Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Radio War Nerd EP #556 — Max Blumenthal on End-Stage Zionism & MAGA (Patreon)

Published:
2025-10-19 18:06:04
Imported:
2025-10
Tags:

Downloads

Content

Guest: Max Blumenthal, The GrayzoneRecorded: October 16, 2025

Max Blumenthal joins us to discuss the Gaze genocide + ceasefire, billionaire Zionist power-politics, the Israel Lobby & the American Right/Charlie Kirk, and more...

Follow Max on Twitter. Read/subscribe to The Grayzone.More episodes with Max:-EP #281-EP #179-EP #54

Total time: 1:43:50Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

*

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

Order your print or ebook of John Dolan's new book Erdogan Pizza: Dispatches from a Violent & Grotesque World

Files

Comments

Redspin Sports

Love seeing Mark, John, & Max reunited! Especially for such a timely and historically relevant topic playing out in front of us in real time.

Shriram

She looks great!

Muirneach

Great episode.. maybe one day we will get a full series on the conflict

Michael Conlin-Elsen

Or perhaps the agile and quick-witted David we need to take on the hulking Goliath of State. What a guy.

Borvis

Anyone know how to get a link to the book? TSHBH? Can’t seem to find the link.

Joshua Garcia

Max himself is an entire wiki on Zionism.

Jason Thompson

Max is great. It really annoys me how he’s an Unspeakable among some progressives for either Russia/Syria apologism (which I can accept argument about to a degree) or for actually talking to Republicans

K Brook

Miriam looks like she fell asleep face first in her gravel driveway after eating a gallon of paint, and I think she enjoys freaking people out with her appearance, b/c she's a true super villain.

Logan Ausherman

Good episode except for the weird part about "white men" and politics. Feeling under attack as a "hetero-normative white dude", is very strange.

Aiden

BANGER!

Kendall

They also lump him in with the anti-vaxxers/MAHA because he’s strongly against vaccine mandates.

Tammy

Miriam Adelson is looking like Eddie the Head

Michael Conlin-Elsen

The banter about Trump and Miriam Adelson in the Knesset had me cackling so hard I sprouted new neural pathways

Karl Childers

i agree with logan, i can't think of a single way in which the perceived greivances of white male youth are relevant to the contemporary american right wing populist movement

Michael S. Judge

I'm sorry, but it's fucking astonishing to me to hear ANYONE taking an "Israeli ceasefire" seriously after the last 2 years. Israel has already announced a new and massive bombing campaign in Gaza "to destroy the Hamas tunnels," which is why they're blaming Hamas and their tunnels for that dipshit who drove over an unexploded Israeli munition. None of this is done. This is the intermission where Netanyahu & company get to "save the hostages" and "allow" hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to "return to Gaza City," which no longer exists in any meaningful way, where they will be slaughtered like cattle in Israel's "anti-tunnel" bombing campaign. The information divide on Gaza is asymmetrical and jumbled – nobody there knows all the geopolitical shit available to a Westerner, and no Westerner knows 1% of what's actually happening in front of these people's eyes – to the degree that the Gaza Palestinian I've known longest, basically since October 7, is JUST beginning to consider that there may be no "move home again" when this "ends." This person is from Jabalia. Jabalia, as mentioned, has been 100% removed from the face of the Earth, which *I've* known for months, but which the survivors packed-at-gunpoint into Rafah can't be sure about, because the only people who could tell them are dead. The other person I know best is from Beit Hanoun. Mutatis mutandis. This "ceasefire" inaugurates the Final Solution phase. Israel is going to give Palestinians a moment to "self-deport" to Egypt via the newly-opened Rafah border (and call it a "humanitarian PR coup," which will succeed politically, because we're the same fuckin' species of self-regarding swine we've been so far!), once these theoretical Gaza emigrants see that their hometowns now exist exclusively in language, just names for missing things – and when the overwhelming majority do NOT "self-deport," they'll coincidentally be standing on top of some Hamas Tunnels™, which have the nearly magical propensity to exist only beneath things that Israel already wants to destroy. What we are watching right now will become the retrospective "So why didn't they leave?" clause. The exact dates and times of every goddamn instant in this "ceasefire" will be used to whitewash a genocide until the end of any recognizable world. Oh, and Israel has just announced that it's restarting the total blockade on aid, so the famine will be tearing Gaza's flesh from its fucking bones, minute by minute, during all of this. Unless someone or something decides to intervene on a massive scale, Israel will finally have its Museum of the Extinct Race by this time next year, and who wouldn't trade Prague, or for that matter Madagascar, for the Gaza Riviera?

Jason Thompson

I know his stance on vaccine mandates/lockdowns. AFAIK he has (thankfully) never actually spoken out against vaccine *science*, which is a different matter

Pranjal Dwivedi

Max is an all time guest, he’s been incredible the past 5 years since COVID

John

🎯

Antipaganda

Egypt won't let Gazans in any numbers through the crossing. That's well-known even in the mainstream media. So at least that part of the excuse won't work.

