00:09:24.500of building a Jewish homeland in the Middle East.
00:09:28.880I've never resonated with any of the justifications for it.
00:09:33.580So, and I, that holds to this day,1.00
00:09:38.480but I feel like it's almost like Palestinians0.99
00:09:43.480have are serving the function that blacks have for liberals for some time that is the uncriticizable0.97
00:09:52.400most wonderful victim group there is and I just find that rather ridiculous and I do find that0.99
00:10:05.180if you want to engage in some sort of third worldist coalition on behalf of Gazans that0.91
00:10:12.320you are going to allow so many trojan horses through the gate you are going to have to embrace
00:10:18.140so many bad opinions that it is just not even close to being worth it now i'm not also recommending
00:10:27.320that we link up with the hardcore israelis or the zionist but i am just saying that we should go our
00:10:34.440own way nick fuentes is saying this now although to be a little critical of nick fuentes he was
00:10:40.520the one pushing this before it was cool. I think we should also just come to terms with this
00:10:48.760reality, which is that not only the left, but normies have been one-shotted about Israel to a
00:10:57.620degree that I'm at a loss for words. They went from zero to 88 on the Israel question
00:11:10.620in like six months, and I don't think they can see straight due to that fact. And I think
00:11:20.960it's sort of a problem, actually. Let's watch a little bit of this interview.
00:11:34.380Okay, just first off, the face. I mean, wow.
00:11:41.460It really does give human resource manager or second grade principal
00:11:51.440i don't know wow okay let's go megan let's start with first principles
00:12:01.120what to your mind is democratic socialism yeah so just very simply it is people having a democratic
00:12:08.560say-so in all of the things that they need to survive so democratic control of their workplace
00:12:13.360democratic control of their housing and democracy in what we already know as democracy in the
00:12:18.320in the political process okay as i said they want democracy everywhere i can't imagine
00:12:25.360something worse than like turning all aspects of life into a committee meeting just saying
00:12:33.980i mad max you can jump in here yeah i just had a quick comment if you've ever had any type of
00:12:40.460shitty job like i moved furniture for a summer between semesters no no no you the last thing0.83
00:12:47.820you would want is your co-workers having a say over how everything is run like imagine all the0.99
00:12:56.080parole like shitheads running the place you have to work in yes i mean we live in a representative0.97
00:13:06.300democracy in the sense that you elect someone and then they've got two four maybe six years to get0.99
00:13:14.300or done. And how they represent you is sort of a philosophical question. Should they go and put
00:13:22.420everything to a vote constantly? Well, isn't that sort of defeating the whole purpose of being a
00:13:28.140representative? Maybe you should represent the best aspects of your community or state or nation.
00:13:36.600And maybe you have to disagree with your voters in order to do that. I mean,
00:13:41.580How you see representation is sort of up to you, but I just, I don't know. I've never really believed in democracy on multiple levels. First off, I don't believe that we're in a democracy.
00:13:57.760say we do have representation as I've just said but we also have lobbying groups and billions of
00:14:06.280dollars floating around and institutions the CIA the military being obvious examples where they
00:14:16.480must in fact keep secrets you can't handle the truth you don't know what is best for you you
00:14:24.940don't want to know what we did to keep you safe um I I guess have a bit of the authoritarian
00:14:33.460personality in the sense that I give my consent to all of those things
00:14:43.900um I won't ask too many questions about their methods when it comes to a whole heck of a lot
00:14:50.320in terms of law enforcement and geopolitics etc that's just who I am um I I accept that but I also
00:15:00.340don't believe in democracy in the sense that democracy is the best outcome you know it is0.98
00:15:07.180sort of like a kind of nihilistic view like it's just people voting on shit you know like is the0.95
00:15:15.580top the number one song on the billboard chart that has been voted for with money and radio0.97
00:15:22.700plays is that the greatest music do you think beethoven's ninth symphony would be number one
00:15:29.180on the billboard chart or do you think actually democracy tells us something different it maybe0.99
00:15:35.020tells us perhaps it's more likely to tell us the levels of stupidity of a work of art0.97
00:15:41.740than the levels of erudition or greatness in a work of art just saying i i don't believe in0.90
00:15:49.420democracy in any way i i have a sort of cynical understanding of the world we live in the
00:15:54.300democracy that we live in but i don't think democracy would create good outcomes and yeah as
00:16:01.100as the saying goes you know um what is the saying ben franklin a democracy is that two wolves
00:16:09.660decide how they're going to divvy up the lamb they just what what is doing i'm misquoting it
00:16:17.100here but it was something to that effect does anyone know it okay well just take my word for
00:16:24.400it um what is it oh someone tried to speak but um someone can look it up if you want to
00:17:30.640Okay, basically, the wolves aren't going to be eaten for dinner is sort of the outcome of that situation. Felix, do you want to jump in?
