In this episode of Trigonometry, Francis and Constantine talk to US journalist Aaron Mate about his work on Russiagate, the media's obsession with the idea that the Trump administration colluded with the Russians in order to get Donald Trump elected president.
00:01:22.620But I also cover generally foreign policy and particularly the, you know, how the U.S. undermines governments abroad that it doesn't like for reasons coming back to the fact that these governments stand in the way of U.S. hegemony.
00:01:38.940So that's pretty much the focus of my work.
00:01:41.680And that's, you know, I can go through my long life story, but I'll save that maybe for later.
00:01:46.660yeah well so you basically it would it be fair to say you represent the anti-imperialist left
00:01:53.120would that be about right certainly people would associate me with that i i try to avoid terms like
00:02:01.000that personally just because i just think i represent factuality and uh but uh sure yeah
00:02:07.220in terms of if you want to assign a category absolutely i'm definitely a part of the anti-imperialist
00:02:12.000left. I don't believe in the self-appointed right of strong states to interfere in the affairs of
00:02:19.620others. Well, we'll probably get into more of that. But the first question I wanted to ask you
00:02:24.640relates probably more to the media landscape than anything else, because Russiagate has obviously
00:02:29.240been a big part of your work. And the way it seems to work nowadays, if you oppose essentially lies
00:02:35.680about someone like Donald Trump, which is what we're talking about, that automatically means
00:02:41.600you're a huge fan of his and you're secretly, you know, it's Trump adjacent and all the rest of it.
00:02:47.340Are you secretly Trump adjacent, Aaron? I am not secretly Trump adjacent. No, no, I'm not. No,
00:02:54.160I really, when he won, that was a very dark couple of weeks to process that. And his presidency,
00:03:02.500I think, was a disaster for the US and for the world. And I really did not want him to win
00:03:09.460re-election. The problem, though, is that I also don't think that Joe Biden and the part of the
00:03:16.000party, of the Democratic Party that he represents, were really a better alternative,
00:03:25.300except for the fact that I just think they're less worse. So I'm not a big fan of Joe Biden or
00:03:29.700anything he does. I just think that the Trump and the people around him were so dangerous.
00:03:34.260And part of the reason why I opposed Russiagate from the start was not only because I thought it was based on a lie and a lot of deception and that there was this key pieces of evidence were missing on all these core claims.
00:03:48.620But also because I thought it was actually a big gift to Trump, because if you're Trump, would you rather have your opposition focused on your policies like, you know, this tax heist in which Trump's tax cuts transferred a massive amount of wealth upwards to the top 1% or pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal or pulling out of a bunch of arms control accords with Russia or tearing up environmental treaties?
00:04:15.600or would you rather have them focused on this crazy conspiracy theory that you're really
00:04:21.320a puppet of Vladimir Putin and there's this secret conspiracy going on and as soon as we find all the
00:04:28.560as soon as we find out the smoking gun your presidency will be over well if I'm Trump it's
00:04:33.120an easy choice I'd much rather have my opposition turning into crazy conspiracy fanatics and that
00:04:40.440unfortunately what the democratic party was for pretty much the bulk of Trump's presidency
00:05:00.520And we saw that when at the end of the Mueller investigation, they came up with nothing.
00:05:05.100And the only reason some people thought they might have found something is because there was more deception and more disingenuous rhetoric to make people think that there was something there when really there was nothing.
00:05:14.880And I think it was a disaster for the opposition to Trump and a disaster for the world, because another impact of all this was to encourage increased confrontation between the U.S. and Russia, which I think for many reasons is a very bad thing.
00:05:29.220And Aaron, why was it that they were so focused on Russiagate when it comes to Trump?
00:05:34.540Because let's be fair, if you if you've got a target, I mean, if there's a lot to criticize on the bloke, why is it that they were so focused on Russia?
00:05:43.300Well, let's start with how the Democrats lost in 2016. So you have Hillary Clinton, who is the embodiment of this neoliberal warmongering establishment. Hillary Clinton, who supported the war on Iraq, who supported the dirty war in Syria, who supported the destruction of Libya, who supported so-called free trade policies that decimated the U.S. working class.