Brian Brain

What point is being proved? That incels are justified or that they are facing issues affecting almost every social group out there (many which have little or no power or voice compared to these billionaire backed RW extremists). It's fine to be a hetero normative white guy. Just don't lump oneself in with or make common cause with the reactionary ones (the most prominent ones). Everyone is alienated, welcome to reality. The real source/cause of their perceived grievances is shared by most people existing in this degenerating hell world. These include terrible economic, social and political conditions affecting everyone to varying degrees. The actual grievances and targets of Ingels/"oppressed" white heteros are entirely misdirected from the structures causing their alienation (a dying real economy, inequality, culture war distractions/propaganda, etc.).

Laynie

😂

Jusitn Stalinger

Such a good episode it actually drove me to comment. To the point of Yasha's theory on the internet and its relation to the current state of discourse, I think Elon's X serves two purposes: To create an allowance for anti-Arab/anti-Muslim rhetoric to flare back up (as it has on the right since 2024) and to create self compromising circumstances. Every Republican group chat is filled with racist/cancelable jokes, so party bosses always have dirt on their underlings.

Stick

Great episode. Appreciate the fine work by all of you.

Robert Geroux

Oh snap I can tell from the thumbnail that this will be a banger 🔥

Arielle Curtin

Hi guys: I am a subscriber for years now but don’t get the newsletter, did not get John’s last book and would really like to get Civil War book.

John

The idea that tucker or anyone close to him would be potentially an anti war leftist is utterly absurd. If in fact thats what max is saying at 1:08 mark. Total nonsense. Tucker is pro war and was one of the main cheerleaders of the iraq war. Any time i hear someone taking him seriously looses credibility in my mind.

John

I relistened and max was talking about the base of the GOP. I still am not sure about tucker and candace et al “waking up”. These are two cynical pieces of shit who, in my opinion, know which way the wind is blowing with the base and are moving accordingly. Even when tucker recently criticised israel he also added “i love israel and i’m taking my family there on holiday”. If anyone reading this wants a more accurate reading on tucker i’d highly recommend robbie & abbie martin on media roots radio.

.

It’s more than just this and it’s not even just X “the everything app!” it’s the internet itself. Drive people into further and further distinct groups, hate/rage post about those who aren’t in your specified group, mk ultra people, atomize people further/pull them away from any sort of materialist politics so we just live in this permanent stasis in these fucked up online spaces instead of any attempt to come together to identify what the actual problem is. No real material politics is going to continue to drive people into further insanity and hatred. The richest people alive, like musk, want to continue this. Atomization benefits them.

Welfare state

Max is a good journalist for the reason any yankoid is capable of being one, hes an annoying contrarian. I was nodding along and found a lot of the stuff interesting and illuminating but thinking that Tucker and Owens have seen the light? Come on man. They're just nationalists and see overseas involvement as not worth it, it's not that fucking deep.

.

Candace Owens is explicitly anti Semitic. Again these people are just capitalist operators for empire and this is elite infighting as the ship is obviously sinking. They have zero morals. Tucker wants to destroy China. Doesn’t want war with Russia because he feels like we should be teaming up with Russia to destroy China. The Democratic Party pushed Russia to China. They are all war pigs.

John

100%. Plus tucker is on the phone to trump on a regular basis. Trump is stamping out anti israel speech. All the while tucker takes the mantle of anti-israel rhetoric. Lots to be suspicious of.

Timmy V

I saw Randy Fine in public a few months ago, the temptation to go off on him was so strong but I knew he would just play the victim.

Gordon

Blumenthal describing Joe Kent as antiwar. Please. A CIA officer, army ranger, current trump official, defender of Eddie Gallagher is antiwar?

N

When Max starts complaining about pronouns I immediately roll my eyes and lose interest ngl

JoR

It’s a ceasefire the same way many drug addicts go “sober”. There’s always a caveat or exception. Saying this from experience lol

John Waaben

I’m a straight white guy and I never experience any alienation with the pro-Palestine crowd. Great interview though, RWN is therapeutic.

Rory Flaherty

I'm a cis hetero white dude and I've never felt condemned or anything like that in left wing spaces. Anecdotal for sure but I can't help feeling that all this "leftists hate white men" shit is a total strawman.

Schaeffer Mallory

Blughhh yeah cmon guys demonization of white men is just lazy. You're referring to an over represented online and campus phenomenon from ~2012-2019. Like what are you trying to say, that DSA is anti white male? Have you been to a DSA meeting?

Schaeffer Mallory

Anyway. Eternal respect to Max for his work, i personally don't care what his opinions on the they thems are, but it's ridiculous to hear Mark parrot such a lazy talking point

Fivey

Even if the wars somehow cool down, the ulcer of settler violence will lock public opinion in place. When the social reaction comes--and it will come--we need to try to deflate the groypers and ensure that it's only directed against Zionists, and Zionists of all backgrounds. Ideally against ethnonationalists generally.

