The Dark Subcultures of Online Politics - Joshua Citarella

1. 0:00 – 5:31

   The Impressionable Minds That Decide Our Destiny

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      I really love what you do. I think it's very interesting, very unique.

   2. JCJoshua Citarella0:03

      That's, uh, incredible high praise from the greatest cinematic podcast that I think exists.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:09

      (laughs)

   4. JCJoshua Citarella0:10

      I mean, there's on- there's only so many people in the game that produce really beautiful video footage.

   5. CWChris Williamson0:15

      Mm-hmm.

   6. JCJoshua Citarella0:15

      And I think you seem to be in maybe the top spot there, so it's a, it's a great honor.

   7. CWChris Williamson0:19

      Thank you. Some may accuse me of all style and no substance, uh, but-

   8. JCJoshua Citarella0:23

      Oh, yeah. (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson0:24

      ... uh, you know, I- I'll-

   10. JCJoshua Citarella0:25

       Okay.

   11. CWChris Williamson0:25

       ... I'll take whatever I can get.

   12. JCJoshua Citarella0:26

       (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson0:27

       How- how do you describe what you do? You meet somebody at a cocktail party and they say, "So what is it that you're interested in?" W- what do you say?

   14. JCJoshua Citarella0:35

       I suppose I- I first try to avoid the cocktail party if at all possible. (laughs) But, uh, I used to say artist 'cause that was what I did, I would show work in galleries and museums. Um, now I say artist and internet culture writer. I'm a podcaster though. Most people know me for podcasting. So about a year ago, maybe a little over a year ago, I launched Doomscroll. We're now on episode 36, 35, something like that. Uh, and so it's- it's a real transformation in that I used to publish to an audience of, like, 10,000 dedicated intellectuals, and now it's, like, 100,000 weekly viewers, and it's just a very, very different game.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:11

       Mm-hmm. And what is it that you're interested in? What- what is it you focus on?

   16. JCJoshua Citarella1:15

       Uh, I mean, I guess it goes back to 2018. I wrote this book. It was a self-published book, really a long-form essay called Politigram and the Post Left that was looking at the memetic activity of teenagers, 12 to 17 at that time, mostly people on what we would then call the post left. Uh, that means a little bit of something different now, which you might associate with, like, post-liberal, new right, what have you, previously Bernie supporters, now people who- who've gone through the, like, Bernie to Trump pi- pipeline. That's generally what we call post left. At that time, it meant eco-anarchy, green anarchy, anarcho-primitivism, people who would reject industrial society and were 14 years old posting on Instagram, and I wrote a pretty extensive ethnography of how those people got into those politics.

   17. CWChris Williamson2:05

       That sounds niche.

   18. JCJoshua Citarella2:07

       (laughs)

   19. CWChris Williamson2:07

       That sounds somewhat niche.

   20. JCJoshua Citarella2:08

       No kidding. (laughs) Yes. Yeah. It was, uh, extremely niche. I think it has held up pretty well considering that was, uh, eight years ago now. Um, and it laid kind of the foundation for a lot of the memetic ecosystem that we live in now. So if you look at those, like, early, you know, this is all primary sources of people who were meme makers, like, teenagers who were shitposting on the bus to school, um, (laughs) there are early inklings of how our media environment exists now. So yeah, I think while it was previously niche to audiences of hundreds or thousands, we now see those same narratives, and in some cases literally the same memes-

   21. CWChris Williamson2:49

       Mm-hmm.

   22. JCJoshua Citarella2:49

       ... posted to audiences in the hundreds of thousands or millions.

   23. CWChris Williamson2:52

       Mm-hmm.

   24. JCJoshua Citarella2:52

       So the scale on these things, we call it early detection. How do you find something that is going to get big in the future? It's, like, political trendcasting.

   25. CWChris Williamson3:00

       Wow. Fascinating. What- what is it that, uh, predicts whether something is going to become big in the future or whether something is going to die a death like most memes probably do?

   26. JCJoshua Citarella3:12

       Well, this was, this was part of the debate at that time, whether this was part of a trend cycle that has, like, a bell curve, right, of early adopters, late adopters, it gets big and then it dies off. And I think the key to that is the underlying analysis of knowing, like, what is a problem that won't go away, or what is a problem that won't easily go away? What is the trend line that you're following? And if you're looking at downward mobility in the United States for most working people, that's been pretty steady for, like, 40 years, so I don't think that's a trend cycle. And basically what I was mining at that time was kids in, you know, this Gen Z bracket who were looking at a life that is very different from millennials, very different from Gen X. They don't have that same boomer upward mobility where-

   27. CWChris Williamson4:00

       Mm-hmm.

   28. JCJoshua Citarella4:00

       ... the future they're looking towards is, in some cases, pretty grim. And so it was understandable about why they would want to reject technology or get into radical politics and do something to upend the status quo.

