How to save the world, with Malcolm Harris

24:45So another place I get diversity tactics and where I think the phrase itself comes from is the like alter or anti-globalization movement. And it was an agreement between different parties within that movement, which included the most radical anti-civilization Black Bloc anarchists to mainstream labor unions and environmental nonprofits and stuff like that. And they had to find ways to work together as a movement, even though they had very different abilities and skills, very different ideologies. And diversity of tactics was an agreement that everyone can do their own thing. no one's going to condemn anyone else for the tactics they use.

25:24So we don't have to smash windows, but the agreement on diversity of tactics means we're not going to condemn the anarchists who do smash windows to the press. And that was the official agreement. But in practice, it was actually much more coherent than that. And I talk about how the port workers actually threatened to strike unless all the radicals were released from jail, where they had been taken, arrested on the street as part of the battle in Seattle in 1999 against the World Trade Organization conference. And that they were able to get all of these radicals who had just been in the streets, fighting the cops, breaking windows, shutting down this conference, out of jail because of their control over the courts.

26:04And that was a way where they could find coherence to support each other. And the radicals were doing the same thing, right? They were creating space for the labor leaders to lead their march, as well as creating a contrast that allowed labor leaders to say, work with us, or you have to work with them or not work with them, et cetera. So diversity of tactics now, I feel like sometimes gets treated as a everyone just do your own thing, which is a downgrade from the sort of like organizational coherence that led to it in the first place and that we can find expression for through it, I think. If you like what you're hearing on this episode, there's a place where you can join the conversation.

26:44It's called Cujoplex, and it's a private online hangout zone on Discord where smart, cool weirdos just like you, you know, people who like talking about the evolving state of independent culture, can congregate, share links, and talk about the news of the day. We've had some great conversations lately about creative economies, media theory, AI, politics, the future of journalism, and even the records and TV shows we've been obsessing over this year. Some of our chats have even inspired episode ideas. You can get access to Cujoplex along with our monthly bonus episodes by signing up for a paid subscription over at our Substack.

27:23That's theculturejournalist.substack.com. so speaking of diversity of tactics or maybe not the timing of this book was interesting for a couple of reasons one of them was that it came out like very close to the same time as the book abundance by ezra klein and derrick thompson which tackles some of the same issues but from a different angle and was widely critiqued by those on the left including by you in the baffler for For those who are unfamiliar, we don't have to go too deep into this, but what is abundance theory? And why do centrist Democrats like Cory Booker or Kamala or whatever seem to love it while people on the left find it pretty cringe?

28:10Okay. So I think when we talk about abundance, we're talking about a couple different things. So there's like a list of policy preferences that I think a lot of us agree with that are like reducing parking requirements for multifamily building construction. And like, I don't know, shit like that. Ending single family zoning. A lot of it's about specifically housing construction, specifically in California. I agree about a bunch of that policies. In fact, I've written about the history of zoning policy in California in my big old book about California. And that's all fine. A lot of that stuff could fall under market craft in my book.

28:46And there are parts of my book and their book, which I have indeed read, that look very similar. Like even like paragraphs that read very similarly when they're talking about market crafts, like hope for the future and the abundance plan of like, we're going to build the things that we need. We're going to build an electrical system grid that can handle the electrification of everything as we're going to decarbonize everything, which means we're going to need a lot of big transmission lines. And we're going to build, you know, green power generation and housing for more people. And we're going to build the stuff we need.

29:21Magic pills that we make in space is one of the things. It's like, you know, we'll solve our problems through technology, better living through technology and development. And we need the political system to assist in making that possible when currently it's like tried to make that less possible. It's been obstructionist or whatever, easy for obstructionists. But I think there's also a political effort that's going on, which is that neoliberals and neoliberal theorists found themselves and pro-market and market fundamentalists found themselves on the outside of the inner circles of the Democratic Party during the first years of the Biden administration.

29:58and instead saw all these like weird heterodox left-wing economic thinkers who are the sort of people who are I talk about in market craft right the solo Marovas or Lina Khans who have a sort of market craft idea that markets are a tool that societies use and we can manipulate them and change them in all sorts of ways to get progressive outcomes rather than just like we need to find ways to support the companies because the companies are where change really happens and not get in their way or whatever. And so I think those market fundamentalist forces threw a bunch of money at this question and started a bunch of new foundations, think tanks, you know, you see these all over the place to combat those ideas.