Michael Conlin-Elsen

Max is actually a good journalist because of his immense talent for writing and cataloguing highly important information, and a good influencer to boot for his ability to bridge gaps between different audiences. Even if you are skeptical of Candace and Tucker (and you'd be right to be for a million reasons, I of course am too) it is still far and a way a net positive for Max and The Grayzone to reach their audiences, period. Your comment is in fact annoyingly contrarian and pedantic. Why don't you try writing four encyclopedic books, spending time in and reporting directly from Israel and the Occupied Territories, and committing your life to fighting the greatest evil of our time, Zionism, as a Jew in America no less. Good luck!

Schaeffer Mallory

For sure, in fact I have had the displeasure of knowing and working with a lot of such people, but what I'm saying is that these people do not represent any meaningful "left movement," they are just internet addicted losers who can over represent their significance and power by way of always being and posting online. I'm saying it's ridiculous to claim that any institution of the left is anti white males (and imo the only existing left institutions are the more radical unions I.e. UAW and some teachers unions, DSA, and a handful of other national orgs)

Michael Conlin-Elsen

Hm, interesting, last time I checked the only faction that accomplished anything in the last 40 years was the Neoconservative movement that infiltrated the highest apex of the American Empire, gaining control of media, finance, and foreign policy. Interesting thesis about the "woke left" being the only "faction" (as if it's not merely culturally astroturfed controlled opposition) to accomplish anything.

.

He’s right about class/anti war politics is the way out of this mess but you can do a better job of actually reaching people where identity is important but stressing class over that is the way out. I’ve posted about max on this podcast about how he is trying to signal to anti trans/libertarian forces. Elliot page liberalism is not the way out for our LGBTQ friends. Most they/them or trans people are poor/working class and a lot of them vote out of fear of being destroyed. Max is a product of a Clinton advisor child even though he does good anti empire work. Social issues do not equal actual leftis economic politics. Build a big tent of economic leftism that doesn’t alienate our lgbtq neighbors and friends. Do not give into reactionaries and even “left” reactionaries.

etienne

throwing a bomb at a broadly popular liberal movement is such good politics dude we should go it more

brendo

I maybe partially agree with you (I guess I'd need a definition of "woke left"), but also to act like the Left doesn't have a reputation as being overly hostile to certain groups based on sex and race (rightly or wrongly) is disingenuous. Regardless, it's a reputation in need of overcoming

brendo

Lol I just said we can overcome that reputation that we objectively have. I think we both would agree that we shouldn't be primarily fighting on the terrain of race and gender, but should be first and foremost class-oriented, but not lose our commitment to gender and racial justice at the same time

Michael Conlin-Elsen

@Etienne's third comment, queer people are accepted today (good thing) because Neoconservative forces acceded to, and eventually co-opted, the forces of cultural liberalism, seeing them as a way to achieve greater cultural soft-power, and ultimately even utilize them in color-revolution regime change pinkwashing efforts (bad thing). Notice how the language of queer liberation movements has been captured and morphed into the stilted HR-speak of the liberal white-collar world, serving as a thin veneer of morality to disguise the exploitative and fascist nature of the American corporate world. Easy.

William

Why is ozzy the episode art

Michael Conlin-Elsen

Good, you should take it, I am sincere, in the open, and using my full legal name. You on the other hand are anonymously trashing a highly accomplished journalist who advocates for the oppressed and fights power at his own peril.

SB

Great to see that Max is a “friend of the show” once again

JoR

As someone who supports this stuff I don’t feel at all that it’s “basically accepted” in the US lol. And even if you accept that LGBT rights are a win, every other basic aspect of the left is a non starter for American politics right now. Universal healthcare, anything whiffing of “socialism”, anything related to DE&I. All of these basic concepts, as mild as they are pursued, are being squashed right now

JoR

I agree with this sentiment but this is difficult to do when, for 80 years, Zionism has been purposely connected to Judaism (ethnicity and religion). Obviously huge props for Jewish people who have risked everything to speak against the genocide. But there’s also an almost century long effort to make Judaism inseparable from Israel

Sean Atkinson

You really should look at Danny Cassolaros research on the Syndicate birth of the ADL. The ADL was a creature of Meier Lansky's, they act like criminals because they are criminals.

Sean Atkinson

Been to many DSA meetings, and they are anti light skin males, just being honest.

Sean Atkinson

Don't understand why Max finds that discussing government planned assasinations so unbelievable. Has he read his own published material?

GC

Yeah my guess is that he went to a generally pretty friendly alternative passover and when they started introductions that included pronouns he got visibly huffy and then some people glared at him. Doesn't mean I'm not very grateful for his work on Palestine but that part of this interview was exhausting and boring.