00:06:10.860so she comes along and she's the candidate for the democratic party she faces this clown in trump
00:06:17.660a reality tv show host who is able to convince people because of his rhetoric on the campaign
00:06:24.800trail that he is some kind of working class champion who is going to take on the establishment
00:06:30.640and drain the swamp and enough people in enough states were so disgusted by the
00:06:38.300Clinton-Obama legacy, that they were willing to take a chance on this clown, Trump, who was saying
00:06:45.760things like, you know, I'm going to bring back jobs and bring back our factories. And he also
00:06:50.940was criticizing the foreign wars that Hillary Clinton had supported. And that worked. And I
00:06:57.620think there are many people who probably didn't believe Trump, but I think they were so contemptuous
00:07:02.120of what Clinton represented that they figured, why not go with this guy? He's at least saying
00:07:06.640the right things. And it worked. So for Democrats, if they want to do honest self-reflection on such
00:07:14.360a humiliating defeat to this clown, then that means that they have to reflect on their actual
00:07:20.240positions, which would require them to come up with a genuine anti-establishment alternative
00:07:26.020to Trump to challenge him on. So instead of Trump's fake populist anti-establishment rhetoric
00:07:31.800for Democrats to learn from 2016 and then challenge him, defeat him, they would have to come up with
00:07:36.280the genuine anti-establishment alternative. But the problem with that is that that would mean
00:07:40.820undermining their own power and privilege within the failed system that let Trump become president.
00:07:48.520And they couldn't do that. So they had to come up with a bunch of excuses for their defeat
00:07:52.760and in a very classic dynamic, find external enemies to blame. And very early on, that became
00:07:59.860Russia. So Russia was now at fault for Trump. Russia was the reason that we had Trump because
00:08:06.200Russia brainwashed millions of Americans with their sophisticated social media posts and their
00:08:11.560hacked emails. And moreover, there was even a conspiracy between Trump and Russia. And that is
00:08:18.440how Trump got to the White House, not because of our failed policies. So I think that at its core
00:08:23.700explains it. And then you have a convergence of factors and other privileged sectors beyond the
00:08:27.800Democratic Party leadership. You have a media that gave Trump billions of dollars worth of free
00:08:33.320airtime. So they also don't want to do some honest self-reflection. And moreover, if your focus is on
00:08:40.020Russia and you're blaming Russian oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska for Trump, then that means you can
00:08:46.520avoid scrutiny of American oligarchs, people like Sheldon Adelson and Robert Mercer and all the
00:08:52.280other billionaires who preside over a rigged system, frustration with which Trump was able
00:08:59.400to exploit. So for a media that serves these same powerful interests, blaming this external enemy
00:09:04.860serves a very useful purpose. And finally, you also have elements of the national security state
00:09:10.280who also tried to undermine Trump. That's very obvious now with all the false leaks that they
00:09:15.000put out, falsely suggesting that there was evidence for a Trump Russia conspiracy.
00:09:18.900they didn't like trump not because they don't like his racism but because they didn't see him
00:09:24.980as a suitable steward of the u.s war machine he's a buffoon and he says the wrong things
00:09:30.620he's actually honest sometimes and when he talks about what the u.s really does around the world
00:09:35.080so for example in syria when he kept u.s troops there he said very openly we're there to take
00:09:40.800the oil yeah barack obama or joe biden would never say that they'll say we're there to confront isis
00:09:46.120or to protect our strategic interests,
00:10:45.380But you obviously talk about the 2016 election.
00:10:48.240If we move forward a little bit to the election that's just happened.
00:10:52.600First of all, let me just a quick fire question.
00:10:54.660Do you think if there's no COVID, Trump gets elected again?
00:10:58.820I do think Trump would have gotten elected.
00:11:00.360Yes, I think there would have been at least a much stronger chance that Trump would have gotten elected.
00:11:04.100And in fact, there's a new book by a couple of reporters, Jonathan Allen and Annie Parnes.
00:11:13.380It's called Lucky. The book is called Lucky. And it's about Joe Biden's election. And it quotes one of his advisors who says that COVID was the best thing that ever happened to Biden. So even from inside the Biden camp, there's a recognition that if not for COVID, Trump would have been in a much stronger position because, look, the economy, at least on paper, was doing pretty good.
