there,
(00:38:26):
left and right,
(00:38:27):
when it comes to this bipartisan consensus on key geopolitical issues.
(00:38:31):
We know that it gets quite complex and we know actually that even previous
(00:38:35):
elections have been really,
(00:38:36):
really torn by these issues.
(00:38:37):
You know, look at the propaganda against Clinton also.
(00:38:40):
But think about Obama.
(00:38:41):
I'm really thinking more about the Obama years.
(00:38:43):
You know,
(00:38:43):
the wish of Obama,
(00:38:45):
of Barack Obama to do something,
(00:38:47):
getting that Nobel Peace Prize perhaps a bit too early.
(00:38:49):
And then,
(00:38:50):
you know,
(00:38:50):
all kinds of series of events on the global stage that still then forced him and
(00:38:55):
that kind of center left back into politics.
(00:38:58):
empire.
(00:38:58):
So I think that contradiction remains there.
(00:39:00):
But it's important even here to look at the other side, right?
(00:39:04):
So we had a bit of news that just came up basically on Friday is that Robert F.
(00:39:12):
Kennedy Jr.,
(00:39:13):
who's the son of Senator Robert F.
(00:39:15):
Kennedy and nephew of the assassinated U.S.
(00:39:17):
President John F. Kennedy.
(00:39:19):
So basically, as a Democrat, the family, as you get the dynasty, a democratic dynasty in America was
(00:39:26):
was running his own independent third party,
(00:39:29):
so to speak,
(00:39:30):
campaign,
(00:39:31):
you know,
(00:39:31):
not with the Democrats,
(00:39:32):
not with the Republicans,
(00:39:33):
basically ended up endorsing Trump.
(00:39:35):
Now, his campaign has been a bit of a mixed bag.
(00:39:38):
I mean,
(00:39:38):
to say the least,
(00:39:40):
he's bringing together this kind of conspiratorial undertones against big business
(00:39:43):
and big pharma.
(00:39:45):
with messages about peace in Ukraine.
(00:39:47):
And all of this sounds quite leftist,
(00:39:48):
but then you look at the Ukraine messages and are quite close to some of the
(00:39:52):
Kremlin's talking points,
(00:39:54):
basically propaganda,
(00:39:55):
beyond the issue of the really Tony issue of war there.
(00:39:59):
But here too, then they all end up in the right.
(00:40:02):
So he end up endorsing Trump.
(00:40:04):
Major donors from the Republicans were also funding him.
(00:40:08):
Timothy Mellon in particular,
(00:40:09):
there's been some news just coming out how he's putting in a lot of money both into
(00:40:13):
the Trump campaign and into RFK Jr.'
(00:40:17):
's campaign.
(00:40:18):
Timothy Mellon is the grandson of this big business tycoon, Andrew Mellon.
(00:40:22):
And for many of you who have,
(00:40:23):
I don't know,
(00:40:23):
foundation,
(00:40:24):
fellowship,
(00:40:25):
scholarship,
(00:40:25):
you would have heard of the Mellon name in so many parts.
(00:40:29):
But I want to just play a clip
(00:40:31):
of RFK Jr.
(00:40:33):
taking the stage at a Trump rally in Glendale, Arizona, on Saturday.
(00:40:38):
Don't you want healthy children?
(00:40:44):
And don't you want the chemicals out of our food?
(00:40:50):
And don't you want the regulatory agencies to be free from corporate corruption?
(00:40:59):
And that's what President Trump told me that he wanted.
(00:41:02):
He also told me that he wanted to end the grip of the neocons on US foreign policy.
(00:41:14):
He said he didn't want any more $200 billion wars in Ukraine,
(00:41:20):
that we could use that money back here in the United States.
(00:41:31):
And the safest,
(00:41:33):
the best way to build a safe America is to rebuild our industrial base and rebuild
(00:41:40):
the middle class in this country.
(00:41:46):
And don't you want a president who's going to get us out of the wars and who's
(00:41:50):
going to rebuild the middle class in this country?
(00:41:56):
I mean,
(00:41:57):
if we didn't see Trump there,
(00:41:58):
just said that,
(00:41:59):
if we didn't hear the Trump word there,
(00:42:01):
I mean,
(00:42:01):
it almost sounds convincing.
(00:42:03):
Like we're taking out all the controversy over Ukraine, Russia.
(00:42:06):
But I mean, let's say we're pro-peace.
(00:42:08):
We agree that children's diseases due to this awful contamination of foods is bad.
(00:42:14):
I mean, it's quite convincing.