Schaeffer Mallory

I am 100% positive DSA does not have a systematic problem recruiting and retaining white male members. They have a problem with recruiting and retaining working class members, broadly speaking, but so too does every single political organization in America - minus labor unions themselves, obviously

GC

Agree--this seems like wishful and un-strategic thinking and it worries me when it comes up. You're not going to get anything good out of the fish sticks heir

Michael Conlin-Elsen

The American Exception podcast with Aaron Good provides encyclopedic cataloguing of this topic, down to the nitty gritty historically verifiable details. Highly recommend as an adjunct course for course for all War Nerd students. Don't I recognize you from that comment section?

aaaaaahhh

As a college student who’s not even white, Max is definitely right about the Palestine movement being feeling pretty inaccessible if u don’t have any of the cultural signifiers, however it’s not like I blame any of the people involved, after all politics in America is just consumption, I met a few people that were great but the majority rubbed me the wrong way as stereotypical this is just a phase for them types

Logan Ausherman

See this is the thing I'm in Detroit and a lot of the organizing spaces im in are majority black and I don't ever feel like I'm "taking strays". Even at contentious union meetings at my UAW local, I've never felt isolated or ostracized as a white guy. Even in spaces where I run into what people like Max would call "SJWs" or "blue hairs" I don't get this vibe. I think if you go into a space lookin g for this kind of stuff however you will find it.

Logan Ausherman

I wasnt really referring to that. I was referring to the weird set of white guys who want to be advocates for social justice and then feel attacked when women and people of color are critical of white men as a group. I've always found it strange as a white person to be offended or feel under attack personally by people of color when they criticize things the vast majority of white people do. If you're not a racist, sexist, etc. You shouldn't have any reason to feel aggrieved.

Benke

Max Blumenthal and Candace Owens, true red-brown alliance, USA is now '90s Russia.

Jeemar

ironically being unable to sit through a pronoun exchange (which i do very regularly whenever i work with specifically anarchists in the UK palestinian liberation movement, but not at all when i work with muslim communities in the very same movement) would suggest that that an "anti-woke" obsession on max's part is more important than being a part of a local palestinian solidarity movement. I'm a big fat white cishet guy and even if you have firm beliefs about the inefficacy of identity politics (which is absolutely the case for me also!), is it not something you can look the other way on to try and be a part of a moment and opportunity that is bigger than yourself? extremely frustrating, as overcoming all of these endless anarchist vs trot vs socialist vs islamist vs (about a thousand other vaguely sociopolitical groupings) bouts is a toll you must not just pay, but enthusiastically ignore in order to try and even tickle the fundamental complicity of the entire western sphere. Appreciate the investigative work max does, but suspect we might all be more effective if we made a conscious effort to move beyond this adopted right wing war on they/thems

John

I’m irish and hav never ever encountered a single human who asked me to use pronouns. The whole obsession with pronouns from the right completely distorts reality in my opinion. But i guess its not just an american phenomenon if its also happening in the UK. I’m in ireland and in fairness i don’t attend any anarchist meetings so possible there is people out there obsessed with pronouns.

John

If you can’t spot tucker i don’t know what to say to you. I agree that its good that his audience is being exposed to the realities of israel but i 100% believe tucker/candace will lead the crowd astray. Just like he did with iraq/afghanistan. My personal opinion/prediction is that netanyahu will be removed and tucker will lead the flock back to supporting israel as a bulwark against “muslim hordes” at the gate. Israel will get a new leader who tucker will promote. Tucker literally said he’s taking his family to israel on holiday.

nik

This poor guy's brain was broken by Wesleyan undergrads in 2015, I prefer when they talk about Palestine and less about his media career

Michael Conlin-Elsen

I'm not defending Tucker, I'm defending Max's honor. I do agree that Tucker is a limited hangout release valve for the establishment (likely WASPy CIA connected factions) as a way for them to let off some steam regarding issues like JFK, 9/11, Israel, but obviously to then misdirect them into a crusade against China. His series on 9/11 is a laughable limited hangout starring a Paulie Walnuts FBI spook supposedly spilling all the beans, omitting 2/3 of relevant information actually regarding the highjackers and their connections. He doesn't get into the McJihad chessboard of central Asia, ala Chechnya, Azerbaijan, and Xinjiang — Check out Aaron Good's podcast American exception for mind blowing factually vetted investigations into all that.

Jason Thompson

I’m also about Max’s age and I also have sometimes found obligatory pronoun exchanges uncomfortable (for me it’s like being prompted to ‘come out’ on every social occasion, like, I don’t always want to come out, leave me alone… if this makes any sense). But I do wonder if this is not exactly like some middle-aged anti-imperialist activist in the 1960s trying to work with younger college-age hippies but getting too hung up on at ‘hippie culture’ and guys with long hair 😕