   29. CWChris Williamson4:11

       Mm-hmm. How- how do you come to think about what's happening with young people in politics at the moment? I- I think I've heard you say that, uh, it's qualitatively different than-

   30. JCJoshua Citarella4:20

       Mm-hmm.
2. 5:31 – 19:04

   The Radicalisation Train is Speeding Up

   1. CWChris Williamson5:31

      What are some of the big trends that you're sort of focused on now? You mentioned that there's some that have started coming through.

   2. JCJoshua Citarella5:36

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson5:36

      What are they?

   4. JCJoshua Citarella5:37

      Oh, I mean, I think the- the rise is clear. It's right-wing populism across all of the advanced world, right? Like, you see this in Hungary, Poland, Italy, like, too many countries to name, the United States obviously. But, uh, basically the constituencies that, like, in my parents' generation used to vote with the interests of labor, the constituencies they used to form the Labor Party, are now voting for these right-wing populist candidates.

   5. CWChris Williamson6:02

      Mm-hmm.

   6. JCJoshua Citarella6:02

      And that trend over the course of 40 years basically tracks with the neo-liberal consensus. And so the thing that has come out of it, to the great surprise of people on the left, is not, like, a renewed trade unionism, and there is a strong push for social democracy, but it is this new...... international nationalism. We don't yet know what to call it-

   7. CWChris Williamson6:22

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JCJoshua Citarella6:22

      ... but generally the rise of right-wing populism as a pushback to austerity, anti-immigration politics, this kind of stuff.

   9. CWChris Williamson6:30

      Is that something that you tracked early? Were you seeing this in the subcultures?

   10. JCJoshua Citarella6:35

       I mean, um, and hitting a lot of pushback on it too, because I think this will sound wild and crazy to Gen Z listeners, but like for the period that you and I grew up, the general consensus of, like, conservative parties was, like, free market evangelism. They were all economically libertarian. So when I started talking about the rise (laughs) of right-wing populism, like, eight years ago, and I was like, "Okay, no one under the age of 25 is a libertarian," that was like, pe- people d- outright dismissed it because it was completely alien to their experience. Um, and now I think if you just look at the general alignment of conservative parties, very few of them are economically libertarian or, or perhaps globalist in their orientation. But that was very new when I started talking about it.

   11. CWChris Williamson7:22

       Mm-hmm.

   12. JCJoshua Citarella7:22

       I think that that was correct.

   13. CWChris Williamson7:24

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So going back to your original research, 2018, and then that must have kickstarted a little bit of an obsession. And also once you've, once you've paid the price of learning how these subcultures work and sort of the, the structure of research, I suppose-

   14. JCJoshua Citarella7:42

       Mm-hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson7:42

       ... being able to go down rabbit holes appropriately, uh, I imagine that the rabbit holes go pretty deep. So what are-

   16. JCJoshua Citarella7:49

       (laughs) Infinitely.

   17. CWChris Williamson7:49

       Just how, uh, extreme or bizarre are the depths that you've managed to find online?

   18. JCJoshua Citarella7:55

       Yeah, I'll lay out maybe a few different projects here, but just, uh, to talk about how really, uh, I mean, incredibly granular this was, which was, um, you know, I don't think, to my credit, I, I didn't really plan much going into this. I was just kind of following my curiosity. Uh, I started with general, let's say, lefty posters who were supporting Bernie Sanders in 2016, previous guest on the podcast, um, you know, broad kind of, let's say, just lefty aligned, you know, not really well-formed politics but kids that were 13, 14 years old.

   19. CWChris Williamson8:27

       Okay.

   20. JCJoshua Citarella8:27

       And then I followed them over the course of around two years. I watched them through various platform migrations, instances of deplatforming, moving between Discord, Reddit, Twitter, all of these different things. Um, at one point towards the end of that text, they're gathered in a pretty exclusive very small Discord that's probably around 100 people, and they're distributing writings from active ecoterrorist groups alongside memes that include instructional m- instructional manuals for how to make improvised explosive devices. So to follow someone's political journey from memetic activity that is reaching audiences of, you know, hundreds of thousands-

   21. CWChris Williamson9:04

       Mm-hmm.

   22. JCJoshua Citarella9:04

       ... to this extremely niche subculture that, you know, 100 people participate in, um, there were not that many primary sources that would just follow the rabbit hole that deep.

   23. CWChris Williamson9:16

       Mm-hmm.

