234: Trump’s Conspiracist Cabinet

What is an oligarchy, exactly? Is the US entering a period similar to post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s? What do Russian oligarchs have to do with proven interference in the 2016 US election?  Julian digs into Russian history to explore parallels with modern-day America. Meet Vladislav Surkov, the architect of both Putin’s 25-year rule over what Surkov has dubbed “sovereign democracy,” and the global propaganda strategies generating our post-truth ecosystem of disinformation and conspiracies. There’s a reason why politics feels like theater these days, why democracy seems like a pipe dream.  While MAGA has a fascism fetish, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine might be a better match for Hitler on the verge, with Trump and Co acting as macho-clown versions of Neville Chamberlain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

31 Maalis 6min

Derek and Julian discuss Robert Paxton's 2004 book, The Anatomy of Fascism, in light of 2025 America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

29 Maalis 43min

McGill University science communicator, Jonathan Jarry, was recently given hundreds of hours of Zoom calls between alt-med salesman, Joseph Mercola, and a supposed clairvoyant that goes by Bahlon. Jonathan joins us to discuss what he found. Show Notes Brad Schimel Admitted to Having "Psychologically Beat the Daylights Out" Of His 8-Year-Old Daughter - MeidasTouch News Rallying Anti-Musk Donors, Liberal Judge Raises $24 Million in Key Court Contest - The New York Times Here are claims about Wisconsin’s Supreme Court candidates — and the facts Ahead of Wisconsin Supreme Court election, Elon Musk PAC offers cash for pledge - WPR Trump backs Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate in hotly contested race - ABC News Billionaires become a focus of the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race Brad Schimel Begins Campaigning With Anti-MLK Advocate Charlie Kirk - MeidasTouch News Exclusive Videos Show Dr. Joe Mercola’s Dangerous Ideas Whipped up by Alleged Medium Brief: RFK's Health Propaganda Roundtable Terminated HHS grants Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

27 Maalis 56min

The Wellness Company is now selling retatrutide, a weight loss drug currently undergoing stage 3 trials by Eli Lilly. An anti-vax company that uses fear-based marketing to push supplements appears to be overstepping legal lines. Yet will they be held accountable in an RFK Jr-led HHS? Derek looks at private market healthcare propaganda from Ronald Reagan to Kennedy, showing how health is not the real goal of MAHA. But if they can sell untested products to fat and chronically ill patients along the way, all the better. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

24 Maalis 6min

Julian covers the recent Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London. Headlined by Jordan Peterson, featuring Konstantin Kisin, Ayan Hirsi Ali, Jonathan Pageau, and Eric Weinstein, the conference positioned itself as an inspiring cultural gathering focused on reclaiming Western values.  Behind the scenes, a hedge-fund billionaire new media baron, conservative libertarian think tank, shady funding source in Dubai, and an evangelical English aristocrat use the prestige of ARC and its celebrity figureheads to popularize a very specific political, economic, and religious agenda. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

22 Maalis 40min

Trump administration Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, recently stated the American economy is going to need a "detox" period. And so today we look at peak the conspirituality convergences between biological and political purification projects. Quinn Slobodian, professor of international history at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, joins Matthew in the final segment to offer his big picture view on the Kings of Pain. Show Notes Johns Hopkins to lose 2,000 jobs after Trump’s $800m cut in USAid funding Young scientists see career pathways vanish as schools adapt to federal funding cuts Report: mRNA vaccines are in RFK Jr’s crosshairs; funding in question FDA Makes Flu Vaccine Recommendations Without Convening Advisors HHS sends all employees a $25,000 voluntary buyout offer Exclusive: US CDC plans study into vaccines and autism, sources say USDA gears up for MAHA dietary guidelines update Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn’t True. Watch CNBC's full interview with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Why we must teach medical students about the role of physicians during the Holocaust | AAMC Teaching Hard Truths About Medicine and the Holocaust | Journal of Ethics | American Medical Association Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