00:11:37.040And again, going back to Russiagate, what had the Democrats offered the public for four years?
00:11:43.120Insane Russia conspiracy theories and basically the fact that they're not Trump.
00:11:49.900So that was the sum of their opposition pretty much was that we're not Trump.
00:11:53.680Oh, and also Russia is at fault for everything that's going on in the US, including Donald Trump.
00:11:57.920So Democrats had not offered voters very much.
00:12:00.320They hadn't really put up a very robust opposition to Trump's actual policies.
00:12:05.080So I don't think Democrats had given the voters enough of a case to win back the people they lost in 2016.
00:12:13.300And so I think it's very plausible to speculate that if not for COVID, which Trump handled so terribly, that he would have been in a much stronger position.
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00:13:13.460biden represents the same neoliberal establishment of the democratic party that lost to trump in
00:13:21.8202016 that under obama presided over a massive loss of power at all levels of government except
00:13:29.480for the white house until 2016 when they also lost the white house as well and you know he
00:13:35.400supported every hawkish foreign policy position over the course of his career for pretty much
00:13:42.480everyone there are some exceptions uh he authored the infamous crime bill which led to a massive
00:13:49.680increase in imprisoning people of color he has been a longtime friend of wall street especially
00:13:57.520the credit card industry so biden to me is just a you know a figurehead for the same old
00:14:04.960neoliberal elite who didn't offer voters much this year except the fact that he wasn't trump
00:14:11.600And I think enough happened for people to just get sick of Trump and how much of a clown he was that that was enough to push Biden over the top.
00:14:19.940But will that be enough to hold on to power?
00:14:23.280On the domestic front, you know, he's not been terrible.
00:14:27.360I think he's been better than Obama, although that's not hard.
00:14:29.800He just passed this stimulus bill that will cut child poverty in half.
00:14:35.480It will increase subsidies to parents with children.
00:14:49.340He could have actually pushed that through, but he caved on that.
00:14:52.160So he, I think, has learned some lessons from Obama's failure.
00:14:57.560Obama, who I think was a very tepid leader, but not that much.
00:15:00.840And to really make effective change, you have to have a movement of people behind you.
00:15:05.780But Biden and his circle, I don't think, are interested in that.
00:15:08.220They just want to work with the Republicans that they can and centrist Democrats and push through incremental reforms that do a little bit but don't do that much.
00:15:18.380That, for example, can't even get to the level of giving people a livable wage, like $15 an hour, and can't even give everybody health care, which is just a global scandal that the U.S., this supposed, you know, civilized country, can't guarantee health care to all of its citizens, especially during a pandemic.
00:15:36.500So do I think Biden will be able to overcome the corruption and dysfunction of the neoliberal
00:15:45.820wing that he represents to win again in 2024 if he runs again?
00:17:02.860And relying on the donations of Wall Street, which became infinitely more power with the in the 1980s with the deregulation policies overseen by Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, when he ran, pretty much ran with similar policies economically as Reagan.
00:17:20.940So it's pretty much instead of a Democratic Party that is, you know, champions workers, it's one that is tied instead to massive corporations and Wall Street and sees deregulation and unfettered finance as sort of the vehicles for growth, allowing for worker protections and worker rights to be consistently undermined.
00:17:48.800And that's been the direction of the Democratic Party since pretty much the Carter administration.
00:17:52.960And if you look at how what Clinton did with NAFTA, the so-called free trade deal, which moved a whole bunch of jobs abroad, completely decimated U.S. manufacturing, deregulating the telecommunications industry, which led to a greater consolidation of corporations owning the media.
00:18:13.300And then his foreign policy have also continued hawkishness, which is not that much different than the Republicans.
00:18:18.800You see basically a one-party system in the U.S. between involving the Democrats and the Republicans.
00:18:26.300They only differ slightly on social issues.
00:18:28.420So where Democrats differ is culturally they're more evolved.
00:18:32.320So they believe eventually – it took them a long time actually.
00:18:36.140It only took them – it actually took them until the Obama administration to even recognize gay marriage.
00:18:40.740But basically they start recognizing cultural and social rights a bit earlier than the Republicans do.