   24. JCJoshua Citarella9:17

       Uh, and what I did during that time was just, mostly 'cause no one else was doing it, I was just spending an enormous amount of time in these communities and trying to catalog how wide the Overton window was. Like, if you're, uh, 15, the acceptable parameters of political debate are not just Democrats and Republicans. It extended to Trump and Sanders, and then it extended to primitivism and transhumanism, and before you know it, you're, like, zoomed out to some cosmic level. And so the big philosophical questions they were asking, um, lo and behold, some of those things are just real world politics now. So, uh, it became pretty interesting, and I'm kind of of the opinion that those 15 year olds were right in some important ways.

   25. CWChris Williamson10:01

       How so?

   26. JCJoshua Citarella10:02

       They had the foresight to recognize an important transformation, uh, technologically, politically, economically, when the traditional gatekeepers of legacy media, for example, were unable to. So yeah, I think that that was an important insight, and, um, I'm inclined to agree with them on that.

   27. CWChris Williamson10:23

       Were you interested in politics at 12 or 13?

   28. JCJoshua Citarella10:27

       God, no.

   29. CWChris Williamson10:28

       Me neither?

   30. JCJoshua Citarella10:28

       Why would you be? (laughs)
3. 19:04 – 26:13

   How Radicalisation Evolves

   1. CWChris Williamson19:04

      That's interesting. So you mentioned there, um... I don't know whether you used the word, but it sounds almost like a pipeline or a funnel-

   2. JCJoshua Citarella19:11

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson19:11

      ... uh, of radicalization-

   4. JCJoshua Citarella19:12

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson19:12

      ... of going from whatever the political equivalent of cute fluffy dog and cat memes are-

   6. JCJoshua Citarella19:19

      (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson19:19

      ... to something more serious over time, to improvised explosive devices.

   8. JCJoshua Citarella19:24

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson19:25

      Um, and then... So t- talk to me about that. Talk to me about the extremism radicalization funnel pipeline. Have you, have you-

   10. JCJoshua Citarella19:35

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson19:35

       ... tracked this? Have you come up with a way that this sort of fits together?

   12. JCJoshua Citarella19:38

       Well, there's... I mean, there are think tank and university researchers that do enormous aggregate, lots of data points to kind of plot trajectories through media, and I think that that terminology is relatively well established. Um, I think it is useful in some cases. The great irony for me writing about these things, you know, I started writing in, in 2018, but the environment at that time was so incredibly hyper-polarized-

   13. CWChris Williamson20:05

       Mm.

   14. JCJoshua Citarella20:05

       ... that we approached politics with th- this idea that people who are on the progressive side or conservative sien- side were, like, carved into stone and immovable, right? And so the great irony of, like, the pipeline metaphor to me was that belief systems are in motion. I think actually all belief systems are in motion, and also the political coalitions and the parties themselves are in motion, right?

   15. CWChris Williamson20:28

       Mm-hmm.

   16. JCJoshua Citarella20:28

       Like, what the Democratic Party was in 1970, very different from 2020. And so, uh, I see that actually as an opportunity, right? I think a lot of people have tried to, um... I'll be more specific. I think the mainstream media has tried to opportunistically use the analogy of a funnel to lump in a whole variety of stuff that should not be there and to make connections between things that are, like, totally antagonistic and actually disagree on very important points. And so when they talk about very popular podcasts being a pipeline to extremist, uh, politics and people who want to go out and hurt someone in the real world, I think that that is a gross, gross mischaracterization. So, um, correctly identifying that there are pathways for people to move through political belief systems-

   17. CWChris Williamson21:16

       Mm.

   18. JCJoshua Citarella21:16

       ... I think accurate, and also, um, an acknowledgement that there are contradictions within the current constellations of political beliefs that people have, where they will hold kind of mutually exclusive positions on certain issues and that cognitive dissonance spurs growth. At some point, they have to kind of resolve it.

   19. CWChris Williamson21:36

       Oh, that's interesting. Uh, it seems to me, especially over the last six months, we've seen a lot of, uh, friends of mine be accused of being some gateway drug to a, a more nefarious belief structure online. Uh, is that a- an inaccurate characterization in your opinion?

   20. JCJoshua Citarella21:57

       I would, I would say that is, that is grossly inaccurate, and those are criticisms being lobbed by people in the high tower who have newly been made precarious in their media positions, and they used to have a complete monopoly. They used to hold the gates for who could publish, and now they can't. So the best that they can do is try to slander everyone else who tr- who tries to compete with them-

   21. CWChris Williamson22:18

       Mm.

   22. JCJoshua Citarella22:18

       ... and quantitatively, these things are enormously popular. I think it's not just because, you know, they happen to be on a certain accessible website or whatever. I think it's because they're talking about the right topics and they're asking the right questions. And so, yeah, I think getting rid of those gatekeepers is basically a political necessity to open up the conversations that we now need to have. Um, and I think if you are going to deploy... This was, I mean, the irony of this pipeline metaphor, if you're going to deploy these things, um, it is left up to, you know, where you direct that flow of energy and inquiry, right? It can lead to alternative places. And so I think there's generally a productive line of questioning that we can introduce, and I think if we can't discuss these things, then, you know, how are we possibly going to have consensus in a democratic society? Like, I don't think they really have much of a plan right now. I think basically, they-

   23. CWChris Williamson23:10

       Who's they?