(00:42:15):
Unlike Vance, who sometimes tries to do these attempts at some kind of leftist tropes.
(00:42:22):
He sounds like a leftist.
(00:42:23):
What's going on here?
(00:42:25):
Yeah,
(00:42:25):
I think listening to somebody like RFK,
(00:42:29):
I try to always put myself in the mindset of somebody who just doesn't pay a lot of
(00:42:35):
attention to political news and maybe just has progressive-leaning inclinations
(00:42:43):
vaguely defined in co-ed.
(00:42:45):
but not super ideological and certainly not super committed in terms of partisan political identity.
(00:42:53):
In the US, it's a major thing.
(00:42:55):
People are Democrats in the same way as,
(00:42:59):
you know,
(00:42:59):
some people root for FC Barcelona and the football team,
(00:43:05):
the soccer team,
(00:43:06):
and some people root for Real Madrid,
(00:43:08):
right?
(00:43:08):
So
(00:43:09):
So there's this loyalty.
(00:43:12):
Many voters in the U.S.
(00:43:13):
don't have that partisan attachment to the Democratic brand or the Republican brand.
(00:43:21):
And to those people,
(00:43:22):
this could sound very appealing if they don't know the details,
(00:43:27):
if they don't cross-check with other accounts with whether what he's saying is true.
(00:43:35):
But it sounds, yeah, indeed, it sounds like,
(00:43:38):
you know, anti-war.
(00:43:39):
Yeah, don't we want wars to end?
(00:43:41):
Yeah, of course we want wars to end, right?
(00:43:43):
Don't we want our kids to be not poisoned?
(00:43:46):
Yeah, that sounds like a good idea, right?
(00:43:48):
So on the surface, it sounds very pro, it almost sounds leftist.
(00:43:55):
Like we want to end, you know, the grip of the neocons.
(00:43:58):
I thought that was a really interesting moment.
(00:44:02):
And the cheers that then happen at that point really indicates that the anti-war
(00:44:08):
message resonates even with the Trumpian base.
(00:44:13):
They say, yes, we want the wars to end and we want the money invested in this war to come to us.
(00:44:21):
I think I put there on the background just now the piece that has been published
(00:44:29):
some years ago in the Boston Review,
(00:44:31):
a major magazine that publishes a lot of scholars,
(00:44:33):
but also in a more kind of engaged scholarship,
(00:44:35):
not just for a more general public,
(00:44:38):
by two scholars,
(00:44:40):
William Callison and Quincy Lobodian.
(00:44:42):
They basically coined this term diagonalism and diagonal thinking.
(00:44:50):
So basically,
(00:44:50):
they're saying that these new movements and this is really something that is,
(00:44:54):
you know,
(00:44:54):
picking up in the last few years.
(00:44:56):
It's also connected to the growth of social media and the kind of mixing of this
(00:45:00):
hybridization of this communication platform is what you were saying that we get
(00:45:04):
more and more people who don't have a brand anymore.
(00:45:06):
They don't have their football club there.
(00:45:08):
they are online and they might get some Trump messages,
(00:45:10):
some Kamala's messages,
(00:45:12):
then they get RFK there,
(00:45:13):
and then they kind of pick and choose.
(00:45:15):
So what we're seeing here is that this kind of convergence, they're mixing left and right messages.
(00:45:20):
So you get a lot of people who can speak really good leftist language,
(00:45:23):
but they also put in very right-wing kind of messages together,
(00:45:28):
especially on protection,
(00:45:29):
defense,
(00:45:29):
the threats,
(00:45:30):
right?
(00:45:30):
So I think that, to me, is very conservative, even beyond what the threat is.
(00:45:34):
I think you put it very well early on.
(00:45:37):
But of course, as we've seen with RFK, it's almost the trajectory that Slobodian and Callison put there.
(00:45:43):
No matter how much they mix left and right, they tend to go towards the far right.
(00:45:46):
And that's exactly what we saw, right?
(00:45:48):
RFK went on, Junior went on for a whole year or so saying, oh, no, no, he really doesn't like both sides.
(00:45:54):
then gets money more from one side than the other, and then ends up endorsing Trump.
(00:46:00):
So I think this is an interesting part.
(00:46:02):
This phenomenon is really much bigger, and I think we will discuss it more in the future show.
(00:46:07):
I think the other point,
(00:46:08):
perhaps,
(00:46:09):
to stress for our audience,
(00:46:11):
I think you hinted at it in what you just said,
(00:46:14):
is that we're seeing,
(00:46:15):
at least here,
(00:46:16):
we don't know.