00:18:47.160That's basically the essential difference between Democrats and Republicans.
00:18:52.340And that's what defines a neoliberal is pretty much the same economic policies and foreign
00:18:57.420policies of Republicans, but on cultural social issues like gay marriage and the separation
00:19:03.680of church and state there, you know, they come along with a more, I think, evolved position
00:19:17.160well at home i'd like to see the u.s government provide for its people's basic needs
00:19:22.340so for example health care it's just a scandal that this country supposedly the wealthiest in
00:19:28.380the world does not guarantee health care for all its citizens unlike every other industrialized
00:19:33.260country um and abroad i like to see the u.s stop terrorizing the world which it has done
00:19:39.220for over a century especially since coming out incredibly powerful after the second world war
00:19:46.740So today, you know, the fact that under Trump, you have an attempt to overthrow the government of Venezuela and you have an attempt to overthrow the government of Syria and overthrow the government of Iran.
00:19:58.900And to illustrate just how bipartisan this is, Biden comes into office and he's essentially continuing all of Trump's policies.
00:20:06.260He's keeping the sanctions in place on Iran, Syria, and Venezuela, which deprive those governments of much-needed revenue and are helping to weaken the states of those countries, and most importantly, are impacting, as they're designed, the civilian populations of these countries, which have a harder time importing medicine, which plunge a lot more people into poverty, and all because the U.S. doesn't want their governments in power.
00:20:32.740So, you know, because I oppose all these things, I, you know, you can call me a leftist, and I've just always identified with any effort to challenge illegitimate power and any imperial power that is interfering in the affairs of other countries, while meanwhile depriving its own citizens of their basic needs.
00:20:51.260And Aaron, don't you think that the Democratic Party lost, how can I put this, any legitimacy with the fiasco with what happened with Bernie Sanders
00:21:04.020And it looked like he won the Democratic candidate and then it then disappeared into the ether and Hillary was elected
00:21:12.460Despite the fact that most people didn't even want her as a candidate
00:21:15.400right well look i i have no uh affection at all for hillary clinton and i certainly think that
00:21:25.460what they did to bernie sanders was a complete scandal and yeah they don't have any legitimacy
00:21:30.000in my eyes but you know look she did still get more votes than him and you can argue that he
00:21:36.000would have won if not for the dnc rigging the primary against them it's possible but we don't
00:21:40.840know that for sure. We don't. And look, Bernie ran again in 2020 and he didn't win. And it's just
00:21:48.340a fact that while certainly, of course, there is bias and even efforts to sabotage Bernie Sanders
00:21:55.220by the DNC. And in fact, there are probably people in the DNC who would rather have Trump
00:21:59.980win re-election than Bernie Sanders if he'd been the candidate. It's still a fact that it's very
00:22:05.620hard to mobilize leftist candidates in this country and and leftist sentiment because there's
00:22:12.280so much against it and it's just quite possible that we haven't arrived there yet with Bernie
00:22:16.100Sanders that even without the rigging of him that it just might not have happened so but yes
00:22:20.980to answer your question shortly of course they were biased against him and of course they tried
00:22:25.500to undermine him and it speaks to the obstacles that leftists face in trying to build power the
00:22:30.340same thing we saw in the uk with jeremy corbyn who came very close to winning uh the entire
00:22:37.180election in 2017 i believe but we saw we saw from leaked emails that members of his own party
00:22:43.240sabotaged him and worked against him and then after that we saw a coordinated effort to sabotage
00:22:49.260him with these fake allegations of anti-semitism and cornering him on brexit which i think all of
00:22:56.280which was designed to undermine him because neoliberals I think possibly hate progressives
00:23:01.700more than they hate the right wing because they have a lot more in common with the right wing
00:23:06.700than they do with progressives like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders. I mean I would say too just
00:23:11.240from a UK perspective Jeremy Corbyn was not the best candidate too. He had some issues in terms
00:23:18.060of likability with the general public but let's not get into that actually. He almost well look
00:23:22.360he he came closer than any other labor leader that i can think of to winning the prime minister's
00:23:27.560office in 2017 it was a few thousand votes shy he did uh he did at that point but his policy on
00:23:34.900brexit completely ruined uh ruined his uh the perception of him with the general public right
00:23:41.500but what i'm arguing there it's my look i haven't followed as closely maybe as you have but it's my
00:23:45.940understanding that he was boxed in by the elite of his own party which did not want to accept
00:23:50.760the result of Brexit so Jeremy Corbyn tried to basically and I think he made a mistake from
00:23:56.400from my reading of it although again it's limited and trying to appease both the results trying to
00:24:02.220trying to recognize both the result but also appease the elite of his own party by saying that
00:24:06.860you know we're going to hold a new vote on whether to accept the terms of Brexit right that's how it
00:24:12.020went down which I think was a mistake I think he should have said no there was a vote we accept the
00:24:16.020outcome, but he faced a huge amount of pressure from within his own party. And I think that
00:24:21.340pressure was consciously aimed at undermining him, of putting him in an impossible position.