30:40And they're doing it not directly, not saying like Bernie Sanders is a socialist and that's bad or whatever, but by trying to reassert this like economic orthodoxy through the branding of abundance. And I think those are the same things. And it uses the policy preferences when it wants to seem reasonable. But if you look at what the agenda actually is, I think it's about influencing the Democratic Party in particular. Now they're trying to pivot a little bit since the Democrats didn't win, which is not what they were planning, I think. But it's an attempt to pull the Democratic Party's economic thought back to the right.

31:15Are you saying by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson or like just people who were there people who were advocating for this before then? Yes. I mean, yes, it's a it's a top down political movement led by rich people to change this orthodoxy and fight back against what they saw as like heterodox economics or left wing economics and or bad economics is what they would say. infiltrating the Biden White House, which also had a bunch of money behind it. Right. You can look at like the Hewlett Foundation or the Jane Family Foundation, or there were like some left wing rich people who also put a bunch of money to try and push left wing economic thought.

31:54And we're relatively successful in doing that. And I think abundance is the name of the backlash to that. I think Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, part of the reason they make good salespeople for the slogan is that they're really focused on the policy agenda question. but in an environment where there's a fight between people who see these questions structurally and people who want to see them as like policy tweaks they're on the wrong side and so they end up fighting for the wrong side and that's part of what my my review said there's also i mean this is a media criticism podcast right we can talk about the that aspect of it because you know it's a number one bestseller and i haven't had one person tell me that it's a good book i mean i seen i I reviewed one of the most popular reviews of it.

32:39I haven't had one person say, hey, no, that's not right. It's a good book. I've had supporters of the abundance philosophy say that's not the point, that it wasn't about it being a good book or whatever. It seems like this question of actual quality is beside the point for these people. And I think that reflects the philosophy itself in which the quality of the things that you're building matters less than the fact that it is out there or whatever, right? The fact that it's a number one bestseller matters way, way, way more than the fact that it sucks. And the fact that there's a huge publicity campaign matters way, way more than the fact that it sucks.

33:17And so every interview I do, people are going to ask me about this book that sucks. And no one's going to ask them about my book, which I think is pretty good. That's not true. Some people ask. But not about the book itself. No one's expected to actually engage with the ideas based on their quality. it's where we have to engage with the like media spectacle because there are two podcast hosts and I feel like that's so much of what it comes down to yes definitely and I know you part of what your critique of it or not your critique part of why it's like not that amazing a book is just because it's like one of those things where famous writers who have essays they're two of them repackaged as a book which I see a lot of people doing that but it's not even that they're famous writers.

34:02It's that they're famous hosts. And I feel like that's more how people are approaching the book. And also some of the chapters are like podcast transcripts that they've, whatever. It's not even that there are articles that they wrote and changed. So it's even like the craft of writing seems beside the point because it's not that they are such good writers. It's that they're good at asking questions, which is probably true, right? They're like good hosts, But the skills that being a good host requires of you are not the same that like writing a thoughtful, analytical book about the present moment is.

34:38And you look at the best selling political books and most of them are written by hosts instead of writers. Maybe they're also good at intuiting or a publisher was good at intuiting that there's a certain subsection of Democrats who need an idea to latch on to with a word associated with it. Do you know what I mean? I mean, it's definitely been a good pitch within the Democratic Party. I think there's a constituency. But again, like those people are getting their talking points from the same think tanks and paid efforts and donors that are creating this ecosystem in the first place. So it's not like, you know, Cory Booker or Richie Torres, like read an Ezra Klein column or heard a podcast episode and was like, this guy's really smart.

35:23It's like they've met each other probably seven times or whatever at different meetings. that people set up. So people should be a little more conspiratorial about this stuff. I think Ezra Klein was invited to, yeah, like there was a news headline today about how he was invited to some sort of democratic retreat. This has been my entire professional life, right? Was there a time when Ezra Klein was not advising the top ranks of the Democratic Party? If it was, it was a while ago, right? Yeah, no, that's true. I feel like philosophically, like sort of what we're looking at here, which is, you know, the core issue that you challenge with abundance, both the book and the concept is essentially that it misses the point that this is just a structural problem.