00:17:40.100yeah i actually wanted to add a tidbit that if you say that the that the united states is a
00:17:47.360democracy on the immigration test you fail you're supposed to say that it's the constitutional
00:17:53.120republic which is kind of a bit conservatory but i do feel like this entire like democratic
00:18:00.200socialist vibe it really reeks of millennialism where just democracy equals good making things
00:18:09.720more democratic make means making them more good like this woman i actually wonder if she has0.50
00:18:15.320children or a family but she's she proposed making a family democratic which is an even1.00
00:18:20.480more absurd proposal right any parent would tell you yes exactly do you really want to have the
00:18:27.600army be democratic like i i it's just we could go through example after it's obvious you know
00:18:35.420Yeah, I do think that I do agree with you. And I think I just said, like, said this, like, I think the DSA, which now apparently makes up 30% of the Democratic Party or someone clear, there's some remarkably high number. First off, they have like 120,000 dues paying members. And so that's money over the barrel every month, or every year, presumably, and a lot.
00:19:02.200and they also have um they take donations and so on like they are sitting pretty right now
00:19:10.120and they maybe that's the approval rating or maybe that there was some sort of question like how do
00:19:16.520you identify as a democrat do a democrat as a democratic socialist it's quite high and it's
00:19:22.340even higher among young people um so this is a real phenomenon and i do think it is like
00:19:30.100one-shotted millennials, basically, who went through this 2016 through COVID period and
00:19:41.840Okay. So that proposes about a million questions. What does democracy in the workplace mean? Does
00:19:49.320everybody get to vote on what we're going to do today, tomorrow, and the next day?
00:19:52.020The way we look at it is mostly probably pretty similar to how a unionized workplace would work
00:19:57.400today. You get to collectively decide with your co-workers what demands you want to make of your
00:20:02.580boss, what your schedule looks like, what your working environment looks like, and negotiate
00:20:09.120collectively with whoever the boss is. Okay, but that sounds like simple unionization, which we
00:20:15.080already have, even though unions are not in the best spot they've ever been in this country.
00:20:19.480That's true. So we'd like to see everybody have a union. Right now, it's quite low. It's in the
00:20:25.480teens, I think, percentage of unionized workplaces. We think everybody should have a union of some
00:20:31.480sort. And what does it mean for the larger economics of a country? For example, Google
00:20:38.960or Apple or the biggest corporations in the country, are they no longer privately owned
00:20:44.760under democratic socialism? Well, that's a good question. And we specifically say that the
00:20:51.120industries that um that you need right so so your necessary industries so power um i would say that
00:21:00.540the internet is is a necessity at this point you can't really function without it um water things
00:21:06.220things like this a lot of these things are public in some places right um we want them public
00:21:10.840everywhere do you believe in the owning isn't it interesting that food is not nationalized like
00:21:17.840doesn't that sort of tell you something i mean food is regulated by the government unquestionably
00:21:25.280uh but it's it's not nationalized by the government yet we have cheap eats everywhere
00:21:32.800you know if if that if there is a necessity in that like
00:21:37.120pyramid of needs like food is foundational uh american center
00:21:43.360yeah i was gonna say it's like sorry i was gonna say it's like an attack on popular kids almost
00:21:52.440you know it's all these high schoolers saying you know why don't we all decide what we want
00:21:56.200for lunch you know it doesn't have to just be like the the cheer captain or not not the cheer
00:22:01.160captain but the football captain you know let's all decide what we want yes i i think there is a
00:22:08.780a deep embedded resentment in this like people power type thing because it's actually an 80 20
00:22:15.420rule or a 98 2 rule in terms of who actually determines culture and society um means of
00:22:24.780production as the marxists used to say but she said the internet is a necessity of life and
00:22:32.940who can disagree with her exactly but i mean do they actually want to nationalize google
00:22:42.220you can just go to a library you know for free yeah definitely so but i mean i don't know it's
00:22:49.580like they they also seem to always be afraid of their shadow like they're these other these other
00:22:55.660um interviews where they're like abolish the police or abolish prisons defund the police like
00:23:01.180do you believe that they're like what we know right now is that like they never want to just
00:23:05.740say yes like if a tanky would be like yeah we're we're seizing apple i kind of respect that more
00:23:16.700than this like wishy-washy business going on i mean just say it if that's what you want
00:23:24.380i do yeah yeah but you speak for whom well i i speak for the democratic socialists of america
00:23:31.020and and i think that you will find uh the the demand long term uh for for the working class