   24. JCJoshua Citarella23:11

       The, uh, uh, media, um, mainstream media narrative producers, blue check journalists, for lack of a better term.

   25. CWChris Williamson23:16

       Yep.

   26. JCJoshua Citarella23:16

       I think basically they're trying to claw back as much of their precarious position as they can, um, but it's rapidly, rapidly eroding.

   27. CWChris Williamson23:24

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   28. JCJoshua Citarella24:35

       (laughs) A lot of it, yes.

   29. CWChris Williamson24:37

       Yeah, interesting. Well, I... I'm gla- in some ways, I'm glad to hear you say that because it's a much simpler explanation than some, like, complex political ideology understanding that I'd maybe assumed. I understand human nature. I understand that the loss of status is something that is-... tantamount to death, destruction-

   30. JCJoshua Citarella24:56

       Mm-hmm.
4. 26:13 – 37:33

   How Small, Strange Communities Control Beliefs

   1. JCJoshua Citarella26:13

   2. CWChris Williamson26:13

      So are the online subcultures that you've spent time researching, are they actually real political spaces? Like how much do-

   3. JCJoshua Citarella26:22

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CWChris Williamson26:22

      ... fringe internet communities shape young people's real beliefs? Like does this come into contact with reality at some point?

   5. JCJoshua Citarella26:29

      Yeah. Yeah. So part of the work in, you know, um... It's, it's been many years now, so I've kept up with a lot of these people that I've interviewed, right? Like, some of them wanna be in contact, some of them not. But there's a kind of gradation of different outcomes. So, uh, part of that is also following how those groups manifest in the real world. Um, one easy example is that there was a, um... I won't mention the name of this group because they were very small, but, um, they were a, a lefty kind of anarcho-communist Discord organization that during the pandemic, because they were all non-contiguous, spread out over different chapters in the US, they turned into mini mutual aid, food pantry things over COVID. So that's-

   6. CWChris Williamson27:10

      Hmm.

   7. JCJoshua Citarella27:10

      ... one kind of direct manifestation. I think the other more abstract thing that I think is, um, very interesting to follow and has been kind of my primary point of interest, is when these media entities kind of cross over into political organizations, I would say that AFPC, America First Political Action Conference, this is Nick Fuentes's, uh, you know, annual dinner get together and speeches conference, that that is a kind of example of this, you know, reverse, um, downloading life from the internet rather than uploading your life to the internet.

   8. CWChris Williamson27:40

      Hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   9. JCJoshua Citarella27:40

      So, um, I like to point to that, and then also I think Destiny has done some groundbreaking work in this field, where, um... I wrote about this for The Guardian, I, I was six months late to it, I just mentioned it passingly in an article. But, um, during the Georgia Senate runoff, he mobilized his Twitch followers and had more people canvassing and knocking doors than the capital D Democratic Party, right?

   10. CWChris Williamson28:02

       I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

   11. JCJoshua Citarella28:03

       And he got basically no, no, uh, mainstream press for this whatsoever. But that to me is a pretty important turning point where the call to action from a media entity is larger than a proper political party. So yeah, watching that convergence I think is really, really important. Um, there's all sorts of ways in measuring the discourse too, and who has mimetic influence and who's moving the Overton Window or whatever.

   12. CWChris Williamson28:25

       Hmm.

   13. JCJoshua Citarella28:26

       But I would point to those things as, um, maybe the best example. I think anything else of, like, influencers running for office has not been very successful, and I'm, I'm pretty negative on that.

   14. CWChris Williamson28:36

       Okay. So radical online communities or just online communities in general can shape policy? It's not just aesthetics?

   15. JCJoshua Citarella28:45

       Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson28:46

       That's interesting. That is interesting. I knew about the Destiny thing. Destiny's been on the show a bunch. Uh, you mentioned the F word or the N word, I guess, Nick Fuentes.

   17. JCJoshua Citarella28:58

       (laughs)

   18. CWChris Williamson28:58

       Um, (laughs) it seems to me... I mean, uh, Tucker Carlson did a breakdown with someone's son. Like, first off, had Nick on, and then had a conversation-

   19. JCJoshua Citarella29:11

       Someone's son?

   20. CWChris Williamson29:11

       ... explaining... Yeah, fuck it, I can't remember who it was. Goddammit. Somebody's son came on-

   21. JCJoshua Citarella29:17

       Mm-hmm.

   22. CWChris Williamson29:17

       ... young guy, a son of politiciany type cultural commentator person, uh, to explain why Nick Fuentes is popular-

   23. JCJoshua Citarella29:26

       Ah.

