The Afterlife of January 6th
It's been over seven months since pro-Trump protestors breached the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The meaning of the event remains contested. Was it a genuine coup attempt by an extra-parliamentary faction of the Trump movement? Or was it a disorganized and pathetic act of desperation by Fox News-poisoned rubes? Were the protestors inside the Capitol more like tourists or like terrorists? Was the siege an expression of dangerous anti-democratic forces? Or should we be more worried about the security state's overreaction to January 6th than about the event itself? Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, we try to contextualize the events of January 6th in terms of a longer trajectory of right-wing mobilization in 2020. Conservatives have variously downplayed, ignored, and defended the insurrectionists. Trump and others have begun to treat Ashli Babbitt — killed by a police officer during the riot — as a martyr for the cause. Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson insists the siege was an inside job, planned and executed by the FBI — an implausible theory gaining popularity among conservatives hoping to absolve themselves of culpability. Still other factions of the right (e.g. our old friends at the Claremont Institute) dream about a version of 1/6 that would actually have succeeded. Further Reading: Video: Day of Rage: An In-Depth Look at How a Mob Stormed the Capitol, New York Times, June 30, 2021. Paige Williams, "Kyle Rittenhouse, American Vigilante" The New Yorker. June 28, 2021.Ben Burgis & Daniel Bessner, "Trump Is a Threat to Democracy. But That Doesn’t Mean He’s Winning." Jacobin. Jan 15, 2021. Micah Loewinger, The Road to Insurrection, WNYC, July 2, 2021. Michael Anton & Curtis Yarvin, "The Stakes: The American Monarchy?," The American Mind. May 31, 2021.Joshua Hochschild "Once Upon a Presidency," The American Mind. Feb 19, 2021.Andrew Egger, "The New January 6 Scapegoats," The Dispatch, Jun 18, 2021.John Ganz "Feb 6 1934/Jan 6 2021," Unpopular Front. Jul 15, 2021....and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for all of our bonus episodes!
19 Juli 20211h 36min
UNLOCKED: Why the New Deal Matters (w/ Eric Rauchway)
In this unlocked bonus episode, Matt is joined by historian Eric Rauchway for a deep-dive into his new book, Why the New Deal Matters. It's Rauchway's latest effort to recover Franklin Delano Roosevelt as an anti-fascist political leader who sought to expand the meaning and practice of American democracy—that in a robust democracy, people don't just need enough to live on, but something to live for. Topics include: Herbert Hoover's and FDR's different responses to the Bonus Army's march on Washington; why Hoover is the true founding father of modern conservatism; how FDR understood the New Deal as more than just a pragmatic series of experiments; the importance to the New Deal of public art and projects like building libraries and theaters; why, despite its compromises with white supremacists in the Democratic Party, the New Deal continues to inspire; and more! Further Reading:Eric Rauchway, Why the New Deal Matters (Yale University Press, 2021)Eric Rauchway, Winter War: Hoover, Roosevelt, and the First Clash Over the New Deal (Basic Books, 2018)Jamelle Bouie, "F.D.R. Didn't Just Save the Economy," New York Times, April 16, 2021...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!
4 Juli 20211h 4min
TEASER: How (Not) to Talk About Racism
Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemyMatt and Sam are back in the same room — Matt's study — enjoying brown liquor, each other's company, and a surprisingly coherent discussion of the right's latest fixations: our "rainbow regime" and "critical race theory." Listen to find out how Matt's mother feels about his porn-stache, if Sam feels bad about boosting the career of Robin DiAngelo, whether the term "white fragility" has any utility, and why queer community is a metaphysical conundrum for Christian post-liberals. It's fun!
30 Juni 20213min
Unraveling Allan Bloom and Saul Bellow
In this episode Matt and Sam discuss Ravelstein, Saul Bellow's roman à clef about the Straussian political philosopher Allan Bloom, who achieved late-in-life wealth and fame after publishing his controversial bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind. Along the way they consider the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought, eros and the intellectual life, love and friendship, Bellow and Bloom's shared Jewishness, and much, much more.Sources and Further Reading:Saul Bellow, Ravelstein (Penguin, 2000)Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (Simon & Schuster, 1987) Giants and Dwarfs (Simon & Schuster, 1990) Love and Friendship (Simon & Schuster, 1993)Michel de Montaigne, "Of Friendship," from The Complete Works (trans. Donald Frame)D.T. Max, "With Friends Like Saul Bellow," New York Times Magazine, April 16, 2000Christopher Hitchens, "The Egg-Head's Egger-On," London Review of Books, April 27, 2000Patrick Deneen, "Who Closed the American Mind? Allan Bloom, Edmund Burke, & Multiculturalism," The Imaginative Conservative, May 29, 2013PLUS: Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!