36:08And abundance kind of seems to ultimately just be positing how to put, you know, band-aids over a problem, over a wound that's like not going to heal. It's almost like a good metaphor for what we were talking about earlier with the piecemeal approach versus the diversity of tactics. Do you feel like sort of what abundance is positing is sort of in the same vein as that piecemeal approach versus the more coherent, collective, systemic, strategic overhaul that you're putting forth instead? Yeah, yeah. The book in particular, I would say, because they don't have an understanding of the structure of capitalism, and they are not interested in that.

36:46They're interested in humanity, how people and the existential collective action problems, which I read a little bit in my review, but the intellectual line that they're talking about is not that long or complicated. And so when they talk about, oh, it's groups fighting for different things and that there are too many groups fighting for their own interests, whatever. This is Menker Olson, who's an economist, and the problems of collective action or whatever. And these are about collective action, or it's a set of answers about collective action in general for people. But that's not about the capitalist system in particular, which they don't have any particular interest in.

37:26But I do. I have a lot of interest in the capitalist system in particular, which is the system in which we live, and its particular contradictions. And there are particular contradictions that are relevant that they do not address or can't deal with or don't know about or aren't interested in. So their answer for how housing prices are going to go down is we're going to get developers to build a bunch more houses. And as I write, capitalism has this particular irony that if a bunch of capitalists are doing something, that makes it less appealing for capitalists to do that thing because it's too crowded.

38:01I quote the classic Yogi Berra line, nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded. And investors work like that. If too many investors are investing in building more houses, then they look at that and they say, well, rents are going to go down because there are more houses. I'm not going to be I don't want to invest in somewhere where rents are going down. I'm going to move my capital out of this sector. And they just don't do it. That's like the main problem with their main solution. And they just don't deal with it. And I don't think it's that they don't know that that exists or whatever. It's that they don't think it's structurally important in that way.

38:36Or maybe is it possible they don't think it's structurally possible? Like they're just, you know, the mindset that like, well, this is the system we live in and we got to work with it best we can. Or yeah, why don't you think they address these things? They're smart guys. Well, I think they're making an argument. But also, I don't think the book isn't written in that way. It's not a dialectical piece of thinking, right? They're not thinking about the objections to what they're saying. They're like reasoned, thoughtful objections to what they're saying and what rejoinders would be or whatever. It's a very like straight argument.

39:06And like, you know how I was saying that readers can tell when you're like trying to get them to believe something in particular, whether you're writing to manipulate them or whatever. I think this book reeks of that and that they're writing down to an audience that is not any less smart than they are. And I think you always have to assume that your audience is just as smart as you are. And I don't think they do that. And it's to the book's discredit. But again, like who cares, right? Like no one, no one cares that the book sucks. Have you guys read the book? Right. So like, you know, right. But you're still going to ask me about it because dominating the discourse.

39:43But like, that's a self-perpetuating thing, right? Like it dominates the discourse because we talk about it. And I haven't had, I don't think I've had an interview or a talk where it hasn't come up. And again, it's not because people are reading the book and are interested in the discussion. It's like, it's gossip, right? It's like, what do you think about Ezra Klein? He's the most popular kid in school. Like, what do you think? or whatever. It's like, I don't give a shit about Ezra Klein. Like, why would I care about Ezra Klein? Well, I would like to see an actual debate between the two of you, though.

40:15Why? Because his argument is so strong and you'd like to see how it goes up against mine? Like, no. Like, I don't know. Because like, then more people who aren't aware of your ideas would be able to... Ah, yeah. Well, that's why I would also like to debate Ezra Klein, but also why he would Wouldn't that also be part of the coherence strategy too? Well, if he considered himself part of the left and found my arguments appealing, but that's not what he, I don't think that's what he's doing, right? I certainly haven't gotten that call. And it's not because the publicist for this book didn't pitch the Ezra Klein show.

40:49It's because they don't have to deal with my work if they don't want to. And they don't want to. No one's hitting them in every argument being like, well, what about this review? What about this other book, you know, they're saying, tell us about your argument, right? Like, tell us why you're right. I also imagine that part of the concept is sort of like resting on creating a, you know, abundance as the opposite of something like degrowth and this sort of like straw man argument that like all leftist arguments in this vein would be positing the opposite of abundance. And this is why you should listen to us because we're suggesting there's like a better way to do it.