00:23:39.500to be in in charge of the means of production is one that is pretty universally held again
00:23:44.700it's not even the people it's the working class in charge of google i mean okay
00:23:51.900no trying to flip a switch so that everything changes tomorrow we're we're thinking about
00:23:56.220ways you can incrementally uh you know make life better for starters but also um shift the balance
00:24:04.380of power from the billionaire class to the working class so this is a kind of fabian strategy now
00:24:10.860a real marxist thinks in terms of cataclysmic changes there are these deep contradictions that
00:24:19.660work themselves out and it might not even it might not necessarily be a political revolution but it's0.59
00:24:26.700some sort of tumult the democratic socialist i guess they can't help but being smirking millennials
00:24:34.860or something like uh uh actually this will make life better um they just want to improve things
00:24:43.580but don't you think that that's just smoothing the rough edges of capitalism do you think that
00:24:50.220we are more likely or less likely to to move to a stage of socialism and then communism
00:24:58.460if you improve capitalism it's an interesting question a non-rhetorical question i don't
00:25:03.900i don't know but i would i don't know for certain but i would tend to say that most likely the
00:25:10.700The impoverishment and immiserization, if I pronounce that correctly, of the working0.81
00:25:17.480class is more likely to create a revolt, just saying.0.73
00:25:23.360Okay, so what is the difference between democratic socialism and what exists in a lot of Europe,
00:25:29.640which I would call social democracy, which is to say a greater emphasis and maybe a higher
00:25:35.340higher tax rate in order to have things like what we would call Medicare for all or single payer
00:25:41.440or either free or radically less expensive higher education. And I think, and I'm going to take a
00:25:49.660wild guess here, if you were using that vocabulary instead of the socialism category, you might have
00:25:56.940more adherence. Yes, maybe. But the reality is that we do not think that we're not fighting for
00:26:04.040a kinder, gentler capitalism. We think that a democracy that's really controlled by the working
00:26:09.000class is the ultimate goal. When you say we, it is kind of crazy that they're like this. I mean,1.00
00:26:16.800this is getting that distinction I made earlier. They just want the working class in charge of1.00
00:26:22.620Google. When you say we, how has that stance arrived upon? Who's we? That's a great question
00:26:32.680and one that I love to talk about. So DSA is fundamentally and sometimes excruciatingly
00:26:41.780democratic. The highest decision-making body of the Democratic Socialists of America is our
00:26:46.140convention. It happens every two years. Chapters elect delegates. We come together, vote on a
00:26:50.780bunch of proposals that may or may not shift our overall strategies or our overall stances on some
00:26:57.480things. And this is, these are representatives from a base of how many people? Well, right now,
00:27:02.160I think we're at 129,000 people. But we have grown significantly since Zoran Mamdani's election,
00:27:10.020which came after our last convention. And then we're seeing a growth spurt recently with the
00:27:15.680recent congressional primary wins as well. It's very interesting to me that maybe the
00:27:20.880highest profile political race that we're now seeing nationally for the midterm elections
00:27:26.860on the left is the ascent in the state of Michigan. If Abdul El-Sayed, who when I asked
00:27:34.100him about democratic socialism said, no, no, no, no, I'm a capitalist. Disappointed?
00:27:40.640He's not a DSA candidate. If he was a DSA candidate, I would absolutely be disappointed.
00:27:44.840But I'm glad that there is a movement sort of across the board of people taking on some of
00:27:50.060these policies, because I do think they will improve life for the working class.
00:27:55.140What is the working class in this country? Because Zoran Mamdani, mayor of New York, just gave an interview, I believe, to the New York Times, and he was asked, please define the working class. And he said, anybody making under a million dollars a year, which I got to tell you was news to me.
00:28:09.880Yeah, that is not how I would define the working class.
00:28:13.780so so we're coming out of a socialist tradition where class is defined based on your relationship
00:28:21.860to capital and so the working class is essentially people who make a paycheck so if i'm a dentist i
00:28:28.500can't be working class well it depends are you a dentist who is working for a corporation and
00:28:34.020selling your labor and getting paid hourly or are you a dentist who owns your uh dental practice it
00:28:39.380does get fuzzy around that edges it gets it you know there's a lot of socialist theory happening
00:28:43.380right now about gig work and how these sort of like technically a gig worker works for themselves,
00:28:47.840but they're obviously not really the ownership class. So there's definitely a hot topic of
00:28:54.940debate. But but the simple definition is, do you make a paycheck or do you make money off other
00:29:00.140people working for you or renting a place that you own? Are you making the money from the?