Michael Conlin-Elsen

Considering what Max said about being a "cis white male" and "heternormativity" --- These things are especially true in the 18-20 year old crowd, liberal arts students who like to cling to seemingly transgressive ideas about intersectionality and gender. If you look into the history of some of those sectors of Academia where those ideas emerge from, you do find funding and influence from organizations like the Ford Foundation and other groups founded as instruments to be used in the US soft power cultural cold war. The general legacy of 60's counterculture as a covertly CIA encouraged movement ultimately served to displace mass class-organization politics, get youth involved in drugs, and imbue them with hyper-individual liberationist attitudes that still pervade to this day. As a result a lot of young hip rebellious spaces, of which the Palestine movement has become very much a part of, are monopolized by younger liberal arts type-kids who in many cases are viscerally, in a limbic-system response type way, skeptical of people appearing "heteronormative" or "straight-laced" if you will. I can see why Max, as part of an older generation, feels alienated when he goes to meetings and is expected to play along with new acts of cultural signification that have become standard fare for "left" or even just broadly "radical" or "radlib" circles. After all, such an intensive focus on sexual politics has become very much a "radlib" token of recognition in the White Collar and corporate world, including the Kamala-Biden democratic party centrist faction. I was arguing with another user called "Etienne" in the comments of this episode who then blocked me, which I think is cowardly. I was making useful and verifiable points about the utilization of sexual politics by the establishment as a means of accomplishing US soft (and ultimately hard) power goals domestically and in color-revolution scenarios. If you want to be honest about how US empire operates, you have to be honest about the role that cultural issues like these play in how it extends its tentacles and influences domestic cultural politics. Right wing cultural reactionaryism is, in some ways, (and I know this is a crass way of putting it, and I'm not trying to equate the two in terms of moral value) the other side of the same coin. On the other hand, it is kind of baffling to see a bunch of anonymous accounts on here suddenly trashing Max Blumenthal with tons of replies and likes from other anonymous accounts, speaking about him in a very disrespectful and dismissive way. Is this the excuse you were all waiting for to disparage a very accomplished and admirable person for his expression of one particular opinion about a niche cultural phenomenon?

Michael Conlin-Elsen

I really think that the crowd Max is referencing is the privileged upper-middle class coastal radlib liberal-arts educated young adult contingent, which forms a significant portion of younger Jewish pro-palestine activists now.

Schaeffer Mallory

(I deleted my reply because it was just arguing for the sake of arguing and anyway it sounds like we're in agreement on the fundamentals)

JDF

tldr homie

Michael Conlin-Elsen

Will ya look at that, another anonymous account casually dismissing someone trying to make a nuanced point.

Doug Cartel

Obviously the Left (the actual one, not the one that has any money or influence over the upper classes) needs to keep improving but I think Max is a little hard on them. Like sure, directing sexual and racial politics as the main effort was a flawed approach (idpol should be piggybacking on class analysis rather than the other way around) but there was a good 30-40 yea period where Marxism was just a non-starter as a thought process, the indoctrination was that good and the material comfort allowed us to ignore it. So, this new movement has to reinvent the wheel and find the real history of the Soviet union etc and take lessons and critiques from those attempts. We're starting from 0 again basically. Then again his wasn't the most acerbic critique, but I do try to point out my argument whenever I get a chance.

Michael Conlin-Elsen

I think American Leftists might do well to learn the real history of the United States, and concurrently learn the real history of the rest of the world, which they are systematically deprived of learning from a young age.

MirrorOooMirror

Well said. I often wonder how often those on the “left” who obsess over culture war/identity politics are actually operating in good faith. Useful idiots may be harsh, but….?

Michael Conlin-Elsen

Useful idiots, naive young people, infiltrators, astroturfed accounts... cyberspace accepts them all.

Jesse Arsenault

What does being "a very accomplished and admirable person" have to do with facing mild criticism for sharing an opinion on a podcast? Did you really think the RWN audience is some kind of ideological monolith, or that it's impossible that a dozen or so subscribers might disagree on this topic? Why is it so weird to you that people subscribe under an anonymous account, and how does that in any way imply that there is some kind of astroturfed hate campaign going on? How is some random queer studies professor getting Ford Foundation funding relevant to any of this?! You are writing paragraphs of paranoid cope because Max got some flak for an unpopular opinion, which happens to many repeat guests on this show. Log off.

Michael Conlin-Elsen

There are in fact large-scale efforts at astroturfing comment sections in adversarial spaces online, so when I see terse and contemptuous dismissals of somebody on very shallow grounds from anonymous accounts with 3 dozen spontaneous likes, alarm bells go off. I am simply rebutting that criticism by providing another perspective, and doing it very well, point by point, in a detached and detailed manner. Your reaction is in fact outsized and attributing to me a level of emotionality and outrage that I did not display. I actually gave you a history lesson. Be grateful.

Michael Conlin-Elsen

More slander of a serious person for cross-ideological communication and audience expansion. Shameful.

Ryan Nathaniel Kelley

Right. The whole point of the line of discussion is finding commonality on issues with people on "the right", while puzzlingly being unwelcome on the resistance left. This isn't a new line of criticism. These movements have long eaten their own through purity testing using astroturfed "cultural Marxist" criticism, despite, as max says in his example, everyone being heteronormative. And here we have someone with a psychological tripwire reacting to this using the exact astroturfed language that made mincemeat of Bernie's campaign, and found its way into the corporate management of Biden and Harris's campaigns. Nothing will be accomplished as long as people practice these autopilot, non nuanced heuristic criticisms, where you need to apologize for who you are based on ethnic, racial, and gender essentialism

Sean Atkinson

1:41 Max: "Dictatorship is coming to america for the sake of Israel" John: "well thank you for your visit".