00:24:26.020And I think it did play a factor in him ultimately losing.
00:24:29.380Well, what I would say to you, Aaron, I think you're right in your analysis. What I would add
00:24:32.480is you were right earlier when you talked about the change in the Democratic Party in the United
00:24:36.520States. The same thing happened to the Labour Party, where they ceased to be the representative
00:33:07.400And in some ways, we're actually a lot more backward in that we have foreign military occupations going on around the world and bases around the world and sanctions around the world that nobody else is doing.
00:33:20.420so i don't accept the premise that we have some duty or some right to act that we don't grant to
00:33:26.960other other states but isn't that the argument that would say we had no reason the united states
00:33:32.620shouldn't have intervened in world war ii for example well that's different because that's when
00:33:36.800you have a nazi army that is invading foreign states and overseeing extermination and other
00:33:44.980states that are being attacked by the nazis have asked the u.s to come to their defense
00:33:49.400so the U.S. was asked for help but that's different than say Vietnam where you know
00:33:54.880no nobody asked the U.S. to come into Vietnam no sovereign government said please come in
00:34:00.240to Vietnam or you know the Nicaragua the no no sovereign Nicaraguan said please come in
00:34:06.380and destroy our country and uh the same it's and you can repeat that everywhere Yemenis didn't say
00:34:12.980please give Saudi Arabia please arm Saudi Arabia and give them intelligence so you can bomb our
00:34:18.660countries bomb our weddings bomb our water plants so world war ii is a unique case i think and the
00:34:25.160only you know if the u.s did anything wrong there it's that it came in way too late it let the nazis
00:34:29.820actually take far too much territory and cause far too much death before it finally came in
00:34:35.520and look and by the way on the issue of the uyghurs um that's worth addressing because
00:34:41.820you know it's interesting we've only seen rhetoric around the uyghurs come up in recent years
00:34:46.720When meanwhile, the conflict there has been going on for a long time.
00:34:49.900There is undoubtedly repression in Xinjiang.
00:34:53.540I think that's that that's undoubtable.
00:34:55.660And there's a massive surveillance state inside of China.
00:34:58.660But we've only seen talk about a genocide happen in recent years.
00:35:03.420And I think it's important to look at why.
00:35:06.360In recent years, China has become more of a target of the bipartisan U.S. establishment because it's a rising economic power.
00:35:13.980Its economic success threatens U.S. hegemony
00:35:19.320And that's why I think China is now in the U.S. crosshairs
00:35:22.380And that's why I think we're hearing more accusations against China of genocide
00:35:26.500Which, by the way, is a very strong term
00:35:28.640Which I do not use when it comes to the Uyghurs
00:35:37.000I haven't been there, but I would bet strongly that all the allegations of repression are true
00:35:42.300But genocide means mass extermination. And anybody who wants to argue that Uyghurs in China are treated worse than, say, Palestinians in Gaza who are being occupied with U.S. support is wrong. It's just a falsehood.
00:35:59.820So there's, I think, a very familiar playbook of weaponizing humanitarian rhetoric to actually justify the real aims of basically demonizing China and waging a cold war against it, which I do not support.