   24. CWChris Williamson29:26

       ... and has impact among young people or whatever.

   25. JCJoshua Citarella29:28

       Mm.

   26. CWChris Williamson29:29

       Um, if I was to think about what is sort of internet first, meme adjacent-

   27. JCJoshua Citarella29:35

       Yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson29:35

       ... like radical shitposty subculture that appears to be in the ascendancy, uh, he would be the first person that I would think of.

   29. JCJoshua Citarella29:44

       Right.

   30. CWChris Williamson29:44

       Um, what have you come to... Uh, he, he must be a pretty canonical example given sort of what you've been tracking over the last few years, or is it not?
5. 37:33 – 49:06

   What Memes Reveal About Modern Ideology

   1. CWChris Williamson37:33

      indeed. Um, you've kept on using the word meme. Are you talking about it in the Richard Dawkins sense-

   2. JCJoshua Citarella37:39

      Mm.

   3. CWChris Williamson37:39

      ... or are you talking about it in the made it on Tumblr sense?

   4. JCJoshua Citarella37:44

      Yeah, so this is like the slippage, right? It's like any academic conversation that you have about memes, it's like are we talking about square JPEGs-

   5. CWChris Williamson37:53

      Mm-hmm.

   6. JCJoshua Citarella37:54

      ... or are we talking about, like, a transmittable unit of information or patterns and stories that humans repeat? Uh, and I think y- you kind of have to resort to the Dawkins definition, where one way of instantiating it is very transmittable JPEGs and PNGs and what have you.

   7. CWChris Williamson38:11

      Mm.

   8. JCJoshua Citarella38:12

      But then there's also vertical videos. It's basically any transmittable narrative, and, uh, as silly as that may sound, um, that is basically the way, after having done many extensive interviews of young people who are politicized but then also adults. Like, we basically just carry these stories that either a professor told us or our dad told us or, like, we're some amalgamation of all of these little tidbits of narrative that we piece together into an ideological view of the world. So yeah, the study of memes looks really silly because the internet is hilarious and silly.

   9. CWChris Williamson38:48

      Mm.

   10. JCJoshua Citarella38:49

       But, um, it is actually this kind of deep investigation into, like, how humans piece together a world view.

   11. CWChris Williamson38:54

       Mm.

   12. JCJoshua Citarella38:55

       And we do that, we do that through narratives, because, like, if you're ever crunching, you know, enormous amounts of data to, like, look at the economy or look at these big abstract patterns, it doesn't really make sense until you tell a short story about it.

   13. CWChris Williamson39:08

       Mm-hmm.

   14. JCJoshua Citarella39:09

       Right? Like, that's, that's kind of how we-

   15. CWChris Williamson39:11

       This is how it's come into contact with reality?

   16. JCJoshua Citarella39:14

       It's almost, it's almost a layer of abstraction because you need to exclude... This is gonna get very silly and granular for a second, but, like, there's a general arc you can draw through the data, right? Purely quantitative data is gonna be spread over this grid, and then there's outliers that, to draw a coherent synopsis or, uh, executive summary of, you have to exclude certain data points.

   17. CWChris Williamson39:36

       Mm-hmm.

   18. JCJoshua Citarella39:37

       And so it's, um, yeah, maybe less information but makes it more digestible.

   19. CWChris Williamson39:42

       That's interesting. How much of this is shitposting versus being, like, actually earnest?

   20. JCJoshua Citarella39:47

       Mm.

   21. CWChris Williamson39:48

       You know, Poe's law keeps on getting more and more Poe-y.

   22. JCJoshua Citarella39:50

       Yeah, yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson39:51

       (laughs)

   24. JCJoshua Citarella39:53

       How much is shitposting? I think, well, I think it changed because one of the things that drew me in many years ago was that this was very hilarious and people didn't mean it, and then now you see this kind of negative polarization and doubling down where a lot of people have kind of irony poisoned themselves in one direction or another. Uh-

   25. CWChris Williamson40:15

       What's that?

   26. JCJoshua Citarella40:16

       Irony poisoning is when you float something that is a joke and then you say, "This is not what I really believe, but I'm posting it to, like, piss off the libs or something like that," and then a few years later you kind of, like, work your way up to it and you're like, "Actually, yeah, this is what I believed."

   27. CWChris Williamson40:29

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   28. JCJoshua Citarella41:47

       Mm.

   29. CWChris Williamson41:47

       You get a pump, right?

   30. JCJoshua Citarella41:48

       Mm-hmm, yeah.
6. 49:06 – 53:24

   The Most Important Ideas to Watch Out For

   1. CWChris Williamson49:06

      What are then the-... ideologies that are in ascendancy, that aren't neo-anarcho-capitalist monarchistic, f- like, fucking paleon- paganism or whatever it is.