41:27But then when you actually read your book, you're not arguing for degrowth. And you say many times, it's great to have more stuff. Yeah. They should debate Kohei Saito, who has actually sold more books than they have in Japan and see how they match up against a actual Marxist degrowther, which I am not, but which is a really easy way to brush off, at least in this country, anyone who's on the anti-capitalist left is like oh you just want to take stuff away from us and it's like if they debated you or that person what is their name sorry kohei saito who wrote slow down is the u.s title of his main one yeah if they debated him or you there would be a lot of things they had to account for and but here are the hosts they get to choose who they talk to which is one of the reasons everyone thinks they're so smart right and it's it's also sometimes good as a host to like not be as smart as the person that you have on but usually you'd think right yeah why would you want to why would you want to talk to anyone who is uh less smart than you someone i recently talked to uh who is a podcast host who i really respect was saying that he like purposely would say the wrong thing say something that was slightly incorrect so that the other person could correct him that that would yield like a more interesting argument i was like that's that's cool and it kind of like takes guts to play the less smart person sometimes but see i think that's what hosts should do i think that's the i think that's the role of the host so it's interesting to see people try and be like oh i want to be the the interview host but i also want to give the answers and so then we just see this sort of musical chairs of people being podcast hosts you know ezra klein will go on chris hayes and it's like what the fuck were you gonna get from ezra klein going on chris hayes like the whole point is that they should both be talking to the smartest, most interesting people that they can find.

43:18We already know what they're going to say. So timing wise, the book also coincides obviously with Trump, Trump's first hundred days in office. He's using them to roll back as many climate regulations as possible, undo a lot of the work that even Biden had done. Given that the landscape around this discussion has changed so drastically since the time when you were writing the book, where do we even begin when it comes to trying to implement the strategies that you describe. Under Biden, it felt like the administration saw market craft as like a starting point. Is it a different starting point under Trump?

43:55Yeah. I mean, obviously, every one of the strategies, the entire left in the United States, which is not the sole focus of my book, has taken a huge hit after the election of a fascist, petrocapitalist regime. But that's happened in a bunch of countries. And I write about how that has happened in a bunch of countries. And I think anyone who assumed that that couldn't happen in America, well, first of all, he's getting reelected, right? So the idea that I assumed that Trump couldn't get elected in America was definitely not part of the premise for the book because he had already been elected in America really recently.

44:28I was not thinking like, oh, this isn't going to happen again. So in some ways, I disagree. I don't think the landscape has changed at all. I think it's exactly the same. And that one of the parts of the landscape that I write about in that fourth chapter is the rise of nationalist, petrocapitalist, right-wing fascist solutions to the climate crisis, right? That like immigration restriction, which you can describe the Trump presidency as part of the like global wave of immigration restriction politics is a climate change solution as far as these people are concerned. It's one of the solutions that I'm opposed to, but it's not unexpected.

45:08It's one of the things that I write about in the book. And the fact that it's happening here and seems very dramatic because it's the United States doesn't change my analysis. And as for market craft, the United States was not leading the world in market craft in the first place. It's not like Trump has decimated the United States electric vehicle industry, which was providing electric vehicles for the world and no longer can. or solar panel industry or any of those, all of those industries were in China. And insofar as the United States economy is destroying itself and China's role is then expanding, the market craft strategy at a planetary level has advanced, I think, with the Trump administration through the marginalization, self-marginalization of the U.S.

45:55economy. And so I think it's important not to get too, like, America-centric about our understanding of this historical moment or of what we can do. So even there's market craft stuff we can do from below as well. And I think in the US strategy or situation, we shift towards building squats and stuff, which is still a form of market craft and tenant protection stuff. And if we have to do that by rallying in the street outside someone's house to prevent them from being evicted versus passing a national eviction ban, then that's what we'll do. But that's still part of crafting the housing market and a role we can play in it.

46:38So, no, I reject the question. I think things are exactly the same. This is maybe a weird question, but under this fascist regime and Trump's protectionist stances are we paradoxically more likely to see like state planning style approaches or i don't know like like not in the united states probably uh you know he's incapacitated the tennessee valley authority incapacitated the bonneville power administration um i think that's what it's called but it's like the in the pacific northwest does something similar to the TVA. So not in the United States, in Mexico, maybe. Right. I think we've seen like political changes in other countries that should hearten us as much as the from a climate perspective, as much as Trump does discourage us.