00:29:05.700So they just sort of hate bosses and landlords. And I get it, you know, but to form an ideology
00:29:12.820on that seems rather strange. And they're just these obvious exceptions that I don't think
00:29:20.180earlier Marxists would have thought of. I mean, I remember at one point, Emma Viglin was defending
00:29:26.460Hassan Piker, who was saying that LeBron James is a member of the working class because he has to
00:29:33.060face off against capital and, you know, negotiate and define terms and so on. I mean, first off,
00:29:41.840saying anyone who's paid I don't even know what his salary is I would I would just guess like 30
00:29:48.040to 50 million dollars a year to say that they're working class is just absurd I mean obviously0.97
00:29:54.760Marx is talking about a proletariat it wasn't the entirety of poor people there's the lumpen0.76
00:30:01.800trolls too it was people directly engaged in the alienating experience of wage labor
00:30:09.940um first and and i should also add on the lebron james question that he's actually an investor in
00:30:18.680the fenway group so he owns a little piece of the boston red socks and the what is uh some of those
00:30:27.000other soccer teams the pittsburgh penguins at one point anyway uh so he is not a laborer and it's
00:30:34.180just absurd to talk in those ways so what you have is like you know we like people like Taylor
00:30:40.900Swift or LeBron James because they're cool so they're like us Taylor Swift's just selling her
00:30:45.700art she's not a cat it's just it's like the categories don't work anymore and thus you're
00:30:54.520just making unprincipled exceptions for people you think are cool and that's just not serious
00:31:00.340the gig worker thing is actually a very important question the the dentist who owns his practice and
00:31:06.660is struggling to make 50 grand a year is that not a if he's not working class then who is
00:31:14.740you know um i could go on the graphic designer who's being destroyed by ai but he sort of is a
00:31:23.060capitalist on some level he owns his capital he works for himself all interesting questions
00:31:31.440it workers are working class though they work for google earned 200 000 a year but that's
00:31:38.720that's supposedly a dsa electorate right it's odd we could go on and on i just don't think
00:31:46.880these categories work anymore. And I don't have an answer for what would work, but I'm also not
00:31:55.940a DSA member, so I don't owe them an answer. Pay off of your capital investments. Are you
00:32:00.320making it because you sell your labor? So let's dig down a little bit here. The DSA refused to
00:32:05.720endorse Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in 2016. You happy about that decision? I think it would
00:32:12.040have hurt our credibility a bit as people who are actually standing for socialism and against
00:32:16.660neoliberalism. Yeah. But on the other hand, you let an authoritarian through the door. I mean,
00:32:22.560I'm not blaming you specifically. A lot of factors went into it. Yeah. Did you stay home in 2016?
00:32:28.340I didn't. No. You voted. I voted for Hillary Clinton and I voted for Joe Biden in 2020.
00:32:33.280So why did you do that against the recommendation of the organization?
00:32:36.420Well, I wasn't a DSA member in 2016, first of all. But I do believe in a harm reduction vote,
00:32:44.380But I don't think that the couple hundred thousand socialists are the ones who swung that vote.
00:32:48.660It's the millions of people who stayed home because all they were being offered was kind of a rainbow flag painted version of the same thing.
00:32:56.220Well, in fairness, millions of people stay home every election.
00:34:11.060And so what does that tell you? It tells you that you're putting your faith in the wrong thing, which is in a political system, whereas there's got to be a real solution that begins with changing people's hearts. That's what I think.
00:34:27.460Does anyone honestly believe that elections don't matter?
00:34:34.020I mean, I sort of get it on some level, like it's not going to change everything about your life or whatever.
00:34:41.680But do you think that we would be at war with Iran right now if Kamala Harris were elected?
00:34:48.740And this is some just way of getting around people like myself and like Nick Fuentes and others who were directly telling you that Donald Trump is much more likely to create a war in the Middle East than Biden-Harris.
00:35:10.100and in fact things were pushing in that direction we can't be certain about anything but if you go
00:35:17.660beyond just bombastic rhetoric about no new wars or whatever and look at interest that that might
00:35:25.900very well happen we've discussed this I retweeted all of my tweets where in which I was saying this
00:35:32.200But just this, like, we, you know, Trump promised us this, and then he didn't get, like, we just, the Democrats might as well be in charge. No, the Democrats were in charge, this would be very different, actually. I don't believe in democracy, but I'm not this, like, sort of Gen X nihilist who's like, oh, it doesn't matter, nothing matters, man. No, it does actually matter.