   2. JCJoshua Citarella49:17

      Yeah, yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson49:18

      Um, what other ones ... W- I've mentioned who are some of the people that are maybe sort of in the ascendancy. What are some of the ideas that you think are, are going to be important over the next few years?

   4. JCJoshua Citarella49:31

      I mean, I think we're in a period of productive growth on the left right now, where, um, a lot of the militant activist rhetoric has been popularly rejected. And so whatever kind of rise there is of this new social democratic movement is organizing itself in a way that I think is broadly appealing to a lot of people, and it needs to win their votes in a democratic society. The thing that I'm interested in, and I think is less commonly discussed, is that in the heyday of the social democratic period, let's say, you know, post-war up until the mid '70s, kind of the golden age of liberalism, right, like, people were a lot more comfortable then as compared to the, um, you know, declining, uh, material status of Gen X, millennials, and now Z. Um, there weren't things like the internet or crypto or, you know, iterations of stateless capital and a kind of transgressing of borders where the economy is now global, international, and immaterial. So it's a lot more difficult and weird to build those economic models in a world that is completely scattered and patchworked and kind of crisscrossed around the globe. Um, yeah, so I see basically, uh, there's a rise of a few different factions, but the meeting of a few of them is this kind of, you know, network state exitarian-

   5. CWChris Williamson50:58

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   6. JCJoshua Citarella50:58

      ... uh, impulse on the right and, uh, where that meets with the kind of rise of renewed social democratic state, and I, I basically think that that is the, the meaningful conflict of our time right now.

   7. CWChris Williamson51:10

      That's interesting. Uh, people love to talk about how the left got lost. What's your perspective on that?

   8. JCJoshua Citarella51:16

      Hmm. It, um ... I've asked people this question of, like, when, when did it get lost, right?

   9. CWChris Williamson51:20

      Hm.

   10. JCJoshua Citarella51:20

       Was it ... 'Cause they'll, they'll give you different answers too, and actually where they (laughs) where they pick the answer is important. Um, I think it got somewhat lost in 1968, where we had incredibly privileged boomers who did a summer job and then bought a home and basically (laughs) , you know, retired at age 35. Um, yeah. Uh, and then really, I think what started to happen in the universities in the '90s is that there was this kind of turn away from, uh, the class conflict, from questions of trade unionism, from wages and all of the material concerns that had constituted discourse on the left towards this identity politics stuff, which is, you know, definitionally marginal, but then also was coated in this elite academic rhetoric that was basically used to, uh, to scare off people who hadn't spent, you know, a quarter of their lives in fancy universities.

   11. CWChris Williamson52:18

       Mm-hmm.

   12. JCJoshua Citarella52:18

       So the rebuilding work is, uh, quite significant, uh, what needs to happen. It's, it's probably a generational project.

   13. CWChris Williamson52:25

       Wow. Wow.

   14. JCJoshua Citarella52:26

       Uh, I don't think it resolves itself overnight, 'cause it didn't get that way overnight.

   15. CWChris Williamson52:29

       Mm-hmm.

   16. JCJoshua Citarella52:30

       But we, we basically have a lot of, a lot of intellectual baggage to bring the most popular, in an electoral sense, the most popular policies in the world to meet any electoral coalition that could enact them, right? So how you get from one to the other is, uh, a long time of discipline, organization.

   17. CWChris Williamson52:52

       Mm. I think when at least most normal people consider sort of radicalization-

   18. JCJoshua Citarella52:59

       Mm.

   19. CWChris Williamson53:00

       ... they think about far right, uh, people that are armed, uh, Charlottesville almost certainly would come up as one of those examples. And then there was almost a, um, chicken and egg, like, you did X so we're gonna do Y, calling out of, look at Antifa-

   20. JCJoshua Citarella53:16

       Hm.

   21. CWChris Williamson53:16

       ... look at Black Bloc, look at sort of the way that people behaved through BLM-

   22. JCJoshua Citarella53:19

       Yeah, yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson53:19

       ... um, riots, protests, et cetera. Uh,

7. 53:24 – 1:04:14

   How Dark Does the Left Go?

   1. CWChris Williamson53:24

      given that you've done your deep dives, just how sort of dark does the left go? 'Cause I think we-

   2. JCJoshua Citarella53:30

      Mm.

   3. CWChris Williamson53:30

      ... we have a, a pretty good ... It's one of, you know, uh, Jordan Peterson's famous, uh, questions, which is, we understand when the right has gone too far.

   4. JCJoshua Citarella53:38

      Hm.

   5. CWChris Williamson53:39

      Sort of easy for us to define that. We have kind of a, a, some canonical examples of that. What have you learned about sort of the darker, more extreme sides of the left, just beyond, like, boys and girls locker rooms and stuff like that?