47:33But again, that requires us to think not from an America centric perspective, which is getting easier by the day as America, once again, marginalizes itself within the world. Totally. All right. So Malcolm, I, as mentioned, I'm in LA, things got really, really real, obviously, earlier this year with the fires. And, you know, essentially, I've been witnessing this microcosm of the planetary crisis play out in real time, you know, not just in terms of like an immediate physical natural disaster, but across all the different paths that it cuts, I mean, very much in line with sort of the pairing and intertwinedness that you talk about in your book.

48:09It's like the way that we're recovering is a picture of housing in a major city, labor, healthcare, agriculture, like it touches everything, you know, and I've been really interested in following the recovery process because like watching how Los Angeles recovers is basically going to tell us because Los Angeles offers so many different like mini versions of other cities around the world, how we recover is going to be a picture of how other cities are dealing with climate change. And, you know, ultimately, once the, you know, sort of basic needs are met, you know, whose wants went out, who who's going to wield the levers of power going forward, right?

48:44So there's a lot of these sort of tensions, you know, surrounding how we address it that I'm seeing, you know, for example, like when it comes to housing, you know, there are there's a lot of folks saying we need to be circumspect about rebuilding, like, let's talk about, you know, how, where and if we should rebuild, like, you know, what Mike Davis said, like, let Malibu burn versus, you know, Gavin Newsom and Mayor Bass basically cutting through pre-existing red tape for permitting and all that so people can rebuild as quickly as possible. And then, of course, Trump coming in after the fires and being like, they need to start rebuilding now.

49:16Of course, what we're seeing is the soil is still toxic. Even people's houses even burned down, still toxic. And the biggest concern, of course, being if we rebuild all this, isn't it just going to burn down again? You know? Anyway, all of which is to say we're fundamentally redefining our city in this process in real time right now. I'm wondering what are some ways that for people who are already being impacted like this in places like Los Angeles, what are some ways that we can be tangibly applying the three strategies you talk about like practically, immediately and effectively right now instead of sort of, you know, in lieu, I should say, of waiting kind of for this collective action kind of to take place?

49:56Or does that have to happen first? No, no. And I think the planning has to happen now. And that even after a disaster, it's never too late to start planning, right? And in the conclusion of the book, I talk about a sort of speculative framework I call disaster councils, where I think people across the three strategies, across the left-wing progressive political spectrum, can gather together and think about what are the disasters that are likely to affect their community and how can they prepare for those situations. So one example that maybe affects my conception or something from the Los Angeles fires that is relevant, I guess, was there was a point where the city was reaching out, if I'm not mistaken, to mask block organizers in L.A.

50:42saying, like, how can we get some masks to distribute to people? or like, how can we coordinate mass distribution with you? And that's not because the city administrators of Los Angeles like think the anarchists and communists who are organized with mass block are like cool or like smart thinkers or whatever, like people that they turn to for political answers. It's because those people had planned already to have a bunch of masks. And so that's because people you had to deal with because they were already planned and they were already in the right place logistically in terms of resources and supplies and pre-existing organization, that they get to exercise power in that moment, right?

51:23And if the state is coming to you and saying like, can you help us with this? Then you have a chance to exercise influence. You've got leverage. And that's not just about like charity or mutual aid. That's about actually building power. And so I think we can prepare. We can fill this vacuum that the state and capitalist society have created around disaster preparedness and jump in there ourselves according to our own auspices and build these councils where we're going to be coordinating across all three aspects of the strategy where we're going to be organizing private actors whether that's like grocery stores where they keep baby formula or like hotels where we might need to use rooms or whatever with public officials, you know, who are going to be coordinating with state resources, with communists and anarchists in the street who are getting things done and are paired to organize and change things directly.

52:24And we need structures in which people can pursue all aspects of that at the same time, not individually, but with some sort of coherence and organization across those different strategies. Zooming out a bit more, what do you think resistance to this current political moment even looks like for the left, especially based on like what we've seen in like the last 100 days? We know that there's been this wave of protests called the hands-off protests that seem popular with a lot of like liberals and maybe older people and some activist groups, but not really with like a critical mass of younger people and progressives.