Nomad22

I'm gonna guess whether or not someone encounters open hostility in left wing spaces as a cis-het white guy depends heavily on where and when they attended a meeting of one of those groups. Even the DSA likely varies considerably in culture depending on chapter and location. There isn't really an organized "left" in America outside college campuses, certain urban centers, and I guess a scattered few militant factions in certain labor unions.

John

I agree with all your points but max’s lack of scepticism around the likes of tucker carslon is a bit of a red flag for me. Also the narrative around charlie kirk being anti israel. I’m sure he can see which way the wind is blowing re support of israel. But kirk never publicly criticised israel. And tucker still claims to love israel and will bring his family there on holidays. I got this information from media roots podcast with robbie martin which i find very interesting.

Jeremy

Israel broke the ceasefire in about 4 hours. No ceasefire is coming. That’s like asking the Einzatsgruppen in 1942/43 to freeze killing all the Baltic jews or something. That type of evil doesn’t stop

Michael Conlin-Elsen

I hear what you're saying, and I think Tucker is basically a spook, but I still am interested by the idea that the lumpen conservative base he speaks to can be moved on Israel. I also really respect Abby and Robbie Martin, so thanks for reminding me to tap back into mediaroots, I used to listen to it all the time.

GC

Hey @Michael Conlin-Elsen: On anonymity, I think it's awesome that you've landed in a professional position where you can discuss radical politics online with your own name and picture. I mean that sincerely. You've got to understand that not everyone has that level of safety and security in this hellscape society, right? I get that anonymity makes everyone a little unsure about everyone else in a virtual "community" like this one (and I'm using that term very loosely) but what's the alternative? I don't think you'd want people to wear nametags (or have IDs checked and recorded) at mass protests, right? Isn't the state doing enough of that already?

Michael Conlin-Elsen

Hi GC, you don't know anything about the professional position I've landed in. I'm using my real name and picture within a closed community which only subscribers can access, so I don't feel too unnerved. In fact, I make the choice to comment and converse here as opposed to the War Nerd Facebook page, which is part of a more transparent platform that I don't feel comfortable using. What I don't respect is anonymous internet peanut-gallery sneering and shit-throwing against people who don't really merit it, the kind I see in RWN comments all the time; I think that shit is weak.

jer

Yeah I thought the bit about was lame tbh. But who knows, im like the most normative white dude in a city in VA so ymmv. Whatever, solidarity forever.

Austin Mettler

So interesting to hear Max's perspective on this stuff as someone who straddles the line between right and left dissident circles. Great episode

GC

@Michael: Don't run opsec for the revolution, man. If this forum's flooded with astroturfers (which was your premise, I think?) it's getting harvested for names and faces. If not, maybe the "anonymous internet peanut-gallery sneering and shit-throwing," " large-scale efforts at astroturfing comment sections in adversarial spaces," "terse and contemptuous dismissals of somebody on very shallow grounds," "infiltrators," "slander[ers]", &c you're observing are fellow RWN listeners who can't or don't want to dox themselves, disagree with you about some of Blumenthal's crankier right-wing tics, generally agree with him (and probably you) about a lot of very consequential matters, and are being, y'know, concise?

Michael Conlin-Elsen

GC, I'm not running opsec for any revolution, I'm just rebutting opinions with my own. Your prose becomes incoherent in your second paragraph, and I really have no idea what you're talking about.

GC

Well, the first half of my second paragraph consists of quotes from your previous posts in this thread, and the second half offers an alternative characterization of the posts (and posters) that I took you to be referring to. Hope that helps! Bye.

Michael Conlin-Elsen

Wrong, the first paragraph consists of an imperative directed at me to stop posting, and that it's somehow me exposing people to surveillance. Complete nonsense.

Tariq

i never get the newsletter for some reason

Tariq

pretty solid episode. on the “white, heteronormative” criticism complaint everyone is commenting on: i don’t think it’s surprising that straight white people, men in particular, are regarded with a level of suspicion when they’re in spaces where there are people of color or queer people. i’m not someone who does that, but i get it.

Boobs123

I think it's telling that so much of the opprobrium being thrown at Max is coming from people who have a very similar writing style, one which common in the Twitter/Bluesky community. It's not surprising that they're converging on this post. That community seeks to mash every cause together into a single package which you can take or leave, and they have been in total denial about how they come off to everyone outside of their communities.

Jeemar

this cuts both ways, and the argument around "how someone comes off" is most often applied by the "progressice except palestine" sanders types, who would claim that it's not productive to display solidarity to a people being exterminated by israel at the cost of socialized healthcare domestically (or any other cherry picked dem soc issue). the palestinian liberation movement in the west is beyond delicate; learning to bite your lip and save powder for the most meaningful debates is a key requirement to avoid further fracturing an opportunity to move beyond our totally ineffective activism, which requires trust among a very broad and disparate group. i give my he/him pronouns with the LGBTQ+ crowds, i close my eyes and be as respectful as i can be for duas at the end of meetings with islamists, and i spend about 20% of my time organizing trying to broker peaces between various cultural groups that are constantly in conflict aside from palestine specifically. max is both very brave and intelligent; i think this is an important issue to run to ground as based on actual direct experience over the last 2 years, these social fractures have only made us less effective in what is in my opinion, the most immediate and urgent political issue of our time.