(00:46:16):
Up to now, it wasn't really a theme in the campaign.
(00:46:18):
But since this rally, this endorsement and this rally on Saturday,
(00:46:22):
This idea of Trump as an anti-war candidate might be coming back.
(00:46:27):
We don't know how much it's going to be used.
(00:46:29):
But this was very strong in 2016.
(00:46:31):
I remember even big commentators like John Pilger,
(00:46:36):
who was a very classic leftist commentator,
(00:46:38):
putting these really abrasive messages of how Trump was more anti-war than Clinton.
(00:46:44):
I mean,
(00:46:45):
beyond whether people were in good faith or not back then,
(00:46:47):
I mean,
(00:46:47):
we know after four years of Trump that,
(00:46:49):
you know,
(00:46:50):
to present him
(00:46:51):
as that's not the case.
(00:46:53):
But I think it's important, again, to debunk a bit those ideas.
(00:46:57):
I mean,
(00:46:57):
while Trump did the withdrawal from Syria,
(00:47:00):
his friend,
(00:47:01):
who's a private military contractor,
(00:47:03):
one of the most problematic,
(00:47:05):
Eric Prince,
(00:47:06):
was actually talking about bringing his own private militias in Syria.
(00:47:10):
So, you know, it's very unclear how that withdrawal from Syria was so pacifist or so anti-war.
(00:47:16):
But even the whole Trump undermining on NATO,
(00:47:19):
effectively,
(00:47:20):
and his tough kind of transaction business,
(00:47:21):
you know,
(00:47:22):
the European allies have to pay up.
(00:47:24):
You know, we can't just foot the bill from America.
(00:47:26):
That's been one of the major,
(00:47:28):
not the only,
(00:47:28):
of course,
(00:47:29):
but one of the major drivers of European increase in defense spending with all the,
(00:47:34):
you know.
(00:47:35):
bad effects on wars and conflicts that we're seeing, whether it's Ukraine, Israel, Palestine, or beyond.
(00:47:41):
And finally, his position on Ukraine, I mean, it's ridiculous to say the least, if it wasn't a tragedy
(00:47:47):
because he's not acknowledging any of the responsibility of his ally,
(00:47:51):
Vladimir Putin,
(00:47:52):
who basically invaded Ukraine.
(00:47:55):
So Trump is refusing to acknowledge that somehow Putin had any wrongdoing in that invasion.
(00:48:00):
So we'll see whether this anti-war thing will come back in play.
(00:48:05):
But it's kind of interesting to see these returns, right, Louis?
(00:48:08):
I mean,
(00:48:08):
we've been following this now for eight,
(00:48:10):
ten years,
(00:48:10):
and then some of these tropes just keep on returning.
(00:48:13):
Yeah, this idea that somehow...
(00:48:18):
Donald Trump is going to somehow outflank the Democrats on traditionally what were
(00:48:26):
considered to be left-wing positions.
(00:48:29):
But I think part of the reason why this sort of argument gets as far as it does is that, to some extent,
(00:48:39):
Right.
(00:48:39):
Diagonalism as a phenomenon that's emerging, neither left nor right and so on.
(00:48:46):
To some extent,
(00:48:47):
what we are seeing is that the dissolution of of traditional left right camps and
(00:48:55):
the formation of a lot of
(00:48:58):
They're very different kind of what could be termed hybrids or syncretic mixed positions.
(00:49:07):
So you could think of centrism as a kind of mixing of left and right,
(00:49:13):
but that's very different from diagonalism to be very sure.
(00:49:18):
Yeah, but it's just proliferating in all different directions.
(00:49:22):
But at the end of the day,
(00:49:23):
right,
(00:49:23):
the diagonalism does tend to flow towards,
(00:49:27):
right,
(00:49:28):
just like water is flowing down to the sea,
(00:49:33):
neither left nor right tends to flow towards far right in the end.
(00:49:39):
And yeah,
(00:49:39):
we'll see,
(00:49:41):
we'll probably see more of this as even as just a tactic to create confusion,
(00:49:49):
to create a messaging that will help to suppress or dim the enthusiasm on the
(00:49:58):
liberal side.
(00:49:58):
So just confusing a few people, reducing the turnout here and there on the margins will be good.
(00:50:04):
We covered quite a lot in this episode, so it's time to wrap up.
(00:50:08):
You're following WEIRD, a global take on the US election hosted by Vito Laterza and Louis Römer.
(00:50:16):
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