53:03A relative of mine who works in politics, who lives abroad, but was kind of like watching the situation from afar recently was like, why are young people out and protesting right now? Of course they are when you think of like, you know, encampments at universities. But, you know, what would you say to someone who said like, the left looks like it's failing to meet this moment? or would you say it's not failing, it's just using different tactics? Well, I think we're all struggling with how to meet the moment. I'm not sure that like the hands-off marches, and I went in Philly with my mother and my one-year-old and it was like huge, huge, huge turnouts.

53:44But then it was a march and people went home and there was no police presence. It's not like they were worried about the threat of this march, right? They weren't going to like march down to the ICE facility and shut it down or something. It was a they marched to Independence Hall where they heard a speech from a congressman. And, you know, so it's not that we were just that we were missing the march, but the march was missing us. Right. Like the march also needed there to be a black bloc there for it to actually be effective and pose like a threat to the status quo. And partly that was just an issue of how it was organized.

54:19that was organized on email lists by like liberal nonprofits, like moveon.org. Like literally, like if you signed up to get a bumper sticker in 2000, 2000 period, like 2000, 00, 00, and you never unsubscribed or put that like email list in your spam filter, like that's how you found out about the march. Or if you talk to someone who did, because it wasn't on Instagram, wasn't in my neighborhood, like there were posters about it. Like the way that young people find out It wasn't there. So that was a failure on March planning as well. And there was like nothing on X about it. There was a point where like boomer relatives of mine were like, are you going to the protest?

54:59It's the biggest thing. Like this is a massive, massive moment. You have to. And we were like, we have not heard of this. And we asked all of our friends and they were like, we what is that? I have no idea what that is. And it's funny that it gets treated solely as a failure of the people who didn't know about it and not as a failure of the organizers when like they were organizing the march. And like if no young people heard about your march, that seems like a failure of yours to publicize it, which it is in part. But it's also just a failure of our of our ecology at the moment. And I think that's because the truth is that people on the left are organizing constantly.

55:34Radical left is like doing a million things a month and even just in Philly. And there are always more efforts to organize new groups of people and new auspices in which people can try to come together. I see ones in my local neighborhood that I have nothing to do with that are like, you know, communist meeting next Thursday or whatever. Or like last Thursday. I'm like, who are these communists meeting in my neighborhood and why don't I know them or whatever? So we really need to like find containers. Naomi Klein has a good line about we need containers for the left because we actually have a lot of left-wing energy, a lot of people who want to do stuff, a lot of people who know a lot of stuff and learned a lot of stuff and are ready to make use of that, and very few containers to bring people together to concentrate that energy and to make sure that we have the cohesion to know what everyone's doing at the same time.

56:30So toward that end, a project I've been working on with my comrade Susan is something called philical.com, which is a calendar for the Philadelphia left that lists all the different events people are doing, like from parent radical parent meetups for Palestine to like book readings to film screenings to rallies to whatever. so that people can go and find that whole movement together in one place and say, oh, I want to go to that and I want to go to that and here's how I'm going to plan and then meet other people there and actually cohere something to a degree that we can rely on it, right? That we can look back and think like, oh, that was the successful climate movement because we're not there yet, I don't think.

57:22And we need to get there. And that is a question of organization. And I think to be realistic about that means admitting that everyone's not going to join a party. Everyone's not going to join even DSA. We can't get everyone to adopt the same line. But we need a movement ecology and even a counterculture, I would say, if we're going to have the containers that we need to gather people into the movement. Yeah. Something that I found interesting about the hands-off thing as well was that they tried to do this sort of big tent, like every single issue under the sun. Well, not every single issue, actually, but they had a whole list of things that the march was about, including hands-off NATO, which I thought was great.

58:04Right. Hands-off NATO. They didn't have hands-off Palestine. And I wonder if that was also part of it. Like, they didn't really take a clear stance on that. So I'm wondering if you think that the problem is taking too big tent an approach rather than like centering something around a single issue and also sort of how this compares to like, you know, the Occupy moment where that was also sort of like this big tent umbrella approach. I guess it was like united around a single image, but like it was sort of this like everything in the kitchen sink situation. Well, it was a structural complaint, but it was really a student debt revolt.