   6. JCJoshua Citarella53:52

      Mm, mm. Yeah, I mean, I, I often get a question like this about the, the right, and, um, I think people think of me as being sort of, like, researcher for right wing pipelines and stuff like this.

   7. CWChris Williamson54:05

      Hm.

   8. JCJoshua Citarella54:05

      But the most extensive thing that I wrote was about people on the left getting radicalized into what I think are really bad ideas-

   9. CWChris Williamson54:13

      Hm.

   10. JCJoshua Citarella54:13

       ... um, and kind of rejecting general humanist values. Uh, and so the ecoextremism, I think, is probably the most likely end point for people who have not only concluded that there's no possibility for utopia, revolution, reform, basically any chance to improve the world, you're standing in it, all of these types of things, but that also we've been on this slow trajectory since the rise of agriculture, since the Industrial Revolution, that we need to, like, do away with organized society whatsoever.

   11. CWChris Williamson54:46

       Hm.

   12. JCJoshua Citarella54:46

       They bring on these kind of antinatalist politics, this kind of, um, the supremacy of Earth, the planet, and nature over human beings.

   13. CWChris Williamson54:55

       Okay.

   14. JCJoshua Citarella54:55

       They ... There was a, a kind of dispute in, um, the early era of Leo- of neoliberal- sorry, liberalism, um-... with Malthus, who hypothesized that there would be an overgrowth of, um, the, the peasantry and the proletariats and all of the, you know, underlings who are not the ruler-

   15. CWChris Williamson55:13

       Mm-hmm.

   16. JCJoshua Citarella55:13

       ... the ruling class of society. Um, and he genuinely argued that we were gonna run out of food and people would starve to death. Uh, and so there's a kind of rise of neo-Malthusian politics-

   17. CWChris Williamson55:24

       Right.

   18. JCJoshua Citarella55:24

       ... where people see the kind of scarcity and the limited carbon budget and so on and so forth, and they, similar to Malthus (laughs) in like the 1700s say, "Well, the solution is to get rid of a lot of people." Uh-

   19. CWChris Williamson55:35

       Right, okay, so-

   20. JCJoshua Citarella55:36

       ... and I find that to be quite disastrous.

   21. CWChris Williamson55:36

       ... sort of antinatalist approach to this.

   22. JCJoshua Citarella55:39

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson55:40

       Uh, oh, that's interesting.

   24. JCJoshua Citarella55:43

       Kind of political nihilism.

   25. CWChris Williamson55:45

       Mm-hmm. So the, the f- at least one of the more extreme sides of this has to do with the environment. It has to do with, uh, the future of the world from an environmental perspective.

   26. JCJoshua Citarella55:59

       For any young person, I think that's a very serious, um, it's a very serious consideration. And those used to be politics that were impossible to discuss on the right. But now environmentalism on the right is, uh, a rising current, yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson56:14

       Is that right? Is it correct?

   28. JCJoshua Citarella56:16

       Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think there's, um, a kind of rising understanding that, uh, the influx of clim- uh, climate refugees is going to be one of the main thing that, like, American nationalists or European nationalists are gonna be dealing with in the-

   29. CWChris Williamson56:31

       Right, okay.

   30. JCJoshua Citarella56:32

       Yeah.
8. 1:04:14 – 1:09:08

   Power, Authority and the Trump–Mamdani Showdown

   1. CWChris Williamson1:04:14

      has the, has the internet leet speak being shown by the guy that has the most power, has that legitimized or galvanized the communities that you guys are seeing more?

   2. JCJoshua Citarella1:04:30

      Hmm. Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:04:30

      I have to assume it would do.

   4. JCJoshua Citarella1:04:33

      Over the last few years has, um, lent a lot of credibility and importance to these things that were maybe casually, uh, toyed with before, often dismissed. Um, I'm trying to think if there are people who are now organizing themselves with that in mind. Um, there have been targeted meme campaigns-

   5. CWChris Williamson1:04:55

      Hmm.

   6. JCJoshua Citarella1:04:55

      ... a few years ago, like, uh, something called a Baking Kit, for example, which is a, a zip file that gives you transparent PNGs that you can drag and drop into different meme formats. Andrew Yang was an example of this, where you'd get a Discord of, like, 100 to 1000 people and be like, "All right, today we're making memes about X topic," and then they flood the internet with it. Those things exist.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:05:16

      Wow.

   8. JCJoshua Citarella1:05:16

      Um, I wouldn't be surprised if they're happening now, but I think, you know, if the actual government is doing it, um-

   9. CWChris Williamson1:05:24

      Might be a bit more sophisticated.

   10. JCJoshua Citarella1:05:25

       ... the, the seat of power is there.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:05:26

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   12. JCJoshua Citarella1:05:26

       (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson1:05:26

       It's a little bit different. Uh, so we have this meeting between Mamdani and Trump.