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00:37:44.820And do not worry what will happen, Aaron, if, as you wish, and correct me if I'm wrong,
00:37:51.300that the U.S. retreats from the world stage, that it just focuses on its own problems and
00:37:57.340health care, whatever it is. What will happen to the world stage if countries like China and Russia
00:38:03.280are allowed free reign? That to me is like asking what, you know, in Star Wars, if the Death Star
00:38:11.220was dismantled, what would that mean for the world? The U.S. is a global empire. Show me
00:38:18.420another country that has bases in hundreds of countries around the world that is waging
00:38:22.780simultaneous military occupations, that is imposing a sanctions regime that cuts off
00:38:29.360massive countries from the rest of the world and denies their civilians food and medicine.
00:38:34.280That's the case in every single major target of U.S. regime change.
00:38:43.940And I'm not a fan of pretty much any government.
00:38:47.080But I don't believe that the system of this one global hegemon that is constantly invading other countries, destroying other countries, blockading other countries, is better than a system where there's not this one empire.
00:39:02.260I think that would be a wonderful thing if there was not this one hegemon controlling everything because it would mean that we have no more – or at least it would reduce the chances of this one bully invading and blockading every country that it doesn't like.
00:39:15.220Do you think that's really true though, Aaron? I mean, the system with no one power is inherently unstable, I would argue. And what you'd probably end up with is Russia or China becoming that superpower instead. And would that be a better world?
00:39:29.760for russia and china to become a superpower on the level of the u.s that would require them
00:39:37.920building up bases around the world invading other countries i don't see that happening
00:39:43.980and when you talk about being less stable well what is stable about the current situation
00:39:49.140where you have countries like iran venezuela cuba syria you can go down the list starving
00:39:57.680under U.S. sanctions and you have this U.S. government that, you know, pretty much with
00:40:04.100every administration invades somebody else. You know, look at the last 20 years. The U.S. invaded
00:40:09.580Iraq, destroyed Iraq. Look at the impact of Iraq, what that's done, not just to Iraq,
00:40:13.940but to the whole region. ISIS then goes into Syria, takes over a large part of Syria. Look
00:40:21.440at Afghanistan, the invasion of Afghanistan. Back then, Al-Qaeda was concentrated to a very
00:40:25.740small part of afghanistan and neighboring pakistan look where they are now now they're
00:40:30.200around the world they're everywhere they're in syria they're in somalia they're in yemen
00:40:34.160that's a result of u.s policy of the invasion of afghanistan and also of iraq then look at libya
00:40:39.920the destruction of libya slavery returning there the dirty war in syria hundreds of thousands of
00:40:46.720people killed millions displaced the country destroyed now it can't even rebuild because
00:40:51.500of u.s sanctions iran people you know there was just a an article that came out in foreign affairs
00:40:58.100talking about how millions of iranians have been plunged from the middle class to below the poverty
00:41:04.520line because of u.s sanctions you can look everywhere around the world so what is stable
00:41:09.260about that for these million tens of millions of people there's nothing stable about living under
00:41:14.260you know the threat of war the impact of the u.s invading and now being surrounded by extremist
00:41:20.760militias like isis and living under medieval sanctions that prevent them from importing their
00:41:25.660basic goods like food and medicine well look on on afghanistan iraq and all that stuff we we're
00:41:31.660completely with you and libya uh and to a large extent syria i mean some of the points you're
00:41:36.860making are hard to disagree with no matter how much i'd like to uh but aaron i i was going to
00:41:41.480ask you something a topic that we cover on on this show quite a bit is you know francis is
00:41:47.040very much old school lefty. I used to be on the left. I'm very much sort of in the center now,
00:41:52.700I think. But one of the things we talk about a lot, and maybe it's our background as comedians
00:41:57.720who are concerned about increasing restrictions around speech, people being, you know, cancelled
00:42:03.360for the wrong comment or whatever, that sort of thing, which does happen quite a lot in our
00:42:08.860experience. As someone who's on the left and cares about foreign policy, cares about economics,
00:42:14.880what do you make of what they what they sort of call woke stuff or woke culture woke politics
00:42:21.540how do you feel that's useful or is it a distraction from the main issues the left
00:42:26.360should focus on what do you make of it to the extent woke refers to how i see its original
00:42:36.980intention which is just to expand consciousness about the world be conscious of subconscious
00:42:44.300biases that we inherit as a result of living in an unequal, racist system, I think that
00:42:51.060is good, you know, and I'm on board with it.