58:41And I think when historians look back on it and understand it, that that's how they will understand it. And it was a student debt revolt that brought anti-capitalism back to the forefront in the American political discourse. So I think one way in which this moment is different from that one is that anti-capitalism has been brought back into the American political discourse. And you can organize as an anti-capitalist in the United States these days, which is very exciting. I think that, yeah, liberals and especially liberal leadership, but also liberal people, failure on Palestine has been a failure that we have all paid the price for.

59:15Can't say enough bad about the Democratic Party and Palestine and their sabotage of their own coalition, right? They were the ones who broke the cohesion necessary and made that impossible, made it impossible, absolutely impossible for people of conscience to support that campaign vocally, right? Whether you voted for them or not in the ballot box, whatever, people of conscience could not publicly support that presidential campaign. And that was their fault. And they have refused to take responsibility for it and to try and mend the tear in the fabric of American political life, not to mention actually try to stop the genocide in Gaza, which is what a lot of us care about most right now.

59:55And for, I think, good reason. So they need to take responsibility for that. But I will say that when I was at the Philly March for Hands Off, we had a peace contingent that was focused on Palestine and people had Palestine signs and were chanting free Palestine. And it's not like anyone told us to leave the march or whatever. And so we need to take part. We need to make space for ourselves and claim that space if we want it. And if they don't like it, they can leave, right? That this is our left. And I think what we'll find is that a lot of those people are perfectly happy to chant for Palestine.

1:00:26Maybe some of the organizers won't be, right? Some people within the Democratic Party certainly aren't. But I think in terms of the people who are in the streets for that moment, we didn't have people shouting us down. Yeah. And I think that's important to remember when, you know, if you look at just sort of the mainstream media depictions of what resistance looks like right now, it's like, okay, there's the hands-off rally where there weren't a lot of police, you said. Yeah, no police, almost no police. There were thousands of people. Crazy. And so there's like that. And then even though there was like a pro-Palestine faction, they're not like represented on the official literature of the event.

1:01:04But then you have these reports of, you know, here in Philly, a bunch of Swarthmore students getting arrested for forming an encampment on campus. And so there's like this weird thing where the left is seen as sort of like in their own little corner, taking these actions and getting arrested and then, you know, not really being heard from again or whatever, and hitting these like third rail moments, but that it's not like unified as one thing. It's sort of like the left feels very out on its own or it looks like it's out on its own right now. Yeah. And I think liberals need to understand that they have something at stake in that, that they have a lot at stake in that.

1:01:38And that if the conservatives and moderates can slice the radical left off and deport us or imprison us or arrest us or suspend us or expel us or make it impossible for us to take part in American political life, which is the current strategy, then their movement can be contained, right? Then their protests can be ignored and the right can hold power and the right can keep pushing the envelope, knowing that there's not going to be a broad, strong response, knowing that they're not going to have to deal with a multi-thousand people march that threatens to overrun the cops, right? That threatens to trash the RNC office or that threatens to obstruct a city for a longer amount of time or something like that.

1:02:19And so the liberals need to understand that they need us, that they are failing in part because they have failed to support us and that the left has held fidelity to our principles and they're the ones who have failed to do so, right? The fact that they have failed to stand up even for the free speech and due process rights of these students, right? That that is absolutely their responsibility and that they have failed to fulfill it. And that's another reason why I think the Abundance stuff is dangerous and wrong is that it tells those liberals that what they need to focus on is getting out of the way, some of these, you know, these like peace meal policy reforms, as opposed to engaging in a social struggle that is going to determine the character of the future right now.

1:03:03And that that's not a fight over like, you know, zoning rules mostly, right? That that's a fight over people's rights, people being expelled from this country over stopping a genocide. And we hear more from like, you know, right wing anti-Trump, small R Republicans, you know, the David Brooks and Bill crystals of the world who are like, this is a moment, you know, we have to fight for democracy. We need to be out in the streets. And like, maybe Bernie Sanders was right. Like, fuck it. I'll take Bernie Sanders. Then someone like Ezra Klein, who is not saying that stuff or, you know, not devoting his sizable, you know, media appearance diet to calling people out, to calling his followers, people who listen to him out into the streets and say, you need to go out to those encampments and defend those students.