20 Maalis 1h 3min

Click here to hear the full episode on Patreon. Second of Matthew’s two-part examination of why the hell questions of force, non-violent resistance with and without force, unarmed violence and property damage, and armed violence are so incredibly hard to talk about in a culture thick with spiritual and political bypassing. Are we capable of understanding the difference between morality and strategy? Part 1 focused on philosophy and psychology while today the focus will be on definitions and tactics. Together, both parts will push back on conspiracism about the identities, motives, and methods  of antifascists. Both will present slices of the rich discourse on violence and non-violence from antifascist history, including clarifying definitions of key terms. Both will open a space to think carefully about what intensities of self and community defense are both useful and tolerable in the fight against fascism.  Today we’ll get into the very thick weeds of how the “strategic nonviolence” research of Gene Sharp, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan is framed as empirical, but may be way more about idealizing Gandhi than about facts on the ground. Huge list of references for each! Show Notes Stopping the Press: The Threats to the Media Posed by the Second Trump Term | The New Yorker What the FBI Has Done, and Kash Patel Could Do - Columbia Journalism Review  Hakeem Jeffries cracks down on Trump speech disruptions  Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer Got Punched—You Can Thank the Black Bloc | The Nation  Aamer Rahman: Is it really ok to punch nazis?  $16.5M settlement reached in class-action lawsuit over mass arrests during 2010 G20 summit | CBC News  Meditations at the ringed fence around G20 Toronto - rabble.ca  Remaining Human: A Buddhist Perspective on Occupy Wall Street - Michael Stone  Brief: The Outside Agitator Conspiracy Trope (w/Dr. Peniel Joseph) — Conspirituality  Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years | Donald Trump | The Guardian  40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Sunshine  rules for radicals | saul d. alinsky  198 METHODS OF NONVIOLENT ACTION | — Gene Sharp She Interrupted a Town-Hall Meeting and Was Dragged Out by Private Security - The New York Times  Martin Luther King Jr. had a much more radical message than a dream of racial brotherhood  The Enigma of Frantz Fanon | The Nation Frantz Fanon and the struggle against colonisation | MR Online Frantz Fanon and the Paradox of Anticolonial Violence – Solidarity Frantz Fanon—a vital defence of violence by the oppressed - Socialist Worker Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub] (starting at the collectivization debate scene)  Full Spectrum Resistance — McBay  The Failure of Nonviolence | The Anarchist Library  Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine  Debunking the myths around nonviolent resistance | ROAR Magazine  Social movements and the (mis)use of research: Extinction Rebellion and the 3.5% rule  Responding to Domestic Terrorism: A Crisis of Legitimacy - Harvard Law Review  Domestic Terrorism: Definitions, Terminology, and Methodology — FBI  676 | United States Sentencing Commission Activists use 'Tesla Takedown' protests to fight job cuts by Musk and Trump | Reuters Tesla vehicles destroyed, vandalized since Musk began role at White House, authorities say - ABC News Anti-DOGE protests at Tesla stores target Elon Musk's bottom line | AP News Tyre Extinguishers: A Night Out with the Climate Activists Sabotaging SUVs Leaflet | Tyre Extinguishers  Tesla Stocks Tumble as Elon Musk’s Political Role Grows More Divisive - The New York Times Internal Memos: Senior USAID Leaders Warned Trump Appointees of Hundreds of Thousands of Deaths From Closing Agency  Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine  Violence Will Only Hurt the Trump Resistance | The New Republic  Why Not Riot? Interview with Author Ben Case - CounterPunch.org 10 Lessons on Filmmaking from Director Ken Loach BBC Taster - How to Make a Ken Loach Film Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

17 Maalis 5min

First of Matthew's two-part examination of why the hell questions of force, non-violent resistance with and without force, unarmed violence and property damage, and armed violence are so incredibly hard to talk about in a culture thick with spiritual and political bypassing. Are we capable of understanding the difference between morality and strategy? Part 1 focuses on philosophy and psychology while Part 2 focuses on definitions and tactics. Together, both parts will push back on conspiracism about the identities, motives, and methods  of antifascists. Both will present slices of the rich discourse on violence and non-violence from antifascist history, including clarifying definitions of key terms. Both will open a space to think carefully about what intensities of self and community defense are both useful and tolerable in the fight against fascism.  Part 2 gets into the very thick weeds of how the “strategic nonviolence” research of Gene Sharp, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan is framed as empirical, but may be way more about idealizing Gandhi than about facts on the ground. Drops Monday on Patreon. Huge list of references for each! Show Notes Stopping the Press: The Threats to the Media Posed by the Second Trump Term | The New Yorker What the FBI Has Done, and Kash Patel Could Do - Columbia Journalism Review  Hakeem Jeffries cracks down on Trump speech disruptions  Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer Got Punched—You Can Thank the Black Bloc | The Nation  Aamer Rahman: Is it really ok to punch nazis?  $16.5M settlement reached in class-action lawsuit over mass arrests during 2010 G20 summit | CBC News  Meditations at the ringed fence around G20 Toronto - rabble.ca  Remaining Human: A Buddhist Perspective on Occupy Wall Street - Michael Stone  Brief: The Outside Agitator Conspiracy Trope (w/Dr. Peniel Joseph) — Conspirituality  Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years | Donald Trump | The Guardian  40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Sunshine  rules for radicals | saul d. alinsky  198 METHODS OF NONVIOLENT ACTION | — Gene Sharp She Interrupted a Town-Hall Meeting and Was Dragged Out by Private Security - The New York Times  Martin Luther King Jr. had a much more radical message than a dream of racial brotherhood  The Enigma of Frantz Fanon | The Nation Frantz Fanon and the struggle against colonisation | MR Online Frantz Fanon and the Paradox of Anticolonial Violence – Solidarity Frantz Fanon—a vital defence of violence by the oppressed - Socialist Worker Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub] (starting at the collectivization debate scene)  Full Spectrum Resistance — McBay  The Failure of Nonviolence | The Anarchist Library  Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine  Debunking the myths around nonviolent resistance | ROAR Magazine  Social movements and the (mis)use of research: Extinction Rebellion and the 3.5% rule  Responding to Domestic Terrorism: A Crisis of Legitimacy - Harvard Law Review  Domestic Terrorism: Definitions, Terminology, and Methodology — FBI  676 | United States Sentencing Commission Activists use 'Tesla Takedown' protests to fight job cuts by Musk and Trump | Reuters Tesla vehicles destroyed, vandalized since Musk began role at White House, authorities say - ABC News Anti-DOGE protests at Tesla stores target Elon Musk's bottom line | AP News Tyre Extinguishers: A Night Out with the Climate Activists Sabotaging SUVs Leaflet | Tyre Extinguishers  Tesla Stocks Tumble as Elon Musk’s Political Role Grows More Divisive - The New York Times Internal Memos: Senior USAID Leaders Warned Trump Appointees of Hundreds of Thousands of Deaths From Closing Agency  Beyond Violence and Nonviolence | ROAR Magazine  Violence Will Only Hurt the Trump Resistance | The New Republic  Why Not Riot? Interview with Author Ben Case - CounterPunch.org 10 Lessons on Filmmaking from Director Ken Loach BBC Taster - How to Make a Ken Loach Film Land and Freedom (1995 Ken Loach) [ENG Sub] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

15 Maalis 43min