21 Juni 20211h 34min
TEASER: Hot and Bothered
Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemyEvery June it happens: conservatives get all hot and bothered by Pride celebrations, and this year has been no different. Why do banal corporate expressions of support for LGBTQ+ rights drive them so mad? How does religion factor into their opposition to basic protections for LGBTQ+ people? What part do these culture war flareups play in their broader political strategy? In this bonus episode, Matt and Sam offer a survey of hyperbolic rightwing reactions to the start of Pride month and break it all down.
14 Juni 20213min
TEASER: Jaffa vs. Kendall
Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemyWhat is the status of "equality" in the American political tradition? What place does it have in the inheritance that conservatives are trying to preserve? Matt and Sam pick up where they left off in their recent conversation with historian Joshua Tait, this time focusing on Harry Jaffa's devastating review of Willmoore Kendall and George Carey's The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition. In it, Jaffa defends Abraham Lincoln against Kendall and Carey's charge that he "derailed" our political tradition by putting the Declaration of Independence, natural rights, and the principle of equality at its center—a move, in their account, that opened the way to Ceasarism, the rights revolution, and more. Sources and Further Reading:Willmoore Kendall & George W. Carey, Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition (Louisiana State University Press, 1970; reprint, The Catholic University of American Press, 1995)Willmoore Kendall, The Conservative Affirmation (Regnery Publishing, 1963)Harry V. Jaffa, "Equality as a Conservative Principle," Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, June 1, 1975Joshua Tait, "Why Willmoore Kendall and James Burnham are the Prophets of Modern Conservatism," National Interest, April 30, 2021Matthew Sitman, "Farewell to a Constitutional Conservative," The American Conservative, June 27, 2013
29 Maj 20212min
The Enemy Within (w/ Brandy Jensen)
For a slight change of pace, we invited our dear friend Brandy Jensen—author of the world's best advice column, Jezebel's Ask a Fuck-Up, and features editor at the new Gawker.com—to answer listener questions about reentering the world post-vaccine, dating, conservative relatives, whether the "Trad Caths" are right, and mourning the lives we did not live. As you'll see, we ended up addressing many classic Know Your Enemy themes—mercy, redemption, humility, etc.—and we had a great time doing it. Thank you to everyone who wrote in with such intimate and profound questions. You're all very beautifully fucked-up. Further Reading:Adam Philips, Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life, Macmillan, 2013Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti, October 3, 2020Brandy Jensen, "Ask a Fuck-Up on a Fucked-Up Year," Jezebel, December 31, 2020
24 Maj 20211h 11min
The Long Farewell to Majority Rule? (w/ Joshua Tait)
In this follow-up episode to "Democracy and Its Discontents" (listen here), historian Joshua Tait joins Matt and Sam for a conversation about the intellectual origins of the American Right's hostility to democracy—from John C. Calhoun's invention of the filibuster in the nineteenth century to the writings of conservatives like Russell Kirk, James Burnham, Willmoore Kendall, and others, in the 1950s and '60s. Sources and Further Reading:Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy (Liveright Books, January 2021)James Burnham, Congress and the American Tradition (Regnery, 1959)Willmoore Kendall, The Conservative Affirmation (Regnery Publishing, 1963)Willmoore Kendall & George W. Carey, Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition (Louisiana State University Press, 1970; reprint, The Catholic University of American Press, 1995)Saul Bellow, "Mosby's Memoirs," The New Yorker, Jul 12, 1968John A. Murley & John E. Alvis, eds., Willmoore Kendall: Maverick of American Conservatives (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002)Harry V. Jaffa, "Equality as a Conservative Principle," Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, June 1, 1975Joshua Tait, "Why Willmoore Kendall and James Burnham are the Prophets of Modern Conservatism," National Interest, April 30, 2021Joshua Tait, "The Long History of Fighting Over the Term 'Conservative,'" The Bulwark, April 2, 2021Matthew Sitman, "Farewell to a Constitutional Conservative," The American Conservative, June 27, 2013...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for all of our bonus episodes!
18 Maj 20211h 26min