Schaeffer Mallory

Yes. I've definitely had people be suspicious of me the random white dude in the room, but lo and behold, it is possible to build trust

Terry Dunk

At the risk of being called an astroturfed sockpuppet ZOGbot, I'm just going to add to the chorus that I'm a cishet Jewish white guy (pause to catch breath) very active in Palestine solidarity and union organizing circles in a big city and have never gotten any stick over my identity despite the existence of some of the new ID-based rituals around pronouns et cetera, which I also think are mostly silly but respect out of respect for the people I organize with. It seems Max, who is dead-on about Israel, Judaism, and US empire and a great investigative journalist, is suffering from serious grievance at the high handed treatment he's gotten from polite liberal society and has been reversed polarized against the blue hairs in a way that has really blinkered him. That he's swallowing hook and line & sinker the latest pivot from among the most naked and unprincipled opportunists in US politics in the form of Owens and Tucker is proof of that imo. Their anti-Zionism is fruit of a poison tree - they may be criticizing Israel now, at long last, because it benefits them, but they are not principled in their opposition and cannot be genuine allies in the struggle against Zionism and imperialism more broadly.

JoR

I don’t doubt Owens and Tucker have their own motives but I also don’t get why they’re automatically shunned. They have legit audiences of hundreds of thousands of conservatives/centrists and they’re all hyper focused on Israel (no matter their social views). It’s a legitimate opportunity, and the fact that so many people wanna write them off just seems so typical

Terry Dunk

I guess my question would be: a legitimate opportunity for what? To form an anti-Zionist popular front with the nativist/nationalist far-right in America? Where does that end and who is excluded if anti-Zionism is the only criterion for alliance? I'm happy to see a segment of the right turn on Israel, sure, and if it corrodes their base of support in this country, even better. But I'm not going to go falling into the arms of the likes of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens when their anti-Zionism is predicated on a) misappropriation of resources and attention better spent on domestic enemies and/or China and b) just old fashioned anti-semitism. A broken clock is right twice a day but that doesn't mean you should buy it and put it on your mantle.

JoR

Also fair lol. I feel we are so depoliticized that I don’t have a good answer tbh. The main thing I can say is the people who watch those two genuinely are getting disenfranchised by the establishment in a lot of ways, and even if it’s for cynical, self serving reasons, this base does seem to have general angst on American foreign policy on a whole (Israel, regime change in general, support for quasi dictatorship allies). Like if you can stomach the other nonsense they think, if you go through the thousands of comments from these people on these videos, you see a general sentiment that isn’t far off from people here, even if the messaging, reasoning, and tones are different

Quinn

Have some relevant personal experience & insight for the 'woke'/'idpol' stuff, not even really throwing in my 2 cents, just my observations to take or leave Been through masters degree & teach now, as well as being heavily involved in irl left organizing since 2015. Not exactly seniority lol but puts me front & center to see this trend develop, peak, & imo now it is already largely irrelevant. Meaning the really excessive & obnoxious 'idpol' stuff largely burnt its own base out & the otherwise sympathetic just got fatigued with it. These days see basically none of the 'woke' bogeyman stuff & far more of ppl complaining abt it. In 2015 when i first got involved & was in undergrad that shit was everywhere & it was genuinely toxic, demoralizing, & politically detrimental. But btwn 2015-2020 it seemed to reached its peak and rapidly die off. And what im describing are these inherently narcissistic & competitive pity contests, which WERE real and im sure still exist in holdouts. They were also obv unsustainable. From what i saw it was always basically a minority of resentful bullies using the language available to them to enable being assholes, using moralism and shame as a shield. And that was and is a very different thing than the existence of a niche ettiquete around a conception of identity, which certainly persists in a lot of the active left and to some extent beyond but not NEARLY as much as the cultural backlash to it seems to suggest. Again i almost never see this shit irl. And really i guess this is my 2 cents now but as far as a subculture of ettiquete goes, so what, even if its weird & alien to you, i dont see where the level of resentment comes from for some people. its like being furious at vegetarians or smthing. if youre in a situation where thats both the norm & youre shamed for not embracing it while being basically respectful, i genuinely sympathize, i have been there and it sucks. and makes perfect sense to retain some personal resentment about that treatment. but ultimately people being judgemental moralists is certainly not exclusive to 'woke', which ik we all know but it feels like its still treated as a different thing. at a certain point it just feels something like reddit atheism thats still hanging onto resentment for the satanic panic

Peter Z

What's the context? The left eats itself on second tier issues? Has anything changed? Maybe with open fascism, the left can coalesce on fighting the billionaire class.

Peter Z

"Cannot be genuine allies in the struggle" against genocidaires? On the contrary, they're our only media allies at the moment. The Bolsheviks understood what needed to be done, and it took a lot of sacrifice to kill the hydra.