1:03:49If you believe in free speech, if you believe in due process, if you believe in the Bill of Rights, then you need to go out there. And I don't care if you don't know anything about Palestine, you need to go out there and support those students because if they lose, then we lose. And I don't know if he believes that or not, but he's not saying it. No, it's a really, really good point. It's sort of another way into, and this is kind of our last question, but another way into the current sort of free speech landscape and censorious atmosphere. So you wrote an article many, many years ago, sort of like coming clean that you were the person who invented the rumor that Radu Head was going to be playing a Zuccotti part at Occupy Wall Street, which is like a funny piece of ephemera.

1:04:30What was the rationale behind the prank at the time? And the reason why I ask this is, is there a place for other forms of resistance, perhaps more on the cultural level, a place for humor or performative and pranking in a political landscape that has become increasingly hostile to open expressions of certain opinions. Yeah, sure. I mean, the idea at the time was we needed to get a bunch of people out to Zuccotti Park. And the biggest band in the world at that point was Radiohead. And they were playing these sold out shows in New York. And we said, wouldn't it be cool if we could get Radiohead to come down to Zuccotti Park, then everyone would come, which is true.

1:05:10Everyone would come. And then we talked about it more and we said, well, people just had to believe that they were coming to Zuccotti Park. And I still think they should have showed up. They could have showed up if they wanted to. Like memeing it into existence. Yeah. And so we convinced people, or I guess I convinced people. I convinced parts of the media that convinced people that they were coming. And then a bunch of people showed up to hear Radiohead. But then everyone had to be like, oh, I'm not here for Radiohead. I'm here for the protests. Sure, it'd be cool if Radiohead showed up, but no one could say, I'm just here for Radiohead, which is great.

1:05:42And then people stuck around some people at least stuck around again like clear on the record fuck radiohead uh zionist scumbags i'm not even a fan in the first place but it worked it got some people out and like yeah sure people should like do some of that stuff i guess i don't know i feel like pranks these days are like youtube pranks or whatever pranks are now it's like it means something different it's not like ad busters or whatever it's like i'm gonna like steal someone's lunch on tiktok or something, you know, like, right? Like pranking is just like doing something aggressive to strangers and taking a video of it.

1:06:16I'm not sure that we should bring that energy. So don't get me wrong when I say we should do pranks or whatever, but sure. Like we, we got to try a bunch of stuff, right? There's a lot at stake right now and people need to get together. And I think it's organizing with people and feeling like it's your job to attack these historical problems that creates the space for people to think of these ideas, right? Cause I didn't think of that in isolation. I thought of it at a moment with a bunch of other people when we were talking about how we could change the world, like very directly. How are we going to go out and change the world tomorrow, next week?

1:06:47What was our particular plan to change the world to make it better or more interesting or to extend this moment of protest? How are we going to make that happen? And I think more people should definitely feel that way of like, what are we going to do next week to change the world in a real sense, not in a like, I'm going to do my little part, but like, no, really, Like, what are we going to do? I was thinking almost of like something like bringing back the spirit of the yippies or I don't know, I could think of the guy who fake became the CEO of Enron. Yeah, I don't know about the Enron stuff seems more like a social media prank or whatever.

1:07:23But the yippies, I mean, the yippies only come about in a in an atmosphere where a lot of people are trying to do that, where people are like constantly organized, even when they're disorganized, thinking about how are we going to change the world? it's incumbent upon us to come up with some good ideas about how we're going to change the world. Like very specific good ideas, right? Not like a general idea, but like specifically what are like you and your friends going to do next week to try and change the world? And that could be trying to levitate the Pentagon or whatever. But it could also be trying to set up an events calendar for around the place where you live, which is one of the things I'm trying to do with my friends.

1:07:58So people should think about what are their responsibilities and what can they do? And I think that perspective opens up a lot of paths, more than just the three, right? Yeah. Well, Malcolm, thanks so much for coming on. Yeah, where can people find, follow your work, get the book, all that? Yeah, wherever fine books are sold, check out What's Left, Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis.

1:08:26This episode of The Culture Journalist was produced and edited by Emily Friedlander and me, Andrea Dominik. Our theme music is by Mark Donica To check out more, head to our Substack That's theculturejournalist.substack.com And if you like what you're hearing Leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts Or share us with friends to help support independent journalism