00:42:54.020Of course, like everything, it's been exploited to distract us from the important issues like
00:43:00.320the ones I've been talking about and to sort of silo politics into this very narrow thing
00:43:05.760where it's no longer about improving people's material well-being, meeting their basic needs,
00:43:11.320opposing things like imperialism and war, but instead very much focused solely on identity
00:43:17.740at the exclusion of everything else. There's nothing wrong, I think, with recognizing the
00:43:22.220role of identity in our biases and trying to correct that. But when you do that at the expense
00:43:29.720and in fact in opposition to everything else, I think it's a very real problem. And the attempts
00:43:35.360to cancel people for saying the wrong things is I think a part of this where it's this like
00:43:39.020effort to push us further and further away from focusing on the things that matter that impact
00:43:43.940people's lives and instead on these semantic narrow concerns that I just don't really
00:43:51.940resonate with the vast majority of people and that's certainly an issue on the left that I
00:43:57.840think is worrying that you know I'm all for focusing on identity issues and you know for
00:44:05.540calling people by the right pronouns i think we have to respect however someone wants to be you
00:44:11.240know uh described we have to respect it but the problem is when people try to make these things
00:44:16.700the sole issue uh at the exclusion and in opposition everything else that's a problem
00:44:21.340and you see that especially now with the democratic party leadership the dnc they love this talk
00:44:26.220because instead of talking about you know the working class the minimum wage uh or the impact
00:44:32.720of sanctioning and bombing foreign countries, they can brag about how diverse the cabinet
00:44:38.180of officials is that is carrying out these same awful policies.
00:44:41.980So sometimes this becomes a smokescreen to continue the very same policies, the very
00:44:58.780And, you know, we saw that here in the U.S. before the election where there was this article on the New York Post about Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, and Hunter's corrupt business dealings abroad.
00:45:09.320And literally, when you wanted to share that on Twitter, you couldn't.
00:45:13.440Twitter blocked people from sharing that.
00:45:15.620And that is a manifestation of this increased policing and censorship of speech.
00:45:21.020and it's you know uh and in the case of of this hunter biden story one way in which they justified
00:45:27.080is they said that this might be russian disinformation and that's another way all
00:45:30.700this has happened is that anything that offends u.s elites gets labeled russian disinformation
00:45:35.460and that way we can bury it so you know all this i think is is concerning and aaron don't you see
00:45:42.280that when it comes to leftist parties this identitarian politics is slowly tearing it
00:45:49.920apart because it's making them less and less electable and less and less relevant to working
00:45:55.560class people who they're meant to be serving i think there is truth to that yes i do i do i do
00:46:02.700now i that doesn't mean that i think leftists shouldn't talk about identity and prioritize
00:46:10.840addressing racism and any other form of discrimination but when it's done at the
00:46:16.960exclusion of everything else. And again, in opposition to improving people's material
00:46:22.240interests, that's when I think it's a problem. And unfortunately, I think that trend of solely
00:46:27.360focusing on identity while still advancing policies that in fact hurt people of color,
00:46:33.420hurt marginalized communities, like, you know, for example, not being able to fight for a $15
00:46:38.280minimum wage as the Democratic Party just showed us. I think that is a real problem and it will
00:46:44.320cost the democrats and other liberals around the world votes because when things are rough you know
00:46:51.400when there's no economic alternative and there's no party offering you any hope and any sort of
00:46:58.000means to improve your your economic condition it becomes much easier to scapegoat other people so
00:47:04.280whether it's people of color or immigrants those things become a lot people become a lot more
00:47:10.700susceptible to demagogues like Trump blaming immigrants for their problems instead of being
00:47:16.060willing to look at U.S. elites, U.S. corporations that are causing the problems. And Democrats that
00:47:21.580refuse to call out those corporations and instead try to pretend that they're woke simply because
00:47:26.300they have a diverse group of people in their cabinet or they use the right pronouns, it's not
00:47:31.580going to work. Right. And the thing as well is if you target your efforts at working class people,
00:47:37.580You will inevitably disproportionately help people who are from ethnic and other minorities because they tend to be overrepresented in that group.