Terry Dunk

The Bolsheviks were an organized, Leninist revolutionary organization prepared to seize power in a major imperial state in the midst of a epochal war and crisis. I don't think the comparison with podcasters or posters holds up. And where did their project end up by the way? And JoR, I hear you to some extent but I for one cannot stomach getting in bed with the far-right even if the payoff were to be significant, and in this case, I don't even know what the ask here is other than to pledge public support to Tucker et. al I guess? I'm more than happy adopting a 'let them fight' attitude and continuing to work (or post, lol) according to my own analysis and principles.

Quinn Tucker

Very disappointed in y'all letting him get away with "tucker carlson would be left wing if it wasnt for woke :((" and even more disappointed you somehow agree. Tucker Carlson's entire stated mission is class warfare against the working class. Even if you are really dumb enough to believe pronouns make people fascists, you cant pretend a committed fascist is just accidentally fascist. This shit is just odious reactionary whining and Im disheartened that you can agree with it.

Quinn Tucker

Especially from you, John. I say you specifically because you should know just how lonely and miserable a person can be while being a white straight dude. Imagine how lonely people who cant claim those things could be. Putting aside the absolute horseshit of "woke turning people away from the left" you should be able to comprehend why people who love mankind want to make sure everyone knows they can be accepted.

Studio Novaya by Fredrick Edward ; Spandau22 coming 2027

Eh, I think people just smell bullshit, it is just sexism. Like whining about using correct pronouns for trans people is like whining about having to be in a meeting with women who are too distracting because you wanna fuck them.

Dr. Ron Jambo

Max half-approvingly ascribes to Maga a "lefty feeling combined with extreme anticommunism". That's one of the better definitions of fascism I've heard.

a clash of purple

what are you guys talking about? You aren't the Bolsheviks. Tucker et al aren't looking to ally with "the left." Why would they waste their time? There's no left to speak of. Get over yourselves.

a clash of purple

This hostility to wokeness and pronouns and whatever is such catnip for older white cishet guys... Finkelstein loves complaining about this shit too. It's not real. You are imagining it because you want to indulge in a fantasy where you are oppressed. You're not. (Bad things happening to you as individuals is not the same thing as systemic oppression.)

Quinn

Not sure what you mean exactly. But I agree with the last part if I'm understanding you right

Tuan O'Carroll

The apologism for Fuentes' insane white supremacism is some absolute horseshit from Blumenthal who should know better, he may value his 'sources' on the right and want to thread the needle in how he talks about their movement but he sounded fucking pathetic here. Fuentes is clearly a canny political operator and a highly influential figure on the right but he does that by taking the most heinous position on every subject possible so he can always position himself as the true voice of the right and make anyone who adheres to social rules of polite society (not being an insane fucking racist nazi) seem a fraud or a shill. It's not exactly political genius it's just an exploitable niche that any charismatic creep willing to embrace nazism could have filled. The push and pull on the right between the financial imperative of supporting Israel and bending the knee and how that's opened a space for outright nazism to occupy a position of legitimacy and influence is an interesting subject to analyse but Blumenthal has destroyed his critical faculties with nonsense grievances about identity politics and fucking vaccines to lean on tired old lazy analysis about frustrated white males becoming nazis because someone made them wear a mask or criticised them for misgendering. It's a shame because he's a brilliant journalist and analyst and I can understand that becoming an outcast in his field because of political and financial pressure is enough to drive anyone mad, but he really sounds like he thinks Candace Owen etc don't have agency and were forced into becoming horrifying fascists because Zionists bullied them or something lol the idea that republicans represent their base based on this analysis is just bone headed, idiot twenty year olds who watch Fuentes aren't fascists who desperately needed their voices heard and represented, theyre fascists because they watch Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens, describing it as some kind of positive model for democratic representation is just nonsensical. There's just no evidence whatsoever that JD Vance virtue signalling to Groypers helped win the election, they won because an insanely unpopular democrat regime alienated practically every demographic expected to vote for them while also fielding an already unpopular incumbent whose brain was visibly deteriorating. Blumenthal is just doing the Yglesias bullshit of blaming wokeness for everything that happens because he doesn't like saying his pronouns at meetings or something. Wokeness in all its forms basically barely exists outside of twitter let's be honest. Ames and Blumenthal are just parroting narratives from the right wing grievance machine about white males being discriminated against because annoying libs with pronouns in bio have been rude to them on twitter

a clash of purple

Wokeness and pronouns and whatever are annoying, it's true. What's even more annoying is listening to white boys whine about it.

Quinn Tucker

You gotta wonder what dudes who are far too uncomfy with the thought of imaginary interactions with woke kids to participate in the movement think they would actually contribute to the movement if they were "allowed"

Patricia Dowling

Great interview, excellent guest. I really enjoyed hearing from 3 intelligent knowledgeable men who can discuss different classes of people and world events without descending into tribalism or ego wars. Great work.

Ollin

Wait had no clue subscribers gots free copy - been using your thesis displayed in the civil war series basically in so much of my worldview ever since getting schooled on the whole northern generals embarrassing shameful truth . Very interested in reading - how to get in touch w a copy ?