   14. JCJoshua Citarella1:05:33

       Hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:05:35

       And I think a lot of politics feels like kayfabe, right? It's-

   16. JCJoshua Citarella1:05:38

       Yeah, yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:05:39

       ... this, um, playing of the game, uh, the pretending of the pantomime as the real. But for a moment, we saw kind of maybe because Trump was in a good mood, and that did seem a little disarming that day. Like, you know, not taking things so personally. We saw kind of the, the real push the kayfabe to one side. "It's okay. You can call me a fascist. I can call you a communist. It doesn't matter."

   18. JCJoshua Citarella1:06:02

       That's fucking wild, yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:06:03

       But to do that, it, it... They will go back to, within the space of a week, saying to each other is the biggest threat to democracy or the future of America.

   20. JCJoshua Citarella1:06:10

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:06:11

       But at the time, they're almost able to break the fourth wall-

   22. JCJoshua Citarella1:06:16

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson1:06:16

       ... and call out what the meta is-

   24. JCJoshua Citarella1:06:19

       Mm-hmm.

   25. CWChris Williamson1:06:19

       ... that sits above it all. Does that make sense?

   26. JCJoshua Citarella1:06:20

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson1:06:21

       You, and I just thought that was so interesting to see... to see the game break briefly-

   28. JCJoshua Citarella1:06:30

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson1:06:30

       ... and like, uh-

   30. JCJoshua Citarella1:06:31

       Yeah.
9. 1:09:08 – 1:20:15

   Do Environmental Protests Do More Harm Than Good?

   1. JCJoshua Citarella1:09:08

   2. CWChris Williamson1:09:08

      I've heard you say that young people are highly ideological and politically ineffective sometimes. Uh-

   3. JCJoshua Citarella1:09:14

      That sounds like something I would say, yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:09:16

      Greta, regularly in the news.

   5. JCJoshua Citarella1:09:18

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:09:19

      Would she be an example of somebody highly ideological and politically, uh, at least attention grabbing?

   7. JCJoshua Citarella1:09:27

      Do you know? I, I didn't follow her. So, it was a comparison that was made very early on 'cause I wrote about all these kids that were super concerned about climate change-

   8. CWChris Williamson1:09:35

      Mm-hmm.

   9. JCJoshua Citarella1:09:35

      ... and she came out right around the same time. Um-

   10. CWChris Williamson1:09:38

       Oh, wow, she was like... It was like The fucking Hunger Games-

   11. JCJoshua Citarella1:09:41

       Yeah, yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:09:41

       ... but eco-

   13. JCJoshua Citarella1:09:43

       (laughs)

   14. CWChris Williamson1:09:43

       ... people and-

   15. JCJoshua Citarella1:09:43

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson1:09:44

       ... she, she won.

   17. JCJoshua Citarella1:09:45

       Well, she was basically... If you were talking about this topic, she was the pop culture association of a young person, you know, climate activist. Um, I think she has gotten, uh, much more, like, properly politicized, where I think, you know, a few years ago, like, Amber Lee Frost, a previous guest in the podcast, um, she makes this great point in her book that we often look to young people for political solutions, and if you would approach that in any other context, like in, you know, a job environment, in a university, it's like, wait, these are the people who know the least.

   18. CWChris Williamson1:10:25

       (laughs)

   19. JCJoshua Citarella1:10:25

       Why are we putting the people who have the least experience in charge of the most-

   20. CWChris Williamson1:10:29

       What a wonderful idea.

   21. JCJoshua Citarella1:10:29

       ... important job in the world?

   22. CWChris Williamson1:10:30

       What a wonderful idea.

   23. JCJoshua Citarella1:10:31

       Um, and so, yeah, I don't hold it against her that the early stuff was like a little bit silly and activist-y, but she does seem to be, um, to her clear material detriment, very committed to the causes she's involved in now. So-

   24. CWChris Williamson1:10:43

       Mm-hmm.

   25. JCJoshua Citarella1:10:43

       ... she's kind of won me over.

   26. CWChris Williamson1:10:45

       Mm-hmm.

   27. JCJoshua Citarella1:10:45

       Um, yeah, but I, I would say-

   28. CWChris Williamson1:10:47

       She did dye the rivers of Venice green this week. I'm not sure if you saw that.

   29. JCJoshua Citarella1:10:50

       I didn't see that yet.

   30. CWChris Williamson1:10:51

       Yeah, so-
10. 1:20:15 – 1:31:55

    Does the Left Have Space for Men?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:20:16

       You did, uh, s- speaking of, uh, the pipelines, I suppose, sort of, the man problem, the stuff that Richard Rives talks about-

Episode duration: 1:53:39