00:47:45.740Anyway, Aaron, I'm just wary that we have to let you go because you've got another thing to run to.
00:47:51.280So I just want to say thank you very much for appearing on the show.
00:47:54.680It's been a pleasure chatting with you. We had a nice bit of back and forth.
00:47:58.000And we've got one more question for you, which is always what's the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be.
00:48:03.240well politically to me i think the dirty war on syria has not gotten nearly enough attention and
00:48:13.420the way it's been described in the western media especially in the british media and the u.s media
00:48:17.760is a scandal the u.s and its allies spent billions of dollars on a dirty war in syria which in the
00:48:24.820words of joe biden ultimately benefited al-qaeda and isis he blurted this out in a comment in 2014
00:48:31.040which he later had to apologize for, but he was telling the truth. And the picture we got in the
00:48:37.520Western media was just not accurate as to what was actually going on. We really helped destroy
00:48:42.320the country. And now Syrians cannot rebuild their country because the U.S. is overseeing what's
00:48:47.080called the Caesar sanctions, which explicitly targets Syria's reconstruction. The U.S. openly
00:48:52.180brags that it's destroying Syria's economy through these sanctions and preventing it from rebuilding.
00:48:57.060And meanwhile, this is in parallel with the U.S. occupying still militarily a third of Syria, which also does not get very much attention.
00:49:04.420So I think the U.S. efforts to destroy Syria along with its allies, including the U.K., should get far more attention.
00:49:10.440And at minimum, we should be lifting these murderous sanctions that are preventing a country that we help destroy from rebuilding.
00:49:17.900And I hope people give that much more attention, along with a scandal that I've been covering very closely at the Gray Zone and the Nation magazine,
00:49:25.620which is that as a part of this dirty war, to impose sanctions on Syria and to justify foreign aggression against it.
00:49:34.220Syria has been accused of carrying out these chemical weapons attacks.
00:49:37.400And you can go through every incident and there's sketchy evidence in all the big cases.
00:49:42.880But the most glaring one is the case of Duma in 2018, April 2018, where Syria was accused of chemical weapons attack.
00:49:51.100The U.S., Britain and France bombed Syria.
00:49:52.860But then there's been this scandal in the OPCW, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which actually went to Duma, to Syria, to investigate this.
00:50:04.080And a whole series of leaks show that internally, the inspectors who went to Duma did not find evidence of a chemical weapons attack.
00:50:14.260Their initial report was doctored, and the OPCW put out a report that was completely misleading and contradicted what its own inspectors had found.
00:50:25.500And this coincided with a U.S. effort to pressure the OPCW to come to a conclusion that happened to match the U.S. narrative that Syria was guilty of a chlorine attack.
00:50:36.140So that is a global scandal where basically, similar to what we saw before the Iraq war, the U.S. is compromising the OPCW to basically doctor claims that justify U.S. warmongering, that justify a bombing of Syria and now justify sanctions.
00:50:53.660And there are whistleblowers inside the OPCW who have challenged this, who deserve our support and certainly our attention because try to find a reference to this in U.S. or U.K. media and it's very, very hard to find.
00:51:05.660A few people have covered it. Peter Hitchens of the Daily Mail has covered it. I've covered it at the Gray Zone. Jonathan Steele, the veteran British correspondent, has covered it. But aside from that, it does not get very much attention.
00:51:17.660And there was finally there was just a new development where there was an open letter just published. It's available at the Courage Foundation, couragefound.org. And it's a statement by a whole bunch of signatories, including Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as the chief of staff to Colin Powell, Tulsi Gabbard, as well as five former OPCW officials voicing support for the whistleblowers and urging the OPCW to stop silence.
00:51:47.660them and to let them air the suppressed scientific findings from their own investigation. So I hope
00:51:54.600people pay attention to that story. And if they're interested, there's a lot more they can find about
00:51:58.440it at thegrayzone.com. Fantastic. Aaron, thank you so much for coming on the show. We absolutely
00:52:05.280loved it. If people want to find you, where is the best place to do that? Thegrayzone.com.
00:52:11.820Thegrayzone.com. Thank you very, very much. He already told you, mate. Come on, pay attention.
00:52:15.140Well, yeah, you can get it in a second time.